Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Can of worms. (Score 1) 1117

by GiovanniZero (#26156337) Attached to: What Restrictions Should Student Laptops Have?
I have a MBP that I've carried half way around the world and back and its running great after two years. I actually had it in my backpack when I got in a motorcycle accident. When I pulled it out of my backpack the bottom half was actually bent about 8 degrees in the middle. I put the bend on the edge of a table and bent it back. It had trouble ejecting disks for a little while but after a month or so it "just worked" Also dropped it down a flight of wooden stairs..no problem. Your best bet if you're not going to get a MBP is to get an Acer. Its the most likely to break the fastest so you can buy a real computer.
GNOME

Matching Up Hotkeys for OS X and Linux GUIs? 83

Posted by timothy from the bringing-on-the-singularity dept.

I use a MacBook Pro for my main machine, but also have a Ubuntu desktop. I get irritated about switching between command-oriented hotkeys and ctrl-oriented hotkeys (cmd-a on OSX = ctrl-a on Linux/windows). I've looked over a lot of forums and have found that Gnome doesn't seem capable of changing hotkeys, while xfce and fluxbox can. The ideal solution would be a way to change system keys in X, or at the system level — that way I can keep compiz. Does anyone have any ideas or know a trick to change system hot keys?
User Journal

Journal Journal: Matching up hotkeys for OS X and Linux

Journal by GiovanniZero

I use a macbook pro for my main machine but also have a Ubuntu desktop. I get irritated about switching between command oriented hotkeys and ctrl oriented hotkeys (cmd-a on OSX = ctrl-a on Linux/windows).

I've looked over a lot of forums and have found that Gnome doesn't seem capable of changing hotkeys while xfce and fluxbox can. The ideal solution would be a way to change system keys in X or at the system level that way I can keep compiz.
Mars

Mars Polar Cap Mystery Solved 77

Posted by Soulskill from the feather-in-their-cap dept.
Matt_dk writes "Scientists are now able to explain why Mars' residual southern ice cap is misplaced, thanks to data from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft (the same probe running the 'Mars Webcam'). It turns out the martian weather system is to blame. And so is the largest impact crater on Mars — even though it is nowhere near the south pole. Like Earth, Mars has frozen polar caps, but unlike Earth, these caps are made of carbon dioxide ice as well as water ice. During the southern hemisphere's summer, much of the ice cap sublimates, a process in which the ice turns straight back into gas, leaving behind what is known as the residual polar cap. The mystery was that while the winter cap is symmetrical about the south pole, the residual cap was offset, and scientists couldn't figure out why."
The Military

US Congress Funds Laser Weapons 423

Posted by Soulskill from the vaporize-ware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that the US Congress is funding laser weapons for use in the near future. Low-power lasers called 'dazzlers' are already being used in Iraq to temporarily reduce a person's vision. High-power laser weapons would allow precision attacks that minimize civilian casualties. From the Post: 'The science board said tactical laser systems could be developed for broader use because they "enable precision ground attack to minimize collateral damage in urban conflicts." The report suggested, for example, that "future gunships could provide extended precision lethality and sensing." The board also proposed using lasers to protect against rockets, artillery, mortars and unmanned airborne vehicles by blasting them out of the sky. Last month, the Army awarded Boeing $36 million to continue development of a high-energy laser mounted on a truck that could hit overhead targets. But deployment is not expected until 2016, even if all goes well.'"

Judge Munley is So Out of My Top 8 791

Posted by CmdrTaco from the surprised-he-was-there-in-the-first-place dept.
Frequent Slashdot Contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A federal judge has ruled that a school district didn't violate a student's free speech rights when it suspended her for a parody MySpace page she created calling her principal a sex addict who "hits on students". In the ruling, Judge James M. Munley made the curious argument that if the case involves a student publishing lewd and offensive speech outside of school on their own time, then the proper precedent-setting cases to look to, are cases involving students making offensive statements in school during school hours, not cases involving students making less-offensive statements outside of school on their own time. In other words, if you can't find prior caselaw where all of the factors are the same, then the lewd-speech issue is more significant than the issue of whether the speech was made in or out of school." Hit that magical link below to read the rest of these words.

Microsoft Innovates Tent Data Centers 201

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-touch-the-fabric dept.
1sockchuck writes "The outside-the-box thinking in data center design continues. Microsoft has tested running a rack of servers in a tent outside one of its data centers. In seven months of testing, a small group of servers ran for seven months without failures, even when water dripped on the rack. The experiment builds on Intel's recent research on air-side economizers in suggesting that servers may be sturdier than believed, leaving more room to save energy by optimizing cooling set points and other key environmental settings in the server room."
Communications

Submission + - The True Cost of SMS Messages (gthing.net)

Submitted by
nilbog
nilbog writes: "How much does it actually cost to send SMS messages? This article outlines the true cost of SMS messages and comes to some pretty startling conclusions. For example, sending an amount of data that would cost one dollar from your ISP would cost over sixty one million dollars if you were to send it over SMS. Why has the cost of bandwidth, infrastructure, and technology in general dropped while the price of SMS messages have risen exponentially? How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super premium data transmission?"
United States

Submission + - California sues US over emissions

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "California is suing the US federal government, in an attempt to force car makers to conform to tougher cuts in greenhouse gas emissions ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7169200.stm ). The lawsuit comes after the federal Environmental Protection Agency denied California a waiver from US law needed to enact its own efficiency targets. Fifteen other states or state agencies are set to join the action. It challenged the Epa's denial of California's request to implement its own emissions law — which would require a 30% reduction in motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 2016 by improving fuel efficiency standards. For years, California has been allowed to set its own environmental targets in recognition of the "compelling and extraordinary conditions" the state faces — and the Epa has never before denied California a waiver request. The other states joining the fight are: Massachusetts, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington."
PHP

Submission + - Mastering regular expressions in PHP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Perl may be regex king, but PHP can slice and dice input quickly, too. Pattern matching is such a common chore for software that a special shorthand — regular expressions — has evolved to make light work of the task. Learn how to use this shorthand in your PHP code.
The Internet

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Archive is beind sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to "opt in" before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search.

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

Close