All Hail Shale: Shale Isn’t Struts

  Submitted by anonymous General Development 10 Comments
"What Shale isn't is a shrink-wrapped, well-documented, well-tested product complete with an automated installer and a polished management interface. now find out what it is, as Brett McLaughlin unveils this mighty - and rightful - heir to the legacy of Struts. In this first of a five-part series, Brett explains what Shale is, how it's different from the Struts framework, and how to install and set it up in your development environment."
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SimpleKDE: Cut-Down KDE

KDE 67 Comments
The ModdingDen has an interview with the lead developer of SimpleKDE, a cut-down, lightweight version of KDE. "The main reason is that we find KDE too cluttered and too bloated; and we want something faster, more simplistic and easier to use. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with my own KDE installation, but I especially observe beginners having difficulty in adapting themselves to it." The interview dates 9th January 2006, but since we never covered SimpleKDE on OSNews, it's interesting nonetheless. Read more about SimpleKDE at their website. And yes, boys and girls, there are screenshots too.
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Intel Mini: Just About Perfect; Opening up the Intel Mac Mini

Apple 37 Comments
Two articles about the Intel Mac Mini: "As a fan of faster computers from Apple, I’m heartened by this week’s release of an Intel-based Mac mini. In fact, with the SPECint_rate_base2000 benchmark indicating speeds of up to four times faster than the Mac mini G4, this new crop of minis sounds just about perfect. I say 'just about', because of one particular issue." And secondly, "Our first Intel-based Mac minis have arrived, straight from the Apple Store, and what was the first thing the cold, cruel alien intellects at Macworld did with one of these innocents? That’s right. We got out our putty knife, popped it open, and spilled its guts out." Here are some XBench tests between an Intel and a G4 Mac Mini.
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Windows Vista To Support Upgrades on the Fly

Windows 71 Comments
"With six separate versions of Windows Vista on the way, Microsoft has a marketing challenge on its hands. How will the company properly inform users as to which versions support which features? One part of the plan is now becoming clear: all four 'consumer' versions of the OS will be available to users even after installation. How? They'll all be available for 'instant online upgrade' once Vista is installed."
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An Evening with Steve Wozniak

  Submitted by BrainDeadHippie Apple 6 Comments
Steve Wozniak did a talk at the Computer Museum on January 12th 2006 and it is now on Google video. "Woz serves up Apple Computer history in his own unique way. Steve will describe a sequence for providing a rational understanding of many of the innovations leading to early Apple designs. He'll look at early company structure, the personalities that influenced him, and personalities within the company. In addition, he'll discuss the reasons he wants to be an engineer for life but not a CEO. Don't miss this sure to be entertaining, informative, and very personal view."
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Apple Security Fix Closes Mail, iChat, Safari Holes

  Submitted by Moulinneuf macOS 21 Comments
Apple on Wednesday released Security Update 2006-001, available for download through Software Update system preference pane and from Apple's Downloads Web page. The update addresses a recently reported exploit that left Safari users vulnerable to malicious shell scripts, corrects a vulnerability in Apple's Mail software, and also changes the way iChat handles file transfers to help prevent the Leap-A malware.
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Review: VectorLinux SOHO 5.1.1

  Submitted by anonymous Slackware, Slax 16 Comments
XYZComputing reviews VectorLinux, and concludes: "VectorLinux is definitely going places. This distribution made a very good impression on me during the time I have spent with it and it will be remaining on my desktop for some time to come. Though it is not really one of the better known Linux distributions it appears to be growing due to its speed and capability."
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Review: MacBook Pro

Apple 20 Comments
Ars has published review of a Macbook Pro in which they feature benchmarks contrasting the performance of the Macbook Pro, a G4 PowerBook, and an Inspiron 9100 with a hacked version of OS X. Interestingly, one of the benchmarks, Cinebench, also features the same Inspiron running Windows, in which the Inspiron/Windows combination does better overall. Of course an unfair comparison (hacked OSX vs. normal XP), but interesting nonetheless. Ars concludes: "All in all, the MacBook Pro is an extremely solid machine that makes me happy to be back in the Apple Pro notebook world after a six month hiatus in 12" iBook-land."
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Unix Road Map

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Unix 23 Comments
"UNIX and Windows data-center market share remain neck-and-neck, according to most analysts, but many in IT perceive UNIX and Linux innovation as slowing to a crawl. We interviewed representatives from Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems who were eager to challenge that perception by highlighting areas in which their UNIX OSs are breaking new ground."
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Open Graphics Project Releases PCB Schematics to OGD1

  Submitted by Timothy Miller 3D 23 Comments
The Open Graphics Project is dedicated to producing open-architecture graphics hardware that is friendly to free and open source operating systems like Linux and BSD. Yesterday morning, they released schematics for OGD1 for public review and critique. OGD1 is an FPGA-based development and prototyping platform that they decided to turn into a commercial product to raise funds. Check out an article on KernelTrap. The release of these schematics was accompanied by a discussion about how to price the OGD1 to maximize fund-raising while keeping it accessible to hobbyists; KernelTrap has another article about that as well.
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The Wait Is Not Over

  Submitted by Salgau Catalin Microsoft 15 Comments
Origami cought some attention this week and now you would expect to see the real thing. Wrong. If you haven't seen the video on Digital Kitchen , you're out of the picture here. The new flash on the Origami Project site further hints on the mobility of this thing, but that's it. We'll have to wait until the 9th of March for the third flash, and maybe, just maybe, some real Microsoft data on the device.
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JNode 0.2.3 Released

  Submitted by Martin Husted Hartvig OS News 14 Comments
The JNode team has released version 0.2.3 of the JNode operating system. JNode is an open source operating system written completely in Java (with a very small assembler nano-kernel). New features and improvements in this release are many classpath patches, improvements in AWT, Swing and desktop support, various bugfixes in the JIT compiler, ISO9660 support, better support for testing JNode with Mauve (mauve plugins, invoker commands), and more. Screenshots are available.
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10 Billion More on Itanium: Is This a Wise Investment?

  Submitted by Robert Escue Intel 22 Comments
"On January 26th, 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance (Intel, Hewlett-Packard, SGI, NEC, Hitachi, Bull SA, Fujitsu, and Unisys) proudly announced that its members had banded together to invest $10 billion over the next four years to improve Itanium's features and functions and strengthen its market position. This huge investment in this architecture at this time forces us to ask a lot of tough questions about the wisdom of this action... "
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