Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx stalks PC and Mac converts

Ubuntu's Lucid Lynx stalks PC and Mac converts

By Gavin Clarke in San Francisco •

Posted in Operating Systems, 27th April 2010 23:27 GMT

Canonical says that with the latest release schedule this Thursday, it will win your love for Ubuntu. If not immediately, give it a year - but Canonical will get you.

And by 'you', Canonical means Mac and Windows users.

Chief operating officer and blogger Matt Asay told The Reg that changes in the consumer-oriented Ubuntu 10.04 LTS edition will cause Apple fanbois to reconsider their love for Steve Jobs, while milk-fed Windows users will be less inclined to run screaming to their retailer to return their Ubuntu PC.

"I guarantee you will be impressed with Lucid if you look at it today," Asay told us in a recent interview. "We may not get you today, but we will get you six months later or a year."

The painful experiences that people had with Ubuntu in the past? When they got home, unpacked their new PC, found it wasn't running Windows but some brown piece of software crap, and returned it to the very public delight of Asay's rival Kevin Turner at Microsoft? Those will fade, says Asay.

Linux netbooks had four times the rate of return on machines loaded with Windows, according to one manufacturer in 2008. But Asay sees a brighter future. "The LTS release is a significantly better operating system than Windows," he said. "We may not win over the Mac users tomorrow, but we will impress the Mac users and we will win over the Windows users."

Ubuntu 10.04 packs a number of changes in the look-and-feel, the online services, and performance that target in particular those looking for a second machine - the netbook market. That machine will run a browser, email, IM, and music player.

Let's take the music player. Ubuntu One will be the first Linux distro to offer an out-of-the box online music store and player similar to Apple's iTunes, which works on Mac and Windows. Called Ubuntu One, the service spans millions of songs that can be searched, purchased, and played - minus DRM. The music is actually delivered by partner 7Digital, 50 per cent owned by EMI and whose customers include Adidas, Nokia, CocaCola and Sony.

Social network meets OS

Canonical has also done something neither Apple's Mac, iPhone or iPad or Windows on the PC offers but that's finding a foothold in mobile operating systems: integration of social network services with the actual operating system. This means logging in and posting is seamless and combined, and you don't need to fire up yet another application.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS uses microblogging client Gwibber to combine streams from Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StatusNet, and such services through a Me Menu.

Performance has been improved specifically to help Ubuntu on netbooks. Canonical claimed boot up times on a standard SSD laptop are now less than 17 seconds. Chris Kenyon, director of business development who leads Canonical's OEM team, told The Reg that where Canonical has worked with PC makers on specific machines to fine-tune Ubuntu start-up, times will be even faster.

"OEMs shipping Ubuntu pre-installed can achieve even faster [results] than that. If we are pre-installing, we can further cut that down. Most users on Ubuntu will notice a really significant speed increase," Kenyon said. "For those users having a really fast boot environment is important."

Osaka University, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Dept. of Systems Innovation Intelligent

A Perceptual Information Infrastructure monitors and recognizes real environment through sensor networks. The sensor network tracks people in real-time and recognizes human behaviors which provide rich information for understanding real world events and helps peoples and robots working in the real world.

An Interigent Robot Infrastructure is an interaction-based infrastructure. By interacting with robots, people can establish nonverbal communications with the artifical systems. That is, the purpose of a robot is to exist as a partner and to have valuable interactions with people.

Our objective is to develop technologies for the new generation information infrastructures based on Computer Vision, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

Introduction of intelligent robotics laboratory （PDF 450KB）

http://www.is.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp/index.en.html

Maido-kun humanoid robot to the moon in 2015

In an ambitious new project unveiled on April 27, an Osaka-area business group has vowed to put a humanoid robot on the moon by 2015.

The business group, known as SOHLA (Space Oriented Higashiosaka Leading Association), made headlines in January 2009 after their Maido-1 lightning observation microsatellite was launched into orbit. Their new project is to develop a bipedal humanoid robot — named “Maido-kun” — which can function in the harsh lunar environment. If all goes as planned, Maido-kun will be ready to travel to the moon in 2015.

SOHLA admits there are a number of obstacles to overcome — most notably the astronomical development costs (now estimated at 1 billion yen, or $9.5 million) — but they are optimistic about their pursuit and believe it can help stimulate the local economy by getting small and medium sized manufacturers involved in the development of space technology. At present, SOHLA consists of six local enterprises working in partnership with government-affiliated organizations such as the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

In 2005, JAXA announced bold plans to send bipedal humanoid robots to the moon. However, after recognizing the numerous difficulties that the lunar landscape poses for two-legged humanoids, they decided it would be more feasible to send wheeled robots instead.

Wheels may be more practical than legs, but SOHLA board member Noriyuki Yoshida sees an advantage in robots that look like people. “Humanoid robots are glamorous, and they tend to get people fired up,” he says. “We hope to develop a charming robot to fulfill the dream of going to space.”

JAXA plans to send their first robot rover to the moon in or around 2015, and SOHLA hopes their Maido-kun humanoid will be able to hitch a ride on the same mission.

http://pinktentacle.com/

Stylish Fraunhofer Lab-in-a-Wristwatch Warns of Impending Medical Emergencies Before They Strikes

Plastic chips monitor body functions. (Credit: Image copyright. Fraunhofer IZM)

According to Megadeth there are 99 ways to die, but many of those — blood clots, dehydration, heart attacks — can be hard to detect except with a thorough medical examination. But since we can’t spend all of our time under doctor’s observation, a team of European researchers, including Fraunhofer Institute scientists, is developing a lab-on-a-chip wristwatch that monitors various bio-indicators of bodily disaster, warning wearers of impending doom before problems become life-threatening.

Inconveniently, this prototype wristwatch doesn’t tell the time, but it will tell an athlete if his or her perspiration shows signs of dehydration, or whether a person wearing a pacemaker is wandering too close to a dangerous electromagnetic field. It can help an elderly person ensure his or her body temperature doesn’t climb too high, and someday might even help diabetics monitor their blood sugar levels around the clock.

The watch itself is actually a mash-up of several lab-on-a-chip technologies, and could be customized for patients based on those conditions for which they are most at risk. Technologically speaking, new ultra-small biomarker sensors emerge all the time, like saliva tests that can instantly diagnose a heart attack, or single-drop, disposable blood tests that can rapidly scan the blood for indicators of impending thromboses. By stacking them in a single sensory device, the research team hopes to provide a means of catching potentially fatal medical incidents before they get into full swing.

Some of these systems are in their infancy and not necessarily suited for integration into a wristwatch device. The blood clot test, for instance, requires a prick with a needle and is generally only necessary in certain situations wherein the risk of blood clots is elevated, like when a patient is traveling by air (it’s also designed for one-time use).

But advances in both polymer electronics and conventional sensors have made these lab-on-a-chip biosensors increasingly small and affordable, meaning in the very near future patients at risk for a battery of illness could wear a diagnostic watch at all times, providing them with a constant stream of biofeedback. And who knows, maybe they’ll even integrate a clock into it. — Clay Dillow

http://www.popsci.com.au/2010/04/stylish-fraunhofer-lab-in-a-wristwatch-warns-of-impending-medical-emergencies-before-they-strikes/

Life On MARS? - New Scientific Evidence

Life On MARS? - New Scientific Evidence

From: UFOTVstudios | November 25, 2006 | 1,272,370 views

Scientists announce the discovery of startling artificial Megalithic structures found among recently released NASA / JPL photos taken by the Mars Global Surveyor and that these artificial structures are stunning proof that Mars was once inhabited by an intelligent civilization. Includes a spectacular collection of new photographs presented by Dr. Tom Van Flandern, former Chief Astronomer for the United States Naval Observatory. See remarkable monuments, "T" shaped craters, gigantic glass tube systems, ancient forest remains and grand edifices that will leave you speechless.

For more information on this topic we recommend the film #U648 Life On Mars? - New Scientific Evidence now available on DVD at www.UFOTV.com.

UFOTV, all rights reserved.

... (more info)

http://www.youtube.com/user/UFOTVstudios#p/a/u/1/5u-20g7Bwdw

France to Release UFO Reports

Monday February 26, 2007

Those of us who are studying the UFO mystery are always calling for our governments to release information that they are hiding from us common everyday citizens. We know that they are not going to do this in the United States, but thankfully, that attitude is not prevalent everywhere. There are some countries who are more open minded about UFO information. Even some military institutions from other countries are not afraid to release information to the public.

Some of the more open minded countries have been Mexico, who was very forthcoming about the Mexico military UFO video of 2004, Belgium, which released information about the Belgium wave of 1989, and the United Kingdom, which finally gave us some of the documents relating to the Rendlesham Forest incident. Another one is France, who previously released the "Cometa" report in 1999, which was related to UFOs and national defense, and also the GEPAN/SEPRA report, which was about UFO sighting reports. Now France has announced they will release at least 1,600 different reports on UFOs to the world at large as early as March of 2007. Hopefully, there will be information that will enhance the case files of some of the best known French sightings, as well as open some new ones. Now, if the United States would just join this group... See more information on France to Release UFO Reports

http://www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-en/5871-the-plain-truth-of-the-matter.php

How To: Enable Or Disable Hibernate Option In Windows 7

In Windows XP enabling Hibernate option was a very easy task, but we have to follow a different approach to do the same job in Vista and Windows 7.

If you are not aware of Hibernate feature, Hibernation is a power-saving state designed primarily for laptops. While sleep puts your work and settings in memory and draws a small amount of power, hibernation puts your open documents and programs on your hard disk and then turns off your computer. Of all the power-saving states in Windows, hibernation uses the least amount of power. On a laptop, use hibernation when you know that you won’t use your laptop for an extended period and won’t have an opportunity to charge the battery during that time.

So if you are really going to use this feature then you need to enable it by doing a simple procedure as mentioned below:

1. Open Command Prompt with Administrator rights. To open Command Prompt, type CMD in Start menu and then hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open the Command Prompt with Admin rights.

2. Next, type the below command and hit enter:

powercfg /hibernate on

3. Type exit and hit enter to close the Command Prompt.

4. If you can’t see the Hibernate option in Start menu then do the following tasks:

A. Type Power Options in Start menu and hit enter.

B. In the left pane, open the link labeled “Change when the computer sleeps” and then open the link “Change advanced power settings”.

C. Under the Advanced Sleep options, expand the Sleep tree and turn off Hybrid Sleep.

D. Now go back to Start menu to see the new Hibernate entry.