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Operating Systems

Ubuntu Continues to Grab Market Share 427

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-blame-someone dept.
slasher writes "MadPenguin.org discusses the future of Ubuntu and confirms Ubuntu's growing market share in the Linux market. Author Matt Hartley writes, "Now, for the biggest question: do high numbers mean that Ubuntu is the best distribution out there? Some will argue that this is an impossible point to make, as each person has different needs from their distribution. But for the sake of this article, we will be considering the average user, not the Slackware crowd, who is obviously much more comfortable within a command line environment than mainstream users."
Linux Business

Submission + - Dell releases Ubuntu PCs worldwide.

Submitted by watzinaneihm
watzinaneihm writes: Dell has announced that it will be selling Ubuntu systems worldwide . The Dell blog also says that it is considering opening up sales to Small/Medium businesses. We have discussed Dell's sales policy to sell only home users before
Censorship

Holocaust Dropped From Some UK Schools 1286

Posted by kdawson from the careful-you-might-offend-somebody dept.
dteichman2 writes "It appears that some UK schools are ignoring the Holocaust. A government-backed study, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, found that some teachers are reluctant to teach history lessons on the Holocaust for fear of offending Muslim students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial. Additionally, similar problems are being encountered with lessons on the Crusades because these lessons contradict teachings from local mosques."
Media

Submission + - Amazon to sell music without DRM

Submitted by watzinaneihm
watzinaneihm writes: A New york times (registration required) article says that Amazon is starting a service that sells music without DRM. This will include music from EMI as well as Indie artists.
Censorship

Submission + - What is the deal anyway? whats news vs. whats not

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm so angry! -that I don't know where to start. I read slashdot a few times per day, 'almost' every day. I've tried to submit a story several times about some new hardware that revolutionizes both home and office. A drastically different piece of hardware than anything else out there. But My story got tossed I don't know how many times. I re-wrote it different ways, each time making sure it was not an "advertisement" for a company, but an awareness article. -all to no avail.

THEN I see stories on the FRONT page of slashdot, such as "what is your favorite way to make coffee?" (just to pull out a recent one) and I about lost it!

For years I have thought that slashdot was for latest breaking news about software, hardware, issues, and for news surrounding computers, IT, security etc.. but I cannot understand why my story of a powerful and unique piece of hardware cannot make the news.. but "how I like my coffee" can..

I give up... I'm beginning to think that concerned readers/posters, who are truly concerned about what slashdot has always been about, have all left the building. And, that I'm beginning to wonder what the people are like who are reading this now. How can a question of 'How I like my coffee' or 'what is my favorite soda' make the front page.. but not something revolutionary in the computer industry... I just cannot understand..

so my question is.. what is most important for you to read about in slashdot?
What is missing in slashdot? -I hope to see this question come online, because I really want to know.
Education

Submission + - Send that dang photon back in time for 20K

Submitted by
QuantumCrypto
QuantumCrypto writes: "Or at least try sending it. Dr. John Cramer of University of Washington has been working on a project to demonstrate time travel using the principle of quantum entanglement. However unfortunately his funding has run out, and he will lose his lab space if he doesn't find $20,000 fast. I suggest that slashdotters should setup and PayPal account to collect donations for this experiment. Even if the experiment doesn't succeed we will learn from it."
Education

Submission + - New Replacements For Diesel and Gasoline

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A chemical engineering research team from Purdue University has put forth a process to make liquid fuels similar to diesel and gasoline. The process is claimed to be fully renewable, more energy efficient than current oil refining processes and carbon-free in production and distribution. What do Slashdotters think?
Privacy

Submission + - Manners maketh man.

Submitted by akintayo
akintayo writes: The New York Times reports that in response to the recent brouhaha, some technology bloggers have suggested raising the level of civility on tech blogs by implementing a code of conduct. Kathy Sierra, a technology blogger and friend of O'Reilly was subjected to threats and insults from readers and other bloggers. In partial response, O'Reilly and others have proposed a code of conduct which could include restrictions like the outlawing of anonymous accounts.
Businesses

Meetings Make You Dumber 207

Posted by Zonk from the not-cumulatively-thank-everything dept.
Maximum Prophet writes "Robert Heinlein once said that the committee was the only life form in the universe with three or more bellies and no brain. MSNBC reports that his statement may have some statistical truth to it. Researchers are finding that meetings are actually bad places to be creative. You're not actually 'dumber' when you're in the meeting, just more likely to lose your creative edge. Studies have now shown that, as collaborative primates, the more often a possibility is mentioned the more likely the group is to go along with it. Individuals placed by themselves were more likely to come up with imaginative alternatives to products, for example."
Software

Lightroom Vs. Aperture 192

Posted by kdawson from the snapshootout dept.
Nonu writes "Adobe has officially released its Aperture killer, Lightroom, and the reviews are starting to come in. Ars looks at Lightroom and concludes that it's a better choice for those without bleeding-edge hardware. 'Aperture's main drawback is still performance as it was designed for bleeding-edge machines. On a quad Core 2 Duo Xeon, it is very usable but Lightroom just feels faster for everything regardless of hardware. Since Aperture relies on Core Image and a fast video card to do its adjustments (RAW decoding is done by the CPU), it's limited to what the single 3-D card can do. Lightroom does everything with the CPU and so it is likely to gain more speed as multicore systems get faster.'"
Linux Business

Submission + - Top Linux Foundations Merge

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Open Source Development Labs (employer of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Linux kernel maintainer Andrew Morton) and the Free Standards Group (home of the Linux Standard Base) have merged to form the Linux Foundation. The OSDL had recently reorganized and cut costs, so the move probably adds further efficiencies to both organizations, but also creates a more powerful organization expanding and promoting Linux internationally. Already, both OSDL.org and FreeStandards.org redirect to Linux-Foundation.org.
Announcements

Submission + - Wikipedia links no longer help your Page Rank

Submitted by
Mrs. Grundy
Mrs. Grundy writes: "Wikipedia has started automatically adding rel="NOFOLOW" to all external links in an effort to combat link spam. Since wikipedia pages are hip-deep in high page rank they attract the unsavory sort of character hoping to gain a little love from Google on their coattails. By making pages NOFOLOW they essentially deny conferring any page rank points from google and hopefully reduce the incentive to spam the pages with offtopic links. This topic has come up before and the community voted to remove the NOFOLLOW business in 2005. Will this move actually reduce link spam or is even the potential clickthrough valuable enough without the boost in Google's ranking? And how does the value of ranking sites based on links change as more and more popular sites start tagging (eh...labeling) their links NOFOLLOW?"

Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space 234

Posted by CowboyNeal from the flying-high dept.
Richard L. James writes "The BBC are reporting that Hungarian-born Charles Simonyi, a 58-year old Microsoft billionaire software engineer is set to become the first 'nerd in space' on board the Soyuz TMA-10 when the spacecraft launches on Thursday 09th March 2007. Charles oversaw the development of Multiplan, Word, and Excel among many other achievements. He has launched a website detailing the 3 goals he wishes to achieve on the trip: advance civilian spaceflight, assist space station research, and involve kids in space sciences. Jó szerencse pölö Charles!"

Techies Must Educate Governments 223

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-get-to-it-folks dept.
Rub3X writes "Those in the know about technology must spend more time reaching out to governments and helping them understand the Internet's role in society, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Tuesday. 'The average person in government is not of the age of people who are using all this stuff,' Schmidt said at a public symposium here hosted by the National Academies' Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. 'There is a generational gap, and it's very, very real.'"

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"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery.'" -- Comedian Jay Leno

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