Slashdot

RKo618 writes "TechCrunch announced that they are planning to design their own $200 web tablet device. Quoting: 'The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.' The aim is for the tablet to run on modified open source software, which will be released back to the community along with the specifications for the hardware."

Just like KDE works hard to ensure that applications written for KDE aren't easily ported to other APIs? And GNOME works hard to ensure that applications written for GTK aren't easily ported to other APIs? And X.org works hard to ensure that applications written for xlib aren't easily ported to other APIs? And Be works hard to ensure that applications written for belib aren't easily ported to other APIs? And Microsoft works hard to ensure that applications written for Win32 aren't easily ported to other APIs? And Sun works hard to ensure that applications written for Swing aren't easily ported to other APIs? And Open Group works hard to ensure that applications written for Motif aren't easily ported to other APIs? And QNX works hard to ensure that applications written for Photon aren't easily ported to other APIs? And Donald Knuth works hard to ensure that documents written for TeX aren't easily ported to other markup languages? And Intel works hard to ensure that x86 assembly code isn't easily ported to other architectures? And Toyota works hard to ensure that gasoline-powered internal combustion engines can't easily run on hydrogen?

BobJacobsen writes "CBSnews.com has an article about Bill Gates and Steve Balmer answering questions at the 'All Things Digital' conference. When asked about 'high points' in his time at Microsoft, Gates replied 'Windows 95 was a nice milestone.' The article continues 'He also spoke highly of Microsoft SharePoint Server software, but didn't mention Vista.' Was there really nothing else that Gates considered a high point?"

Of course. iPods have nothing to do with this article at all. A less misleading title would be "Researcher Discusses Microprocessor Supercomputer". The word "iPod" is only there as an eye-catcher.

sTeF writes in, with the hope that this is an April Fools joke. Doesn't look like it though. An article up at Intellectual Property Watch claims they have obtained a document (PDF) enumerating the vote after Microsoft's OOXML won ISO standard status.

LetterRip writes "The Trailer for the Peach Open Movie "Big Buck Bunny" has just been released, it is beautiful, can't wait for the full release."
http://peach.blender.org/index.php/trailer/

ehovland writes "It seems that Battle for Wesnoth has released its latest version (1.4.0). Time to reawaken the overlord in you and start trashing Orcs!"

posys noted an interesting talk from Neil Gershenfeld's called "The beckoning promise of personal fabrication". It's a TED talk which I've found greatly enjoyable in the past, and is worth your time, assuming you have 20 minutes to see something really neat.

Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that the process of natural selection can act on human cultures as well as on genes. The team studied reports of canoe designs from 11 Oceanic island cultures, evaluating 96 functional features that could contribute to the seaworthiness of the vessels. Statistical test results showed clearly that the functional canoe design elements changed more slowly over time, indicating that natural selection could be weeding out inferior new designs. Authors of the study said their results speak directly to urgent social and environmental problems. 'People have learned how to avoid natural selection in the short term through unsustainable approaches such as inequity and excess consumption. But this is not going to work in the long term,' said Deborah S. Rogers, a research fellow at Stanford."

Lucas123 writes "The chips can be combined to create a 128-GB flash storage device capable of holding up to 80 DVD movies or 32,000 MP3 music files. The chip was created using 30-nanometer processing technology that was developed with Samsung's self-aligned double patterning technology. Manufacturing will start in 2009; but the article quotes a Gartner analyst who reminds us, 'Samsung has had a difficult time adhering to its timelines for mass production due to the complexity of MLC architectures and ever shrinking process geometries.'"

dottyslashdottydot writes "CBC Marketplace recently ran a sting operation and discovered that most home computer repair technicians failed miserably at diagnosing a simple RAM failure. Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades. (or even a new computer!) However, the worst offender was one guy who claimed that the hard drive had failed, and that the only remedy was to pay $2,000 to have a special facility with a clean room recover the data."

bsdphx writes "While Theo may have a reputation of being "difficult" in some circles, this response to the recent relicensing controversy is thoughtful and well penned. Through this whole process I've learned some new things about both GPL and BSD licensing, and especially about combining the two."

a_n_d_e_r_s writes "The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did ... for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: 'The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today's meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM's Swedish local representative Johan Westman.'"

With the publishing of the discovery of the connection between Vista's poor networking performance and audio activities last week, word quickly spread around the Internet. No doubt this grabbed Microsoft's attention, and they have decided to respond to the issue. Microsoft state they are working on a technical documentation, as well as applying a slight sugar coating to the symptoms. Apparently they believe almost a 90% drop in networking performance is "slight," only affects reception of data, and that this performance trade-off is necessary to simply play an MP3 or a Windows 'ding' sound. Come on — this is 2007, not 1997.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=724

An anonymous reader writes "According to this post in the Skype Linux Forums Skype tries to read out the /etc/passwd as well as some other files and directories. At this time, there is no official statement from Skype concerning this matter."