Ecasound, Multitrack audio processing tool.

Ecasound is a software package designed for multitrack audio processing. It can be used for simple tasks like audio playback, recording and format conversions, as well as for multitrack effect processing, mixing, recording and signal recycling. Ecasound supports a wide range of audio inputs, outputs and effect algorithms. Effects and audio objects can be combined in various ways, and their parameters can be controlled by operator objects like oscillators and MIDI-CCs. A versatile console mode user-interface is included in the package.

Download Ecasound 2.9.0

Fedora 17 ARM Edition Officially Released

Paul Whalen proudly announced a few minutes ago, June 19th, that the stable version of the ARM edition of the Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle) operating system is now available for download.

Distributable as ARM and ARMhf (hard-float) editions, the Fedora 17 ARM operating system includes prebuilt images for the Versatile Express (QEMU), Beagleboard xM, Trimslice, Pandaboard, iMX, Kirkwood Plugs, and Highbank based hardware platforms.

“We invite you to download the Fedora 17 GA release and provide your valuable input to the Fedora ARM team.” - was stated in the official release announcement.

Additional information, such as a list of currently supplied prebuilt images, instructions on how to install Fedora 17 ARM, as well as known issues, can be found on the announcement page.

Download Fedora 17 ARM

How to: Disable popup window when inserting USB in Linux Mint 13 (MATE)

In Linux Mint 13 (MATE edition), when you insert a USB drive into your machine, a popup window will appear to show the files and folders you store within the USB. I dont like this feature, when I insert a USB into my machine, I just need it to be mounted and dont want to be distracted by any popup window.

To disable that popup window feature in Linux Mint 13 (MATE), you just need to open Caja file manager and go to the Preferences window:

After the Preferences window appear, go to the media tab and check the "Never prompt or start programs on media insertion" option:

From now, no annoying popup window will appear when you insert a USB drive into your machine. This trick also works in Ubuntu, Linux Mint Cinnamon and other distros that use Nautilus file manager.

Court declares Tetris clone a breach of copyright, big implications for derivative games

 

The US District Court of New Jersey has ruled that Tetris-like game Mino infringes Tetris Holding’s copyright, Sunstein Law reports (via Marsh Davies). It’s a decision that’ll have a big knock-on effect for all games that are functionally similar or identical to already successful games.
Previously, developers have struggled to prove that the mechanics of a game can be protected under copyright, since ‘ideas’ themselves cannot. That’s led to an incredibly clone-happy culture, in which virtually every successful game has any number of rip-offs on Flash portals or the iOS App Store.
But this case delved deep into the mechanics of Tetris to sort out what qualified as the ‘idea’ of the game, and what elements were specific to Tetris’ particular ‘expression’ of it. Copying the idea is fine – copying the expression is not.
Mino creators Xio didn’t try to argue that the similar elements of their game weren’t copied from Tetris. Instead, they claimed that the specifics of Tetris are essential and generic to the idea behind it, and therefore fair game.
The court’s decision, quite reasonably, was that it would be perfectly possible to make a game about falling blocks fitting together and vanishing without copying the specific shapes of those blocks, the dimensions of the game space, the brightly coloured look, and many other specifics of Tetris that Mino shares.
You can see what Xio might have been thinking: change any or all of those things, and you’d probably end up with a worst game. But that’s not Tetris Holdings’ problem: if you choose to copy their idea, you have to come up with an expression of it that’s different to theirs. If you can’t think of a better one, tough.
The result will give hope to developers like Spry Fox, who are taking legal action against the creators of Yeti Town, which they say copies their Facebook game Triple Town. There’s no denying the ideas are basically the same, but Spy Fox point out that Yeti Town also copies particulars like the specific prices of items in the in-game shop. Previously, Yeti Town developer 6Waves might have been able to argue that these specifics were part of the ‘idea’ of the game and not the ‘expression’ of it. The Tetris decision is going to make that much harder.
From everything I’ve read about the case, it seems like the right call, and a positive thing for developers suffering actual damage from clones. But the specifics are really important. It would be a disaster if all game mechanics were declared part of the ‘expression’ of an idea, because games would no longer be allowed to learn from each other. Game design is as much science as art, and all of my favourite games copy good mechanics from the classics that inspired them.
If every legal case goes into the kind of analytical depth that this one did, hopefully that distinction will remain clear. Sunstein’s write-up is great, by the way, and explains what little legalese is relevant.

IBM builds world’s fastest supercomputer

IBM may not make PCs any more, but it looks like that’s our loss and not theirs. Supercomputer rankings site TOP500 has just awarded a system based on its Sequoia design the official title of world’s fastest computer. The theoretical peak performance of the new number one is almost twice as quick as the previous incumbent of the role, Fujitsu’s K Computer.
With almost one hundred thousand individual IBM Power BQC processors and over million and a half cores, the new champ is housed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US where it has a slightly sinister task: it’s used by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for modelling the performance of nuclear weapons. In other words, it may be technically faster, since the K Computer is mostly used for things like modelling climate change and designing solar cells, on a scale of moral equivalence it’s still our favourite.

Liberal qualms aside, Sequoia is incredible though. It consumes 7.89MW of power, and has one and a half petabytes of memory. Theoretical peak performance is 20 petaflops, and it’s been benchmarked running at 16.32petaflops. By comparison, K Computer is theoretically capable of running at 11petaflops, and its number one position was held with a benchmark of 10 petaflops.
Here’s some perspective – just 18 months ago, the fastest computer in the TOP500 list was performing at 2.57 petaflops. For anyone who’s still unsure about the technical feasibility of something like Google Glasses, from a server side augmented reality point of view, that’s an increase of six and a half times in performance in less than two years.
Of course, you need the budget of a nuclear defence program (around $70bn a year) to develop fast computers that quickly. There aren’t many computer companies that sit on that kind of cash.

Spellforce 2 Faith in Destiny FLT

Game information:
 =================

 In times of war and chaos you will assume the role of a young man, who  is
 supposed to liberate the entire world of Eo from the new,  nameless  evil.
 Along with a group of diverse heroes and a dragon as trustful  companions,
 you will fight to gain information about this  mysterious  new  enemy  and
 thereby discover your own true destiny. With daring and courage  you  will
 be able to succeed in this brand new,  epic,  strategic  RTS/PRG-Mix  that
 combines the storylines of the  previous  Spellforce-games  and  continues
 further.


System Requirements:

   * OS:Win XP, Vista, Win7
   * Processor:Intel Pentium ® IV 1.5 GHz/Intel Pentium ® IV 2.5 GHz
   * Memory:2 GB RAM/4 GB RAM
   * Graphics:3D graphics card with 128 MB RAM (compatible with GeForce 4 Ti or higher)/3D graphics card with 256 MB RAM (compatible with GeForce 6600 GT or higher)
   * DirectX®:9.0c
   * Hard Drive:5 GB HD space




Installation Information:
 =========================

Burn or mount
Play the game
 

Free NVIDIA graphics driver reaches version 1.0

 

The developers at the Nouveau project have published version 1.0.0 of their open source graphics driver for X.org's X Server. About seven years into the project, this milestone means that the final part of the Nouveau driver has now left behind its pre-release status – the Nouveau 3D drivers have been part of Mesa 3D for some time, and the Nouveau DRM driver, which is being developed as part of the Linux kernel, left the staging area with Linux 3.4 in mid-May. At the time of writing, an official release email has yet to be issued.

The Nouveau driver, which has been a standard component of Linux distributions for quite some time now, supports dual monitor operation and 2D acceleration via EXA, and offers all the components that are required to use 3D acceleration with nearly all NVIDIA graphics chips. However, as recently demonstrated by Phoronix in a series of benchmarks, the proprietary NVIDIA driver gets far better 3D performance from the graphics cores. For simple games and the desktop effects of GNOME and KDE, however, the Nouveau driver's 3D performance is sufficient. The driver doesn't activate a number of power management features, and it can't access the fan control on many graphics cards. If a graphics card doesn't control the fan on its own, the fan will run at full speed when the Nouveau driver is used, which causes excess noise and can wear out bearings.
NVIDIA has been a member of the Linux Foundation since March but doesn't contribute to the development of Nouveau – lately, the company has mainly focused its Linux efforts on its ARM chips. NVIDIA doesn't even provide programming information; the Nouveau developers have to reverse engineer it all. This is one of several areas where NVIDIA stands out because of its poor support of the open source developers, and it is likely one of the reasons why Linux creator Linus Torvalds recently held his middle finger up to a camera and said: "NVIDIA, fuck you".

Superb Mini Server (SMS) 1.6.6, a new version of the project's Slackware-based distribution for servers, has been released: "Superb Mini Server version 1.6.6 released (Linux kernel 3.2.20). It's that time again, we have a new kernel, a lot of upgrades, security fixes and some new features. For our default web server we keep Apache HTTPD 2.2.22 and PHP 5.3.14, once again, to maintain stability and compatibility. New PHP 5.4.4 and HTTPD 2.4.2 packages are available though, under testing in Extra if someone wants to use them. MySQL has been upgraded to the 5.5.x branch so it needs your attention. If you are upgrading, be sure to backup your /var/lib/mysql folder containing your MySQL databases and restore it after and run mysql_upgrade. Perl has also been upgraded to 5.16, so if you have Perl modules installed by yourself, I would recommend that you remove them and install them again." See the release announcement for more warnings and recommendations. Download: SMS.Native.CD-1.6.6-Install.iso (711MB, MD5), SMS64.Native.CD-1.6.6-Install.iso (698MB, MD5).

ZevenOS-Neptune 2.5.1 Has Linux Kernel 3.3.8

ZevenOS-Neptune, a Linux operating system with software optimized for slower computers and with elements of BeOS, has just reached version 2.5.1.

ZevenOS-Neptune 2.5.1 is a service release update, at least according to the developers, with just a few fixes and changes.

Highlights of ZevenOS-Neptune 2.5.1:

· CUPS printer detection has been fixed;
· Amarok crashing on start has been repaired;
· Additional language support and localization has been fixed;
· Printer applet crashing fixed;
· sudos /var/lib/sudo permission have been repaired;
· Additional languages to isolinux bootloader menu have been added;
· English is the first and default boot entry in isolinux menu;
· Linux kernel has been updated to 3.3.8;
· KDE SC has been updated to 4.8.4.

A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official announcement.

Download ZevenOS-Neptune 2.5.1