Tech
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Up until recently, VirtualBox had a pretty major limitation: There was no way to use Windows Aero effects when running Windows Vista or Windows 7 inside VirtualBox. If you are testing software, this makes a big difference: You are not getting the Aero experience most Windows users would get, and your screenshots look wrong. Fortunately, with the advent of VirtualBox 4.1, this can be fixed.
Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips
Anyone remember Color cycling from the 90s? This was a technology often used in 8-bit video games of the era, to achieve interesting visual effects by cycling (shifting) the color palette. Back then video cards could only render 256 colors at a time, so a palette of selected colors was used. But the programmer could change this palette at will, and all the onscreen colors would instantly change to match. It was fast, and took virtually no memory. Thus began the era of color cycling.
Old School Color Cycling with HTML5 | EffectGames.com
Isn’t it delightful how geek culture works? During my Christmas shopping last year, I stumbled into a favorite little pop culture shop in Little Collins Street in Melbourne which is well known for its comprehensive stocking of all things Lovecraftian. I was looking for some stocking fillers for the kids; instead I walked out with [...] The combination of a cloud service and verification that does not involve sharing data has allowed one company to provide a true bumper-to-bumper insurance policy, reports Victor Cruz. One legacy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has arrived on the southern border of the United States. The Department of Homeland Security recently completed tests of a powerful camera, one that cut its teeth in the war zones, that captures video of entire miles of border in a single frame.
Wired News
If you're a little too impatient to wait for the Absinthe jailbreak tool to make its way to Windows, good news, there's another option. The iPhone Dev Team has released Corona, a command line-based option for Mac and Windows 7 that will deliver Cydia to your iOS 5.0 or 5.0.1-running iPhone 4S or iPad 2. Obviously, you'll want to be comfortable with the terminal and command prompt but, if you can handle a little CTRL+c and CTRL+v action, jailbreaking your brand new iOS device shouldn't prove too difficult. Hit up the source link for complete instructions on how to free your shiny A5 portable from Apple's shackles while still using your Microsoft machine.
Engadget
InfoWorld: The idea that the GPL is in decline appeared last summer when 451 Group analyst Matthew Aslett built on comments defending Oracle's open source adjustments by Eclipse Foundation representative Ian Skerrett. LinuxBSDos: One of the better alternatives to Unity that has been made available is the Cinnamon desktop, a project of Linux Mint, a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop itself. EnterpriseAppsToday : Open source business intelligence vendor Pentaho aims to make it easier to get a grip on Big Data by offering user-driven data visualization in its latest software release. (Apr 27, 2012, 10:00) ( 1 talkbacks )
Linux Today
10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it. (10 more for emphasizing that you worked on your own.) 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be stolen. 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations". 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it. 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to provide a "mechanism".
Crackpot index
The quackometer is a project based around the automation of debunking quack medicine on the web. The web is full of pages supporting dubious medical claims and inflated capabilities for cures. The freedom that the web gives us to express our views, entertain and do business also gives quacks a way to make a living by promoting nonsense treatments to unsuspecting people. Spotting these web sites appears to be easy when you know what to look out for. If it is that easy, can the process be automated? The quackometer project intends to find out.
The Quackometer -
A peine le dernier jeu Saint Seiya disponible qu’il est déjà temps de penser au prochain. Mais attention, cette fois, vous ne revisiterez pas pour la douzième fois le Sanctuaire, ses courants d’air et ses flèches au pif. C’est de la nouvelle série animé dont il est question : Saint Seiya Omega , qui se déroule après la saga Hades.
Gizmodo
Qubes is an open source operating system designed to provide strong security for desktop computing . Qubes is based on Xen, X Window System, and Linux, and can run most Linux applications and utilize most of the Linux drivers. In the future it might also run Windows apps. [ more ]
QubeOS
"Silent World," a photography project by Parisian artists Lucie & Simon, takes the most crowded parts of New York City, Paris, and Beijing, and alters them in a basic (but technically incredible difficult) way. We recognize Times Square, Columbus Circle, and more landmarks from our own hometown, but only barely--those usually people-clogged landmarks are now empty, totally bereft of the swarms of tourists and locals alike that give those areas their personality. Apparently the artist duo used a neutral filter "normally used by NASA for analyzing stars." The filter allows the photographers to take extra-long exposures, and then cut out any moving objects like people or cars.
Popular Science | New Technology, Science News, The Future Now
Slashdot
We've heard recently of CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act , a bill currently making its way through Congress that many are calling the latest incarnation of SOPA. Reader SolKeshNaranek points out an article at Techdirt explaining exactly why this bill is bad , and how its backers are trying to deflect criticism by using language that's different and rather vague. Quoting: "The bill defines 'cybersecurity systems' and 'cyber threat information' as anything to do with protecting a network from: ' (A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or (B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information. ' It's easy to see how that definition could be interpreted to include things that go way beyond network security — specifically, copyright policing systems at virtually any point along a network could easily qualify."Ars Technica
A Texas-based Linux admin was charged with hacking into the websites of at least 4 police groups after FBI agents engaged him in an online manhunt that mined photo metadata, Facebook profiles, and other digital evidence. He says he's surrendered all accounts in his control, but his status as a cooperating witness is anything but clear.By Cory Doctorow at 5:47 pm Tuesday, Apr 3 • 12 Comments • Share On IO9, Ron Miller has published a selection from his collection of photos of 1970s cosplayers, dating from a costuming epoch where nudity was a lot more common than it is today. Among the clothed pictures (not reproduced here) is one shot of Elfquest co-creator Wendy Pini as one of her own elves. One thing I noticed in going through the slides — mostly taken at Worldcon masquerades and a few other cons — is the great sense of whimsy that permeated SF costuming decades ago. This is something that seems to be missing, now that costuming is taken so much more seriously.