Comment Re:Linux Brands? Alpha, Purism, System76, ZaReason (Score 1) 287
Or the KDE Slimbook
Comment Emulated games (Score 1) 2
How well do emulated games run on the Pandora? Not performance-wise, since the Pyra has more modern hardware and can probably support many newer systems, but using keypad and general "feel"
London Stock Exchange To Abandon Windows 438
BBCWatcher writes "Computerworld's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports that the London Stock Exchange is abandoning its Microsoft Windows-based trading platform: 'Anyone who was ever fool enough to believe that Microsoft software was good enough to be used for a mission-critical operation had their face slapped this September when the LSE's Windows-based TradElect system brought the market to a standstill for almost an entire day .... Sources at the LSE tell me to this day that the problem was with TradElect ...'"
Is Microsoft Improving Its Image? 746
nk497 writes "Writer makes the case that Windows 7 is a turning point for Microsoft, and we all might start liking them soon ...
'While it's not winning everyone over, there are real signs that Microsoft has taken criticisms on board where it matters most: in the software and services that it provides. The idea of a faster, slimmer Windows is one that most Vista owners would automatically put on their wishlist, and it seems that Microsoft has genuinely done something about it. It's not just reignited interest in the Windows product line, but it's got users appreciating a fresh approach from Microsoft as well.'"
Comment AbanQ (Score 1) 264
There's a program called AbanQ, formerly known as FacturaLUX, which works quite well in a POS. However, it is oriented mainly to the Spanish market and has little U.S. support, I'm afraid :-(
Pope Cancels Speech After Scientists Protest 1507
Reservoir Hill writes "Pope Benedict XVI canceled a speech at Rome's La Sapienza university in the face of protests led by scientists opposed to a high-profile visit to a secular setting by the head of the Catholic Church. Sixty-seven professors and researchers of the university's physics department joined in the call for the pope to stay away protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seemed to justify the Inquisition's verdict against Galileo in 1633. In the speech, Ratzinger quoted an Austrian philosopher who said the ruling was 'rational and just' and concluded with the remark: 'The faith does not grow from resentment and the rejection of rationality, but from its fundamental affirmation, and from being rooted in a still greater form of reason.' The protest against the visit was spearheaded by physicist Marcello Cini who wrote the rector complaining of an 'incredible violation" of the university's autonomy. Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.'"
Copyright Cutback Proposed As RIAA Solution 709
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe proposes a novel solution to the ongoing spate of RIAA lawsuits over alleged music copying. He suggests legislation which cuts back corporate copyrights from 120 years to 5 years. 'We should do what we do to children who misbehave,' he writes. 'Take away their privileges.' Wolfe says this is regardless of the misunderstanding surrounding the latest case, which apparently isn't about ripping CDs to one's own computer. As to those who say copyrights are a right: "That's simply a misunderstanding of their purpose. Copyrights, like patents, weren't implemented to protect their owners in perpetuity. They are part of a dance which attempts to balance off societal benefits against incentives for writers and inventors. You want to incentivize people to push the state of the creative and technical arts, but you don't want give those folks such overbearing protections that future advances by other innovators are stifled." What do you think; is it time to cut off the record industry?"
Performance Evaluation of Xen Vs. OpenVZ 116
An anonymous reader writes "Compared to an operating-system-level virtualization technology like OpenVZ, Xen — a hypervisor-level virtualization technology that allows multiple operating systems to be run with and without para-virtualization — trades off performance for much better isolation and security. OpenVZ's performance advantage due to running virtual containers in a single operating system kernel can be significant. A performance evaluation study (PDF) done by researchers at the University of Michigan and HP labs provides insight into how big a performance penalty Zen pays and what causes the overheads (primarily L2 cache misses)." From the report: "We compare both technologies with a base system in terms of application performance, resource consumption, scalability, low-level system metrics like cache misses and virtualization-specific metrics like Domain-0 consumption in Xen. Our experiments indicate that the average response time can increase by over 400% in Xen and only a modest 100% in OpenVZ as the number of application instances grows from one to four... A similar trend is observed in CPU consumptions of virtual containers."
MS Urges Antitrust Scuttling of DoubleClick Deal 234
Microsoft contends that Google's $3.1 billion deal to buy DoubleClick would hurt competition in the online advertising market. And Microsoft expects AT&T, Yahoo, and other companies to join them next week in protesting the proposed sale.
Adobe To Release Full PDF Specification to ISO 275
nickull writes "Adobe announced it will release the entire PDF specification (current version 1.7 ) to the International Standards Organization (ISO) via AIIM. PDF has reached a point in its maturity cycle where maintaining it in an open standards manner is the next logical step in evolution. Not only does this reinforce Adobe's commitment to open standards (see also my earlier blog on the release of flash runtime code to the Tamarin open source project at Sourceforge), but it demonstrates that open standards and open source strategies are really becoming a mainstream concept in the software industry.
So what does this really mean? Most people know that PDF is already a standard so why do this now? This event is very subtle yet very significant. PDF will go from being an open standard/specification and de facto standard to a full blown de jure standard. The difference will not affect implementers much given PDF has been a published open standard for years. There are some important distinctions however. First — others will have a clearly documented process for contributing to the future of the PDF specification. That process also clearly documents the path for others to contribute their own Intellectual property for consideration in future versions of the standard. Perhaps Adobe could have set up some open standards process within the company but this would be merely duplicating the open standards process, which we felt was the proper home for PDF. Second, it helps cement the full PDF specification as the umbrella specification for all the other PDF standards under the ISO umbrella such as PDF/A, PDF/X and PDF/E. The move also helps realize the dreams of a fully open web as the web evolves (what some are calling Web 2.0), built upon truly open standards, technologies and protocols."
Submission + - Open nVidia linux drivers pledge near completion
Ciarán Mooney writes: "The Pledgebank drive to get $10,000 raised for Project Nouvaeu is almost complete and currently only needs 199 people to sign up to finish.
Started by David Nielsen, heres a link to his blog explaining what he hopes will happen.
If it reaches completion then thats a big plus for the Linux community, not just for Project Nouveau but who ever said that you needed big company backing to get money raised?"
EMI Considers Abandoning DRM on CDs 166
jOmill writes "EMI Netherlands has announced that it is considering no longer using DRM on CDs, because it isn't worth the cost.
According to Reuters the company is still reviewing the decision. From the article: 'Critics have argued that the system has not worked as consumers could be driven to illegal sites to download music to the popular iPod instead. A spokeswoman for EMI said it had not manufactured any new disks with DRM, which restricts consumers from making copies of songs and films they have purchased legally, for the last few months.'"
IE7 Released As High-Priority Update 438
jimbojw writes, "Internet Explorer 7 was finally released this morning and is available via automatic update or download from Microsoft." And an anonymous reader notes stats on IE7 and FF2 downloads, adding: "Looks like FF2 is already outnumbering FF 1.5, while IE7 is having a hard time to find followers. Will today's release as a high-priority, force-fed update fix this issue?" The sans.org stats site will be updated throughout the day, so perhaps we'll get an indication.
Journal Journal: EspEcu: España y Ecuador
Hi, we've just started a new web page about Spain and Ecuador, EspEcu. In there you will find lots of information on tourism, inmigration, emigration, events and more.
Hola, acabamos de estrenar una nueva página sobre España y Ecuador, EspEcu. Ahí encontrarán información sobre turismo, inmigración, emigración eventos y más
Comment DivX hardware; ok, What version? (Score 2, Interesting) 150
VCD, SVCD, DVD; ok, Mpeg2 compresion...
Mp3; ok, Mpeg layer 3 compresion...
but DivX, How many version of DivX are now?
Too fast changes for hardware descompresion...
Slashdot Top Deals
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future. - Niels Bohr
