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The team behind the next version of KDE has released the beta 4. When we see the screenshots it’s clear that KDE 4 is in the game with one of the more aesthetically appealing interfaces. Curious people can download an openSuse based liveCD to experience the new desktop.

The interface in KDE 4 is significantly more attractive than the one we are used to in KDE 3.5. The icons and windows have become more appealing to the eyes. KDE 4’s esthetic looks makes it climb to the same level as Mac OS X.

You’ll find the ISO at “KDE Four LiveCD”

The screenshots are found at Phoronix

Source: linuxworld.idg.se

Students that skip school aren’t the ideal kid for parents and teachers. A way to get to these slackers is to install a RFID-chip in their school uniforms, in this way you can see whether the student is located in the class room or not. The method is currently tested in a school in Doncaster, England. The technique is tested on 10 pupils.

In a school in England, RFID-chips are used to keep track of pupils going in and out of class rooms. The manufacturers of the chip see a lucrative market they sure want to get into.

- The school follows the project and performs several different tests to see if the test is compatible with other information systems already running at the school, said Graham Wakeling, principal in the school.

Also the manufacturer follows this test closely and are hoping to create a very lucrative market if this tests outcome is good.

Not surprisingly these tests also have received criticism.

- Criminals that are released on probation from prisons, usually get this chip installed. Now when our pupils have to verify their fingerprints and now this chip thing, it seems as we are treating our kids in the same fashion as we traditionally treat criminals, said David Clouter, founder of the organisation Leave Them Kids Alone.

Source:The Register
sakerhet.idg.se

Two years have past since FreeBSD came out with a new version, but don’t think that the development has halted just because of this long period. Soon it’s time for the launch of FreeBSD 7.0 which offers ton of new things. According to tests performed by FreeBSD, the new version will beat Linux when it comes to multi-core systems.

The developers have polished pretty much every detail in the operating system since their last version. More than 18000 changes have been made and you’ll also find several new things.

According to the presentation the team behind FreeBSD has done, we see improvements in the file system, network, improved security, several programs for the uses, better tools for developers and the biggest new thing - a completely redone processor architecture.

Earlier, FreeBSD scaled very poorly ( Like every other BSD compared to Linux). The operating system wasn’t capable of increasing its performance with more processors and threads. Thanks to the new architecture this problem is now just a part of the past, FreeBSD is back in the game.

Graphs from FreeBSD indicate that the new architecture scales almost linearly as the number cores and threads used increases. The curve is almost straight.

FreeBSD also comes with the file system Zetta Byte Filesystem - something that will definitely make the Linux administrators green of envy.

Several drivers has found their way into FreeBSD. The case here is the same as in Linux, the majority of the drivers are for wireless hardware. 802.11 is now stable, Atheros, Intel’s circuits and more works automatically. WPA (Wifi Protected Access) is included.

You readers who want to use FreeBSD as a desktop can be happy as X.org 7.3, KDE 3.5.7 and Gnome 2.18.3 is included.

You can read more about the news in “Introducing FreeBSD 7.0″ (PDF File!).
You can download a beta of FreeBSD 7.0 through their ftp-archieve.

Source: linuxworld.idg.se

The Russian computer company Elcomsoft has discovered that the processors on the graphic cards can be used to crack passwords. As they can work with hundreds of tasks simultaneously, they are much faster than the regular processors.

Elcom has even a patent pending for the method of using GPU (powerful internal computing engine) to crack passwords. Only by using a regular Geforce 8800-card, cracking a password becomes 25 times faster than by traditional methods.

Thanks to the fact that the GPUs are so fast, a task that earlier took two years can now be shortened to two weeks if you have a computer with twin graphic cards. The reason why graphic cards are so effective is due to the fact that they can handle multiple tasks parallely, which means hundreds of calculations at the same time.

A lot of the advanced graphic cards available today on the market, offers a computing capacity of 500 gigaflops. If you connect several cards together you can basically achieve a capacity of over one teraflop.

Read more at: TG Daily

As everyone owning or dealing with websites has noticed, the google toolbar pagerank has updated. And the outcome is different from one site to another. What’s interesting is that so many blogs got a decreased pagerank and other sites got a much lower one than was expected.

The Outcome

The results of the toolbar pagerank update are various, some are happy from an increased one and others are wondering why theirs were lowered.

What happened is illustrated best by the image above. Google started their update by lowering the pagerank on various sites. This was discussed by many blogers, the question if google was punishing them came up. The fact that paid links, reviews and other similar issues were disliked by Google was known, so it everyone pretty much settled with the idea that this was in fact a move of punishment.

Then the time came for the rest of the site updates. This seems to have started last night. And the results are various, and the process seemed a bit odd as well. Take thingsbymike.com their site went down to a pr 2 from 3 before it changed up to 4.

So the question I have now is whether the pr you see now on some pages is the final one or if Google will do something more? Impossible to know, we’ll have to wait and see.

I have spoken to some webmasters which also feel, as I do, that Google had to have changed or added something new to their algorithm that calculates the pr for a page.

We had some expected pr calculated for the pages, and the outcome was much different once Google performed the update. Many people said that the tool was pretty much accurate; if it wasn’t dead on, you usually got a number lower. So if it said 5 you could get anything between 4 and 5.

So the question now is, was that tool wrong when it came to our sites for the first time with such a huge margin, or did Google modify something in their algorithm?

So could the drops in PR, be nothing more than the accurate pr according to the new algorithm and not just a punishment? Or maybe it is a mix between them both a new value due to the new method of calculating it and a punishment?

It is hard to say, but it I find it as a plausible idea. I would like to see what others have to say about all these questions that have risen with the latest Google toolbar update.