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geekbits writes "For all those who have at one time or another been too lazy to get up off the couch and go to the fridge and get a beer, heat up some pizza, or change the channel when the remote is missing, we may be one step closer to being able to keep our tushes parked just a little while longer. There may also be some slightly more noble implications here. According to an article in The New York Times, in an experiment at Duke University, a 12-pound, 32-inch monkey made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity. She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan."

Peter writes "Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman and ITWire have praised KDE and KOffice developers for taking a principled stand against OOXML, while raising serious concerns about the GNOME Foundation's decision to give credibility to Microsoft's broken format. This comes on the heels of GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza's depiction of OOXML as a 'superb standard', and GNOME Foundation director Quim Gil's stonewalling of the patent-free Ogg Vorbis / Theora format on behalf of Nokia. Will the GNOME Foundation's indifferent response to Richard Stallman's appeal drive him to throw his weight behind KDE?"

Craig Maloney writes "Throughout the years, there have been many clones and re-implementations of the venerable vi editor. One variant of vi that emerged and stayed with us is VIM. Since its introduction, VIM has proven itself a worthy successor to the traditional vi editor. VIM has rightfully taken the place of standard vi implementations as the spiritual successor to vi, completely replacing the vi editor on many, if not all of the current Linux distributions. Many improvements have been made to VIM such as tabs, spell checking, folding, and many, many more. However many of these new enhancements may still remain hidden to anyone who isn't keeping up on the cutting edge of VIM development. Hacking VIM is a good resource for becoming more familiar with the new features of VIM and how to make them work best for you." Read below for the rest of Craig's review.

Placid sends in a Wired blog entry on Wal-Mart's new sub-$200 Linux-based PC. Wired calls it "a custom distribution of Ubuntu Linux," and the AP identifies the distro as gOS, made by a small company in Los Angeles. Wal-Mart began selling Linux PCs in 2002 but they have been out of stock for a while. From the Wired blog: "It has a 1.5 Ghz VIA C7 CPU embedded in a Mini-ITX motherboard, 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Normally, this would simply mark it as unacceptably low-end for use with modern software. By using the fast Enlightenment desktop manager (instead of heavier-duty alternatives like Gnome or KDE), the makers say it's more responsive than Vista is, even on more powerful computers."

HelloDotJPEG writes "Mozilla Labs, the organisation's experimental arm, has launched Prism for interested Windows users to try out. Prism is a piece of software which integrates web applications such as Gmail or Google Reader into the desktop. The program enables you to run multiple such sites as though they were local applications, each in their own dedicated browser window. The product isn't entirely new, but is an officially adopted and rebranded update to the Site-Specific Browser project WebRunner (not to be confused with XULRunner upon which it is built). From the site: 'Web developers don't have to target it separately, because any application that can run in a modern standards-compliant web browser can run in Prism. Prism is built on Firefox, so it supports rich internet technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. And while Prism focuses on how web apps can integrate into the desktop experience, we're also working to increase the capabilities of those apps by adding functionality to the Web itself, such as providing support for offline data storage and access to 3D graphics hardware.'"

The New York Times has finally admitted that making people pay for its content is a losing proposition. The paper has announced that it will end its paid Internet service in favor of making most of its Web site available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue. This had been predicted countless times and is now coming to pass. How long before other online papers and similar information services come to the same realization and open up their sites?
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSWEN101120070918?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."

ChelleChelle writes "The names Hennessy and Patterson are probably familiar to everyone — we all had to read their seminal textbook Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach at some point or another. In this interview, the Berkeley-Stanford duo discusses current innovations and future challenges in the realm of computer architecture. Definitely an interesting, but entertaining read!"

An anonymous reader writes "After a phone call to Microsoft, I was informed that even companies with extended patch support still have to pay $4000 for retired product DST patches. (Keep in mind when you sign up for the extended patch support license, you pay extra.) 1. How did MS figure that $4000 a client would cover the cost of the patch? Are they following the pricing schemes of the oil industry? What is the true cost of such things? 2. Why isn't MS getting more slack for charging this ridiculous amount of money? Is this price gouging? 3. Wouldn't it be in Microsoft's best interest to at least offer the Win2k workstation patch as a free download? Would it have been a chance to help improve the company's image? 4. Since Win2k machines still receive Windows Updates, why are they free yet the DST fix is not?"

An anonymous reader writes "Many organizations implement some form of LDAP service for storing enterprise directory information. Existing search options allow for a range of lookups based on where certain data is stored in the directory. This article allows you to combine the power of regular expressions with the grep tool to create your own custom LDAP search capability. In the spirit of successful search engines, such as Google, we'll change the search format from a LDAP-style query string to simple and powerful keyword matching and results display."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Georgia Tech researchers have had a brilliant idea. Rocket engines used today to launch satellites run at maximum exhaust velocity until they reach orbit. For a car, this would be analog to stay all the time in first gear. So they have designed a new space rocket which works as it has a five-gear transmission system. This space engine uses 40 percent less fuel than current ones by running on solar power while in space and by fine-tuning exhaust velocity. But as it was designed with funds from the U.S. Air Force, military applications will be ready before civilian ones. Here is how this new rocket engine works."

An anonymous reader writes "My current organization is working on a revised DR plan. The systems administration team is pushing for the use of Mac laptops for DR. One such example of a need for it is the event that a virus takes out our windows based network and a non windows OS is needed for recovery. A non windows OS that has full hardware and software support to avoid different vendors passing the buck. Unfortunately we are receiving a lot of push back from management which seems to be caused by a knee-jerk reaction based on the outdated idea that "Mac is for artists, not business". Is anyone out there including Mac's in their DR plan, or for any related reasons? I cannot imagine we are the only people who see a huge boon to using Mac's in security related matters."