dryriver writes "Dear Slashdotters, We are a two man crew who have spent almost three years developing a video processing algorithm that 'upgrades' the visual quality of digital video footage. We take video footage that is "of average quality" — think an amateur shooting on a cheap digital camcorder or on a smartphone camera — and use various mathematical tricks we have developed to make the footage look better — optically sharper, better lit, more vivid colours, improved contrast, enhanced sense of three-dimensionality and of 'being-there realism.' In about a month, we will be presenting our algorithm to some venture capitalists. We have the obligatory before-and-after video demos prepared for this, of course. But there will also be a short PowerPoint presentation where we explain our tech in some detail. Now here is our main question: What, in your opinion, should we — or indeed should we NOT — put in the PowerPoint presentation to impress a Venture Capitalist? Should we talk about how we developed the algorithm at all — what kind of R&D and testing was involved? Should we try to walk the VCs through how our algorithm works under the hood — simplified a bit for a 'non-engineer' audience of course? Or should we stick to talking about market potential, marketing strategy & money-related stuff only? If you were in our shoes — presenting a digital video-quality improvement technology to professional VCs — what would and would you not put in your PowerPoint? Any advice on this from Slashdotters with some experience would be most welcome!"

First time accepted submitter anarcat writes "After two years since the last Debian release (6.0, nicknamed "squeeze"), the Debian release team has finally published Debian 7.0 (nicknamed "Wheezy"). A newly created blog has details on the release, which features multi-arch support (e.g. you can now install packages for both i386 and amd64 on the same install), improvements to multimedia support (no need for third party repositories!) and improved security through hardening flags. Debian 7.0 also ships with the controversial Gnome 3 release, and the release notes explicitly mention how to revert to the more familiar 'Gnome classic' interface. Finally, we can also mention the improved support for virtualization infrastructure with pre-built images available for Amazon EC2, Windows Azure and Google Compute Engine. Debian 7.0 also ships with the OpenStack suite and the Xen Cloud Platform. More details on the improvements can be found in the release notes and the Debian wiki." An anonymous reader points out (from the announcement) that "[t]he installation process has been greatly improved: Debian can now be installed using software speech, above all by visually impaired people who do not use a Braille device. Thanks to the combined efforts of a huge number of translators, the installation system is available in 73 languages, and more than a dozen of them are available for speech synthesis too. In addition, for the first time, Debian supports installation and booting using UEFI for new 64-bit PCs (amd64), although there is no support for Secure Boot yet."

crookedvulture writes "Intel has revealed fresh details about the integrated graphics in upcoming Haswell processors. The fastest variants of the built-in GPU will be known as Iris and Iris Pro graphics, with the latter boasting embedded DRAM. Unlike Ivy Bridge, which reserves its fastest GPU implementations for mobile parts, the Haswell family will include R-series desktop chips with the full-fat GPU. These processors are likely bound for all-in-one systems, and they'll purportedly offer close to three times the graphics performance of their predecessors. Intel says notebook users can look forward to a smaller 2X boost, while 15-17W ultrabook CPUs benefit from an increase closer to 1.5X. Haswell's integrated graphics has other perks aside from better performance, including faster Quick Sync video transcoding, MJPEG acceleration, and support for 4K resolutions. The new IGP will support DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.0, and OpenCL 1.2, as well." Note: Same story, different words, at Extreme Tech and Hot Hardware.

Nerval's Lobster writes "BlackBerry 10 is completely different from previous BlackBerry operating systems — with good reason. Its core assets come from a company named QNX, which Research In Motion acquired in 2010. Blackberry 10 features include 'live tiles' that dynamically refresh with new information, as well as a revamped keyboard and security upgrades. But what really makes or breaks a phone is the quality (and quantity) of its third-party apps. Jeff Cogswell pokes through the BlackBerry 10 programming API in a quest to see what app developers can do with the platform, and how it compares on that front to Apple iOS and Google Android. His conclusion? Although some of the underlying components are showing their age, BlackBerry has 'spent a lot of time building up a foundation for a good development community.' He also goes over BlackBerry 10's viability for porting apps and building games. But will developers actually work with a platform with such low market-share?"

An anonymous reader writes "Today, OpenBSD 5.3 has been released. It has many improvements, updates, and new stuff. Also, OpenSMTPD 5.3 is included. This is the first version of OpenSMTPD considered to be ready for production. Many pre-built packages are available for many architectures. OpenBSD 5.3 ships with various Desktop Environments, including Gnome 3.6, KDE 3.5, and XFCE 4.10." And don't forget the release song, "Blade Swimmer."

crookedvulture writes "AMD has revealed more details about the unified memory architecture of its next-generation Kaveri APU. The chip's CPU and GPU components will have a shared address space and will also share both physical and virtual memory. GPU compute applications should be able to share data between the processor's CPU cores and graphics ALUs, and the caches on those components will be fully coherent. This so-called heterogeneous uniform memory access, or hUMA, supports configurations with either DDR3 or GDDR5 memory. It's also based entirely in hardware and should work with any operating system. Kaveri is due later this year and will also have updated Steamroller CPU cores and a GPU based on the current Graphics Core Next architecture." bigwophh writes links to the Hot Hardware take on the story, and writes "AMD claims that programming for hUMA-enabled platforms should ease software development and potentially lower development costs as well. The technology is supported by mainstream programming languages like Python, C++, and Java, and should allow developers to more simply code for a particular compute resource with no need for special APIs."

An anonymous reader writes "DragonFly BSD has released version 3.4. This version is the first BSD to support GCC 4.7, and contains a new experimental Aptitude-like binary package installed called DPorts, which uses the FreeBSD ports collection as a base."

hypnosec writes "After a week's delay Linux 3.9 has finally been made available by Linus Torvalds. Last week Torvalds released the rc8 stating that he wasn't 'comfy' releasing the final version yet and that 'another week won't hurt.' Torvalds noted in this week's announcement that last week had been very quiet as there were not many commits and the ones which were there were 'really tiny' so he went ahead with the release of Linux 3.9."

Chrisq writes: "Our software landscape includes a number of open source components, and we currently assume that these components will follow the same life-cycle as commercial products: they will have a beta or test phase, a supported phase, and finally reach the end of life. In fact, a clear statement that support is ended is unusual. The statement by Apache that Struts 1 has reached end of life is almost unique. What we usually find is:

• Projects that appear to be obviously inactive, having had no updates for years
• Projects that are obviously not going to be used in any new deployments because the standard language, library, or platform now has the capability built in
• Projects that are rapidly losing developers to some more-trendy alternative project
• Projects whose status is unclear, with some releases and statements in the forums that they are 'definitely alive,' but which seem to have lost direction or momentum.
• Projects that have had no updates but are highly stable and do what is necessary, but are risky because they may not interoperate with future upgrades to other components.

By the treating Open Source in the same way as commercial software we only start registering risks when there is an official announcement. We have no metric we can use to accurately gauge the state of an open source component — but there are a number of components that we have a 'bad feeling' about. Are there any standard ways of assessing the status of an open source project? Do you use the same stages for open source as commercial components? How do you incorporate these in a software landscape to indicate at-risk components and dependencies?"

DeviceGuru tipped us to the release of the latest single board computer from Beagle Board. It's been two years since the previous BeagleBone was released, and today they've released the BeagleBone Black (including full hardware schematics) at a price competitive with the Raspberry Pi ($10 more, but it comes with a power brick). Powered by a Cortex-A8, it has 512M of DDR3 RAM, 2G of onboard eMMC, two blocks of 46 I/O pins, a pair of 32-bit DSPs, the usual USB host/client ports, Ethernet, and micro-HDMI (a much requested feature). Support is provided for Ångstrom GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, and Android out of the box. Linux Gizmos reports where some of the cost savings came from: "According to BeagleBoard.org cofounder Jason Kridner, interviewed in a Linux.com report today, cost savings also came from removing the default serial port as well as USB-to-serial and USB-to-JTAG interfaces, and including a cheaper single-purpose USB cable. (Three serial interfaces are available via the expansion headers.) In addition, the power expansion header for battery and backlight has been removed."

colinneagle writes "During a recent trip to an eye doctor, I noticed that she was still using Windows XP. After I suggested that she might need to upgrade soon, she said she couldn't because she couldn't afford the $10,000 fee involved with the specialty medical software that has been upgraded for Windows 7. Software written for medical professionals is not like mass market software. They have a limited market and can't make back their money in volume because there isn't the volume for an eye doctor's database product like there is for Office or Quicken. With many expecting Microsoft's upcoming end-of-support for XP to cause a security nightmare of unsupported Windows devices in the wild, it seems a good time to ask how many users may fall into the category of wanting an upgrade, but being priced out by expensive but necessary third-party software. More importantly, can anything be done about it?"

An anonymous reader writes "With the latest development work on Clang ahead of the release of LLVM version 3.3, Clang is now C++11 feature complete. The last remaining features of the ISO C++11 feature specification have been implemented. C++11 support for GCC is also more or less complete."

An anonymous reader writes "Six months after the release of Wayland 1.0, versions 1.1 of Wayland and Weston have been released. Wayland/Weston 1.1 brings new back-end support for the Raspberry Pi, Pixman renderer, Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and FBDEV frame-buffer device. Wayland/Weston 1.1 also introduces a modules SDK, supports the EGL buffer-age extension, touch-screen calibration support, and numerous optimizations and bug-fixes."

mikejuk writes "This is a strange story. AMD Vice President of Global Channel Sales Roy Taylor has said there will be no DirectX12 at any time in the future. In an interview with German magazine Heise.de, Taylor discussed the new trend for graphics card manufacturers to release top quality game bundles registered to the serial number of the card. One of the reasons for this, he said, is that the DirectX update cycle is no longer driving the market. 'There will be no DirectX 12. That's it.' (Google translation of German original.) Last January there was another hint that things weren't fine with DirectX when Microsoft sent an email to its MVPs saying, 'DirectX is no longer evolving as a technology.' That statement was quickly corrected, but without mentioning any prospect of DirectX 12. So, is this just another error or rumor? Can we dismiss something AMD is basing its future strategy on?"

lkcl writes "Rhombus Tech and QiMod have working samples of the first EOMA-68 CPU Card, featuring 1GByte of RAM, an A10 processor and stand-alone (USB-OTG-powered with HDMI output) operation. Upgrades will include the new Dual-Core ARM Cortex A7, the pin-compatible A20. This is the first CPU Card in the EOMA-68 range: there are others in the pipeline (A31, iMX6, jz4760 and a recent discovery of the Realtek RTD1186 is also being investigated). The first product in the EOMA-68 family, also nearing a critical phase in its development, will be the KDE Flying Squirrel, a 7-in, user-upgradeable tablet featuring the KDE Plasma Active operating system. Laptops, desktops, game consoles, user-upgradeable LCD monitors and other products are to follow. And every CPU that goes into the products will be pre-vetted for full GPL compliance, with software releases even before the product goes out the door. That's what we've promised to do: to provide Free Software developers with the opportunity to be involved with mass-volume product development every step of the way. We're also on the look-out for an FSF-Endorseable processor which also meets mass-volume criteria, which is proving... challenging."

MojoKid writes "Intel recently revealed a number of details regarding future Atom and Xeon processors and proposed server rack-level enhancements to improve efficiency and ease upgrades. The company will soon refresh its Xeon and Atom processor lines with new products manufactured using Intel's 22nm process node, which offer improved performance per watt characteristics and expanded feature sets. In total, Intel revealed details of three new low-power, Atom-branded SoCs for the data center, all coming in 2013. Intel is also updating the Xeon E3, E5, and E7 product lines. The Atom processor family will see new SoCs based on designs codenamed Briarwood, Avoton, and Rangeley, while the more powerful Xeons will be updated with Haswell, Ivy Bridge EP, and Ivy Bridge EX-based designs. Xeon E3s will leverage the increased graphics performance of Haswell to improve performance in multimedia-related workloads, like HD video transcodes. OHaswell-based Xeon E3 processors will also offer improved performance per watt over existing Sandy and Ivy Bridge-based designs and Intel will offer Xeon E3 processors with TDPs as low as 13 watts, approximately 25% lower than the prior generation."

The Python developers have been busy this weekend, releasing three new versions at different points on the Python continuum: 2.7.4 (a 2.7 series bugfix release), 3.2.4 (what's new), and production releases 3.3.1. Here's what's new in 3.3.1.

sfcrazy writes "ZFS on Linux has reached what Brian Behlendorf calls an important milestone with the official 0.6.1 release. Version 0.6.1 not only brings the usual bug fixes but also introduces a new property called 'snapdev.' Brian explains, 'The snapdev property was introduced to control the visibility of zvol snapshot devices and may be set to either visible or hidden. When set to hidden, which is the default, zvol snapshot devices will not be created under /dev/. To gain access to these devices the property must be set to visible. This behavior is analogous to the existing snapdir property.'"

Hot on the heels of the Gtk+ 3.8 release comes GNOME 3.8. There are a few general UI improvements, but the highlight for many is the new Classic mode that replaces fallback. Instead of using code based on the old GNOME panel, Classic emulates the feel of GNOME 2 through Shell extensions (just like Linux Mint's Cinnamon interface). From the release notes: "Classic mode is a new feature for those people who prefer a more traditional desktop experience. Built entirely from GNOME 3 technologies, it adds a number of features such as an application menu, a places menu and a window switcher along the bottom of the screen. Each of these features can be used individually or in combination with other GNOME extensions."

Billly Gates writes "With the new leaked videos and screenshots of Windows Blue released, IE 11 is also included. IE 10 just came out weeks ago for Windows 7 users and Microsoft is more determined than ever to prevent IE from becoming irrelevant as Firefox and Chrome scream past it by also including a faster release schedule. A few beta testers reported that IE 11 changed its user agent string from MSIE to IE with the 'like gecko' command included. Microsoft may be doing this to stop web developers stop feeding broken IE 6-8 code and refusing to serve HTML 5/CSS 3 whenever it detects MSIE in its user agent string. Unfortunately this will break many business apps that are tied to ancient and specific version of IE. Will this cause more hours of work for web developers? Or does IE10+ really act like Chrome or Firefox and this will finally end the hell of custom CSS tricks?"