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Comment Re:ugg (Score 2) 88

by fader (#34464742) Attached to: Google eBookstore Launched
The app is Adobe Editions, and it's a completely different app. Chances are good that it's already installed on the computer of most people with an ebook reader.

... unless they run Linux, which Adobe promised a DE client for but never delivered. Unfortunately for me, this means I won't be reading any Google books on my nook, which is a shame.

Submission + - Boy of 15 fitted with robotic heart (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you’re Dr Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart giving the boy another 20-25 years of life.

The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution.

Dr Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90 gram fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy’s left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt and connected to behind his left ear.
GNOME

Submission + - GNOME 3.0 delayed until March 2011 (derstandard.at) 4

Submitted by Julie188
Julie188 writes: In the ongoing saga of GNOME 3.0, here's another delay. GNOME 3.0 was scheduled to be released in September but during the developers conference, GUADEC 2010 in Den Haag, the organization had to face facts: the much ballyhooed GNOME Shell really wasn't ready. The Shell is supposed to bring "a whole new user experience to the desktop." So now, in September, what users will see is GNOME 2.32, distributed as a new stable release. Next target date for 3.0: March 2011.
Ubuntu

Submission + - ARM Cortex A9 Laptops to be Linux Powered (armdevices.net)

Submitted by Charbax
Charbax writes: In this video, Jerone Young, lead partner engineer at Canonical, explains some of the challenges that Canonical and other companies who are part of the new Linaro project have been working on for the past many months, in preparation for the now imminent release of a whole bunch of ARM Cortex A9 Powered laptops and desktops likely to be manufactured by giants of the industry such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Quanta, Invetec, Pegatron, Compal, all of whome have been showing tens of early prototype designs of these ARM Powered laptops at trade shows around the world during the past year and a half. They work to standardize the boot process, write drivers to use graphics and video hardware acceleration, they optimize the web browser (Chrome and Mozilla), they implement faster DDR3 RAM and faster I/O bus speeds, they also optimize the software to use the new faster dual core ARM Cortex A9 processors. The goal is to have these upcoming ARM Powered laptops feel as usable to end consumers as Intel x86 based laptops/netbooks. With increased competition thanks to this alternative CPU architecture, prices of laptops and desktops could rapidly go down (sub-$149 laptops and sub-$99 desktops are likely), battery life could run much longer (up to 30-50 hours using a Pixel Qi LCD screen), sizes and weights can be much smaller. This could be the type of low-power, low-cost computer that the next 5 billion people in the world may use as their first computer.
Security

Submission + - Secure Communication Comes To Android (whispersys.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Forbes is reporting that Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson's startup, Whisper Systems, has released a public beta of two Android applications which provide encrypted call and SMS capabilities for your Android phone. In the wake of recent GSM attacks, it'll be interesting to see if smartphones end up providing a platform which fundamentally changes the security we can expect from mobile communication.
Games

More Evidence For Steam Games On Linux 256

Posted by Soulskill from the come-on-valve-spill-the-beans dept.
SheeEttin writes "Back in November 2008, Phoronix reported that Linux libraries appeared in the Left 4 Dead demo, and then in March, Valve announced that Steam and the Source engine were coming to Mac OS X. Now, Phoronix reports that launcher scripts included with the (closed beta) Mac version of Steam include explicit support for launching a Linux version."
Games

Submission + - More evidence for Steam games on Linux

Submitted by
SheeEttin
SheeEttin writes: "Back in November 2008, Phoronix reported that Linux libraries appeared in the Left 4 Dead demo (also on Slashdot), and then in March, Valve announced that Steam and the Source engine were coming to Mac OS X
Now, Phoronix reports that launcher scripts included with the (closed beta) Mac version of Steam include explicit support for launching a Linux version."
PC Games (Games)

An Early Look At Civilization V 286

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."
United States

Submission + - Our Low-Tech Tax Code

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: After establishing that nothing can excuse Joe Stack's murderous intentional plane crash into an IRS office, a NY Times Op-Ed explains the reference in Stack's suicide note to an obscure federal tax law — Section 1706 of the 1986 tax act — which the software engineer claimed declared him a 'criminal and non-citizen slave' and ruined his career. Interestingly, a decade-old NY Times article on Section 1706 pretty much agreed: 'The immediate effect of these [Section 1706] audits is to force individual programmers...to abandon their dreams of getting rich off their high-technology skills.' Section 1706, the NYT Op-Ed concludes, 'is an example of how Congress enacted a discriminatory law that hurt thousands of technology consultants, their staffing firms and customers. And despite strong bipartisan efforts and unbiased studies supporting that law's repeal, it remains on the books.'

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