utkarshraj - Slashdot User

Journal Journal: India's Rs. 1,200 (~US$ 29) Linux-based 'laptop'

Journal by utkarshraj on Sunday August 10, 2008 @01:01PM

A small-scale unit based in India has developed an 'electronic school bag' (ESB) for schoolchildren. The ESB has 2GB flash memory, runs on Linux, and comes with black and white LCDs. The device will be available to government schools at Rs 1,200 (that's less than US$ 29) in the next two months. OK, it might not be a true 'laptop', but it's perfect for schoolchildren in rural India.

Multitasking Makes You Stupid and Slow 551

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 27, 2008 @07:16PM from the knew-it-all-along dept.

Reverse Gear recommends a long and interesting article over at The Atlantic in which Walter Kirn talks about the scientific results that support his claim and his own experiences with multitasking: that it destroys our ability to focus. "Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires — the constant switching and pivoting — energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we're supposed to be concentrating on... studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy."

Lotus Notes 8.5 Will Support Ubuntu 7.0 297

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 27, 2008 @05:44AM from the desktop-in-the-enterprise dept.

E5Rebel sends in an article from Computerworld.uk article that reports: "IBM believes Linux on the enterprise desktop is finally ready for widespread adoption. To meet future demand it is preparing to deliver its next versions of Lotus Notes enterprise collaboration software and Lotus Symphony office productivity applications for the first time with full support for Ubuntu Linux 7.0... The Ubuntu support for Notes and Symphony were a direct response to demand from customers."

Massive WiMax Network for India 145

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday January 26, 2008 @12:27PM from the well-bully-for-them-then dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Engadget reports that the largest Indian telecom company is planning to build a mobile WiMax network covering three states on the subcontinent capable of serving 250 million people. State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited is leaning on Soma Networks to build the broadband-speed network in response to government requirement that 20 million broadband lines be in service by 2010." Meanwhile I can't even get cable. Maybe it's time to move to India.

Linux Kernel 2.6.24 Released 108

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 25, 2008 @04:34AM from the new-toys dept.

LinuxFan writes "Linus Torvalds has released the 2.6.24 Linux Kernel, noting that he and most of the other key Linux developers will be flying to a conference in Australia for the next week. As the whole team will be down under while the kernel is being tested by the masses, Linus added, "Let's hope it's a good one". What's new in the latest release includes an optimized CFQ scheduler, numerous new wireless drivers, tickless kernel support for the x86-64 and PPC architectures, and much more. Time to download and start compiling."

DoS Attacks on Estonia Were Launched by Student 184

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 25, 2008 @12:04AM from the modern-techniques-for-making-people-hate-each-other dept.

As_I_Please alerts us to the fact that a 20-year-old Estonian student has been fined for participating in DoS attacks against various Estonian political and governmental websites last May. The situation was notable because it escalated tensions between Estonia and Russia when the latter was accused of initiating the 'cyber-attack'. Quoting: "The fact that a single student was able to trigger such events is particularly ominous when you consider just how many potential flashpoints exist between various countries all over the world. The DoS attack against Estonia is an excellent example of how a cyberattack carried out by a 20-year-old student in response to real-life events further exacerbated an existing problem between two nations."

Comment Bots? (Score 1) 4

by utkarshraj on Thursday November 22, 2007 @03:59AM (#21444641) Attached to: Laugh, laugh, I thought I'd die!

Have a look at the 1996 paper by Adams, Wright, and Lohr: Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal? . But to be honest, I think it's some prankster's bots at work, skewing up the Conservapedia statistics page.

Submission + - Microsoft face online fight with Hotmail Founder (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

bharatm

on Thursday November 22, 2007 @03:47AM

bharatm writes: "Sabeer Bhatia(The co-founder of Hotmail, the web-based e-mail service bought by Microsoft for $400 million a decade ago), is challenging the American software giant's core $20 billion (£9.7 billion) office desktop business. Yesterday Sabeer Bhatia released a free online rival to the bestselling Office suite of applications that will allow users to view, share and edit documents from any computer. Click here for more details."

Submission + - Linux Foundation's Desktop Linux Survey Results 2

Submitted by __aajbyc7391 on Thursday November 22, 2007 @01:57AM

__aajbyc7391 writes: While the Linux Foundation's third annual desktop Linux survey doesn't officially end until November 30th, the number of daily respondents have shrunk to a trickle and the Foundation is working on analyzing the results. This is an early look at the raw data. For starters, almost 20,000 self-selected users filled out this year's survey compared to fewer than 10,000 in 2006's survey. Not surprisingly, the Ubuntu family of Linuxes is the most popular among organizations, at 54.1 percent. This was followed by the Red Hat family — RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Fedora/CentOS) — with 50.2 percent. The Novell SUSE group — SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) and openSUSE — came in third, with 35.2 percent.

Ecma Receives 3,522 Comments on Open XML Standards 182

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 22, 2007 @12:38AM from the everyone-has-an-opinion dept.

Bergkamp10 writes "Microsoft's Office Open XML document format attracted 3,522 comments from the national standards bodies that participated last summer in balloting that has so far derailed the effort to certify the format as an ISO standard. Brian Jones, an Office program manager at Microsoft and the sole Microsoft employee on the Ecma Technical Committee, revealed the total number of comments that had been received in a blog posting this week. Ecma International is a Swiss standards body that already ratified Open XML and is guiding the format through the ISO. According to Jones many of the 3,500-plus comments, consisting mainly of objections and suggested changes to Ecma's standards proposal, overlap with one another. "When you group them into similar buckets, it narrows down pretty quickly into a more manageable list," he said. Still, he apparently acknowledged that the number of comments was "still pretty impressive." Open XML just missed out on a fast-track to approval as an ISO standard in the initial balloting that concluded in early September. Ecma's proposal won a majority of the votes that were cast but not enough to meet the requirements for approval. Ecma has until January 14 to provide responses and rebuttals to the comments submitted by the national standards bodies. The issues raised will then be debated at a so-called ballot resolution meeting that ISO will hold starting February 25, after which the various national standards bodies will have a chance to amend their vote — the last chance for Open XML to be approved."

Journal Journal: Indian Government considering a ban on posting videos on net 1

Journal by utkarshraj on Thursday November 01, 2007 @10:03AM

The Economic Times reports that the Government of India is considering a "ban on posting of private and personal videos on internet and mobiles" to tackle piracy and cyber crime.

Google's Plans for a Social API 83

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @09:30AM from the i'm-still-waiting dept.

NewsCloud writes "After tonight's Breaking Open Facebook with Free Open Source Software, TechCrunch reports Google plans to announce an open API for social networking tomorrow. "OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks: 1) Profile Information (user data) 2) Friends Information (social graph) and 3) Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)" Says Om Malik: "OpenSocial attacks Facebook where it is the weakest (and the strongest): its quintessential closed nature...Even if you take Facebook out of the equation, the task of writing and adapting widgets for the every increasing number of social platforms was going to be turn into a colossal mess.""

Today's Gamers, Tomorrow's Leaders? 245

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @08:48AM from the something-to-think-about dept.

slash-sa writes "Video games have become problem-solving exercises wrapped in the veneer of an exotic adventure. In today's fast and rapidly-changing business environment, the strategic skills they teach are more important than ever. From realistic battlefield simulations to the building of great nations, from fantastic voyages through worlds of mythology to conquering space, "Generation G" could well offer the answer to unlocking great 21st century strategists and leaders."

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