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GUI

The User Experiences Of The Future 230

Posted by Zonk from the just-give-me-a-cyber-implanted-hud-with-ai-assistance dept.
Patrick Griffin writes "The way that we interact with technology is almost as important as what that technology does. Productivity has been improved greatly over the years as we've adapted ourselves and our tools to technological tasks. Just the same, the UI experience of most hardware and software often leaves novice users out in the cold. The site 'Smashing Magazine' has put together a presentation of 'some of the outstanding recent developments in the field of user experience design. Most techniques seem very futuristic, and are extremely impressive. Keep in mind: they might become ubiquitous over the next years.'"
Music

RIAA Claims Ownership of All Artist Royalties For Internet Radio 458

Posted by Zonk from the isn't-that-called-stealing dept.
ISurfTooMuch writes "With the furor over the impending rate hike for Internet radio stations, wouldn't a good solution be for streaming internet stations to simply not play RIAA-affiliated labels' music and focus on independent artists? Sounds good, except that the RIAA's affiliate organization SoundExchange claims it has the right to collect royalties for any artist, no matter if they have signed with an RIAA label or not. 'SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free ... So how it works is that SoundExchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of SoundExchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties.'"
Communications

Samsung's UpStage Looks To Trump iPhone 197

Posted by kdawson from the flip dept.
bj sends word of Samsung's recently unveiled cell phone, called UpStage. It will ship April 1 (no fooling) for $300, or $150 with a 2-year contract from Sprint Nextel. "...the UpStage is a candy-bar style handset that's less than half an inch thick and not much taller or wider than an iPod Nano. Other multimedia-friendly cell phones struggle to balance the sometimes-conflicting requirements of a conventional handset and a music or video player; the UpStage solves this quandary by simply putting phone functions on one side of the device and the multimedia functions on the other side."
Science

Organism Survives 100 Million Years Without Sex 343

Posted by samzenpus from the they-must-play-dungeons-and-dragons-too dept.
zyl0x writes "The Times has an interesting article online on the discovery of a 100-million-year-old micro-organism which has survived its entire lifespan without sex." From the article "A tiny creature that has not had sex for 100 million years has overturned the theory that animals need to mate to create variety. Analysis of the jaw shapes of bdelloid rotifers, combined with genetic data, revealed that the animals have diversified under pressure of natural selection. Researchers say that their study "refutes the idea that sex is necessary for diversification into evolutionary species".
Databases

Submission + - Configuring Compiere without Oracle

Submitted by masterkumon
masterkumon writes: Compiere is an open source ERP software built in Java. It will be widely use entire world, since other ERP software such as SAP is very expensive. Unfortunately Compiere is originally built for Oracle and DB 2 that is listed on the DB connectivity 3rd party software.
It would be very nice if there is someone developing Compiere connectivity to communicate with free DB server such as MySQL or posgresql.
GUI

Is Ubuntu a Serious Desktop Contender? 463

Posted by Cliff from the land-of-the-heavy-weights dept.
Exter-C asks: "2006 was the year that a large amount of people started to talk Ubuntu as a possible contender for the Enterprise Linux desktop. There are several key issues that have to be raised: Is Ubuntu/Canonical really capable of maintaining Dapper Drake (6.06 LTS) for 5 years? I know this is not a new question but the evidence after 6 months seems to be negative. A case in point is the 4-5+ day delay for critical updates to packages like Firefox. Given that such a large percentage of people use their desktop systems on the web critical, browser vulnerabilities seem to be one of the core pieces of a secure desktop environment (user stupidity excluded). Can Ubuntu/Canonical really compete with the likes of Red Hat, who had patches available (RHSA-2006:0758) the day that the updates came out?"
Red Hat Software

Fedora Project to Help Revitalize RPM 334

Posted by CowboyNeal from the breathing-life-back-in dept.
-=Moridin=- writes "The Fedora Project has announced plans to revitalize RPM, the package manager used by many Linux distros. According to the announcement, 'Job #1 is to take the current RPM codebase and clean it up, and in doing so work with all the other people and groups who rely on RPM to build a first-rate upstream project.' For more information, see the the RPM web site and the new wiki-based RPM FAQ. The issue of RPM's upstream development has been a thorny issue ever since Jeff Johnson, the original maintainer of RPM, left Red Hat."

The Future is Plastic ... Bridges 72

Posted by timothy from the good-enough-for-gaston-glock dept.
ches_grin writes "BusinessWeek reports on the latest in bridge-building technology, where new materials and techniques are allowing bridges to be built in places that were previously thought impossible. New plastics are allowing bridges to be lighter and stronger than concrete, and 'using cables and new suspension techniques, these bridges traverse bodies of water that were once too deep, too soft-floored, or too earthquake-prone for conventional methods.' The article also includes a slideshow of some of the most innovative bridges, some still under construction."

EU Fines for Microsoft Approved, Off the Record 692

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the whatever-that-means dept.
mattaw writes "The Register is carrying a report that all 25 member states of the EU have found Microsoft guilty of non-compliance, off the record. Microsoft is in line for a fine of $2.51 million per day backdated to December 15th 2004 for failing to meet the terms of the EU commission's ruling."

Iran Cracks Down on Bloggers 261

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the not-too-distant-future dept.
Wired News is reporting that dozens of Iranian Bloggers have been met with harassment by the government and some have even been arrested for voicing dissenting views in recent history. The article takes a look at some of the bloggers who are fighting for their rights and how. From the article: "The Iranian blogging community, known as Weblogistan, is relatively new. It sprang to life in 2001 after hard-liners -- fighting back against a reformist president -- shut down more than 100 newspapers and magazines, and detained writers. At the time, Derakhshan posted instructions on the internet in Farsi on how to set up a weblog."

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