AMD to drop Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 Catalyst support (on Linux) In what will certainly be controversial and disappointing to some Radeon Linux desktop users, AMD will soon announce that they will effectively be discontinuing support for several Radeon product families from their proprietary Catalyst driver. After that point, for future Linux distribution updates, the open-source Radeon Linux driver will be your only option for accelerated graphics. Phoronix
Memory profiling -- launching, graphs and markers It is said that "A point of view is worth 80 IQ points"; the meaning perhaps being that if we can look at things in different ways then we might understand them better. The Memory Profiler that ships with the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 provides, in its own way, multiple views into the memory usage of your application, and in an earlier post we had seen how specific views helped us understand one particular issue with the application better. But even before we got to the specific views, there was a graph and a couple of rows of markers, remember? Windows Phone Dev Blog
Fez and the death of the pixel "Gomez is a 2D creature on a voyage of discovery into the mysterious 3rd dimension." Polytron’s official description of Fez, released today for Xbox Live Arcade, succinctly explains the game’s core conceit. But it also points to a larger truth about the game: that this is a 2D platformer released into a medium where, in the mainstream at least, 2D graphics and sprites are ostensibly out-dated and where 3D reigns. Hookshot Inc.
The geeks who saved Prince of Persia’s source code from digital death He saved all the videotape he took in October 1985 of his brother running and jumping around their old neighborhood, footage that he rotoscoped into the animations for his Apple II game Prince of Persia. He saved all of the meticulous journals he kept of the production process, documenting each tiny step of the creation of the landmark hit game. Wired
First man to make 1 million Wikipedia edits Justin Knapp, 30, from Indianapolis, has edited Wikipedia at a rate of 385 edits per day, or just over one every four minutes, since signing up in March 2005. The millionth edit was announced on Wikipedia yesterday. Wikipedia, whose editors work on a voluntary basis, removed the option allowing anyone to edit an entry in 2007 after a series of unreliable updates. Telegraph
Report: Samsung launching cloud service on May 3 Samsung is reportedly prepping its own cloud service to stream movies, photos, music, and other content, according to a report. Maeil Business reported (via Google Translate) that the so-called S-Cloud could be launched on May 3 at an event in London. Samsung has already sent out invitations to the event, where the "next Galaxy" device is scheduled to be launched. PCMag
Oracle and Florian Mueller got hitched Florian Mueller has confessed -- in the interests of being "transparent", he says -- that Oracle has hired him, for his analysis of FRAND issues. I know. You are shocked, shocked. Who'd have ever guessed? We did. Groklaw did. We get suspicious when someone's "analysis" is uniformly that Google is doomed. It's my Spidey sense. And it's usually on the money, as they say. Groklaw
Windows Phone is headed for a life of fragmentation If you’re one of the handful who has taken a Windows Phone leap of faith, bad news: Your device is forever stuck with Windows Phone 7. People close to the company say Microsoft will only make Windows Phone 8 available on new phones that are released later this year, according to reports. ExtremeTech
Microsoft idea: Analyze Facebook posts to deduce mood, interests, education Thanks to its Facebook partnership, Microsoft has been strongly positioned to use social media to enhance its Bing search engine, incorporating the preferences of a person’s friends into the search results that person sees. But this would take it to a whole new level. GeekWire
Flashback infections not waning after all; 650,000 Macs still hijacked Analysis declaring the demise of the Flashback Mac backdoor has been greatly exaggerated, said researchers with a Russia-based antivirus firm, who on late Friday estimated there are 650,000 unique OS X machines currently infected by the malware. Ars Technica
Why the Halo Movie failed to launch The Master Chiefs left the offices of Creative Artists Agency around midday on June 6, 2005 in a fleet of limo vans. In their green, red and blue Spartan armour the cybernetically-enhanced super soldiers made quite a spectacle. Each stood six-foot-three tall, visored helmets obscuring their faces. Wired
Video gamers defeat energy efficiency Game consoles like the XBox 360 have long been known to be energy hogs, but researchers at Carnegie Mellon have come up with what may be the most precise measure yet of their electrical consumption -- and they offer a painless solution to the problem. The WSJ
The lost Steve Jobs tapes A treasure trove of unearthed interviews, conducted by the writer who knew him best, reveals how Jobs's ultimate success at Apple can be traced directly to his so-called wilderness years. Fast Company
