A Sansui Story

Sansui - one of the most popular Japanese brand during 70's and early 80's. This is a little glimpse of how Sansui declined in the late 70's, early 80's as told by a son whose father worked for Sansui for roughly 30 years.

My father worked for Sansui for roughly 30 years. In that time, I lived around the world as we moved from Japan - New York - Los Angeles - London England.

By the time we were in England (1981), he was the technical director of Sansui Electronics of UK (england) and was also briefly the general manager of the Los Angeles office in Gardena in the late 70's. [Full story]

OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 2 Released

The second beta of OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Codename "Agama Lizard" has been released. The release anouncement has the links for you to download.

7 Myths About The Challenger Disaster

Twenty years ago, space shuttle Challenger blew apart into jets of fire and plumes of smoke, watched and replayed around the world. Now 20 years later, James Oberg an NBC News space analyst has an article about the 7 myths surrounding the Challenger shuttle disaster. Nice read...

Netscape Browser 8.1 released

Netscape has release version 8.1 of the Netscape browser. What new in the release is Anti-Spyware Protection, Built-in RSS reader and improved speed and security. Check the release notes.

Samba originator and developer wins 2005 Free Software Awards

Andrew “Tridge” Tridgell originator and developer of the Samba project wins the 2005 Free Software Awards.

Linus says no to GPLv3

Linus Torvalds says that the Linux kernel "in general" has always been covered under version 2 of the GPL, and that that isn't going to change.

The Linux kernel has _always_ been under the GPL v2. Nothing else has ever been valid.

Volvo Ocean Race - Melbourne leg Update

ABN Amro One claim victory in the second leg of the Volvo Ocean Race in Melbourne its sister entry ABN Amro Two takes second and movistar third. Third leg starts Febuary 12 to Wellington.

Researchers to map pig DNA

My favorite meat, pork is going tastier as researcher will map the pig DNA. I hope so..

A team of researchers won a $10 million federal grant to provide the first complete sequence of the swine genome -- a genetic map they say could help farmers produce better hogs, give consumers tastier pork and ultimately benefit human health. [CNN]

OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 1 Released

The first beta of OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Codename "Agama Lizard" has been released. The release anouncement has the links for you to download. Enjoy..

GNOME 2.13.5 is Out!

GNOME 2.13.5 has been released. This is the last release in the 2.13 development series and represents a release that is now API/ABI and feature frozen. As usual, GARNOME 2.13.5 Desktop and Developer Platform is also out.

Big Brother Prison to Open in Netherlands

A high-tech prison dubbed by the local press as "the Big Brother Prison" is opening this week where inmates wear electronic wristbands that track their every movement and guards monitor cells using emotion-recognition software. Detainees will be kept in six-man dormitory cells. They will do their own cooking, washing and organize their own daytime schedules via a touch-screen monitor at the foot of their beds.

Konica Minolta quits camera, film business

Well-known camera maker Konica Minolta is announcing its withdrawal from the camera and color film businesses. Konica Minolta, was created in August 2003 through the merger of Konica Corp. and Minolta Co.

Finland: Firefox's market share 38.4%

According to the French market research company XiTi, Firefox Internet browser has a market share of 38.4% in Finland. This is the largest market share Firefox has in any country. In Slovenia, Firefox's market share is 35.6%, and in Germany 30.27%. [eFinland]

Corel Intros The New Corel WordPerfect Office X3

World's Leading Alternative to Microsoft Office Improves Compatibility, Security and Formatting Capabilities; Groundbreaking PDF Import Extends Open Standards Support

Corel Corporation today announced the availability of the new Corel WordPerfect® Office X3 family of desktop productivity software – the newest version of the world's leading alternative to Microsoft® Office. Providing enhanced compatibility with Microsoft Office, as well as industry-leading feature richness, ease-of-use and value, Corel WordPerfect Office X3 sets a new standard for content re-use as the world's first and only office suite to natively import and export word processing documents, plus export spreadsheets and presentations, to PDF, one of the world's most widely deployed open formats. [Corel]

Ubuntu DapperFlight3 Released

Flight 3, the third alpha release of Ubuntu 6.04 - The Dapper Drake has been released. Improvements in this release include an updated installer CD boot splash, X11R7, GNOME 2.13.4, improved and simplified menus, new default desktop panel configuration, some new applications such as XChat-GNOME, a faster Live CD and Live CD persistence (yes you read right, Live CD persistence) and much much more.

UK spy plane unveiled

Images of the UK's first prototype stealth surveillance aircraft have been unveiled.

The unmanned vehicle, which has been built by BAE Systems, is known as the Corax, or as the Raven. [BBC]

GPL 3: First Draft Available

The Free Software Foundation has released the first public discussion draft of the General Public License version 3. You can also read the rational behind the changes and comments about it.

Fedora Core 5 Test 2 available

The Fedora Project announces the second release of the Fedora Core 5 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and PPC/PPC64 architectures. Release notes here, download here.

FlyakiteOSX v3.0 is Out!

I been waiting for this release for over half a year, and now FlyakiteOSX v3.0 is Out! For those who are new or don't know what it is ..

FlyakiteOSX is a transformation pack. It will transform the look of an ordinary Windows XP+ system to resemble the look of Mac OS X. The installer automates the process of replacing system files, applying registry tweaks, installing 3rd part software, skins, and extras such as cursors, sounds, visual styles, etc.

In case you are not happy with the results of FlyakiteOSX, everything is completely removable. Just run the uninstaller from the Start Menu or from Add/Remove Programs.

FlyakiteOSX does not contain any spyware or ad-ware of any kind. All files needed for FlyakiteOSX are stored in the Windows directory in a folder named 'FlyakiteOSX' that is hidden by default. All registry values for FlyakiteOSX are written to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FlyakiteOSX.

Stardust To Land In Utah At 2.12AM PST Sunday

A capsule weighing 46 kilograms and carrying a teaspoonful of space dust is expected to land in a Utah desert at 2.12am PST (1012 GMT) Sunday after flying 4.63 billion kilometers in space. [spacedaily]

F-22A Raptor goes operational

The F-22A Raptor --the world’s only 5th generation fighter aircraft and Air Force’s most advanced weapon system -- is ready for combat, Air Force officials announced today.

A Cellphone Powered by Urine

Physicists from Singapore have developed a battery that can be powered by human urine. Led by Dr Ki Bang Lee, a team at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology developed a paper battery which is designed to be cheap to produce, and use urine as its power charge source.

PHP 5.1.2 Released

The PHP development team is proud to announce the release of PHP 5.1.2. This release combines small feature enhancements with a fair number of bug fixes and addresses three security issues. All PHP 5 users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.[PHP]

Intel Macs may boot XP after all

Reports spreading across the web that Intel Macs can’t boot Windows XP might be inaccurate. An article in APC Mag has the answers.

List of Top 10 Organizations Receiving Most U.S. Patents

From the heading of the press release..

USPTO Releases Annual List of Top 10 Organizations Receiving Most U.S. Patents

American Innovation Continues to Top the Field

The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced today the 2005 top 10 global private sector patent recipients. Heading the list is IBM but 6 out of the 10 companies on the list are non-US companies Canon, Matsushita, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Fujitsu.

Nikon to stop making film cameras

Nikon, my camera brand of choice, I own one, a Nikon F-401 said that it would stop making most of its film cameras and lenses in order to focus on digital cameras.

As a result of the new strategy Nikon will discontinue production of all lenses for large format cameras and enlarging lenses with sales of these products ceasing as soon as they run out of stock. This also applies to most of our film camera bodies, interchangeable manual focus lenses and related accessories. Although Nikon anticipates that the products will still be in retail distribution up to Summer 2006. [Nikon]

Thunderbird 1.5 Released

Scott MacGregor writes: "The final release of Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 is now available for download from getthunderbird.com. Users of RC1 should see the update soon. If you are using RC2, then you already have 1.5 final." [mozillaZine]

Mouse Thrown Into Fire Sets Home Ablaze

Onyo's Odd News..

A mouse got its revenge against a homeowner who tried to dispose of it in a pile of burning leaves. The blazing creature ran back to the man's house and set it on fire. [Link]

A smart move on the mouse's part..

XP Won't Run on Intel MacBook, iMac

With the announcement of the first Intel based Macs yesterday, many users have rejoiced in being able to dual-boot both Mac OS X and Windows. Unfortunately, this is not the case; due to Apple's use of the extensible firmware interface (EFI) rather than BIOS, current Windows releases will not run on the systems. [BetaNews]

Mono in Fedora Core 5

Mono lands in rawhide, and will be included in Fedora Core 5.

2006 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award Recipients

"For contributions to the development of the vestigial sideband (VSB) digital transmission system for digital television broadcasting." Wayne Bretl, Richard Citta and Wayne Luplow, will be honored with the 2006 IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award. Sponsored by Sony, the award is to recognize outstanding contributions in the field of consumer electronics.

Stable kernel 2.6.14.6 released

Stable linux kernel 2.6.14.6 is out!

Blu-ray Disc Format Specifications Completed

Licensing to Begin for BD-ROM, BD-R and BD-RE

The Blu-ray Disc Association announced today that the format specification is complete and that licensing is ready to begin for BD-ROM, BD-RE and BD-R. The completion of the specification now enables content providers and manufacturers to begin the process of producing Blu-ray Disc products for a wide variety of uses.

Announcement here.

LinuxFilter - Digg-like News Site for Linux

A new linux news site is launched - LinuxFilter. Check it out! LinuxFilter is a Linux news system based on the look and feel of digg.com.

YellowDog Linux 4.1 Released

For the PPC architecture, Terrasoft has released YellowDog Linux 4.1. This release includes support for the latest Apple PowerBooks, beta support for Apple G5 PowerMacs with dual core CPUs, USB device auto-mount under both KDE & GNOME, greatly improved sound support, basic 64-bit development and runtime support and a completely rebuilt KDE and Gnome "start" menu for vastly improved navigation of the graphical user interface and many more updates and improvements.

Yellow Dog Linux v4.1 is immediately available from YDL.net Enhanced accounts, will ship from the Terra Soft Store and Resellers by the close of January, and will be available from public mirrors two weeks thereafter.

GNOME 2.13.4 Development Release

GNOME 2.13.4 dev has been released. This is the last release in the 2.13 development series before API freeze. As usual release notes for platform, desktop and bindings and for downloads for platform, desktop and bindings. You can also build this release almost automatically by using the Jhbuild modulesets available here.

Update: GARNOME 2.13.4 Released

Qt Centre Launched

Attention KDE developers and users, there is a new Qt community site Qt Centre billed as a the ultimate Qt community site. It replaces QtForum and KDE-Forum.org.

JFK assassination 'was Cuba plot'

The never ending conspiracy theories on the JFK assassination never ends..

A new documentary exploring the death of John F Kennedy claims his assassin was directed and paid by Cuba.

Rendezvous with Death, based on new evidence from Cuban, Russian and US sources, took three years to research.

One source, ex-Cuban agent Oscar Marino, said Havana had exploited Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested but shot dead before he could be tried. [BBC]

Novell Only Linux Vendor to Earn Prestigious Support Certification

Joins 200 world class organizations certified under the Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification Program

Novell announced today that its Global Support and Services organization has achieved certification under the prestigious Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program. SCP Certification quantifies the effectiveness of customer support based upon a stringent set of performance standards and customer satisfaction, and it represents best practices in the industry. Novell achieved certification after an extensive audit of support capabilities. As a result, Novell® customers will get predictable, reliable support from Novell in keeping their IT infrastructure in top condition. [Novell]

X.org Developer's Conference Announced

The next X.Org Developer's Conference will be held from February 8, 2006 to February 10, 2006 at the Sun Microsystems Agnews Campus in Santa Clara, CA, USA. Some proposed presentation topics are "NVIDIA driver internals" - Andy Ritger, Nvidia, "Persistency & Mobility of Remote PC X Server Sessions" - Harold Hunt, Starnet, Suspend/Resume on Solaris/x86 platforms - Jay Cotton, Sun Microsystems, Modelines and beyond- Configuration of X.org server - Stuart Kreitman, Sun Microsystems, Challenges of OLPC Graphics - Jim Gettys, OLPC. Also there will be Hackfesting, Brainstorming, and Beer...[Announcement]

Linux Kernel 2.6.15 Released

Linus Torvalds has announced the releases of kernel 2.6.15 after two months and a week of development. Full changelog here. Download it here, or wait for your distro to release it.

Broadcom Announces Decoder Chip for Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD

Broadcom has announced a high definition (HD) audio/video decoder chip that is fully compliant with the emerging Blu-ray™ and HD DVD™ optical disc formats. Compliance with Blu-ray and HD DVD formats permits the recording and playback of high definition video on blue laser-based optical disc media and drives. Broadcom's latest high definition decoder chip enables a new generation of consumer electronics devices that can decode compressed HD video stored on Blu-ray or HD DVD formatted discs.

[Full story]

Next version of High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) Announce

The seven HDMI Founder companies (Hitachi, Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Philips Consumer Electronics International B.V., Silicon Image, Inc., Sony Corp., Thomson, Inc. and Toshiba Corp.) today highlighted key capabilities under development for the next version of High-Definition Multimedia Interface(TM) HDMI(TM)) targeted for the first half of 2006, including support for deep color, higher speed and easier integration into personal computers. By delivering crystal-clear, all-digital audio and video via a single cable, HDMI dramatically simplifies cabling and helps provide consumers with the highest-quality home theater experience.

Products implementing these new versions of the HDMI specification will continue to be fully backward compatible with earlier HDMI products. [PRNewswire]

New Search Engine Navisso.com Launches Beta Test

Attention Google and Yahoo, a new search engine is coming...

Navisso, a free search engine with the goal of becoming one of the most relevant and dependable search engines on the web, launches Navisso Search Beta. Navisso's mission is employing a search engine that provides accurate, real, and relevant search results to its visitors.

Navisso Search invites the general public to test its newly launched product Navisso.com. Unlike other popular search engines, Navisso Search (http://navisso.com) is a web search engine that does not rely on external search feeds. Navisso Search utilizes automated crawling technology to identify web sites for inclusion in the search index. [ereleases]

LG Elec Develops World's First DVB-H, Media Flo Phones

LG Electronics Inc., South Korea's second-largest electronics maker, said Monday it has developed the world's first handsets based on DVB-H and Media FLO mobile broadcasting standards.

DVB-H, or digital video broadcasting-handheld, developed by Nokia Corp, supports such wireless communications frameworks as GSM, GPRS and WCDMA, many of which are used in Europe.

Media FLO refers to wireless broadcasting standard "Media Forward Link only" developed by chip maker Qualcomm Inc.

Currently, there are three mobile broadcasting standards -- South Korea's digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB), Europe's DVB-H and Japan's ISDB-T. [Yahoo News]

GUADEC 2006 Logo and Web Theme Design Contest

The 7th annual GNOME User and Developer European Conference (GUADEC 2006) is looking for the best GUADEC logo and web theme. Submit your work before 31/jan/06 and win:

* 2 GUADEC vip passes
* 2 return tickets to Vilanova
* 1 week accommodation for both

Contest details here.

Happy New Year!!!

I would like to wish everyone a

Happy New Year