For some inexplicable reason, Nintendo and Toyota have teamed up to turn the Nintendo DS into a navigational remote control, thereby allowing drivers (although I hope passengers do most of the fiddling) to set their routes using their game consoles.

The service, called Kuruma de DS lets you see map and destination info as well as tour information as you drive through town. The service slightly gamifies the experience by adding a POI saving option.

The compatible Toyota Smart Navi system costs about 3,000 dollars while the game itself costs 92 dollars - quite a bit of cash to simulate the map screens in Super Mario World. The DS connects to the car via Bluetooth and includes quiz games and delightful Mii characters who show you around town.

Em, don't sign me up.

The Ubuntu team is very pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Long-Term Support) for Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products.

Codenamed “Precise Pangolin”, 12.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. The team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing a few new features and improving quality control.

To be a bit more precise about what we’re releasing today…
there are 54 product images and 2 cloud images being shipped with this 12.04 LTS release, with translations available in 41 languages.

The Ubuntu project’s 12.04 archive currently has 39,226 binary packages in it, built from 19,179 source packages, so lots of good starting points for your imagination!

For PC users, Ubuntu 12.04 supports laptops, desktops, and netbooks with a unified look and feel based on an updated version of the desktop shell called “Unity”, which introduces “Head-Up Display” search capabilities. Finding and installing software using the Ubuntu Software Centre is now easier thanks to improvements in speed, search and usability.

Ubuntu Server 12.04 has made it much easier to provision, deploy, host, manage, and orchestrate enterprise data centre infrastructure services with the introduction of new technologies such as “Metal as a Service” (MAAS), the Juju Charm Store, and the latest OpenStack version, codenamed Essex. These technologies further position Ubuntu Server.

Download ubuntu 12.04 here.

The Millennium Technology Prize is the largest technology prize in the world and it is awarded once every two years by Technology Academy Finland. The Awarded is given for life-enhancing technological innovation.

Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds and Dr. Shinya Yamanaka won the Millennium Technology Prize, the prominent award for technological innovation for 2012.

Torvalds is best known for creation of a new open source operating system Linux kernel. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software. Linux is far more than just a server operating system. The Linux kernel has received contributions from thousands of programmers and companies around the world. According to David A. Wheeler's calculations it could cost approximately 2.2 billion to redevelop the Linux kernel.

Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher. Currently, he serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyoto University.

Avengers VS X-Men went on sale yesterday. Marvel arranged with over 1100 comic book stores to have launch parties. According to Marvel there were launch parties in all 50 states in the USA. Each store participating was asked to register as either an Avenger store or an X-Men store. Each store received variant covers of the comic book. Avengers VS X-Men marks the beginning of Marvels initiative to offer free digital copies of all their major titles, included inside the comic. The prices of the comics have not increased with this initiative.

According to Marvel, Avengers vs. X-Men is the end result of all the threads from the Fear Itself, X-Men: Schism, and Avengers: The Children's Crusade stories coming together.

In addition to the main series, Marvel is going to release a six-issue tie-in series named AVX: VS, which will focus solely on fight scenes. Each issue will contain two fights occuring during AvX in more detail, with each fight done by a different writer and artist. The fights for the first three issues have been confirmed, with issue one featuring Iron Man vs. Magneto and the Thing vs. Namor, issue two featuring Spider-Man vs. Colossus and Captain America vs. Gambit, and issue three featuring Black Widow vs. Magik and the Thing vs. Colossus. Marvel has confirmed that this will be the only special series to tie-in to the main series, though other ongoing series will also have tie-ins.

Apple is being sued in New York by Frank Fazio, who claims that Apple falsely advertises Siri as a responsive and helpful when in fact the virtual assistant is allegedly anything but, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Represented by Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, Fazio’s class-actions suit seeks unspecified damages and and a court order demanding that Apple cease all misleading advertising that depict Siri as responsive, user-friendly feature. “On many of Apple’s television advertisements, individuals are shown using Siri to make appointments, find restaurants, and even learn the guitar chords to classic rock songs or how to tie a tie,” Fazio’s complaint reads. “In the commercials, all of these tasks are done with ease with the assistance of the iPhone 4S’s Siri feature, a represented functionality contrary to the actual operating results and performance of Siri.”

Fazio’s attorneys argue that their client and the class he represents have had nothing but trouble with Siri, which is unresponsive and often doesn’t understand what is being asked of it.

Here's a curious issue - when you run an older linux installer you get the error message: "Verifying archive integrity...tail: cannot open `+6' for reading: No such file or directory". I'm getting this when trying to reinstall Return to Caslte Wolfenstein on my PC using file wolf-linux-1.4-full.x86.run.

The solution is to enter the following in the terminal

export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209

THEN, run ./wolf-linux-1.4-full.x86.run or whatever your program is. Sorted

Fox has opted not to move forward with a second season of its Steven Spielberg time-travel drama Terra Nova.

According to hollywoodreporter.com, while the pricey dinosaur series averaged 7.5 million total viewers and 2.6 million in the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demo in its 11-episode first season, it failed to catch on the way the network had hoped. Its two-hour finale matched a series low in the demo, drawing a 2.1 rating among adults 18-49 and an audience of 7.2 million.

I actually enjoyed Terra Nova, and thought it had great potential. But yet again another quality si-fi gets cancelled (Stargate Universe, Sarah Connor Chronicles, The 4400, Firefly - the list goes on). Weather a show lives or dies is based on PILOT episode figures usally, not season finales. The original Star Trek in the 60s triumphed on RERUNS, not it's first run (which is why IT got cancelled. Hard to believe now, isn't it?)

Irish actor Jason O'Mara who stars in Terra Nova has been cast as Simon Bolivar Buckner in new mini-series To Appomattox, to be screened next year. Some kind of American Civil War drama apparently.

Starting this summer, the comics giant will release the seven inter-connected prequel mini-series that aims to build on the foundation of the original bestselling graphic novel of time.

Taking up the challenge will be a group of the industry’s most iconoclastic writers and artists – including Brian Azzarello (‘100 Bullets’), Lee Bermejo (‘Joker’), Amanda Conner (‘Power Girl’), Darwyn Cooke (‘Justice League: New Frontier’), John Higgins (‘Watchmen’), Adam Hughes (‘Catwoman’), J.G. Jones (‘Final Crisis’), Andy Kubert (‘Flashpoint’), Joe Kubert (‘Sgt. Rock’), Jae Lee (‘Batman: Jekyll and Hyde’), J. Michael Straczynski (‘Superman: Earth One’) and Len Wein (‘Swamp Thing’).

In a statement, DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee commented, “It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant. After twenty five years, the Watchmen are classic characters whose time has come for new stories to be told. We sought out the best writers and artists in the industry to build on the complex mythology of the original.”

Each week, a new issue will be released, and will feature a two-page back-up story dubbed ‘Curse of the Crimson Corsair,’ written by original series editor Len Wein with art by original series colorist John Higgins. There will also be a single issue, ‘Before Watchmen: Epilogue,’ featuring the work of various writers and artists, and a ‘Crimson Corsair’story by Wein and Higgins.

“The original series of ‘Watchmen’ is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC’s reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire,” said Dave Gibbons, ‘Watchmen’ co-creator and original series artist.

Moore, who has disassociated himself from DC Comics and the industry at large, called the new venture “completely shameless,” adding, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.”

After months of inactivity due to data loss (never forget to backup your work!) and lack of motivation that followed, the GENU project website is back.

In case you ever wondered what we powered things with around here, you guessed it, we use GENU.

What's new since the last version (2010.0) which this site uses? Well, Raoul (the developer) wanted to revive the project, it's website and the various development tools that he uses. His first new release is a version named 2012.0 which is the 2010.0 version with the following modifications:

- compatibility with PHP 5.3.x and deprecated features
- new domain name for the project website

We're expecting big things as we've never had a single issue with this site while GENU powered it, so fingers crossed there is a major release in the not too distant future