381347
submission
ohrmazd writes:
Firefox 3 is getting a visual refresh for better integration with Mac OS X and Windows, but original plans called for Linux to be left out of the fun. That decision was reversed and Ars has a look at some of the new themes. 'A patch submitted by Michael Ventnor makes the Firefox 3 toolbar use stock GTK icons from the user's GNOME icon theme. We tested this feature extensively and found that it worked very well with Tango, the default GNOME icon theme, Ubuntu's Human icon theme, and a variety of other popular third-party icon themes downloaded from gnome-look.org.' So far, it looks very promising.
293023
submission
suraklin writes:
Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time Series has died of a rare blood disease. Jordan was working on what was to be the 12th and final book of the series.
293021
submission
The GNU Wing in Egypt writes:
The 10th issue of Amarok Weekly Newsletter is out the door with a brief overview of development being done on Amarok 2.0, and with some hot screenshots! The upcoming 2.x series sports a more-than-major interface overhaul (making use of new Qt4 graphics features and SVG support) and integration of multiple music services among other features (currently Magnatune, Jamendo, Shoutcast and MP3Tunes Locker are in development.) A contest has been launched for a new first run theme to be included with 2.0. It should be noted that Amarok 2 will (like most KDE 4 applications) be easily portable to non-X11 platforms, most importantly Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. On Windows, you can already see the first signs of life!
248981
submission
deadmantyping writes:
Ars Technica reports on a survey of 6,260 responses which indicates that only 40 percent of PS3 owners knew that their console included Bluray. Apparently a large portion of gamers aren't aware of the non-gaming capabilities of their systems. Ars speculates that this might help explain Nintendo's apparent dominance in the console market since their introduction of the Wii.
241873
submission
Anonymous writes:
The Hydrogenaudio community is conducting a "Public, Multiformat Listening Test" (http://www.listening-tests.info/mf-64-1/) to see which codecs (AAC, WMA Pro and Vorbis) provide the best sound quality when compressing samples at 64kbps.
This test is open until the 5th of August and seems to be much, much harder than what one would expect, even for experienced developers of sound codecs, at bitrates that the public would find "too little", as the comments on the thread at the discussion forums (see: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?show topic=56397).
Do you think that you have good ears? That 64kbps is "too little"? Then try it for yourself and participate. Your participation will help us improve the codecs so that they are even closer to being "transparent" at such "low" bitrates.
