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Comment Re:What the hell is KMS? (Score 1) 374

by edlinfan (#29381813) Attached to: Linux Kernel 2.6.31 Released

(Vast simplification coming up.) KMS makes changing between video modes much nicer, so no more annoying blinks and flickers when you switch from a tty to X (among other things.)

It is also hugely important for the 'nouveau' nvidia open-source driver, which has been waiting for KMS to go live for a long time now.

Comment Slashdotted - cache. (Score 3, Informative) 81

by edlinfan (#27520811) Attached to: New CASMOBOT Lawnmower Controlled By a Wiimote

First, the obligatory Google Cache link.
http://74.125.95.132/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A//www.casmobot.dk/

There's not much on the main page except a link to the YouTube video, here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhMl7a3wJvQ

Anyway, I wonder how easy it really is to control this thing. Holding a WiiMote level for a long time is harder than it sounds.

The GPS-autonomous mode is really cool, though. Last time I checked the progress of robo-mowers, many of them required a buried cable, fence, or other tangible barrier. This thing is orders of magnitude more convenient.
United States

Submission + - Believing in Medical Treatments That Don't Work

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "David H. Newman, M.D. has an interesting article in the NY Times where he discusses common medical treatments contradicted by the best available evidence e.g. for decades doctors have administered "beta-blockers" to heart attack victims although studies show that the early administration of beta-blockers does not save lives; patients with ear infections are more likely to be harmed by antibiotics than helped — the infections typically recede within days regardless of treatment and the same is true for bronchitis, sinusitis, and sore throats; no cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo; back surgeries to relieve pain are, in the majority of cases, no better than nonsurgical treatment; and knee surgery is no better than sham knee surgery where surgeons "pretend" to do surgery while the patient is under light anesthesia. Newman says that treatment based on ideology is alluring "but the uncomfortable truth is that many expensive, invasive interventions are of little or no benefit and cause potentially uncomfortable, costly, and dangerous side effects and complications." The Obama administration's plan for reform includes identifying health care measures that work and those that don't and there are signs of hope for evidence-based medicine: earlier this year hospital administrators were informed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that beta-blocker treatment will be retired as a government indicator of quality care, beginning April 1, 2009. "After years of advocacy that cemented immediate beta-blockers in the treatment protocols of virtually every hospital in the country," writes Newman. "the agency has demonstrated that minds can be changed.""
Google

Submission + - Google purges thousands of suspected malware sites (itnews.com.au) 1

Submitted by
Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: "In response to a concerted effort by cyber criminals to infect the computers of Google users with malware and make them unwitting partners in crime, Google has apparently purged tens of thousands of malicious Web pages from its index. Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Software, noted that many search results on Google led to malicious Web pages that expose visitors to exploits that can compromise vulnerable systems. Sunbelt published a list of search terms that returned malicious pages, the result of search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns by cyber criminals to get their pages prominently ranked in Google — Sunbelt refers to this as "SEO poisoning."

Let's hope Google has done its research and hasn't purged legitimate sites."
Music

Submission + - EMI may cut funding to IFPI, RIAA (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Teen Bainwolf
Teen Bainwolf writes: Big Four record label EMI is reportedly considering a big cut in its funding for the IFPI and RIAA. Each of the labels reportedly contributed over $130 million per year to fund industry trade groups, and EMI apparently believes that money could be better spent elsewhere. 'One of the chief activities of the RIAA is coordinating the Big Four labels' legal campaign, and those thousands of lawsuits have done nothing but generate ill will from record fans, while costing the labels millions of dollars and doing little (if anything) to actually reduce the amount of file-sharing going on. In fact, the RIAA freely admits that the legal campaign is a real money pit, and EMI's new ownership may be very leery of continuing to pour money down that particular rat hole.
Windows

Submission + - More evidence that XP is Vista's main competitor (computerworld.com) 3

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is "considerably faster" than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista: 'Vista's biggest competition isn't Apple or Novell or Red Hat; it's Microsoft itself, it's XP, [Forrester Research analyst Benjamin Gray] said. So enamored of XP are businesses that Microsoft may feel obligated to extend the operating system's mainstream support past its current April 2009 expiration date. ... He attributed the lowered expectations to a lack of detailed information about Vista in 2006; too-high prices for PCs with 2GB of memory, which is essentially the minimum needed for Vista, according to company managers; and a larger-than-expected number of incompatible applications.'"
Linux Business

Submission + - Torvalds on where Linux is headed in 2008

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: In this new interview, Linus Torvalds is excited about solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualisation despite his personal lack of interest in the area.

From the article: "To get some perspective on what lies ahead in 2008, we caught up with Linus Torvalds via email. His responses touched on the Linux development process, upcoming features, and whether he's concerned about potential patent litigation."

Torvalds on Linux biggest strength: "When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility. And it stems directly from the fact that anybody who is interested can participate in the development, and no single entity ends up being in control of where it all goes.

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