Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Media

Theora 1.0 Released, Supported By Firefox 310

Posted by timothy from the funny-name-and-all dept.
YA_Python_dev writes "The Xiph.Org Foundation announced Monday the release of Theora 1.0. Theora is a free/open source video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties. Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera will play natively Ogg/Theora videos with the new HTML5 element <video src="file.ogv"></video>, and ffmpeg2theora offers an easy way to create content. Theora developers are already working on a 1.1 encoder that offers better quality/bitrate ratio, while producing streams backward-compatible with the current decoder." Adds reader logfish: "Since its bit-stream freeze in June of 2004 there have been numerous speed-ups and bug-fixes. Although Nokia claimed it to be proprietary almost a year ago, nothing has been proven. So now it's time to help it take over the internet, and finally push for video sites filled with Theora encoded vlogs, blurts and idle nonsense."
Intel

Submission + - Intel Core 2 "Penryn" and Linux (linuxhardware.org)

Submitted by
LHoAugustus
LHoAugustus writes: "Linux Hardware has posted a look at the new Intel "Penryn" processor and how the new processor will work with Linux. "Intel recently released the new "Penryn" Core 2 processor with many new features. So what are these features and how will they equate into benefits to Linux users? That's what Linux Hardware is here to unravel. In this review I'll cover all the high points of the new "Penryn" core and talk to a couple Linux projects about the impact on end-user performance.""
Music

Submission + - CBS buys last.fm for $280m (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
JimBowen
JimBowen writes: "Music recommendation based social networking site Last.fm have announced that the US broadcasting giant CBS have bought them out for $230 million.
In a blog post, Last.fm's Richard Jones claims that the buy-out will not affect the site's open-source client, the absence of DRM in their web radio or their privacy policy. However there is considerable dissent of the deal on the site's forums.

Following the purchases of MySpace and YouTube, could this be the fate of all successful independent "web 2.0" sites, reminiscent of the massive surge of buyouts in the dotcom boom?"
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Fedora 7 Released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Fedora 7 has been released and represents the culmination of several goals that Fedora has spent the last few releases (spanning the course of at least 2 years) working to achieve. This release includes significant new versions of many key components and technologies such as KDE 3.5.6, GNOME 2.18, Xorg 7.3 and Linux Kernel 2.6.21.
Censorship

Submission + - Indigenous Poverty: The true story. (newtfn.com)

Submitted by
3rdworld
3rdworld writes: "In 2003, the NB Court of Appeal ruled that Joshua Bernard, a Mi'kmaq logger, had been wrongfully convicted in April 2000 of illegally harvesting spruce logs on Crown land. It also ruled that Mr. Bernard was the beneficiary of a treaty right, and could earn a "moderate livelihood". The government went to the Supreme Court of Canada which promptly overturned the lower court. Following the Appeal Court 's decision, Andrea bear Nicholas relates to the facts of the matter in this prophetic 2003 article."
Communications

Submission + - 'iPhone in stores June 15 - in limited quantities' (texyt.com)

Submitted by The Emperor Vespasian
The Emperor Vespasian writes: Many stores operated by AT&T, the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone mobile phone, say they expect to have the iPhone in stock on June 15, but will have only a handful of phones in stock initially, according to AT&T retail staff at a number of stores. Is the iPhone going to see the same kind of carefully stage-managed scarcity that attended the launch of video games consoles like the Xbox 360 and PS3?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Surface bears striking resemblance to Bu (blorge.com)

Submitted by
secretsather
secretsather writes: "http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/05/31/mi crosoft-surface-bears-striking-resemblance-to-bump top/

Microsoft Surface bears striking resemblance to Bumptop

By now, you've probably already heard of Microsoft's former 'top secret' project, known as Surface, which is a table-shaped computer that boasts a 30 touch screen for interactive 'touch' computing. It's certainly a great idea, but everyone seems to be missing the fact that this technology has been done before, in a prototype known as Bumptop.

The YouTube video (shown above) of Bumptop was added just a little under 1 year ago, and has since become the #1 watched video with over 1.8 million views to date.

The Microsoft Surface video (shown above) looks exactly like Bumptop, despite being a bit more polished.

Microsoft claims its idea for Surface came about in 2001, but oddly enough, no one from Microsoft, or anywhere else for that matter had mentioned this technology in the past. The idea is being played off as a 'top secret' project from Microsoft, justifying the delay in the announcement.

So was Surface dreamed up after Bumptop? Would you put it past Microsoft to copy someone else's technology, fabricate a history for it, and 1 year later release its 'future computing interface?'

The cards are on the table; you decide."
United States

Submission + - Defense Contractor Halliburton Moving HQ to Dubai

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Much-maligned defense contractor Halliburton is moving its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai's friendly tax laws will add to Halliburton's bottom line. Last year, it earned $2.3B in profits. Sen. Patrick Leahy called the company's move 'corporate greed at its worst.' Halliburton, once headed by VP Dick Cheney, has received contracts valued at an estimated $25.7B for its work in Iraq."
Space

Submission + - New Earthlike planet detector should launch soon

Submitted by AlphaLop
AlphaLop writes: The hunt for Earth-like planets is to be stepped-up as a new mission prepares for launch.

Corot will be the first spacecraft capable of detecting rocky planets just a few times bigger than Earth that are orbiting neighbouring stars.

It will also uncover information on the stars themselves, determining their mass, age and chemical composition.

The mission, led by the French space agency Cnes, is due to launch on the 26 or 27 December.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6210012. stm
Space

Submission + - X9 Solar Flare!

Submitted by RacerZero
RacerZero writes: spaceweather.com is reporting the observation of a major X9 class solar flare this morning at 1035 UT. The flare was not pointed earthward but there could be more to come. Flares of this kind can blackout radio communications planet-wide.
Networking

Submission + - Internet2 turns 10 and upgrades

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As an update to a previous story, Internet2 is celebrating its 10th anniversary in Chicago this week at it's fall conference. In addition, they're announcing the initial stages of their second significant network upgrade of their backbone network. Engineers are providing daily blog updates of the network install process as the old network is transitioned to the new. In addition to changing to a Level3-managed and Internet2-provisioned DWDM transport system for backbone capacity, I2 is implementing a new connection-oriented backbone network based on the Ciena CoreDirector platform in concert with the routed IP network.
Announcements

Submission + - 3 of 4 in Kim Family Found; James Still Missing

Submitted by sanimalp
sanimalp writes: Kati Kim, and her 2 daughters, Penelope and Sabine were found in their car in a remote area of Oregon after being lost for nearly 9 days. The family reportedly ran their car until it ran out of gas to stay warm, and then burned the tires one by one to keep warm. James apparently set out on foot 2 days ago in an attempt to get help. Here is to hoping that James Can be found in time.
Security

Submission + - The Case for OpenID

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VeriSign and NetMesh are making the case for OpenID, the grass-roots, decentralized digital identity system already supported by LiveJournal, Six Apart, Technorati, VeriSign and many startups, reportedly growing 5% every single week. They say OpenID "is fundamentally different from other identity technologies" because it is a "fully decentralized system" and has a "much lighter cost structure" than any alternative, like Microsoft Passport, CardSpace or Liberty Alliance.

Time to remove username and password from your site and add OpenID libraries instead, so visitors can authenticate with their blog URL?

Slashdot Top Deals

If all else fails, lower your standards.

Close