(Useful) Stupid Vim Tricks? 702
haroldag writes "I thoroughly enjoyed the recent post about Unix tricks, so I ask Slashdot vim users, what's out there? :Sex, :b#, marks, ctags. Any tricks worth sharing?"
Submission + - Multiformat Listening Test at 64kbps 1
prospective_user writes: "Do you think you have good ears? Think again.
The community at Hydrogenaudio has prepared a Public Listening Test for comparison of the most popular audio codecs (AAC, Vorbis, and Microsoft's WMA included) in a battle to see how they stand at compressing audio at 64kbps.
Many of the participants right now have expressed their surprise at being unable to determine which is the original and which is the compressed version of 18 samples covering a vast amount of musical styles.
The results of this test (and other that are conducted at Hydrogenaudio) will be used by the developers of the codecs to further improve the "transparency" and let this kind of test be even harder.
Everyone is invited to participate and show how good your listening is!"
The community at Hydrogenaudio has prepared a Public Listening Test for comparison of the most popular audio codecs (AAC, Vorbis, and Microsoft's WMA included) in a battle to see how they stand at compressing audio at 64kbps.
Many of the participants right now have expressed their surprise at being unable to determine which is the original and which is the compressed version of 18 samples covering a vast amount of musical styles.
The results of this test (and other that are conducted at Hydrogenaudio) will be used by the developers of the codecs to further improve the "transparency" and let this kind of test be even harder.
Everyone is invited to participate and show how good your listening is!"
Submission + - Minimig: Amiga on FPGA with GPL'd verilog code (hetnet.nl)
akkartik writes: "Minimig stands for Mini Amiga. Minimig is an FPGA-based re-implementation of the original Amiga 500 hardware. In it's current form, Minimig is a single PCB measuring only 12*12cm which makes it the smallest "Amiga" ever made and the first new "Amiga" in almost 14 years!"
Submission + - USB Memory Stick as Malicious Tool (informit.com)
Nitsudima writes: By inserting a seemingly innocent looking USB stick into your computer, a malicious person can steal all sorts of data, infect your system with Trojans, and more. Seth Fogie and Cyrus Peikari look at how a USB stick can be turned into a malicious tool, what it can do, and how you can prevent this type of attack.
Submission + - How to bypass a TPM with a piece of wire (root.org)
Trailrunner7 writes: "Security super-genius Nate Lawson has an excellent analysis of a new attack on TPM version 1.1: "Trusted Computing has been a controversial addition to PCs since it was first announced as Palladium in 2002. Recently, a group at Dartmouth implemented an attack first described by Bernhard Kauer earlier this year. The attack is very simple, using only a 3-inch piece of wire. As with the Sharpie DRM hack, people are wondering how a system designed by a major industry group over such a long period could be so easily bypassed.""
Submission + - Lost Sonic Xterme game for Sega Saturn released (thepiratebay.org)
ASSEMblergames writes: The lost Sonic 3D game for Sega Saturn has been found and released
by a group of collectors.
Sonic Xtreme featured the Sega Nights engine, which was used in a demo by Sega USA.
This lead to conflict with Sega Japan reaching the point of a the threat by Sonic Team
to quit Sega. Needless to say, the version was axed, a later version was also killed off
as unworkable.
This game previously sold for $3000 in 1996 and was finally bought by almost 100 people and released.
You'll have to jump to the piratebay for the torrent.
Sonic Xtreme featured the Sega Nights engine, which was used in a demo by Sega USA.
This lead to conflict with Sega Japan reaching the point of a the threat by Sonic Team
to quit Sega. Needless to say, the version was axed, a later version was also killed off
as unworkable.
This game previously sold for $3000 in 1996 and was finally bought by almost 100 people and released.
You'll have to jump to the piratebay for the torrent.
Submission + - Linux: A Musician's OS?
lazyeye writes: Keyboard Magazine has an in-depth article about the state of music production on Linux. While it does introduce Linux to the average musician, the article does get into some of the available music applications and music-oriented Linux distributions out there. From the opening paragraph:
You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.
Submission + - Backdoors, Anyone?
Anonymous Westley writes: Watched WarGames for the nth time recently, and got to the scene where Jim and Malvin (the "hackers") tell David (Broderick) about backdoors. Which got me thinking: Do people still do this? What about OSS? Is there anyone who has written a backdoor recently, in an OSS or other project? Have you ever found one (in code or on a live application) left by someone else?
Submission + - Hands On: The $100 Laptop
Paul Stamatiou writes: "I got my hands on the second release of the $100 One Laptop per Child laptop and wrote a review complete with pictures. It runs a custom version of Fedora Core 6 complete with an Xulrunner-based browser and an impressive 7.5-inch LCD sporting a resolution of 1200×900 with the ability to go monochromatic in sunlight. Other hardware features include a VGA webcam, 802.11b/g wireless, 512MB flash storage, 128MB DDR266 system RAM and a 366MHz AMD Geode CPU."
Submission + - IBM to help game devs grok Cell
Piri W. writes: IBM is hooking up with Vivendi Universal to offer a 'developer jam session' aimed at teaching game developers how to take better advantage of the Cell CPU found in the PlayStation 3. During the jam sessions, IBM will try to answer two questions likely to be asked by developers:
'IBM can help a lot more with the second question than it can with the first, although the first one is by far the hardest. It's also the case that the Xbox 360 won't support the same degree of task-level parallelism that Cell will, so developers who design their games from the ground up for the PS3 will have their work cut out for them when porting to the more popular Xbox 360. It remains to be seen if the amount of work that it will take to really get the extra mileage out of Cell will pay off with such a relatively small installed base of PS3s.'
- How much task-level parallelism can we wring out of this game?
- Once we've made the game as parallel as possible, how can we get the best per-task performance out of the SPEs?
'IBM can help a lot more with the second question than it can with the first, although the first one is by far the hardest. It's also the case that the Xbox 360 won't support the same degree of task-level parallelism that Cell will, so developers who design their games from the ground up for the PS3 will have their work cut out for them when porting to the more popular Xbox 360. It remains to be seen if the amount of work that it will take to really get the extra mileage out of Cell will pay off with such a relatively small installed base of PS3s.'
Submission + - Wikipedia Blocked by Schools
Malkara writes: "Apparently my school system, in Central Florida, has blocked Wikipedia access on all school computers. I had known wikipedia was blocked for the last week, but I was just recently informed that it had indeed been a conscious decision. Apparently they're worried about people quoting directly from Wikipedia, and decided to take the easy way out by simply completely blocking the website in all schools from Elementary to High School."
The Wii - Is the Magic Gone? 492
Computer And Video Games asks the tough question: is the Wii's magic gone? After the flurry of excitement around the launch, lackluster ports and a persistent inability for Nintendo to keep units on the shelves has made it hard for gamers to sustain their enthusiasm for the system. It doesn't help that most of the good games slated for this year won't be out for months. In some cases, there's doubt they'll even make it out this year: Reggie Fils-Aime appears to be backpedaling on Metroid Prime 3 by Christmas, which would be a shame. GigaGamez has additional commentary. Are you still as excited about the Wii as you were when it launched?
Submission + - Did D-Wave really demonstrate a quantum computer?
Qubert writes: Was D-Wave's quantum computer demo last week the real thing? Ars Technica takes a look inside the cold, black box and concludes that whatever was in there, it probably wasn't a 'pure' quantum computer: 'Jumping off the fence, we will say that we think D-Wave demonstrated a real device; however, we think their device is going to set off a debate in the physics community over where the boundary between classical and quantum computation is. At present, quantum computers are "globally phase coherent," which means that every qubit's state is entangled (and therefore correlated) with every other qubit... The D-wave system, however, is certainly not globally phase coherent, which raises the question of whether it is a quantum computer.'
Submission + - Blender 2.43 released - with Google SOC tools
LetterRip writes: "Blender 2.43 the free 3d animation suite has been released. There are a number of amazing new features including sculpting (which was supported by Googles Summer of Code) — you can now sculpt huge poly counts (6.5 million!) on Linux; fast 3D texture painting and numerous animation tool improvements."
