http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:54:04 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/22463/Five_Years_of_Firefox_A_Retrospective/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22463/Five_Years_of_Firefox_A_Retrospective/ Hands up if you use Firefox. Have used it? Know about it? Heard of it? 'Sites up and down the World Wide Web today will be celebrating five years of Firefox. When I sat down to write this I worried about having to list the history of its features and landmark events and the news of the past five years. Other sites will be comprehensively doing that, there is nothing I can add to that list that Google can't surmise. Instead I will be telling you what Google does not know, my story of Firefox and what Firefox has meant to all of us. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:20:45 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc Camen) Editorial 64 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 News http://www.osnews.com/story/22431/Has_Palm_Missed_the_Boat_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22431/Has_Palm_Missed_the_Boat_/ Most of us here like gadgets. Things with displays, LEDs, or stuff that otherwise lights up in the dark and makes cool noises. There is this one gadget I had been waiting for to come out in The Netherlands for quite a while now, but at some point a limit was reached, and today I decided to do a complete 180 and buy a competing product. Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:44:40 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 67 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/22392/Apple_Psystar_Purism_Confidence/ http://www.osnews.com/story/22392/Apple_Psystar_Purism_Confidence/ A couple of years ago, a professor at my university had a very interesting thought exchange with the class I was in. We were a small group, and I knew most of them, they were my friends. Anyway, we had a talk about language purism - not an unimportant subject if you study English in The Netherlands. Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:51:47 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 190 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/21918/The_Camel_s_Back_Broke_1984_Days_of_Bad_PR_for_Apple/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21918/The_Camel_s_Back_Broke_1984_Days_of_Bad_PR_for_Apple/ I think I'd like to start an internet movement. Due to Apple's recent actions regarding the Google Voice app, I intend to criticize Apple every day at OSNews for 1984 days, or until they perform a very subtle and simple act of contrition. I'd like to enlist the help of every tech journalist, blogger, twitterer, Facebook denizen, and person who ever talks to another person. I'm that girl in the running shorts with the hammer, people! I'm throwing the hammer at the big creepy guy on the screen! We don't have to be slaves anymore! Read on for the full manifesto. Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:14:45 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Editorial 93 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/21893/Editorial_What_Palm_Should_Have_Done/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21893/Editorial_What_Palm_Should_Have_Done/ Every few years we geeks have our own kind of popcorn show to watch: tech companies showing teeth to one another. This time around, it's Palm vs Apple. In all seriousness though, how ethical is the battle around iTunes? Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:52:46 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Editorial 83 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Feature http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_a_Disease/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21887/Linus_Microsoft_Hatred_is_a_Disease/ So, Microsoft submits 20000 lines of code to the Linux kernel, all licensed under the GPL. Microsoft, who considers Linux a great threat, and once called the GPL a "cancer". Opinions on this one are flying all around us, but what does Linus Torvalds, Linux' benevolent dictator, think about all this? Thu, 23 Jul 2009 22:53:24 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 113 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial Remy Chi Jian Suen http://www.osnews.com/story/21378/The_iPhone_Is_Not_a_Netbook_I_Can_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21378/The_iPhone_Is_Not_a_Netbook_I_Can_/ Last week, Apple again repeated its claim that the iPhone and iPod Touch are capable of filling the netbook niche. They also claimed that netbooks can barely be called personal computers. Both of these statements are complete and utter nonsense, but instead of writing down some high-level definition of what a netbook is, I decided to simply write down all the things I do with my netbook that the iPhone/iPod Touch cannot do to make the difference between the two that much more tangible. Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:07:14 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 84 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/21002/Resorting_to_FUD_Hurts_the_Alternatives_to_Microsoft/ http://www.osnews.com/story/21002/Resorting_to_FUD_Hurts_the_Alternatives_to_Microsoft/ Does Windows 7 contain more DRM than Windows Vista? Does Windows 7 limit you from running cracked applications, and will it open the firewall specifically for applications that want to check if they're cracked or not? Does it limit the audio recording capabilities? According to a skimp and badly written post on Slashdot, it does. The Slashdot crowd tore the front page item apart - and rightfully so. Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:28:44 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 98 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/20987/Consistency_Isn_t_Skin_Deep/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20987/Consistency_Isn_t_Skin_Deep/ Late last week we ran a story on how the Google Chrome team had decided to use Gtk+ as the graphical toolkit for the Linux version of the Chrome web browser. It was a story that caused some serious debate on a variety of aspects, but in this short editorial, I want to focus on one aspect that came forward: the longing for consistency. Several people in the thread stated they were happy with Google's choice for purely selfish reasons: they use only Gtk+ applications on their GNOME desktops. Several people chimed in to say that Qt integrates nicely in a Gtk+ environment. While that may be true from a graphical point of view, that really isn't my problem with mixing toolkits. The issue goes a lot deeper than that. Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:07:45 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 92 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/20862/Don_t_Blame_Windows_and_KDE_for_Your_Own_Aversion_to_Change/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20862/Don_t_Blame_Windows_and_KDE_for_Your_Own_Aversion_to_Change/ With Windows 7 having made its grand debut, and with KDE4's vision making leaps and bounds forward with every release, we have two major software projects that have decided to implement some fairly drastic interface changes. Such changes are bound to receive some harsh criticisms - but the funny thing is, these criticisms usually come from people you least expect it from. Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:46:07 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 68 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/20801/In_Praise_of_the_Print_Media/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20801/In_Praise_of_the_Print_Media/ There's been a lot of talk lately about the imminent demise of the print media. With the economy in the toilet, subscriber bases shrinking, advertising rates declining, and demographic shift moving many publications' readers ever-older with no younger readers to replace them, it's looking grim. Some cities will be losing their only daily newspaper. Even the New York Times is in danger of going bankrupt. Even with advertising rates putting pressure on net-based publications, online publishing is here to stay. Is there room in this world for printed tech publications? Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:06:18 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Editorial 16 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/20719/DTV_Transition_Facts_and_Fallacies/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20719/DTV_Transition_Facts_and_Fallacies/ If you live in the United States, then it's almost certain you've heard about this big digital switch that public television is making due to a new US law. If you live outside of the US, I bet you've heard of it anyway since we like to let people know what we're up to. The big day that's coming up -- February 17th, 2009 -- that magical date when all television stations will historically abandon the infamous analog broadcasting for greener, digital pastures -- didn't strike fear into the hearts at my household. We rarely utilize the antenna, and then only two to four times a year for a special program. Nonetheless, we got our hands on one of those nifty coupons anyway and went out to purchase a digital converter for the sake of those few intrinsic public broadcats. Read on for the whole story. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:28:34 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (OSNews Staff) Editorial 31 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial weildish http://www.osnews.com/story/20648/Does_Windows_Need_a_Linux_Package_Manager_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20648/Does_Windows_Need_a_Linux_Package_Manager_/ InternetNews.com states: "Microsoft (or a really smart ISV) should build a full application manager for Windows, similar to what most Linux distributions do today." Most Windows applications come with their own distinctive updating mechanism (much like Mac OS X), instead of having a centralised updating location like most Linux distributions offer. While it certainly wouldn't be harmful for Windows to gain such a feature - the question remains: isn't it time we rethink program installation and management altogether? Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:10:14 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 107 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/20607/One_Flew_Over_the_Songbird_s_Nest/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20607/One_Flew_Over_the_Songbird_s_Nest/ Songbird is a new open-source music player that has this week landed at 1.0. Songbird is described as a "web player"- a music player for this modern, connected era. It blends the web-rendering core of Firefox (Gecko), with the media capabilities of GStreamer- a cross-platform, open-source media playback engine. Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:20:52 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc Camen) Editorial 59 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial http://www.osnews.com/story/20527/Unmasked_by_Counting_Threads_/ http://www.osnews.com/story/20527/Unmasked_by_Counting_Threads_/ Yesterday, a story made its rounds across the internet. It was picked up by many large news websites, and I'm sure it will be quoted by people until eternity. It was published by a large website, looked all fancy, it had multiple pages - it looked like it was really something. However, anyone with even the remotest bit of knowledge knows that the article was a collection of complete and utter bogus. Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:55:38 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Editorial 56 http://www.osnews.com/topics/5 Editorial