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More and more manufacturers are going down the oversized smartphone route and if the latest rumblings are to be believed Nokia isn't far behind.Those notions, however, are coming from the incredibly hit and miss Taiwanese site Digitimes which claims its industry sources have revealed Nokia will release its first phablet in 2014.The supersized phone market is growing with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Huawei Ascend Mate, LG Optimus G Pro and ZTE Grand Memo all sporting screens around the 6-inch mark.For Nokia it would be an important space to break into as the Finnish firm seemingly has no interest in offering a full blown tablet device, so a 6-inch smartphone could be its key to continued growth and success.Is bigger better?No further details were provided on Nokia's supposed larger-than-life device, but the sources did mention that Chinese manufacturer Huawei is already planning another.Apparently a 6.5-inch smartphone is under development in China, and if so it would dwarf Huawei's current big screen offering with the Ascend Mate packing an already huge 6.1-inch display.There's no word on a release date for this handset, and pricing for both still remains a mystery - as does the legitimacy of these rumours - so we'll keep an eye out for more information over the coming months.

Sometimes it happens that for one reason or another there's a need to use a proprietary application (read: can not be modified due to its licence) that contains bashisms. Since the application can not be modified and it might not be desirable to change the default /bin/sh, dealing with such applications can be a pain. Or not.The switchsh program (available in Debian) by Marco d'Itri can be used to execute said application under a namespace where bash is bind-mounted on /bin/sh. The result:$ sh --helpsh: Illegal option --$ switchsh sh --help | head -n1GNU bash, version 4.1.5(1)-release-(i486-pc-linux-gnu)Simple, yet handy.

Thanks to the release team ACK, I've started uploading Xfce 4.10 to unstable yesterday. For now, I've only pushed Xfce 4.10.1 desktop components, which means people using xfce4 + xfce4-goodies in unstable won't be able to upload at once. That's because panel plugins have a quite hard dependency on the running xfce4-panel, and the communication protocol has changed between Xfce 4.8 and 4.10. So all panel plugins need to be rebuild against the new xfce4-panel. I'll start uploading new releases or packages revisions this evening, and binNMUs will be scheduled for the rest, but it'll take some days. In the meantime, you can safely wait before upgrading xfce4. If you don't use external panel plugins, then you can accept to remove xfce4-goodies and the various xfce4-*-plugins and upgrade to xfce4 4.10. There's no need to report a bug about that situation, we're already aware of it and it's somehow intended, things will settle in a few days.

AltOS 1.2.1 — TeleBT support, bug fixes and new AltosUI features Bdale and I are pleased to announce the release of AltOS version 1.2.1. AltOS is the core of the software for all of the Altus Metrum products. It consists of cc1111-based micro-controller firmware and Java-based ground station software. The biggest new feature for AltOS is the addition of support for TeleBT, our ground station designed to operate with Android phones and tablets. In addition, there’s a change in the TeleDongle radio configuration that should improve range, some other minor bug fixes and new features in AltosUI AltOS Firmware — Features and fixes There are bug fixes in both ground station and flight software, so you should plan on re-flashing both units at some point. However, there aren’t any incompatible changes, so you don’t have to do it all at once. New features: TeleBT support. Improved radio sensitivity. The TeleDongle receiver parameters have been tweaked to provide better reception. TeleMini now completely resets all radio parameters in recovery mode (with the two outer debug pins connected) — 434.550MHz, N0CALL, factory radio cal. Bug fixes: USB device fixes. This improves operation with Windows, avoiding hangs and errors in many cases. Correct the Kalman filter error covariance matrix; the old parameters were built assuming continuous measurements. AltosUI — Easier to use AltosUI has also seen quite a bit of work for the 1.2.1 release. It’s got several fun new features and a few bug fixes. New Graph UI features: Show tool-tips with the value near the cursor. Make the set of displayed values configurable. Add all of the available data values just in case you want to see them. Added a Map tab showing the ground track of the whole flight. The flight summary tab now includes the final GPS position. This lets you figure out where your rocket landed without replaying the whole flight. Other new AltosUI features: TeleBT support, including Bluetooth connections (Linux-only, at present). Shows the callsign in the Monitor Idle and other command-mode windows so that you can tell what callsign is being used. Show the block number when downloading flight data. This lets you see something happen even for longer flights. Make the initial position of the AltosUI configurable so that you can position it out of the way of the rest of you desktop. Distribute Mac OS X in .dmg format (Mac OS Disk Image); this means you don’t need to explicitly unpack the bits. Bug fixes: Deal with broken networking while downloading map tiles. Tiles are now always downloaded asynchronously so that the UI doesn’t freeze when the network is slow.

Recently we had our online Ubuntu Developer Summit where we discussed a range of topics, defined next steps, and documented work items. The very last session at the event was an overall summary of the tracks (you can watch the video here), but I wanted to blog an overall summary too. These notes are quick and to the point, but they should give an overall idea of decisions made. Client Content Handling - Siloing apps. Main applications will define a “main repo” and provide an API to deliver, share and access the data in the main repo. X.org Want to update to 1.14 or even 1.15 if the video ABI doesn’t change. System Settings Focus on the phone settings defined here. Scopes Scopes that didn’t land in 13.04 should land within 2 weeks. Several scopes will be migrated from Python to either C++ or Go for memory purposes. Chromium Expressed interest in moving to Chromium as default for a better user experience. Gathered feedback on the possible move. Next steps are to take discussion to the mailing list. Unity 8/Mir Preview in 13.10 Want to have a preview of Ubuntu 8 (Phablet UI) running on Mir as an optional session (installable from universe or PPA, most likely). Foundations Reviewed the current 13.10 release schedule found several changes made in 13.04 that mistakenly hadn’t been carried over, such as later freeze dates and one fewer alpha; Adam Conrad will be syncing all this up and sending mail to the ubuntu-release list for review. We discussed the positioning of the development release in light of some conversations last cycle, and put some more flesh on the design for making it easier for people to follow along with the development release all the time. This cycle, we’ll be bringing up a new 64-bit ARM architecture based on cross-building work done last cycle, and we’ll update developers on that once we get closer to the point of starting up builds in Launchpad. Moving forward with click packages. Fleshed out ideas on source package provision, integrating with existing client package management stacks, and clarifying some other things like the security model. For image based upgrades, the team held a demo and Q&A for the current proposed solution, which is split into client, server, and upgrader; client is going well and expected to land by the end of June, server is currently blocked on infrastructure but should be ready around the same time, and Ondrej Kubik has been making good progress at tweaking the CyanogenMod recovery environment for the upgrader. Firmed up the plan for packaging Android components for Ubuntu Touch images. Upstart will be used as the standard way of spawning desktop apps for Unity on touch devices and ideally on desktop too (Unity 7 and 8). This will let us make sure we only have one instance per app, and will make it easy to apply AppArmor, seccomp and cgroup confinement consistently to all apps. Defined a goal to reduce the amount of time it takes to prepare, test and make a Checkbox release, automating more of the process. This will benefit people who use the Checkbox tool as part of their daily work. It’s possible that Checkbox may move to Universe, although this needs some more discussion. The server certification tools are being reengineered to use the new plainbox engine as their core. This will preserve the existing UI, but we’ll have co-installable packages with the new core, and will eventually switch over to the new tools. The cert tools and test suite are being upgraded to work well on ARM for our hyperscale and mobile work, fixing any issues so we can get full, clean test runs on ARM servers. MaaS will be used for provisioning, and tested as a part of the ARM server solution. We will be basing the primary kernels for 13.10 on Linux 3.10, but will strongly consider 3.11 depending on timing. For Ubuntu Touch devices, we already have kernels available for Nexus 4 and 7, and plan to also bring up kernels for Ga

(Posted 21 May 2013 by finid)

Keith and I are pleased to announce the immediate availability of TeleBT, a new Altus Metrum ground station product providing the equivalent of TeleDongle plus Bluetooth. TeleBT working with AltosDroid on an Android device provides everything needed to monitor a rocket in flight, record telemetry, and know how to walk right to the airframe after it's back on the ground. The Bluetooth capability of TeleBT is also supported by AltosUI on Linux, and with a micro USB cable TeleBT works just like TeleDongle on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems running AltOS version 1.2.1 or later.

The other day in the Linux Journal IRC room (#linuxjournal on Freenode), I was whining to the channel about no-ip.com deleting my account without warning. My home IP address hadn't changed in a couple months, and because there was no update, it appeared abandoned. more>>

Savor this spring session of CTIA 2013, because it will be the last. In Las Vegas' Venetian Ballroom, moguls of the wireless world took the stage for the show's opening keynote to discuss the expansion of wireless service in North America, the future of the CTIA shows, and women in wireless.After the show closes on Thursday, the Wireless Association will merge the spring and fall CTIA shows will merge to form one session. 2014's show will be a so-called "super show."CTIA as holiday launchpadLike this year's show, the next CTIA session will also be in Las Vegas. Taking place from September 9-11, the time has been chosen to give manufacturers the chance to launch products into the holiday season.This should help CTIA compete with the other Vegas tech show, CES, which occurs in January, after the holiday feeding frenzy.A subdued send offThe last opening keynote of the CTIA spring show began on an appropriately dour note. CTIA President and CEO Steve Largent began his address with condolences to the victims of Oklahoma's deadly tornadoes.Former NFL player Largent is an Oklahoma native himself, and served his state in the U.S. House of Representatives before shifting to a career in the wireless industry. He praised the work of emergency workers in his home state, and urged the audience to text a donation to the Red Cross.Women in WirelessLargent then introduced newly appointed FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The first woman to hold this position, Clyburn was still in her first week as commissioner when she took the stage on Tuesday.Clyburn was followed by Mary Dilon, president of U.S. Cellular and CTIA Chairwoman. She stressed the need to encourage young women to enter the wireless industry, joking that the CTIA rest rooms are the "only place where the men are waiting and the women just waltz right in."Despite an overall gender imbalance in the industry, the CTIA opening keynote was able to muster an impressive all-female panel of wireless moguls. Executives from Qualcomm, Target and more joined Dilon for a discussion of their own career paths, and their vision for the industries future.

Microsoft unveiled it's all new console today, the Xbox One, and with it a host of partnerships with game companies for new titles heading to market later this year. Of particular note is a partnership between Microsoft and the National Football League to mix the real and virtual world of gaming together. One a user is watching teams on the gridiron, they can seamlessly switch to fantasy football information and displays, as well as receive on screen updates. Developing...