Archive for April, 2009

Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” KDE CE released!

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

On behalf of the team I am thrilled to announce the release of Linux Mint 6 KDE. Congratulations to Jamie Boo Birse, maintainer of this edition, for the integration of a fantastic KDE4 desktop and the excellent work he’s done for this release.

This edition is based on Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, Xorg 7.4 and it comes with KDE 4.2 and Amarok 2.0. For a complete list of new features read: Whats new in Felicia KDE CE?

System requirements and known issues:

You need 256MB RAM to run the Live CD or install. To install, you need a minimum of 4GB of free space on your hard disk. Once installed, Linux Mint 6 KDE CE can run with 256MB RAM, but it is strongly recommended to have at least 512MB RAM.
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DNA analysis may be done on Mars for first time

Monday, April 20th, 2009

dn16933-1_300In August 1996, molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun was about to reveal one of the biggest discoveries of his scientific career. His lab at Harvard Medical School had recently found a gene called age-1 that determines lifespan in roundworms. Their work offered the tantalising possibility that tinkering with molecular pathways might extend the lifespan of other organisms – and perhaps even humans.

Harvard sent out a press release and Ruvkun prepared for an onslaught of media attention. But it never came. Two days before his team’s paper came out, scientists analysing a meteorite from Mars called ALH84001 made headlines worldwide. Then-US president Bill Clinton even got in on the announcement.

“My grad student leans in the door and says, ‘They’ve just announced life on Mars,’” recalls Ruvkun. “That would really f— us,” Ruvkun replied, thinking his student was joking.
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Destroy the Internet with a hacksaw?

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

This morning many people in Silicon Valley woke up without 911 service, Internet, cellular phones, and in some cases TV. Web sites were impacted and Internet traffic between a few major datacenters stopped flowing. Several of our employees were cut off from the Internet and phone service.

AT&T put out a press release stating that there was a fiber cut, but to make this happen, there had to be several cuts. According to several employees that work at AT&T, it may have been done by the very people that repair this stuff, the Communication Workers of America Union (CWA).

This of course is speculation on behalf of these individuals. The cuts could have also been framed to make it look like it was done by a competent group, someone that knows where the major fibers are sitting inside specific manholes. However, the CWA contract to do work for AT&T expired last Saturday night. According to various press releases from CWA, “five of CWA’s six agreements with various AT&T companies expire at midnight, April 4, 2009″. The cuts were clean, done apparently by a hacksaw. The first major cut went down around 2 AM in the South East Bay which isolated the city of Santa Cruz. Another cut around 4 AM took out the major Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN) in the San Francisco bay area as well.
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Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction

Saturday, April 18th, 2009

Parents all know that children make it harder to do some of the most enjoyable adult things. Bluntly put, kids can get between you.

Now scientists have attached some numbers to the situation.

An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.

“Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time,” says Scott Stanley, research professor of psychology at University of Denver. “However, having a baby accelerates the deterioration, especially seen during periods of adjustment right after the birth of a child.”
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From geeks’ Star Wars dreams to reality

Friday, April 17th, 2009

It’s a memorable scene from “The Empire Strikes Back”: Han Solo uses his light saber to slice open the carcass of a tauntaun, a large, furry repto-mammal, so that a nearly frozen Luke Skywalker can huddle inside and survive the deadly cold on the ice planet Hoth.

It’s so memorable that when thinkgeek.com offered a tauntaun sleeping bag last week—”complete with saddle, internal intestines and LED Luke Skywalker Lightsaber zipper pull”—the company was flooded with orders.
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Railroad Stimulus: How to Spend $14 Billion to Improve U.S. Rail

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

February’s economic stimulus bill contained money for weatherizing houses, the expansion of rural broadband, improving the grid and upgrading the U.S. transportation infrastructure. For this last category, some money for highway and bridge construction has been spent, but what of the money for rail? The bill set aside $1.3 billion specifically for Amtrak and $8 billion for high-speed rail, with $5 billion more in the President’s proposed budget. Rail is energy-efficient, environmentally sound and, if properly implemented, cheap. There are many ways to improve the country’s passenger-rail network—from new high-speed designs to simple commuter efficiencies, investing in pricey maglev technology or improving signals on old lines. With $14 billion plus in hand, experts agree that to get more people off the roads and onto trains, the government must pick and choose projects wisely.
By S.E. Kramer
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Obama says timing right for millions to refinance

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Declaring “good news” in the midst of an economic meltdown, President Barack Obama on Thursday urged families to take advantage of near-record low mortgage rates by refinancing their home loans. “We are at a time where people can really take advantage of this,” Obama said, seated with a handful of homeowners who have already lowered their bills.

But he also warned people to watch out for scam artists, cautioning, “If somebody is asking you for money up front before they help you with your refinancing, it’s probably a scam.”

Rates on 30-year mortgages inched upward this week but remain near the lowest level in decades, allowing borrowers with strong credit and stable jobs to save money if they refinance.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 4.87 percent this week, up from 4.78 percent last week, Freddie Mac reported Thursday. That was the lowest in the history of the survey, which dates back to 1971.
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Opinion: The top 10 operating system stinkers

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

Enough of the good old days! Let’s talk about the bad old days of OSs instead.
I love old technology as much as the next techno-geezer, but come on, it wasn’t all wonder and goodness. After we’re done reminiscing about the good old days of operating systems, let’s reflect on the bad old days of operating systems as well. After all, the bad times are still with us — even in 2009, there are still some wretched operating systems out there.

In historical order, from oldest to newest, here’s my own personal list of the top (bottom?) 10 OS stinkers.

OS/360, 1964

No, no, I’m not talking about the later versions of OS/360 that some of us used on IBM 360 mainframes back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. For its day, it was fine. Indeed, my very first operating system was an OS/360 descendant with TSO (Time Sharing Option) running on top of it.

What I’m talking about is the very first version of OS/360 — the one that led its project manager, Fred Brooks, to write The Mythical Man-Month, his classic book on how software development fails. That first version of OS/360, to paraphrase Brooks, came in late, had flaws in its control programs, required more memory than planned, was over budget by several times the original estimate, and, oh yeah, it was slow too.

On the other hand, we did get a classic book on how not to develop software, which included such nuggets as “Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” Brooks likes to describe it as a software developer’s Bible, because “everybody reads it, but nobody does anything about it.” As the rest of this tale shall reveal, he was right.
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Scientists pinpoint the ‘edge of space’

Monday, April 13th, 2009

Canadian technology on NASA mission is a prototype for future, longer mission
Where does space begin? Scientists at the University of Calgary have created a new instrument that is able to track the transition between the relatively gentle winds of Earth’s atmosphere and the more violent flows of charged particles in space – flows that can reach speeds well over 1000 km/hr. And they have accomplished this in unprecedented detail.

Data received from the U of C-designed instrument sent to space on a NASA launch from Alaska about two years ago was able to help pinpoint the so-called edge of space: the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
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Pollution link with birth weight

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

Exposure to traffic pollution could affect the development of babies in the womb, US researchers have warned.

They found the higher a mother’s level of exposure in early and late pregnancy, the more likely it was that the baby would not grow properly.

The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, looked at 336,000 babies born in New Jersey between 1999 and 2003

UK experts said much more detailed research into a link was needed.
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The Road to Area 51

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

45879002After decades of denying the facility’s existence, five former insiders speak out
by Annie Jacobsen
Area 51. It’s the most famous military institution in the world that doesn’t officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada’s high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground. Then again, maybe not— the U.S. government refuses to say. You can’t drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted—all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades.

It has become the holy grail for conspiracy theorists, with UFOlogists positing that the Pentagon reverse engineers flying saucers and keeps extraterrestrial beings stored in freezers. Urban legend has it that Area 51 is connected by underground tunnels and trains to other secret facilities around the country. In 2001, Katie Couric told Today Show audiences that 7 percent of Americans doubt the moon landing happened—that it was staged in the Nevada desert. Millions of X-Files fans believe the truth may be “out there,” but more likely it’s concealed inside Area 51’s Strangelove-esque hangars—buildings that, though confirmed by Google Earth, the government refuses to acknowledge.
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Jordan’s locker up for auction

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Michael Jordan fans will have a chance to buy one of his Chicago Bulls lockers along with other memorabilia in a charity auction next week.

The Bulls and Hunt Auctions are offering one of two lockers Jordan used at the team’s practice facility in the 1990s during a fundraiser for the team’s nonprofit charity organization April 18 at the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago.
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