25 most recent entries:
Rethinking Window Management (Oct 05 2008 15:57 GMT)
There is one thing that really pushes my buttons, one thing that is sure to send me off on a rant on life, the universe, and everything. I have a 21" widescreen 1680x1050 display - which might not be large to some of the real geeks in here, but to me, it's pretty huge. With so much screen real estate, why oh why do my friends all still insist on maximising every window they come across when they sit down behind my computer? This - and more - is the subject of the latest post on Microsoft's Engineering 7 weblog.
Should Palm Adopt Android? (Oct 05 2008 03:18 GMT)
A Fortune Magazine article looks at hand-held computing's most beleaguered major player and wonders whether it wouldn't be better off hitching its wagon to Google's coat-tails and adopting Android. After shunting aside its own, old-and-creaky OS in favor of Microsoft's it's been hanging its hopes on a long-awaited new Linux-based OS. Android may be Palm's best bet to avoid stemming its inexorable slide into irrelevance.
Microsoft's Latest Product: Zombie XP (Oct 05 2008 02:58 GMT)
Windows XP just refuses to die. Have you ever notice that in movies they hit the bad guy just hard enough to stun him, then go about their business with their back turned to him while he slowly gets up and surprises them by attacking again? In this allegory, Microsoft management is the cute couple and XP is the villain: "Microsoft's deadline for allowing OEMs to sell PCs with systems that are "downgraded" from Windows Vista to XP is still a moving target. Initially planned to expire on June 30 of this year, Microsoft at first granted an extension to July 31.
Reactions to Microsoft's European Tour and Cloud Announcement (Oct 05 2008 00:00 GMT)
The New York Times and The Guardian both published interesting editorials about Microsoft's latest press blitz in Europe, and its promotion of Windows 7, "Windows Cloud," and its positioning against Google.
Jobs' Fake Heart Attack: Playing the Blame Game (Oct 04 2008 21:12 GMT)
If you're looking for a party, Wall Street probably isn't the place you're going to find one. And to make matters worse, there are apparently people out there who are wilfully trying to make the life of the people on Wall Street (and subsequently, the rest of the world) even harder. By making up fake stories. And publish them on CNN's Digg - iReport.com.
Apple Denigrates Psystar's Antitrust Claims (Oct 03 2008 15:24 GMT)
Gutsy/foolhardy Mac clone maker Psystar responded in August to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit with an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple. Earlier this week, Apple's lawyers filed a motion to have the suit dismissed, calling it "deeply flawed." In its statement, Apple contends: "One of the bedrock principles of antitrust law is that a manufacturer's unilateral decision concerning how to distribute its product and with whom it will deal cannot violate the Sherman Act."
*Review: PC-BSD 7* (Oct 02 2008 20:50 GMT)
Recently the PC-BSD team released their latest stable version (PC-BSD 7) code-named Fibonacci Edition. Some of major changes from the previous version include a newer kernel, an experimental ZFS module, and a KDE 4 for desktop environment. Being a Linux junkie, I thought of this as a perfect opportunity to venture into the BSD arena. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...
A New Way of Sleeping in the Linux Kernel (Oct 02 2008 17:40 GMT)
The Linux Kernel version 2.6.25 introduces a new Linux process sleeping state, TASK_KILLABLE: If a process is sleeping killably in this new state, it works like TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE with the bonus that it can respond to fatal signals. This feature is generally an improvement over the existing options -- after all, it is another way to keep from getting stuck with dead processes.
GIMP 2.6.0 Released (Oct 01 2008 22:28 GMT)
The GIMP Project has released GIMP 2.6.0. Among some UI-based changes and additional fixes, it comes the long promised integration of the GEGL library. The promise of 16 bit per-pixel non-destructive editing goes back to 2002, but it's at last here.
Microsoft Unveils 'Windows Cloud', Confirms Midori (Oct 01 2008 21:30 GMT)
Even though I'm still not quite sure what "the cloud" actually is (it's the internet, right?), Microsoft has just announced that it will be releasing 'Windows Cloud' at its Professional Developers Conference later this month. Windows Cloud (a temporary codename) will apparently be based on Windows Server, but with new features and characteristics. Steve Ballmer made the announcement at a Microsoft-sponsored conference for IT managers in London.
*The State of Bluetooth Headsets* (Oct 01 2008 17:57 GMT)
The Bluetooth headset has gone from nifty novelty to ubiquitous accessory. They've become better and better with each generation, so now that they've matured, just how good are they? And what use are they for something other than making you look like you're talking to yourself? Read more on this exclusive OSNews article...
Apple Removes NDA on iPhone Software (Oct 01 2008 16:41 GMT)
Who said community pressure doesn't work with big companies? Apple has announced in a note titled "To Our Developers" that it has removed the non-disclosure agreement for iPhone developers, stating it placed "too much of a burden" on iPhone developers. The NDA was one of the two major problem points among iPhone developers, so the community has responded in a way that can only be described as rejoicing.
The A-Z of Programming Languages: C# (Oct 01 2008 14:32 GMT)
Microsoft's leader of C# development, writer of the Turbo Pascal system, and lead architect on the Delphi language, Anders Hejlsberg, reveals all there is to know on the history, inspiration, uses and future direction of one of computer programming's most widely used languages - C#. Hejlsberg also offers some insight into the upcoming version of C# (C#4) and the new language F#, as well as what lies ahead in the world of functional programming.
Microsoft Begins to Reveal Visual Studio 2010 (Oct 01 2008 00:05 GMT)
Yesterday Microsoft started introducing Visual Studio 2010 to Windows developers with a press release and a MSDN website. Introductions to the next Visual Studio also popped up on various technology news sites; InformationWeek, ChannelWeb, Microsoft Watch, BetaNews, and Ars Technica each have brief summary and explaination of the information Microsoft has released so far. Only NetworkWorld digs into the subject by asking various developers to give their impressions of the new Visual Studio.
Nokia Launches Linux Based Qt Extended Mobile Platform (Sep 30 2008 20:27 GMT)
"Nokia announced today the launch of Qt Extended 4.4, a complete mobile and embedded development platform based on the open source Qt toolkit. It is designed with a modular architecture that provides building blocks for assembling a Linux-based software stack for various embedded devices ranging from phones to set-top boxes." ArsTechnica showcases the various features and enhancements of the platform. There are some impressive screenshots of the Qt widgets as well.
Omega 10 Desktop Linux (Sep 30 2008 02:26 GMT)
The Red Hat community engineer behind the Fedora Games and Fedora Xfce media spins, Rahul Sundaram, announced the release of Omega 10 Beta, a remix of Fedora this past weekend. Omega is a desktop/mobile Linux distribution that is based upon Fedora but includes packages from the Livna RPM repository. The Omega 10 Beta release is roughly equivalent to the Fedora 10 Beta to be released tomorrow, but integrates multimedia support not found in Fedora.
Iyonix Range Taken Off the Market (Sep 29 2008 16:20 GMT)
A huge blow to the already small RISC OS market and community: Castle Technology has announced that the Iyonix range of ARM-based RISC OS computers will be taken off the market after 30th September. Support will continue through the Iyonix website, the dealer network, and by email. This leaves Advantage6 as the only manufacturer of RISC OS hardware with its A9Home computer.
Hockenberry: App Store Policies 'Killing Our Enthusiasm' (Sep 29 2008 12:29 GMT)
The saga surrounding Apple's policies concerning the App Store hasn't reached its climax just yet. After several seemingly arbitrary application rejections, high profile developers quitting iPhone development, and Apple adding a non-disclosure clause to its App Store rejection emails, we now have another high-profile Mac developer contemplating giving up iPhone development. Craig Hockenberry, of The Iconfactory, has written a public letter to Steve Jobs, detailing his worries that Apple's restrictive App Store policies are detrimental to the young platform.
Improving Boot Time on a General Linux Distribution (Sep 29 2008 02:58 GMT)
Mandriva has done quite a lot of work on optimizing boot speed for its latest release, Mandriva Linux 2009. Frederic Crozat (head of the French engineering team) has written a blog post summarizing Mandriva's past work on this front, and the tweaks and improvements made for 2009. It shows that close analysis of inefficiencies in boot, and fixing 'small' bugs, can result in gains as large or larger than 'big picture' items like new initialization systems.
IBM Transitioning to 22nm Chip Fabrication (Sep 29 2008 02:52 GMT)
Intel has already shipped 45nm processors, while AMD is trying to get its 45nm to market. TI is claiming big 45nm performance too. Meanwhile, IBM believes it can lead the market to 32 and then 22nm chip production: "At 22nm, the existing techniques for microprocessor manufacturing useful at the 45nm and 32nm nodes will become obsolete. While currently lithography techniques cannot produce 22nm circuitry, IBM has developed a new approach called Computational Scaling, which will allow for this tiny-scale production.
Guide Through the Linux Sound API Jungle (Sep 27 2008 22:14 GMT)
Lennart Poettering, main programmer of the PulseAudio project, has written a 'Guide Through The Linux Sound API Jungle': "At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux. So here's my try to guide you through this jungle."
SqueakNOS: Look Ma! No OS! (Sep 27 2008 01:16 GMT)
SqueakNOS is an old idea that has gotten the kiss of life again. Squeak is a Smalltalk system built by Alan Kay and SqueakNOS is an attempt to remove the OS underneath Squeak. You can download a VMWare playable image from their sourceforge website or you can get an iso and more details about SqueakNOS from here.
10 Alternative Operating Systems (Sep 26 2008 22:53 GMT)
"This post is about the desktop operating systems that fly under the radar of most people. We are definitely not talking about Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, or even BSD or Solaris. There are much less mainstream options out there for the OS-curious." Though the article doesn't go into much detail about the OSes, it is a good round up of some of the interesting candidates.
Cisco Patches Network Hardware (Sep 26 2008 20:28 GMT)
This week Cisco released twelve sets of security patches, eleven of which were to address security vulnerabilities in the Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS), the OS that runs on most of its networking hardware.
The Five Best Desktop Linuxes You Haven't Tried (Sep 26 2008 20:22 GMT)
This article takes a look at five great but not very well-known desktop-focussed Linux distros, including SimplyMEPIS and Mint. It focuses on distros that are easy-to-use.
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