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Submission + - Judge rejects SCO's motion for a new trial (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A judge has rejected SCO's motion for a new trial in the company's dispute over UNIX intellectual property ownership. The ruling validates a verdict that was issued in April by a jury which determined that Novell, and not SCO, is the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. This means that SCO cannot continue to pursue its litigation against IBM and other Linux users. "There was substantial evidence that Novell made an intentional decision to retain ownership of the copyrights," the Judge wrote in his decision. "The Court finds that the verdict is not clearly, decidedly, or overwhelmingly against the weight of the evidence. Therefore, SCO is not entitled to a new trial."
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu One gets iPhone app for contact sync (arstechnica.com)

oneone writes: Canonical is bringing its Ubuntu One cloud service to handheld devices with a new mobile contact synchronization feature that is powered by Funambol. Canonical's Ubuntu One application for the iPhone is now available from the iTunes Music Store. Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application. The mobile sync feature is currently in the beta testing stage but will be generally available to Ubuntu One subscribers when Ubuntu 10.04 is released later this month. Canonical says that it is boosting its Ubuntu One server infrastructure in order to support what it anticipates will be record loads.

Submission + - Tentacular, tentacular! (arstechnica.com)

Tyler Too writes: "Beware, mortals: Cthulhu has returned, and he's armed with bacon and an unhealthy obsession with geek brains." It's a really bizarre and hilarious choose your own adventure saga starring the Great Old One himself, Sergey Brin, Anonymous, David Pogue, and non-Euclidian tacos with bacon.

Submission + - Ubuntu dumps the brown, gets new visual identity (arstechnica.com) 4

buntcake writes: Canonical has launched a new visual identity for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu is shedding its previous brown look and adopting a more professional color scheme with purple and orange. The colors will be used in a new GNOME theme and boot splash for Ubuntu 10.04. According to updated design documents that were published in the Ubuntu wiki, "light" is the underlying concept behind the new visual identity. It displaces the "human" concept that has been part of Ubuntu's theming and brand vernacular for the past five years. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon has posted a screenshot and additional information.

Submission + - SCO fires CEO Darl McBride (arstechnica.com)

Scowned writes: SCO's latest SEC filings reveal that the company has fired Darl McBride, the company's controversial CEO. McBride is the architect of SCO's failed litigation assault on the open source Linux operating system, a strategy that ultimately led to the company's collapse. In a statement issued along with the SEC filing, SCO's new leaders say that they plan to continue the fight against IBM and Novell in court. "These actions, while difficult, are essential to SCO becoming a more agile and efficient company, not just for this year, but for years to come," Hunsaker said.
Television

Submission + - MPAA pushes for HD-disabling SOC once again (arstechnica.com) 2

Tyler Too writes: The MPAA is once again trying to badger the FCC into approving Selectable Output Control, which would plug the 'analog hole' during broadcasts of some prerelease HD movies. MPAA bigshots met with seven staffers from the FCC Media Bureau last week, calling the petition a 'pro-consumer' move designed to 'enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content.' At least the studios are now acknowledging that SOC would break the functionality of some HDTVs, an admission they were previously unwilling to make: 'What's interesting about the group's latest filing, however, is that it effectively concedes that the output changes it wants could, in fact, hobble some home video systems. "The vast majority of consumers would not have to purchase new devices to receive the new, high-value content contemplated by MPAA's" request, the group assures the FCC.'
Intel

Submission + - Intel brings rich UI to Moblin Linux platform (arstechnica.com)

2mob writes: Intel's Linux-based Moblin operating system recently got a significant user interface overhaul. The platform's new graphical shell, which was unveiled Tuesday in a new Moblin 2 beta release, delivers top-notch usability and slick visual effects. The developers have completely reinvented the concept of virtual desktops and have replaced it with a more fluid "zone" system that makes it easier to organize how windows are grouped together. The shell also has tightly-integrated social network and messaging features, such as a built-in Twitter client and an instant messenger buddy list. Ars Technica tested Moblin beta 2 on Dell netbook and has published a comprehensive hands-on look at the new user interface.
Software

Submission + - Canonical aims for the cloud with new Ubuntu One (arstechnica.com)

sud writes: Canonical intends to bring cloud synchronization and collaboration features to Linux with Ubuntu One, a new web service that integrates tightly with the desktop. The service, which is currently in closed beta testing, includes a file synchronization and cloud storage feature that is similar to Dropbox. Ars Technica has written complete review of Ubuntu One and interviewed a Canonical engineer who is working on the project. The article includes many details about Ubuntu One's underlying technology and feature roadmap. According to the article, Ubuntu One will eventually provide comprehensive infrastructure for synchronizing application data, such as Tomboy notes and Evolution contacts. Programming APIs will be offered so that third-party application developers will be able to take advantage of this capability and integrate it into their own software.
Google

Submission + - Google brings 3D to web with open source plugin (arstechnica.com) 1

maxheadroom writes: Google has released an open source browser plugin that provides a JavaScript API for displaying 3D graphics in web content. Google hopes that the project will promote experimentation and help advance a collaborative effort with the Khronos Group and Mozilla to create open standards for 3D on the web. Google's plugin offers its own retained-mode graphics API, called O3D, which takes a different approach from a similar browser plugin created by Mozilla. Google's plugin is cross-platform compatible and works with several browsers. In an interview with Ars Technica, Google product manager Henry Bridge and engineering director Matt Papakipos say that Google's API will eventually converge with Mozilla's as the technology matures. The search giant hopes to bring programs like SketchUp and Google Earth to the browser space.
Programming

Submission + - Project aims for 5x increase in Python performance (arstechnica.com)

cocoanaut writes: A new project launched by Google's Python engineers could make the popular programming language five times faster. The project, which is called Unladen Swallow, seeks to replace the Python interpreter's virtual machine with a new just-in-time (JIT) compilation engine that is built on LLVM. The first milestone release, which was announced at PyCon, already offers a 15-25% performance increase over the standard CPython implementation. The source code is available from the Google Code web site.
GNOME

Submission + - Review of GNOME 2.26 and GTK+ 2.16 (arstechnica.com)

devg writes: The GNOME development community recently announced the official release GNOME 2.26, the latest version of the open source desktop environment for Linux. It adds the Brasero disc burning software, UPnP support in the Totem media player, and basic support for video chat in the Empathy instant messaging client. GNOME 2.26 will be shipped in upcoming Linux distributions, including Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04. Some early reviews show that it is an incremental improvement with some good additions. GNOME 2.26 is accompanied by the release of GTK+ 2.16, a new version of the widget toolkit that is used to build the desktop environment. Ars Technica has published a detailed programming tutorial with code examples that demonstrate how developers can use the new features of GTK+ 2.16 in their own applications. Users can test GNOME 2.26 by downloading one of the official Foresight-based VM or ISO images via BitTorrent.
Windows

Submission + - Windows 7's UAC is a broken mess; mend it or end i (arstechnica.com)

ZosX writes: "ars technica has an interesting opinion piece about a recent security flaw that was found in the UAC that elevates privileges without prompting the user. The author's veridict: Fix UAC or ditch it all together. From the article: "The decisions Microsoft has made not only make Windows 7's Admin Approval mode less secure than Vista's, they also undermine the entire purpose of the UAC system."...."There's no point in retaining Admin Approval mode as it currently stands, and it should be scrapped completely.""
Idle

Submission + - The Call of Cthubuntu (arstechnica.com)

Francis Wayland Thurston writes: An arcane Linux distribution created by the insidious star-spawn of Cthulhu has revealed that unearthly horrors from beyond the stars are coming to earth to subjugate humanity. The Call of Cthubuntu heralds our impending doom: "Though the presence of these Great Old Ones has long been obscured from humanity, we are surrounded by subtle signs and portents of the secret horrors that will one day awaken and rise from the depths to blot out our feeble existence. An artifact that prophesies their grim return has come into my possession: the dread Cthubuntu Linux distribution--an arcane relic of ineffable power that originated in a dark time beyond reckoning. The incomprehensible apparatus is an otherworldly chimaera forged by alchemical arts unknown to modern science."

You can participate in the invasion on Twitter by following wotw2 and posting updates about what you are seeing and experiencing this halloween as the world is destroyed by evil aliens. Don't forget to include the #wotw2 tag in your messages!

Mozilla

Submission + - Firefox gets massive JavaScript performance boost (arstechnica.com)

monkeymonkey writes: Mozilla has integrated tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey, the JavaScript interpreter in Firefox. This improvement has boosted JavaScript performance by between 20 and 40 times in certain contexts. Ars Technica interviewed Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich (the original creator of JavaScript) and Mozilla's vice president of engineering, Mike Shaver. They say that tracing optimization will "take JavaScript performance into the next tier" and "get people thinking about JavaScript as a more general-purpose language". The eventual goal is to make JavaScript run as fast as C code. Ars reports: "Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. [...] They aim to improve execution speed so that it is comparable to that of native code. This will redefine the boundaries of client-side performance and enable the development of a whole new generation of more computationally-intensive web applications." Mozilla has also published a video that demonstrates the performance difference.

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