What Sucks About DEs, pt. II: Apple, MacOS X

Last week's column was basically a rant about things that bothered me about Ubuntu's GNOME/Linux combination. Besides the usual 'I do not experience the problems you have, so you must be an anti-GNOME troll!' and of the course the ever-present 'How on earth can you complain about Free software!', it did what is was supposed to do: bring problems under developer's direct attention (for instance, Evolution's UI maintainer emailed me, asking for more clarification). Now it's Apple's turn. Here is a list of problems I find the most annoying about Apple's Mac/MacOS.

HelenOS 0.2.0 Released

HelenOS 0.2.0 has been released. "This release fixes many bugs and adds new functionality both to the kernel and userspace. The kernel now supports graceful task cleanup and the userspace layer was extended with framebuffer and console services. We also ported BSD tetris to demonstrate userspace capabilities of HelenOS. This is the first release with official documentation.".

Mach-O and Universal Binaries

"There's quite a few interesting tidbits of information surrounding 'Universal' or fat binaries. First of all, this isn't the first time Apple has packaged binaries for multiple architectures into one file. The current scheme, however, was used by NeXT to provide binaries for multiple architectures, and again by Apple in to provide support for both 32 and 64-bit PowerPC architectures, well before the term Universal Binary was being thrown around."

WinFX Is Officially .NET Framework 3.0

When speaking to developers about WinFX one question that repeatedly comes up is, "WinFX sounds great, but what happens to .NET?" Vice President S. Somasegar describes the decision to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. Now the WinFX technology you know has a name that identifies it for exactly what it is - the next version of Microsoft's developer framework.

Shuttleworth on Red Hat, Impi, HBD, GNOME vs. KDE

"In Part I of our multi-part series of discussions with Canonical CEO and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth, Shuttleworth covered the delay in the release of Dapper, and something of a history of the open source and free software movements. In Part II, Shuttleworth spoke specifically about Dapper in the Enterprise, and a bit about how Canonical will make money on Ubuntu. In this final installment, we delve into the geographics of Ubuntu's appeal; the investment by Shuttleworth's venture Capital fund, HBD in ImpiLinux, and ever so gingerly broach the religious topic of KDE versus Gnome - not just as the Linux desktop, but as Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu desktop."

Abusing Mach on Mac OS X

"This paper discusses the security implications of Mach being integrated with the Mac OS X kernel. A few examples are used to illustrate how Mach support can be used to bypass some of the BSD security features, such as securelevel. Furthermore, examples are given that show how Mach functions can be used to supplement the limited ptrace functionality included in Mac OS X."

Google Releases Browser Sync Tool for Firefox

Google has released a new tool which allows users to synchronize their Cookies, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks, History and tabs from their last session for the Firefox web browser. All of this data is uploaded to Google's servers continuously (and has the option to be encrypted), and then downloaded every time you launch Firefox on any computer with the extension installed.

Discover Internet Protocol, Version 6

"The next-generation protocol, Internet Protocol version 6, is the future of the Internet. Learn how IPv6 compares to Internet Protocol version 4, understand the version 6 address formats, discover the benefits of IPv6, and learn which IT products comply with this new standard."

No Fix for ‘Critical’ Hole in Windows 98, ME

Microsoft will not fix a serious flaw in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition because a patch could break other applications. The security bug relates to Windows Explorer and could let an intruder commandeer a vulnerable PC, Microsoft warned in April. The software maker has made fixes available for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000, but it has found that eliminating the vulnerability in Windows 98 and ME is "not feasible," it said.

House Rejects Net Neutrality Rules

The US House of Representatives definitively rejected the concept of Net neutrality on Thursday, dealing a bitter blow to Internet companies like Amazon.com, eBay and Google that had engaged in a last-minute lobbying campaign to support it. By a 269-152 vote that fell largely along party lines, the House Republican leadership mustered enough votes to reject a Democrat-backed amendment that would have enshrined stiff Net neutrality regulations into federal law and prevented broadband providers from treating some Internet sites differently from others.

Leopard To Bring Collaborative Documents?

"Since Apple announced Leopard last year during WWDC, MacOSXRumors obtained reports on two major features in the next release of Mac OS X. The first is a redesigned Finder making extensive use of Spotlight and the second is the inclusion of virtualization software. Recently sources have been indicating that Leopard will feature easy collaborative work throughout the OS. The main idea is that it will be possible to declare a document as available for collaborative use over a network or Internet. Users who want to work on this document will be able to connect and work simultaneously on it. Modifications made by each user will be updated in real time for all connected users." Authenticity up for debate, obviously.

Using Excel to Analyze MySQL Data

"You might be surprised to know that you can connect Excel to a database, and this isn't limited to databases running Microsoft's SQL. Excel can connect to practically any mainstream database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and others), provided that the database offers an ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) driver. In this article, you'll learn how to connect MySQL to Excel."

Review: 3D Web Browsers

"What ever happened to the virtual reality, 3D world of the web? Back in the late 90s, all the hype was about VRML - Virtual Reality Markup Language - which would turn the web into an immersive environment that you'd maneuver around to get to the information you wanted. We're here to tell you that the reports of the 3D web's death are greatly exaggerated. As evidence, we present three 3D browsers that will use that graphics card for something other than gaming: 3B, Browse3D, and SphereXPlorer."

Long Live Fiber Broadband

"1.7 gigabytes in 12 minutes. That's 1,700MB in under 15 minutes from the Internet to my PC. Glorious, spectacular, almost breathtaking speed, brought to me courtesy of Verizon FiOS. Yes, it's true, I finally got it installed and it's good. Devoted readers know the long road I took to get here, but for those new to me or to FiOS, here's a brief recap."

Go Beyond what the Desktop Normally Does with Tcl/Tk

Most computer users interact with their workstations primarily through some form of graphical user interface (GUI). In the world of Microsoft Windows, this interface is tightly controlled. The UNIX world, by contrast, offers a veritable smorgasbord of different GUIs with varying degrees of functionality. They range from minimalist window managers, such as twm, to large, capable tools, such as GNOME and KDE (K Desktop Environment). This article shows you how the Tcl/Tk scripting language offers a simple and elegant way to code GUI widgets with minimal effort.