judgecorp writes "Government institutions are among the targets of an attack on Pakistani bodies, which originates in India, according to reports. The campaign is using vulnerabilities in Microsoft software to install the HangOver malware, according to Norwegian security firm Norman Shark (PDF). From the article: 'In the attacks on Pakistani organizations, spear phishing emails were sent out purporting to contain information on "ongoing conflicts in the region, regional culture and religious matters," according to Norman. Norman could not provide direct attribution to the attacks, but its report did note the following: "The continued targeting of Pakistani interests and origins suggested that the attacker was of Indian origin." Snorre Fagerland, principal security researcher in the Malware Detection Team at Norman, told TechWeekEurope it appeared Pakistani government bodies had been attacked.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

x_IamSpartacus_x writes "Jolla, the Finnish company that continued Nokia's work on the MeeGo mobile platform, announced details of its first smartphone on Monday. Availability for the Jolla device is expected by year end and can be pre-ordered now; the phone will be priced at no more than €399 (US $512.26). The Jolla hardware looks similar to that of Nokia's Lumia, with a clean, button-less front face that houses the 4.5-inch touchcscreen. The phone will use a dual-core processor and support 4G LTE in some regions. Internal storage tops out at 16 GB, but can be expanded via microSD card. The phone also includes an 8 megapixel rear camera with auto focus. The phone is also 'Android app compliant' which, in a move similar to that of BlackBerry, can help with available apps at launch."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With a new slicker x264 set of controls, the latest version of the open source video transcoder is easier to use. New betas show developments using Intel GPUs and OpenCL too

Just posted: Our review of the Tamron SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Di VC USD. In our latest lens review produced in collaboration with DxOMark, we look at Tamron's fast standard zoom for full frame cameras - the first in its class to include optical stabilisation. With its Ultrasonic Drive focus motor and drip-proof construction, it looks like a very tempting option for full frame shooters, especially as it costs rather less than its counterparts from Canon, Nikon or Sony. But is this all too good to be true? Click through to read our review and find out.

jones_supa writes "Google's YouTube is celebrating its 8-year birthday, and at the same time they reveal some interesting numbers. 'Today, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. That's more than four days of video uploaded each minute! Every month, more than 1 billion people come to YouTube to access news, answer questions and have a little fun. That's almost one out of every two people on the Internet. Millions of partners are creating content for YouTube and more than 1,000 companies worldwide have mandated a one-hour mid-day break to watch nothing but funny YouTube videos. Well, we made that last stat up, but that would be cool (the other stats are true).'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canadian photojournalist – Ted Grant – is quoted as saying:

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”

This quote often comes to mind when talking about portraiture and I thought it might make an interesting discussion starter.

Do Ted’s words resonate with you?

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

DISCUSS: When you Photograph People in Black and White, you Photograph their Souls

A Guest Post by Lynsey Peterson.

Nothing freaks me out like props.  Every time I see a picture of flower girls holding an empty frame that is outlining a bride and groom kissing in the distance, I die a little inside.  

Whenever I am subjected to a photo that attempts to bring in a letter jacket and a football and a casual I’m-just-hanging-out-here-in-my-letter-jacket-holding-my-football expression, I try to remember that I am terrible at making coffee and therefore cannot give-up photography immediately and go get an application at Starbucks.  We have come to a place where portrait photography trends are natural and candid and while you would think that means we are leaving all props behind to die a formal, posed, and staged death, we just can’t help ourselves from wanting to put a little extra something in there.  

Something personal.  Or themed.  Or fun.  As a photographer, the logistics of getting something personal or themed or fun in an image and having it look natural are overwhelmingly complicated.  Often leading to overwhelmingly complicated images.  But if done right, a little extra something adds…….a little extra something.  Photographing people with props comes down to one basic thing: how can you make this interact with that?

Make it Natural

This shot doesn’t scream A PROP WAS USED HERE, though it was.  This bride did not provide me with a “must have” shot list, which of course makes her my favorite bride ever, but she had one simple request: one picture of her drinking a can of PBR in her wedding gown.  

Now admittedly when she told me that, I wanted to pass out from the biggest eye roll that has ever happened because……….how on earth was I going to pull that off?  The goal was a tongue-in-cheek stylish effort that didn’t come across as a classless snapshot.  

Had there been any posing or obvious mention of the can, it could have easily gone from sweet and funny to tasteless and tacky.  Instead it’s a near romantic take on a candid moment at a reception.  It’s rare that making a joke out of the prop or drawing obvious attention to it generates a beautiful and interesting portrait.  Since it’s already on the losing side of “one of these things is not like the other”, there is no need to point it out.

 

Make it Different

When it comes to props in portrait photography, chances are good that it’s been done before.  So do it different.  Photography is just storytelling and a prop is just another subject in your cast of characters; how many lines it gets is totally up to you.  High school seniors tend to be the group most interested in including a prop.  Which is often sports equipment and getting creative and unposed with things like sporting equipment is not an easy task.  Step out of the intended purpose and treat it like an object.  

A soccer ball doesn’t have to go at the feet, a letter jacket doesn’t have to be worn, a lacrosse stick doesn’t have to……do whatever it is that lacrosse sticks do.  The image is about a person—the viewer knows what the intended purpose is of a practical use prop.

Make it Simple

Including a prop adds another level for the eye to process, so clean up everything else as much as you can.  A tight frame, a clean background, and minimal distractions are all your friends.  Stick with them and they won’t do you wrong.

Make it Meaningful

As props go, the easiest of the bunch are the ones people want included because they are highly personal and mean a great deal.  Wedding rings, special stuffed animals, maybe their cat (tip: avoid this one if you can).  The interaction here will be easier, so the key is highlighting the connection between the person and their special prop.  

The book in this photo was written by their great-grandmother and has obvious family importance.  Before this shot I took dozens of them just holding the book, wanting badly to document the entire cover.  Finally it dawned on me that the the story here was about kids having something so significantly personal and historic still able to generate their interest.  Great images are never about the prop, but the people it connects to and why.  

Make it Timeless

Props have a way of dating a photograph.  Take a moment to consider what the image you are about to take will feel like in 10 years.  Or 20.  Or 50.  If there is anything that can be changed, deleted, or moved so that in a decade this image will have every bit as much relevance as it has today, do it.  

These kids had on screen print t-shirts featuring cartoon characters that most of us likely won’t know in a few years.  T-shirts, messy faces, lollipops, and two boys makes for a complicated snapshot.  Colorful props, interaction, and sweet expressions makes for a timeless portrait.  

Make it make Sense

In my opinion, there is no tougher prop than a costume.  And when these sweet girls showed up in tutus at a suburban park, I had no idea how PINK TUTUS and grass and dirt were going to mix together.  Seemed a little like onion flavored ice cream.  If you take it apart piece by piece, it’s easier to vision it as a whole.  

I knew I wanted to show off the tutus full glory so the girls had to be standing.  I wanted the relationship of the sisters to play a huge role.  And I wanted it to have a feeling of magic.  Much like how I feel when I go to the park in my own pink tutu.

With enough creativity, almost any prop can make an image fun, personal, and interesting.  Unless someone shows up with their cat and lacrosse stick.  Then you’re on your own.

Check out more of Lynsey Peterson’s work on her website.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Props Are Evil: How To Use Them For Good

According to reports a bush fire burned down John McAfee's home in Belize on Thursday. The local fire department was unable to to contain the blaze and the the two main buildings were completely destroyed. Property Manager Noel Codd (who was not there at the time) estimated the value of the buildings at $250,000 each. Despite the reported cause of the fire, McAfee says that the destruction of his compound was no accident. We caught up with him to talk about why he thinks the fire was set and what he plans to do now. Read below to see what he had to say.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The developers of the open source web frontend framework Bootstrap are designing the next version of their software to be adaptable to mobile form factors by default. Development work on Bootstrap 3 is almost complete

In this edition: Meteor goes all WebSockets, IntelliJ IDEA goes all Android, Pythonic progress, development kits for Hadoop, and standards for lifecycle software

Nerval's Lobster writes "Yahoo has agreed to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. As you know, Yahoo is a major corporation with a need to monetize its assets in a way that makes its shareholders happy, leaving open the question of whether it'll alter Tumblr's DNA in order to make the latter more of a significant cash generator. But at least for the moment, Yahoo seems content to leave its new property alone. 'Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,' read the company's press release. 'The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators.' Tumblr CEO David Karp, who has been known to make some very anti-advertising comments in the past, will remain in place. Even so, anyone who likes Tumblr may have some cause for concern, because Yahoo has a history of making high-profile acquisitions that subsequently implode. Back in 1999, for example, it paid over $3 billion for GeoCities, another blogging network that it eventually shut down after years of failing the update the property. In 2005, it acquired popular photo-sharing Website Flickr, which it likewise allowed to languish and die. That same year it bought Delicious, a popular Webpage-bookmarking site, and did exactly nothing with it. So when Yahoo starts off its Tumblr press release with a promise not to screw things up, it's a self-deprecating nod toward all that history. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been on a bit of a buying spree of late, snatching up startups such as Summly in an attempt to make her company 'cool' and relevant."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The new Hangouts is designed to put an end to the proliferation of Google chat services and promises to provide interesting features - but its missing XMPP support potentially means that numerous Google Talk contacts could be irretrievably lost

sciencehabit writes "Whooping cough, or pertussis, has exploded in the United States in recent years. A new study (abstract) confirms what scientists have suspected for some time: The return of the disease is caused by the introduction of new, safer vaccines 2 decades ago. Although they have far fewer side effects, the new shots don't offer long-lived protection the way older vaccines do."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BorderLineGtk3 0.5.2
(GTK 3.x Theme/Style)
Borderlined gtk+3 + gtk+2 + metacity.

"ONLY TESTED with Gnome3.6 and 3.8 and Gnome-panel session"


Please help me to improve it

changelog:
Same concept new bugs fix

new switchs (works well with indicator)
new metacity (more flat)
color fixed where it was needed ...

scale color fixed for indicators and toolbars vs frame.

added good widget-gtk.css file for gnome3.8

> http://i.imgur.com/EndRtXW.png <

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cylonlover writes "Recently the media has been saturated with overly-hyped reports that NASA's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer may have detected dark matter. These claims may have some justification if the word 'may' is shouted, but they rest on a number of really major assumptions and guesses, some of which are on weak and shifting soil. So just what was seen in the experiment, and what are the possible explanations?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

itwbennett writes "Whoever said 'everyone has to start somewhere' has clearly never tried contributing to an open source project — the Linux Kernel development team in particular is known for its savagery. But if you're determined to donate your time and talents, there are some things you can do to get off on the right foot. Of course you should pick something you're interested in and that you use. Check, and double check. You should also research the project, learn about the process for contributing, and do your utmost to avoid asking questions that you can find the answers to. But beyond that there are some hallmarks of beginner-friendly open source projects like Drupal, Python, and LibreOffice — namely, a friendly and active community, training and mentorship programs, and a low barrier to entry."

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Windows 8 modern UI (metro) 1.0
(Metacity Theme)
Windows 8 modern UI (metro) metacity theme.

Please rate it if you like or/and uses !

This is my very 1st metacity theme creation.

gtk theme is here:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=158721


Please note that there is a metacity bug on the maximize button with some dialogs, bug opened here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=695519

changelog:
May 1, 2013: v1.0
- reworked close button
- reworked default colors
- added a grey theme

Feb 16, 2013: v0.1
- first release
- blue version only

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Windows 8 modern UI (metro) GTK2/3 0.1
(GTK 3.x Theme/Style)
Windows 8 modern UI (metro) gtk3 (+gtk2) theme.

Please rate it if you like or/and uses !

Metacity theme is here:
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=157024


This is my very 1st gtk+ theme creation, it is not yet completely achieved but is quite advanced to be released.


changelog:
May 20, 2013: v0.1
- first release


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riverat1 writes "After being embarrassed when the Europeans did a better job forecasting Sandy than the National Weather Service Congress allocated $25 million ($23.7 after sequestration) in the Sandy relief bill for upgrades to forecasting and supercomputer resources. The NWS announced that their main forecasting computer will be upgraded from the current 213 TeraFlops to 2,600 TFlops by fiscal year 2015, over a twelve-fold increase. The upgrade is expected to increase the horizontal grid scale by a factor of 3 allowing more precise forecasting of local features of weather. The some of the allocated funds will also be used to hire some contract scientists to improve the forecast model physics and enhance the collection and assimilation of data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twelve months and 400,000 lines of code changes have produced the latest version of Perl, 5.18. The headline feature is a reimplementation of hashing to make it truly random

An application's version-controlled source code is stored in the repository. Why not that of the database? To reproduce arbitrary database states in development, test or production environments, two powerful Java libraries are at hand that can be seamlessly integrated into a build for an agile Continuous Delivery

Among the enhancements in NetBSD 6.1 is support for the Raspberry Pi's USB and onboard Ethernet, along with security and bug fixes. The same fixes are also in the newly released 6.0.2

"Saucy Salamander" could include early versions of Ubuntu's Mir display server and of the Qt-based Unity Next desktop, both of which have been demonstrated. However, the graphics stack of Ubuntu 12.10 will continue to be used by default

After almost two months' delay, the latest version of the distribution that started as a fork of Mandriva refreshes the included software packages, implements the /usr move pioneered by Fedora and adds Steam for Linux

A convenient online search facility is now available for the enormous amount of data that was accumulated during a port scan of the entire internet

Freshly Exhumed writes "Forked from Mandriva Linux back in 2010, Mageia Linux has hit a new release milestone. Trish at the Mageia blog announces: 'All grown up and ready to go dancing: Mageia 3's out! We still can't believe how much fun it is to make Mageia together, and we've been doing it for two and a half years. For people who can't wait, get it here; release notes are here. To upgrade from Mageia 2, see here.'" Adds reader hduff: "It offers cutting edge and stable versions of your favorite applications and desktop environments as well as a version of the STEAM gaming software."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On the occasion of the ten-year Opteron anniversary, AMD was able to present not only a better balance sheet than last year, but also the new shared memory architecture for CPU and GPU called hUMA

mask.of.sanity writes "Lights, sounds and magnetic fields can be used to activate malware on phones, new research has found. The lab-style attacks defined in a paper (PDF) used pre-defined signals hidden in songs and TV programmes as a trigger to activate embedded malware. Malware once activated would carry out programmed attacks either by itself or as part of a wider botnet of mobile devices."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Steampunk Browsers Icons
(GNOME Icon)
All the Internet browsers that I know of and some linux file managers, all in a steampunk look and feel and all ppart of the Steampunk theme that I am developing.

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b1tbkt writes "So it seems that furniture manufacturers have not yet acknowledged the realities of modern life. Kitchen tables could benefit greatly from built-in concealable receptacles. Even more obvious is the need for electrical wiring in couches and coffee tables. I realize that there are safety (fire) concerns but as it stands most families that I know already have power cords for laptops, tables and phones draped over, under and through their couches at any given point. If someone wanted to wire their furniture with AC or some type of standardized LV DC system, what are some dangers to watch for and what, if any, specialized hardware exists for the purpose?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

cold fjord writes "A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans ... [The unnamed company alleges] the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee – and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges. The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said." Also at Nextgov.com.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NovaShell 0.6
(GNOME Shell Theme)
A Gnome-Shell Theme for Gnome 3

If you use GNOME 3.8 download version 0.6!
If you use GNOME 3.6 download version 0.4!
If you use GNOME 3.4 download version 0.3!
To find out your version goto control-center > Details;
or open a terminal and type:
gnome-shell --version


themeconfig
Open NovaShell-directory and run themeconfig (in terminal) to customize NovaShell!


Normal Installation:
*Extract the zip-file and put the NovaShell-directory into ~/.themes or install via gnome-tweak-tool (Theme > Shell-Theme)
*Select Nova-Shell with gnome-tweak-tool (Youll need the User-Themes-Extension)


Installation as default theme: (NovaShell will be the !default! theme for all users and gdm-theme):
*copy NovaShell-directory into /usr/share/themes/[/li]
*rename /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme to /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme.original
$ sudo mv /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme.original
*create a symbolic link to /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme
$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/themes/NovaShell/gnome-shell /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme
*log out and log in again


[ Icon-Theme used in preview-picture: Faience http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?action=content&content=144814 by tiheum ]

changelog:
0.6
*various bugfixes
*minor changes
0.5
*GNOME 3.8 support
0.4
*GNOME 3.6 support
*minor changes
0.3
*themeconfig added
0.2
*reworked dash, notification-bar and all-app-view
*lots of minor changes
0.1
*First release

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First time accepted submitter The0retical writes "A couple of mine-sweeping dolphins dredged up what is known as a 'Howell torpedo' dating from 1870 to 1889. Only 50 were ever produced, this being the second example known to exist. The 11-foot-long brass torpedo had a maximum range and speed of 400 yards at 25 knots. The new example will be displayed at Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wash. alongside the only other example."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

puddingebola writes with this excerpt from a Bloomberg report: "The Pentagon cleared Apple Inc. (AAPL) devices for use on its networks, setting the stage for the maker of iPhones and iPads to compete with Samsung Electronics Co. and BlackBerry for military sales. The Defense Department said in a statement [Friday] that it has approved the use of Cupertino, California-based Apple's products running a version of the iOS 6 mobile platform. The decision eventually may spur a three-way fight for a market long dominated by Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry.'" Also, Apple devices are best for uploading viruses to alien craft.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Associated Press (as carried by the Washington Post) reports that a living payload of newts and mice has been retrieved after a month orbiting earth in a Russian space capsule at an altitude of 345 miles, far higher than the ISS's orbital distance of 205 miles. Says the story: "Fewer than half of the 53 mice and other rodents who blasted off on April 19 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome survived the flight, Russian news agencies reported, quoting Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and the lead researcher. Sychov said this was to be expected and the surviving mice were sufficient to complete the study, which was designed to show the effects of weightlessness and other factors of space flight on cell structure. All 15 of the lizards survived, he said. The capsule also carried small crayfish and fish."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hypnosec writes "IBM is taking its COBOL server platform to the next level by updating the mainframe platform in a bid to extend and enable its mainframes to host cloud based applications and services. The latest update is looking to add XMLS Server as well as Java 7 capabilities to the System/z COBOL platform and this update would extend the overall lifespan of COBOL by taking it up a notch and gearing it towards the cloud computing arena."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today Joe Decker shares some tips on wide angle photography.

One of the first lens purchases aspiring landscape photographers typically made is a wide or super-wide lens, anything (in full-frame 35mm terms) from 24mm on down, and with good reason, wides offer photographers the ability to capture the sweeping vistas of the natural landscape. But they can also be a challenge to use effectively, it’s all to easy to end up with a wide-angle shot that lacks the power and grandeur we felt when we were shooting. In this article, I’ll explain why that’s so often the case, and provide a few tips for working around those challenges, showing you how to use wide-angle lenses to create dramatic, effective images.

1. Get Close!

Because wide-angle lenses take in a bigger angle-of-view than other lenses, using a wide-angle lens at the same distance from your subject will render that subject smaller than it would otherwise. To compensate for this, you’ll have to move closer to your subject. Don’t be bashful about getting close, particularly with super-wides&mash;it’s almost impossible to get “too close” to your subject with a 14mm lens. This emphasis in size that wide-angle lenses give nearby objects means that …

2. It’s All about the Foreground

Contrary to what you might expect, this means that the most important element of your wide-angle landscapes is the foreground. While wide-angle lenses do capture the wider landscape, they also (almost inevitably, because of their wide field-of-view) capture quite a bit of foreground as well, and this foreground is emphasized by the wide-angle perspective. As a result, if your foreground isn’t interesting, your photograph won’t be interesting. This leads us naturally to the Josef Muench idea of the near-far composition, an image which uses a wide-angle lens to not only show a broad vista, but also to show one detail of that landscape in an up-close, intimate way. When you’re photographing wide, be sure to spend some time looking for the most interesting foreground available to combine with your grand vista.  (If there isn’t an interesting foreground, you might want to consider using a longer lens to leave out that less interesting foreground.)

3. Watch those Verticals!

Wide-angle lenses tend to bend and distort verticals, as you can see in the tree trunks near the top of Fallen Redwoods. Now, you might decide you like that effect, or that you hate it, but it’s important to be aware of it and to make a conscious decision about it. For some images it’s fun to embrace, but more often I find myself having to work to avoid it or correct it later.  Avoiding it can be as simple a matter as composing so that there’s only a single obvious vertical (and that that’s vertical), alternatively, using shift movements with a tilt-shift lens can correct some of this distortion in-camera. Post-exposure, Photoshop’s “Lens Distort” filter can also save the day.

4. Leading Lines

Compositionally, lines (such as streams or railway tracks) leading from the bottom corners of an image towards the center often have a particular magic for guiding the viewers eye through the picture, making for strong images, and this is particularly the case for wide-angle images. Hot Stream is a great example of this, the viewers eye tends to wander from the corner  back through the image along the stream. As the stream moves back into the image, the stream gets smaller (in terms of inches on the printed page) quickly due the wide perspective. This quick fade (in width) into the distance creates a real sense of depth in the image.

5. Filter Woes

Shooting wide creates two problems for those of us who use filters. Polarizers are a specific problem, the effect of a polarizer on a blue sky varies across the sky so greatly that wide-angle images including the sky are left horribly unnatural, so leave off the polarizer unless you know there’s no blue sky in your scene. Screw-in filters are a separate problem, it’s all too easy for the filter edges, particularly if you’re stacking more than one filter on the same lens. Filter systems, such Cokin’s P-series filters (with the wide-angle filter holder), can help you avoid these problems if you must use filters.

6. Focusing

One of the things I enjoy most about working with wide-angle lenses is the ease of focusing them. As you move to wider and wider focal lengths, the depth-of-field at a particular aperture gets deeper and deeper. This allows you to make great use of the concept of hyperfocal distance, that is, the nearest distance you can focus a particular lens at a particular aperture and get “good focus”. At 24mm, by focusing about six feet out from the camera you’ll capture everything from about three feet to infinity in focus—even at f/11. At 17mm, focusing at the right point at f/11 will get you everything from infinity down to 17 inches away. Find (using a web site like this or any of a number of other sites, software tools or printed tables) and write down the hyperfocal distance for a couple of your widest lenses at a couple of your favorite apertures, and you’ll have an easy way of bringing the entire scene of near-far compositions into critical focus.

Using wide-angle lenses can certainly be tricky, but I love them all the same. Used well they can allow the photographer to create images that immerse us in a world with both small, intimate details and bold, dramatic vistas.

Joe Decker is a professional nature photographer and writer for Photocrati’s Photography Blog He also offers nature photography workshops and coaching around the western United States.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

6 Winning Ways to Work Wide

With the kind of cagey phrasing found in many such electronics approval applications, Google describes a device that some are taking to be the successor to its discontinued Nexus Q thus: "The device functions as a media player." From the article: "Some of the specs of the device includes a 2.4GHz WiFi b/g/n connectivity. The FCC report does not contain test photos so we do not know what the device looks like. It is likely that the H840 will support Google Play Music All Access and will have similar functionality as a Sonos media player that can be connected to external speakers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

linux (the freedom frontier)
(GNOME Wallpaper 1920x1200)


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New Faience icon pack 1.2
(GNOME Icon)
Installation of this package of icons

1) Download zip file and extract it.
2) Copy folder apps to folder, where you are have Faience icons pack. Usually it is $HOME/.icons/Faience/ or /usr/share/icons/Faience/.
3) Done :)


changelog:
2013-03-13 - First release

2013-03-29 - Added new icons (Linux MultiMedia Studio, Komodo Edit 8, OpenShot and JAMin)

2013-05-19 - Added Android Studio & MEGA


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TechCrunch reports that Yahoo's string of acquisitions may soon include Tumblr: "The Wall Street Journal is now reporting via Twitter that the rumored $1.1 billion cash acquisition deal for social blogging site Tumblr has been approved by Yahoo’s board of directors. The Tumblr acquisition was rumored last week, with a price tag reportedly north of $1 billion, which appears to be accurate if the WSJ’s sources are correct." The article notes, too, that "Yahoo had only $1.2 billion cash on hand as of its most recent quarterly earnings, which makes an all-cash offer for Tumblr a lot more of a stretch than it would be for someone like Apple, or even Facebook, which acquired Instagram for $1 billion in a mix of both cash and stock."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PinguyOS Waves 1.0
(GNOME Wallpaper 1920x1200)
This one is an adaptation of Devos Ubuntu Waves for PinguyOS. The original artwork can be found here: http://opendesktop.org/content/show.php/Devos+Ubuntu+Waves+-+1920x1080?content=129270

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First time accepted submitter russotto points out the claim of industry group TechAmerican Foundation (reported by Computerworld) that "wages for the software industry are falling, not rising. Wages fell 2% to $99,000 in 2012." Averages are one thing; the article points out though that wages vary vastly within the industry, and that some jobs are harder to fill (thus, better paid) than others. An excerpt: "Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, a research firm that also analyzes IT wage and employment trends, cited a number of reason for the decline in wages for software professionals. First, technology is becoming easier to implement without having an IT professional, he said. Also, the option of turning to outsourcing creates less pressure to increase wages. As the recession continues, companies continue 'to look at productivity and will often look to hire individuals who are lower cost employees,' said Janulaitis. That could include displaced baby boomer workers who have been out of work for some time and 'will take a lower paying job just to get back into the workforce.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Guest Contribution by Anotherphotograpbynoob.com.

What this tutorial will show you
In short: how I made the photo on the right become the photo on the left.

In this tutorial, we will cover basic tools of the free photo editing software GIMP.
Here is a quick rundown of the features covered in this tutorial:

• Crop a photo in GIMP
• Increase contrast with the Levels panel
• Make the colors pop with the Hue & Saturation panel
• Adjust colors with the Color Balance panel
• Add a color filter to boost the warm colors in your photo.

Sound hard? Don’t worry. I’ll guide you through the whole process, step by step.

Resources

First of all, you need to have GIMP installed. Click here to download GIMP, and then follow the instructions provided with the software.

If you want to follow along with me in this tutorial, the original photo can be downloaded here. I shot the photo myself last year. The sportscar is a racing green Volvo P1800, just like the one Roger Moore drove in The Saint – yep, my dad tells me the story every time we ride in that car.

You are free to use the photo for whatever you may want, as long as it isn’t illegal of course.

If you are interested in the specifications of my camera, it is:

• Nikon D3000
• Nikon DX AF-s NIKKOR 35mm 1.8G
• Shot at f/3.2, 1/200 seconds and ISO 100
• The exposure compensation was set to -2.7

Enough with the anecdotes; let’s start editing.

Start it all Up

After you have started up GIMP, open up the image you want to edit. If you have chosen to follow along and you haven’t changed too much in the standard layout in GIMP, it should look like this.

Fixing the Composition

The first thing I want to fix is how I composed the image. I don’t like the license plate showing in the original photo. Ideally, I would like to see no license plate and at the same time as much as possible of both the car and sky.

The easiest way would be just cropping off the right of the photo until the license plate is gone.

But…

I know my mother will most likely print this photo – just as with all the other photos I’ve sent her. In order to make the process of printing the images as smooth as possible, I need to keep the proportions of the image in tact (I don’t want the print service computer system to decide how the photo is cropped).

With that in mind, choose the Crop tool from the toolbox on the left (Shortcut Shift + C).

To make sure proportions are kept, check the box labeled Fixed. From the drop-down menu, you should select Aspect Ratio and the value should be set to current. Like this:

Now you can drag out the area you want to keep. You can adjust it by dragging the corners around the image. When you are satisfied, hit enter and your photo is cropped.

So far, so good. The image is still dull, I know. Let’s get moving.

Quick Tip – Duplicate the Background Layer

When you open up a photo in GIMP, a background layer will be created automatically. Don’t edit directly on that. Instead, you should make a copy of the layer by pressing Ctrl + Shift + D (Mac: Cmd + Shift + D).

Now you have the original background layer for reference while editing, and no matter the mess you make, you can easily start from scratch.

And now we must go back to the sports car!

Use Levels to Increase Contrast

The first thing I want to do is increase the contrast. This is mainly to darken the ugly details on the back of the car, in order to let the more shiny parts sparkle.

First, open op the Levels panel Color > Levels:

I’ve made a simple move. I just increased the darks by 10 and kept the whites at 255. I kept the whites at 255 to ensure most details are preserved in the sky; we’ve now set the best base for boosting the color of the image.

Work the Colors

The first panel I use in this process is Adjust Hue/Lightness/Saturation.
Go to Colors > Hue-Saturation:

I won’t be explaining every panel I use in detail. Instead, I’ll focus on the settings I needed for this tutorial. I’ve only adjusted the master channel in this panel.

Hue
I’ve increased the hue a little. Six steps up isn’t a lot, but you’ll easily notice the difference. Increasing the hue removes the slight magenta shade in the sky.

Lightness
Even though I adjusted the Levels before, I want an even more warm and dark feeling. Almost like a classical sunset-silhouette – just keeping the details in the photo.

By decreasing the Lightness, I darken the photo and turn up the colors even more in the sky. The Volvo P1800 even starts looking right with dark green colour (the actual name is British Racing Green – another dad anecdote).

Saturation
The final step in the Hue-Saturation panel is increasing Saturation – a lot! I’m putting the pedal to the metal now. All in on sunset.

The Color Needs more Attention

This is much better. But, I want to adjust it a little bit more. Next stop: the Color Balance panel.

Go to Color > Color Balance:

Again, I’m not going into detail on all functions. Just the ones I altered. In this case, it’s the Color Levels of the Midtones.

Cyan

Red

Everything got a little too blue when I boosted Saturation – especially the car. The first step is decreasing Cyan (by increasing Red). Now the car is getting warmer.

Magenta

Green

One step down is not doing much, but I really think it helped. It needed some compensation after increasing Red and Yellow.

Yellow

Blue

Let’s add even more color to the sky and some warmth to the chrome on the car.

Adding a Color Filter is the Last Thing

I still don’t like the blue shade on the chrome. The last step is to add a color filter. It’s really simple.

First, add a new transparent layer. Just go to Layer > New Layer (Ctrl + Shift + N).
Name the layer “Warm Color Filter.” Choose a transparent layer and click Ok.

Now select the foreground color and set it to #F4B905. Actually, I just went for a warm orange and landed on this. Not freakishly important. Just go for a warm orange color.

Select the Bucket Fill Tool (Ctrl + B) and fill your new transparent layer with warm orange.

This should turn your entire image warm orange. Looking great, ay?

Ok. Now change the layer opacity to 10%, and set the blend mode to Dodge.

The result is a nice and warm feeling to the overall photo. And it also got us rid of that blue trouble in the chrome details. Nice.

Saving is now Exporting

As you may already know, GIMP does no longer save in JPEG. But don’t worry, the good people working with GIMP has just moved the function a bit and it is now called Export (Ctrl + E) and Export As (Shift + Ctrl + E), if you need to rename the file.

The Final Result

My mom actually ended up printing all the photos of my dad’s sports car. If you want to check out the rest of the sports car photos and even more GIMP tutorials, head over to my blog at http://anotherphotographynoob.com.

More specifically, the images of the sports car are here: http://anotherphotographynoob.com/sportscar/

And all my tutorials for GIMP are here: http://anotherphotographynoob.com/gimp-tutorial/

Anotherphotographynoob is a European blogger and photo enthusiast, blogging daily at Anotherphotograpbynoob.com. It all started as a simple blog posting a photo a day, but recently the blog has moved to a self-hosted solution and now tutorials are being written on a daily basis to help other photo nerds.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Make your Photos Sparkle with GIMP

Pirate Bay Founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is to be tried starting tomorrow in Sweden, after his indictment last month for computer hacking and fraud. Wikileaks has released several documents related to his detention and the associated charges. From the summary of this material: "This material includes inter alia the interrogations with GSW and his co-accused, internal correspondence from the Swedish Foreign Minister and the Swedish embassy in Cambodia, damage assessment reports by the companies and the authorities concerned, and correspondence between GSW and Kristina Svartholm and the Swedish prison authorities. The material is formally public, but the Swedish prosecution authority has refused to provide the documents in digital format. Photocopying this volume of paper costs around £350." Notable is the refusal of Warg's request to obtain a graphing calculator while in prison.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UpstartX 0.2
(Other GNOME Stuff)
Upstartx is a application for checking upstart daemon services in a
GraphicalUser Interface mode!

1.First go to help>about and install chkconfig
2.Run sysV link in order to link upstart scripts with sysV for compatibility!

Then run whatever command you want (see , enable , disable startup daemons ...etc)

changelog:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gir1.2-launchpad-integration-3.0

http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1

http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-common

[read more]

job recommendations:
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Ubuntu Server Manager 0.7.4
(Other GNOME Stuff)
Designed for localhost !Still you can use'it on remote hosts with ssh x forward!
Ubuntu Server is a GUI ,created with Quickly Glade, to manage your servers that are installed (apache2,myqsl,proftpd,samba,monitorix,ssh,nagios,webmin) and see the server log activity!
INSTALL:
Just download deb file and install using command line , ubuntu software center or gdebi.

Added new services and tasks like scan for rootkit , run netstat , scan localhost fot open ports , configure firewall through gufw , open your www default folder and others!

NEW:
Install the servers from help&install menu!
Project files https://sourceforge.net/projects/ubuntuserverman/

Added instant status changer!

-Added list apache modules avaiable /enabled
-Better visual style in general window!

0.6 ver
-added anonymous option (enable/disable) for proftpd server!

changelog:
ver 0.7
-added Backup utility, view info about network interfaces , config samba shares , view local & external ip , enable or disable sites and modules in apache2
-a new look & feel

ver 0.7.2

added mtr and traceroute options

ver 0.7.3

-added BIND9 server

ver 0.7.4

-added NTP server

http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gir1.2-launchpad-integration-3.0

http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1

http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-common

[read more]

job recommendations:
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Ramdisk 0.3
(Other GNOME Stuff)
This program allows you to create a special partiton form your RAM memory !

GENERAL WARRNING!!!
After reboot the data form this partition will be lost!!

USAGE: First create a a RAM DISK image (the default size value is 16MB according to your Kernel boot parameter) then mount\'it and give write acces!You can then mount or unmount partition any way you like!
WARRNING!! After creating RAMDISK to not hit again CREATE RAMDISK or your partition will be reformated and you will lose data!

For increasig RAMDISK size edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg adding ramdisk_size=1000000(this is 1GB) at the end of line containing kernel /vmlinuz-3.5.0.27 (whatever kernel you have).

changelog:
-ver 0.2

added Backup and Restore Utilities ( you can backup data from Ramdisk and restore it after rebooting )

PS:
I have tested Fedora 18 XFCE installed on Ramdisk using VirtualBox and booting time was about 6 seconds and CentOS 6.4 about 15 seconds!(System host Ubuntu 12.04 , 12GB Ram--7 GB allocated for Ramdisk--, i7 second gen )

-ver 0.3
~General application improvement
~More detail on Partition info
~List Backups option


Added a short tutorial : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsdrg4mFh7s&feature=youtu.be


Dependency ubuntu 13.04:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-common
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1
http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gir1.2-launchpad-integration-3.0

[read more]

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Hardwareinfo 0.4
(Other GNOME Stuff)
Hardwareinfo is a application to show information about your system hardware and software!

Dependency ubuntu 13.04:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-common
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1
http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gir1.2-launchpad-integration-3.0

changelog:
Dependency ubuntu 13.04:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-common
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1
http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gir1.2-launchpad-integration-3.0

[read more]

job recommendations:
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Mangui 1.2
(Other GNOME Stuff)
Mangui is a application for accessing information abot linux commands and
programs in a GraphicalUser Interface mode!

ver 1.1

-added INFO command option
-resolved some bugs

ver 1.2

-improvement in general visual style!

changelog:
Dependency ubuntu 13.04:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-common
http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1
http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gir1.2-launchpad-integration-3.0

[read more]

job recommendations:
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