358319
submission
Opurt writes:
On the first day of the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Boston this week, a roundtable session focused on the vision for the upcoming Hardy Heron Ubuntu release. Unlike Gutsy Gibbon, which brought a handful of experimental features along with some new functionality, the focus with Heron will be on robustness as it will be supported on the desktop for 3 years. 'The Compiz window manager, which adds sophisticated visual effects to the Ubuntu user interface, will be a big target for usability improvements. Keyboard bindings and session management were noted as two areas where Compiz still needs some work.' PolicyKit and Tracker will also be significantly tweaked, while Heron is also likely to see a complete visual refresh.
295795
submission
mlimber writes:
The Freakonomic guys and friends take a look at the future of the music industry in light of digital music. An excerpt from one of their "Quorum" contributors: "[W]hat is the explanation for the sales reduction that has occurred [with albums]? The most obvious culprit is illicit file-sharing on networks such as Napster, KaZaA, eDonkey, and BitTorrent. While linking the two seems tantalizing — file sharing rose to prominence at roughly the same time that record sales started to fall — there is surprisingly little evidence to support the claim that file sharing has significantly hurt record sales.... If file sharing hurts record sales, then albums that are more heavily downloaded should experience lower sales than comparable albums that are less downloaded. But, after controlling for the role of popularity, we found that downloads had little effect on album sales." He also notes: "[A]lbum sales fell 18 percent between 2000 and 2006, after accounting for paid digital downloads from online stores like iTunes. While these numbers are not good, other industries have experienced similar downturns. For example, new car sales are down 22 percent for U.S. automakers."
264463
submission
flanksteak writes:
In a move that seems to make no sense (even after a long explanation), Sun's CEO Jonathon Schwartz announced on his blog today that Sun will be changing their NASDAQ stock trading symbol from SUNW to JAVA.
Initial reaction in the comments of the blog appears to be mostly negative.
182813
submission
flanksteak writes:
Several media outlets sent reporters to tour the new Creation Museum in Kentucky. The AP story is at the SF Chronicle, but a longer and more in depth article is at Salon (must watch ad first).
All I can say is, Wow, some people's self-denial knows almost no bounds.
160259
submission
DrNASA writes:
An article that quoted George Lucas as saying that SpiderMan 3 is a 'silly movie' also had this interesting bit of King Geek speak:
"And here's a little news: Lucas tells me he will make two more live-action films based in the "Star Wars" era.
"But they won't have members of the Skywalker family as characters," he said. "They will be other people of that milieu." "
TFA — http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,270874,00.html
126427
submission
jddj writes:
A USAF airman suffered second-degree burns during a testing exercise for a "non-lethal" weapon in south Georgia (the US state, not the nation) this week. The "Active Denial System" uses a beam of RF energy to make men, women and children in its path feel like they're about to catch fire.
The weapon is designed for crowd control, and is presently planned for use in Afghanistan. Curious minds wonder how long it'll be before the now-emerging western police states begin to use it for dispersal of lawful demonstrations — or even to prevent them by force of intimidation.
(NB: I initially thought this looked like it might go under "Wireless Networking", but thought better and filed under "Education". I'm thinking Pavlov. Are you?)
126393
submission
IdaAshley writes:
Applications using the LAMP architecture, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl, are constantly being developed and deployed. This first article in a series of three covers the LAMP architecture, some measurement techniques, and some basic Linux kernel, disk, and file system tweaks. This series of three articles discusses many of the server configuration items that can make or break an application's performance.
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