Ural Electronics in DVD deal with Indian firm

Ural Electronic Factory based in Ekaterinburg (Russia) is negotiating terms of DVD-R disc distribution with India's Moser Bayer.
Currently Ural Electronic Factory is equipped with three disc production lines from Germany's Steag Hamatech AG and three lines using Holland's VDL. Production output is 4.5 million units a month.

Getting to grips with Linux

Gary Parkinson had a torrid time when he converted to Linux. Here he shares his experiences with one of the alternatives to Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system.

It's Saturday afternoon and I should be lying on the sofa sipping sweet tea and watching Football Focus.

Instead, I'm stamping loudly round the living room swearing like a sailor, looking for a cat to kick and cursing a Finnish computer programmer whose name meant nothing to me only days before.

The source of all this disquiet sits on the coffee table looking defiant yet lovely.

It's £370 worth of brand spanking new laptop, sleek glossy black, 10 inches wide, give or take, and weighs about the same as a chunky hardback novel.

Hippy ideals

It's not the machine itself that's driving me to violence, but the operating system that controls its programs and hardware: Linux.

Linux is an alternative to operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Mac's OS X and has been around since the early 1990s.

It's creator Linus Torvalds - then a 21-year-old University of Helsinki student - made the heart of his operating system absolutely free and open source, which means anyone can still download the code and tweak it as they see fit.

This kind of hippy philosophy behind Linux - that free access to software inspires development driven by need, not the need for cash - was the main attraction to me of choosing a Linux-fuelled machine over the Windows or Mac OS.

It's a muscular system too. The likes of Amazon and Google, and plenty of other household-name companies, are increasingly turning to Linux to run important parts of their businesses.

Look and feel

My requirements are more modest. It needs to let me surf the web, word process and manage the music that I listen to on an iPod.

First impressions of Linux were positive. The new machine, an Asus Eee, came pre-installed with a distribution, or flavour, of Linux called Xandros.

Because Linux is open source, different programmers have taken its kernel, or core, and written variations on the theme. They may use the same base code, but the desktops look and feel very different.

Some will seem much more familiar to those used to Windows or OS X than others.

There's half a dozen or so popular "distros", including the likes of Fedora, Mandriva and the one I prefer, Ubuntu.

Xandros worked right out of the box. Like most distros it includes Open Office, an open source copycat of Microsoft Office. Word processing, spreadsheets and presentations are no problem.

Linux-based computers won't run the software that you may be used to on Windows or a Mac - but there are free, Linux-compatible versions of pretty much any program you may want that can be downloaded from the internet.

Xandros connected to the net through my home wireless network at the first time of asking. And surfing was fast and easy.

Freedom to fiddle

There were a couple of things about Xandros which I didn't like.

The music management program - its "iTunes", if you like - let me listen to music and podcasts on my new laptop but wouldn't sync anything I loaded on to my iPod. Big problem for a music and podcast junkie.

Plus the desktop - the way the screen looks, the icons it uses to open programs - looks like it's been designed by a four-year-old with a fat crayon. It's may be down to personal taste, but I just don't like the way Xandros looks.

One of the (many) great things about Linux is that if you don't like a particular distro you can just change it for one you do by downloading it from the internet and installing it on the machine.

If you don't like that one either, just keep trying distros until you find one to your taste.

A quick trip to the local newsagent yielded a Linux magazine that included instructions on how to change distros and free CD with Mandriva and Ubuntu on it.

CD into disk drive, hit the escape key right after power up, boot up from the disk not the hard drive as usual, follow the simple instructions to install and 10 minutes later my computer screen looks completely different and much more like what I'm used to. A doddle.

Except now the internet wireless connection doesn't work and the music management software still won't let me sync with my iPod. Mmmmmm......

Like most journalists, I've the attention span and patience of a gnat. The air turns blue and I inform my wife loudly that Linus Torvalds has much to answer for (I paraphrase slightly).

Another great thing about Linux is the plethora of internet forums that you can sign up to where users can share tips and experience. My new machine may not be connected but luckily my wife's computer is. Couple of quick registrations later and I'm picking through the discussion boards for answers.

Text-based

Trouble is, the people populating these forums seem much cleverer than I am. On another planet, in fact. I may not be a good bet to be one to discover the cure for cancer, but I pride myself that not a (complete) fool either.

But I'm completely stumped by the instructions posted on these sites. The level of assumed knowledge is way above my head. I follow a couple of suggestions, try to connect to my router using an ethernet cable, download code that promises to set things right. And fail.

Ubuntu's own website isn't much help either. It suggests that with this particular machine it can sometimes help to whip out the battery, give it a couple of minutes, whack it back in, plug in an ethernet cable and get on line first that way. Nada.

Perhaps I am a complete fool after all.

It's probably worth mentioning one other important point about Linux here. It's a text-based operating system, which means that a fair few of the things you may want to tell your computer to do - installing certain new software, for example - requires you to open up a "terminal window" and actually type text into the little window.

It's a bit like the way all hackers in Hollywood movies furiously crash out lines of incomprehensible text on their laptops when they're trying to bust into the Pentagon's defence network.

As someone used solely to double-clicking on pretty pictures to do most anything on a computer this is pretty hairy stuff.

Tech support

True to form when I'm too stupid to figure out how to do something in five minutes, I phone an expert.

Geek Squad, a tech support service partnered with the Carphone Warehouse, is more used to dealing with problems with broadband and e-mail but later that night, Agent Jamie Pedder walks me through it over the phone.

Download a couple of bits of code from one of the Linux help sites on to a memory stick. Whack the memory stick into the offending laptop.

Bang a couple of lines of code into the terminal window to tell the machine to install what we've downloaded. Bingo, we're cooking on gas.

Ubuntu's running my wireless network and I'm back on-line. Easy when you know how.

The fly in the ointment remains the music management software. I still can't sync an iPod and Agent Pedder reckons that I probably won't be able to - for now at least.

While Linux is founded on the philosophy of free and easy access to its code for anyone who's interested, Apple is not. That means no iTunes for Linux, and nor is Apple likely to release such a version.

The iPod out of action is a major irritation, but I've not given up hope. There's software out there - free for Linux users as always - that promises to do what I want. I just haven't got round to downloading and playing with it yet.

For the time being, it's back to the trusty CD player. All this talk of hippy ideals has put me right in the mood for a bit of Sgt Pepper's.
from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7594249.stm

Large Hadron Collider

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the Large Hadron Collider will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself.

Find out more about the LHC with this BBC News guide, starting at the top of the page with an introduction from Science Correspondent David Shukman. You can then explore key elements of the experiment using the links above.

They have now fired two beams of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash protons together with cataclysmic force.

Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

The first - clockwise - beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. The second - anti-clockwise - beam successfully circled the ring after 1400 BST.

So far, all the beams have been stopped, or "dumped", after just a few circuits.

On Thursday, engineers hoped to inject clockwise and anti-clockwise protons again, but this time they plan to "close the orbit", letting the beams run continuously for a few seconds each.

The BBC understands that low-energy collisions could happen in the next few days. This will allow engineers to calibrate instruments, but will not produce data of scientific interest.

"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of the successful test.

from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7604293.stm

21 dumbest-ever tech predictions

Second-guessing the future is never a good idea, as pundits from Bill Gates to Sir Alan Sugar prove

"They couldn't hit an elephant from that distance." So said Major General John Sedgewick in 1864 just before being hit by the bullet from a Confederate sharpshooter.

He's not alone in making bad predictions, the history of the tech industry is littered with them. Here are 21 of the worst:

Phones

1. "Well informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value." -- The Boston Post, 1865

2. "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union memo, 1876

3. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office, 1878

4. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidised item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." -- Steve Ballmer, USA Today, 2007

Audio and video

5. "Radio has no future." -- Lord Kelvin, inventor of the Kelvin scale, 1897

6. "The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage." -- Charlie Chaplin, 1916

7. "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." -- Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube, 1926.

8. "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- Harry Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

9. "[Television] won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl Zanuck, movie producer at 20th Century Fox, 1946

10. "Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan." -- Mary Somerville, educational broadcast pioneer, speaking in 1948

Computing

11. "Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949

12. "I went to see Professor Douglas Hartree [in 1951], who had built the first differential analysers in England and had more experience in using these very specialised computers than anyone else. He told me that, in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built - one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them." -- Lord Bowden, American Scientist, 1970

13. "I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- Business books editor, Prentice Hall, 1957

14. "The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most." -- IBM to the founders of Xerox, 1959

15. "In the mid-70s, someone came to me with an idea for what was basically the PC. The idea was that we would outfit an 8080 processor with a keyboard and a monitor and sell it in the home market. I asked: 'What's it good for?' And the only answer was that a housewife could keep her recipes on it. I personally didn't see anything useful in it, so we never gave it another thought." -- Gordon Moore, Intel

16. "We will never make a 32-bit operating system." -- Bill Gates, speaking at the launch of MSX in 1983

17. "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." -- Bill Gates, foreword to the OS/2 Programmer's Guide, 1987

18. "Two years from now, spam will be solved." -- Bill Gates, World Economic Forum 2004

The Internet

19. "Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." -- Robert Metcalfe, 3Com founder and inventor of Ethernet, 1995

What the?

20. "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality in 10 years." -- Sir Alex Lewyt, president and founder of vacuum cleaner maker Lewyt Corporation, 1955

21. "Next Christmas the iPod'll be dead, finished, gone, kaput." -- Sir Alan Sugar, CEO of Amstrad, Daily Telegraph, February 2005

What's your favourite stupid tech prediction? Write in with your comments below!

By Rob Mead