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Comment It's only $200! (Score 2, Insightful) 235

by Crasp (#21478101) Attached to: A Review of the $200 Wal-Mart Linux PC
I'm sorry but this review is extremely biased by a (more or less) experienced Ubuntu user. Some criticism is spot on (like the PSU efficiency remark) but some criticism is a bit far fetched. It lacks in documentation, sure but to cover the last 20% it probably requires 80% more time which would make the PC easily $300 instead of $200, not to mention that the writer apparently thinks that all PC's should be capable of understanding any piece of hardware you push into it. This PC just does what it's supposed to do, it runs with the preinstalled hardware and that's it. Want to customise it? Fine, you pay the extra price for it. I think $200 for a complete PC (excluding monitor) is actually pretty cheap. Don't forget that $200 is a price you could easily spend on a half-decent CPU alone and now you get a complete working PC for it. Sure it might lack a bit on this and that's but if you consider that a problem you probably bought the wrong PC.
Linux Business

Dell to Sell Machines with Ubuntu Pre-Loaded 562

Posted by Zonk from the a-decision-is-made dept.
kotj.mf writes "Cnet is reporting that Dell will shortly announce a partnership with Canonical to offer Ubuntu pre-loaded on certain consumer-oriented desktops and notebooks. The announcement comes after a groundswell of support for pre-installed Linux on Dell's IdeaStorm site. 'The company is starting its business by trying to appeal to users of desktop computers. From there, Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth has said, the company plans to head to the server market, where the real Linux bread and butter can be found. [Dell spokesman Kent] Cook wouldn't comment on whether Dell plans to offer Ubuntu on its servers as well.'."
Transmeta

Journal Journal: Kernel.org is 10 years old...

Journal by diz
I just finished making the logo to mark 10 years since kernel.org was announced...

Happy birthday kernel.org!
Sponsored by Intel

Vendor Virtualization in the Data Center 111

Submitted by Scott_Intel
Hello Slashdot community. Scott, Sunil, Arjan and Chris here and we are changing the guard this week and moving our discussion from energy efficiency to server virtualization. At Intel we are "all in" on virtualization in the data center. Our move to Quad-Core Xeon has given our servers even more performance to hit solid consolidation ratios, and we're seeing real benefits within IT and business. If you want to read about one way in which we are implementing virtualization in our own IT dep
Space

Submission + - The search for dark matter and dark energy

Submitted by mlimber
mlimber writes: The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy, popular article on dark matter and dark energy, discussing the past, present, and future: 'Astronomers now realize that dark matter probably involves matter that is nonbaryonic ["meaning that it doesn't consist of the protons and neutrons of 'normal' matter"]. And whatever it is that dark energy involves, we know it's not "normal," either. In that case, maybe this next round of evidence will have to be not only beyond anything we know but also beyond anything we know how to know.'
Privacy

Submission + - Drug selectively removes rats memory

Submitted by rednuhter
rednuhter writes: Nature online is reporting scientists have used drugs to selectively remove one memory while unaffecting another. Musical tones were played to the rats and at the same time the subjects were given a mild electric shock. Half the study group were given the drug (not approved for use in humans) and then the experiment was repeated with a new tone. The following day the rats that had not been given the treatment were afraid of both tones while the treated half were only afraid of the second tone, the memory of fear of the first had been erased.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Is Gentoo in crisis?

Submitted by
TheCoop1984
TheCoop1984 writes: "A recent article on distrowatch, and an extended thread on the gentoo forums, have pointed out that gentoo is not what it used to be. Daniel Robbins came back and went again after only a few days, developer turnover is as high as ever, personal attacks on the mailing lists are common, and people are generally not happy about the current state of affairs. Is gentoo rotting from the inside, and can anything be done about it?"
Censorship

Submission + - Scientists Threatened For "Climate Denial"

Submitted by Forrest Kyle
Forrest Kyle writes: A former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg has recieved multiple death threats for questioning the extent to which human activities are driving global warming. From the article, "'Western governments have pumped billions of dollars into careers and institutes and they feel threatened,' said the professor. 'I can tolerate being called a sceptic because all scientists should be sceptics, but then they started calling us deniers, with all the connotations of the Holocaust. That is an obscenity. It has got really nasty and personal.' Richard Lindzen, the professor of Atmospheric Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology...recently claimed: 'Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves labelled as industry stooges. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science.'"
Games

The Big Minds Behind LittleBigPlanet 28

Posted by Zonk from the robby-rocketpants-has-nothing-on-these-guys dept.
Gamasutra is reporting on a panel put on by the folks at Media Molecule, just hours after Phil Harrison's keynote yesterday. There, they talked about the formation of their ambitious company. They began with just a lot of hopes, and knew hard work was in store for them. Just the same, using techniques they'd picked up in the mod community, they drew up a very successful game concept and got someone else to pay for it. "[Essentially], the company's sole mission at the start was to do the most ambitious game it could produce, asking 'how hard can we make it for ourselves.' 'If we were jumping into the abyss,' said Evans, 'we were going to do it with rockets on our back.'"
Programming

Submission + - Auto-parallelizing compiler from Codeplay

Submitted by
Max Romantschuk
Max Romantschuk writes: "Parallelization of code is a very tricky thing. We've all heard of the challeges with Cell, and with dual and quad core pocessors this is becoming an ever more important issue to deal with. The Inquirer writes about a new auto-parallelizing compiler called Sieve from Codeplay: What Sieve is is a C++ compiler that will take a section of code and parallelize it for you with a minimum hassle. All you really need to do is take the code you want to run across multiple CPUs and put beginning and end tags on the parts you want to run in parallel.

Is this the Silver Bullet of parallelization? There's more info on Sieve on Codeplay's site."
Games

Do Reviews Still Serve a Purpose? 93

Posted by Zonk from the no-porpoise-jokes dept.
Via Voodoo Extreme, a post on the Sony-sponsored ThreeSpeech blog asking if game reviews are a thing of the past. Post author 'Azz Hassan' opines that the proliferation of blogs and easy access to game trailers has made the 'biased views' of reviewers a thing of the past. Responding via the Ars Technica Opposable Thumbs blog, Frank Caron offers a rebuttal to the piece. 'The argument presented in the article seems to come with the very slant that it so viciously protests: one of a negative view towards a medium that the writer feels is inadequate. Yes, there is a ton of available media on the net that can help you get a look at a game as it develops, but the problem with videos and pictures is that often the intangible elements are impossible to understand simply from seeing the game in motion--only the written or verbal communication of a person can adequately capture these details.'
Science

Speed of Light Exceeded? 393

Posted by kdawson from the when-pigs-fly-faster-than-light dept.
PreacherTom writes "Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ are reporting that they have broken the speed of light. For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapor of laser-irradiated atoms, causing a pulse that propagates about 300 times faster than light would travel in a vacuum. The pulse seemed to exit the chamber even before entering it." This research was published in Nature, so presumably it was peer-reviewed. It's impossible from the CBC story to determine what is being claimed. First of all they get the physics wrong by asserting that Einstein's special relativity only decrees that matter cannot exceed the speed of light. Wrong. Matter cannot touch the speed of light in vacuum; energy (e.g. light) cannot exceed it; and information cannot be transferred faster than this limit. What exactly the researchers achieved, and what they claim, can only be determined at this point by subscribers to Nature.

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