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New Volume Control Interface for GNOME

Phoronix has a overview of the new volume control interface for GNOME currently in development. "One of the items being worked on by Red Hat for Fedora 11 is making the GNOME volume control and sound preferences area more intuitive and easier to use. With Fedora and most other distributions now using PulseAudio, they are beginning to take advantage of some of the features available through this sound server. Some of this work involves reworking the user interface for controlling GNOME Sound Preferences, which we are providing a glimpse of in this article. Among other benefits, there is finally the ability to adjust the volume level on a per-application basis."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 Released

Red Hat has released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, the third update to the current stable version. "In the third update to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, customers will receive a wide range of enhancements, including significantly increased virtualization scalability, expanded hardware platform support and incorporation of OpenJDK Java technologies. Customers with a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription will receive the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 update, which is available for immediate download from Red Hat Network." More information including a short video explaining the new features via the subscription model is available here.

Drives Fail at High Rates, Seagate Offers Solutions

A recent unusual rise in Seagate Barracuda 1 TB hard drive fatalities got the company's attention as many customers were angry at the loss of their new drives. The Seagate forum was overrun with users asking for help and complaining of this "plague" that seemed to grip the drives made in Thailand and distributed to most major consumer countries throughout the world, but no one seemed to be able to find the answer-- directly from Seagate or elsewhere. In response to the epidemic, the company has isolated the "potential firmware issue" responsible and has provided a firmware upgrade to those who purchased the drive. Though the data remains intact on the affected drives (the hard drives simply locked up and became unusable), Seagate is also offering free data recovery to anyone who bought the drive and lost data afterwards.

Developer’s-Eye View of Smartphone Platforms

InfoWorld's Peter Wayner surveys the development landscape for six smartphone platforms. The survey -- which includes the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm -- shows how wide open the mobile development field has become. 'Unlike the desktop world, there are more than a few players, and the niches are evolving, merging, and splitting,' Wayner writes. 'Some of the platforms are better for tightly integrated enterprises, while others offer much better opportunities for gamers and experimenters. Some require the highest-end hardware with the most expensive contracts, while others work well with cheap phones too.' Throughout the survey, Wayner offers insights and questions to help you target the right device, as well as extensive tips for pursuing the cross-platform option: Web apps for smartphones.

Inauguration on Silverlight: Some Linux Fans Upset

Those up top (the Presidential Inaugural Committee) chose to utilize Microsoft's Silverlight technology to stream the upcoming inaugural events for the new president of the United States. Though Microsoft certainly likes this idea, this leaves out thousands of people in the US and elsewhere who still cannot run Silverlight or an open source alternative on their systems from viewing the streamed video online. Update by Thom: Linux and PowerPC Mac fans rejoice, as they can watch the inauguration as well using Moonlight. Migel De Icaza wrote: "Microsoft worked late last night to get us access to the code that will be used during the inauguration so we could test it with Moonlight." Microsoft and the Moonlight team fixed this issue in one afternoon, so it might be a little rough.

Asian Executives Fix LCD Prices, Face Imprisonment in US

Current and former executives from LG, Chunghwa, and Sharp have all agreed to plead guilty to various charges of fixing the prices of TFT-LCD screens. The executives will face six to nine months in jail, pay $20,000-$50,000 fines, and have also agreed to help the United States government in other LCD price fixing investigations. The companies themselves are ending up having to pay criminal fines to the government of $585 million, collectively. It was mentioned that Sharp was fixing the prices of LCDs sold to Apple, Dell, and Motorola. Hopefully this means that the prices of technology utilizing LCD screens is going to drop from this point onwards, but in times like these, you never do know.

The Last of the Laser Disc Players

Remember those lovely laser discs that education systems seemed to so lovingly embrace back in the 80s and 90s? The discs resembled what today's children would probably call a giant DVD, and these would be placed upon a massive tray to be sucked into a player twice the size of your VCR (VCR? What's that?). All of the memories associated with these players may bring tears to the surface, but you're going to have to face the truth sooner or later: Pioneer just ended production of its last three laser disc players, meaning that replacements for the said players, assuming you own one, will now be gone... forever. Stock up and buy a couple, and you'll be able to enjoy those massive discs for years to come instead of using them as frisbees. Honestly, though-- how did the laser disc player last this long?

Google, Seagate Cutting Staff, Microsoft Testing the Waters

2009 certainly isn't the year for economical prowess even in the thriving world of technology. Even the untouchable Google is apparently taking a hit now that it is cutting the jobs of 100 recruiters as well as closing several satellite engineering offices. Seagate seems to be taking a somewhat heftier blow but grinning and bearing it as they cut 2,950 (6%) jobs worldwide as well as reducing executive pay up to 25%. Microsoft hasn't announced any doom just yet and hopes to avoid layoffs, but if it means staying afloat, the company could announce another chunk of the world unemployed by next Thursday.

Nonexistent Laser Drive Boasts 100Tbits/s

Though this drive is pretty much in the average consumers' dreams (albeit a very tech-savvy average consumer) for at least the next decade or so, having one of these buggers would certainly make even those of us who have "seen it all" drool. It's estimated that in a mere five years, laser-drive hybrids could be commercially available (for a hefty price, I wager), but only reaching the sluggish access time of 1Tbits/s. It is also estimated, however, that in the future beyond, we may be seeing more modern drives with a happy 100Tbits/s. Amazing what shedding a bit of laser light on a subject can do.

Instant-on Technology to Take Netbooks?

Nobody ever liked looking at a boot screen, especially when in a hurry for quick access to a bit of needed information. Quick-boot technology has been around for ages, it seems, going seemingly nowhere, as if taunting. However, a number of new products displayed recently at CES by companies such as Sony, Lenovo, Phoenix, and Qualcomm, gives one the idea that the quick-boot technology will soon be implemented into netbooks, and all for the better (quicker, at least).

Das Keyboard Professional, a Review

In the future people may interact with computers via a touchscreen or voice commands, but presently, keyboards are still one of the major ways to interact with a computer. The Tech Report has acquired a modern buckling spring keyboard, the Das Keyboard Professional, for review. Being a hardware review site, they have to compare the Das Keyboard Professional against something, so Cyril pits it against his personal Model M.

Shouting at Your Computer May Just Make it Worse

A recent YouTube video by Sun's Fishworks Lab's Brendan Gregg proves that vibrations (including shouting) will cause hard drives' latency to spike. But then, he only shouted at it angrily. Who's to say that perhaps blasting Mozart in your server room will cause the latency to drop? Perhaps telling each hard drive that he or she is special may even make their capacities grow!

Eeebuntu 2.0 SD Card Installation on the Aspire One

To supplement storage space with the initial purchase of the Aspire One (8 GB SSD version), I bought a 16 GB Transcend TS16GBSDHC6 card that integrates nicely into the left card slot. The pre-installed Linux Linpus just wasn't what I needed since I use many networking tools at work and at home. I initially ran Ubuntu 8.041 with the /home partition on the 16 GB SDHC card. I discovered Eeebuntu while searching for information on how to boot and run Linux off a SDHC card. The goal was of multi-boot installations of Ubuntu, with one install specifically loaded with the tools I use at work. The Acer Aspire One BIOS does not 'see' the card, so you can't boot from it using the startup key (More on the SDHC boot up further in this article).

Apple To Vie With Google Docs

At MacWorld, Apple announced its new iWork.com beta, a Google-Docs-esque online collaboration application to work closely with the original iWork program to share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with others. When beta testing is over, it will be a paid service (though the monthly price as of yet hasn't been released), much unlike Google Docs, which is free.

DTV Transition: Facts and Fallacies

If you live in the United States, then it's almost certain you've heard about this big digital switch that public television is making due to a new US law. If you live outside of the US, I bet you've heard of it anyway since we like to let people know what we're up to. The big day that's coming up -- February 17th, 2009 -- that magical date when all television stations will historically abandon the infamous analog broadcasting for greener, digital pastures -- didn't strike fear into the hearts at my household. We rarely utilize the antenna, and then only two to four times a year for a special program. Nonetheless, we got our hands on one of those nifty coupons anyway and went out to purchase a digital converter for the sake of those few intrinsic public broadcats. Read on for the whole story.

A Look at newLISP

In the age of dynamic languages and closures, most of you have probably heard of a mighty dragon called Lisp (which stands for LISt Processing), whose fans look almost with despise at other languages rediscovering it. Invented half a century ago, Lisp went on to become a de facto standard in the world of AI research, and has stood behind a handful of very neat inventions in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the long AI winter and the drift of technology towards other paradigms have almost lead to forgetting Lisp alltogether; IT has only recently started to rediscover parts of what made Lisp so cool back then.