$1,499 Gaming Laptop is Ready for Steam on Linux

Alternative, Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu haven’t historically carried much weight with PC gamers. Very few PC games have been made for Linux, over the years, ever since the company that was porting AAA gaming titles to Linux (Loki Games) went bankrupt in 2001. And while it’s possible to use a “compatibility layer” such as Wine to run Windows PC games in Linux, the results are mixed at best and require a lot of technical tweaking, sometimes even in between updates.

Colorado-based indie PC hardware company System76, however, clearly expects that not only are there PC gamers on Linux out there, but that some of them are willing to pay $ 1,499 for a tricked-out gaming laptop — the 17.3-inch Bonobo Extreme. Like all of System76′s machines, it runs the Ubuntu flavor of Linux; and its actual price tag is $ 1,599, but it’s gotten a $ 100 discount for the holidays.

Is it ahead of its time, like the Loki Games ports? Or has the time come for a new age of Linux gaming? For whatever reason, Valve — the creators of the Steam social gaming service — seems to think the latter.

​The hardware

The 17.3-inch screen is full 1080p, with a 1920×1080 resolution. Pretty much every spec starts out at “high end” and maxes out at “over the top”; it comes standard with an Intel Core i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 500 GB, 7200 RPM hard drive, with a second drive bay and the option to swap the DVD burner out for a third storage disk. All three have the option of going up to a 512 GB Crucial solid state disk, or a 480 GB Intel SSD.

Gaming graphics are powered by an nVidia GeForce GTX 670MX, with 3 GB of memory. An extra $ 340 will get you a GTX 680M with 4 GB of memory. All told, with every possible hardware upgrade the Bonobo Extreme maxes out at an “extreme” $ 4,333 … and the Alienware-style, multicolored light-up keyboard is included for free.

​But what about the games?

Valve’s Linux Steam client is currently in beta, with another 5,000 testers added over the Thanksgiving holiday. About two dozen games are already available for purchase, including Valve’s free-to-play multiplayer online shooter Team Fortress 2 and a selection of games from previous Humble Indie Bundles.

The HIB previously became famous not just for having nearly all of its games support Linux, but for posting public sales figures online, and showing that a good-sized chunk of each bundle’s sales were for Linux gamers. Efforts such as this helped to convince Valve that supporting Linux would be worthwhile … and also seem to have reached someone at System76.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bounce houses a party hit but kids' injuries soar

CHICAGO (AP) — They may be a big hit at kids' birthday parties, but inflatable bounce houses can be dangerous, with the number of injuries soaring in recent years, a nationwide study found.

Kids often crowd into bounce houses, and jumping up and down can send other children flying into the air, too.

The numbers suggest 30 U.S. children a day are treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains, cuts and concussions from bounce house accidents. Most involve children falling inside or out of the inflated playthings, and many children get hurt when they collide with other bouncing kids.

The number of children aged 17 and younger who got emergency-room treatment for bounce house injuries has climbed along with the popularity of bounce houses — from fewer than 1,000 in 1995 to nearly 11,000 in 2010. That's a 15-fold increase, and a doubling just since 2008.

"I was surprised by the number, especially by the rapid increase in the number of injuries," said lead author Dr. Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Amusement parks and fairs have bounce houses, and the playthings can also be rented or purchased for home use.

Smith and colleagues analyzed national surveillance data on ER treatment for nonfatal injuries linked with bounce houses, maintained by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Their study was published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Only about 3 percent of children were hospitalized, mostly for broken bones.

More than one-third of the injuries were in children aged 5 and younger. The safety commission recommends against letting children younger than 6 use full-size trampolines, and Smith said barring kids that young from even smaller, home-use bounce houses would make sense.

"There is no evidence that the size or location of an inflatable bouncer affects the injury risk," he said.

Other recommendations, often listed in manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, include not overloading bounce houses with too many kids and not allowing young children to bounce with much older, heavier kids or adults, said Laura Woodburn, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Amusement Ride Safety Officials.

The study didn't include deaths, but some accidents are fatal. Separate data from the product safety commission show four bounce house deaths from 2003 to 2007, all involving children striking their heads on a hard surface.

Several nonfatal accidents occurred last year when bounce houses collapsed or were lifted by high winds.

A group that issues voluntary industry standards says bounce houses should be supervised by trained operators and recommends that bouncers be prohibited from doing flips and purposefully colliding with others, the study authors noted.

Bounce house injuries are similar to those linked with trampolines, and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended against using trampolines at home. Policymakers should consider whether bounce houses warrant similar precautions, the authors said.

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Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

Trade group: http://www.naarso.com

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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FDA flexes new muscles, shuts down plant

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration halted operations of the country's largest organic peanut butter processor Monday, cracking down on salmonella poisoning for the first time with new enforcement authority the agency gained in a 2011 food safety law.

FDA officials found salmonella all over Sunland Inc.'s New Mexico processing plant after 41 people in 20 states, most of them children, were sickened by peanut butter manufactured at the plant in Portales and sold by Trader Joe's grocery chain. The FDA suspended Sunland's registration Monday, preventing the company from producing or distributing any food.

The food safety law gave the FDA authority to suspend a company's registration when food manufactured or held there has a "reasonable probability" of causing serious health problems or death. Before the food safety law was enacted early last year, the FDA would have had to go to court to suspend a company's registration.

Michael Taylor, the FDA's deputy commissioner for foods, said the agency's ability to suspend a registration like this one is a major step forward for the agency.

"Consumers can be assured that products will not leave this facility until we determine they have implemented preventive measures that are effective to produce safe products," Taylor said.

Sunland had voluntarily closed its plant after a September outbreak and planned to reopen its peanut processing facility on Tuesday, with hopes of selling peanut butter again by the end of the year. Sunland's Katalin Coburn said FDA's decision to suspend the registration was a surprise to the company and Sunland officials had assumed they were allowed to resume operations.

The company now has the right to a hearing and must prove to the agency that its facilities are clean enough to reopen. Coburn said Sunland is cooperating with FDA and company officials hope they can be up and running again soon.

Sunland is the nation's largest organic peanut butter processor, though it also produces many non-organic products. The company recalled hundreds of organic and non-organic nut butters and nuts manufactured since 2010 after Trader Joe's Valencia Creamy Peanut Butter was linked to the salmonella illnesses in September.

In addition to Trader Joe's, Sunland sold hundreds of different peanut products to Whole Foods, Safeway, Target and other large grocery chains.

During a month-long investigation, after the outbreak linked to processor Sunland and to Trader Joe's, FDA inspectors found samples of salmonella in 28 different locations in the plant, in 13 nut butter samples and in one sample of raw peanuts.

The agency also found improper handling of the products, unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside the facility that were exposed to rain and birds.

The FDA said that over the past three years, the company shipped products even though portions of their lots, or daily production runs, tested positive for salmonella in internal tests. The agency also found that the internal tests failed to find salmonella when it was present.

FDA inspectors found many of the same problems — including employees putting their bare fingers in empty jars before they were filled, open bags of ingredients, unclean equipment, and many other violations — in a 2007 inspection. Similar problems were recorded by inspectors in 2009, 2010 and 2011, though government officials didn't take any action or release the results of those inspections until after the illnesses were discovered this year.

In a statement issued earlier this month, Sunland's president and chief executive officer, Jimmie Shearer, denied the company knowingly shipped tainted products.

"At no time in its 24-year history has Sunland, Inc. released for distribution any products that it knew to be potentially contaminated with harmful microorganisms," Shearer said in a statement posted on the company's website. "In every instance where test results indicated the presence of a contaminant, the implicated product was destroyed and not released for distribution."

A separate peanut butter outbreak in 2009 not related to Sunland was linked to hundreds of illnesses and nine deaths.

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Find Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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Online:

FDA updates on Sunland and list of recalled items: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/CORENetwork/ucm320413.htm

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AP PHOTOS: Scenes from Bangladesh factory fire

A fire engulfed a garment factory outside Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, trapping many workers and killing at least 112 people in the building without emergency exits.

Authorities said the fire started on the ground floor late Saturday and spread upward, cutting off staircases and preventing workers' escape. Some survivors were rescued from the eight-story building's roof.

Thousands of onlookers and anxious relatives gathered at the burned-out factory Sunday awaiting word on relatives who worked there.

Bangladesh has some 4,000 garment factories, many without proper safety measures. The country annually earns about $20 billion from exports of garment products, mainly to the United States and Europe.

Here are photos of the fire and its aftermath:

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Nokia imaging chief to quit

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia‘s long-time imaging chief Damian Dinning has decided to leave the loss-making cellphone maker at the end of this month, the company said in a statement.

The strong imaging capabilities of the new Lumia smartphone models are a key sales argument for the former market leader, which has been burning through cash while losing share in both high-end smartphones and cheaper handsets.

Nokia’s Chief Executive Stephen Elop has replaced most of the top management since he joined in late 2010 and Dinnig is the latest of several executives to leave.

Dinning did not want to move to Finland as part of the phonemakers’ effort to concentrate operations and will join Jaguar Land Rover to head innovations in the field of connected cars, he said on Nokia’s imaging fan site PureViewclub.com.

(Reporting By Tarmo Virki, editing by William Hardy)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Afghan police: Student killed in university clash

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Sunni and Shiite students clashed at Kabul University on a Shiite holy day Saturday, and Afghan authorities say that one person was killed.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir, director of the criminal investigation division, said police were trying to assess why the fight that broke out in the afternoon, killing one student and wounding six others.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said Shia and Sunni students started fighting and by evening, several hundred more people joined the melee, fist-fighting and throwing stones at each other. He said eyewitnesses at the scene said the clash was related to Ashoura, the commemoration of the 7th century death of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson.

Afghan leaders went to the site to try to calm the crowd. Abdul Azim Nurbakhsh, a spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, said late Saturday that classes at the university had been canceled for the next 10 days. Damage was reported to buildings at the university.

Other gatherings marking Ashoura in the Afghan capital were peaceful, but last year, a suicide bomber on foot struck worshippers at a Shiite shrine in Kabul, killing at least 80 people. Some Sunni extremists consider Shiite ceremonies to be heretical.

Separately, NATO said a service member with the international military coalition was killed Saturday in an insurgent attack in the south.

No other information was disclosed.

So far this year, 379 NATO service members have died in Afghanistan.

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Associated Press Writer Massieh Neshat in Kabul contributed to this report.

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HP says products may have been sold to Syria by others

(Reuters) – Hewlett Packard Co said in a letter made public on Friday that its products could have been delivered to Syria through resellers or distributors, but the world’s largest PC maker affirmed it did not sell directly to the country.

The letter was a response to a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission‘s Office of Global Security Risk that asked whether HP’s products were sold in countries where they would be subject to U.S. sanctions.

“We are aware of November 2011 news reports that your equipment was installed by the Italian company, Area SpA, in Syria as part of a nationwide surveillance and tracking system designed to monitor people in that country,” the SEC wrote in its request.

“Please describe to us the nature, duration, and extent of your past, current, and anticipated contacts with Syria and Iran, whether through subsidiaries, distributors, resellers, vendors, retailers, or other direct or indirect arrangements.”

In a letter dated October 9, HP said it had not authorized the sale of products to Syria.

Instead, HP said the Italian surveillance company had likely obtained its products from an HP partner that was unaware of their ultimate destination.

In another October 9 letter to the agency, HP said it ended its contract with Area SpA in April.

Calls to HP seeking further comment were unanswered as were calls to Area SpA.

HP’s overseas subsidiaries ended sales of printers and related supplies to third-party distributors and resellers with customers in Iran in early 2009, the company wrote.

But because its products are often sold by others through indirect channels without its knowledge or consent “it is always possible that products may be diverted to Iran or Syria after being sold to channel partners, such as distributors and resellers,” HP said.

Reuters has documented how banned computer equipment from U.S. companies has made its way to Iran’s largest telecommunications company through China-based ZTE.

Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc has since cut its ties to ZTE.

HP said in both letters that it would continue to work with ZTE, but it had conducted an internal investigation relating to an alleged sale of its products to MTN Irancell, Iran’s second largest mobile carrier.

The company was also asked about EDS – an IT outsourcing company that HP bought in 2008 – and any activity in Iran, Syria and Sudan.

HP said it had the same policy regarding Sudan as it did on sales to Iran or Syria.

HP is eager to avoid more negative publicity after surprising the market on Tuesday with an $ 8.8 billion write-down on its $ 11.1 billion acquisition of software group Autonomy, accusing the British company of improper accounting to inflate sales.

Autonomy has denied any wrongdoing.

(Reporting by Nicola Leske in New York. Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Andre Grenon)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

Read More..

Tourists visit Texas ranch to remember 'Dallas' star Larry Hagman

PARKER, Texas (AP) — Tourists and locals flocked to Southfork Ranch on Saturday, bringing flowers in memory of Larry Hagman, who played the infamous J.R. Ewing on the TV show "Dallas."

Hagman died in Dallas on Friday at age 81 due to complications from his battle with cancer.

Southfork, a ranch north of Dallas, was known to millions of viewers as the Ewing family home. Exterior shots of the house and pool were shown when the series aired from 1978 to 1991, although the show wasn't filmed there.

The ranch has been open for tours since the mid-1980s, and now sees more than 100,000 visitors each year. Each room of the house has a theme for each character.

On Saturday, J.R. Ewing's room had flowers and a card for tourists to sign.

"Today is about Larry Hagman and his family," said Janna Timm, a Southfork Ranch & Hotel spokeswoman. "He was such a wonderful person, and we will really miss him."

"Dallas" was recently revived on TNT this summer, and all of the scenes were filmed at Southfork or other places in the Dallas area. Hagman had revised his role as the scheming oilman who would even double-cross his own son.

Linda Sproule of Peterborough, Ontario, had been traveling through the U.S. the past couple of weeks and heard about Hagman's death Friday while in Dallas. She said she didn't know where Southfork was but wanted to come because she was a fan of the show in the 1980s.

"I remember on Friday nights we watched it, and J.R. was bigger than life in some ways," she said after taking the Southfork tour Saturday morning. "This ranch is beautiful. Being here is kind of emotional in a way."

Barbara Quinones and her husband were in town for their daughter's soccer tournament and had already planned to visit Southfork when they heard news of Hagman's death.

"We loved him because he was so ruthless," said Quinones, of Albuquerque, N.M. "This is a sad day, but I'm glad we're here."

Some of the show's stars, including Hagman, came to Southfork for the series' 25th anniversary. The Fort Worth-born actor also had visited several times before the show was revived.

"He was definitely a gentleman, a class act," said Jim Gomes, vice president of resorts at Southfork Ranch & Hotel. "He loved the fans as much as they loved him."

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