Cody Taylor

Team Finland strikes again setting the 3DMark06 World Record under Liquid Nitrogen cooling.

Ubuntu 9.04 is getting closer and closer to the final release and we thought that it would be nice to give you guys a sneak peek at some of the upcoming features. One of these new features was introduces with tonight’s updates and it is a brand new login screen a.k.a. GDM theme, which is black and has a nice Ubuntu logo in the right bottom corner.

Video demonstration of a service Microsoft is working on that basically combines Qik’s cell phone video streaming with Photosynth’s panoramic image stitching together. The new service will take multiple live video streams focusing on the same subject (as you might find at a concert), and stitch them together to create one large panoramic video.

Today, a new updated appeared online that brings out a new login screen to Ubuntu 9.04

Larry Brilliant is stepping down from Google.org to become chief philanthropic evangelist at Google.com;Megan Smith, the company’s VP of new business development, will add Google.org to her portfolio.

Hugh Pickens writes “With the discovery last year of the first wreck of an Elizabethan fighting ship off Alderney in the Channel Islands, thought to date from around 1592, marine archaeologists are revising their ideas on how the English defeated the Spanish Armada. Replicas of two cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck were recreated in a modern foundry, and tests carried out showed that the Elizabethans were throwing shot at almost the speed of sound. Elizabeth’s ‘supergun,’ although relatively small, could hit a target a mile away. At a ship-to-ship fighting distance of about 100 yards, the ball would have sufficient punch to penetrate the oak planks of a galleon, travel across the deck, and emerge out the other side. Tests on cannon recovered from the Alderney wreck also suggest that the ship carried guns of uniform size, firing standard ammunition. ‘Elizabeth’s navy created the first ever set of uniform cannon, capable of firing the same size shot in a deadly barrage,’ says marine archaeologist Mensun Bound from Oxford University, adding that that navy had worked out that a lot of small guns, all the same, all firing at once, were more effective than a few big guns. ‘[Elizabeth’s] navy made a giant leap forward in the way men fought at sea, years ahead of England’s enemies, and which was still being used to devastating effect by Nelson 200 years later.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dazedNconfuzed writes “Whatever happened to the 19th IOCCC? The opening thereof was announced over two years ago and the winners’ names were posted, but the source code was never released — leaving the results of the 2006 contest unknown as we get well into 2009. Emails to questions@ioccc.org just bounce. Surely the quiet absence of a high point of geekdom becomes news at some point!”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.