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Book Reviews

Book Review: Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers 91

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
JR0cket writes"Inkscape is an open source 2D drawing tool that helps you create graphic designs, from simple buttons and logos to full blown posters and web page designs. Inkscape is similar to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw and gives you a vector based graphics tool that uses the W3C Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Inkscape is easy to use, although learning the tricks that make designing a web site look great are more involved. The Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web designers is specifically focused on helping you to create your first web site designs and does a great job of getting you started. Most if not all the techniques covered are relevant to creating other graphic works too, so its useful as a general Inkscape tutorial." Read on for the rest of John's review.
Iphone

Submission + - iPhone workers still sick after chemical poisoning (cio.com.au)

Submitted by
swandives
swandives writes: "Chinese workers who suffered chemical poisoning after being exposed to n-hexane on an iPhone production line are still experiencing health problems, even though Apple reports "all affected workers have been treated successfully" in its most recent progress report on its suppliers. n-hexane is a chemical cleaning agent that was used at one of its supplier's factories in Suzhou, China."

Submission + - Employee Termination Procedures 3

Submitted by RoyaleA
RoyaleA writes: I've worked in the IT industry for 8 years and for whatever reason I've never had to deal with a disgruntled employee that either quits or is terminated. It just happened last week. This employee was a VP, so they had access to a lot of company data (client information, financials, etc). Now, I like to think of myself as paranoid when it comes to keeping records of everything that goes on since I still have access log files from 2003, but I'm wondering what exact procedures other SysAdmins take when dealing with this. It's a small company (10 client nodes, 2 servers) so there's no real policy in place to go by. So far, I've disabled the account on the LDAP, disabled the employee's website credentials, archived all of the access logs to an encrypted flash drive, and cloned their old PC to an offsite backup machine. Being a responsible admin, I need to ask...is there anything I'm overlooking? This employee was pretty pissed off...

Submission + - Company resells Open Source Software (blender.org)

Submitted by
sylphsama
sylphsama writes: "A company named "IllusionMage" deceptively resells a 3D open source animation package (www.blender.org) and claims it as their own. The software, dubbed IllusionMage, portrays flagrant similarities with Blender, although outdated compared to the original. The website itself is a patchwork of sorts, using renders from different users and numerous other packages as a way to impress its visitors. Not only is that a breach in copyright, but they intentionally hide that the software is distributed under the GNU GPL license, rendering it free to use. Here's their website: http://computeranimations.org./ The Blender Foundation itself has spoken out through its chairman Ton Roosendaal."

Submission + - Make more money than Zuckerberg == fired (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
Dryanta
Dryanta writes: "I made a Fortune 50 company at least 18 billion dollars, and got fired for it. I optimized their application implementation and got the best customer kudos email ever sent to a F5 support rep, and trying to advise management that these results are simple with the right approach resulted in termination. I am disclosing the emails Assange style and wanted the /. crew to be the first to rip it apart."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft and Nvidia abandon PC Gaming Alliance (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ever since Microsoft turned its back on Windows gaming in favour of the closed Xbox Ecosystem, the platform has been crying out for a champion. The company occasionally gives nods towards a revived focus upon PC gaming, most recently with yet another relaunch for Games for Windows Live and a trio of upcoming PC games, but when it comes to throwing cash around the Xbox is the beneficiary. What can definitely be said is that the one group that should be championing the PC, the PC Gaming Alliance, is going backwards. In 2009 the group lost the biggest PC game developer/publisher Activision-Blizzard, and now it seems that both Microsoft and Nvidia have bid the alliance farewell. This sounds pretty unimpressive considering the operating system developer, both major graphics manufacturers and the publisher of the biggest PC game have departed the alliance.
Movies

Submission + - Former Senator Chris Dodd Set to Head MPAA

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Hill reports that former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut is set to become the new chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America taking over the $1.2 million position and the job of coordinating the policy goals of the various member studios. Interim CEO and president Bob Pisano says that organization's unwavering focus on its top priority will remain increasing the federal government's efforts to stop online film piracy. The MPAA is optimistic about its legislative prospects this Congress, thanks to the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee (headed by Dodd's close friend Senator Patrick Leahy) last year before stalling in the full Senate. The bipartisan bill would make it easier for the Justice Department to shut down websites that traffic pirated music, movies and counterfeit goods. While a member of the Senate, Dodd was an adamant opponent of the the FISA bill that granted retroactive immunity to telecoms who engaged in warrantless wiretapping. As to what type of organization will await Dodd when he begins, an MPAA spokesman acknowledged the organization sustained a 20 percent budget cut during the height of the recession but said the MPAA's decision was not unlike those taken by many peer trade groups."
Android

Submission + - First Alpha of Qt for Android Released (sourceforge.net) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of the Nokia's announcement that it will be cheerfully throwing its existing developer community under a bus by not offering Qt for Windows Phone, a project to implement Qt on Android has announced its initial alpha release. Necessitas project lead Bogdan Vatra writes, 'I had a dream that one day, I'll be able to deploy existing Qt software on any Android platform. I had a dream that one day, all Qt applications will use system wide shared Qt libraries. I had a dream that one day, all Qt applications once compiled and deployed to one android platform, will run on any other newer android platform and will last for years without any recompilation. I had a dream that one day, I'll be able to create, manage, compile debug and deploy Qt apps using a first class citizen IDE. Now, those dreams become reality.' The Necessitas wiki offers some documentation on Qt for Android. A demo video of Qt for Android in action is also available.

Submission + - VPS security. Can Mallory compromise Alice?

Submitted by gpuk
gpuk writes: Like everyone else, I have enthusiastically embraced the virtualisation revolution and now recommend this approach to most of my clients when they are deciding how to host their web properties. Root access, immediate provisioning and easy scalability all for a fraction of what dedicated hosting costs. What's not to like? On the face of it nothing but lately I've been wondering about security. Specifically, what happens if a malicious user finds a bug in Xen / Vmware / KVM allowing them to break out of their guest instance and on to the host machine (that may also be running my guests)? Scanning the FAQs of popular VPS providers yields surprisingly little detail on what security exists between my guest and someone else's and what attack vectors might theoretically exist. Is this the achillies heal of virtualised hosting versus dedicated or am I being paranoid?
Space

Submission + - Why Faster-than-Light Travel is Impossible (reddit.com) 1

Submitted by
rsk
rsk writes: "reddit user purpsicle27 asked "Why exactly can nothing go faster than the speed of light?" and got a slew of excellent replies. One reply in particular, by user "RobotRollCall" (RRC), was a favorite thanks to its simplification of an inherently complex matter and easy to understand examples.

According to other reddit folk, RRC has been notoriously tight-lipped about his real identity but continually drops excellent written comments into the community from time to time. reddit user mazsa suggested that RRC is actually popular science author Brian Greene, author of the The Fabric of the Cosmos. I don't know if that is true, but the reviews from his existing books seem to suggest that the easy-to-understand style is a very Greene trait."
Android

Submission + - Android Honeycomb Born Too Early

Submitted by adeelarshad82
adeelarshad82 writes: This year's Mobile World Confress was the stage for dozens of new tablets, unfortunately though Android Honeycomb tablets lacked presence to the extend that amongst the top Android tablets showcased at the show, only Motorola Xoom was running Honeycomb where as others were running either Android 2.3 or older versions. Moreover most of the top apps announced for the OS were not new; just reworked. Gigaom may believe that Honeycomb tablets will be iPad's true competition but in my opinion progress has been slow. Honeycomb was born too early, primarily out pressure of iPad getting a one year head start in the tablet industry.
Oracle

Submission + - Netbeans 7 without JUnit, legally speaking (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
JR0cket
JR0cket writes: "Trying out the latest Netbeans 7 beta 2 release, you quickly see the gentle influence of the Oracle lawyers have had on the Netbeans development team. JUnit testing framework is no longer distributed with Netbeans 7 onwards.

All is not lost though as the first time you run Netbeans 7 you are immediately prompted as to whether you want to install the JUnit testing framework into Netbeans, via the Netbeans plugin for JUnit. As JUnit is pretty much standard for all Java development these days, it seems a strange thing to ask, but when legal concerns get in the way of common sense I guess these things happen. You can still install the Netbeans plug-in later on if you choose not to do it straight away, or if you are not connected to the Internet and therefore cannot connect to the Netbeans "app store" for plugins.

As has been previously reported by NetBeans Platform Architect Jaroslav Tulach, Oracle lawyers are concerned by the overly constrictive conditions of the Common Public Licence used by JUnit and have caused a hold-up on the Netbeans 7 release. This CPL license could be interpreted to mean that if Oracle ever sues a contributor to JUnit for patent infringement, then all patent licenses granted to Oracle by that contributor could be revoked. So the license certainly seems restrictive if you are in the litigation business.

According to Kent Beck, if the CPL license is a big enough problem to get lawyers involved, then its an important enough reason to buy a commercial licence. Unless Oracle wants to pay for a commercial license, pay to get JUnit re-licensed or forget about suing anyone contributing to JUnit, then I guess the Netbeans team will have to keep their work-around.

At least it seems that Netbeans 7 is back on track now and fingers crossed that Oracle decides it will not sue anyone who contributes to JUnit."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Minecraft Documentary to be a feature film-length (gamersleak.com)

Submitted by
Gamersleak
Gamersleak writes: "A few months ago, 2 Player Productions which have been doing wonders with Sony, MTV, G4, CurrentTV, Pitchfork Media, Spike TV, Gametrailers.com, Video Games Live, and 8bitpeoples, have announced that it was working on a documentary on the making of Minecraft. Their original plan was to make a small 20 minute film of the first week of the game’s development studio Mojang Specifications. Now, the team has announced that this project would become a feature film-length project."
News

Submission + - Physicists Build Bigger 'Bottles' of Antimatter (sciencedaily.com) 1

Submitted by intellitech
intellitech writes: Once regarded as the stuff of science fiction, antimatter — the mirror image of the ordinary matter in our observable universe — is now the focus of laboratory studies around the world. While physicists routinely produce antimatter with radioisotopes and particle colliders, cooling these antiparticles and containing them for any length of time is another story. Clifford Surko, a professor of physics at UC San Diego, who is constructing what he hopes will be the world's largest antimatter container, said physicists have recently developed new methods to make special states of antimatter in which they can create large clouds of antiparticles, compress them and make specially tailored beams for a variety of uses.

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