Linked by Eugenia Loli on Mon 11th Jan 2010 08:10 UTC
I followed the hype: Reddit, Slashdot's front page, months of thumbs up on my blog and various video forums by Linux users for OpenShot. Given that I'm longing for a usable Linux video editor since 2003, and given that OpenShot version 1.0 had just been released, I naturally gave it a go, by also downloading its provided dependencies on my Ubuntu Linux 9.10.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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The big studios predominantly use Linux and OSS programs in post production imaging.
For example, the open source nature of Cinepaint is the main reason why the major film studios and major animation houses use it, and not Photoshop. Not only is the development a lot faster (having 32-bit color depth years before Photoshop), but they can (and do) accelerate the app's development if they need a feature.
Post production techniques are constantly developing at a rapid pace, and every minute of the average theatrical feature film costs about one million dollars to make. With that kind of money involved in every detail and with competitors writing their own image manipulation code, do you think that the studios are going to settle for the stock features of off-the-shelf proprietary programs like Photoshop? They need an image editor that they can develop in-house to their advantage. This advantage is why Cinepaint is so much more attractive to the studios than Photoshop.
Here's the NLE/compostitor, Piranha: http://www.ifx.com/products/piranha
Piranha has been around forever on Linux. Scroll down the Piranha web page and note some of the features. One could say that Piranha is slightly more sophisticated than Final Cut Pro!
Same goes for Piranha's little brother, Ant: http://www.ifx.com/ant
Another big advantage of Linux NLEs over FCP: one can change to a darker theme so that the OS's window elements aren't glaring into one's eyeballs in a dark edit bay.
What's wrong with Ardour? ... Blender? Both are incredibly powerful programs.
GIMP is better than Photoshop in many ways. First of all, it's easier to use. I have been able to accomplish a lot of things in GIMP, that my professional photographer friends couldn't do in Photoshop, with years of Photoshop experience. Recently, a friend of mine (who is a pro with probably eight years Photoshop experience) could not figure out how to separately extract the images in an animated gif, so he emailed it to me. I had never done it before, but, using GIMP, I was emailing him the separate images within ten minutes of when I received the gif.
The open source nature of the GIMP is an advantage. One can fork it off into new editor if one desires -- such as Cinepaint!
I can use the latest version of GIMP/Cinepaint compiled for 64-bit. Try that on a Mac with Photoshop! ;-)
Furthermore, I can put GIMP/Cinepaint on a small Linux distro on a live CD (or live USB stick) and it will boot on almost any X86 PC, so I can travel with my photo editor and I don't have to worry whether it will be comptible with the OS on the machine that I encounter.
If I use Tiny Core Linux, both the OS and GIMP combined on the live CD/USB come to only 17Mb! Try that with your proprietary software!
I can do the same with Ardour, Blender and probably with Ant and Piranha.
By the way, Photoshop relies on the open source dcraw for its Adobe Camera Raw plugin to import raw camera files (an essential function for pro photographers). Read the second sentence: http://wiki.panotools.org/Dcraw
I hear a lot of vague criticism of OSS and Linux, but when it gets down to the details, I find that it is often superior to the alternatives.
Also, give the OpenShot guy a break. He's probably been coding his NLE for less than a year, and he's accomplished a lot it that short time. No one should expect it to be perfect right now.
Edited 2010-01-12 01:43 UTC