39174335
submission
alancronin writes:
This morning at 10:00AM GMT, the Irish broadcaster RTE will stop broadcasting it's analog television signal after moving to the digital OTA MPEG-4 service. Ireland now joins the ever growing list of countries that are no longer broadcasting OTA analog TV signals.
38646545
submission
alancronin writes:
Felix Baumgartner will not attempt his stratospheric skydive tomorrow.
Weather conditions continue to be less than ideal for the mission, in which Baumgartner plans to set several records — most dramatically, becoming the first person ever to fly, or in this case freefall, at supersonic speed without the protection of an aircraft fuselage around him. In making the attempt, if all were to go according to plan, he also would make the highest manned ascent with a balloon (120,000 feet, or just under 23 miles) to get to his jumping-off point, and the longest sustained freefall (an estimated 5 minutes, 35 seconds).
37585363
submission
alancronin writes:
The Pirate Bay turns nine years old today, a truly remarkable achievement considering the history of the site. What started out in 2003 as a fun project of a small group of friends turned into one of the largest websites on the Internet. The site has become a global icon; hated by Hollywood and other entertainment industries, but loved by millions of file-sharers.
Open the link to read a brief history of the site.
37147245
submission
alancronin writes:
A new leaked photo of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone, or the "London," promises a completely different looking BlackBerry than the world is used to. According to the BlackBerry news site N4BB, a photo of the device (which is designed by Porsche) shows a slender touch-screen phone that is the color "gun metal." Several apps are shown in the photo, including Facebook, BBM, and DocsToGo. Another leak posted by BlackBerryItalia.it shows a video (see below) of the smartphone with a removable 1800mAh LS1 battery. The London is the first BlackBerry 10 and is slated to have a TI OMAP dual-core CPU running at 1.5GHz, as well as 1GB of RAM, 16GB storage, and an 8-megapixel camera.
36426129
submission
alancronin writes:
Attention all gamers! Humble Bundle is back with a new package of cross-platform games for the very fair price of whatever you think it's worth.
The latest bundle includes the games BIT.TRIP BEAT, Fieldrunners, SpaceChem, and Uplink along with each of their soundtracks. Plus, if donate above the average price, which is currently $6.07, you can also get the puzzle game Spirits. All games in this Humble Bundle are compatible with Android, Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
36386531
submission
alancronin writes:
If you thought your OTA update took too long, how about four days? That's how long the Curiosity "brain transplant" took, and is now finally complete. This now means that the main computers have switched over from landing mode, to surface mode — and thus we hope — meaning the rover's good to go. That said, it's still a painfully slow process, with Curiosity's wheels likely remaining steadfastly motionless for at least another week — and even then we're looking at a trip of just a few meters. When it comes to interplanetary travel, though, slow and steady definitely wins the race — in the meantime, you can soak up the view.
35587511
submission
alancronin writes:
Tech giant Cisco Systems said it plans to cut 1,300 jobs, or 2 per cent of the workforce, as part of an effort to eliminate costs and streamline decision making. "We routinely review our business to determine where we need to align investment based on growth opportunities," San Jose, California-based Cisco said in a statement. "Additionally, we continue to evaluate our organisational structure as part of our plan to drive simplicity, speed of decisions and agility across Cisco." The cuts follow last year's decision to eliminate about 6,500 jobs, or 9 per cent of the full-time workforce, to help trim $1 billion in annual costs and step up profit growth. Cisco chief executive John Chambers has been eliminating jobs and abandoning less-profitable businesses to reverse a sales-growth slowdown and stem market-share losses to rivals including Juniper Networks.
34842439
submission
alancronin writes:
According to StatCounter — one of several sites that keep statistics on Internet usage — Google Chrome became the most widely used browser in June on a global basis. Basing its information on tracking more than 15 billion page views, Chrome surged past Firefox late last year and overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the May-June time frame.
34606763
submission
alancronin writes:
With Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" set to be frozen soon, I took the opportunity to run some new benchmarks of Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, the Debian OS variant using the FreeBSD kernel rather than Linux, to compare it to Debian GNU/Linux as well as Ubuntu Linux and PC-BSD/FreeBSD 9.0.
32435101
submission
alancronin writes:
Over 100 new engineering positions will be created at Cisco’s R&D facility over the next two years in a major €26 million expansion.
An Taoiseach Enda Kenny confirmed the new jobs at a conference at the multinational’s headquarters this morning, revealing that recruitment commenced in the latter half of 2011 and is continuing in multiple product and technology areas.
The investment is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland and will expand the mandate of the Cisco Galway R&D centre into new business areas in communication and collaboration software technology, including enterprise and cloud enabled desktop, mobile applications, desktop virtualisation and real-time web communications.
[Disclaimer: I am a Cisco employee]
32302325
submission
alancronin writes:
Google have introduced a new easter egg into their search engine, search for 'zerg rush' and defend your search results against the incoming hoard.
31223675
submission
alancronin writes:
Computer and IT giant Dell said today it will acquire privately held Wyse Technology, a company that specializes in what it calls “cloud client computing.”
18053108
submission
alancronin writes:
For those Linux users that need or want to run Windows applications in LInux, here is some good news for you. Wine 1.3.9 is now out, providing new stability and compatibility options. At the top of the list of new features in Wine (WINE is not an emulator) is the beginning of new ActiveX support in the browser. Moving beyond ActiveX are a long list of fixes for Windows games that will now work on Linux.
17325510
submission
alancronin writes:
For those who didn't know about this one yet; inside the Android API there is a static method labeled isUserAMonkey() which: "Returns "true" if the user interface is currently being messed with by a monkey." This has been in since API Level 8. The doc is available here: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/ActivityManager.html#isUserAMonkey()
7788840
submission
alancronin writes:
A sneak peek at Ubuntu including a screenshot of the (more) transparent interface and the promised boot times.
