Archive for July 11th, 2007
Do more with Nautilus
Straight from Lifehacker: “Linux users: Ramp up the Nautilus file manager menu with three simple packages which add several features. Resize and rotate images, run apps as administrator, and jump to locations in the terminal — all from the Nautilus right-click menu. The OS Novice weblog runs through the whole process. These packages complement the previously mentioned Nautilus Scripts quite nicely. Ubuntu users can get grab these packages with the following installation command:
sudo apt-get install nautilus-gksu nautilus-image-converter nautilus-open-terminal
Cindy Sheehan May Run Against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2008
Straight from Fox News: “CRAWFORD, Texas — Cindy Sheehan, the soldier’s mother who galvanized the anti-war movement, said Sunday that she plans to seek House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat unless she introduces articles of impeachment against President Bush in the next two weeks.
Sheehan said she will run against the San Francisco Democrat in 2008 as an independent if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush. That’s when Sheehan and her supporters are to arrive in Washington, D.C., after a 13-day caravan and walking tour starting next week from the group’s war protest site near Bush’s Crawford ranch.
“Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership,” Sheehan told The Associated Press. “We hired them to bring an end to the war. I’m not too far from San Francisco, so it wouldn’t be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money.”
Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the congresswoman has said repeatedly that her focus is on ending the war in Iraq.”
Explaining the Special Effects Behind Transformers
Straight from Slashdot: “Popular Mechanics has an in-depth look at the special effects behind the Transformers movie, including some exclusive shots from Paramount Pictures. Apparently, using real cars as models presented some interesting problems for the folks at Industrial Light and Magic, who had to figure out how a recognizable chunk of steel can fold into robot. In the end, the solution was the development team getting hands-on in the auto shop. And lots of grease.”
Granny Sues RIAA Over Unlicensed Investigator
Straight from Slashdot: “An elderly, non-file-sharing grandmother from East Texas, who had been sued by the RIAA after being displaced by Hurricane Rita, has sought leave to file counterclaims against the RIAA record companies for using unlicensed investigators. In her counterclaims (PDF) Ms. Crain claims that the record companies ‘entered into an agreement with a private investigations company to provide investigative services which led to the production of evidence to be used in court against counterclaim plaintiff, including the identification of an IP address on the basis of which counterclaim defendants filed their suit… [They] were at the time of this agreement aware that the aforementioned private investigations company was unlicensed to conduct investigations in the State of Texas specifically, and in other states as well… [T]hey agreed between themselves and understood that unlicensed and unlawful investigations would take place in order to provide evidence for this lawsuit, as well as thousands of others as part of a mass litigation campaign… [T]he private investigations company hired by plaintiffs engaged in one or more overt acts of unlawful private investigation… Such actions constitute civil conspiracy under Texas common law.’”
Using VirtualBox to run Ubuntu and any other operating system
Straight from Free Software Magazine: “GNU/Linux can be scary to a new user. After all, what if you mess up? What if you end up corrupting your hard drive so badly that you need to format it to get rid of GNU/Linux? The solution is to use virtualization technology. A virtual machine creates a virtual hard drive as well as a virtual computer, so you can install and run it from within another operating system. If you want to get rid of the virtualized (also known as the guest) operating system, just delete the virtual hard disk from the real (host) computer’s hard drive.”
For those of you running Ubuntu as your OS of choice, you can seamlessly integrate a virtual Windows XP installation into your Ubuntu desktop with VirtualBox. Follow these step by step instructions.
Pentagon Destroying Old F-14s to Keep Them Out of Enemy Hands
Straight from Fox News: “A mechanical monster grabs the F-14 fighter jet and chews through one wing and then another, ripping off the Tomcat’s appendages before moving onto its guts. Finally, all that’s left is a pile of shredded rubble — like the scraps from a Thanksgiving turkey.
The Pentagon is paying a contractor at least $900,000 to destroy old F-14s, a jet affectionately nicknamed “the turkey,” rather than sell the spares at the risk of their falling into the wrong hands, including Iran’s.”
We are meant to be here
A relatively long article, but definitely worth the read.
Straight from Salon: “Forget science fiction. If you want to hear some really crazy ideas about the universe, just listen to our leading theoretical physicists. Wish you could travel back in time? You can, according to some interpretations of quantum mechanics. Could there be an infinite number of parallel worlds? Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg considers this a real possibility. Even the big bang, which for decades has been the standard explanation for how the universe started, is getting a second look. Now, many cosmologists speculate that we live in a “multiverse,” with big bangs exploding all over the cosmos, each creating its own bubble universe with its own laws of physics. And lucky for us, our bubble turned out to be life-friendly.
But if you really want to start an argument, ask a room full of physicists this question: Are the laws of physics fine-tuned to support life? Many scientists hate this idea — what’s often called “the anthropic principle.” They suspect it’s a trick to argue for a designer God. But more and more physicists point to various laws of nature that have to be calibrated just right for stars and planets to form and for life to appear. For instance, if gravity were just slightly stronger, the universe would have collapsed long before life evolved. But if gravity were a tiny bit weaker, no galaxies or stars could have formed. If the strong nuclear force had been slightly different, red giant stars would never produce the fusion needed to form heavier atoms like carbon, and the universe would be a vast, lifeless desert. Are these just happy coincidences? The late cosmologist Fred Hoyle called the universe “a put-up job.” Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has suggested that the universe, in some sense, “knew we were coming.”"
AllOfMP3 Shut Down by Russian Government For Good
Straight from TorrentFreak: “AllOfMp3, the popular online music store, has been shut down by the Russian government. Pressure from the United States, and a refusal to enter the World Trade Organisation (WTO) convinced the Kremlin to take the website down for good.
Before the shutdown AllOfMP3 had nearly 6 million users who were able to download songs and albums for a fraction of the price from authorized alternatives such as the iTunes Store. MP3s were sold for $0.20 per song, or less.
AllOfMP3 has been a thorn in the side of the RIAA and the US government for years. Last year, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that if Russia wants to join the WTO, they should shut down the pirate music website [AllOfMP3] that is robbing U.S. recording companies of sales.
In an interview with P2Pnet, the owners of AllOffMP3 later said that Schwab completely and deliberately mischaracterized AllofMP3, “it is irresponsible to use AllofMP3.com as a negotiating instrument in an attempt to extract concessions from Russia”, thay added. But now it seems like president Putin has some good news to tell Bush today, a mere coincidence of course.
It is not clear how effective the shutdown of AllOfMP3 will be. Most users will probably move to MP3sparks, a similar service with a similar setup, launched by the same company. This site is not illegal under Russian law because they use a different licensing model.”
It would appear as though MP3sparks has now also been shutdown. I’ve been unable to reach the site for the past several days. If you still have an outstanding balance with AllOfMP3, their AllTunes software still works and allows for the purchase and download of their entire catalog. The download link to the AllTunes software application is still functional as well. Visa and Mastercard are still blocking access to AllOfMP3, AllTunes and MP3sparks, so trying to replenish your balance to order more songs is virtually impossible.
For alternatives to AllOfMP3, see:
Space Adventures Plans Private Trips Around Moon
Straight from Fox News: “A Space Adventures team has blueprinted a circumlunar mission using a unique blend of existing and flight-tested Russian technology. At the heart of the lunar leap is Russia’s venerable Soyuz spacecraft. A pilot and two passengers would depart Earth in their Soyuz, linking up in orbit with an unpiloted kick stage for a boost outward to the Moon.
“The Soyuz was originally designed as a circumlunar spacecraft. It hasn’t flown with people around the Moon, of course. But the Soyuz would fly a free-return trajectory — a boomerang course — around the Moon. So there’s not a lot that needs to be done to the Soyuz to accommodate for that … it could probably fly around the Moon right now,” Anderson told SPACE.com. “There will be some upgrades to the communications systems … and we would make the window bigger too.”
Anderson said that the Soyuz pilot and two passengers would not go into lunar orbit.
“That comes later,” he added, as a follow-on public space travel trek.
A practice run of mission hardware in unpiloted mode is likely, Anderson continued, “so we would test it all out, even though we think we could do it [the expedition] without a test flight.”
The two-passenger, $100 million per couch flight adds up to a $200 million mission.
“I personally think that it’s the biggest thing in private spaceflight. It would change the way the whole world thinks about private spaceflight. It is definitely doable for under the $200 million price tag,” Anderson explained, thereby signaling a radical reduction in cost of any past piloted lunar flight.”
Military Running a Parallel Earth Simulator
Straight from Slashdot: “The US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality. Putting supercomputers to an innovative use, the military is simulating our planet in an effort to predict the outcome of different scenarios. They might run tests to see how long ‘you’ can go without food or water, or how ‘you’ will respond to televised propaganda. Billions of nodes are created in the system, intended to reflect every man, woman, and child. ‘Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project. Simulex is the company developing these systems, and they list pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among their private sector clients. The U.S. military is their biggest customer, apparently now running the most complex version of the system. JFCOM-9 is now capable of running real-time simulations for up to 62 nations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. The simulations gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.”
AMD’s quad-core ‘Barcelona’ coming in August
Straight from Cnet News: “Advanced Micro Devices in August will begin selling its quad-core “Barcelona” Opteron processors, models that answer Intel’s current products but soon will face stiffer competition.
The first Barcelona models, formally called Quad-Core Opteron, will run at clock frequencies up to 2GHz and will be available in standard and low-power versions. Faster models, both of the standard and more power-hungry special-edition ilk, will arrive in the fourth quarter, the company said. The first servers using the chips will come in September. “
This Just In, Your 99 Yard Touchdown Run Will Look Better On An Xbox 360…
Straight from Ripten: “It has been confirmed that Madden NFL 08 and NCAA Football 08 will run at 60 frames per second on the Microsoft Xbox 360 and only 30 frames per second on the Sony Playstation 3.This has to be very frustrating for loyal Playstation owners. The PS3 was supposed to be the better machine and the specs clearly pointed to that, however as of late the “specs” have not been enough to convince video game developers to not cut corners when developing games for the console.
We have seen footage of many games side by side for both the 360 and PS3, and in nearly every one the 360 version appeared to be superior.”
