technology - "computer"

The entire category of so-called netbooks ? personal computers designed primarily for Internet use ? may be headed over a price cliff, according to industry analysts.

As I wrote in my July 15 review of the iPhone 3G, the latest version of Apple's handheld computer, the best way to judge a device like this is to use it for a while. It's been more than a month since I bought my iPhone 3G, switching from my trusty Samsung BlackJack.

eonlabs writes 'A new paper has been published on the formation of stars in close proximity to a supermassive black hole. Their formation has not been well understood until now, but with the help of a year of supercomputer time, scientists have been able to model the interstellar processes needed to produce them. The results not only match up well with earlier observations, but provide clues as to how their formation is remotely possible. It also helps clear up previous research in this area. 'The simulations...followed the evolution of two separate giant gas clouds up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, as they fell towards the supermassive black hole. ...The disrupted clouds form into spiral patterns as they orbit the black hole... In these conditions, only high mass stars are able to form and these stars inherit the eccentric orbits from the elliptical disc.'' The paper itself was published in Science, but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract. of this

Earlier this week, we ran a story on GoboLinux, and the distribution's effort to replace the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard with a more pleasant, human-readable, and logical design. A lot of people liked the idea of modernising/replacing the FHS, but just as many people were against doing so. Valid arguments were presented both ways, but in this article, I would like to focus on a common sentiment that came forward in that discussion: normal users shouldn't see the FHS, and advanced users are smart enough to figure out how the FHS works. on this exclusive OSNews article...

'Once upon a time, a Linux distribution would be installed with a /dev directory fully populated with device files. Most of them represented hardware which would never be present on the installed system, but they needed to be there just in case. Toward the end of this era, it was not uncommon to find systems with around 20,000 special files in /dev, and the number continued to grow. This scheme was unwieldy at best, and the growing number of hotpluggable devices (and devices in general) threatened to make the whole structure collapse under its own weight. Something, clearly, needed to be done.' The solution came in the form of udev, and udev uses rules to determine how it should handle devices. This allows distributors to tweak how they want devices to be handled. 'Or maybe not. Udev maintainer Kay Sievers has recently let it be known that he would like all distributors to be using the set of udev rules shipped with the program itself.' ComputerWorld dives into the situation.

'Atari was founded in 1972, but its crowning accomplishments in console gaming and computers were the Atari Video computer System (or 2600) and the Atari 400/800 line of personal computers. This four-year period - from 1977 to 1981 - contains some of the most exciting developments the company ever saw in its history: the rise of the 2600, the development of some of the company's most enduringly popular games (Centipede, Asteroids) and the development and release of its first home computing platforms. This comprehensive look back, filled with quotes from the original creators and other primary sources, offers a detailed peek into the company that popularized video gaming as the '70s turned into the '80s, and created the first viable market for home consoles. For more detail, be sure to read Gamasutra's first Atari history article, which covers the period of 1971 to 1977 - the latter date being the year that the Atari VCS was first released.' That's a grand total of 40 pages of detailed