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Comment Re:problem is, Unity is a disaster (Score 1) 511

by duncan3dc (#35978156) Attached to: Is Canonical the Next Apple?

There's a perfectly good UI paradigm for the desktop that's been around since the 80's. Constantly reinventing the wheel is one of the things putting non-computer experts off Linux on the desktop. With Windows, some things change sure, but the basic metaphor (icons on the desktop, a start button to launch programs, a taskbar to show your running programs) has been perfectly good for years and people are used to it.

I'm using Unity at the moment, I have icons on my desktop, I have a button in one corner that I can use to launch programs, and there is a bar on the left on side showing my running programs. What is this UI paradigm you speak of that Unity has supposedly thrown away?

5.1 Sound Card Delivers 3 Streams of iTunes 259

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-a-whole-lotta-streams dept.
An anonymous reader writes "How do you distribute simultaneous streams of DRM-protected iTunes from a single computer to multiple rooms of the house? Autonomic Controls demonstrated a unique solution at the recent Electronic House Expo (EHX). The company's Media Control Server EX software turns a PC with a 5.1 sound card into a three-zone music distribution server. (Add a second card for six outputs). At EHX, the solution was demonstrated with a multiroom audio system from NuVo, whose keypads could be used to browse and select songs, playlists, genres, artists, etc. The Autonomic software merges WMA and iTunes files into a single library for easy access." I have mixed feelings about this: on one hand, this is a really clever idea and a cool hack. On the other hand, the fact that DRM makes something like this necessary is truly infuriating.
GNU is Not Unix

Number of GPL v3 projects tops 2,000 116

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'm-sure-rms-is-very-happy dept.
Da Massive writes "The number of open-source projects that use the GNU General Public License Version 3 has grown to more than 2,000, according to Palamida, which sells software and services for tracking open-source code within a customer's code base. 'Our database now contains over 2,000 projects that are using the GPL v3. "At this rate the GPL v3 is being adopted by 1,000 projects every 4-5 months, and if the trend continues, the license will be used by 5,000 projects by the end of the year," states a recent posting on Palamida's blog.'"
Microsoft

ISO Approves OOXML 435

Posted by kdawson from the looks-like-no-joke dept.
sTeF writes in, with the hope that this is an April Fools joke. Doesn't look like it though. An article up at Intellectual Property Watch claims they have obtained a document (PDF) enumerating the vote after Microsoft's OOXML won ISO standard status.
The Courts

RIAA "Making Available" Theory Rejected 168

Posted by kdawson from the complaint-without-a-complaint dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In a 25-page decision (PDF) which has been awaited for two years in Elektra v. Barker, Judge Kenneth M. Karas has rejected the RIAA's 'making available' theory and its 'authorization' theory, but sustained the sufficiency of the complaint's allegations of 'distribution' and 'downloading,' and also gave the RIAA 30 days to cure the defects in its complaint by filing a new complaint. The judge left it open for the RIAA to allege that defendant made an 'offer to distribute,' and that the offer was for "'the purpose of further distribution,' which, the judge held, would be actionable."
Education

Augmenting Data Beats Better Algorithms 179

Posted by kdawson from the tell-it-to-the-dhs dept.
eldavojohn writes "A teacher is offering empirical evidence that when you're mining data, augmenting data is better than a better algorithm. He explains that he had teams in his class enter the Netflix challenge, and two teams went two different ways. One team used a better algorithm while the other harvested augmenting data on movies from the Internet Movie Database. And this team, which used a simpler algorithm, did much better — nearly as well as the best algorithm on the boards for the $1 million challenge. The teacher relates this back to Google's page ranking algorithm and presents a pretty convincing argument. What do you think? Will more data usually perform better than a better algorithm?"
United States

US Military Explored Hiring Bloggers As Propagandists 355

Posted by Zonk from the meme-warfare-has-been-going-on-for-a-while dept.
Zeinfeld writes "Wired reports that one time Clipper Chip supporter Dorothy Denning wrote a report on using blogs for information warfare in 2006 (a report available from cryptome). Amongst the proposals were hiring bloggers directly as propaganda agents and using military media resources to 'make' a blogger posting favorable material. Notably, and most unfortunately absent from the report, is the very real question of whether the military should be manipulating domestic media." Is meme warfare just another battleground, or is this dirty pool?
Space

Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered 141

Posted by Zonk from the two-of-a-kind-beats-ace-high dept.
esocid writes "Astronomers have spied a faraway star system that is so unusual, it was one of a kind — until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, they found a star system that is unusual, because it's what the astronomers have called a 'yellow supergiant eclipsing binary' — it contains two very bright, massive yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a large amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut."
KDE

A Screenshot Review of KDE 4 274

Posted by Zonk from the who-doesn't-like-a-little-eye-candy dept.
billybob2 writes "PolishLinux.org has an extensive screenshot review and commentary on the development version of the Free and Open Source KDE desktop. Highlights include the ability to run any desktop applet prepared for Mac OS X inside Plasma, on-the-fly annotation and rating of files from within the Dolphin file manager. It also has an improved GUI for the Amarok music player, flexible 3D eye candy configuration in KWin, and improved support for both accessing digital cameras via the Solid hardware layer and the DigiKam photo manager."

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