transmetal - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Nokia's fate? (Score 5, Informative) 117

by transmetal on Tuesday April 03, 2012 @04:07PM (#39564375) Attached to: Qt 5 Alpha Released

They've made an effort over the past year to move Qt into becoming an independent project. See http://qt-project.org/ and http://wiki.qt-project.org/The_Qt_Governance_Model . In some respects, Nokia's already put all their eggs in Microsoft's basket (their abandoning of Meego and non Windows Phone mobile OSs), and it doesn't seem to have impacted Qt's development in any noticeable fashion.

Submission + - ioquake3 1.36 Gold

Submitted by

Time Doctor

on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @08:13PM

Time Doctor writes: "The de-facto standard in Quake 3 engine technology, ioquake3, has hit version 1.36 recently. It includes a garbage bag full of improvements: in-game VOIP; optional external Mumble (voip); OpenAL; IPV6; Anaglyph stereo rendering; Full x86-64 architecture support; Rewritten PowerPC JIT compiler, with ppc64 support; New SPARC JIT compiler, with support for both sparc32 and sparc64; Improved console command auto-completion; Persistent console command history; Improved QVM (Quake Virtual Machine) tools; Colored terminal output on POSIX operating systems; Multiuser support on Windows systems (user-specific game data is stored in their respective Application Data folders); PNG format support for textures. Of course there are even more fixes for security holes and other bugs in there. So if you don't like ads and queues in your Quake 3 experience, get a copy off of Steam and copy your data files and key into your ioquake3 directory."

Submission + - Developer's Perspective on Chrome (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

snydeq

on Thursday September 04, 2008 @11:02AM

snydeq writes: "Users are not the only beneficiaries of the work that's gone into Chrome, Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister argues. There's a lot under the hood that should interest developers, too. First off, WebKit, which leads the pack in Web standards compliance and could be the development pearl inside Chrome. Second, its V8 code execution engine, which 'beats Firefox's forthcoming TraceMonkey to the punch by offering a just-in-time native compilation engine for JavaScript.' But the true value of Chrome, McAllister writes, is that Google has clearly taken 'the next step in the ongoing project to create the ultimate client for the Web application platform.' Instead of waiting on standards bodies to muddle through requirements gathering to outline what a browser should do, Google has 'offered us its own vision of what a reference implementation of the browser should look like — not just how it should render pages, but how each module of the application should operate and interoperate.'"

Submission + - Google Earth: Every Satellite tracked in realtime (agi.com)

Submitted by

Matt Amato

on Tuesday September 02, 2008 @02:05PM

Matt Amato writes: "With the recent article on the ISS having to dodge some space junk, many people's attention has once again focused on the amount of stuff in orbit around our planet. What many people don't know is that USSTRATCOM tracks and publishes a list of over 13000 objects which they currently monitor, including active/retired satellites and debris. This data is meaningless to most people, but thanks to Analytical Graphics, it has now been made accessible free of charge to anyone with a copy of Google Earth. By grabbing the KMZ from here, you can not only view all objects tracked in real-time, but you can also click on them to get more information on the specific satellite, including viewing it's orbit trajectory. It's an excellent educational tool for any space-curious slashdoter. DISCLAIMER: I not only work for Analytical Graphics, but I'm the one that wrote this entire tool myself as a demo."

Submission + - SPAM: Massive $208M petascale computer gets green light

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday September 02, 2008 @10:46AM

coondoggie writes: "The 200,00 processor core system known as Blue Waters got the green light recently as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) said it has finalized the contract with IBM to build the world's first sustained petascale computational system. Blue Waters is expected to deliver sustained performance of more than one petaflop on many real-world scientific and engineering applications. A petaflop equals about 1 quadrillion calculations per second. They will be coupled to more than a petabyte of memory and more than 10 petabytes of disk storage. All of that memory and storage will be globally addressable, meaning that processors will be able to share data from a single pool exceptionally quickly, researchers said. Blue Waters, is supported by a $208 million grant from the National Science Foundation and will come online in 2011. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Intel acquires Linux distributor (linuxdevices.com)

Submitted by nerdyH on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:56PM

nerdyH writes: "Poky Linux" and Matchbox developer OpenedHand announced that it has been acquired by Intel Corp. The U.K.-based embedded Linux services team will join the Intel Open Source Technology Center, and will focus on Moblin development for mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and other mobile devices. Looks like Intel is really getting serious about Linux devices...

Submission + - ESPN/TopCoder Winning Formula Challenge (infoworld.com)

Submitted by

Mike

on Thursday August 28, 2008 @01:38PM

Mike writes: "The ESPN/TopCoder Winning Formula Challenge asks for algorithms to predict the 2008 NCAA football scores from historical data. $100,000 in prizes. Fantasy Football collides with competitive programming."

Submission + - Black screens for pirate copies of Windows (custompc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by

arcticstoat

on Thursday August 28, 2008 @12:07PM

arcticstoat writes: "In a bid to deter people from using pirate versions of Windows XP, Microsoft is now updating its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool to introduce a few uncomfortable niggles for users of pirated versions of Windows. These include replacing the desktop wallpaper with a black screen every 60 minutes, although you can still replace it with your wallpaper of choice in the intervening period. As well as this, copies of Windows deemed to not be genuine will also have a translucent watermark above the system tray, which Microsoft calls a 'persistent desktop notification.'"

Submission + - Ten-million-digit prime discovered? (mersenne.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @09:17AM

An anonymous reader writes: The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has apparently discovered a new world-record prime number. A GIMPS client computer reported the number on August 23rd, and verification is currently under way. The verification could take up to two weeks to complete. The last Mersenne prime discovered was over 9.8 million digits long, strongly suggesting that the new value may break the 10 million digit barrier — qualifying for the EFF's $100000 prize!

Submission + - SSD Won't Make Sense In Laptops For Two Years (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

kgagne

on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @08:40AM

kgagne writes: "While solid state disk drives can vastly improve random read performance and are perfectly suited to most mobile devices, many operations are sequential in laptops and desktops and involve writes where SSDs most often lose to magnetic hard disk drives in performance. While introducing multi-channel flash memory controllers and interleaving the NAND flash chips increases performance, it will still be about two years before the cost versus benefit ratio will make sense to install SSD in your laptop or desktop PC, according to a Computerworld story. 'I think you need to get to 128GB for around $200, and that's going to happen around 2010. Also, the industry needs to effectively communicate why consumers or enterprise users should pay more for less storage," says Joseph Unsworth, an analyst at Gartner Inc.'"

Submission + - New Algorithm Boosts Network Efficiency (universityofcalifornia.edu)

Submitted by

palegray.net

on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:39AM

palegray.net writes: "Researchers at the University of California have developed a new network routing algorithm that has the potential to significantly boost Internet traffic routing efficiency. This new approach focuses on the needs of dynamic networks, where connections are frequently transient. From the article: "What the team did with their new routing algorithm, according to Savage's student Kirill Levchenko, was to reduce the "communication overhead" of route computation — by an order of magnitude." For the technically inclined, the full research publication is available in PDF format."

Submission + - PC hardware manufacturers love piracy, says id CEO (custompc.co.uk)

Submitted by

arcticstoat

on Friday August 22, 2008 @12:24PM

arcticstoat writes: "While it generally costs more to buy a gaming PC than a console, a lot of PC gamers hope to save money in the long run by invoking the great unwritten PC gaming rule; you can get some of your games for free if you pirate them. According to id Software's CEO, Todd Hollenshead, this is a surreptitious money maker for PC hardware manufacturers. Hollenshead says that the situation is 'this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content — even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs — is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games.'"

Submission + - Microsoft enlists Seinfeld in Vista battle (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by

Barence

on Thursday August 21, 2008 @07:31AM

Barence writes: "Microsoft has signed up comedian Jerry Seinfeld to its $300 million Vista PR blitz, as it attempts to turn around the negative perception surrounding its operating system. Reports suggest Bill Gates will also appear in the ads, which given the comedy timing he displayed in his "Bill's Last Day" video, and the deadpan manner of Seinfeld could result in a huge hit for the company."

Submission + - Firefox to get a nag screen. For upgrades. (ostatic.com)

Submitted by ruphus13 on Wednesday August 20, 2008 @07:48PM

ruphus13 writes: Firefox has been pushing version 3.0 very aggressively, and firmly believes that it is a solid product. The Download Day was just one of their ways to drum up user support for the new release. Now, Firefox is going to 'gently nudge' users of Firefox 2.0 to upgrade. Several users are waiting for their add-ons to get upgraded, but now, according to the article, "If you've been on the fence about upgrading to Firefox 3.0, Mozilla is planning to give you a little nudge. Sometime within the next week, people using Firefox 2.0.0.16 will see a request to upgrade and though you'll have the option to decline, it's likely Firefox will ask again anyway."..."users will most likely be offered a second change to upgrade after "several weeks."" It will be interesting to see if this speeds up the upgrade by users, as well as upgrades of the add-ons.

Submission + - SPAM: Vendors Rally While Windows Sleeps

Submitted by

Anti-Globalism

on Monday August 18, 2008 @02:34AM

Anti-Globalism writes: "Dell, Intel and their partners announced last week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal.

One technology involves enabling users to gain instant access to a laptop's e-mail, browser and other basic functionality — without booting Windows at all."
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