acambra - Slashdot User

Canonical Designer Demos Ubuntu Context-Aware UI 237

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 21, 2010 @09:00AM from the i-sense-something-interesting dept.

Blacklaw writes "Canonical's Christian Giordano has posted details of what he believes could be the future of user interface design in Ubuntu — a system that detects physical context. Designed to be paired with a webcam or other sensor system, the concept is that the computer is able to detect where a user is in proximity to the display along with an idea of roughly what he or she might be doing. Using this information, the operating system — in this case, Ubuntu Linux — can automatically make changes to the screen layout. For example, when the system detects that the user has leaned back in his or her chair, the system automatically makes the currently playing video full-screen. Lean forward again, and the video returns to its previous windowed mode."

Terry Pratchett Knighted 366

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 31, 2008 @04:07AM from the sir-discworld dept.

ackthpt writes "Headlines have been popping up on Google News: 'Terry Pratchett declared himself "flabbergasted" to receive a knighthood as he led a group of writers, actors and performers honoured today.' The Discworld author and stalwart adversary of Alzheimers Disease has been a member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for Services to Literature since 1998. He will be entering the new year as Knight Commander. Well done and Oook, Sir Terry."

Why LEDs Don't Beat CFLs Even Though They Should 685

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @07:57PM from the light-it-up dept.

TaeKwonDood writes "LEDs don't beat CFLs in the home yet, but it's not simply because PG&E is getting rich making people feel like they are helping the environment buying CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save. It's a problem of indication versus illumination. However, some new discoveries are going to change all that."

Comment Re:-exec as a test (Score 1) 2362

by acambra on Thursday November 06, 2008 @06:10PM (#25667431) Attached to: (Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks?

hmm... there is still the nice old tar:

$ tar cf - somedir | (cd to_some_otherdir;tar xfv - )

or even

$ tar cf - somedir | ssh user@another.machine (cd to_some_otherdir;tar xfv - )

use that quite a lot.

Enigma Machine for Sale on eBay 175

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 19, 2007 @07:55AM from the break-your-own-codes dept.

RagingMaxx writes "An Italian antiques dealer has recently put to auction a mint condition, fully operational Enigma machine on eBay. The machine, dated circa 1938, will be sold to the highest bidder in just over a week, but after 30 hours of bidding the price has already surpassed $12,000 US. For those of you who can't afford the real thing, why not make your own?"

Submission + - Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued

Submitted by

RobertB-DC

on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @06:21PM

RobertB-DC writes: "With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell's privacy blog. Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."

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