Comment Linuxinsider (Score 5, Informative) 239
Anything from Linuxinsider I would take with a healty dose of skepticism - it's better known for their anti linux shills.
Comment Re:Hidden costs and economy (Score 1) 354
[i]health costs especially in major urban areas with smog pollution[/i]
Of course, the pollution is moved from the tailpipe to the powerplant.
Wine 1.2 Release Candidate Announced 165
An anonymous reader writes "After evolving over 15 years to get to 1.0, a mere 2 years later and Wine 1.2 is just about here. There have been many many improvements and plenty of new features added. Listing just a few (doing no justice to the complete change set):
many new toolbar icons; support for alpha blending in image lists; much more complete shader assembler; support for Arabic font shaping and joining, and a number of fixes for video rendering; font anti-aliasing configuration through fontconfig; and improved handling of desktop link files. Win64 support is the milestone that marks this release. Please test your favorite applications for problems and regressions and let the Wine team know so fixes can be made before the final release. Find the release candidate here."
MIT Unveils First Solar Cells Printed On Paper 125
lucidkoan writes "MIT researchers recently unveiled the world's first thin-film solar cell printed on a sheet of paper. The panel was created using a process similar to that of an inkjet printer, producing semiconductor-coated paper imbued with carbon-based dyes that give the cells an efficiency of 1.5 to 2 percent. That's not incredibly efficient, but the convenience factor makes up for it. And in the future, researchers hope that the same process used in the paper solar cells could be used to print cells on metal foil or even plastic. If they're able to gear efficiencies up to scale, the development could revolutionize the production and installation of solar panels."
Japanese Researchers Make Plastic Out of Water 117
greenrainbow writes with this excerpt from Inhabit: "The material shown in the picture above is just ice, right? Look again. Elastic water, a new substance invented by researchers at Tokyo University, is a jelly-like substance made up of 95% water along with two grams of clay and a small amount of organic materials. As is, the all-natural substance is perfect for medical procedures, because it's made of water, poses no harm to people, and is perfect for mending tissue. And, if the research team can increase the density of this exciting new substance, it could be used in place of our current oil-based plastics for a host of other things."
Comment Re:Display Shrink (Score 1) 952
I find that (for me) 16:10 is the best of all worlds. 4:3 isn't wide enough, and 16:9 isn't tall enough.
Comment Re:Perhaps nobody else cares? (Score 1) 952
I think you are referring to Sun's NeWS. It was also used by SGI as the windowing system under Irix 3.
Comment Finally (Score 5, Insightful) 425
It took how many years for Miguel de Icaza to realize this? Most of us could have told him that with seconds.
Comment Re:waiting (Score 1) 631
Of course, MTBF != maximum number of write cycles for a SSD.
Comment Same song (Score 4, Insightful) 703
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Comment Re:Increase econmy 10-25% (Score 1) 379
I love MTs, but the new 5 and 6 speed automatics are very close to a MT in fuel economy. And you don't get the fuel economy savings with a manual if you don't shift it right - I know plenty of idiots who get poorer fuel economy because of their poor shifting habits. In the US, automatics may cost more initally, but usually have higher resale value. And MT versions of some cars are hard to find, and usually are stripped lower end versions.
I find maintenence costs for a MT higher than an automatic - replacing a clutch once costs more than the costs of the number of transmission fluid changes needed to go the same number of miles. Plus I can change the tranny fluid myself, making it even cheaper.
Comment Re:Let me have doubts... (Score 1) 379
My large sedan gets roughly twice the mileage of a 1965 VW Beetle
My 1974 VW beetle got around 25-28 mpg, driving it in the Washington, DC metro area. I was not a gentle driver. A 1965 should get better, since it had to meet fewer emission and safety (added weight) requirements.
Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334
Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."
Patent Markings May Spell Trouble For Activision 82
eldavojohn writes "If you pick up your copy of Guitar Hero and read the literature, you'll notice it says 'patent pending' and cites a number of patents. A group alleges no such patent pends nor are some of the patents applicable. If a judge finds Activision guilty of misleading the public in this manner, they could become liable for up to $500 per product sold under false patent marking. The patents in question seem to be legitimately Guitar Hero-oriented, and little is to be found about the mysterious group. The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers."
Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
