Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Digia developers working on the Qt tool-kit have decided they will switch from using the WebKit browser engine to instead using Google's "Blink" engine fork for Chromium. The new Qt web rendering engine will be called Qt WebEngine.

The next version of the Linux kernel, version 3.12, has a name: “Suicidal squirrel”. Linus Torvalds let the new name be known in a Git commit in which he killed off the “Linux for Workgroups” name used for version 3.11. The Linux Lord has not, however, entirely ruled out returning to Microsoft-themed names for future versions of the kernel, offering the following commentary on future names: “This reverts the Linux for Workgroups thing. And no, before somebody asks, we're not doing Linux95. Not for a few years, at least.

Database startup Couchbase has developed what it believes is the first NoSQL database for mobile devices, but why would anyone want such a thing? The Couchbase Lite database was announced by the company on Friday as part of its "JSON Anywhere" strategy, which sees it also create a new data syncing service and a cloud test and development "sandbox" platform. It comes a few weeks after the company trousered $25m of filthy Valley lucre.

Antik Technology announced a smaller, lower-powered sibling to its Juice Extreme 2 multicast/OTT IP set-top-box. The Juice Nano runs Linux on a 550MHz ST STiH207 processor, delivers video at up to 1080p at 60fps, provides HDMI, TOSLINK digital audio, and USB ports, and offers both Ethernet and WiFi connectivity.

My first encounter with SPARKcon was shortly after I moved to Raleigh when I saw someone wearing the T-shirt. Intrigued solely by the name, a quick web search told me that I had just missed the event, held each September in downtown Raleigh, and a great opportunity to get to know the local creative community.

Pam Chestek is an intellectual property lawyer. She runs Chestek Legal, a practice that focuses on giving practical, legal advice on branding, marketing, and protecting and sharing content. In this interview she shares with me what caused her to challenge traditional wisdom back in law school, the kind of chaos involved in analyzing free and open source software through the lens of the law, and how creativity is at the heart of it all.

Intel offered new details about its 22nm “Silvermont” architecture “Bay Trail-T” system-on-chip, targeting affordable Android and Windows 8 tablets. The Intel Atom Z3000 family SoC will be offered in dual- and quad-core models, offering up to twice the performance of current Atom chips while providing up to 10-hour battery life, says Intel.

I'm not writing to complain about your choice of programming languages (Visual Basic? Seriously??) or about the A my daughter earned in your class. And, actually, my daughter had no specific complaints about you as a teacher. I, on the other hand, have plenty of feedback for you.

Last week support was committed to the mainline Mesa tree for Haswell Gallium3D support via the community-maintained "ILO" driver formerly known as i965g. In this article are the first public benchmarks of the Intel Haswell Gallium3D support code and the performance is compared to the classic i965 Mesa DRI driver that is officially developed by Intel for all modern HD Graphics hardware support.

Interestingly, AMD chose to launch its new embedded strategy and 2014 roadmap on the first day of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Both companies have been scrambling to adapt to the shifting winds of the “post-PC” era, with PC sales lagging and tablet and smartphone sales skyrocketing. Each has come out with x86-based system-on-chips, and Intel recently was able to claim several successes in new smartphone and tablet device releases. But whereas Intel divested itself of its ARM-based XScale chip business several years back, AMD let it be known earlier this year that it planned to expand into ARM territory.

If you are an owner of Intel "Ironlake" generation hardware, there is still some good open-source Linux graphics driver news. Intel developers have addressed hardware context support for Ironlake Linux graphics and will be re-attempting to enable RC6 power-savings support.

Dot Categories: KDE Official NewsThe KDE Community announces the release of Plasma Active 4 (PA4). Plasma Active is a user experience technology stack for consumer electronics. While the default user interface is for tablets, it can be customized to work on smartphones, settop boxes, smart TVs, and touch computing devices such as home automation and in-vehicle infotainment. There are major new improvements to the Files application, an overhaul of the on-screen keyboard and a completely free and open source system based on the Mer Core.

Sharing is easy. Everyday we have faster, easier and many more ways to do it. Sharing is also important. They say happiness gets bigger when it’s shared, as sorrow gets smaller. We share everyday and we feel good about it. We share our knowledge about an issue, we share advice when needed, and we share our opinion on all sorts of things. But the best thing about sharing is when our friends also share their points of view, giving everyone a better vision of the topic and enriching each another through a new perspective. Sharing code is similar.

U.K.-based car manufacturer McLaren is adding an Android-based in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system to its 2013 MP4-12C sports car based on Parrot’s Asteroid system. The Formula One inspired racer’s updated IRIS IVI system introduces new features like Pandora radio, Bluetooth audio streaming, and voice controlled music selection.

For parents: Shopping for back-to-school supplies, textbooks, clothing, and other accouterments can be frustrating and expensive. To help take the sting out of this ritual, students and parents might consider turning to free, open source software and tools in preparation for a new year of study.  For students: Beyond cost savings, open source software empowers students to take ownership of their work and be free of software licensing treadmills. And, perhaps the ultimate educational opportunity is the ability to examine, analyze, and contribute to open source software and tools like these. For teachers: Turning theory to practice, students can learn by doing as they help with documentation, quality testing, bug review, or even code contributions. Teaching is not simply the delivery of content, via lecture-taxi, to passive minds. Participation and collaboration ignites powerful learning, and empowers students to engage in thoughtful, meaningful scholarship. And open source can be the catalyst. Here are five great open source applications for learning. Share this list to your favorite student or teacher!

For manuals and guides, Wikis are an excellent way of organizing content. Yet, they often don't work as well for larger articles or books because individual content is spread across many pages and the reader has to click around. Additionally, when you want to read online content while in a place where you cannot get an Internet connection (like, reading on the plane), another mode of content delivery is needed.

Dot Categories: KDE Official News With the upcoming Frameworks 5, the KDE Release Team will decouple the release cycles of Workspaces, Applications and Platform. While Applications will have more releases in the 4.x series, the Plasma Workspaces team has decided to focus on Workspaces 2. The recently released 4.11 version of Plasma Workspaces will have Long Term Support. Meanwhile, work on Frameworks 5 is progressing, making KDE technologies ready for the future. What does all this mean? Read on to find out!

In 2008, Facebook gave big data users a gift. The social network released Cassandra, its NoSQL, big data distributed data store to open source. Today, with the release of Cassandra 2.0, the gift is more valuable than ever.

Recently filed FCC test documents offer a sneak peek at a new device in Sony’s NSZ-series Google TV media player lineup. Although the NSZ-GU1 plugs directly into a TV’s HDMI connector, it’s considerably larger than HDMI stick-style adapters like Google’s Chromecast or Plair’s device, which eschew Google TV in favor of remote management by a computer or mobile device.

It’s a relatively quiet time for most governments around the world right now. Typically, during this time there are few new initiatives, policies, or announcements related to open source. So, it’s a good time to consider the trends of the first half of the year and ponder what the remainder of this calendar year holds. Here are a few that come to mind.