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Unix

NYT Ponders the Future of Solaris In a Linux/Windows World 340

Posted by timothy from the year-of-the-solaris-desktop dept.
JerkBoB links to a story at the New York Times about the future prospects of Sun's Solaris, excerpting: "Linux is enjoying growth, with a contingent of devotees too large to be called a cult following at this point. Solaris, meanwhile, has thrived as a longstanding, primary Unix platform geared to enterprises. But with Linux the object of all the buzz in the industry, can Sun's rival Solaris Unix OS hang on, or is it destined to be displaced by Linux altogether?"

Comment Re:Paper and gasoline-based dinosaurs (Score 4, Insightful) 136

by wyldeone (#24722675) Attached to: 5 Ways Newspapers Botched the Web

You're ignoring one of the most important jobs of newspapers: investigative reporting. While blogs and news aggregators like Digg and Slashdot do provide a useful service, they don't generate much news. Digg and slashdot primarily link to traditional news sources and would be bereft of content were such organizations to disappear. For an example of the importance of this role, just look at the past few years. If it were not for the investigations carried out by major newspapers (in particular the NY Times and the Washington Post) we would not know about the NSA wiretaps, the Guantanamo abuses, or the role of the Bush Administration in falsifying pre-war intellegence, just to name a few.

In order for a democracy to truly function, a strong, independent press is necessary (look at Russia for a "democracy" where this element is missing). It's hard to see blogs and TV news stations taking over that role from newspapers any time soon.

Toyota Unveils Violin-Playing Robot 203

Posted by Zonk from the but-can-it-play-guitar-hero dept.
eldavojohn writes "Toyota has unveiled a robot that can play the violin. From the article: 'Toyota said it planned to further advance the robot's dexterity to enable it to use tools and assist with domestic duties and nursing and medical care. The robot has 17 joints in both of its hands and arms now.' It seems there have been small — or maybe even strange, impractical — advances in robotics repeatedly with demonstrations of robots performing a specialized task. Are we merely struggling to hard code each human activity as we strive for an all purpose android? Is there a chance artificial intelligence & robotics will ever become generalized enough to make interaction interesting?"
OS X

Leopard as the New Vista? 734

Posted by Zonk from the angry-apple-man-scares-me dept.
ninja_assault_kitten writes "There's an interesting rant from Oliver Rist up on the PC Magazine site. He compares the catastrophe that is Vista to the recently released OS X Leopard. While clearly one is a lion and the other a cub, there do appear to be some frustrating similarities. From the article: 'A month of using Leopard with the same software I had under Tiger and the OS has dumped six times. That's six cold reboots for Oliver. Apple isn't even honest enough to admit that Leopard is crashing: The OS just grays out my desktop and pops up a dialog box telling me I've got to reboot. Like the whole thing is my fault. I even snapped a picture of it. After all, I HAD PLENTY OF CHANCES!'"
Amiga

Submission + - The History of the Amiga (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
wyldeone
wyldeone writes: "Ars Technica has published the first part of their history of the Amiga, and of the mis-management at Commodore that led to its demise. From the article:

The Amiga computer was a dream given form — an inexpensive, fast, flexible multimedia computer that could do virtually anything. It handled graphics, sound, and video as easily as other computers of its time manipulated plain text. It was easily ten years ahead of its time. It was everything its designers imagined it could be, except for one crucial problem: the world was essentially unaware of its existence.
"
GNUStep

Etoile Project Releases Mac-Like Environment 311

Posted by kdawson from the starry-eyed-penguin dept.
pschmied writes "Today the Étoilé Project released v0.2 of its Desktop Environment. Not only does Étoilé share user interface similarities with Mac OS X, Étoilé enjoys some source-level compatibility with Mac OS X as well. Many here undoubtedly remember NeXT, the revolutionary computer / development environment that gave rise to the first Web browser and later became the foundation of Mac OS X. Étoilé uses the FSF's own implementation of the NeXT development environment, GNUstep, making this a close technological relative of OS X. Screenshots and a source tarball are available."
Microsoft

Warning On Office 2007 "Try-Before-You-Buy" 380

Posted by kdawson from the don't-get-fooled-again dept.
walterbyrd writes with a warning: "Microsoft is pushing Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy.' Please don't let your friends and relatives install Microsoft 'trial' software. When Microsoft tells you 'try-before-you-buy,' the 'buy' part is not meant to be an option. Once you 'try' a Microsoft 'upgrade' you can not easily go back, because your files will be replaced by new versions that you need the new software to read." The ChannelRegister article also notes how Microsoft's push goes against the grain of the consumer revolt against "crapware." Read on for an account of walterbyrd's experience with a previous Microsoft trial upgrade.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Playstation Home unveiled

Submitted by Verunks
Verunks writes: Today Sony Computer Enterteinment Inc announced a new service for Playstation 3 called "Home". It will become available this fall after a closed beta testing. Playstation Home is a 3D virtual place that allows user to interact, chat, shop, join online games and also create your personal home. An HD trailer is also available at gametrailers

Pthreads vs Win32 threads 385

Posted by Hemos from the different-situations,-different-needs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's interesting when different people have different opinions. While I was searching for something on Intel's website, I came across an article on why Windows threads are better than Posix threads. Curiously, I also came across this article on why Posix Pthreads are better that Win32 threads. The thing is, both of these articles are written by the same author!

So who is right (metaphorically speaking?), or what has changed since the first article was written?"
Books

Submission + - Blender Character Animation Book a Top Seller

Submitted by Tony
Tony writes: Blender news has been coming thick and fast lately. Just days ago Blender's fantastic new version 2.43 was released, and now Introducing Character Animation with Blender has just been released from Sybex/Wiley, one of the top publishers in the field of 3DCG. The book reached #11 on Amazon.com's Computers & Internet top sellers list this morning, which is really something for this kind of title. ICAWB covers all aspects of character creation and animation in Blender, the world's premier open source 3D modeling and animation software package. If you have been wondering about what all the fuss over Blender is about, this is a great way to find out. More information about the book, including some snapshots, is available at BlenderNation. People interested in checking out Blender itself should go to the official Blender Website and download the latest version.
United States

Submission + - Voting Machines Not To Blame In Florida

Submitted by
InternetVoting
InternetVoting writes: "The final report from Florida's Secretary of State and an audit from an independent team led by Florida State University have reach the same conclusion that voting machines are not to blame for the 18,000 missing votes in Sarasota county. The Secretary of State's report found "no evidence to suggest or conclude that the official certified election results did not reflect the actual votes cast" and the 8 member independent audit team unanimously decided the voting machines "did not cause or contribute to the CD13 undervote." However, the losing candidate has responded that the audit "contained several critical flaws" and Princeton Professor Ed Felton has said "I think the jury is still out on whether voting machine malfunctions could be a significant cause of the undervotes.""
The Media

Newspaper Headlines Bow To SEO Demands 75

Posted by Zonk from the find-what-you-are-looking-for dept.
prostoalex writes "News.com.com says the art of writing newspaper headlines is changing due to reliance on search engines for traffic to newspaper archives. Forget about clever puns, double entendres and witty analogies: 'News organizations that generate revenue from advertising are keenly aware of the problem and are using coding techniques and training journalists to rewrite the print headlines, thinking about what the story is about and being as clear as possible.' One big winner for now is Boston.com, The Boston Globe property, which 'had training sessions with copy editors and the night desk for the newspaper to enforce Web-optimized keyword-rich headlines suitable for search engine queries.'" Update: 10/30 14:1 GMT by KD : Corrected mis-attributed ownership: boston.com is owned by the Boston Globe, not the Boston Herald.
Education

The Best Graphing Calculator on the Market? 724

Posted by Cliff from the better-than-a-TI? dept.
aaronbeekay asks: "I'm a sophomore in high school taking an honors chem course. I'm being forced to buy something handheld for a calculator (I've been using Qalculate! and GraphMonkey on my Thinkpad until now). I see people all around me with TIs and think 'there could be something so much better'. The low-res, monochrome display just isn't appealing to me for $100-150, and I'd like for it to last through college. Is there something I can use close to the same price range with better screen, more usable, and more powerful? Which high-tech calculators do you guys use?"
Science

MIT Labs Moves Ahead In Synthesizing Spider Silk 135

Posted by Zonk from the spiderweave-cap-of-the-bear dept.
icepick72 writes in with a link to an ExtremeTech article on new methods for creating synthetic spider silk. This material, like lycra in many ways, has a number of unique properties. The MIT lab that created it is being monitored by military elements, keenly interested in applications of this material to front-line technologies. From the article: "The secret of spider silk's combined strength and flexibility, according to scientists, has to do with the arrangement of the nano-crystalline reinforcement of the silk as it is being produced--in other words, the way these tiny crystals are oriented towards (and adhere to) the stretchy protein. Emulating this process in a synthetic polymer, the MIT team focused on reinforcing solutions of commercial rubbery substance known as polyurethane elastomer with nano-sized clay platelets instead of simply heating and mixing the molten plastics with reinforcing agents."
Your Rights Online

Canada May Lose Copyright Fair-Use Rights 303

Posted by kdawson from the rights-eh? dept.
DotNM writes with an article from the CBC reporting that the Canadian government is considering removing fair-use rights from Canada's copyright law. From the article: "Exacerbating the situation is intense pressure from the United States, where Canada is considered a rogue when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. It still hasn't ratified a 1997 World Intellectual Property Organization copyright treaty... Two of the most controversial issues are [DRM] and the closely related technological protection measures."

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