Sharky's Notebook

Well, this is an interesting double standard. Remember Apple's reaction to Palm trying to tap into iTunes? They were pretty pissed, right? Well, it seems that in Apple's world, it's not okay to access their services unauthorised, but when Apple needs to do the same to someone else's services, it's suddenly not a problem. As it turns out, Apple violated Facebook's terms of service, knowingly, and willingly.

FreeOrion, a turn-based space empire and galactic conquest game, version 0.3.15 has been released. Changes include: Planets now have only a single focus selection as secondary focus settings and the balanced focus option were removed. Scriptable species definitions have been added. Species now have names, icons, focus settings, environmental preferences, food consumption and effects associated [...]

"Google is celebrating Chrome's second birthday by releasing a new stable version of its rapidly evolving browser, offering a slightly simpler user interface, an automatic form filler, and the ability to synchronize extensions and form data across machines."

The iPad pretty much has the tablet market all to itself at this point, since no serious competitor has yet been released. We've been teased to death with the first real competitor, a device from Samsung called the Galaxy Tab. It has been officially unveiled today, and it indeed looks like the first serious competition to the iPad. It runs Android, naturally.

#firefoxtip We already know Firefox isn't the most pixel-friendly browser, and bookmark bars make it even worse. Reader Marand shows us an easy way to save space without losing quick access to your bookmarks. More »

Howtoforge posted a guide setting up Apache2 with mod_fcgid and PHP5 on OpenSUSE 11.3...

How To Set Up Apache2 With mod_fcgid And PHP5 On OpenSUSE 11.3

This tutorial describes how you can install Apache2 with mod_fcgid and PHP5 on OpenSUSE 11.3. mod_fcgid is a compatible alternative to the older mod_fastcgi. It lets you execute PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners instead of the Apache user.

openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 1 has been released...

Metalink multichannel download, so package candy melts your screen, not your internet connection.

openSUSE 11.4 Milestone 1 is available today, Thursday, September 2 for developers, testers and community members to test and participate in the development of openSUSE 11.4. M1 starts off openSUSE 11.4 development at a cracking pace with performance improvements in the package management network layer and version updates to major components.

This milestone contains libzypp version 8.1, which has a new backend for http and ftp package downloads. MultiCurl replaces the old MediaAria backend, and brings support for zsync transfers and better Metalink download support. These will improve both repository refresh and package install and update performance. Metalink allows the multi-channel download of packages by downloading the individual blocks of a package in parallel from multiple servers. ZSync reduces the amount of data to download by only fetching the changed parts of a file instead of the whole file. This speeds up repository refreshes, since due to the way the repository data is structured, it is easy to locate the parts of the metadata that changed since the last update. The new Curl-based zypp backend also gives libzypp and therefore zypper and YaST better support for network proxies, by using the same proxy configuration as the rest of YaST instead of its own, and adds support for HTTP BASIC password-protected repositories. And as an added bonus, MultiCurl should eliminate slow and hanging package installations that occurred due to bugs in the old MediaAria backend.

Zsync efficiently downloads only the changed metadata. Sweet!

Other major components that have received updates from upstream projects for Milestone 1 include XOrg 1.9, KDE 4.5 and GNOME 2.32.0 Beta 1. Automated testing and brave openSUSE Factory testers have been validating early builds to make sure that Milestone 1 is suitable for others to test, so please download Milestone 1 and report bugs – the earlier a bug is reported in the development cycle, the more likely it is that it will be fixed on release day, March 10, 2011.

The next milestone is scheduled for September 30.

TuxRadar Linux posted a review on Linux Mint 9 KDE...

The new look tech blog posted day 10 of their ongoing Lightweight Distro Roundup...

ixproject is an Ubuntu Karmic image that allows you to have a rough (read: ugly and pre-alpha) install of Ubuntu on your iPhone.

Info here: [blog.ixproject.org]
Download here: [idroid.nickpack.com]

#tips #iphone #ubuntu #linux

trashcanpatrol

It's been only a mere six months since its first unveiling, but Microsoft has already announced that Windows Phone 7 has been released to manufacturing. This means device makers can start tuning the software to their hardware, leaving plenty of time to release devices before the holiday season.

Well, this was rather unexpected. As it turns out, Commodore USA's CEO Barry Altman isn't particularly pleased about the article I wrote earlier today in which I placed a considerable amount of scepticism with regards to Commodore USA and its business (and website). He (not his lawyer) sent us a threatening email demanding we take down the article, post a new correction article, the whole shebang. The entire email - as an image, you'll want the original formatting - after the break. Our reply? We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.

A whole lot of Apple news of course, but we've never really done music players or streaming devices, so let's skip the barrage of new iPods and the new Apple TV (streaming-only? Fail). The real meat is of course iOS 4.1 and 4.2, both of which were detailed during today's press event.