Comment Re:Orange and purple are more professional? (Score 1) 683
Apparently pictures of space are cool again....
What? Pictures of space are always cool!
Why PyCon 2010's Conference Wi-Fi Didn't Melt Down 145
jafo writes "There's been a lot of teeth gnashing going on recently about broken wireless at conferences. We just wrapped up PyCon 2010, with around 600 (out of 1,000) attendees simultaneously accessing the volunteer-run network, and response has been fairly positive. 2.4GHz (802.11b/g) continues to be problematic, but most users were on 5.2GHz (using 802.11n) and associating at 130mbps, with a 100mbps link to the net (though after the fact we found that 35mbps would have sufficed). My PyCon 2010 wrap-up reveals all the secrets of how we did it, including pretty bandwidth and user graphs."
Comment Re:Crock (Score 1) 311
If you're paying 29.99% credit card interest like I am, NPV is pretty high.
(Disclaimer: I am not a financial expert)
(Disclaimer: I am not a financial expert)
MPEG LA Extends H.264 Royalty-Free Period 260
Sir Homer writes "The MPEG LA has extended their royalty-free license (PDF) for 'Internet Video that is free to end users' until the end of 2016. This means webmasters who are registered MPEG LA licensees will not have to pay a royalty to stream H.264 video for the next six years. However the last patent in the H.264 portfolio expires in 2028, and the MPEG LA has not released what fees, if any, it will charge webmasters after this 'free trial' period is over."
Has Apple Created the Perfect Board Game Platform? 531
andylim writes "recombu.com is running an interesting piece about how Apple has created a 'Jumanji (board game) platform.' The 9.7-inch multi-touch screen is perfect for playing board games at home, and you could use Wi-Fi or 3G to play against other people when you're on your own. What would be really interesting is if you could pair the iPad with iPhones, 'Imagine a Scrabble iPad game that used iPhones as letter holders. You could hold up your iPhone so that no one else could see your letters and when you were ready to make a word on the Scrabble iPad board, you could slide them on to the board by flicking the word tiles off your iPhone.' Now that would be cool."
Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago 356
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has a story on researchers from the University of Utah who have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors Homo erectus, H. ergaster, and archaic H. sapiens were spreading through Africa, Europe, and Asia, there were probably only about 18,500 individuals capable of breeding in all these species together (PNAS paper here). Pre-humans were an endangered species with a smaller population than today's gorillas and chimpanzees. Researchers scanned two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, then compared the nucleotides in these old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in effective population size, and thus genetic diversity between modern and early humans. Human geneticist Lynn Jorde says that the diminished genetic diversity one million years ago suggests human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time as devastating as the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that triggered a nuclear winter and is thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago."
Comment Re:In short: (Score 1) 278
...Trying to represent files on a computer in anything more than two dimensions is always going to fail
Always?!?!!! You obviously haven't seen Hackers... or Jurassic Park!
Microsoft Wants To Participate In SVG Development 292
rossendryv writes "After many years of fighting against the standard, Microsoft announced they are joining the WC3's SVG working group to help with the development of SVG. 'We recognize that vector graphics are an important component of the next-generation Web platform,' said Patrick Dengler, senior program manager on Microsoft's Internet Explorer team in a blog post."
Happy Birthday, Linus 376
Glyn Moody writes "Today is the birthday of Linus. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first PC: a DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc. Today, the kernel he wrote on that system powers 90% of the fastest supercomputers, and is starting to find its way into more and more smartphones — not to mention everything in between. What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?"
Comment Re:ATI chipsets (Score 1) 195
...A laptop with an R600 chipset is not easy to get working.
You have a good point -- graphics card choices in laptops are limited. But, instead of using windows, or linux without 3D, I just no longer consider laptops with ATI cards (which leaves nvidia choices for now).
I feel your pain though -- I had a T43 with X300 card for a couple years, and that experience is unfortunately burned in my memory.
Google Launches Public DNS Resolver 540
AdmiralXyz writes "Google has announced the launch of their free DNS resolution service, called Google Public DNS. According to their blog post, Google Public DNS uses continuous record prefetching to avoid cache misses — hopefully making the service faster — and implements a variety of techniques to block spoofing attempts. They also say that (unlike an increasing number of ISPs), Google Public DNS behaves exactly according to the DNS standard, and will not redirect you to advertising in the event of a failed lookup. Very cool, but of course there are questions about Google's true motivations behind knowing every site you visit."
Comment Re:ATI chipsets (Score 2, Informative) 195
If you're ok with not-so-open drivers, nvidia 3D cards have worked for years. I am waiting for quality open source 3D linux drivers, but until then, at least 3D can and has worked reliably on linux. (the nvidia-settings tool is reasonable enough that you generally don't need to edit config files)
Google Patents Displaying Patents 93
theodp writes "Google has actually managed to patent displaying patents. The USPTO issued US Patent No. D603,866 to six Google inventors for their 'graphical user interface for display screen of a communications terminal.' Among the six inventors is the guy who introduced Google Patents. Ironically, Google Patents can't seem to find the new Google patent for Google Patents."
Comment Re:He deserves it (Score 1) 541
Actually I am sure that both men created lots of things. But what one thing stands above the others for each man? Or a better question, do you know more people that have used Linux or emacs? Those original tools were key parts needed for Linux to happen. But it was Linux that busted into the mainstream.
Stallman was building an operating system. Linus contributed a kernel for it. The Linux kernel and most open source software is built with gcc. I'll still agree that writing the kernel is no small feat. Otherwise the other two or three kernel options considered for GNU would have been completed before the linux kernel.
Comment Re:He deserves it (Score 5, Insightful) 541
That is the point. Stallman founded a religion, and Torvalds gave us a tool.
Really? Maybe you aren't aware of the tools Stallman wrote? Stallman wrote the first versions of gcc, gdb, emacs, etc.
So if you still want to oversimplify it, this is more accurate: Stallman created tools and created open source. Torvalds created a tool.
