IT Sales - Service - Support - Tel:01446 747702
We specialise in PC and laptop repairs, sales and servicing for every make or model.
Internet security's such as removal of spyware, trojans, adware, viruses, rootkits - or any computer "nasty" can be removed in-house or can be in your own home.
We have been building, repairing, servicing PC's and helping customers since 1996. If your PC does not work or the program refuses to start. what happens? - You contact us for help.
We offer Service and maintenance Contracts for business's, we also carry many stock items like Cases, Memory / RAM, Motherboard, Processors - anything to increase the performance of your PC or to create your desired PC.
Our experienced technicians can remedy your PC problems in the quickest and most convienient way.
A quantum physics trick is set to give smartphones and hand-held devices pressure-sensitive switches and touchscreens.
Three people are arrested as China's largest training website for hackers is shut down, state media reports.
An influential group of MPs and peers says the government's plans on illegal file-sharing could breach the rights of net users.
The US space agency (Nasa) has launched its shuttle Endeavour on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
A 17-year-old vulnerability that dates from the days of DOS is being patched in Microsoft's February security update.
Revenue staff tip off Radio 4's Money Box that there are more tax code problems than their bosses are admitting to.
The US Department of Justice says that it is still not satisfied with a deal that would allow Google to build a digital library.
Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time people in the UK spend going online using their phones, according to figures.
The European Environment Agency launches a web tool to encourage citizens to log air and water quality in their area.
A selection of props and costumes from BBC One's Doctor Who are to go under the hammer in London later this month.
 CNET | A phone that translates 6000 languages in real time, really? Independent Google is getting all futuristic on us with plans to implement Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-worthy mobile phone translation software in the next generation of telecommunications gadgets. The Times Online reports that the internet giant has been ... Google (Voice) solves universal translation soonish Google translation phone "two years away" Google leaps language barrier with translator phone |
 stv.tv | BT pushing for rivals to open up their networks Times Online BT has called on its rivals to follow its example and open up their own network infrastructure to boost broadband coverage and competition in the sector. The telecoms company has been in the spotlight since the Conservatives revealed a plan to force it ... BT plans to open up broadband tunnel network BT to share its tunnel network with rivals Hurrah! BT To Allow Rivals To Use Underground Network |
 Telegraph.co.uk | Moggie lovers brighter than dog owners? Isaac Newton and Freud prove that's ... Daily Mail But no. Dr Jane Murray really is the Cats Protection lecturer in feline epidemiology at Bristol University and, after months of assiduous research, she has produced a learned paper which she claims confirms that cat owners are more ... More cat owners 'have degrees' than dog-lovers Cat owners 'more educated than dog owners' Cat and dog population up by 4m |
 The Guardian | UK Mobile Users Flock To Facebook Website ITProPortal Social networking website Facebook attracted a significant number of mobile phone users in December 2009 as figures published by the Mobile Media Metrics service showed that a third of UK handsets accessed the website during the last month of last year ... Facebook leads rise in mobile web use Facebook dominates mobile phone web use Facebook rules mobile web use |
 TrustedReviews | Microsoft Launches Custom 'Safety' Edition of Internet Explorer TrustedReviews Well, yes and no. For the first time in a long time Microsoft's IE team is to be applauded after this week announcing it has partnered with the CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) to launch a new customised version of the IE8 ... Online safety push for five-year-olds Microsoft and CEOP team up on customised IE8 Schools get lessons in online hazards |
 BBC News | Quantum trick for pressure-sensitive mobile devices BBC News Handheld devices could soon have pressure-sensitive touch-screens and keys, thanks to a UK firm's material that exploits a quantum physics trick. The technology allows, for example, scrolling down a long list or webpage faster as more pressure is ... Samsung licence puts Peratech QTC in mobile phones $1.4m contract for touch screen licence 3D touchscreens? Why Samsung think pressure-sensitive screens are the next big ... |
 Broadband Genie (blog) | Mobile Broadband Providers Being Dishonest About Average Speeds ITProPortal Mobile phone networks need to come clean about the true speed one can expect to achieve when getting mobile broadband services instead of providing with "unrealistic claims" says Broadband Genie. The broadband comparison website says that in 2009, ... Do dongle providers think we are plonkers? O2 extends two months' free broadband offer Free home broadband offer extended by O2 |
 Times Online | "Climategate" scientist contemplated suicide BBC News The scientist at the centre of "climategate" says he contemplated killing himself after leaked e-mails were seized on by sceptics. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Professor Phil Jones also said he had been provoked into sending the e-mails. ... 'Climategate' Professor Phil Jones 'considered suicide over email scandal' 'Climategate' scientist threatened If you're going to do good science, release the computer code too |
 Telegraph.co.uk | BT Wants To Charge Couple £37000 To Install broadband ITProPortal A couple that runs a bed and breakfast in a village in Cumbria has been quoted a staggering £45000 by BT for getting broadband to their guest house to replace their dial up 56K line. BT later said that it was prepared to pay up to £8000 of the charge ... BT customer quoted £45000 for broadband upgrade BT tells couple installing broadband will cost £45000 Want broadband? That'll be £37000, please |
 UberGizmo (blog) | Plastic Supercapictor Points To End Of Batteries eWEEK Europe UK British scientists at Imperial College London may have signalled the death of conventional batteries after they developed a prototype plastic supercapictor. The scientists have created a plastic that can store and release electricity. ... Hybrid car bodies could be batteries Supercapacitor promises end to batteries Car bodies, mobile phones could one day be their own batteries |
Subscribers should already have started to receive LXF129, and the rest of you will be able to pick up your copy from this Thursday. Inside you'll find a four-page tutorial on how everyone - even someone with only a few weeks of coding experience - can submit patches to the Linux kernel. It might sound crazy, particularly as many people consider the Linux kernel to be Really Hard or out of reach of mere mortals. But I hope that when you've finished the tutorial, you'll feel confident enough to give it a try.
If you've received your copy of LXF128, you should by now have spotted that our new special edition magazine, Paul Hudson's Coding Academy, is now on sale - you can read more about it at www.linuxformat.com/codingacademy.
The problem is, it's selling a bit better than we had expected - we had 200 copies ready for sale online alongside the thousands destined for newsstands around the world, but all the online copies have already sold out. We're trying to get more for online sale by pulling copies back from newsstands, but it's not easy.
So, there are some things you need to know:
I've just spent the last few hours putting up a beginners Emacs tutorial on TuxRadar. Long-time LXF readers will recognise it from way back in the dark mists of LXF - from the early 60s to the mid-70s to be precise - and I figured it was time to set the content free for everyone to enjoy. It's hardly as if Emacs has changed all that much, after all, and even the most hardened of LXF subscribers are unlikely to dig that deep into our subscriber-only area to find the PDFs. If you find yourself bored over the holiday break and you're interested in trying something different, give it a read.
So, I'm done now. I'm free to enjoy my last Christmas without kids, which means tomorrow morning I'll sleep in, then hopefully have a very relaxed day indeed. We're all out of the office now until January 4th, so I wish you all a very merry Christmas and an awesome 2010!
Subscribers will be receiving LXF127 right now, and you'll notice a) we provided a double-sided DVD with Ubuntu LXF remix, OpenSUSE 11.2 and Mandriva 2010 for you to enjoy, plus b) it should come with a free wallchart: helpful commands on one side, and a super-size reproduction of the LXF120 cover on the other (NB: you can download a variety of cover art as desktop wallpapers from our collection of free Linux wallpapers)
It's Christmas, so we hope you enjoy the little extra - do let us know if we're wasting our time popping extras into an issue, or whether it's the kind of thing you'd like to see more of!
(PS: the issue goes on general sale tomorrow morning, and, yes, all newsstand copies also come with the wallchart + 8GB DVD, but we expect them to disappear pretty quickly!)
Do you long for the days of 8-bit BASIC? When GOTO wasn't considered evil, REM wasn't just an American alternative rock band, and PEEKing and POKEing didn't get you into trouble with the police? Well, those days are back with the release of MikeOS 4.0.
Many moons ago I blogged about a game idea Graham had called Brain Party. That was some time ago, and since then I ported the code both to Windows Mobile devices and Xbox 360, and managed to sell quite a few copies of it.
But here's what's new: you probably know by now that I'm obsessed with coding, so I took it on myself to port Brain Party from C# to plain old C++, and as of today Brain Party is available for iPhone/iPod Touch users. Now, it's a long way from the old SDL game I made a few years ago - it has 30+ minigames, it's OpenGL-accelerated (shinier graphics - oooh!), and it's actually finished as opposed to kind of hanging around waiting for something to happen - but the core concept is the same: family-friendly brain games that everyone can enjoy.
Got a problem with Linux? Looking for a quick fix? On our sister site TuxRadar we've created a searchable database of over 700 Linux problems and solutions. These have been taken from the Answers section of Linux Format magazine, and stretch back over five years - so some of the information may be a bit dated. Nonetheless, there's lots of valuable information inside, so we hope it comes in useful!
Many thanks to LXF readers Towy and Guy for their help in converting LXF Answers to XML. Oh, and if you're looking for a complete list of the questions (it's a big page!), click here.
I want to run a big feature on Moblin and on netbook software; something that will complement all the hardware hard work that MikeS put in for our cover feature a couple of months ago. But I'm a bit worried: I'm not sure how many of you are interested in such a beast. Are you closet netbook fanboys? Do you want to be closet netbook fanboys? Do you see netbook distros as a great way to breathe new life into ageing computers?
I'm also thinking of running a coding series on Clutter, because it's a lot of fun. The question is, would you prefer we write that tutorial using Clutter's native C, or using Python and the PyClutter binding? Or are we just crazy and should leave Clutter well alone?
In Linux Format issue 124, page 77, I wrote about the Free Software Foundation's Windows 7 Sins page. Specifically, I gave my opinion that the page is too zealous and hyperbolic; that it makes the free software community look like irrational mouth-foaming Microsoft haters. I said that we should focus more on publicising GNU/Linux rather than bashing Microsoft.
A reader emailed me asking for more elaboration on what I dislike about the page - so here are some of the quotes on the page and why I think they don't work.
Fresh from recording another TuxRadar podcast ready for tomorrow (yes, it really does go through extensive sound editing before being released to the world), we had a discussion here at LXF Towers about whether we use up too much space with our dazzling wit.
Whether it's SPython, chimps delivering subscriptions, flippant welcome page answers, SI Gonzales ratings or LeeNukes and his legion of page-checking ninjas (he probably hasn't spotted that one yet), we rarely shy away from filling in captions or other little spaces with seemingly random comments that frequently only long-term subscribers will get.
Does this irritate you? Would you rather we cut the fluff and focused on more, more, more Linux goodness? Answers on a postcard, or alternatively leave a comment below.
