65544981
submission
sfcrazy writes:
We may finally see the patent reform that this country dearly needs, thanks to the nomination of Michelle Lee as the next head of the United States Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO). Michelle Lee is an ex-Googler and a vocal supporter of patent reforms.
65513123
submission
sfcrazy writes:
It seems to be the beginning of the end of the cable television in the US. Yesterday entertainment giant HBO announced they will start offering Internet subscription without requiring any cable subscription. Today CBS, yet another leading TV network, announced their move to the Internet. The most interesting aspect this ‘shift’ is net neutrality. With more TV networks moving to the web, how will it affect the net neutrality? Will they sign up deals with ISPs, similar to Netflix, and weaken net neutrality to dismiss competitors or will they become an ally and lobby for the net neutrality? HBO is owned by Time Warner, the cable company so it was not surprising when Time Warner CEO supported the idea of fast lane and 'paying' ISPs for content. Is it bad news for the internet that traditional cable companies are going online?
65313625
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Netflix can be run on Linux now without any tweaks or work-around what so ever. I just noticed it when I installed a new Ubuntu system (14.10), with Chrome Beta 39.x and out of curiosity opened Netflix. It worked flawlessly. No agent switcher required anymore.
65296849
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The openSUSE community has just announced the release of the first ‘release candidate’ of openSUSE 13.2. According to Kostas Koudaras of openSUSE, “This previous Beta release was a blast with almost 10.000 downloads. The community responded to the call and we had lot of eyes looking for bugs in openSUSE 13.2 Beta1. Many of them have been already squashed and openSUSE 13.2 Release Candidate 1 is here to prove it.”
65239055
submission
sfcrazy writes:
KDE Plasma was using in Hollywood movie Gravity and now it is spotted in yet another Hollywood blockbuster Hobbit.
65236805
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Google is finally getting its two operating systems Chrome OS and Android to 'talk' to each other. Till now Chrome OS devices didn't support MTP so Android users were not able to plug in their devices to Chromebooks and access files (though they could do that through apps like AirDroid). Google has pushed an update to the stable channel of Chrome OS which brings MTP support to Chrome OS devices (sans Chromeboxes).
65136289
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The primary reason behind using a procedural language like C for writing the Linux kernel was efficiency. However, this resulted in higher degree of dependencies (or coupling) among different parts of the Linux kernel and makes it difficult to maintain. A touch of object-oriented design may make things easier.
65095099
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The KDE Community has released the second beta of Plasma 5. The release is intended for enthusiasts and testers. KDE’s desktop Plasma is getting heavy makeover with the version 5. It not only brings a refined look and feel, but also improves the performance manifold as it moved to newer technologies like Qt5, Baloo and brand new modular libraries also known as Frameworks.
65042769
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Adobe is bringing its the king of all photo editing software Photoshop to Linux-based Chrome OS. Chrome OS powered devices such as Chromebooks and Chromeboxes already have a decent line-up of ‘applications’ that can work offline and eliminate the need of a traditional desktop computer. So far it sounds like great news. The bad news is that the offering is it beta stage and is available only to the customers of Creative Cloud Education program, residing in the USA. I have a full subscription of Creative Cloud for Photographers and LightRoom, but even I can’t join the program at the moment.
64898721
submission
sfcrazy writes:
The most important app, which was announced during the ownCloud Contributor Conference is ‘Mail’. ownCloud teams are working on the 0.1 release and the way any open source product works, if you are interested in it, grab the code, install on your server, test it and help developers in making it better. At the moment it is just a basic IMAP client and is under heavy development.Along with Kolab, ownCloud mail will fill the gap of easy to install and configure email server.
64828159
submission
sfcrazy writes:
India has made history today by being the first and only country in the world to send a space craft to Mars in first attempt. The country also made history as it achieved it in a budget lesser than the un-scientific Hollywood block buster Gravity; India spent only $71 million on the mission. What excited us the most was to see Red Hat Enterprise Linux being used in the mission. You can clearly see RHEL in the webcast of Isro where they talk about the mission.
64734917
submission
sfcrazy writes:
openSUSE team has announced the release of the first beta of openSUSE 13.2. The final release is scheduled for November. As usual 13.2 will bring the best experience and integration with two top desktop environments – KDE’s Plasma and Gnome.
64650473
submission
sfcrazy writes:
KDE Software is often criticized for being too complicated for an average user to use. Try setting up Kmail and you would know what I mean. The KDE developers are aware of it and now they are working on making KDE UI simpler. KDE usability team lead Thomas Pfeiffer Thomas prefers a layered feature exposure so that users can enjoy certain advanced features at a later stage after they get accustomed to the basic functionality of the application. He quotes the earlier (pre-Plasma era) vision of KDE 4 – “Anything that makes Linux interesting for technical users (shells, compilation, drivers, minute user settings) will be available; not as the default way of doing things, but at the user’s discretion.” And he goes ahead to remind the simplified form in KDE HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) – “Simple by default, powerful when needed.”
64615133
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Native support for Netflix is coming to Linux, thanks to their move from Sliverlight to HTML5, Mozilla and Google Chrome. Paul Adolph from Netflix proposed a solution to Ubuntu developers: "Netflix will play with Chrome stable in 14.02 if NSS version 3.16.2 or greater is installed. If this version is generally installed across 14.02, Netflix would be able to make a change so users would no longer have to hack their User-Agent to play."
The ball is now in the court of Canonical developers.
64590175
submission
sfcrazy writes:
Canonical has finally released the first image of Ubuntu Touch RTM. The news comes to the heels of announcement by Meizu that Ubuntu powered devices will becoming later this year. Another Ubuntu Touch mobile partner Bq has not announced any release date for their Linux powered devices.
