Comment It's a sad day... (Score 0) 199
...when Slashdot top headlines are belittled to a boring meeting room at Microsoft.
Washington State LUG to Hold "Nerd Auction" 376
elrous0 writes "As part of a PR stunt, a Washington Linux user group is holding a "Nerd Auction" and appealing to local sororities to exchange dates and makeover advice for their computer skills and homework assistance. 'The problem is that we're all still nerds. Let's face it, guys. If anyone's going to bid on us, we'll need some spicing up,' writes Washington State Linux Users Group president Ben Ford on the group's website. 'And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?' So far there has been no comment on how a Linux user group is going to help sorority girls with their Windows machines."
Big Box Store Reps Push Unnecessary Recovery Discs 380
Ed Albro, PC World writes "At PC World, we've got a story today on salespeople at Best Buy and Circuit City pushing consumers to pay the stores' technicians to create recovery discs for their new laptops. Recovery discs are important to have, of course, but the fact is that they're easy to make yourself. Or you can get them from the manufacturer of your PC, often for half of what Best Buy and Circuit City charge you. The salespeople often tell you that you can buy from the manufacturer — but they claim you'll pay twice as much as the stores charge."
Journal Journal: AMD Expands SSE Instructions, Excluding Intel's
AMD announced their proposal today for a new SSE instruction set, namely SSE5. The new instruction set won't be set to launch until 2009, so don't expect to see it in any Barcelona cores. Interestingly, SSE5 will not be backwards compatible with all of the previous generations of SSE, which has been the case for all SSE generations thus far. Intel's new SSE4 is launching in Penryn around the end of the year, but only a fracti
Bionic Arm With Muscle Emulation 118
Gugo writes "German based company FESTO has develop a bionic arm that uses muscle emulation,(video included) with a product called 'fluidic muscle.' It works like a normal animal-human muscle but moved by air inside.
This new type of prosthetic offers rapid response, small size, simple assembly and ease of control.
On their website they show the range of fluidic muscles with a car race simulator."
Bad Movie Physics Hurt Scientific Understanding 910
eldavojohn writes "A paper published by UCF researchers claims that bad movie physics hurt students' understanding of real world physics. From the article, "Some people really do believe a bus traveling 70 mph can clear a 50-foot gap in a freeway, as depicted in the movie Speed." The professors published this paper out of fear that society will pay the price. One of the authors commented on advancements in the past years "All the luxuries we have today, the modern conveniences, are a result of the science research that went on in the '60s during the space race. It didn't just happen. It took people doing hard science to do it." I commented on the physics of the most recent Die Hard having problems detracting from my enjoyment of the movie but is it really the root of a growing problem of poor science & math among students?"
Microsoft Says "War on Terror" is Overblown 666
SlinkySausage writes "The endless security measures imposed on society as a result of the "war on terror" have become overblown and intrusive, according to Microsoft Redmond senior security analyst Steve Riley. He made the comments in a talk at day one of Tech.Ed Australia about software security. Riley also fessed up that Microsoft cocked up XP from a security perspective. "We let you down with XP," he said.
Microsoft also showed a very interesting new desktop virtualisation technology called SoftGrid, which allows applications to be virtualised individually, rather than a whole OS. Think Virtual PC or VMware, but instead of virtualising an OS, just a single application is virtualised."
Vista Use Grows as Mac OS X Stays Flat 387
jdelator writes to mention ComputerWorld is reporting that Microsoft's Windows Vista has increased their market share steadily every month while their main opponent, Mac OS X, has remained essentially flat. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August."
OLPC Mass Production Begins 187
chris_mahan writes to tell us that mass production of the $100 laptop is finally being ramped up. "Hardware suppliers have been given the green light to ramp-up production of all of the components needed to build millions of the low-cost machines. Previously, the organization behind the scheme said that it required orders for 3m laptops to make production viable. The first machines should be ready to put into the hands of children in developing countries in October 2007. "There's still some software to write, but this is a big step for us," Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), told the BBC News website."
Ubiquitous Multi-Gigabit Wireless Within Three Years 152
Anonymous Howard passed us a link to the Press Escape blog, and a post about the future of ultra-fast wireless connectivity. Georgia Tech researchers unveiled plans to use ultra-high frequency radio transmissions to achieve very high data transmission rates over short distances. In a few years, the article says, we'll have ubiquitous multi-gigabit wireless connectivity, with some significant advances already under their belts. "GEDC team have already achieved wireless data-transfer rates of 15 gigabits per second (Gbps) at a distance of 1 meter, 10 Gbps at 2 meters and 5 Gbps at 5 meters. 'The goal here is to maximize data throughput to make possible a host of new wireless applications for home and office connectivity,' said Prof. Joy Laskar, GEDC director and lead researcher on the project along with Stephane Pinel. Pinel is confident that Very high speed, p2p data connections could be available potentially in less than two years. The research could lead to devices such as external hard drives, laptop computers, MP-3 players, cell phones, commercial kiosks and others could transfer huge amounts of data in seconds while data centers could install racks of servers without the customary jumble of wires."
Robot Aims To Walk On Water 125
qeorqe writes "CMU researchers are developing a robot that runs across water (PDF). It is modeled after the basilisk lizard, which has that rare ability. The researchers have done both computer simulations and experiments with test models."
Harry Potter Leaked Via Handheld Camera 427
owlgorithm writes "Salon reports that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been leaked four days before it hits bookstores. It turns out that someone with access to the American edition of the book has taken a photograph of every one of the pages and made them available via bittorrent. Publishers may well be quaking in their boots, but in some places the quality is barely legible. On many pages the pirateer's hands are in the pictures with other pages needing a bit of Photoshopping just to make out the words. It appears many of the sites have been removing the content, naturally enough."
