It’s been a crazy few days around here, mostly relating to computer issues (including a halting effort on my own part to upgrade myself to the latest Ubuntu 8.04 beta, which had some weird issues that needed to be straightened out) and changes in personal lives (our fearless leader is in the process of changing physical addresses, a process only slightly less aggravating and time-consuming than changing e-mail addys has become). That’s kinda been why things have been so slow in WotGland of late.

In any event, just to touch on a few quick points while I have the opportunity:

And the Winner Is… Opera: The latest updates to the Opera browser make it the first mainstream browser to reach 100% on Acid Test 3. These updates should make their way to the public within the next week. Safari currently stands at 98%, though its rendering engine is reportedly at 100%. The latest Firefox stable (2.0.0.13) still fails miserably, with a 52% score.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS “Hardy Heron” Beta Released: As indicated above, the latest and greatest Ubuntu is now ready for beta testing. Upgrading from 7.10 is as easy as running “update-manager –devel-release” and clicking on the “Upgrade” button that appears in the updater. (WARNING: This is still a beta, and as such caveat downloador applies like crazy. My own personal experience was that my sound card stopped working after the upgrade – this was due to a bug, relatively easily corrected, that defaulted to a 386 kernel rather than the generic x86 one – and some games and applications I’d compiled by hand needed to be rebuilt from source before they’d work. Hopefully these issues will be dealt with by the time 8.04 goes final next month.)

Dapper Drake on its Deathbed: Speaking of Ubuntu, the impending release of 8.04 as the second LTS (Long Term Support) version means, for those who are still running 6.06 LTS (“Dapper Drake”), that your distribution is about to be officially end-of-lifed. As promised, Canonical provided 18 months of support for this release, and as of 25 April 2008 the process of phasing 6.06 out begins with the cessation of security patches and critical fixes for the Dapper one. 6.06 users are encouraged to upgrade to 7.04 (“Feisty Fawn”), then use that to step up to first 7.10, then 8.04 when it goes final; stepping up directly from 6.06 to 8.04 is not recommended.

The Laptop of Tomorrow: We’ve all seen those cool-looking “concept cars” at auto shows (or more likely, at TV recaps of such shows) – cars that look like they rolled right off the set of a medium-budget sci-fi flick, with all sorts of nifty gadgets and styling, that are destined never to be made as production vehicles. Now, in that grand tradition, you can see some “concept laptops” that you might be using in the next 7-10 years. How about a dual-screen laptop that opens vertically, like a book, and can be used as an ebook or traditional laptop (with the keyboard appearing on a touch-sensitive screen)? Or a “screenless” laptop for the blind that converts images into tactile 3D objects via an innovation known as “Magneclay?” Read all about them.

Blizzard B****slaps Bot: Apparently – and I wasn’t previously aware of this – there’s a bot program available for World of Warcraft (MMO Glider) that automates certain ingame tasks. Blizzard is, as you might logically expect, not happy about this, to the point they’re suing its author (Michael Donnelly) for copyright infringement and violation of WoW’s EULA. Should be interesting to watch.

Rubik’s Cube in 25 Moves: Now this is just plain cool for any child of the ’80s. A Stanford-trained math guru claims to have proven that a scrambled Rubik’s Cube (the standard 3×3x3 version, mind you) can be solved in no more than 25 moves, regardless of configuration. This trumps a study done last year suggesting a 26-move solution from any position. But even this isn’t all; this guy also claims to be working on proving 24- and even 23-move solutions for the future, with designs on just 20! So, if you’ve still got a Cube somewhere in the deterius of your childhood possessions that you’ve never quite been able to solve, you may want to see about digging it out and giving this a try.

Podcast this week?: There may, or may not, be a Week in Geek podcast this week. Watch the site for details.

That’s all for now; more information as it arrives. Thanks for sticking with us through this rough period while we try to straighten things out behind the scenes…

If you liked that, try...

1. Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) Hits Final Release
2. Ubuntu 7.10 Is Here
3. Ubuntu 8.10 Released
4. Ubuntu 8.04 Released
5. Ubuntu 6.10 Final Released

1 Comment »

1. 
   Shawn M.
   March 27, 2008 at 5:40 pm

   An update on my front — had a work accident, so most of my right hand is useless for the moment. As luck has it, that is my drawing hand. So, no Innergeek from me for awhile. I already talked to Sean C., he might be able to pick up the comic for a bit.

   [Reply]

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