La pasada semana publicábamos una historia que informaba de una presentación en Siggraph 2007 en la que Shai Avidan y Ariel Shamir mostraban cómo redimensionar imágenes teniendo en cuenta su contenido. La herramienta creada por estos profesores universitarios israelíes reducen solo aquellas partes menos significativas. Hoy, a través de Planet Gnome, descubro una implementación libre de esa idea, realizada en Python por Nicolas Trangez mediante Python Imaging Library y SciPy/NumPy. Por cierto, Adobe ya ha contratado a Shai Avidan.

coondoggie writes "The FBI has made a number of big busts using the eBay and other online auction sites this year. Today comes news that it played a big role in the indictment of an Alabama man for wire fraud. Joseph Davidson, has been charged in U.S. District Court with wire fraud in connection with an eBay scheme in which he allegedly received approximately $77,000 for stolen goods sold on the auction site. "Online auction houses present an opportunity for a thief to turn a stolen item into cash. Thieves should know that law enforcement can surf sites too in investigating crime," the FBI said."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lund, Sweden refuses to work around a Vista bug, so people who live there must choose between Vista and internet access. It's nice to see the right people being held accountable for a change.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

pobrecito hablador nos cuenta: «Grails es un framework web que desarrolla ideas tomadas de Ruby On Rails y las lleva al mundo Java. Utilizando como lenguaje Groovy (un lenguaje dinámico que corre sobre la máquina virtual Java) permite el desarrollo rápido de aplicaciones web. Ayer se publicó la versión 0.6 de este framework, la última antes de la 1.0, que sin duda va a revolucionar el desarrollo de aplicaciones JEE como Ruby On Rails lo hizo en su ámbito. La nueva versión incluye varias funcionalidades nuevas, como la integración con Spring Web Flow, y una mejora de rendimiento de hasta un 80%. Si os interesa Grails tenéis una serie de artículos de introducción en groovy.org.es»

DailyTech posted interviews with the founder of Pandora and management from Proton Radio (and Proton Music) asking them what SoundExchange's latest rulings mean to them. A lot of net radio stations are dreading the upcoming changes in royalty rates, which are said to be around 400%... a number that would bankrupt most of the industry. An interesting read for anyone who uses online radio.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BrendanMcGrail writes "Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum? As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views, but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

pabloiran nos cuenta: «En Cosas que Pasan se hacen eco de una completa comparativa entre Windows Vista y Ubuntu. Como ellos mismos dicen, "no solo compara los procedimientos de instalación, o los motores gráficos, o el sistema de archivos, hace una comparativa desde que se introduce el cd/dvd de instalación, hasta que el sistema está listo para usar, y además, compara los programas que vienen incluidos en la instalación de ambos sistemas".»

sea_stuart writes with a story from the Tidbinbilla space tracking station, outside Canberra, Australia. It is still communicating with the two Voyager spacecraft 30 years after they were launched and 18 years after Voyager 2 passed close by Neptune. Here's a little background on Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. "The bank of computers that would look at home in black-and-white episodes of Doctor Who cannot be junked... [T]he 1970s hardware is now our world's only means of chatting with two robot pioneers exploring the solar system's outer limits. Today Voyager 1 is humanity's most remote object, 15.5 billion kilometers from the sun. Voyager 2 is 12.5 billion kilometers from it. Both continue beaming home reports, but now they are space-age antiques. 'The Voyager technology is so outmoded,' said Tidbinbilla's spokesman, Glen Nagle, 'we have had to maintain heritage equipment to talk to them.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has some fascinating coverage of the recent rift between the OpenBSD developers and the Linux kernel developers. Proponents of the GPL defend their license for enforcing that their code can always be shared. However in the current debate the GPL is being added to BSD-licensed code, thereby preventing it from being shared back with the original authors of the code. Thus, a share-and-share-alike license is effectively preventing two-way sharing." We discussed an instance of this one-way effect a few days back.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hausmasta writes "Since August 30, there are massive problems with PayPal subscriptions. The automatic renewal of subscriptions stopped that day, causing headaches for lots of web site owners that rely on this kind of revenue. The problem is global, as this thread in the PayPal Developer Community shows. PayPal is aware of the problem but hasn't indicated any progress yet; some posters are wondering whether they have stopped working on it over the long (US) holiday weekend."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leo en Faq-Mac que, según un estudio, Apple ha vendido uno de cada seis portátiles en EE.UU. durante el último trimestre fiscal de Apple, pasando de un 14.3% de cuota de mercado en este segmento al 17.6%, al vender 1,1 millones de equipos.

insidedesign writes "Blogger Marco has recently discovered that the newest version of Google Earth includes a flight simulator. Though simple in comparison to full-blown simulators, Google Earth's is fun and addictive. To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+A for the initial dialog (on OS X, Command+Option+A). Then choose your plane (F16 or SR22) and initial airport. Joysticks are supported; it has even been reported that force feedback works. The game's controls are sensitive so it takes some getting used to. Here are all the available controls. For a quick overview, check out this YouTube video."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

speardane sends us word of a proposal in the German legislature to make it legal for that government to email spyware to terror suspects. The action comes in response to a court denying prosecutors' requests to break into suspects' computers over the Internet. The German chancellor supports the measure despite considerable outcry from political opponents and rights groups.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

fmfnet nos cuenta: «Comprar una cámara de fotos significa leer sobre marcas, ópticas, milímetros, megapíxeles... un alud de información que, lejos de ayudarnos, nos confunde todavía más. En una entrada de mi blog he elaborado un listado con las características en las que nos tenemos que fijar a la hora de elegir una cámara y unos consejos sobre qué tipo de cámara nos puede interesar según el uso que le queramos dar. Al comprar una cámara, los elementos más importantes en los que fijarse son el diámetro del objetivo y la marca de la óptica. Cuanto más grande sea la lente, más luz puede captar la cámara y en consecuencia mas nítidas saldrán las fotos. Por su parte, una óptica de calidad significa que podremos ampliar la fotografía sin que la imagen se degrade. Respecto a los megapíxeles, el parámetro del que más se habla, solo resulta útil si la cámara tiene una buena óptica.»

derrida writes "During the many threads discussing Ingo Molnar's recently merged Completely Fair Scheduler, Roman Zippel has repeatedly questioned the complexity of the new process scheduler. In a recent posting to the Linux Kernel mailing list he offered a simpler scheduler named the 'Really Fair Scheduler' saying, 'As I already tried to explain previously CFS has a considerable algorithmic and computational complexity. This patch should now make it clearer, why I could so easily skip over Ingo's long explanation of all the tricks CFS uses to keep the computational overhead low — I simply don't need them.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Vía el blog de David Maeztu, nos enteramos de un acuerdo entre Creative Commons Holanda y una entidad de gestión musical para gestionar los usos comerciales de los autores que usen una licencia CC-NC, es decir, que excluye el uso comercial. Así, esta entidad admitirá como socios a autores que tengan sus obras bajo una licencia CC no comercial para recaudar en su nombre lo que les corresponde cuando la obra se emplea bajo modalidades de explotación al margen de las libertades que concede la licencia CC. ¿Cuál es la relevancia del asunto? Hasta ahora las entidades de gestión vienen ofreciendo un único contrato a los socios, sin posibilidad de especificar que solo se recaude en aquellos casos en que el autor decida (solo usos comerciales, por ejemplo), por lo que excluía la posibilidad de que los autores pertenecientes a una entidad de gestión pudiesen distribuir su repertorio bajo CC. Por tanto, esta vía abre la compatibilidad de este tipo de licencias semi-libres con las sociedades de gestión, un argumento largamente esgrimido por los defensores de las licencias CC, y que pondrá a prueba si estas entidades están al servicio o no de los variados intereses de sus socios. Esperemos que cunda el ejemplo.

James Hardine writes Wikileaks, the website for whistleblowers, has broken one of the world's biggest corruption stories in the international press (Guardian, BBC, Forbes, Sydney Morning Herald). The site has leaked a secret report on looting by ex-president Moi of Kenya — and possibly altered the outcome of an impending national election. Moi has become a key player in political life in Kenya, and is now an essential pillar in President Kibaki's campaign for re-election in December 2007. From the Wikileaks page: 'The suppressed auditor's report reveals that currency worth billions of US dollars was looted from Kenya by President Moi and his associates. The money was laundered across the world and includes properties and shell companies in London, New York and South Africa and even a 10,000 hectare ranch in Australia.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eggun nos cuenta: «[ Vía LinuxParty] La Junta de Extremadura es el primer gobierno regional en España que cuenta con un sistema global de administración electrónica, un sistema "útil" tanto para los ciudadanos como para las empresas de la región, y que "tiene el objetivo de simplificar y agilizar los trámites burocráticos". Citado del artículo: "Según informó la Junta en nota de prensa, el sistema global de Administración electrónica permite a los usuarios efectuar telemáticamente cualquiera de los 1050 procedimientos existentes. Se podrán obtener certificados, licencias, solicitar becas o subvenciones, realizar el pago de impuestos o pedir la tarjeta de la seguridad social, todo ello sin necesidad de acudir presencialmente a las oficinas de la Junta de Extremadura".»

kiracatgirl writes "The NYTimes has a fun story about a relatively unknown Google employee and his hobby — taking photographs of himself with famous visitors to Google's headquarters. Tan Chade-Meng 'is a household name only in his own household,' but his gallery is posted on the walls at Google HQ. It's also available for our viewing pleasure at his Picassa photo album."Read more of this story at Slashdot.