Ok, my previous comment ("Who cares?") seemed to be thoughtless or even offensive (~15 downvotes in 5 minutes), and I have to acknowledge that it lacked quite some arguments.
So let me ask: why does this news deserve so much attention to stand in front of HN? What interesting innovation, except the GUI, has brought this new OS release? Is an OS all about GUI and look & feel?
Generally speaking, I am just fed up with all this thoughtless media attention.
Considering 95% of the world don't care about anything but how something looks and whether they can interact with it in a way that makes sense I would suggest that it is, to a large degree.
They also need a good foundation of course but too often do people in the OSS communities confuse having a solid foundation with having a winning product.
Generally related to the UI, but from a technology viewpoint - this release will use Freetype 2.4 which is the first released that is not patent encumbered by Apple or Microsoft (all those patents expired in May)
Though Ubuntu has always shipped with the patent encumbered stuff turned on, but I think we are going to see some interesting innovation in font rendering going forward.
One thing I like about the bi-annual Ubuntu announcements is that it has provided a sort of mental metronome for the pace of development, and a moment to reflect on when, exactly, I did I last update those servers?
CVs: here are several CV examples, with different layouts, and using different techniques. It is true that for someone who is not familiar with LaTeX, common text processing software might be easier for typesetting a simple CV. This said, using LaTeX is also seeing how other people use it...
o CV1 (cv1.txt,cv1.ps.gz): simple
o CV2 (cv2.txt,cv.cls,cv2.ps.gz): more complex, but also nicer, it uses its own document class 'CV', written to that purpose (...)
main(l
,a,n,d)char**a;{
for(d=atoi(a[1])/10*80-
atoi(a[2])/5-596;n="@NKA\
CLCCGZAAQBEAADAFaISADJABBA^\
SNLGAQABDAXIMBAACTBATAHDBAN\
ZcEMMCCCCAAhEIJFAEAAABAfHJE\
TBdFLDAANEfDNBPHdBcBBBEA_AL\
H E L L O, W O R L D! "
[l++-3];)for(;n-->64;)
putchar(!d+++33^
l&1);}
One type of fraud that they need to deal with is fraudsters getting control of an established account (...) Their strategy for this seems to be to make people jump over a low paperwork barrier, then wait long enough that the payments have all cleared before they pay out.
One day my account (solely used for sending payments) got blocked because of a "potential unauthorized third-party access". After completing the verification they asked (new password, new security question and credit card confirmation), I received another message asking me to send a scanned copy of my ID Card, a proof of domicile and my BBAN.
I told them that for confidentiality reasons, it was out of question to send any of these documents. I asked them to give me more specific information about the materials that led to the account suspension and to reactivate it without delay. The next day, I received an email with vague excuses and my account got reactivated immediately.
It is true that their antifraud system can lead to number of suspended accounts and frozen funds without any solid basis. But they may also take advantage of frozen money (eg. this 600k case) for further financial activities so as big-box stores are used to: http://books.google.com/?id=UOSk0J8vYugC&pg=PA533 (source: http://preview.tinyurl.com/2vrcddc)
http://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=explorer&srcid=0B9lDh_...