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Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

Posted by samzenpus from the take-a-look dept.
A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
GNOME

GNOME 3.8 Released Featuring New "Classic" Mode 267

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the extend-freely dept.
Hot on the heels of the Gtk+ 3.8 release comes GNOME 3.8. There are a few general UI improvements, but the highlight for many is the new Classic mode that replaces fallback. Instead of using code based on the old GNOME panel, Classic emulates the feel of GNOME 2 through Shell extensions (just like Linux Mint's Cinnamon interface). From the release notes: "Classic mode is a new feature for those people who prefer a more traditional desktop experience. Built entirely from GNOME 3 technologies, it adds a number of features such as an application menu, a places menu and a window switcher along the bottom of the screen. Each of these features can be used individually or in combination with other GNOME extensions."
Firefox

Emscripten and New Javascript Engine Bring Unreal Engine To Firefox 124

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the cycle-is-nearly-complete dept.
MojoKid writes "There's no doubt that gaming on the Web has improved dramatically in recent years, but Mozilla believes it has developed new technology that will deliver a big leap in what browser-based gaming can become. The company developed a highly-optimized version of Javascript that's designed to 'supercharge' a game's code to deliver near-native performance. And now that innovation has enabled Mozilla to bring Epic's Unreal Engine 3 to the browser. As a sort of proof of concept, Mozilla debuted this BananaBread game demo that was built using WebGL, Emscripten, and the new JavaScript version called 'asm.js.' Mozilla says that it's working with the likes of EA, Disney, and ZeptoLab to optimize games for the mobile Web, as well." Emscripten was previously used to port Doom to the browser.
Google

Google Pledges Not To Sue Any Open Source Projects Using Their Patents 153

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the now-and-forever dept.
sfcrazy writes "Google has announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge. In the pledge Google says that they will not sue any user, distributor, or developer of Open Source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Under this pledge, Google is starting off with 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google. Google says that over time they intend to expand the set of Google's patents covered by the pledge to other technologies." This is in addition to the Open Invention Network, and their general work toward reforming the patent system. The patents covered in the OPN will be free to use in Free/Open Source software for the life of the patent, even if Google should transfer ownership to another party. Read the text of the pledge. It appears that interaction with non-copyleft licenses (MIT/BSD/Apache) is a bit weird: if you create a non-free fork it appears you are no longer covered under the pledge.

Comment Re:Cause you have no proof? (Score 0) 862

When you can spontaneously create life from raw materials, in a lab, let me know and I'll believe you, until then I'll keep up with my current belief system.

It's not beyond the realms of science...
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1990836,00.html

When a man who died 2012 years ago spontaneously springs back to life, let me know and I'll believe.
When you can provide *proof*, using scientific methods (you are a scientist aren't you?), that the earth is 6,000 odd years old, let me know and I'll believe.

Until then, I'll keep up with my current lack of belief...

Comment Re:2000 lines can be enough (Score 0) 532

by klogg_siebentag (#31122714) Attached to: Learning and Maintaining a Large Inherited Codebase?

2000 lines?! I've inherited codebases of 250k+ LOC (Visual J++), and there were numerous single methods that would dwarf that 2000 lines! I know that claim is sort of the new millenium's version of my grandfathers claim of "walking 64 furlongs to school with only 1 shoe in 16 inches of snow because he couldn't afford the 2 and thripence yearly fee for a bus pass", but being thrown into the deep-end of a 250k line project is not unusual. If you get one with documentation, its like winning a small lottery. If you get one with up-to-date and informative documentation, then, well, do they exist?

I find that stepping through the code and trying to understand it is psycholigally damaging. You end up just wanting to hurt the person who wrote it. But as everyone else has said, its probably the best idea and the only way to achieve your goal.

Anyway, that's my 1.274p worth...

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