Ubuntu amazed me this weekend, when my desktop started and everything was as much as loaded a pop-up appeared at the lower right corner;

A nice warning about the battery level of my wireless mouse, I didn't have to do anything to get or enable this feature. It is just there, no fuzz, no hassle, a default feature!

So you installed the latest Ubuntu, enabled the 3D effects you've been seeing on YouTube and find that it runs dog slow on your PC. It appears the default install has some swapping settings that have a negative effect on desktop performance, luckily they are easily solved.

sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10

This should speed things up for you (you could even set it to zero if you like), keep the change permanent by adding it to '/etc/sysctl.conf'.

First there is Gartner, which in a new report tries to reduce the openness of documents used in EU countries. A new published report advices to open up to 'recognized' standards. Luckily there is a website available were you can sign a petition and has contact information available for European Commission. Don't hesitate and put your digital signature on the list.

Next, we have a troublesome report from the BSA. In this document they list the best countries for IT development & innovation. We all know that the BSA contains a bunch of closed source, proprietary software vendors. In one topic of the report they mention that the US has wonderful worked out IP protection laws and that they have the best software patents system of all countries. Naturally they are dissing China and India for the same reasons. All OSS fanatics know how innovative patents can work.

Amazing, on some sites you could read about the doubts most of them had that Nintendo would gain something from this years E3. There was nothing new on the horizon, what could they ever announce that did not make us yawn.

And yet, they managed to walk away with the most innovative gamer thinking of all the 3 tenors. The WiiFit is causing as much buzz as last year, when the Wii was shown in action.