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Comment Re:Time for Linux, finally? (Score 1) 489

by daemonburrito (#41113887) Attached to: Windows 8 Tells Microsoft About Everything You Install

You can avoid all the pain of researching hardware by purchasing a pre-configured Linux machine.

https://www.system76.com/

I've had great experiences from them. Great support, both official and community. Computer comes ready to go, with a system76 repo for support of very new hardware. After less than a year, my laptop now works with vanilla Linux without need of system76's software.

Ships with latest Ubuntu, but if you're not a fan of Unity, xubuntu is great.
Science

Submission + - NC Republicans Consider Outlawing Sealevel Rise Predictions (newsobserver.com) 2

Submitted by
ideonexus
ideonexus writes: "Republicans in North Carolina are floating a bill that would force planners to only consider past historical data in predicting the sea-level rise (SLR) for the state as opposed to considering projections that take Global Warming into account. NC-20, the pro-development lobbying group representing twenty counties along the NC coast, is behind the effort and asserts that the one-meter prediction would prohibit development on too much land as opposed to SLR predictions of 3.9 to 15.6 inches."

Submission + - European Parliament blocks copyright reform with 113% voter turnout (falkvinge.net) 1

Submitted by mcmadman
mcmadman writes: In a bizarre turn of events. The Legal Affairs committee (JURI), which has the responsibility of safeguarding the integrity and trustworthiness of the legal framework as a whole in Europe voted recently to weaken a reform of the copyright monopoly for allowing re-publication and access to orphan works. Pieces of our cultural heritage where no copyright monopoly holder can be located. What is surprising that the voter turnout happened to be 113%. This rather embarrassing issue was pointed out to the committee, the fact that there were three votes too many, and that these three votes determined the outcome. When this was done, along with formally requesting a re-vote, that re-vote on the points in question was denied.
Businesses

Submission + - Bill Gates Takes the Stand in WordPerfect Trial

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Remember WorldPerfect? Bill Gates took the witness stand to defend his company against a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit that claims Microsoft duped Novell into thinking he would include WordPerfect in the new Windows system, then backed out because he feared it was too good. Gates testified Monday that Microsoft was racing to put out Windows 95 when he dropped technical features that would no longer support the rival's word processor and that in making the decision about the code, he was concerned not about Novell but about one element of the program that could have caused computers to crash. That code, technically known as "name space extensions," had to do with the display of folders and files. Novell attorney Jeff Johnson concedes that Microsoft was under no legal obligation to provide advance access to Windows 95 so Novell could prepare a compatible version but contends that Microsoft enticed Novell to work on a version, only to withdraw support months before Windows 95 hit the market. "We got stabbed in the back.""

Submission + - UN Bigwig: 'The web" should have been patented and (boingboing.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has unearthed an amazing video where the head of WIPO, the UN agency responsible for "promoting" intellectual property, suggests that Tim Berners-Lee should have patented HTML and licensed it to all users. Amazingly this is done on camera and in front of the head of CERN and the Internet Society, who look on in disbelief.
User Journal

Journal Journal: "Western" reactors

Journal by daemonburrito

There are 23 GE Mark 1 reactors in operation in the US.

Note that one of them is at the Vermont Yankee plant. On March 10, 2011, the NRC concluded proceedings for a twenty year extension for the operating license.

I am truly awed by the political and media power of the nuclear energy industry.
The Internet

Submission + - Trumpet Winsock creator made little money (ycombinator.com) 1

Submitted by omast
omast writes: It appears that Peter Tattam, creator of Trumpet Winsock, got very little for this piece of software. For those of you who do not remember — or did not need it because were already outside the MS Windows world — Trumpet Winsock was a shareware program that provided TCP/IP functionality to Windows machines back in 1994-1995. It allowed millions to connect to the Internet back then; I was one of them.
According to the article, Tattam made very little money from the program as it was widely distributed but rarely paid for.
Android

Submission + - Android Devices Are Hives of License Violations (linuxplanet.com)

Submitted by inkscapee
inkscapee writes: Android developers are paying little attention to Free/Open Source software licenses and have a 71% violation rate. Come on folks, FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certainly easier than proprietary software licenses, and less punitive. But it seems even the tiny hoops that FOSS requires are too much for devs eager to cash in.
Education

Submission + - Can For-Profit Tech Colleges Be Trusted? (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Robert Scheier takes a closer look at for-profit IT-oriented colleges, questioning whether IT pros and employers can trust the quality of education on offer at institutions such as University of Phoenix, DeVry, ITT Tech, and Kaplan in the wake of increasing scrutiny for alleged deceptive practices that leave in high debt for jobs that pay little. 'For-profit schools carry a stigma in some eyes because of their reputation for hard sales pitches, aggressive marketing tactics, and saddling students with big loans for dubious degrees or certificates,' Scheier writes. 'Should IT pros looking to increase their skills, or people seeking to enter the IT profession, consider such for-profit schools? And should employers trust their graduates' skills?'"
Games

Submission + - Futureproofing artifacts-Spacewar! 1962 in HTML5 (oversigma.com)

Submitted by
trebonian
trebonian writes: "In 1997 we posted a playable version of the Spacewar!, the first graphical computer game. Spacewar! was written by Russell et al at MIT in the early 60s.

We did not re-implement the game. Rather, we found the original source code, rebuilt it to get an authentic binary and ran it on a PDP-1 emulator that we wrote in Java.

We chose Java to implement the PDP-1 because we believed at the time — correctly as it turned out — that a Java version would survive the browser wars. Also, it would not require any effort to keep it running on all platforms well past the turn of the millennium, and through the traffic peaks of Spacewar's 40th and 45th birthday.

It's now getting close to 15 years later. We would not want to bet that in another 15 years a Java program will still run on the latest popular platforms.

As a hedge to the future, and in an effort to continue the preservation of this significant digital artifact, we've now ported the PDP-1 emulator to Javascript/HTML5.

It's posted at http://spacewar.oversigma.com/html5/. This should see the game through Spacewar!'s 50th (and hopefully 60th) birthday.

Expect another update around 2025."
Government

Submission + - Feds Help You Find Your Fastest Internet Service (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "Slashdot previously covered the National Broadband Map, designed by the U.S. Federal government to illustrate where the "digital divide" between those with access to high-speed Internet and those who don't. But, as blogger Ryan Faas points out, you can use it for a much more individualistic purpose: to find your fastest local wired or wireless ISP. Just plug in your name and address and you'll soon see what your options are."
Chrome

Submission + - Google to support or oppose DRM on HTML5 video? (mozillazine.org)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Mozilla has committed to not implement DRM in Firefox for WebM HTML5 video even though it is theoretically possible. Microsoft has asked Google and the WebM community several other questions that still have not been answered, but this one seems more important: will Google commit to keeping WebM in Chrome DRM-free? Does our community think that is important for the open web and free software?"
HP

Submission + - Recent HP Laptops shipped CPU-Choking WiFi Driver (superuser.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer manufacturers have recently come under fire for the continued practice of shipping machines with excessive bloatware. Software preinstalled on some recent HP laptops was worse than normal though, consuming anywhere from 25-99% CPU by making incessant WMI queries, resulting in overheating laptops and reduced battery life. Users on a computer Q&A site did some sleuthing, and revealed that HP Wireless Assistant — software which does nothing but tell the user when their WiFi adapter is turned on or off — was causing the problem. According to an HP support forum, the problem is fixed in later versions, but thousands of laptops have the software installed, and the software does not get updated automatically.

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