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Linux

Submission + - Why Linux is a desktop flop (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows. So, why hasn't Linux on the desktop taken off? When it comes to desktop Linux, the cost savings turn out to be problematic, there are management issues, and compatibility remains an issue. ""We get a lot more questions about switching to Macs than switching to Linux at this point, even though Macs are more expensive," one Gartner analyst says.
Hardware

Submission + - Physicist explains Moore's Law collapse in 10years (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Moore’s Law won’t be true forever, and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has explained how it will collapse. And that collapse isn’t going to happen in some distant future, it is going to happen within the next decade.

The problem is one of finding a replacement for silicon coupled with the exponential nature of Moore’s Law. Quite simply, computing power cannot go on doubling every two years indefinitely.

The other issue is we are about to reach the limits of silicon. According to Kaku, once we get done to 5nm processes for chip production, silicon is finished. Any smaller and processors will just overheat.
Hardware

Submission + - Silicene discovered: Single-layer silicon that could beat graphene to market (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Numerous research groups around the world are reporting that they have created silicene, a one-atom-thick hexagonal mesh of silicon atoms — the silicon equivalent of graphene. You will have heard a lot about graphene, especially with regard to its truly wondrous electrical properties, but it has one rather major problem: It doesn't have a bandgap, which makes it very hard to integrate into existing semiconductor processes. Silicene, on the other hand, is theorized to have excellent electrical properties, while still being compatible with silicon-based electronics. For now, silicene has only been observed (with a scanning tunneling electron microscope), but the next step is to grow a silicene film on an insulating substrate so that its properties can be properly investigated."

Comment Re:Australian law made most sense (Score 2) 169

by robcfg (#39608153) Attached to: Proposed Chinese Copyright Changes Would Encourage Re-Use
I think that a person's lifetime + some years is simply too much time. Specially when it comes to software. Think of it, there are still people alive from almost the very first years of computing, imagine 70 years from now... There would be no one able to recover any history of computing, as it's difficult today to dump tapes, roms, disks. In 70 years from now almost nobody will remember how the origins of computing looked like. In this case, copyright is destroying culture.
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - Flashback Trojan Hits 600,000 Macs and Counting (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
twoheadedboy
twoheadedboy writes: "A Flashback variant dubbed Backdoor.Flashback.39 has infected over 600,000 Macs, according to Russian security firm Dr Web. The virulent Flashback trojan infecting Apple machines sparked interest earlier this week after it was seen exploiting a Java vulnerability, although it was actually first discovered back in September last year. The Trojan has a global reach after Dr Web found infected Macs in most countries. More than half of the Macs infected are in the US (56.6 percent), while another 19.8 percent are in Canada. The UK has 12.8 percent of infected Macs."
News

Submission + - Next Great Depression? MIT researchers predict 'global economic collapse' by2030 (yahoo.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: A new study from researchers at Jay W. Forrester's institute at MIT says that the world could suffer from "global economic collapse" and "precipitous population decline" if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace(http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/next-great-depression-mit-researchers-predict-global-economic-190352944.html). The study's researchers created a computing model to forecast different scenarios based on the current models of population growth and global resource consumption, different levels of agricultural productivity, birth control and environmental protection efforts. Most of the computer scenarios found population and economic growth continuing at a steady rate until about 2030. But without "drastic measures for environmental protection," the scenarios predict the likelihood of a population and economic crash.

Submission + - LHC at 4TeV (web.cern.ch)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists from CERN announced a new world record in the energy beam.The collision energy of 8 TeV is a new world record, and increases the machine’s discovery potential considerably. Although the increase in collision energy is relatively modest, it translates to an increased discovery potential that can be several times higher for certain hypothetical particles. Though it is suspected supersymmetry may not be a fortunate approach, operation at 4 TeV will likely rule out or confirm the existence of Higgs boson.
Emulation (Games)

Submission + - Browser emulation of 1975 computer runs first* 16-bit home game (mlsite.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following up on the 2009 story about the "First Graphics Game Written On/For a 16-Bit Home PC", I though /. readers might be interested in seeing the game in question running in their browsers. The original hardware has been emulated and loaded with the original machine code transcribed from .PDF scans. Some brief background here.
Censorship

"Liberated" Tunisia Still Censoring Websites 108

Posted by samzenpus from the I-don't-think-that-word-means-what-you-think-it-means dept.
Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton writes "Tunisia's high court will decide on Wednesday whether to allow censoring of websites containing pornography or 'calls to violence.' It's disappointing that censorship continues in post-revolutionary Tunisia, but it's enough of an improvement over the old regime, that anti-censorship cyber-activism efforts would probably best be spent on helping other countries." Read on for Bennett's analysis.
Software

Submission + - Deconcentration of Attention: Addressing the Compl (deconcentration-of-attention.com)

Submitted by ikusakov
ikusakov writes: This article attempts to describe specific mental techniques that are related to resolving very complex tasks in software engineering. This subject may be familiar to some software specialists to different extents; however, there is currently no common consensus and popular terminology for this subject area. In this article, the area is charted from a practical usability perspective.

This article also proposes to treat software engineering itself as research on human thinking because software is meant to simulate thinking.

Submission + - Internet Acess is Not a Human Right - Possibly a C (nytimes.com)

Submitted by lacaprup
lacaprup writes: Vinton G. Cerf contributes an Op-Ed to the New York Times today that makes the assertion that internet access is not, in fact, a human right, and may not even be a civil right (although he does concede that the argument for it as a civil right is far more compelling than the human right case). Cerf posits the correct idea that — in all cases — the internet is simply a means to obtain something much greater: speech, economic productivity, creative collaboration, etc.

Comment Competition is good. (Score 2, Interesting) 253

by robcfg (#32042386) Attached to: ARM-Based Servers Coming In 2011
After many years, Intel finally has some challenge. And for those of you who doubt what ARM chips are able to do, I'll tell that I've been surfing the web and chatting through MSN Messenger on an Acorn A7000+, which runs on a 48 Mhz ARM 7500FE. Now, if they can raise that to 2ghz, I see very nice performance while still retaining a fairly low power consumption.

Comment Re:Why was this "difficult"? (Score 1) 982

by St.Creed (#32022686) Attached to: Terry Childs Found Guilty

The law that he broke was a section CA Penal Code 502, specifically that he disrupted or denied computer service to an authorized user and he did so without permission.

Refusing to provide a password is absolutely not a denial of service. That's like claiming losing keys to a rack in a data center is a denial of service.

However, he made one of the biggest mistakes then that he could have. While under police surveillance, he decided then to leave the state and make cash withdrawals of over $10,000. He was arrested, and that's where it became a criminal matter instead of simply an employment matter.

How this is a criminal act? Was he under court order to stay within the state of California and not touch his money?

This whole case was never a criminal matter.

Please re-read all the replies before that post. The problem wasn't the refusal of providing a password, but the refusal of providing ANY access at all. Combine that with the attempt to leave the state and it looks likely that he was going for a Denial Of Service in the most literal sense of the word. That's what got him convicted, not a refusal to hand over a password.

To rephase the issue, the city accused him of Denial of Service. His actions support that accusation. There are penalties for DOS-attacks and he got hit with 'em. Now, the DOS-attack would never have taken place if the city management had not been completely incompetent - that is very clear. But if I had been a juror on this, and with the explanations given above, I would have considered him guilty too.

That said, I might still have hesitated to actually vote that way, given the circumstances. But it looks like he did a Denial of Service on the city and yes, that carries a stiff penalty.

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