Ed's interview with Martin Krafft - one of the lead Debian developers - available in Ogg Vorbis format (20MB):
http://www.rrr.org.au/archive/byte/MartinKrafftInterview.ogg
For more from Martin:
http://debiansystem.info/
http://madduck.net/
BBC NEWS | Technology | Virtual telescope opens night sky
Microsoft has launched WorldWide Telescope, a free tool that stitches together images from some of the best ground- and space-based telescopes.
Collections include pictures from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, as well as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
The web-based tool also allows users to pan and zoom around the planets, and trace their locations in the night sky.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Google helps the web to go social
Google has joined the drive to make the web more social by introducing tools to enable people to interact with their friends.
Friend Connect follows plans announced last week by the world's two biggest social networking sites, MySpace and Facebook.
Data Availability and Connect let users move their personal profiles and applications to other websites.
At the heart of Google's service is the use of Open Social which will allow third parties to build and develop applications for the site.
The company says with Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running right away without any complicated programming. This will run the gamut from invitations to member's gallery and from message walls to reviews.
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft boosts XP on budget PCs
Microsoft is cutting the cost of putting Windows XP on low cost laptops.
The price cuts will only be available for ultra-portable laptops that meet a strict set of specifications.
The move is widely seen as an attempt by Microsoft to bolster its market share in one of the PC industry sectors showing growth.
Low-powered laptops, such as the Asus Eee PC, are proving hugely popular in developed nations and in projects trying to bridge the digital divide.
BBC NEWS | UK | Facebook users warned about ads
Credit companies are using the Facebook social networking site to target young people, a debt charity has warned.
Credit Action says adverts promising cheap loans for people with poor credit ratings are appearing on the site and many break advertising regulations.
In particular, they are promoting two new products - payday loans secured against a salary or logbook loans secured against a car, it says.
The charity has made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading.
Credit Action says many of the adverts contravene UK credit advertising regulations, usually by failing to give details of interest rates.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Adobe opens up Flash on mobiles
Adobe has announced a plan to try to get its Flash player installed on more mobile devices and set-top boxes.
Dubbed Open Screen the initiative lifts restrictions on how its multimedia handling software can be used.
Adobe will stop charging licencing fees for mobile versions of Flash and plans to publish information about the inner workings of the code.
In taking this step Adobe hopes to repeat on mobiles the success its Flash technology has enjoyed on the web.
NNDB mapper lets conspiracy theorists connect the dots between powerful people - Boing Boing
The NNDB Mapper is a visual tool for tracking the connections of more than 32,000 famous people- linking them together through family relations, corporate boards, tv shows, political alliances and shadowy conspiracy groups.
Creating a map with the NNDB Mapper tells a story about the world through connecting the lives of billionaire executives, scientists and inventors, politicians and activists, writers and musicians, and even Hollywood stars.
Analog switchoff == DRM screwjob - Boing Boing
Fred sez, "Nice article explaining how the end of analog TV in the U.S. in Feb. 2009 is going to unleash DRM troubles on a lot of unsuspecting consumers."
This is great for the studios, but it's not how the audience thinks (or should think) of their product. Paying for some form of content should directly connect to real received value: a performance of a movie in a theater. A DVD with additional commentary and deleted scenes. And yes, convenient on-demand availability, when appropriate. But too often, the "value" is based upon an indirect conspiracy to make it difficult or impossible to use the media you've already paid for, making the end result a tax on the technological have-nots.
SMS data rate is 4x more expensive than data from the Hubble - Boing Boing
A space scientist from Leicester has calculated that SMS data is four times more expensive than receiving data from the Hubble space telescope.
He worked out the cost of obtaining a megabyte of data from Hubble – and compared that with the 5p cost of sending a text.
He said: “The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.
Macworld | Mac 911 | Alphabetizing Firefox bookmarks
Here’s the trick:
Choose Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks. Select a folder full of bookmarks in the left pane of the Bookmarks Manager window. The right pane will fill with that folder’s contents. If you want to sort all the items in the right pane by name, just Control-click on an item in the right pane and choose Sort By Name from the contextual menu. Firefox will first organize folders alphabetically, and then follow those folders with alphabetized items that carry URLs. For example, in my Bookmarks toolbar, choosing Sort By Name puts my Apple, Favorites, and Mac Stuff folders first in line and then Google News, Latest Headlines (an RSS feed with a URL), and Rhapsody follow after that.
If the right pane includes folders of its own—you’ve chosen the Bookmarks Toolbar Folder, for example—click the triangle next to one of the folders in the right pane, select an item within that folder, and perform that Control-click/Sort By Name trick again. The items within the folder will be sorted alphabetically. And yes, the alphabetical sorting will carry over into Firefox’s Bookmarks toolbar as well as submenus in the Bookmarks menu
10 Useful Gadgets for Mobile Computing | Six Revisions
If you’re a web worker, mobile computing is either a necessity of the job or something you choose to do to get away from the monotonous confines of your office work station. Along with your laptop and (most probably) your iPhone/Blackberry/[insert handheld here], there are a plethora of useful devices that you can tag along with you to enhance your computing experience. Here’s a round-up of 10 cool gadgets that can supplement your remote workspace. Including (amongst other): The USB Port Blocker prevents data thieves from plugging in USB devices to grab your precious data or injecting malware when you’re not looking. The Solio Solar Charger is a multi-compatible device charger that uses stored solar energy to charge up your other gizmos. It works with the iPhone, iPod, and most other portable handhelds. A fully charged Solio can charge two standard cell phones, and can charge as fast as any wall chargers (according to the maker) and Adding an extra layer of protection to your data is made easy with the STYSEN E08 RFID Security Mobile Disk. It works by locking your hard drive which you can then unlock using an RFID key.
SME's get more Web choices with MYOB - Internet - iTnews Australia
Business solutions company MYOB announced today it will expand its range of products to offer online Web hosting services to its SME customers.
MYOB will now offer domain registration from $35 for two years, email hosting from $14.95 per month and Web hosting from $29.95 per month.
MYOB has always focused primarily on small to medium enterprise (SME) clients, and has tailored their new web offerings to benefit anything from young start-up companies to fully established SMEs.
Sun open sources Mac OS X virtualisation tool - Operating Systems - iTnews Australia
Sun Microsystems has unveiled a useful update to its xVM VirtualBox, open source desktop virtualisation, which now has support for both Solaris and Mac OS X.
The update means that Sun is now officially the first firm to have launched open source virtualisation for those particular two operating systems.
Sun is seeking a niche in the big-business virtualisation market. Its Virtual Box, which was developed by German company Innotek, bought by Sun this February, can run as an application on a host operating system, allowing several guest OSs to run on top of it.
The software comes in a free, open source version as well as in a licensed version sporting advanced features, which is also free, but only for individual use. Any business users who want the software have to cough up for the purchase licenses.
Sun claims that as well as supporting Solaris and Mac OS X as hosts, its new and improved VirtualBox 1.6 now also comes with seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests, SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per VM and a programming interface for Web services. Solaris is also supported as a guest OS, but Mac OS X is not as yet.
XP SP3 crashes some AMD machines - Hardware - iTnews Australia
The long-awaited and much-delayed update to Windows XP, Service Pack 3, is giving owners of machines with AMD hardware headaches aplenty it seems.
The problems, which first arose just one day after the push, have been causing lots of noise on Microsoft support sites and angry user blogs.
One user reported, "I just installed Windows XP SP3 and after completing the processes and when the system reboots, the system cannot proceed to load the Windows. It just displays the flash screen of Windows then after it reboots again."
Angry users have also reported that, after the installation, it is not even possible to boot in safe mode, usually the last resort before setting up a repeated forehead/screen interface.
Jesper Johansson, a former program manager for security policy at Microsoft and a well respected blogger has provided some pointers as to where the problem might lie.
ADC Round 1 Winners! | Android Phone Fans
Google has contacted the Round 1 winners of the Android Developer Challenge and here are the results. Listed are 46 of the 50 Winners… the remaining 4 opted not to disclose their project!
Video games don't create killers, new book says - Software - iTnews Australia
It was a different approach than most other studies, which have focused on laboratory experiments that attempt to use actions like ringing a loud buzzer as a measure of aggression.
"What we did that had rarely been done by other researchers was actually talk to the kids. It sounds bizarre but it hadn't been done," Kutner said.
They found that playing video games was a near-universal activity among children, and was often intensely social.
But the data did show a link between playing mature-rated games and aggressive behavior. The researchers found that 51 percent of boys who played M-rated games -- the industry's equivalent of an R-rated movie, meaning suitable for ages 17 and up -- had been in a fight in the past year, compared to 28 percent of non-M-rated gamers.
The pattern was even stronger among girls, with 40 percent of those who played M-rated games having been in a fight in the past year, compared to just 14 percent for non-M players.
One of the most surprising things was how popular mature games were among girls. In fact, the "Grand Theft Auto" crime action series was the second-most played game behind "The Sims", a sort of virtual dollhouse.
Kutner and Olson said further study is needed because the data shows only a correlation, not causation. It is unclear whether the games trigger aggression or if aggressive children are drawn to more violent games.
Adobe CS3 subscription offer for Aussies - Software - iTnews Australia
From May 1 resellers will stock Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium Subscription Edition, which will cost customers $129 per month for a 12-month contract. Australia will be the first and currently only country that has been offered the subscription service, claimed Cokes. The suite will also be available for AU$199 month-to-month.
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