Linked by David Adams on Thu 29th Jul 2010 17:15 UTC, submitted by Panajev
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless The GNOME foundation and the LiMo group announced a partnership to help push Linux forward in the consumer field. The only notice that anyone has seem to have taken is mockery. So why can someone announce some dedication to promoting open source software in the mobile space and generate no enthusiasm in the mobile space? Android.

 

Linked by David Adams on Thu 29th Jul 2010 16:59 UTC, submitted by root
Gnome GNOME developer Dave Neary has posted the highlights of his work to determine where contributions to GNOME come from. This "Census" is a combination of data mining and surveys that gives a snapshot of gnome activity and the profile of a GNOME contributor. This project's aims were to answer three questions in particular: What does the developer community look like? What companies are investing in GNOME, and how? What does the commercial ecosystem around the GNOME project look like?

 



Linked by David Adams on Thu 29th Jul 2010 16:47 UTC, submitted by suka
Gnome During the currently ongoing GUADEC conference in Den Haag the GNOME release team announced that GNOME 3.0 would be delayed for another six months and is now scheduled for March 2011. "We could release in September and have something working that is okayish, but it's not up to the standards we have" release team member Vincent Untz explains the reasoning. There's coverage of this issue at derStandard.at and an official GNOME press release.

 

Linked by David Adams on Tue 27th Jul 2010 07:44 UTC
Intel An interesting article at Ars Technica takes a look at some compelling data (the longer-than-normal processor update cycles in Apple's personal computer lineup) and speculates that Apple's enthusiasm for its partnership with Intel might be cooling. Like Apple's soured relationship with once-BFF Google, this may be the result of Intel's increasing activities in the mobile computing space.

 

Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 26th Jul 2010 17:48 UTC
Legal So, there I am enjoying a nice Gilmore Girls episode after a long day's work, and Engadget's iPhone application brings the good news: the US Library of Congress has added a DMCA exemption for jailbreaking or rooting mobile phones! This is a major blow to Apple, who actively tried to keep jailbreaking a criminal offence, and a major win for everyone who believes that the phone you buy is actually yours, and not the manufacturer's.

 

Linked by David Adams on Mon 26th Jul 2010 00:44 UTC, submitted by orfanum
Hardware, Embedded Systems India's Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled a touchscreen tablet that he claims they will be able to produce for just $35. The device is being aimed at students, and seems to be taking the One Laptop Per Child idea and running with it. "Despite the price, users will get a touch-screen, a PDF reader and a webcam for video conferencing. There has been no confirmation of its specifications but reports suggest 2GB of memory, Wi-Fi and Ethernet and power consumption at just 2W. Naturally, the device will run Linux."

 

Linked by David Adams on Mon 26th Jul 2010 00:30 UTC, submitted by boulabiar
Multimedia, AV Just after 3 weeks of the binary compatible vp8 decoder release, the FFMpeg team still impressing us but this time with a new benchmark of their own vp8 decoder. The new ffvp8 decoder written independently using pre-existent FFMpeg code-base is now the fastest vp8 decoder with margins going more than 30% faster than Google's official codec specially on 64bit machines.

 

Written by Michael Hill on Sun 25th Jul 2010 10:36 UTC
OS/2 and eComStation "As a long-time fan of GeoWorks Ensemble (now Breadbox Ensemble), a DOS based graphical user interface and office suite popular in the 80s, I've run it under a variety of operating systems and emulators over the years. You see, Ensemble requires an underlying operating system to provide a DOS compatible file system, not unlike early versions of Windows that required DOS. [...] With the release of eComStation 2.0 I thought I'd revisit the challenge of getting Breadbox Ensemble running under OS/2 again [...] but to add a further twist, since I didn't want to do this on a dedicated machine, I chose to see if I could get things running under VirtualBox."

 

Written by gsyoungblood on Tue 20th Jul 2010 18:01 UTC
PDAs, Cellphones, Wireless On July 15th the latest Android super-phone was released by Motorola and Verizon Wireless. All hail the Droid X. The release was not without controversy though. The Droid X, while greatly raising the bar for Android phones in general, does so at the expense of the very power users and community that made the original Droid the gotta-have phone it became. Alienating this group may have far reaching consequences for Motorola.

 

Written by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Sun 18th Jul 2010 09:32 UTC
Multimedia, AV I'm a couch potato. There, I've said it. I love sitting down and watching sci-fi movies, like any good geek would. And this is an (almost religious) action that hasn't changed for many, many, years. But I feel that we're in for a surprise soon. The way we watch TV and access content is about to change. TV watching will at last arrive into the 21st Century, and the technology giants will be there to duke it out for the reins of this new industry.

 

Linked by David Adams on Fri 16th Jul 2010 17:59 UTC
Apple In a move that should surprise nobody, Apple has sort-of admitted to iPhone antenna problems in their press conference this morning, claiming it affects a small number of users, but they claim to be working hard to fix the problems that they have confirmed. They've offered free bumpers (that have until now been a $30 accessory) to all iPhone buyers, and are offering to waive any restocking fees for anyone who wants to return their iPhone 4. Whether or not there's going to be a hardware fix for future iPhones, Steve Jobs says he doesn't know yet whether that will happen.

 

Linked by snydeq on Thu 15th Jul 2010 18:31 UTC
General Development Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister asks whether the need for advanced development expertise is on the decline in an era in which tools grow increasingly more advanced, and coding increasingly moves offshore. 'Few companies share Google's zeal for academic credentials when hiring new developers. Many are willing to accept self-taught programmers, particularly if they have other skills relevant to the business.'

 

Linked by Brynet on Thu 15th Jul 2010 16:55 UTC
QNX As of April 2010, a silent change was made on Foundry27, users with a myQNX account could no longer checkout/update their copies of the QNX SVN repositories and a vague Wiki page was created "detailing" some licencing clarifications.

 

Linked by David Adams on Wed 14th Jul 2010 21:33 UTC, submitted by iseyler
OSNews, Generic OSes BareMetal is an open source 64-bit OS for x86-64 based computers. It is written in Assembly, and applications can be written in Assembly or C/C++. It's aimed at three target segments (High Performance Computing, Embedded Applications, and Education). It's also designed to be simple, and it's really small. Under 16Kb small. Version 0.4.8 was released recently, which includes updates to the C application library, updated documentation, and better support for SMP. It's good to see some innovation in the startup/hobbyist OS space. We wish them well!

 

Written by Mufasa on Tue 13th Jul 2010 15:57 UTC
Editorial I read David's post worrying about the end of the free internet and I had to respond, as I strongly disagree that free and advertising-supported content is the future. If anything, it is advertising-supported content that is destined to be a niche strategy, because of new internet technology that enables entirely new models and empowers consumers to have exactly what they want. Advertising will not support much content creation, so I suggest what will.

 

Linked by David Adams on Sun 11th Jul 2010 18:54 UTC
Internet & Networking There's an article today at abc.com that looks at recent trends around net-based pay-for services and the smattering of paywalls from News Corp to the NYT that are up or threatening to be put up, and speculating that this could be the beginning of a trend. Of course, a YouTube video rental site and a few large publishers putting up paywalls will make zero difference to the "free internet" on their own. But if they're successful, it could spark emulation. But could this be a trend that could snowball enough to change the nature of the net?

 

Linked by David Adams on Fri 9th Jul 2010 17:04 UTC, submitted by fran
Multimedia, AV It's really more than an HDMI competitor, it's a cable specification that "converges full uncompressed HD video, audio, 100BaseT Ethernet, high power over cable and various control signals through a single 100m/328ft CAT5e/6 LAN cable." That's an idea that I can really get behind. No new proprietary connectors, no expensive cables needed, consolidation of all necessary signals into one cable. The founding companies include LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

 

Written by Thom Holwerda on Fri 9th Jul 2010 13:25 UTC
Multimedia, AV Let's do some blatant copy/paste from Ars Technica. A few days ago they ran a story called "What's in your home theatre system?". This poll wasn't so much about listing specific speaker types or amplifier models as it was about a number of more recognisable devices you could vote for. Let's copy their idea, but make it more open: what's in your home theatre setup - and list everything, from CD player to DVR to the type of cabling used. Be as anal about is as you want. Read on for my setup.

 

Linked by David Adams on Wed 7th Jul 2010 19:09 UTC
Apple A Forbes article notices that while the iPad's reception from the public and the mainstream press has been overwhelmingly positive, the prevailing sentiment among some alpha geeks has been negative to the extreme. The conclusion, of course, is that these people aren't reacting to what the iPad is, but rather what it represents: a violation of the ethos of the personal computer. The author of the Forbes article concludes that much of the anti-iPad vitriol is hyperbole, and doesn't help advance the cause. It's a thought-provoking question.

 

Written by Howard Fosdick on Wed 7th Jul 2010 16:58 UTC
Editorial Last month, I described how the computer industry encourages planned obsolescence in order to sell more product. This business model exacerbates the problem of computer disposal because it artificially shortens computer lifespans. This increases production and, ultimately, the numbers requiring disposal. One result is that e-waste -- electronics waste -- is one now one of our most pressing environmental challenges. Updated