Ubuntu 10.04, currently in development, has hit the second alpha release. As a quite update, here are some of the features you can see in the Alpha 2 release of Ubuntu 10.04. A new graphical boot screen manager called ‘Plymouth’ which is to replace the currently used xsplash and usplash boot screen systems. The user menu and [...]
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Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx sees the release of Alpha 2
Avatar film rendered with enormous Ubuntu server farm
It turns out that Avatar, the hugely successful science fiction epic film from James Cameron, was rendered using a huge Ubuntu rendering server farm, at Weta Digital. The Weta Digital server farm or ‘rendering wall’, as they call it, has a disk array capable of storing roughly 2 petabytes of data in total. The individual servers are [...]
vBulletin Fake User Plugin – Good or bad?
This article is pulled from a previous site of mine, and relates to the starting of a forum board and the negative cycle of not having enough users registered to entice new users to join. It primarily focuses around the idea of using a vBulletin plugin to artificially inflate the number of online users in [...]
A Social Media Overview – How are you feeling?
How are you feeling? View the day’s global mood swings with this fun, social media, Twitter-powered tool. Click here to choose a feeling and begin. ‘How are you feeling?’ is a quick social overview of the feelings that are appearing in the microblogging community. It pulls down hourly updates of today’s microblogs (or ‘Tweets’) based on specific [...]
New Indicator Applet & Messaging Menu for Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx
I previously discussed some of the new social networking aspects coming in Ubuntu 10.04. These mainly focus on the brand new Me Menu which is a personalised menu that holds and controls all your social networking and assists with broadcasting to microblogging services. Some related changes are the new changes to the indicator applet and [...]
Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx’s Social Networking Features
Social media and social networking are huge now-a-days, with Twitter, Facebook and the like being hugely successful at keeping friends and family in touch. Now only that, but social networks are huge for charities, with many causes being supported and heavily promoted via social networking. Corporations and business use social networking too to promote their products and [...]
Don’t be evil licensing
Google, who brought forward the specifics of the ‘do no evil’ ideology within consumer visible software, is refusing to host an open-source project due to slight, almost humorous, modifications to its license, denying ‘evil’ use of the licensed software. Douglas Crockford selected the MIT license for his JSMin program to reduce JavaScript code syntax in such a way to make it [...]
Pond Frozen – Winter definitely here
Waking up this morning, I discovered the pond at my house had frozen solid. The temperature in the morning was between -3 and -2 degrees Celsius and was ~ -5 degrees Celsius really damn cold overnight. Glad I got my new winter coat recently…
Computers in Drama can always ‘Enhance’
Why is it that computers in TV dramas and science fiction have the magical ability to enhance any photograph? To make good television, that’s why.
Google Chrome OS – A Simple Explanation
Google have released a very simple explanatory video, aimed at new computer users, detailing their new operating system which is focused around the Google Chrome web browser. If you’ve ever needed to ask, what is the difference between Google Chrome OS and Google Chrome, this video explains the answer in the simplest manner possible. Google [...]