16019580
submission
supersloshy writes:
Frictional Games, who participated this year in the Hunble Indie Bundle have released their latest survival horror game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The game has been released simultaneously for Windows, Mac OS X, as well as Linux-based operating systems. Amnesia is also DRM-free and is available for download at the price of 20 USD. Reviewers also have very positive opinions about the game; IGN says, "Few games are able to conjure up an atmosphere this genuinely frightening.", and Rock Paper Shotgun says, "I think it is safe to say that Amnesia is the most successfully frightening game to have been made.".
15360336
submission
supersloshy writes:
GNOME has just announced a project called SeedKit. The project aims to allow web technologies such as HTML5, CSS, and Javascript to define a program's user interface. It is available as a library for use in GTK applications as well as a stand-alone viewer (called SeedKit Viewer) for running applications written using only these web technologies. You can visit its project page, git repository, as well as the original announcement which includes temporary download links. This is not a stable library and it is expected to change drastically between now and its "1.0" release.
15298600
submission
supersloshy writes:
Techdirt reports that ACTA negotiators don't seem to know or care that it violates USA law and that they assume that the USA will just "ignore the parts that don't mesh with the current law". Why should the USA have special exemption to having to follow ACTA word-for-word, while other countries that sign on with ACTA will? The article points out that Luc Devigne, the top European negotiator, did not realize or care that ACTA is supposed to be an "anti-counterfeiting" agreement (hence the name), and instead insists that it is an "intellectual property agreement", contrary to the name.
15011996
submission
supersloshy writes:
VideoLAN, makers of the well-known media player VLC, have just announced a new project called libaacs. The libaacs library's intention is to provide a free software library to implement the AACS specification, the copy-protection found on things such as Blu-ray discs. Note that this isn't meant to actually be a decoding library. It includes no AACS keys and is solely developed for research purposes.
14725098
submission
supersloshy writes:
The GNOME Census, a project to see who contributes to GNOME and how, has released its first set of results. The results group people by their reasons to contribute code, what they contributed code to, and what percentage of the total contributions they have. For example, 23.45% of code contributions were volunteer, 16.3% of code contributions came from Red Hat, 1% of contributions came from Canonical (which has caused a lot of controversy), and 0.24% came from Mozilla Corporation. The census results are also represented in diagrams (release activity, why contributions were made, and what was contributed to and by who). The report is also available here and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.
12323736
submission
supersloshy writes:
Today, the Humble Indie Bundle finished its week-long sale. However, some posters on the Wolfire Forums noticed that if the bundle earns over $1,000,000, Lugaru, Penumbra Overture, and Gish would become open-sourced. At the end of the sale, they announced that Lugaru would be released under the GNU GPLv2 and the sale was extended for another week. The sale page was changed to reflect this, and also goes on to say that Aquaria in addition to the others will be open-sourced as well. World of Goo could not be open-sourced because of their license agreement with Nintendo, as it is a WiiWare title.
12088220
submission
supersloshy writes:
Last year, 2D Boy, the developers of the popular independent game World of Goo, had a pay-what-you-want birthday sale with curious results. For the next seven days, Wolfire Games is attempting the same kind of sale, but with some new twists. Wolfire Games' Humble Indie Bundle contains five independent games (World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra) with no DRM and they are all cross-platform. In addition to supporting the developers of these five games directly, part of the money also goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Child's Play Charity. No matter how much you spend, you also get to choose who your money goes to (charity only, developers only, custom or evenly).
11726064
submission
supersloshy writes:
Back in 2007, Valve was looking for a Senior Software Engineer to "port Windows-based games to the Linux platform". A year later, Valve revealed that the Source engine was being ported to Linux. On April 21st, Phoronix found in the Mac OS X Steam client launcher (which is a bash script), proof of Linux support in Steam. And on the 22nd, yesterday, Phoronix found more proof by using the "strings" command with the Mac client and an official download link for the Linux client from Steam's website! How much longer before Valve officially announces this?
11552784
submission
supersloshy writes:
Hearing of the horrible DRM on games like Spore and Assassin's Creed 2, I figured that I don't want to damage my operating system just to play a game that won't work in 10 years. Are there any good games out today that don't imply heavy DRM restrictions? I already have Civilization IV and World of Goo, two very great DRM-free commercial games, and I love them very much regardless of how good they are because they're DRM-free. I am also a big supporter of games like Nexuiz, Battle for Wesnoth, and NetHack where the games are free as in freedom and naturally don't have these restrictions. I can play games on both Windows and Linux, but I prefer Linux if it will run on there.
9996272
submission
supersloshy writes:
Ubuntu 10.04, also known as Lucid Lynx, is currently in alpha testing. Alpha 3 was just released on the 25th, and some testers are reporting that Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices are now supported! You can now copy music to and from these devices, and browse them with a file manager. Instructions on how to do this with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) can be found here.
9515806
submission
supersloshy writes:
Facebook Chat has so far only been meant to be used in a web browser, and instant messaging applications have had a hard time implementing it's undocumented protocol. Today, Facebook is making this job much easier by enabling support for XMPP to access it's chat service. Serkan Piantino from Facebook says, "Every day people send more than two billion chat messages to each other on Facebook. Today we're making it easier for people to extend those conversations with their Facebook friends to instant messaging clients beyond Facebook.com." Instructions on how to set it up in your favorite instant messenger, such as Pidgin or Adium, can be found here. AOL's AIM and the Empathy Instant Messenger are also including pre-set Facebook options, due to already supporting XMPP.
9428612
submission
supersloshy writes:
Just four days ago, it was reported that OpenOffice.org was being replaced by Google Docs. OMG! UBUNTU! has just reported on Monday that the decision has been changed: Abiword and Gnumeric are now replacing Google Docs which was replacing OpenOffice.org. Ubuntu developer Rick Spencer was reported saying in the article (mind the grammar/spelling errors, they are not mine): "I think we should try gumeric and abiword by default, and then those who want OOo apps can install just the ones they need later." It also seems that Tomboy is returning to the list of default programs as well.
7907602
submission
supersloshy writes:
The Consumerist reports an incident where an anonymous reader's netbook's protection plan was apparently voided when he installed Linux on it. "The manager of the Geek Squad informed me that installing Ubuntu Linux on my machine voided my warranty, and that I could only have it serviced if the original Windows installation was restored.", says the anonymous reader. However, his problem was because his "touchpad and power adapter had been broken", which is clearly a hardware issue. He re-installed Windows so he could have them repair his netbook, but they insisted that Linux caused the problem and kicked him out of the store.
7643276
submission
supersloshy writes:
Even though Firefox gets more developer attention, that doesn't mean that Thunderbird is dead yet! Today, Mozilla released Thunderbird 3 to the world after quite a long time of development! Many new features are now available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a "message archive" for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements.
6992384
submission
supersloshy writes:
Contrary to popular opinion, GNOME 3 will not be released in March next year. It has been delayed until September 2010, six months later. According to the news message, this is because "our community wants GNOME 3.0 to be fully working for users and why we believe September is more appropriate." GNOME 3's main goal is to re-define the ways people interact with the desktop, mainly through a new UI design (currently called "GNOME Shell"), while GNOME 2.30, set for release in March, will have a focus on being stable.
