Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 31st Oct 2011 12:59 UTC, submitted by Martin H Hansen
Sometimes, on a rather boring and run-of-the-mill Monday, I get news in the submission queue which just puts a gigantic smile on my face. We've talked about the Raspberry Pi before on OSNews, and other than reporting that everything's on track for a Christmas launch, it has also been announced that the Raspberry Pi will be able to run... RISC OS. A British educational ARM board running RISC OS? We have come full circle. And I couldn't be happier. Update: Theo Markettos emailed me with two corrections - Markettos isn't actually a representative of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and the quoted bits are transcribed, they're not Markettos' literal words. Thanks for clearing that up!
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Member since:2005-07-06
Well, such computers were already used in education. In fact, wasn't this the biggest market for ...RISC OS? The model was probably even more apparent with earlier BBC Micro, or Apple II ...but I'm not certain if they resulted in widespread insights which you envision. Maybe/possibly a bit the contrary (and people with lasting skills chose such path[1])
Anyway, "well-integrated GUI paradigm" of RISC OS might be a bit frustrating, IMHO & possibly[2] - feels way too dependant on drag'n'drop (that's frustrating even now, with optical mouse and reliability of switches mostly worked out - it must have been a nightmare on the mouses from 2 decades ago, especially considering the "public" ones were, typically, permanently clogged)
1. You know, the whole idea of specialisation which gives us our modern world - ultimately, machines are just prostheses of our bodies, also minds ...and most of the fields of knowledge which you touch daily as a layperson (not knowing much about them, just using them) have some machines in the chain crucial to their efficient functioning, I guess. Interwoven into the working of our civilisation.
I even strongly suspect one machine tells you when to wake up, most of the mornings 
2. Judging from ROX Desktop (BTW, not requiring any cash), which supposedly does strive to imitate the core concepts of RISC OS GUI.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-11-16
Anyway, "well-integrated GUI paradigm" of RISC OS might be a bit frustrating, IMHO & possibly[2] - feels way too dependant on drag'n'drop
I think this was always a matter of taste more than anything. Back in its day RISC OS was very much mouse driven, even more so than Mac OS in some ways. In my opinion the advantages (e.g. the best window management and menu system in any GUI) more than made up for issues like that, but I can see how it could frustrate.
Through added features and 3rd party utilities RISC OS became much more keyboard friendly as time went on. Most modern RISC OS applications support a global clipboard rather than relying on drag and drop to move data between applications.
It's the underlying OS that looks primitive today, not the user interface.
News
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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Member since:
2005-07-06
Yes, yes, YES. I, too, have always wanted to experiment with RISC OS, but as noted, most of the options involved way too much cash for a hobby machine. From the outside looking in, RISC OS appears to be a very interesting OS - Amiga-like in its well-integrated GUI paradigm.
I would also like students to interact with the computer at a lower level (see command-line interaction in the article). If we only teach them to point and click, they become servants of the machine. If they learn how the machine works, and learn from the beginning to interact at a lower level, the machine becomes their servant.
I've always felt there would be two classes of people in the future - those who tell machines what to do, and those who are told what to do by the machines.