Slashdot Mirror

A German man -- Norbert Blum -- who claimed that P is not equal to NP is seeing several challenges to his solution. From a report: Numerous mathematicians have begun to raise questions about whether the German mathematician solved it at all. Since Blum's paper was published, mathematicians and computer scientists worldwide have been racking their brains as to whether the Bonn-based researcher has, in fact, solved this Millennium Prize Problem. After an initially positive reaction, such as the one from Stanford mathematician Reza Zadeh, doubts are beginning to arise about whether Blum's reasoning is correct. In a forum for theoretical mathematics, a user named Mikhail reached out to Alexander Razborov -- the author of the paper on which Blum's proof is based -- to ask him about Blum's paper. Razborov purports to have discovered an error in Blum's paper: Blum's main argument contradicts one of Razborov's key assumptions. And mathematician Scott Aaronson, who is something of an authority in the math community when it comes to P vs. NP, said he would be willing to bet $200,000 that Blum's mathematical proof won't endure. "Please stop asking," Aaronson writes. If the proof hasn't been refuted, "you can come back and tell me I was a closed-minded fool." In the week since Aaronson's initial blog post, other mathematicians have begun trying to poke holes in Blum's proof. Dick Lipton, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, wrote in a blog post that Blum's proof "passes many filters of seriousness," but suggested there may be some problems with it. A commenter on that blog post, known only as "vloodin," noted that there was a "single error on a subtle point" in the proof; other mathematicians have since chimed in and confirmed vloodin's initial analysis, and so the emerging consensus among many mathematicians is that a solve for P vs. NP remains elusive.

Unhappy Windows User writes: An Austrian photographer was contracted by the luxury [hotel] Sofitel in Vienna to photograph the bar with an amazing view over the skyline. He was paid for his time (4200 euros) and arranged a three-year internal usage contract for the photos. After the contract expired, he still found his photos being used -- on external sites too. He is now suing for 2 million euros, based on each individual usage.

My question is: Is this the real market value of his work...? It seems like the largest economic contribution to the work was from Sofitel, who allowed access to the property and closed it to customers. I don't have any issue in a photographer wanting to be paid fairly for his work, and asking for perhaps double or treble the original price for the breach of contract to match what an unlimited license would have cost. [But] with this money they could have employed a professional for a month and automatically obtained full rights to the work...it seems like this guy is trying to take advantage of an oversight by a large corporation, never to have to work again.
Here's the original article in German and an English translation, and it's one of those rare cases where the copyright belongs to an individual instead of a massive entertainment conglomeration. But do you think the photographer should be suing for 2 million euros over this copyright beach?

Knuckles writes Austrian computer pioneer Heinz Zemanek, the first person to build a fully transistorized computer on the European mainland, died in Vienna, aged 94 (link in German). Officially named Binär dezimaler Volltransistor-Rechenautomat (binary-decimal fully transistorized computing automaton), but known as "Mailüfterl", the computer was built in 1955 and in 1958 calculated 5073548261 to be a prime number in 66 minutes. Its power was comparable to a small tube computer of the time, and it measured 4 by 2.5 by 0.5 meters. "Mailüfterl" means "may breeze" in Viennese German and was a play on US computers of the time, like MIT's Whirlwind. 'Even if it cannot match the rapid calculation speed of American models called "Whirlwind" or "Typhoon", it will be enough for a "Wiener Mailüfterl"' (Viennese may breeze), said Zemanek. Mailüfterl contained 3,000 transistors, 5,000 diodes, 1,000 assembly platelets, 100,000 solder joints, 15,000 resistors, 5,000 capacitors and 20,000 meters switching wire. It was built as an underground project at and without financial support from the technical university of Vienna, were Zemanek was an assistant professor at the time. In 1961, Zemanek and his team moved to IBM, who built them their own lab in Vienna. In 1976, Zemanek became an IBM Fellow and stayed at IBM until his retirement in 1985. He was crucial in the creation of the formal definition of the programming language PL/I. The definition language used was VDL (Vienna Definition Language), a direct predecessor of VDM Specification Language (VDM-SL). He remained a professor in Vienna and held regular lectures until 2006.

An anonymous reader writes "In an extensive interview with derStandard.at, GNOME designer Jon McCann shares his thoughts about all the criticism GNOME 3 currently faces and why he doesn't think at all that GNOME is in a crisis. He also talks about the current plans for GNOME OS and explains why he thinks that Linux distributions should rethink their purpose."

An anonymous reader writes "After years of focusing on further improving KDE4, two weeks ago the developers of the free desktop announced the next big step for their project: KDE Frameworks 5.0. But as long-time developer — and Plasma team leader — Aaron Seigo points out in an interview with derStandard.at/web, the source-incompatible changes shall be held to a minimum. He also calls Frameworks 5.0 only the 'first step;' new Applications and Workspace releases are to follow later. Seigo goes on to talk about their chances in the mobile market with Plasma Active and further areas of collaboration with the other big free desktop: GNOME."

An anonymous reader writes "In an extensive interview, GNOME 3 designer Jon McCann talks about the future of GNOME 3 — why it's all about the apps and why he is convinced that KDE and Ubuntu are actually different operating systems. He also reacts to the outspoken criticism against GNOME 3, which has been making the rounds lately."

dkd903 wrote in with an interview with Chris Dibona in Der Standard. Within, he declares Android as "... the dream come true. It's your Linux desktop, it's the ultimate success story of Linux that I've been working on personally since 1995." There's lots of other good stuff on Google's internal use of GNU/Linux: "If you'd look at laptops it's maybe 70 percent Mac OS X and most of the rest is Linux, we are a huge customer of Apple. Engineering Desktops are overwhelmingly running on Linux. We have our own Ubuntu derivative called 'Goobuntu' internally for that, integrating with our network — we run all our the home directories from a file server — and with some extra tools already built-in for developers."

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla's Chris Blizzard talks about the rising competition by Google Chrome, the evolution of the web platform and the prospects for WebM. He also promises that Firefox 4 will be 'one generation ahead' of other browsers in relation to Javascript speed."

Julie188 writes "GNOME 3.0 was scheduled to be released in September but during the developers conference, GUADEC 2010 in Den Haag, the organization had to face facts: the much ballyhooed GNOME Shell really wasn't ready. The Shell is supposed to bring 'a whole new user experience to the desktop.' So now, in September, what users will see is GNOME 2.32, distributed as a new stable release. Next target date for 3.0: March 2011."

suka writes "In a fresh interview with derStandard.at, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth talks about GNOME 3.0 — its strengths, but also about what he thinks is missing. He also mentions ongoing talks for a common meta-release-cycle with Debian which could delay the next LTS."

suka writes "During a keynote at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Nokia's Quim Gil announced that a future release of Maemo is going to be built around Qt. Maemo Harmattan is going to switch away from GTK+ / Hildon, derStandard.at reports from the conference." Michael Pyne also writes with a post describing day one of the conference from a KDE perspective.

Knuckles writes "Austrian newspaper Der Standard continues its recent series of in-depth interviews with free software developers. This time they sat down with Novell's Vice President of Developer Platform, Miguel de Icaza of Gnome and Mono fame. The interview was conducted at GUADEC (GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference). Miguel talks mainly about Mono 2.0 and .Net 3.5 compatibility, enhancing the collaboration with Microsoft over Silverlight ('Moonlight' in Mono), and the larger political situation of Mono and Moonlight. When the interviewer asks whether Moonlight is only validating Silverlight on the web, Miguel gives a quite detailed answer that includes a possibly well-deserved swipe at Mozilla ..."

Knuckles writes "Austrian newspaper Der Standard continues its recent series of in-depth interviews with free software developers. This time they sat down with Novell's Vice President of Developer Platform, Miguel de Icaza of Gnome and Mono fame. The interview was conducted at GUADEC (GNOME Users' And Developers' European Conference). Miguel talks mainly about Mono 2.0 and .Net 3.5 compatibility, enhancing the collaboration with Microsoft over Silverlight ('Moonlight' in Mono), and the larger political situation of Mono and Moonlight. When the interviewer asks whether Moonlight is only validating Silverlight on the web, Miguel gives a quite detailed answer that includes a possibly well-deserved swipe at Mozilla ..."

An anonymous reader points out an interview with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard, regarding the future of Firefox and how it affects other browsers. It's an Austrian site, so forgive the comma abuse. From derStandard: "It's sort of interesting though, part of our strategy is to make sure, that we continue making change and the indirect effect of this is that Microsoft continues to have to do releases, because if we get so far ahead that we're able to drive the platform they are not able to keep up and keep their users. I mean, we have this joke which says 'Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we ever did,' because they would not have done it, if we would have not built Firefox. And the same is true for Apple, they are doing a lot to keep up with us. Safari 3.1 is a good example, as far as we see it, the only reason they did this release was that Firefox 3 would come out and have Javascript speed which would be twice as fast as theirs, cause that's how it was before. So by pushing other people to make releases we can go on our mission to make sure the web stays healthy."

An anonymous reader writes "derStandard.at has an extensive interview with Ubuntu-founder Mark Shuttleworth, in which he seems to be pushing for a switch to QT in the GNOME-project: 'I think it would be perfectly possible to deliver the values of GNOME on top of QT.' He goes on to talk about Apple as an 'innovation leader' and problems with Hardy Heron."

suka writes "The founder of the Ubuntu project argues in a recent interview with derStandard.at that the time for mass consumer sales of Linux on the desktop has not yet come. He goes on to talk about the integration of proprietary drivers, the One Laptop per Child project, and 'great applications' from Microsoft."

suka writes "In a recent interview with the online edition of an Austrian newspaper, Mono project-lead Miguel de Icaza pleads for cooperation between Mono and Microsoft's .Net: 'I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration, and even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration'. The whole interview has some other interesting bits, like de Icaza's thoughts on open sourced Java and information about upcoming versions of Mono."

ost writes "There was a recent article in an Austrian newsapaper saying that Wallace and Gromit Creator, Nick Park, signed a deal for four movies with Steven Spielberg's Company DreamWorks. But the main thing i want to point out is that if Wallace and Gromit are to go to Hollywood, that poor penguin that was the villian in "The Wrong Trousers" has to be re-sozialized!" The article is in German - head over to the Tower of babel fish to get the skinny. I do enjoy Spielberg equaling Play mountain in the Fish - makes the translation all worth it!

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)