20% desktop share by 2008! Really?

Global IT firm predicts Linux will have 20% desktop market share by 2008

Never happened!
In fact, it is still below 1%, though some statistics put it a little above 1%


Desktop Linux Share Overtaking Macintosh

Never happened!
Mac OS X has 6x the market share of GNU/Linux and continues to grow. Mac sales in the US are increasing despite the slowing economy.


2008: Year of the Linux Desktop

Where did I read this before?


Linus Says 2004 is the Year for Desktop Linux

Yes! the same slogan that has been since the turn of the century.

American cars can't handle? take II

Chevrolet Camaro SS laps the 'Ring in... 8:20

In this automotive day and age, any vehicle that has even a trace amount of performance in its DNA has to make the rounds around the Nurburgring. The new Chevy Camaro SS isn't exempt. So after GM revealed the Camaro on Monday, one of the scribes at InsideLine ran up to an engineer to find out what kind of time the Camaro put down at the Nordschleife. According to Doug Houlihan, GM's chief engineer for global rear-wheel-drive vehicles, the Camaro SS ran the 'Ring in 8:20.

To put that into perspective, the recently released 2008 Cobalt SS did the deed in 8:22, along with the BMW E46 M3 and the last generation BMW M Coupe, followed by the Lotus Exige S and Porsche Cayman S at 8:25.


http://www.autoblog.com/2008/07/22/c...-ring-in-8-20/

Ubuntu unAmerican?!

This article has to be the best example of satire and extreme sarcasm I've ever ran into on the WWW, and even funnier was the responses! some people took the article seriously!

http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/2007/08/18/ubuntu-%E2%80%93-why-it-is-wrong-for-america.aspx

Setting up a GNU/Linux cluster

At where I'm training this summer, the whole servers and clusters run Windows, and some are mulling the idea of migrating some of the servers to GNU/Linux. So today I have been assigned the task of setting up a Linux cluster.
Ultimately, I've done my research and decided on setting up a master/slave cluster following the steps outlined here, versus a load-balancer or a round-robin. Mainly, due to being limited to two test machines, and it seems as an easier set up. If it works, we can extend it eventually by adding more slave nodes.
This is probably the most interesting thing to happen at work, since I started my summer training, and as I am writing this, I'm downloading CentOS. Never used it before, but thought it would be a good (best?) candidate for setting a server cluster. Here's to hoping everything works, without too much hassle.

I'll post later with the results, but that probably wont be until Monday.

Final Fantasy XIII goes X360

Tesla Shipping Cars

You know of course the saying “Good things are worth waiting for” … undoubtedly we were trying the truism of this adage longer than warranted, but we have broken the logjam. We are delivering the Roadster to our customers. Already 9 production Roadsters have arrived in California, another 3 arrive this weekend, and they will keep arriving at the rate of 4 per week (except for the scheduled factory shut down in the last two weeks of August). In fact, currently there are 27 Roadsters in various stages of assembly. In large measure we deliberately limit the production until we install our own born and bred final transmission by mid-September, at which time production will start to ramp up leading toward a monthly rate of over 100 cars in December.

More at link: Update on Production.

American cars can't handle?

Corvette ZR1 7:26 Nürburgring Nordschleife video

Macs are more expensive than PCs?

MacBook vs. Dell XPS M1330

I configured online a MacBook and Dell XPS M1330 with specs as closely matched as possible. Both had 2GB of memory, a 160GB hard drive running at 5400 rpm, a 2.4-GHz Intel Core Duo 2 processor, Intel integrated graphics media accelerator (X3100), and Bluetooth 2.0. I chose the Dell 56Whr battery option (an extra US$79), which is comparable to the MacBook’s standard 55Whr battery. I also added the $99 optional bundle of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements to the Dell laptop. The MacBook ships with Apple’s iPhoto and iMovie applications, part of its iLife suite, at no extra cost.
The bottom line: The Dell laptop that I configured cost $1,308. The MacBook was $1,299.

Price advantage: Apple, by a hair.


MacBook Pro vs. HP’s Compaq 8710w Mobile Workstation

My configurations had this in common: 17-inch displays with 1,680-by-1,050 pixel resolution, dedicated graphics cards, 250GB hard drives at 5,400 rpm, 2GB of memory, and 2.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors.
There were some differences, of course. For example, the HP computer features a biometric fingerprint scanner, which the MacBook Pro lacks.
The bottom line: The MacBook Pro that I configured was $3,049. The HP Compaq 8710w was $3,561. Adding the Adobe image and video editing software brings it to $3,661. The HP Compaq 8710w came standard with a three-year HP extended warranty. A similar warranty from Apple costs an extra $349. If you factor that in, the price difference makes the MacBook Pro just $263 less than the HP notebook.

Price advantage: The MacBook Pro.

Full story:
http://www.macworld.com/article/134373/2008/07/laptop_price.html?lsrc=rss_main

Square Enix Ships iPod Game

From Square-Enix North America:


Los Angeles (July 7, 2008)

Square Enix, Inc., the publisher of Square Enix™ interactive entertainment products in North America, announced the release of SONG SUMMONER™: The Unsung Heroes, on sale at the iTunes® Store worldwide (www.itunes.com) and available for play in English and Japanese on the iPod nano with video, iPod classic and fifth generation iPod.

SONG SUMMONER: The Unsung Heroes is a Role-Playing Game that transforms your iPod® songs into powerful "Tune Troopers" that you can control in battle! As the protagonist Ziggy, you will embark on an epic journey to rescue your brother from the clutches of the Mechanical Militia! Intriguing characters, an epic story and a tactics-based battle system combine for a rich RPG experience previously only available on home and handheld game consoles.

STORY From the days of old, Melodica was a land of music, a land of freedom. The people sang, played and danced to the music they so cherished. Until one day, they came — the Mechanoids, who enhanced their bodies with machinery. Those who were tempted by greed and power willingly gave away their souls for bodies of steel, forsaking their humanity to become cold, emotionless automatons. Now, they seek to destroy all that do not embrace their way of life. But there is hope on the horizon. There are those who are fated to stand against the tyranny of the machines — the Superstars, who can turn sound into lethal weapons, and the Conductor, also known as the Song Summoner, who can summon powerful warriors born of music. In their most desperate hour, Melodica awaits the arrival of their new Song Summoner...

FEATURES Transform your iPod songs into "Tune Troopers" to combat the evil Mechanical Militia Tune Trooper types and abilities are determined by the songs used to create them Your Tune Troopers can be powered up even outside of the game--just by listening to the songs you used to create them! Control Ziggy, a "Conductor" that creates warriors out of music, and guide him through his journey to save his brother Zero from the Mechanical Militia Experience a turn-based tactics battle system, divided into player and enemy phases where each side takes turns maneuvering their forces Deploy the right troopers at the right time, and use contraptions found on the map effectively to achieve victory in battle! iPod Click Wheelallows players to play the game as easily as selecting music

Screenshots:





http://www.square-enix.com/na/company/press/2008/0707/

Firefox 3 set Guinness world record

From Mozilla:

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web.

Ever since Firefox was launched in 2004 we've relied on our community to help us spread the word, and thanks to projects including crop circles, newspaper ads, giant stickers, videos, blogs and more we now have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries.

So what's next? We'll just have to wait and see what YOU come up with!

ReactOS 0.3.5 Short Review

KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ALPHA STAGE SOFTWARE!
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NORMAL USE!


I'll start by admitting that I've installed it on a virtual machine, I've used VirtualBox and created a new Windows NT 4 machine, I've found that this is the only emulation that works, at least for me. Installation was QUICK! in 30 or so seconds I have the OS installed and ready to use. Take that Vista!

First thing obviously is to try and install a browser, so using the Download utility, I've downloaded Firefox 2, I noticed that downloading is SLOW, it must have something to do with the incomplete network stack, eventually though Firefox 2 was downloaded and installed.
Firefox 2 started normally, unlike my previous experience with 0.3.4, it actually ran after the install, and didn't crash on me during the 5 minutes trial.

There wasn't much for me to try out in this alpha release, and frankly everything felt familiar, as if I were still using Windows 98, but this time the horrid Internet Explorer isn't integrated into everything. ReactOS has a proper spatial browser, and the whole GUI shell looks a lot better, as in terms of functionality and layout, not a real looker, this is no Mac OS X.

I've noticed some inconsistencies in the ReactOS Explorer, some times it feels like Windows 95 (Windows Explorer) and sometimes it feels like Windows 3 (File Manager). The good thing is, it never feels like Windows 98 (Internet Explorer).


One of the things I didn't have the chance to try was search, it is yet to be implemented, My Network Places, relaunches the desktop for some reason (SMB is not yet supported) and Folder Options in the Control Panel, doesn't launch. Another thing I've noticed is the Trash keeps thinking it is full, no matter how many times you empty it and given the fact it is empty!

Of the weirdest bugs I've noticed is whenever I create a new folder and then create a new text file, the folder is deleted, I did this repeatedly in My Documents, I've even tried creating multiple folders and renaming them, the moment I close My Documents and reopen it, or create a text file, all the folders are gone, they must have went to the big bit bucket in the sky. The even more weird part is, after a while this stopped happening, only untitled folders disappear.

A lot of the tools and bundled programs look as if they came straight from Windows, and functions just as you would expect them. Basically if you have used Windows, you need zero training to use this, everything is properly laid out, and there is multiple (4) desktops, though you can never configure it, as in you can't increase or decrease their number.

I got to admit that I'm not the best of reviewers, nor do I have any idea how to review alpha software, I'm sure I've missed a lot of things. The whole purpose of this review is to show how far ReactOS has came, and they've done a whole lot of progress, now you can install the OS without glitches, install a browser (Firefox) and a word processor (AbiWord), and they all seem to work pretty well, but there is still more left to be implemented. Overall what I've seen is really promising, I'm a fan and I wish them the best of luck.


Maybe I should get of my lazy ass, and put what I've learned as a CS major (read: null) to use!