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The Internet

Tim Berners-Lee Says World Wide Web Must Emerge From 'Adolescence' (venturebeat.com) 281

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The fraying World Wide Web needs to rediscover its strengths and grow into maturity, its designer Tim Berners-Lee said on Monday, marking the 30th anniversary of the collaborative software project his supervisor initially dubbed "vague but exciting." From a report: Speaking to reporters at CERN, the physics research center outside Geneva where he invented the web, Berners-Lee said users of the web had found it "not so pretty" recently. "They are all stepping back, suddenly horrified after the Trump and Brexit elections, realizing that this web thing that they thought was that cool is actually not necessarily serving humanity very well," he said. "It seems we don't finish reeling from one privacy disaster before moving onto the next one," he added, citing concerns about whether social networks were supporting democracy. People who had grown up taking the internet's neutrality for granted now found that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump had "rolled that back."

Comment Re:iPad (Score 1) 233

by GennarinoParsifalle (#33282108) Attached to: 7-Inch iPad Rumored

what is the purpose of this medium-sized iPhone?

You certainly aren't a hipster. I've studied their language and the prickish snooty word replacement for medium is "Grande". Nobody knows why.

Nobody also knows why the Italian word for "big" should mean "medium", btw...

PC Mag Slams Cheap Wal-Mart Linux Desktop 671

Posted by Zonk from the not-all-that-the-penguin-could-be dept.
An anonymous reader writes "PC Magazine reviews the $200 Linux desktop wonder sold by Wal-Mart. This desktop sold out quickly and has been cited as proof that consumers are tired of the Windows tax and ready for Linux. Not so according to PC Magazine, which gave the gPC a 1.5 star rating." Previous discussions we've had about system reviews were realistic but not quite so harsh; is this just nitpicking or is the 'shiny' starting to wear off of the cheap Linux PC concept?
Music

Submission + - The Death of High Fidelity 1

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Rolling Stone has an interesting story on how record producers alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. Much of the information left out during MP3 compression is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Without enough low end, "you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord." The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness and human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to loud noises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. But the effect doesn't last. After a few minutes, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many feel an urge to skip to another song. "We're conforming to the way machines pay music. It's robots' choice. It used to be ladies' choice — now it's robots' choice," says Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen."

Comment Allowable under SISSL (Score 5, Informative) 227

by soullessbastard (#20912245) Attached to: OpenOffice.org 2.3 Review

Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of NeoOffice.

Being based on OOo 1.x, IBM does not need to release the source code for Symphony. OOo was originally dual licensed both under LGPL and the SISSL license. SISSL allows companies to make completely closed source forks, only providing notice of the original vendor and SISSL license. This license was one of the primary motivating factors for why we forked and created NeoOffice, to prevent companies from making a commercial product whose improvements couldn't be shared back with all the volunteers that had worked to create it.

Closed source forking is also our reason for using full GPL since it guarantees everyone's freedom to access the code. Not even LGPL provides that ability since commercial closed source proprietary code can still be incorporated provided it's in a shared library. Only the full GPL provides enough protections to ensure that everyone must cooperate and that no one can make key parts of the project rely on closed source solutions.

ed
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Can Apple+ATT shut down iPhone Unlockers? (businessweek.com)

Submitted by aalobode
aalobode writes: Do Apple and AT&T have the legal right to stop hackers from selling unlocked iPhones? Under their terms, only AT&T may sell iPhones, and Apple gets a commission. When unlocked iPhones are used on other providers' networks, AT&T and hence Apple get nothing beyond what they earned on the initial sale of the hardware. Can they prohibit unlocking? Reselling? The article in Businessweek gives the for and against arguments, but appears to indicate that the hackers have the law on their side for once.
Supercomputing

Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator 470

Posted by Zonk from the in-that-reality-i'm-an-ardent-fan-of-this dept.
Fantastic Lad writes "The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long 'you' can go without food or water, or how 'you' will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. 'Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence."

PS3 Lines Already Forming In America 452

Posted by samzenpus from the get-a-life dept.
Wowzer writes "Nine days until Sony's PlayStation 3 launches in America, and lines are already forming. From the article: "Someone went to Best Buy this morning and saw about 7 people waiting outside. He went inside and one of the workers told him that they had been there since Monday. It must be a tough job being such big PS3 fans and being the butt of many passer-by jokes like 'Where is the line for PS4? Is it on the other side?'"

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