Two articles in the BBC on machinima:
Machinima waits to go mainstream by Peter Price
The Machinima festival was held in Leicester
Falling somewhere between film, animation and gaming, machinima is the art of producing films using graphics rendered by computer games.
Hot picks: Machinima by Tracy Harwood
Manager Machinima Festival Europe 07
The Festival was the first in Europe dedicated to machinima
Machinima is a medium that has come of age….
I recently ordered the new Sony PRS-505 ebook reader. It has a e-ink display that only uses power when turning pages and supposedly has a resolution that equals paper print. I hope that the paperless office comes a step closer with this one, as I still rpefer printouts to reading on screen.
What is interesting, but not advertized, that little gadget is based on Linux as well. If you have a look at Sony’s Linux website, offering downloads for used open source software, you’ll be amazed how many of its products are based on some GPL’ed software.
There is – obviously – already a hacker community around that little thing, improving it in unknown and unintended ways. They are adding new file formats and other cool stuff.
It is getting closer!!! Exiting:
10/18/2007 9:21 am With delivery courier. Zurich, Switzerland 8:52 am Arrived at DHL facility. Zurich, Switzerland 7:26 am Depart Facility Basel, Switzerland 6:01 am Clearance processing complete Basel, Switzerland 6:01 am Processing for clearance Basel, Switzerland 6:00 am Transit through DHL facility Basel, Switzerland 3:38 am Depart Facility Brussels, Belgium 10/17/2007 10:21 pm Transit through DHL facility Brussels, Belgium 10:28 am Depart Facility New York City Gateway, NY 4:45 am Depart Facility Wilmington - Clinton Field, OH 10/16/2007 11:01 pm Depart Facility Pinellas Park, FL 8:07 pm Depart Facility Bradenton, FL 2:32 pm Shipment picked up Bradenton, FL
This is just a post-it to myself…
Captive portals are used to authenticate WLAN users. Two open source projects found in a quick desk research:
Chillispot
WifiDog
This (free) documentary, called code breakers, shows the benefits of Linux and FOSS ( Free and open-source software) for development countries.
From their website:
The Team of independend producers visited nearly 12 Countries worldwide to see how the adoption of FOSS presents opportunities for industry and capacity development, software piracy reduction, and localization and customization for diverse cultural and development needs.
Stories from The Codebreakers include computer and Internet access for school children in Africa, reaching the poor in Brazil, tortoise breeding programmes in the Galapagos, connecting villages in Spain, and disaster management in Sri Lanka. The documentary also includes interviews from key figures around the world.
Production company: UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme, International Development Research Centre of Canada and UNESCO, The International Open Source Network (IOSN)
Walmart’s stores cover an area which is larger than Manhattan. Wow, that is impressive.
Various store sizes of retail chains (2007)
Found via boingboing, original image was here (now defunct).
Cam back from 3 and a half day in Istanbul. It was a vey nice and extremely fun weekend there. The city itself is vibrant, lively and very busy. Driving is hell, 10 cm distance between cars seems to be considered enough, and overtaking a police car on the right hand-side with 100km/h in a 30-zone is no problem either.
Another highlight was a visit in the Haman. It seems that as a woman you get pampered while men need to be treated as manly (read brute) and briskly as possible. My knee-caps are still red from being repeatedly pressed against the marble floor.
ProLinux.de writes: Laut Andreas Constantinou, Gründer der Marktforschungsfirma VisionMobile, ist es jedoch ein Mythos, zu glauben, dass der Zugang zum Quellcode, fehlende Lizenzkosten oder die Anpassbarkeit dafür ausschlaggebend seien. Constantinou nennt stattdessen folgende sechs Gründe: Geringere Kosten und schnellere Marktreife, breitere Auswahl an Middleware-Komponenten, strategische Kontrolle, Skalierbarkeit, Qualität und Innovation.
If you speak German, and would like to know what this OpenStreetMap thing is about, German TV channel 3Sat has a 5 minute clip explaining it.
This complaint (legalese pdf) has been filed on behalf of two BusyBox developers which sue Monsoon for not providing the source code to the GPL’ed BusyBox program which they use in their products.
Apparently this is the first ever US lawsuit of this kind and the lawyers of the Software Feedom Law Center (SFLC) are handling the case. See their announcement here.
It’s going to be interesting how the thing plays out.