Linked by Amjith Ramanujam on Sun 3rd Aug 2008 15:56 UTC, submitted by netpython
"Apple Inc. has pulled its security engineering team out of a planned public discussion on the company's security practices, which had been set for next week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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2005-07-08
Someone needs to fix the quoting mechanism here. I'll try to quote with italics.
Keep dreaming. If you think Linux has an easier time of converting people to Linux over OS X you truly are dreaming.
Focus on making Linux as consistent and user friendly as OS X and you'll accelerate more Windows people to Linux just as they are moving to OS X. They won't switch from OS X to Linux as they already have the GUI paradigm and they also have familiar applications under that paradigm.
Linux will never be the big player for Desktop as long as Desktops require a GUI and a consistent user experience.
Linux has made huge inroads in the server space against traditional big iron companies because these companies have dumped billions into helping it mature.
If Linux Community lost the funding/support from IBM, Novell, Google and Sun you'd see advancement of the OS go from a tidal wave to a stream.
Oh, I know they won't convert many OS X users, but I suspect they'll get to the point where the GUI in Linux is Good Enough, on the level of say Windows with some of the eye-candy of OS X. It's never going to be as elegant as OS X probably, simply because open source development resists that level of consistency and the Linux desktop is too fractured with multiple desktop environments and toolkits, much less applications that adhere to interface guidelines. Many users, however, are used to some inconsistency already.
If Linux can get to the point where it doesn't need much command line intervention, and gets included in more OEM systems, then it will make progress. There is already a large market of people who would get a computer running Linux in a user-friendly fashion at a low price, netbooks are filling some of that market - ASUS's EEPC is a large percentage of new notebook sales now. Remember what the largest selling computer in history is? Not anything from Apple or the PC. The Commodore 64. When computers are available at blue-color prices again, there will be a shift.
As for corporate funding, it helps, but a lot of the progress has been made by Ubuntu and others on the desktop, though with some help from Novell, IBM, Google, and a "consortium" of other companies that have a grudge against Microsoft. ;-)
Incidentally, I don't say this as an Apple-hater. I use a Mac, but am very disappointed at what they're doing with security and secrecy. I still recommend Macintosh to people, but if this keeps up Apple is asking for trouble. What happens to their image of being less virus-ridden than Windows when the first malware outbreak comes? Security-through-obscurity isn't enough. I believe OS X is the best for my needs, else I wouldn't be running it, but they really need to work on this - especially if they intend to crack the enterprise market they need to be more professional about security.
Edited 2008-08-03 22:45 UTC