In a presentation at Ubuntu Developer Summit currently going on in Denmark, Drew Bliss from Valve said that Linux is more viable than Windows 8 for gaming. Windows 8 ships with its own app store and it is moving away from an open platform model.
via Valve: Linux More Viable Than Windows 8 for Gaming ~ Ubuntu Vibes | Daily Ubuntu Linux Updates.
Ubuntu is preferred platform as it has a large user base and good community support with a strong company like Canonical behind it.
A tractor beam is a traveling wave that can transport illuminated material along its length back to its source.
via Optical conveyors: A class of active tractor beams.
Abstract.
We experimentally demonstrate a class of tractor beams created by coherently superposing coaxial Bessel beams. These optical conveyors have periodic intensity variations along their axes that act as highly effective optical traps for micrometer-scale objects. Varying the Bessel beams’ relative phase shifts the traps axially thereby selectively transports trapped objects either downstream or upstream along the length of the beam. The same methods used to project a single optical conveyor can project arrays of independent optical conveyors, allowing bi-directional transport in three dimensions.
Total bid costs were the sum of Layer 2 hardware (and software), Layer 3 hardware (and software), Layer 2 maintenance, Layer 3 maintenance, training, and taxes and shipping. Cisco’s cost in each respective category was $51 million; $18.7 million; $34.3 million; $10.6 million; $1 million; and $7 million.
Alcatel-Lucent’s was $14.5 million; $2.5 million; $1.8 million; $798,000; $777,000; and $1.7 million.
via Cisco network really was $100 million more.
The comments in response to this article are superb and well worth the read. If you don’t drill down far enough this comment stood out for me (highlights mine).
it comes down to a architected solution vs best of breed. If you just want routing and switching (speeds and feeds) – -take it to bid and bid on the lowest vendor. Although there are still some advantages inherent within each product – you’re going to get what you get. But you can’t get business value out of switching and routing – its the applications! In SJSUs case – I laud the concept that you buy an architecture. If you need to deliver business applications like conferencing, video, call processing, presence/IM service, and contact center… as it appears sjsu was looking to do … why not buy the architecture that has been integrated and purpose built for the applicaitons. That is why SJSU is saying Cisco was the only vendor that had a solution. ALU doesn’t, brocade doesnt, HP doesnt…. the alternative is you could go to bid for each of these, take over a year to do it, once purchased, hire an IBM, Accenture, or build your own team to integrated them all, and then what do you have… a HUGE expense and stovepiped systems that don’t truly deliver the needs of the business today or tomorrow
Any college with a reputable Computer Science program should have many decent graduate students able to solve integrating applications from various vendors reducing the problem set to just speeds and feeds. It’s also not a good idea to buy into an architecture that ties one to a single vendor for applications.
Here’s a better approach: circumventing copy protection schemes shouldn’t be against the law in the first place. DRM schemes harm legitimate users more than they deter piracy. Indeed, as the phone unlocking example illustrates, many uses of DRM have nothing to do with copyright infringement in the first place. Rather, they’re a convenient legal pretext for limiting competition and locking consumers into proprietary products. We shouldn’t be using copyright law as a backdoor means to give such anti-competitive practices the force of law.
via Jailbreaking now legal under DMCA for smartphones, but not tablets | Ars Technica.
As the world’s largest maker of networking equipment, Cisco occupies a large market share in China. It accounts for over a 70 percent share of China Telecom’s 163 backbone network and over an 80 percent share of China Unicom’s 169 backbone network.
The pressure to evolve even further has become immense now that the quality gap between cheap-or-free games and full-price ones is narrowing. The best iPad games look like middle-of-the-road Xbox 360 games. Your smartphone is quickly getting to the point where its hardware could display good-looking games in 1080p on your television, and it won’t be long before your phone and TV can sync up without cables.
via Consolation Prize: The Game Console Is Dead. What Will Replace It? | Game|Life | Wired.com.
Gaming aficionados will pay up, they say, because the bigger games are of higher quality. But only a handful of developers can now afford to play in this rarefied and risky space, and even for these few, the returns will be smaller. The new leaders in the game, insiders predict, will be those who can shift resources into less ambitious, higher-return products, leaving the future of high-end games in serious doubt over the long haul.
Humphrey tells Fox News that for a few hundreds dollar his team was able to “spoof” the GPS system on board the drone, a technique that involves mimicking the actual signals sent to the global positioning device and then eventually tricking the target into following a new set of commands. And, for just $1,000, Humphreys says the spoofer his team assembled was the most advanced one ever built.
via Texas college hacks drone in front of DHS — RT.
“In five or ten years you have 30,000 drones in the airspace,” he tells Fox News. “Each one of these could be a potential missile used against us.”
But beyond the chemistry lab, most elements appear in everyday tech gear, too. We’ve researched each element to learn more about its properties and typical uses, and found common products that spawn from that element. From iPhones to microwave ovens, from alkaline batteries to camera lenses, and from hybrid-car fuel cells to plasma HDTVs, everything starts with elements. Here’s the breakdown.
Even the already famous seem to have enjoyed an artificial boost. In August, UK social media management firm StatusPeople scanned several massively popular Twitter accounts using a service it developed called Fake Follower Check. According to StatusPeople, more than 70 percent of President Barack Obama’s 19 million Twitter followers were either fake or inactive accounts. Fake Follower Check returns roughly similar results for Mitt Romney, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber.
via Almost Famous: Inside social media’s fake fan industry | ITworld.
“It used to be the main metric of social media success for many companies was how many Likes or fans they had,” says Mike Nail, vice president of operations for the company. “But what really matters is engagement, and when you’re buying Likes to pad that number, your engagement rate actually goes down. You can’t have engagement with people who don’t exist. The real reason to use social media is to get leads, and you can’t get leads from fake people.”
If you buy e-books from Amazon, and want to engage in a bit of digital civil disobedience—by stripping the files’ DRM and making sure that Amazon can’t deny you access—we’re about to show you how. Yes, many parts of the Internet have known about this technique for some time now, but we feel that it bears mentioning again here..
via DRM be damned: how to protect your Amazon e-books from being deleted | Ars Technica.
Now, as West himself noted, these files are for your personal use only—they’re not meant to be distributed anywhere. Enjoy!