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Submission + - Micron increases NAND flash endurance six fold (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Flash memory maker Micron said it has been able to increase the native write/erase cycles in its multi-layer cell (MLC) NAND flash memory by six-fold or up to 30,000 writes over its lifetime. The company also said its latest lithography technique also increases its single-layer cell (SLC) NAND endurance by six-fold or up to 300,000 write cycles. The technology advance means MLC NAND flash is now not only suited for consumer use in iPods and laptop solid state disk drives, but also for data center applications, Micron said.
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - SPAM: MySQL cofounder says Oracle should sell database

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Oracle should resolve antitrust concerns over its acquisition of Sun Microsystems by selling open-source database MySQL to a suitable third party, its cofounder and creator Michael "Monty" Widenius said in a blog post [spam URL stripped] on Monday. Oracle's $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun is currently being held up by an investigation by the European Commission. The Commission's main concern seems to be MySQL, which was acquired by Sun in January 2008 for $1 billion. A takeover by the world's leading proprietary database company of the world's leading open source database company compels the regulator to closely examine the effects on the European market, according to remarks made by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes last month. The key objective by Widenius is to find a home outside Oracle for MySQL where the database can be developed and compete with existing products, including Oracle's, according to Florian Mueller, a former MySQL shareholder who is currently working with Monty Program AB on this matter.
Link to Original Source
Linux

Submission + - Universal Binaries for Linux (icculus.org)

Submitted by GiMP
GiMP writes: From the website, FatELF is a file format that embeds multiple ELF binaries for different architectures into one file. This is the Linux equivalent of what Mac OS X calls 'Universal Binaries.' FatELF lets you pack binaries into one file, seperated by OS ABI, OS ABI version, byte order and word size, and most importantly, CPU architecture. Work is focused on GNU/Linux, but this could be applied to most modern Unix systems: the BSDs, Solaris, etc. Distributions no longer need to have separate downloads for various platforms. Given enough disc space, there's no reason you couldn't have one DVD .iso that installs an x86-64, x86, PowerPC, SPARC, and MIPS system, doing the right thing at boot time. You can remove all the confusing text from your website about 'which installer is right for me?'

Submission + - Why the heck are people still using POP3? (emailserviceguide.com) 2

Submitted by Siker
Siker writes: Email Service Guide asked "Why the heck are people still using POP3 [...instead of IMAP]?" Remarkably the answer does not seem to be "because they don't know any better" because at Email Discussions an intense debate erupted over the topic. In this day of large storage server accounts and multiple access devices for email accounts, is there a reason other than habit for POP3?
Windows

Submission + - Windows: From the beginning to Seven (channelinsider.com)

Submitted by dasButcher
dasButcher writes: Nearly a quarter-century has passed since Windows 1.01 hit the market. Since then, nearly 30 different primary versions of the operating system have either been developed or released to market — each with varying degrees of performance and success, and Vista wasn't the first major failure. Here's a look back at the major versions of Windows over the last 25 years (http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Microsoft/Windows-Start-to-Seven-151438/), including some forgotten versions such as Windows Neptune.
Mars

VASIMR Ion Engine Could Cut Mars Trip To 39 Days 356

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-believe-when-i-ride-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It would take about 39 days to reach Mars, compared to six months by conventional rocket power. 'This engine is in fact going to be tested on the International Space Station, launched about 2013,' astronaut Chris Hadfield said. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR®) system encompasses three linked magnetic cells. The 'Plasma Source' cell involves the main injection of neutral gas (typically hydrogen, or other light gases) to be turned into plasma and the ionization subsystem. The 'RF Booster' cell acts as an amplifier to further energize the plasma to the desired temperature using electromagnetic waves. The 'Magnetic Nozzle' cell converts the energy of the plasma into directed motion and ultimately useful thrust."
Movies

Submission + - Astro Boy Director on the Challenge of Animating S (amctv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The director of Flushed Away David Bowers discusses his new Japanese manga adaptation, shares his science fiction influences and relates Astro Boy's thematic relationship to Star Wars.

Submission + - Linux, First Successful Drive Transplant 4

Submitted by
tjstork
tjstork writes: "I think my new Linux box must be among the proud recipient of one of the first successful total hard drive transplants in the modern world. By hard drive transplant, I mean, you take an old computer,rip out the old hard drive, and drop it into the new computer, and boot with that same transplanted hard drive.

The donor computer consisted of two dual core Opteron 270s based machine running on a Tyan S2885 motherboard. The recipient computer consisted of a single Intel Xeon 5520 on a dual socket Asus Z8PE-D12. There was some trouble going from the old GeForce 6200 AGP card to the new GeForce GT250 PCI-Express board but even that was resolved within a few minutes.

Sure, I might have gotten lucky, but it seems to me that being able to transplant hard drives is a huge, huge feature win for Linux if it could be made workable on a consistent basis. This sort of thing just breaks Windows model altogether. I can't say how many hours being able to plop a drive in and have a working system saved me, and I just dread doing the same thing for Windows, even Windows 7. Within a few minutes of a new system build, I'm up and rolling with Linux, I'd still have stuff to do."
Mars

Submission + - What happens when we make it into space?

Submitted by klwood911
klwood911 writes: I would like to pose this question to the Slashdot community. It is not a technical question, but will have technical impacts. If and when we get to outer space, what time will we base our civilization on? Here is why I ask. We submit our taxes on April 14th. We have our religious holidays on their respective days. We have our birthdays on, well our birthdays. Now translate this to a new planet where hours in the day and days in the year will differ. A person on earth might be 30 years old, but on another planet would be only 18. Would that person still be legal to drink? I ask as these don't seem to be questions that are brought up when we talk about inhabitting another planet. The technical part comes in when judging time and location. Imagine picking your time zone based on the planet you are on. This would have huge implications in software design, almost like the watches that were specifically designed for the engineers working on the Mars rovers. What are yuor thoughts?

Submission + - New robotic hand 'can feel.' But can it love? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Dyne09
Dyne09 writes: The BBC has just run an article about a group of Swiss and Italian scientists who have created a robotic hand with forty sensors that "connect directly to the brain." Though fuzzy on the details, the hand provides sensor feedback to a willing test subject who lost his arm to disease early in life. How long until we have access to Star Wars-esque robotic limbs?

Submission + - A Critical First Look at Ubuntu 9.10 4

Submitted by BrendaEM
BrendaEM writes: Easily installed from a live USB, and fortified with no-delayed-write patched EXT4 goodness, I installed the Ubuntu 9.10 beta. Upon booting, I noticed that the new Ubuntu 9.10 splash screen gives little information on how far the boot progress is. The useful old status bar was removed, and replaced by a useless Cylon throbber.

The 9.10 new login screen is quite busy for the eye. Even for someone who does 3D and graphic design, it takes a moment to understand the nesting of boxes and blocks. There must be some geometric meaning to them. If I can sort out a 15,000 brush Quake map, and add nuts and bolts to a 700 part CAD'ed machine, I know I can figure out the nesting order of the login boxes and squares--just give me more time, please.

When a multi-boot is updated, the user still needs to remove accumulated kernels manually, with Synaptic, or install the Gnome Startup Manager. While it is not an imperative, the multi-boot menu still looks bad. It is not imperative because we do not expect other operating systems to Linux aware at all, yet we do expect Linux to be aware of other operating systems. A text cursor still sneaks in to show itself while booting with the graphic loader--sneakie little things, aren't they?

Once booted, Ubuntu boots on my computer with only 120mb of memory used, and no swap spent; other operating systems take note--especially Microsoft.

In this version, it appears that the sound works, and in fact everything else seems to work on my Ubuntu S10, cheers! In Ubuntu 9.04, I had to run a script to update the Alsa, which is used by not only Gnome's streaming framework API de'jour, but JACK, which I hope will take its places as Linux's streaming solution, but that won't happen because there are too many companies trying to implement DRM on Linux, and they will want a single point to control the audio streams. Myself, I just use the SMPlayer GUI for Mplayer, but I wish SMPlayer was GTK instead.

Perhaps someday, Gnome designers may become aware of the fact that dual menu-bars waste valuable real estate. This can be remedied with some effort, and swapping out the Ubuntu text menu bar with original Gnome menu applet, unlocking and moving the widgets, and deleting 2nd menu bar, sending it to the bit-bucket where it belongs. While doing this, you may notice that the individual check-boxes that lock each launch icon must go. Use only one lock for the whole bar works fine, thank you. The user switching applet, and new communication widgets also take up valuable room, but they can be removed for netbook use. While help is available as an icon is on launch bar, it is not on the first tier of the Gnome menu, for some reason. The occasional help needer will need to look for help longer. I can't seem to take a screenshot while Gnome's are open, which cannot make the creation of tutorials easy.

The twin desktop switcher is still too large. It should be smaller horizontally. Gnome's multiple desktops work so well, it is a shame not to use it on small monitors. It would also be nice to able to double click Workplace switcher to minimize / un-minimize all. It would also be nice to be able to drag an application's menubar to a workspace by the widget. Even though it's big, you still can't do it. I seem to remember using the 4-desktop workspace switcher, is actually smaller than the twin one, for some unknown reason. If I can hit little boxes on one, I can hit them on the other.

New Wi-fi Dialog is poorly designed, relying on little more than font style only to indicate user is connected or not to anything.

Delving deeper into the menus, it should be apparent to almost anyone that "Recent Documents" are not really "Places," and so they should not be placed there. Was there not a nice sweep icon to clear this just in the last version? Where did it go?

Gnome menu editing itself is still not integrated, and still requires a separate application. You cannot drag icons in the menus, and the separate application feels separate--not slick, but I'm sure people are still reeling from the idea that people might want to arrange their menus--at all.

Upon installation, the context/click create document menu is empty on installation. Does no program know about this menu, or how to use it?

The Evolution daemon still starts on default. I use Thunderbird, and so, I notice the subtle things such as Evolution being attached to Gnome like an Alien face-hugger.

The new icons and themes look nice. There are additional wallpapers to be had, also nice.

There is still GUI font installation method? Nautilus still not patched for Fonts:// as that was too easy for the user to add fonts?

Fortunately, the lid/power thing is fixed, as the older default of not shutting off a notebook when the lid is closed was quite dangerous in a machine stuffed in a bag along with angry lithium batteries. One rushed and forgetful afternoon, I almost toasted both of my laptops after doing installs on them, and putting them in their cases--unthinking of that they were still running.

While most people would think that "Documents" makes more sense than "My Documents," I still prefer to have folders such as these on the bottom of my desktop, so that files can be sorted as a sieve. Now they are speced to be out of sight in the home folder where most people won't see them as much as they would be seen on the desktop. If you were going to have any folder on your desktop, would you not want it to be your documents?

The current method of breaking up multimedia into movies, sound, and photos is useless for those people who create multimedia content. I create a folder for project, and then put all the associated files for that project in that folder. I also like my music in folders--so when the databases become corrupted I can still sort things out.

The Nautilus preferences dialog is still too large for my netbook. I filed a few bug reports for large menus, but perhaps not enough. Tabbed Nautilus is a great improvement, thanks : )

Given the amount of updates in a beta version of an operating system, the update manager did very well, better than any solution in the Windows or Mac world. Update Manager progress bar was replaced with yet another useless throbber. Okay, the old progress indicator went backwards once in while when it didn't find the servers, but why pull the engine out of the car because it backfires sometimes. Ubuntu software "Center" should be under system. While the thrice reinveted Synaptic knock-off doesn't seem bloated yet, still, "Center" is a marketing term which equates to bloated high-level idiot resistant ware. Just because there's a new software installation tool doesn't mean we need to trip over it in the menus, like an attention starved dog.

Rather than "Ubuntu One," I would rather have a GUI for easy SSH and SFTP server setup, as people might like to use their Ubuntu systems also as servers. I do not want Ubuntu One to search through my documents, nor do I want to see checkmarks next to all my icons. I had hoped that Linux would not be as nosy as its competitors. To me, "Cloud" means: someone owes someone money--when the bombs fall, I'll loose my stuff--when your company has competition, I'd better do free advertising for you, or I'll lose my data should you go out of business. Cloud computing is the antithesis of a personal computer. We need to keep coming out with marketing ideas, "Cloud computing," "Web 2.0." Here's a marketing idea: "Own your stuff."

Sigh, OpenOffice's grammar checker Language Tool is broken again, wait don't tell me, let me guess-- it is a Java version issue right? I am all for removing Java as a depend for OpenOffice, but that will not happen without a split. I noticed that OpenOffice Gnome integration icons are good for created documents, better than the original OpenOffice launch glyphs. Having written hundreds of thousands of words in OpenOffice, made spread sheets, and charts, I've been quite pleased with it. Now, I dread seeing the ribbon bar mock up I saw for OpenOffice; two wrongs do not make a right, but no one can stop an infatuated programmer who looks to reinvent a wheel that's too big for the car. Often, when I write, I do so with only, with the style bar, right elevator/scroll box, and a status bar. Sometimes the best GUI is no GUI. When I get down to writing, I use full screen, and only a vertical scroll box, and that damn close button they now made sure I cannot shut off in OpenOffice.

Lastly for now, in this release, Gnome/Ubuntu 9.10 separates certain games into "Logic" to make some people feel better about wasting their time, so they feel better about doing so, in a more intelligent manner. Nudge, Tetris is a logic game, as well. Where do you draw the line, but more important--why?

--BrendaEM
Education

Submission + - Interest on Loans Rankles College Grads 3

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Like many recent college grads, Steven Lee finds himself unemployed in one of the roughest job markets in decades and saddled with a big pile of debt, owing about $84,000 in student loans for undergrad and grad-school. But what's really got Lee angry are the high interest rates on his government-backed student loans. 'The rate for a 30-year mortgage is around 5%,' Lee said. 'Why should anyone have to pay 8.5%? The government has bailed out homeowners. It's bailed out big businesses. Why can't it also help students?' Not only that, federal student loans are the only loans in the nation that are largely non-dischargeable in bankruptcy, have no statutes of limitations, and can't be refinanced after consolidation, so Lee can forget about pulling a move out of the GM playbook. And unlike mortgages on million-dollar vacation homes, student loans have very limited tax deductibility. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education blamed Congress for the rates which she conceded 'may seem high today' (especially compared to the deal Wall Street banks get), but suggested that students are a credit-unworthy lot who should thank their lucky stars that rates aren't 12% or higher. Makes one long for the good-old-days of 3% student loans, doesn't it?
Amiga

Submission + - Amiga and Hyperion Settle ownership of AmigaOS (hyperion-entertainment.com)

Submitted by HKcastaway
HKcastaway writes: Amiga Inc and Hyperion Entertainment announced the settlement over ownership and licensing over AmigaOS 4.0 and future versions. Since the bankruptcy of Commodore Amiga's history has been littered with lawsuits which have affected the development of Amiga hardware and software. Having a lawsuit free OS is probably will help a great deal to the continuity and recovery of the Amiga heritage. Hyperion also provides AmigaOS SDKs for developers.

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