Mithy - Slashdot User

Submission + - 85% of Mac owners also own a PC (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @07:13AM

Barence writes: More than eight out of ten Mac owners also own a PC, according to a new piece of research. The NPD survey found that 12% of US computer-owning households have a Mac. However, 85% of those also own a Windows PC, suggesting that the Mac/PC divide is nowhere near as clear cut as both Apple and Microsoft suggest. Mac owners are also far more likely to have multiple computers in the house. Two thirds of Mac owners have three or more computers in the home, while only 29% of PC owners have two or more PCs.

Submission + - Windows Mobile 6.5 launched, panned (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @07:02AM

Barence writes: It's not Windows Mobile 7, but at least it's here. PC Pro has posted its full review of Windows Mobile 6.5, as found on the new HTC Touch2 handset, which is also reviewed. If you're expecting something to challenge Apple OS and Android, prepare for a very large let-down. The damning quote: "Business users, as much as consumers, deserve a phone that's quick and intuitive to operate as well as one that hooks in neatly to Exchange and Outlook and is easy to manage centrally. If this is the best [Microsoft] can muster in the year-and-a-half's worth of development time since Windows Mobile 6.1 appeared, we'll be dramatically lowering our hopes for Windows Mobile 7."

Submission + - SPAM: London Stock Exchange rejects .NET for open source 4

Submitted by ChiefMonkeyGrinder on Tuesday October 06, 2009 @05:52AM

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes: London Stock Exchange (LSE) is moving from the Microsoft .Net-based TradElect to the GNU/Linux-based MillenniumIT system is a pretty savage indictment of the costs of a complex .Net system. The GNU/Linux-based software is also faster, and offers several other major benefits. The details provide some fascinating insights into the world of very high performance â" and very expensive â" enterprise systems.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - New split cycle engine may revolutionize cars (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

egghat

on Thursday September 17, 2009 @06:13AM

egghat writes: "Scuderi Group demoed the first real prototype of their new split cycle engine at the IAA in Frankfurt this week. Scuderi claims the torque and mileage of diesel engines combined with the agility and quietness of normal gasoline engines and up to 80% less nitrogen oxide. The trick is simple: Two cylinders work together. The first cylinder sucks and compresses air, pumps it to the second cylinder that fires and burns the gasoline. The Scuderi engine achieves pressures that a way higher than normal engines and are therefore more efficient. The good thing: Most parts of the engine (pistons, ignition plug, cylinders, etc.) are standard parts that are available today. Scuderi plans to build turbo and diesel version and even a hybrid that uses compressed air as an energy storage instead of electricity in batteries. 7 Geeky Tech Designs from the 2009 Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress Washington Times: Company says air is fuel of future"

Submission + - British film 'Creation' banned in USA (digitaljournal.com) 8

Submitted by

thesappho

on Thursday September 17, 2009 @06:11AM

thesappho writes: "From the story : "British film 'Creation' will not be coming to the United States because of its controversial theme. While the film opened the Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews, the religious undertones surrounding this Darwin biopic appear to be to much for the U.S. ". It seems that the film could not find even one distributor to be aired. Is this a kind of banning? negligence? censorship? or business decision?"

Submission + - OSC09: The future of openSUSE on desktop (tuxjournal.net)

Submitted by

vciaglia

on Thursday September 17, 2009 @05:40AM

vciaglia writes: "An exclusive interview to the openSUSE program manager Andreas Jaeger just published on TuxJournal from openSUSE Conference 2009 in Nuremberg. It talks about the future of openSUSE on Desktop and what we have to expect from 11.2 release. About the decision to use KDE as default DE, Andreas writes: "Let me first explain what was decided: It was decided to pre-select in the DVD installer the KDE desktop. Therefore, with openSUSE 11.2 release, the KDE desktop will be installed if the user accepts the default setting. Users can also choose the GNOME desktop at this stage. The decision was made because of usability (openSUSE defaultseverywhere, just not here and this can confuse new users) and to preselect KDE was based on popularity of KDE by openSUSE users""

Submission + - CERN boss targets linear collider (physicsworld.com)

Submitted by

Hamish Johnston

on Thursday September 17, 2009 @05:35AM

Hamish Johnston writes: "The boss of CERN wants the next big experiment in particle physics after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to be built at the Geneva lab. Speaking in a video interview with physicsworld.com, Rolf-Dieter Heuer says that CERN should host the experiment, which would collide electrons and positrons in a linear accelerator. Although a design for the machine has not been finalized by the international particle-physics community, Heuer is keen to bring the collider to CERN. "I would be a bad director-general if I did not push for CERN at least bidding for the next global project," Heuer told physicsworld.com. "CERN is a fantastic place. [It] has proven that it can host such a project and therefore I think CERN should do it." However, Heuer is aware that it is far from certain that CERN will host the facility — Fermilab in the US is likely to be a contender — and the CERN chief is looking forward to bids from rival labs. "Competition is always welcome," he says. In a separate interview, CERN's head of communications James Gillies rejects claims that the initial switch-on was over-hyped, putting down the extensive media interests to the fear of black holes and Dan Brown's Angel and Demons. Gillies said, "We didn't over-hype it. The hype was there and we lived with it.""

Submission + - Implanted tooth helps blind woman recover sight

Submitted by

Alvaro Arce

on Thursday September 17, 2009 @05:20AM

Alvaro Arce writes: "Yesterday we saw some color blind monkeys being cured by genetic therapy, well no need to use such a fancy stuff to help a blind soman recover sight. A 60-year-old US grandmother, blind for nearly a decade, has recovered her sight after surgeons implanted a tooth in her eye. What the heck will you say how can that be possible? well, actually the trick is to implant the patient's tooth in the eye to anchor a prosthetic lens and restore vision, which is usefull in cases where the patient reject an artifical or transplanted cornea. You can read the whole article here "

Submission + - CSSBox: 2.3 released (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by SF:radkovo on Thursday September 17, 2009 @05:15AM

SF:radkovo writes: CSSBox is an (X)HTML/CSS rendering engine written in pure Java. The new 2.3 release brings a vertical alignment implementation and fixes in floating block placement and width computation.

Submission + - Old operating systems don't die... (technologizer.com)

Submitted by

Harry

on Thursday September 17, 2009 @05:02AM

Harry writes: "Haiku, an open-source recreation of legendary 1990s operating system BeOS, was released in alpha form this week. The news made me happy and led me to check in on the status of other once-prominent OSes--CP/M, OS/2, OS/2, AmigaOS, and more. Remarkably, none of them are truly defunct: In one form or another, they or their descendants are still available, being used by real people to accomplish useful tasks. Has there ever been a major OS that simply went away, period?"

Submission + - Holograms that you can touch (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 17, 2009 @03:35AM

An anonymous reader writes: Imagine a light switch or a book that appears only when you need it — Japanese scientists are one step closer to making the stuff of sci-fi films into reality after creating a hologram that can also be felt... ..By using ultrasonic waves, the scientists have developed software that creates pressure when a user's hand "touches" a hologram that is projected.

Submission + - 110 years of IBM technology on display (cio.com.au)

Submitted by Dan Jones on Thursday September 17, 2009 @03:10AM

Dan Jones writes: CIO has a large collection of photos covering 110 years of IBM technology and products — from the original 1899 Moneyweight Scale to Roadrunner, the first system to break the petaflop barrier. Interestingly, the Moneyweight Scale Company was founded in Chicago in 1899 as a marketing arm of the Computing Scale Company of Dayton, Ohio. WF Stimpson of Detroit later formed a trust with the Computing Scale Company. This trust was called Computing Scale Company of America which changed its name to Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911 and became IBM in 1924.

Submission + - Should we be able to bitch about our boss online? (computerworld.com.au) 3

Submitted by boss man on Thursday September 17, 2009 @12:08AM

boss man writes: In Australia, the fate of a group of six prison wardens lies in the hands of an industrial relations committee, after they landed themselves in trouble for writing awful things about their boss and other co-workers on a Facebook group page. Some comments even went so far as to call their boss Judas! Their boss, who says he was offended by the comments, is seeking to sack the group of employees, but the employees believe they should have the right to vent frustrations about their boss on Facebook. So, whose side are you on? One expert argues that we will see more of these cases appear as society struggles to come to grips with issues arising from social networking.

Submission + - Gravitational Currents Could Slash Fuel Needed to 1

Submitted by pickens on Wednesday September 16, 2009 @11:51PM

pickens writes: Hugh Pickens writes

BBC reports that scientists are mapping the gravitational corridors created from the complex interplay of attractive forces between planets and moons that can be used to cut the cost of journeys in space. ''Basically the idea is there are low energy pathways winding between planets and moons that would slash the amount of fuel needed to explore the solar system," says Professor Shane Ross from Virginia Tech. "'These are freefall pathways in space around and between gravitational bodies. Instead of falling down, like you do on Earth, you fall along these tubes." The pathways connect Lagrange points where gravitational forces balance out. Depicted by computer graphics, the pathways look like strands of spaghetti that wrap around planetary bodies and snake between them. 'If you're in a parking orbit round the Earth, and one of them intersects your trajectory, you just need enough fuel to change your velocity and now you're on a new trajectory that is free," says Ross. ''You could travel between the moons of Jupiter essentially for free. All you need is a little bit of fuel to do course corrections.'' The Genesis spacecraft used gravitational pathways that allowed the amount of fuel carried by the probe to be cut 10-fold but the trade off is time. While it would take a few months to get round the Jovian moon system suing gravitational currents (PDF), attempting to get a free ride from Earth to Mars on the currents might take thousands of years.

Submission + - Pay up, says Comcast (koat.com)

Submitted by BuhDuh on Wednesday September 16, 2009 @11:20PM

BuhDuh writes: The tragic death [KOAT.com] of a NM State trooper, helicopter pilot, and the student they tried to rescue lead the honorary Japanese Consular General, Davis Begay, to be personally held responsible for her unpaid Comcast internet bill. Despite Comcast's assertion that the matter had been dealt with, they continued to harass Mr. Begay and even put the account into collection. Only [after the TV channel's assertion that they had intervened] did Comcast cancel the action, credit the account, and apologize. One can only imagine the extra grief Ms. Yamamoto's parents must have experienced.

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