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HP

Submission + - Would anyone miss the Break and SysRq keys? (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Would anyone actually miss the Break and SysRq keys?. That's the question posed by HP's vice president Phil McKinley, whose company is replacing all the function keys (F1, F2 etc) with actual functions (volume up/down, brightness up/down etc) on a forthcoming laptop. Lenovo is also considering doing away with the CAPS LOCK key, after it monitored the keyboard habits of 30 of its staff using a keystroke logger. Are the keyboards we've grown used to over the past 20 years about to change? And what keys would you get rid of?"
Government

Submission + - First Internet Election Takes Place in Hawaii

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that voting has ended in what is being touted as the nation's first all-digital election and city officials say it has been a success after some 7.300 voters in Honolulu's neighborhood council election were able to pick winners entirely online or via telephone. Although only 6.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, city officials say the experiment appears to have generated few problems and it even saved the financially strapped city around $100,000. "It is kind of the wave of the future," said Bryan Mick, a community relations specialist with the city Neighborhood Commission, "so we're kind of glad in a way that we got to be the ones who initiated it." Before the first day of balloting, voters living in 22 neighborhood board districts with contested races received a passcode that, along with the last four digits of their Social Security number, gave them access to an election Web site created by Everyone Counts. Voting also was conducted by phone, with results electronically fed into the same computer system that collected the Web votes. Lori Steele, head of Everyone Counts, the San Diego-based firm chosen by the commission to run the election, said the computer codes in her firm's system are available for auditing, and that each completed ballot is heavily encrypted and more secure than that used in Internet banking. Web voting, which produces no paper record, cannot be used in city council or state elections because state law bars voting systems that do not include a vote verification process. "The technology side, it works," said Joan Manke, executive secretary of the commission. "So my sense is because it's a change, it's something totally new, it takes time. I think, for people to buy into it, to want to actually try it.""

Comment Re:I thought it was in beta (Score 1) 489

by Tangent128 (#25361365) Attached to: Google's Chrome Declining In Popularity
There's the feel. It appears quite lightweight, clean (from the user side, anyhow), fast, and simple. I've mostly switched to Chromium for random browsing now.

On an interesting psychological note, though: although Chrome can remember your previous browsing session, I don't use it for remembering my regular tabs; I leave that to Opera. Since I check those specific pages regularly, it just feels right to keep them in a more solid-feeling window.
Graphics

Submission + - Ray tracing for gaming explored (pcper.com) 3

Submitted by
Vigile
Vigile writes: "Ray tracing is still thought of as the 'holy grail' for real-time imagery but because of the intense amount of calculations required it has been plagued with long frame render times. This might soon change, at least according to an article from Daniel Pohl, a researcher at Intel. With upcoming many-core processors like Intel's Larrabee he believes that real-time ray tracing for games is much closer than originally thought thanks in large part to the efficiency it allows with spatial partitioning and reflections when compared to current rasterization techniques. Titles like Valve's Portal are analyzed to see how they could benefit from ray tracing technology and the article on PC Perspective concludes with the difficulties combing the two rendering techniques as well as a video of the technology in action."
Graphics

Submission + - Stereoscopic 3D on Linux

Submitted by
Pitr
Pitr writes: "Owners of head mounted displays could enjoy stereoscopic 3D on their Linux boxes only with high-priced graphic card like NVIDIA Quadro or ATI FireGL. But, the things changed... for the better. The salvation came, but not for all. Owners of ATI Radeon cards will have to wait for a while, but the lucky, lucky owners of any NVIDIA GeForce card can enjoy stereoscopic applications, images and videos with PolyStereo adapter — http://vrlogic.com/html/polystereo_adapter.html — on their Linux boxes and almost any HMD supporting 800x600 resolution. It also works with shutter glasses, but who actually uses those anymore?"
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia Bans Whistleblower (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by Retired Wikipedia Editor
Retired Wikipedia Editor writes: When a user of Wikipedia complained about a former administrator named Betacommand calling another user a "fucktard", he was banned over it by a power-tripping admin who goes by Moreschi. Why? Because it was the user's first edit to Wikipedia. This user could have been an alternate account of a regular editor, who was afraid of blowing the whistle in fear of retaliation. He was right; the Wikipedia cabal banned him for it. Or maybe he was a lurker who was concerned over such a strong use of language. The discussion about it is still ongoing, but there's a shocking amount of support for the banning of the whistleblower. I used to edit Wikipedia pretty regularly, until I finally gave up on it due to the politics and the need of administrators to pull garbage like this.

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