Showing headlines posted by Fettoosh

At its best, the Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas. But Web-savvy news junkies have known for a long time that reader feedback can often turn nasty. Now a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggests that rude comments on articles can even change the way we interpret the news. "It's a little bit like the Wild West. The trolls are winning," says Dominique Brossard, co-author of the study on the so-called nasty effect. Those trolls she's referring to are commenters who make contributions designed to divert online conversations.

We all know passwords suck – they’re hard to remember, a pain in the arse to manage, and even the good ones are only as secure as the database in which they reside. We’ve seen enough password-hacking exploits over the last year (Dropbox, Evernote, LinkedIn, eHarmony to name just a few) to realize that much is true. For many, the solution to our authentication woes lies in biometrics. What easier way to log in to your personal accounts than by using part of your person? Nothing to remember, nothing to bring, hard for someone else to duplicate or steal. No muss, no fuss. Well, not so fast, kemosabe. Todays’ news brings an example of how biometrics can be easily fooled.

An open-source physiology engine that anyone can use to develop medical simulations is being developed by the U.S. Army’s Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center. It’s not altruism that’s spurring the $7 million PhACTS (Physiologically Accurate Community-based platform for Training Systems) project. Rather, TATRC hopes that the new engine will enable the public to develop medical simulations that will benefit military as well as civilian medicine.

This is part of the "Case for KDE" series of blog entries in which I explore various non-technical aspects of KDE. What follows are my personal thoughts and observations rather than an officially sanctioned position statement by the KDE community. I figured I would start with the topic of branding as it is a fairly simple topic .. a nice way to ease into this little adventure. It's also a topic that has been getting increasing amounts of attention in the Free software communities in the last few years as products become more successful, projects progress and more companies appear on the scene. So where does KDE stand on branding?

Aurélien Gateau and Shaun Reich started to implement a QML version of a SAL-like containment, which is also useable as a Launch-Button.

The project is called "KDE Homerun"

See it in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK8Z1LHX80k

Debian packages are here: https://launchpad.net/homerun https://launchpad.net/~blue-shell/+archive/homerun

Report bugs and ideas here: https://github.com/blue-shell/homerun/issues

The code can be found here: https://projects.kde.org/projects/playg ... se/homerun

Homerun is already quite useable while still being in development, so all ideas are welcome.

Video of a very nice utility that is applicable to Desktop/tablets/Netbooks/Phones and must see.

This is a Google Hangout interview with Keith Bergelt, Chief Executive Officer of the Open Invention Network (OIN), which was jointly founded by IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony to share their relevant patents with all Linux and Open Source developers and users in order to prevent patent troll attacks on FOSS, such as the famous SCO vs. IBM lawsuits that hampered Linux adoption during the early 2000s.

Hewlett-Packard seems more determined than ever to flee the Windows reservation, unveiling a $170 Android tablet, the HP Slate 7. The tablet is slated to go on sale in April.

At the time of this article, Canonical's efforts with Ubuntu have done wonders for gaining new adopters for Linux. Sadly however, Canonical's efforts have yet to make the company profitable. Despite their financial shortcomings thus far, Canonical is bullish about their efforts with the Ubuntu phone and the Ubuntu tablet. Recently I was given the opportunity to try both firsthand. After spending some time getting to know the interface and understanding the core back-end, I was shocked to find that in many regards the Ubuntu developer preview had a ton going for it. In this article, I will share why I think this could be a winning alternative to Android on the tablet.

The people over at Muktware published a video the other day of Plasma Active running on Google's Nexus 7 tablet. You can see it here: Occasionally people ask me what I think about Plasma Active appearing on various devices, knowing that we're working on a tablet ourselves. It's a really good question, and gets to one of the core tensions around open culture: the interplay between control and benefit.

KDE Plasma Active developer Aaron Seigo has been working to bring a tablet running open source Linux-based software to market for over a year. While the project has hit some roadbumps, Seigo says factory tooling for a new tablet has begun, and the first models could roll off the production line by May. While Seigo isn’t ready to provide specs for the new tablet yet, he says the Vivaldi tablet that’s currently in the works has a higher-resolution screen and faster processor than the model the team had planned to release in 2012.

Federal Parliament has issued documents formally compelling major technology vendors Apple, Microsoft and Adobe to compulsorily appear before its committee investigating price hikes on technology products sold in Australia, in a move that finally ends months of stalling by the vendors, who have proven unwilling to voluntary discuss their pricing strategies in public.

Last week I heard it not once, not twice but three times in three different conversations with three different people that building KDE software and getting involved was mysterious and perceived as difficult. We have documentation on the KDE wikis for this, but I admit that it can take time to read through everything and find the shortest path from point A (e.g. a machine with Linux installed) to point B (building software from git.kde.org).

For the first time, Chrome and Firefox can “talk” to each other via WebRTC. WebRTC is a new set of technologies that brings clear crisp voice, sharp high-definition (HD) video and low-delay communication to the web browser.

Last week I mentioned that I was going to do a live cast on Google Hangout .. and I did. It went well enough to consider doing it again, in fact. Having learned the ropes a bit in the process and played with a few tools over the weekend, I'm going to try to make it a weekly adventure. Yes, my weekly live vidcast is back after it sat lonely and scared in my closet for several years! ;)

Yesterday I mused on Google+: I used to do a "seigo on kde" live video cast back in the day ("straight from his bedroom, heeeeeeere's aaron!" ;) with viewer interaction, and they were a lot of fun and pretty well attended. Years have passed, and I'm considering starting up again using Google+ Hangout, though with a slightly broader scope to encompass the bigger world of things that make up the Free software user experience landscape. It'll retain a KDE perspective, but not be limited exclusively to "things KDE makes". The response was quite good .. and so I've decided to go ahead with it. I'll be hosting the first Hangout tonight (!) at 18:00 UTC. Why the short notice? This will be something of a dry run to get the feel for "on air" Hangouts, both in terms of the production bits and the audience management. If all goes well tonight with the technical details, I"ll make this a weekly thing with a regular schedule posted and a proper announcement a day in advance to remind all you wonderful peoples.

posted a few weeks back about a report that Samsung was preparing a Valentine's Day gift in the form of a red Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 tablet, and today, the company has officially launched that slate in what it's calling "garnet red." Unfortunately, while there's a new color option, the specs haven't been updated from the original Tab 2 7.0, which is also available in silver. The 7-inch tablet (with a screen resolution of 1,024x600) runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean using a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP CPU and includes just 8GB of storage. It does include a handy built-in IR blaster to turn the Tab into a remote control for your TV.

There are tablets and seven-inch tablets and portable devices that wear their Android affiliation on their sleeve, but Samsung has gone and combined the best of all that has come before and pushed it someplace decidedly newer and better with their new Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. As the name will tell, the two models in this line represent a second generation of Samsung's popular Galaxy Tab, and the 7.0 iteration we tried affirms the evolution away from the ten-inch range and toward a more compact, increasingly common seven-inch screen size that is more affordable and generally easier to handle. (For those who prefer the larger form factor, Samsung does also offer a 10.1-inch second-gen model.)

HP is preparing to launch its first entry into the Chromebook marketplace, if a PDF found on its site can be believed. According to this listing, HP's currently-unannounced Pavilion Chromebook will feature a 1.1GHz Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM, a 16GB solid-state drive, and a 14-inch, 1366 x 768 display.

Exclusive Microsoft blames PC makers for underwhelming Windows 8 sales over Christmas, The Register has learned. The software giant accused manufacturers of not building enough attractive Win 8-powered touchscreen tablets.

But the computer makers are fighting back: they claimed that if they’d followed Microsoft’s hardware requirements and ramped up production, they'd have ended up building a lot of high-end expensive slabs that consumers didn’t understand nor want.

LibreOffice 4.0 is right around the bend and today Charles H. Schulz wrote why this particular version is "an existential release." Folks were wondering why the big jump in version numbers, but Schulz says there are two big reasons why the time is now. Besides the additions that will be seen by the users, his reasons go a bit deeper.