ArsTechnica has an interesting article about the new Qt 4.4 version.
Some of the most significant features added in Qt 4.4 include a multimedia abstraction layer, an HTML rendering widget based on WebKit, a new concurrency framework, and support for rendering widgets on the toolkit’s drawing canvas. This is also the first Qt release to include support for Windows CE and Windows Mobile.
Read more…
Source: Lwn.net
This is a story of a sucky customer experience. As customers and experts alike will tell you, users like to rock, not to suck. [...]
[...] My conclusion? I tried to pay you money for music. I tried hard, and annoyingly long. As long as this kind of effort doesn’t allow for a legal, DRM-free download, the music industry has no reason whatsoever to complain about losing sales. As bloggers and press people learn early on: Make your stuff available. [...]
This report is brought to you by www.thewavingcat.com.
Source: Netzpolitik.org
Southpark has an episode (Season 12, episode 6) where the internet is broken. Watch their prediction how people will react and what will happen.
Source: Netzpolitik.org
Netzpolitik.org interviewed Bicyclemark about Citizen Journalism. About the hurdles it faces and what it could be.
Source: Netzpolitik.org
Together I want to present you three news entries in the world of free and open source software (FOSS).
Subversion considers its future
What role does Subversion — a “best of breed” centralized version control system — have in a world where everyone is slowly moving to decentralized systems? Subversion has clearly accomplished the mission we established back in 2000 (”to replace CVS”). But you can’t hold still. If Subversion doesn’t have a clear mission going into the future, it will be replaced by something shinier. It might be Mercurial or Git, or maybe something else. Ideally, Subversion would replace itself.If we were to design Subversion 2.0, how would we do it? [read more...]
Source: Lwn.net
The open life of Second Life
It’s not the proprietary code that generates money for most companies. A lot of companies assume that they would put their revenue streams at risk by opening their code, when the value of the service they’re providing is probably not in the code. [read more]
Source: Lwn.net
Stallman: Can we rescue OLPC from Windows?
Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Its functioning is secret, so it is incompatible with the spirit of learning. Teaching children to use a proprietary (non-free) system such as Windows does not make the world a better place, because it puts them under the power of the system’s developer — perhaps permanently.
You might as well introduce the children to an addictive drug. If the XO turns out to be a platform for spreading the use of proprietary software, its overall effect on the world will be negative. [read more]
Source: Lwn.net
A short animation film explaing the Creative Commons in a … unorthodox … way.
The film is licensed under the Creative Commons Australian Attribution-ShareAlike 2.1 licence. You can get the sources on their website.
Source: Creative Commons Australia
LegalTorrents, “an online community created to discover and distribute Creative Commons licensed digital media”, has re-launched in exciting fashion. Originally founded in 2003 as a means to distribute “hand-picked .torrent files that were approved by content owners“, LegalTorrents revamped its infrastructure to be more friendly to content creators looking to spread their works far and wide, a goal which included a clear articulation of CC-licenses in relation to relevant torrent files. [More Information...]
Source: CreativeCommons.org
If you are a progammer chances are good that you have heard something about Donald Knuth creator of the books The Art of Computer Progamming.
InformIT.com has an interview with him.
Andrew Binstock and Donald Knuth converse on the success of open source, the problem with multicore architecture, the disappointing lack of interest in literate programming, the menace of reusable code, and that urban legend about winning a programming contest with a single compilation.
Source: Lwn.net
If you have ever wondered how you can convince your manage to favor free and open source software over proprietary ones, in this case gnu/linux over microsoft windows there is an article for you on TechRepublic.
1. TCO is bunk
2. Linux is not just for servers
3. Security is the name of the game
4. Support is everywhere
5. Applications are key
6. The kernel is just for you
7. Virtualization is virtually everything
8. Updating is simple and fast
9. Administration is world wide
10. Linux is constantly gaining traction
I think the article is somewhat biased but has his truth.
Source: Lwn.net
Microsoft is ceasing support for its MSN Music service. After August 31, 2008, people who have bought music from the service will no longer be able to move that music to different computers, or even change the operating system on their current computers.
DefectiveByDesign.org reports what happens if one trusts companies selling proprietary software and non free codecs.
With restricted music, every time you move it to a new system, you have to get new approval. Microsoft is shutting down the servers that currently grant that approval, which leaves everyone who bought music from them holding locks with no keys, and no recourse.
…
This isn’t the first time people have had access to their music and movies revoked (we’re looking at you, MLB and Google Video), and it won’t be the last unfortunately. But thankfully, this mode of selling media is dying. It was one thing when the threat of revocation was just some fine print, but now that it’s become a demonstrated reality, people are voting with their dollars for DRM-free living.
Wut im Bauch