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KDE

Linus Switches From KDE To Gnome 869

Posted by timothy from the seldon-plan dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent Computerworld interview, Linus revealed that he's switched to Gnome — this despite launching a heavily critical broadside against Gnome just a few years ago. His reason? He thinks KDE 4 is a 'disaster.' Although it's improved recently, he'll find many who agree with this prognosis, and KDE 4 can be painful to use." There's quite a bit of interesting stuff in this interview, besides, regarding the current state of Linux development.
The Almighty Buck

Economic Crisis Will Eliminate Open Source 753

Posted by CmdrTaco from the why-so-gloomy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The economic crisis will ultimately eliminate open source projects and the 'Web 2.0 free economy,' says Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur. Along with the economic downturn and record job loss, he says, we will see the elimination of projects including Wikipedia, CNN's iReport, and much of the blogosphere. Instead of users offering their services 'for free,' he says, we're about to see a 'sharp cultural shift in our attitude toward the economic value of our labor' and a rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash. Companies that will survive, he says, include Hulu, iTunes, and Mahalo. 'The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren't going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some "back end" revenue,' says Keen."
Medicine

Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells 198

Posted by kdawson from the for-the-love-of-god-montressor dept.
Amenacier writes "Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the use of fat stem cells in repairing cardiac damage, or fixing such cardiac problems as holes in the heart. It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle through signals from the rat cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells, without any danger of rejection by the body. Quoting: 'The next step is to implant the human heart cells onto the damaged heart of a laboratory rat to see whether they repair the heart. Then they would be trialled in higher species such as sheep and pigs before human applications could be considered. Clinical application could be five years away ...'" The Age has a multimedia treatment (Flash) of the discovery.
The Almighty Buck

Fuel Efficiency and Slow Driving? 1114

Posted by timothy from the practical-interest-here dept.
vile8 writes "With the high gas prices and ongoing gas gouging in my hometown many people are trying to find a reasonable way to save gas. One of the things I've noticed is people driving exceptionally slow, 30mph in 45mph zones, etc. So I had to take a quick look and find out if driving slow is helpful in getting better mileage. I know horsepower increases substantially with wind resistance, but with charts like this one from truckandbarter.com it appears mileage is actually about the same between 27mph and 58mph or so. So I'm curious what all the drivers out there with the cool efficiency computers are getting ... of specific interest would be the hemis with MDS; how do those do with the cylinder shutoff mode at different speeds?" Related: are there any practical hypermiling techniques that you've found for people not ready to purchase a new car, nor give up driving generally?
The Media

A Wikipedia Conspiracy and the Wall Street Meltdown 485

Posted by kdawson from the controlling-the-public-discourse dept.
PatrickByrne writes "This is The Register's world-class investigative piece concerning one aspect of the meltdown on Wall Street ('naked short selling') and how the criminals engaged a journalist to distort Wikipedia to confuse the discourse. The article explicitly and formally accuses a well-known US financial journalist, Gary Weiss, of lying about his efforts to distort a Wikipedia page under assumed names, and accuses the Powers That Be in Wikipedia (right up to and including Jimbo Wales) of complicity in protecting Weiss. This is not another story about a 15-year-old farm kid in Iowa pretending to be a professor. This is like the worst Chomskian view of Elites manipulating mass opinion. But it is all documented." We discussed the alleged Wikipedia manipulation when The Register first wrote about it last December. The submitter is the CEO of Overstock.com and a major player in this drama from the beginning.

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