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Ubuntu

Submission + - Canonical licenses h.264 codec 2

Submitted by
FrankNFurter
FrankNFurter writes: "Seen on OMG Ubuntu!:

Canonical are currently the only Linux company to license H.264/AVC, the patented non-free technology used to compress video and favoured by companies such as Apple & Microsoft for HTML5 Video. Neither RedHat, makers of Fedora, or Novell, makers of Suse, appear on the list of over 800 licensee's. What’s interesting is that the rival, if you will, to H.264 is the free and open codec Ogg Theroa which one would naturally assume would be the favoured choice for a Linux distribution’s parent to support. With Canonical putting their weight behind H.264 and already having the most popular desktop Linux distribution this might tip the scales to H264 adoption for HTML5 video on the web. And does this mean Ubuntu 10.04 LTS users are covered and can install H.264 to their systems without worrying about patent issues?

So much for Linux distributors supporting free and open standards like .ogg."

Submission + - Nexuiz Founder licenses Nexuiz for non-GPL use (alientrap.org)

Submitted by King InuYasha
King InuYasha writes: Nexuiz founder Lee Vermuelen, along with several other Nexuiz core developers, has licensed the Nexuiz name, Nexuiz.com domain, and Nexuiz DarkPlaces engine to Illfonic in a deal to get Nexuiz on the Xbox 360. However, the kink is that the engine has been licensed for non-GPL usage. That is, Illfonic has no intention of contributing their code back to the main GPL Nexuiz project. As a result, Nexuiz has been forked into a new project called Xonotic. While the main Nexuiz site doesn't mention that Illfonic has no intention of contributing back, the Xonotic project FAQ states, "Lee Vermeulen, the Nexuiz project founder, decided to license the Nexuiz code, including the Darkplaces engine, to a new game development company named Illfonic so that they could develop a closed-source version for the PS3. As part of this deal, IllFonic acquired the rights to use the name Nexuiz along with the domain nexuiz.com, and are under no obligation to contribute code back to the open-source Nexuiz project (and have stated that they have no intention of doing so)." Additionally, the Xonotic project states that Illfonic "may be in violation of the GPL as most contributors to the Nexuiz codebase have not relicensed their work for inclusion in a closed-source project."
Windows

Submission + - Autopatcher Taken Down. (autopatcher.com)

Submitted by
KyoMamoru
KyoMamoru writes: ""Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher is probably history. As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took the download page down. We would like to thank you for your support. For the past 4 years, it has been a blast. Unfortunately, it seems like it's the end of AutoPatcher as we know it. Comments are welcome... Antonis Kaladis""
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Kills AutoPatcher

Submitted by Sounder40
Sounder40 writes: Sad news indeed from the AutoPatcher crew:

"Today we received an e-mail from Microsoft, requesting the immediate take-down of the download page, which of course means that AutoPatcher is probably history. As much as we disagree, we can do very little, and although the download page is merely a collection of mirrors, we took the download page down.

We would like to thank you for your support. For the past 4 years, it has been a blast. Unfortunately, it seems like it's the end of AutoPatcher as we know it.
United States

Submission + - The USA is Turning into a Subprime Borrower (populistamerica.com)

Submitted by
populist
populist writes: "Much in the same way that US investors were "steered" into rip-off mortgage loans, the entire country has been "steered" into an economic crisis. The question is how to get out of it.

In the subprime loan scandal, unscrupulous brokers conned home buyers with poor credit histories into deals designed to profit lenders and bleed borrowers. Contract "teasers" hid ballooning monthly payments while a lack of regulation allowed the scam to continue unabated. Millions more Americans now face losing their homes.

The Bush administration similarly used promises of cakewalks and increased security to con the US public into wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. US taxpayers have spent over $450 billion on Iraq alone, while Bush/Cheney cronies continue making a killing from military contracts. Meanwhile, global security has degenerated and over 4,100 US service members have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with an untold number of coalition troops, contractors and civilians.

http://www.populistamerica.com/the_usa_is_turning_ into_a_subprime_borrower"
Announcements

Submission + - Resurrection of Suprnova

Submitted by tW
tW writes: The Pirate Bay has recently ressurected Suprnova, giving a statement about their purposes and the fate of those against them:

"Suprnova has been down for some years due to some heavy pressure from the copyright lobby. The former owner sloncek donated suprnova to The Pirate Bay — and as you know, we like to kick ass and bow for noone!

We were going to keep this site a secret until we had finished it, but of course it leaked, that's how internet works. So now that the word is out, we're releasing it!

Please consider these first weeks/months as a beta test. Since we love all you guys and gals so much we decided to keep it an open beta test. That means, please behave, don't complaint to much and if you discover any weird bugs or problems, let us know.

Some of you have also already discovered our new forum, Suprbay! Which is a joint forum for both Suprnova and The Pirate Bay. Discuss movies, music, love and whatever with your fellow pirates.

Finally, some words for non-internet loving companies: This is how it works. Whatever you sink, we build back up. Whomever you sue, ten new pirates are recruited. Wherever you go, we are already ahead of you. You are the past and the forgotten, we are the internet and the future.

y'arr!"
Space

Submission + - The first quark supernova (arxivblog.com) 2

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "The largest supernova ever recorded ain't what it seems. Astronomers watched this thing explode in real time last year and were amazed to see it release 100 times more energy than any other supernova. Now astrophysicists think the only way to account for all the energy is if the star were made entirely of quarks. That's cool because quark stars were proposed by Ed Witten at Princeton over 20 years ago."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - The Great Internet Swear Word Project (doyoukissyourmotherwiththatmouth.co.uk)

Submitted by
morner
morner writes: "The great internet swear word project aims to find the best swear word in the world according to you, the internet. Each visitor to this page is offered a choice between two randomly selected user-submitted swear words, their vote is recorded and fed into a Condorcet voting algorithm. Over the course of many thousands of votes, an accurate picture of the group preference emerges and thus, or so the theory goes, the world's best swear word may be identified unambiguously. YMMV."
The Internet

Submission + - A campaign to block Firefox users (whyfirefoxisblocked.com) 5

Submitted by rarwes
rarwes writes: A website is aiming at blocking Firefox users. This because a fraction of the Firefox users installed an Ad Blocker and thus stealing money from website owners that use ads. They recommend using IE, Opera or IE tab. From the site: Demographics have shown that not only are FireFox users a somewhat small percentage of the internet, they actually are even smaller in terms of online spending, therefore blocking FireFox seems to have only minimal financial drawbacks, whereas ending resource theft has tremendous financial rewards for honest, hard-working website owners and developers.
OS X

Submission + - DreamLinux Live CD Review: An OS X Copy Cat (madpenguin.org)

Submitted by linuxer
linuxer writes: MadPenguin.org has its review of DreamLinux Live CD, which according to the author looks very polished and OS X-like. He writes, "The installer is really well done, and other distros should be taking notes. Big applause to DreamLinux on this, seriously! It's a clean presentation of everything on one dialog. I was also delighted to see that I could setup both my admin account and user account from the same page as well. But then the installer had a serious flaw in usability — how do I select the mount points? Having used installers like this before, I realized that I had to select the partition I wanted by highlighting it with a mouse click, and then un-intuitively left click on the downward column representing the mount point. The column in question is labeled "mnt pt." Wow, how could anyone not get this, especially with such a great resolution, right? Give me a break.
The Internet

Submission + - Don't Kill The Trolls, But Feed Them (seorefugee.com) 2

Submitted by
Henk van Ess
Henk van Ess writes: "Voelspriet.nl has initiated an idea to rid communities (be it forums, blogs, whatever) of trolls. Not get rid of them by banning them or nuking their posts, no, by accepting their trolly messages and keeping them at ease. The smart thing is that this anti-troll plug-in only shows the trolly stuff to the troll itself. That way, the other community members need not suffer. The idea was presented today on Dutch radio in Radio Online. A free beta plug-in for Wordpress will be available soon."
United States

Submission + - Computer glitch holds up 20,000 at LA Airport

Submitted by
FrankNFurter
FrankNFurter writes: "The LA Times writes:

More than 20,000 international passengers were stranded for hours at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, waiting on airplanes and in packed customs halls while a malfunctioning computer system prevented U.S. officials from processing the travelers' entry into the country.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection system went down around 2 p.m., forcing some planes to sit on the tarmac for so long that workers had to refuel them to keep their power units and air conditioning running. Maintenance workers ran trucks around the airport hooking up tubes to service lavatories.
A consequence of overly paranoid laws regarding entrance into the US, or a necessary evil to keep terrorists out? You decide."
Windows

Submission + - Vista Performance Hotfixes are Published

Submitted by Annonymous Coward
Annonymous Coward writes: Many have been anticipating the releases of the Vista Performance and Compatibility hotfixes this Tuesday, but it has not been clear that they would be released on Patch Tuesday (8/14). However, there is some good news if you are anxious to load these updates. The final updates are out (not the Beta), and available by searching for the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles.

Vista Performance and Reliability Pack:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;938979

Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; EN-US;938194

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