Review: Google Spreadsheets

  Submitted by Jane Walker Google 12 Comments
"Google Spreadsheets are in the 'sneak peek' phase. The two big questions seem to be a) why would anyone want to use a potentially non-secure spreadsheet with limited capabilities, and b) how will we refer to the primitive era before online spreadsheets, which revolutionized life as we know it (which, of course, leads to a related question: what kind of silver jumpsuit is most comfortable when you're crunching numbers?)?"
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Linux 2.6.17 Released

  Submitted by misha Linux 24 Comments
The Linux kernel version 2.6.17 has been released. Not a lot of changes since the last -rc; the bulk is actually some last-minute MIPS updates and s390 futex changes, while the rest tend to be various very small fixes that trickled in over the last week. The changes are listed at KernelNewbies (don't look at me for the name).
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Creating Desktop Notifications

  Submitted by skx2 Debian 5 Comments
The Debian Administration website gives a small tutorial in using the new desktop notification deamon included in GNOME to create simple desktop popups. "There are several times when you'll be writing a script, or a program, which needs to communicate with the desktop user and here we'll look at two of the more modern approaches."
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Xen 3.0 In Ubuntu 6.06

  Submitted by falko Ubuntu 7 Comments
This tutorial contains step-by-step instructions for installing Xen 3.0 from precompiled binaries in Ubuntu Dapper Drake. Xen lets you create guest operating systems (UNIX-like operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD), so called 'virtual machines' or domUs, under a host operating system (dom0). Using Xen you can separate your applications into different virtual machines that are totally independent from each other.
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Cell Could Offer Dramatic Boost for Scientific Computing

IBM 30 Comments
A new paper from a group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, "The Potential of the Cell Processor Scientific Computing" , explores the performance of IBM's Cell processor on some specific types of code commonly found in high-performance computing applications. The paper compare Cell's performance on these kernels to the performance of the Cray X1E, AMD Opteron, and Intel's Itanium2. The idea here is that Cell will be a commodity processor (at least that's what the authors and IBM hope), so it'll be a viable HPC alternative for the cost-sensitive academic research market. This paper represents the first formal academic attempt to decide if Cell hardware is something that researchers will want to invest in. So how does Cell stack up in comparison to these three competitors? In a word, it screams.
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Convert a Windows Executable to a MacOS X, Linux Binary?

  Submitted by Pep General Development 42 Comments
"Alky is a tool that allows you to convert a Windows executable to a Mac OS X or Linux binary. We are focused on high-end gaming at the moment, though we will support other applications in the future. Our binary translation layer is already working fully for OS X and Linux support is in progress. Of course, Windows applications use a very different set of libraries from Linux or OS X applications so we are also working on a library called LibAlky that will provide those Windows libraries to the application." One of the project's members is Cody Brocious, one of the developers behind PyMusique.
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Win4Lin Announces Virtual Desktop Server Product

OS News 7 Comments
"Win4Lin announced the immediate availability of their new Enterprise and SMB product, Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server. The product provides the ability to consolidate and serve multiple Windows Desktops from Linux server infrastructure. Win4Lin Virtual Desktop Server allows organizations to standardize the application environment to users regardless of desktop hardware and operating system - Windows, UNIX, or Linux can be used on the client, but a common application profile can be created and served from Linux server configurations such as blade servers, rack arrays or large multi-way machines."
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The Interchange File Format

  Submitted by anonymous General Development 9 Comments
"The Interchange File Format (IFF) standard is widely regarded as long dead, and indeed, no one uses it anymore, except that nearly everyone uses it sometimes. Many believe the IFF standard is an Amiga graphics standard, and certainly, there have been a great many graphics files saved in the IFF format. However, IFF is not just a graphics format. It has been used for graphics, audio, text, saved games, and more. Electronic Arts actually developed the standard, back when it was a software company and not just a video game company."
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Cream for Vim – Making Vim More User Friendly

  Submitted by anonymous Office 20 Comments
"Learning to use Vi editor could be a real pain for most people as it has a relatively steep learning curve. But once the most common commands are mastered, one gets to enjoy the sheer power of this editor made available at ones finger tips. One project which has gained a lot of popularity in the Vim community is Cream. Cream consists of a collection of scripts and plug-ins which aims to make it much easier for a new user to cut his teeth in Vim and the user can easily use most of the features of Vim which has made it the popular editor it is by just navigating the menu."
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High Level Virtual Machine, v0.1

  Submitted by ganges master General Development 20 Comments
The High Level Virtual Machine aims to build a common infrastructure for the development of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python, Haskell, etc.) targeting the Low Level Virtual Machine. It provides a platform agnostic virtual machine runtime, on top of LLVM, which is able to interpret, jit- or static- compile any supported language. Since all language use the same underlying VM, it's easy to achieve code and data interoperability between different languages. Version 0.1 was released June 13.
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Will Microsoft Be the Same?; Interviews with Gates’s Successors

Microsoft 26 Comments
A lot of news on Bill Gates's stepping back. Mary Jo Foley wonders if Microsoft will still be the same after Gates has left, while also compiling a list of his 10 biggest Microsoft flops. Elsewhere, Bill Gates's successor, Craig Mundie, talks to eWeek. In addition, Cnet features an interview with both Mundie as well as Ray Ozzie: "Bill Gates leaves some pretty big shoes to fill. Think of Ray Ozzie as the left shoe and Craig Mundie as the right one."
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MacOS X 10.4.7 To Deliver Audio Fixes, More

macOS 4 Comments
An update to Apple's Mac OS X Tiger due within a matter of days will deliver audio enhancements for several of the company's applications, AppleInsider has learned. Specifically, people who claim to have tested the latest pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4.7 say the update will offer fixes for audio playback in iTunes, Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack and QuickTime. It will also improve Bluetooth file transfers, mobile phone synching and mouse pairings, these people have said.
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