tyahand - Slashdot User

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @01:32PM from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Submission + - Psystar loses big against Apple (groklaw.net) 3

Submitted by UnknowingFool on Saturday November 14, 2009 @03:41PM

UnknowingFool writes: Apple has won their summary judgment at Psystar for copyright infringement and DMCA violation. Psystar's first sale defense was rejected by the court. Psystar also was denied on their summary judgment motion against Apple for trademark infringement and trade dress. There are still issues to be decided but they are only Apple's allegations: breach of contract, induced breach of contract, trademark infringement, trademark dilution; trade dress infringement, state unfair competition, and common law unfair competition. Even if Psystar wins all of them, it is unlikely to help them very much.

Submission + - GNOME 3 Delayed Until September 2010 2

Submitted by supersloshy on Friday November 13, 2009 @03:46PM

supersloshy writes: Contrary to popular opinion, GNOME 3 will not be released in March next year. It has been delayed until September 2010, six months later. According to the news message, this is because "our community wants GNOME 3.0 to be fully working for users and why we believe September is more appropriate." GNOME 3's main goal is to re-define the ways people interact with the desktop, mainly through a new UI design (currently called "GNOME Shell"), while GNOME 2.30, set for release in March, will have a focus on being stable.

Submission + - Two Earth-sized Bodies With Oxygen Rich Atmosphere (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by tugfoigel on Friday November 13, 2009 @02:58PM

tugfoigel writes: Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two earth sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres — however there is a bit of a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves, as they are not planets but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars.

Comment Re:BeOS in historic context (Score 1) 411

by tyahand on Monday September 14, 2009 @12:53PM (#29415441) Attached to: After 8 Years of Work, Be-Alike Haiku Releases Official Alpha

I've personally sat and used OSX on a Dual G5 for around a year, got it up to 10.5 eventually and it was slow when I got there and it was slow when I left.

Well, if a Dual G5 is your basis for evaluating OS X performance, then yeah, I can see how you'd think it was really slow. The G5 had a nice FPU, but it was lackluster at best on integer code, and while the memory bandwidth was much improved over the G4, it was still anemic compared to what workstation-class x86 machines could do at the time. Any of the first-gen Intel Macs easily outclassed the G5.

Comment Re:This is the Aqua and Aero "equivalent" ? (Score 1) 448

by tyahand on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @03:06PM (#18014878) Attached to: No Closed Video Drivers For Next Ubuntu Release

Linux on the desktop has always been "more promising" than the alternatives, and looks set to be "more promising" for the indefinite future. Maybe one day it'll all come together and work the way software is supposed to, but personally I got bored of waiting. It'd be one thing if the problems were mostly technical, because then I (and I'm sure others) would be more than willing to help out. Alas, as this and other stories show, the biggest problems are all cultural, religious, and political, and most of them will probably never be fixed. Which is a shame, really, because there really is a ton of promise waiting to be realized on the Linux desktop.

Slashdot Top Deals