Terminator for GNOME lets users split terminal windows
Although a command line isn't a necessity anymore in modern desktop Linux distributions, there are many situations where it's still the most efficient way to perform and automate tasks. I often spawn terminal windows in clusters on my desktop while I'm working so that I can monitor and switch between a number of simultaneous operations. A large number of terminal windows can be frustrating to manage, however, and can look cluttered on a desktop.
The standard GNOME terminal application supports tabs for command-line multitasking, but that's often not sufficient for complex arrangements. I want to be able to have more control over how my terminals are organized and I want to be able to manage them better collectively. One good solution is an alternative terminal application for GNOME called Terminator that allows users to organize multiple command line sessions into resizable split panes and tabs.
Terminator, which is developed in Python, provides splitting and other similar features, but uses the same high-quality VTE widget that powers the standard GNOME terminal. There are configurable shortcuts for creating vertical and horizontal splits and rotating through panes and tabs. A "maximize" feature allows you to temporarily collapse the inactive panes so that the active terminal takes up the whole window.
You can also designate groups of panes to which you can "broadcast" your input. The optional broadcast feature allows you to send the same keystrokes to multiple terminals at the same time—a capability that is especially useful if you are using ssh to remotely connect to more than one computer and you want to execute the same command across all of them.
Terminator has been around for a while, but has recently reached a level of maturity where it is a compelling replacement for gnome-terminal in day-to-day use. I highly recommend it to GNOME users who are looking for the ability to split the terminal.
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Android location search gets a boost with new Places app
Google really changed the game for mobile mapping in Android by offering impressive features like turn-by-turn navigation at no cost. Excellent location-aware software is obviously a prerequisite for lucrative location-sensitive advertising, so it's unsurprising that Google has continued to invest a lot of technical resources in its effort to aggressively improve Android's map software.
The latest improvement to Google Maps for Android is a new Places application that makes it easy for the user to search for points of interest in their immediate vicinity. It's basically a shortcut for performing local searches without having to start in the Maps interface. The tool comes with a built-in set of standard preconfigured searches that can be performed for finding restaurants, coffee shops, bars, hotels, and gas stations. Users can also add their own search queries to invoke from the application.
Google has also made some improvements to the location search results, adding data like store hours and menu links for restaurants. Much of the information exposed by the location search tool is aggregated from Internet sources like Zagat, Yelp, and Urbanspoon. It even has basic OpenTable integration so you can make reservations from your phone for supported restaurants.
Google has done an impressive job bringing together the most useful third-party location services and exposing their information in a cohesive user interface. The move pushes traditional stand-alone GPS gadgets one step closer to extinction. The update is being rolled out through the Android Market and will be available to users on Android 1.6 or higher.
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Long-neglected Mac Pro, Cinema Display finally updated
After letting its top-end professional line of computers and displays languish without significant upgrades for nearly two years, Apple today announced revised Mac Pro workstations and an accompanying 27" LED Cinema Display. The new Mac Pros can be fitted with up to 12 Xeon processing cores in a dual-CPU configuration, up to 4 512GB SSD drives, and almost-top-end ATI Radeon GPUs. All that graphics power can be pushed to the new 27" LED Cinema Display with its 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution.The new Mac Pros still retain the same case as the previous models—though the design dates back to the Power Mac G5, Apple seems loathe to update the look—but are available with Intel Xeons inside, including the latest 32nm 6-core Westmere-EP variants.
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Court: breaking DRM for a "fair use" is legal
A federal appeals court has just ruled that breaking through a digital security system to access software doesn't trigger the "anti-circumvention" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Any other interpretation of the DMCA, declared the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, would permit infringement liability for tapping into a work simply to "view it or to use it within the purview of 'fair use' permitted under the Copyright Act."The ruling is already being hailed as another victory for fair use, following Monday's Library of Congress decision giving wide approval to iPhone jailbreaking and DVD CSS circumvention on similar grounds.
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Valve responds to MW2 Steam glitch with free copies of L4D2
A recent glitch caused 12,000 Modern Warfare 2 players on Steam to be banned for no apparent reason. Valve has owned up to the error and, as a way of making amends, is giving those who were banned a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2."The problem was that Steam would fail a signature check between the disk version of a DLL and a latent memory version," Valve President Gabe Newell wrote in a personal email to those affected. "This was caused by a combination of conditions occurring while Steam was updating the disk image of a game. This wasn't a game-specific mistake. Steam allows us to manage and reverse these erroneous bans (about 12,000 erroneous bans over two weeks).
"We have reversed the ban, restoring your access to the game. In addition, we have given you a free copy of Left 4 Dead 2 to give as a gift on Steam, plus a free copy for yourself if you didn't already own the game."
While accidentally banning thousands of players from one of the most popular online shooters is a good way to anger players, at least Valve was able to own up to the error and offer up some sort of compensation. Despite its tumultuous launch on the PC, MW2 and its Resurgence expansion are still two of the top selling games on Steam.
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iMacs with i7, SSD, and Magic Trackpad make their debut
As anticipated, Apple released an update to the iMac line Tuesday morning. It also unleashed the rumored Magic Trackpad, a wireless "intuitive multi-touch" trackpad that brings gestures to the desktop. The iMacs still sport the same cosmetic design as the previous model, but are packed with more power and can even come equipped with an SSD drive.
All iMacs have been given Intel's latest dual-core i3 and i5s, as well as quad-core i5 and i7 processors—the previous model sported Core 2 Duos in the lower-end models, but those have now all been upgraded to i3s. The iMacs also come with discrete ATI Radeon HD for graphics. On top of these upgrades, those who buy the higher-end 27" iMac can get a 256GB solid state drive as either a primary or secondary drive, though this option is not available for buyers of the 21.5" iMac.
The 21.5" iMac starts at $1,199 for a 3.06GHz Core i3 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA drive at 7200rpm, and ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics with 256MB GDDR3 SDRAM. At the other end is the high-end 27" iMac starting at $1,999 for quad-core Core i5s, 1TB drive, and ATI Radeon HD 5750 with with 1GB GDDR5. This one can be built to order with 2.93GHz quad-core Core i7s and the SSD drive. Those with a burning desire to see an exhaustive list of the specs can head over to the Apple Store.
The iMac, as usual, comes with Apple's buttonless Magic Mouse, but it also comes with the option of the Magic Trackpad. The device is an external, wireless trackpad that basically looks like the metal palm rest on a MacBook Pro, but one that's covered in glass. The aim here is to bring the multitouch gestures that users have become accustomed to on Apple's portable line to the desktop, allowing pinch and zoom, two-finger scroll, three- and four-finger swipes, and more. Apple says the device can click, though we're still a little unclear on how that functionality would work.
According to the Apple Store online, you can add the Magic Trackpad to your iMac order for an additional $69 (on top of a Magic Mouse), but there is no trackpad-only option. Apple has also rolled out an overpriced $29 AA battery charger to go along with your wireless devices if you so choose, but far less expensive third-party options are available. As someone who switches between an iMac and MacBook Pro several times a day, I find often myself trying to perform multitouch gestures on my Magic Mouse, but I'm not sure I'd spend $70 on an external trackpad. What about you?
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Feature: Microsoft should cut out the middlemen, build its own phones
Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales. The model has served the company well on the PC, but if it wants to make money in the phone market, it needs to start thinking like a consumer electronics company. That means selling Microsoft phones.Microsoft revolutionized the operating system market back in the early 1980s. Indeed, Microsoft created the operating system market back in the early 1980s. Back then, when you bought a computer, it normally had its own special operating system that the vendor bundled (or even sold at extra cost).
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There will be blood: why Apple and Intel are destined to clash
A long time ago, in what seems like a galaxy far, far away, Apple and Google were the Brad and Jennifer of the tech world. Google had the cloud, Apple had the clients, and both companies were such industry darlings that fantasizing about world-changing Apple/Google team-ups was a popular pundit pasttime. The love extended all the way up to the top of Apple, with Google CEO Eric Schmidt taking the stage alongside Jobs at WWDC 2007 for the iPhone's unveiling. Jobs was supposedly so pleased with the prospects for Apple/Google collaboration that when he learned of Google's secret "Gphone" project (Android), he reportedly hit the roof. Given how much engineering effort the company has focused on its iOS-based products—to the point where most of the CPUs in Mac hardware have fallen a full generation behind—it's hard to imagine that Jobs isn't feeling similarly betrayed by yet another Apple partner's full-court press into the smartphone market. I'm talking, of course, about Intel, which just hired former Apple and Palm VP Mike Bell to head up its smartphone efforts, and which is rumored to be contemplating a purchase of key baseband chipmaker Infineon. Intel is jumping into the smartphone market with both feet, and the company's goal isn't just to create a direct iPhone competitor—no, Intel wants to empower a whole ecosystem of iPhone competitors based on x86.
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Did you hear the joke about the comedian and copyright law?
Ponder the difference between the comedian and the musician. Both create and perform works to entertain audiences, but they go about protecting that work in different ways. The notoriously litigious music industry often resorts to the legal system to protect itself from pirates and samplers. But comedians don't. So why hasn't the joke well gone dry?That's the question asked by a forthcoming book chapter from the University of Chicago Press called "Intellectual Property Norms in Stand-Up Comedy." Written by two professors from the University of Virginia School of Law, the chapter offers a case study in the axiom that more IP rights aren't always better IP rights.
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Khronos Group releases OpenGL 4.1, claims to leapfrog Direct3D 11
Just four and a half months after releasing the OpenGL 4 specification, the Khronos Group has released the final version of the OpenGL 4.1 specification. OpenGL 4.0 brought feature parity with Direct3D 11's new features—in particular, compute shaders and tessellation—and with 4.1, the Khronos Group claims that it is surpassing the functionality offered in Microsoft's 3D API.OpenGL 4.1 includes more robust error handling to make running buggy programs safer, richer debugging features to make developing OpenGL software simpler, and a new ability to save and restore programs written to use the shaders found in modern video hardware. Shader programs, an important part of modern 3D software and hardware, are written in a hardware-independent language, and then compiled at runtime by the OpenGL driver. This allows the programs to be properly optimized for the specific GPU hardware. The downside is that compilation can be a slow process, and if it has to be performed each time a game starts, for example, it can lead to noticeable delays. OpenGL 4.1 allows software to cache the compiled programs and therefore bypass the slow compilation step.
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AT&T targeting heavy 3G use with WiFi in Charlotte, Chicago
AT&T may not be able to expand its 3G network capacity at lightning speeds, but it can at least expand its availability of free WiFi hotspots in order to lighten the 3G data load. The company announced Monday that it was rolling out its WiFi "hotzones" to more cities after having launched them in New York City earlier this year, focusing on areas with the heaviest 3G traffic.Charlotte, North Carolina will be the next city to pilot AT&T's hotzones. The WiFi coverage will extend along South Brevard Street near the NASCAR Hall of Fame Plaza to East Trade Street, as well as the Lynx light rail. Similar coverage will be coming to Chicago as well in the "coming weeks," said AT&T, though the company did not elaborate on which parts of the city would be included.
When AT&T first introduced the hotzones in NYC in May, the carrier said it was focusing on areas where there was consistently high 3G traffic and mobile data usage. That test has apparently worked well—after all, AT&T's data network is notoriously bad in NYC, so any reprieve would be welcome. Of course, AT&T's subscribers would like for the actual data network to get a boost everywhere, but for now, the hotzones will have to stand in while AT&T expands its infrastructure.
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Navigating the Wild West of non-peer-reviewed science
Peer review serves as a critical sanity check for the scientific literature. It is by no means a perfect system—flaws ranging from outright fraud to subtle errors can easily slip past reviewers—but peer review can generally identify cases where a paper's conclusions aren't supported by the underlying data, or the authors are unaware of other relevant papers, etc. As a result, peer review acts as a key barrier to prevent scientifically unsound ideas from attracting undeserved attention from the scientific community.So, does it make any sense to push unreviewed material onto the public? For better or worse, science journalists have discovered preprint repositories like the arXiv, in which scientists post both final papers and works-in-progress—papers that haven't yet cleared the hurdle of peer review.
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Exploring the StarCraft 2 Collector's Edition in pictures
While we won't be able to play until the servers go live, our copy of the StarCraft 2 Collector's Edition has arrived. This version of the game will cost $100, which is $40 more than the standard game. It comes packed with a ton of extras, both real and virtual. We're going to give you a look at what comes in the box to let you know if we think it's worth the extra cost.Read the comments on this post
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Ultimate fighters ask streaming sites to unmask uploaders
Ultimate fighters are the type of people you don't usually want to anger, but a couple of rogue uploaders have officially tempted the fate bear. The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has subpoenaed two popular video sites in hopes of getting the identities of users who have been uploading UFC's pay-per-view fights, but whether the sites will fork over the information is another question.UFC's parent company Zuffa is actually behind the subpoenas and is going after the anonymous users uploading the PPV content to justin.tv and ustream.tv. UFC claims that 36,000 people watched a live streaming feed of one of its PPV events on January 2, followed by another fight uploaded by the same user two months later that got 78,000 "non-paying users" watching.
The company says that this kind of behavior results in a significant loss of revenue and, in a rather unsurprising statement, UFC President Dana White declared, "This is a fight we will not lose."
The UFC claims that it sent the subpoenas because of the DMCA, though it's unclear whether the company also sent the mandated DMCA takedown notices to ustream.tv and justin.tv before resorting to a subpoena. Streaming sites have become intimately familiar with the DMCA takedown process over the years—it would be surprising if the sites in question did not respond to UFC's takedown requests.
Now that the deed is done, however, we can't help but wonder whether justin.tv and ustream.tv will hand over the users' information or try to fight the subpoenas. We also have to wonder what UFC thinks it's achieving by going after individual uploaders—there are a million more where they came from, but perhaps the company hopes that legal action against these individuals will scare others away.
UFC, justin.tv, and ustream.tv did not respond to our request for comment by publication time.
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"Qi" wireless power standard promises cord-free charging
A universal standard for charging devices wirelessly is close to becoming a reality, as the Wireless Power Consortium finalized the interface definition for a low-power specification this past Friday. That interface definition is already available internally and will be published publicly on August 30, though WPC said that performance requirements and compliance testing documents will only be available to consortium members.The current spec maxes out at 5 Watts of power. That should be sufficient for most common mobile devices, many of which already charge via USB ports that max out at 2.5W (5V at 500mA). The spec is open enough to allow a wide variety of design solutions, such as a magnetically aligned coil that is used for the Palm Pre's Touchstone charger, or an array of coils activated individually depending on device placement.
In addition to the standard, however, WPC has a series of tests for specification compliance. Devices purporting to comply with the standard will have to pass third-party certification before the manufacturer is allowed to use the trademarked "Qi" logo on the device or its packaging. This is designed to make it easy for consumers to find interoperable chargers and devices.
"Our customers will see the Qi logo and know: this product works with my other Qi products," wrote Menno Treffers, a senior director of standardization at Philips who works with the consortium. "Publishing a standard is not enough. Without test documentation, certification services, and a logo license agreement, interoperability is an illusion."
Certification testing services will begin in August, meaning products supporting the standard could start appearing this fall.
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Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are "fair use"
Every three years, the Library of Congress has the thankless task of listening to people complain about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA forbade most attempts to bypass the digital locks on things like DVDs, music, and computer software, but it also gave the Library the ability to wave its magical copyright wand and make certain DRM cracks legal for three years at a time.This time, the Library went (comparatively) nuts, allowing widespread bypassing of the CSS encryption on DVDs, declaring iPhone jailbreaking to be "fair use," and letting consumers crack their legally purchased e-books in order to have them read aloud by computers.
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