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Software

Submission + - StarOffice, Linux fly high at Singapore Airlines

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Singapore Airlines is offering access to Sun's StarOffice 8 office productivity suite free of charge to passengers on its new Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. StarOffice, Sun's proprietary version of OpenOffice.org, runs on the aircraft's Linux server and is accessed via a seat-back terminal at each passenger's seat.
The Internet

Submission + - Facebook Tip - not approving new applications

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Hi, Here's something about Facebook you'll be interested in. Obviously, Facebook is touting their "applications" as opening the site up. BUT: Facebook is not approving any new applications. This isn't by policy; this is just reality based on empirical data. Here is the data: On Friday (the day after it launched — I didn't check it on Thursday) morning at about 9am, they had 10 pages of applications, or about 100 application (10/page). Today, they have 10 pages + 1 application. How many applications would you guess have been submitted to Facebook for their approval since Friday? I'd guess at least another 100. I personally know at least 10 people who have submitted applications that haven't been yet approved. To have approved at most a couple is ... ridiculous (and susicious?). At this rate, the list of applications waiting to be approved will grow exponentially. And the # of users of Facebook's partners/sponsors' applications (which were there the day of launch) will also grow exponentially, even if they're not necessarily the best. And, I'd prefer to be anonymous on this tip. Thanks."
Power

Submission + - Fire from Salt Water

Submitted by
sterlingda
sterlingda writes: "John Kanzius and his associate Charlie Rutkowski have found a way to create energy by burning salt water with the same radio wave machine they are using to kill cancer cells. Kanzius and Rutkowski were testing their external radio-wave generator to see if it could desalinate salt water, and it ignited. A university chemist determined that the process is generating hydrogen. While the phenomenon is interesting, it is not yet practical for energy generation inasmuch as more energy is consumed by the radio frequency device than is produced for burning. [memo do be deleted: the wiki server should be able to handle slashdotted bandwidth]"
Space

Submission + - Letting the moon light the streets

Submitted by
keulenae
keulenae writes: "Street lights dimmed at full moon

Have you ever lain awake because of strong moonlight shining through your curtains? A full moon in a clear sky can indeed be a powerful source of light. Even Roman military commanders were fully aware of this, often making use of a full moon to attack or move their troops for greater tactical advantage. It seems a bit strange then that modern street lights totally ignore the lighting power of the moon. But this fact did not escape the attention of the San Francisco-based design firm Civil Twilight. They invented the Lunar Resonant Street Lamp. They were rewarded with Metropolis Magazine's top Next Generation Design Award for their efforts.

Their idea is as simple as it is bright. Their lamps have sensitive light sensors built into them that detect the changing brightness of the lunar cycle and the nighttime sky and dim themselves accordingly. If there is a full moon with a clear sky, the lamps dim to as much as 10 percent of their nominal output. This significantly reduces energy consumption. It also reduces unnecessary light pollution, providing the pleasure of improved visibility of the moon and stars. By making use of energy efficient LEDs, the lunar resonant streetlights have a combined savings of 90 to 95 percent over traditional street lights. Moreover, LED lights require less maintenance than traditional gas discharge lamps. References
  • Article "Lunar Light" in Metropolis Magazine
  • Article "Streetlights That Adjust To Moonlight" on MetaEfficient.com
  • Article "Civil Twilight Team Wins 2007 Metropolis Next Generation® Design Prize" on ArchNewsNow.com
"
Businesses

Submission + - Ubuntu Prominent on Dells Homepage

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: There have been lots of postings recently about how the Dell Ubuntu is very low profile ("locked in the cabinet in the basement of the filing office with a sign that says beware of the leopard").

Not any more. I went to Dell.com to check my order status and the top banner says "By Popular Demand, Ubuntu Has Arrived". There are different banners, so you might have to reload the page a few times to see the Ubuntu banner.
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Will Dell Kill Ubuntu?

Submitted by davidork
davidork writes: First I must say that I love Linux. I made the switch from windoze about 3 years ago now, and am never going back. It's cool to see that Linux is getting mainstream support from hardware vendors, but there are possible problems I see. With Dell selling computers preloaded with Ubuntu now, will this end up hurting the Ubuntu community or extend to the Linux community as a whole? This may sound a bit stupid, but think about it. Dell is selling computers to everyone, even the ones who ask "what aisle is the internet on?" They want to keep their customers happy, and in an effort to keep their customers happy they must supply drivers and applications to simplify things (though theres not much more you can simplify in Ubuntu) for their "less than tech savvy users". Will they provide and maintain their own repositories for these files or will they be integrated into the Ubuntu repositories? If so could that not slow down the rapid pace at which Ubuntu is developed? Will the Ubuntu community be waiting on Dell to crank out it's support software and drivers just to get the newest Ubuntu release? Will Dell contribute to the community and set up repositories for Ubuntu packages to keep the rest from overloading? Or will Dell develop them independently of the Ubuntu community? If so would could that eventually lead to a fork in Ubuntu all together? Ubuntu and Dell branded crapware loaded Ubuntu? Will this give Dell leverage over the Ubuntu community? If Dell fails to keep up and make good of Ubuntu, pissing off users with crappy drivers, crash prone dell support software, will that taint the mainstream market's opinion of Linux; putting the Linux desktop back at square one in terms of mainstream appeal? and if Dell does sell enough computers preloaded with Ubuntu to mainstream consumers? Will that dilute the Linux community? I know it sounds elitist, and in a way it is but, Although it would show that the Linux desktop has finally gained mainstream success and Micros*ft is on its last leg, The thought of any moron that doesn't know a serial port from his elbow saying "I use Linux" annoys me. Just because they can rip cd's, surf the web doesn't mean they KNOW Linux, they didn't spend any time reading man pages, configuring XOrg, dealt with dependency hell, or spent a few minutes praying that their newly configured kernel would compile and work how they wanted,they just bought a Dell and clicked through some crappy support software. although the idea of watching a commercial where a guy says "Dude, your getting Ubuntu!" does sound pretty cool, I still have a few worries about the whole Dell/Ubuntu thing. Let me know what you think.
Businesses

Submission + - Dell claims next day support equals 3 days later?

Submitted by Symphonic5
Symphonic5 writes: I just got off the phone with Dell support and was surprised to hear that even while having "next day on site service", I can expect a tech maybe on Monday, 4 days away. Apparently, as dell as just informed me, next day on site means that I will recieve a call about the issue the next day to schedule an appointment, the tech will show up a a few days time. Am I crazy to expect that with next day on site service a tech should show up, well, next day? Has anyone else had any problems like this?
Spam

Submission + - What do you use for anti-spam

Submitted by Jim
Jim writes: I work for a small non-profit organization and we are currently paying for spam filtering service through postini. We have about 75 users and my initial thoughts are going to an appliance like a Barracuda would be cheaper. What are some of your experiences with hosted services and appliances. Are there any open source solutions out there that do a good job? Money is always an issue around here and around $400 a month seems to be getting pretty outrageous.
The Internet

Submission + - Is there anything a small town can do?

Submitted by
kneemoe
kneemoe writes: "Is there any way to 'force' a broadband carrier into an area? I'm moving to a small town right on the Hudson River just 10 miles outside of the state capital (Albany) and I'm shocked to find out that the only high speed internet available is through a satelite provider (I'm not about to pay double for half the bandwidth, same argument can/will be made against DSL crud)
So the question goes — Is there anything a (potential) consumer can do to force a cable provider into the area. Its not like this place is in the middle of the Adirondaks, its just outside of the capital!"
United States

Submission + - Where Are The Entry Level Jobs?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I've done my time in college, and now I want to reap the rewards. But even with a Master's in computer science, I can't get an entry level job. I'm sure most of you have noticed, but many of these so-called entry level jobs require either 1-2 years of experience or an understanding of some technology that you will never see in academia. So where are the real entry level jobs for college grads?
Software

Submission + - A Better Open Source Webmail?

Submitted by
CandyMan
CandyMan writes: "Recently I have been forced to go back to a certain open source webmail (name withheld to protect the touchy), and I can't say I would recommend it to anyone. For emergencies maybe, but not for daily use. Lightning-quick full-text indexing and Javascript UI tricks in Gmail and Yahoo! mail have spoilt me forever, and I guess that most webmail users out there would feel the same. Old-style html-only webmail applications just don't cut it anymore. Which is your favourite webmail client? Is it a bare-bones html-only application, or does it have a fancier interface?"
Music

Submission + - Linux Music DJing

Submitted by
Cocodude
Cocodude writes: "I'm moving to a new house in London and as the house IT expert, I want to be in control of computerised music at a housewarming party. I haven't been able to find any suitable automated DJing systems for Linux, where I can queue up some songs to be played with an automated detection of the end of each song and hopefully some rudimentary beatmatching. I don't want to have to run Windows to do this, so how can I, in this simplistic situation, prove that open source software for an open source operating system can do the job?"
Handhelds

Submission + - Why is there no Firefox Mobile Browser?

Submitted by
GGCRabidGopher
GGCRabidGopher writes: "Being both a big fan of PDA's and Firefox, I had to ask myself why there is no Firefox browser for either the Palm OS or Windows Mobile. The standard version of IE that ships with windows mobile is very limited in it's ability do much of anything. There has to be a better mobile browser available but maybe I am just missing something."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Are .tmp files necessary or just bad programming?

Submitted by planckscale
planckscale writes: After spending another hour deleting .tmp files from a bloated XP machine I started to wonder, is the .tmp file necessary when coding an application on the MS platform? Why do so many apps produce .tmp files and is it just because of bad coding or does the use of them dramatically speed up an app? Don't coders use dev/null to reduce them in linux? I can understand the use of them in case an app crashes for recovery purposes, but why don't more apps have the capacity to delete their own .tmp files once they are done with them? Is it too much to ask to at least have the option when closing an app to delete your temp files?

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