There must be red faces among marcomms types at Microsoft today after the tech world universally collectively guffawed at an embarrassing tweet by media mogul Oprah Winfrey.
The chat show queen tweeted last night: "Gotta say love that SURFACE!’ Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts. #FavoriteThings."
A drill-down into the source of the tweet using Twitter client YoruFukurou revealed it came form Twitter for iPad. Nuff said....
Frozen Sand is pleased to announce that HavoK has joined the (ever expanding) Urban Terror development team !
HavoK is an experienced IT Administrator used to deploying and supporting games on a large scale. His main job will be to help us out with the nternal and community administration.
Skulltag, the port for the original Doom and Doom II is no longer being actively developed (but is still available for single player fun).
However, weep not! Zandronum is the continuation of Skulltag with the goal of continuing to provide enhanced gameplay, modding capabilities, and personal attunement for the newschool crowd. Zandronum is capable of running on all of the popular desktop operating systems (even has a .deb for Ubuntu).
If you have been runnnig a Skulltag server publically, you should probably switch. If at home for LAN parties, don't fret too much. As long as everyone still uses skulltag clients you are fine.
The skulltag guys have moved on to Wrack, an arcade-style first-person shooter that pits you, Kain Sager, against the invading Arcturan empire! Battle your way through hordes of monsters at blistering speeds as you single-handedly attempt to save mankind from certain doom! Nice
The screen debut of James Bond 007, was not as many think in 1962 with "Dr. No" starring Sean Connery.
Surprisingly, nor was it in 1967 the (first) film version of Casino Royale, starring David Niven and Peter Sellers, as Bond fans will tell you.
Nope, unknown to most, their was actually an EARLIER version of Casino Royale, broadcast live on CBS television in the U.S. on October 21, 1954 as part of the "Climax Mystery Theater." The running time of the show was just 50 minutes.
Starring Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond, Linda Christian as the Bond girl, (the excellent) Peter Lorre as the villain, Le Chiffre, and with Michael Pate as Clarence Leiter. In a nationality twist, "Jimmy Bond" was a CIA agent, and "Clarence Leiter" is Bond's British ally.
Interested? Thought so! Check out the full episode below
This was the first screen adaptation of a James Bond novel and was made before the formation of Eon Productions. When MGM eventually obtained the rights to the 1967 film version of Casino Royale, it also received the rights to this television episode. It was lost for decades after its 1954 broadcast until a kinescope of it was located by film historian Jim Schoenberger in 1981.
On a related note, did you know Roger Moore played bond years earlier, in 1964? While Sean Connery had only two Bond movies under his belt? Check it out.
The seventh installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Iron Man 3 (released next April) will be the first major release in that franchise since the crossover film The Avengers.
Shane Black is set to direct a screenplay by himself and Drew Pearce, which will be based on the "Extremis" story arc by Warren Ellis. Jon Favreau, who directed the first two films, serves as executive producer, along with Kevin Feige. Robert Downey, Jr. reprises his role as Tony Stark, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle and Favreau reprising their roles as Pepper Potts, James Rhodes and Happy Hogan, respectively. Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale and Ben Kingsley round out the film's principal cast.
MATE, the open-source desktop environment whose name no one is sure how to pronounce, is now over a year old. Many of us never thought it would make it this far, but the interface has held its own against competitors like Unity and GNOME Shell. But does MATE have a long-term future in the fast-evolving world of Linux? Here are some thoughts from Christopher Tozzi at linuxtoday.com that we agree with.
When MATE debuted in August 2011, it was a one-man effort by a developer who called himself Perberos to keep alive the GNOME 2 desktop environment, which the GNOME project had deprecated in favor of GNOME 3.
While many welcomed the endeavor as an alternative to GNOME 3 and Canonical’s Unity interface, neither of which enjoyed universal popularity among Linux users, there was also plenty of reason early-on to doubt MATE’s viability. It lacked the backing of any major organization in the open-source channel and endorsement by Linux distributions.
Yet MATE has managed in the last year not only to stick around, but also to grow. Its development team remains small, but now at least includes a half-dozen different individuals from throughout the world. The project has pushed out regular releases, with the most recent, MATE 1.4, appearing at the end of the summer. And Linux Mint, one of the most popular desktop Linux distributions at the moment, has officially adopted MATE as one of its desktop environment choices; in addition, MATE packages have become available for a variety of other distributions.
If you’re a fuddy, unimaginative Linux user, you probably just want a desktop environment that works, even if it lacks all the bells and whistles of ostensibly “next-generation” options like GNOME Shell and Unity.
Good news - MATE fits that bill well!
As a self-described “traditional desktop environment” (the tagline that has replaced the project’s original, tongue-in-cheek, motto, “a non-intuitive and unattractive desktop”) MATE gets the job done without getting in the way, just like GNOME 2 used to do.
But the commitment to simplicity that ensures MATE’s popularity also makes future development plans difficult. How do you improve a product whose major selling point is that, unlike alternative choices, it is static and unchanging?
In part, the answer lies in keeping MATE compatible with the latest and greatest software produced elsewhere in the open-source channel. That means, in particular, upgrading MATE’s backend to work with gtk+ 3, in order to ensure that the most popular Linux applications will continue to work on MATE. Such plans are already on the table.
Yet beyond updates “under the hood,” it seems difficult to make many improvements to MATE that will draw in new users. That will likely be a challenge for the project going forward, especially as GNOME Shell and Unity gain greater followings. Nor is it certain that Linux Mint, which is also creating its own original desktop environment, Cinnamon, will continue supporting MATE once Cinnamon becomes more mature.
But maybe the lack of clear demand for new features to integrate into MATE is a good thing. Some people — and not all of them are neophytes to the computer world — just crave the simplicity and predictability of the same-old software they’ve been using for years.
Consider, for example, all those Windows XP users who would prefer the decade-old operating system to much fancier modern versions. If Windows XP were GNOME 2, and Vista and Windows 7 were GNOME Shell and Unity, these people would be flocking to MATE.
And that’s why MATE is particularly important within the open-source channel, where developers typically prioritize pushing out experimental code and bleeding-edge features, which employers and critics reward highly, much more than they do keeping things simple. In this respect, the MATE developers are a rare breed, but they fill an important niche within the open-source ecosystem. Here’s hoping they continue their work for a while to come.
The new iPad has been and gone, sporting a chunkier and heavier build than the iPad 2, which left some wondering: what's with all the extra weight?
However, it looks like Apple may be about to aid those conscious of extra grams in their bags, as rumours hot up about a potential iPad Mini (or iPad nano, if you prefer) arriving later this month (October 23rd?).
As the Amazon Kindle Fire, Google Nexus 7 and Nook HD steal the budget tablet show, Apple may well want a bite of the, well, apple.
Back in 2010, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that smaller screened tablets were not "sufficient to create great tablet apps" and would be "dead on arrival", so rumours suggesting a new iPad mini is in the works reveals a potentially new direction for the firm in its post-Jobs era.
Chinese sources claim that the miniature iPad will be priced at around 0-0 (£156-£187 respectively). Apple devices are notoriously expensive, so the launch of a cheap(er) tablet is a clear indication that the San Francisco firm is pulling out all the stops to ensure Amazon doesn’t steal its tablet crown.
Some analysts also believe the launch of a mid-sized tablet will fend off competition from the likes of Samsung and Microsoft, both of which have been very active in their pursuits to overtake the world’s biggest company. Analysts claim Apple stands to gain about 0 in profit for each tablet sold. That figure is based on a calculation of its potential innards, with the screen costing the most at .54.
