Comment Old news (Score 1) 227
Burn all GIFs was 1999
Comment Nuclear profits (Score 1) 154
Excellent
Shuttleworth: Apple Will Merge Mac and iPhone 414
Barence writes "Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth claims Apple will follow Ubuntu's lead and converge the iPhone and MacBook product lines. Speaking to PC Pro to mark the upcoming launch of Ubuntu 13.10, Shuttleworth said that the failed Ubuntu Edge smartphone — an attempt to bridge mobile and desktop computing devices — had set an example that others will follow. 'We've seen a very interested ripple go through the industry, and an uptick in interest in convergence,' Shuttleworth added. 'People are saying yes, mobile processors are catching up with the desktop. When Apple announced the iPhone 5s, it called the processor "desktop-class," and I don't think that was an accident – it was sending what we think is a very clear signal that it will converge the iPhone and the MacBook Air.'"
Comment Re:Cognitive science (Score 2) 231
I'm currently repairing my friends car made in 1999 that has the heater controls on a 7" LCD. It's not touchscreen, it uses physical controls but the setting is shown on the screen and it is impossible to even demist the windows without it.
The replacement is prohibitively expensive but used units are available from end of life cars, however they may not last very long and the labour involved in fitting them is very lengthy.
Ubuntu Still Aims For Wayland in Quantal Quetzal 230
jones_supa writes "While there's still more than one month until the Ubuntu 12.10 feature freeze, Ubuntu developers continue to work towards their tight schedule of having Wayland serve as the compositor for the Quantal Quetzal release due out in October. Canonical's intends to provide smooth transitions from boot to shutdown. Wayland is also used for session switching and other operations, avoiding traditional VT switching, providing a consistent monitor layout, using the greeter as the lock screen, ensuring that locked sessions are actually secure from displaying, and showing the greeter while the session loads. Phoronix remains skeptical about Ubuntu making the deadline."
Student Expelled From Indiana High School For Tweeting Profanity 349
First time accepted submitter OopsIDied writes with the story that high-school senior Austin Carroll of Garrett, Indiana was recently expelled after tweeting profanity from his own home, writing "Supposedly the school has a system which tracks students' social networks after they have logged in at school. Although the tweet was done at home at 2 AM, the school decided that such behavior was unacceptable and that the most fitting punishment was expulsion. He did use a school computer, but it was set up to use the school network even when used outside the school because the school claimed the tweet was associated with the school's IP address." As usual, TechDirt has some biting commentary about the expulsion. But Hey, at least they didn't throw him in jail.
Comment Re:Gee, why not just send the police then (Score 1) 691
I didn't say anything about how it is spent, I just used a common colloquial term and not the latest bureaucratic phrase.
"Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) (also commonly known as vehicle tax, car tax and road tax)"
Comment Re:Gee, why not just send the police then (Score 1) 691
(because you can't get an MOT without insurance)
Yes you can, there are no prerequisites for either an MOT or insurance in the UK. To buy a road fund license ('road tax') you do need to have both insurance and an MOT but the case you describe is plain wrong.
Comment Re:eMacs not good enough? (Score 1) 248
eMacs run Emacs just fine.
Comment eMacs (Score 5, Informative) 248
eMacs are PowerPC based and therefore won't run recent versions of Mac OS and also won't run recent versions of Safari or Firefox. I wouldn't be surprised if this means they don't support Google Docs etc fully or even at all.
They really are pretty much useless these days, I have just retired an office full of them that have been soldiering on for years but the number of websites that were simply not available to them became too great.
The Linux Counter Relaunches 113
psychonaut writes "Long-term readers of Slashdot may be familiar with The Linux Counter, which attempts to measure (through surveys and statistics) the number of people using GNU/Linux operating systems. The project started in 1993 and shot to fame six years later, largely as a result of three Slashdot articles (two of which brought the Counter to its knees). After four years of stagnation, project founder Harald Tveit Alvestrand has handed over the reins to a new maintainer, Alexander Mieland. Over the past few months, Mieland has completely redeveloped the project, with a modernized design and support facilities (including a bug tracker, mailing list, RSS feed, and Twitter account). The New Linux Counter is now up and running, with all the data for active users from the old counter. The old site will continue to operate for a time but will soon be shut down and requests redirected to the new site."
Comment Re:55 miles is pretty good, and not the point (Score 1) 369
"When was the last time you saw Top Gear give a Consumer Reports review of a car"
In the early nineties.
Wikileaks Founder Arrested In London 1060
CuteSteveJobs writes "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by London police on behalf of Swedish authorities on allegation of rape. Assange has admitted that he is exhausted by the ongoing battle against authorities. The Swiss Government has confiscated $37K in his Swiss Bank account. PayPal and Mastercard have frozen Wikileak's accounts, hampering Wikileaks from raising any more funds."
Pope Rails Against the Internet and Transparency 840
tcd004 writes "At a conference on digital media at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI attacked the idea of transparency in the Internet age, warning that digital transparency exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves and increases the 'dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism,' which can lead to 'multiple forms of degradation and humiliation' of the essence of a person, and to the 'pollution of the spirit.' All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide-open communication environment being demanded by the Internet age."
History Repeats Itself — Mac & the iPad 514
Keith found an interesting story telling a bit about how Steve Jobs operates. It involves small teams of young engineers willing to work 90-hour weeks in total secrecy, and a complete willingness to throw away bad ideas without flowery language. The iPad is surprisingly similar to the Mac."
