PC Industry Looks to Transform Firmware

Hardware 39 Comments
PC firmware, a murky world of interwoven software code that dates back to the original IBM PC and its clones, is about to be modernized. In a move that experts say promises to lead to fewer headaches for IT staff by creating more stable and manageable desktops and notebooks, the PC industry has begun transitioning to the United Extensible Firmware Interface. Dubbed UEFI, the interface offers a standardized way for a PC's firmware, the underlying software that controls its hardware, to interact with the operating system. The new interface offers a standard method for loading an operating system, as well as running pre-boot applications.
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MS Releases IE 7 Beta 2 to Public

  Submitted by Jason Scalia Internet Explorer 51 Comments
Microsoft has released the 2nd beta of Internet Explorer 7 to the general public. You can read the release notes, or watch a tour of the new features. Microsoft warns you not to use this beta a production environment: "Evaluation of Internet Explorer 7 should start now, but the software should not be used on production systems in mission-critical environments. Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview will only run on Windows XP Service Pack 2 systems, but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003." Update: You might have been expecting this, but there's already a DoS attack out there for this new beta.
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AROS January Update

  Submitted by wonea Amiga & AROS 2 Comments
The AROS team has posted their first update of 2006. "Georg Steger has fixed input preferences for mouse, in order to improve mice tracking and pointer precision on the screen. Mathias Rustler has updated documentation for users and developers, adding some nice hints and removing obsolete informations. You'll find signs of his work through this site. Mathias has also commited ExecuteStartup, a little tool that executes whatever application you'll copy in the SYS:WBstartup drawer. Thanks to Nick Andrews and Jack Patton AROS has got IRC and Telnet clients. In order to enable networking on hosted version of AROS, Michal Schulz has commited a .tap interface hidd for all Unix targets."
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KOffice 1.5 Beta Released

  Submitted by jaboua KDE 19 Comments
"The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.5 beta 1, the first preview release for KOffice 1.5, scheduled for release this March. KOffice is an integrated office suite with more components than any other suite in existence. Never before has a new version of KOffice brought this many exciting new features including Kexi 1.0 and the first release of project management application KPlato. Read the full announcement and the changelog for more details or read on for the full article."
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SGI Gets a New CEO

  Submitted by milatchi SGI and IRIX 20 Comments
"Silicon Graphics announced today that Dennis McKenna has been named chairman of the board, chief executive officer and president, effective immediately. McKenna succeeds Robert Bishop, who will remain on the board of directors and serve as vice chairman. "Dennis McKenna is a proven leader, with an established track record of driving positive results in difficult business environments. He is well balanced in strategy, business development and operational execution - a combination that we believe will bring improved results to SGI and its stakeholders," said James McDivitt, SGI's lead director." Update: El Reg has more on this.
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Announcing the Mustang Regressions Challenge

  Submitted by robogeek Java 2 Comments
"We are challenging you, the Java developer community, to find functional regressions between J2SE 5.0 (Tiger) and Java SE 6 (Mustang). The contest runs from Jan 31 through March 31, 2006, with prizes to be awarded in mid-April. You will find details on the contest home page and FAQ. The complete entry requirements are in the official legal rules governing the contest. You can enter the contest using the contest entry form. Prizes? There are five Ultra 20 workstations which will be awarded to the best regressions found during the contest. In addition all successful entrants, whose regression is entered into Suns internal database, will be given a t-shirt as our thanks to you for participating."
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Tax Man Uses Special Computer for Bill Gates

  Submitted by sean batten Microsoft 32 Comments
Bill Gates has revealed that the US taxman cannot process his tax return on its standard computers. Speaking to a Microsoft conference in Lisbon, Bill said that his fortune was too large and pendulous for the tax office computers. Apparently they just run screaming when they see his bulky dossiers. The tax office have had to splash out on a special computer that can accomodate all those 00000000s without squealing like a pig.
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Apple Makes the Switch: iMac G5 vs. iMac Core Duo

Apple 35 Comments
AnandTech has written a long and in-depth review of the new Intel iMac (16 pages). They conclude: "I like the iMac, I like it a lot. It's a computer that can look and work as well in a kitchen as it can in an office, and that's one thing that Apple has done very right with this platform. It took me this long to look at it, but I think it could quite possibly be Apple's strongest offering as it accomplishes exactly what they are trying to do - which is build lifestyle computers."
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Google Rep to Speak at SCALE 4x about Linux Desktop Issues

  Submitted by anonymous Google 26 Comments
Google's Dan Kegel will be keynoting at the 2006 Southern California Linux Expo on Feb 12th. He will be giving a presentation titled "Why doesn't Johnny run Linux? Or, Overcoming Desktop Obstacles". Dan will go over some of the main issues identified by the recent Desktop Linux Survey and Desktop Linux Architects' meeting at OSDL, as well as his own list of issues, and what's being done to solve them. This is interesting with regard to El Reg's story on 'Goobuntu'. Elsewhere, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols doesn't believe the rumours.
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UK Linux Guru Backs GPL 3

Linux 45 Comments
Alan Cox, a leading UK Linux developer, has expressed his support for the next version of the General Public License. His viewpoint is in direct contradiction to Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, who said last week that he won't convert Linux to GPL 3 as he objects to its proposed digital rights management provisions. Cox said that the DRM provisions "don't really matter" to the Linux kernel as DRM is generally used by applications.
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Solaris and Linux: No Code Swapping

Solaris 12 Comments
While Sun Microsystems is open to licensing Solaris under Version 3.0 of the GNU General Public License, it will not reconsider its decision not to license the operating system under GPL 2.0, the current version of the license. Sun created the CDDL for Solaris after rejecting GPL 2.0 as too restrictive for its purposes. Sun will not consider licensing Solaris under the current GPL for the same reasons it gave when it created the CDDL, which is based in large part on the MPL (Mozilla Public License), Tom Goguen, Sun's vice president of software marketing, told eWEEK in an interview.
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Microsoft Talks up Tools at VSLive

Microsoft No Comments
Microsoft has solidified the time frame for the release of its Team Foundation Server and will be releasing a preview of another key piece of Visual Studio technology, a company executive said at the VSLive conference here. In a keynote address, S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of developer tools at Microsoft, said that in the next week or so, Microsoft will "make the first CTP drop of Visual Studio Tools for Applications." Somasegar also said the TFS (Team Foundation Server) component of VSTS (Visual Studio Team System) will reach release candidate status by the end of this week and will reach RTM status in March.
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Review: Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta

  Submitted by DigitalDame Internet Explorer 48 Comments
"The beta version of IE7 released today by Microsoft is meant for developers and tech enthusiasts, and it's a good thing. This is not (yet) a browser for the faint of heart; in fact, if you've become accustomed to the minimalist approach of alternative browsers like Firefox, IE7 might actually feel like a step backward. The product's proper name - which should tell you most everything you need to know - is Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows XP SP2 Beta 2 Preview. We'll refer to it simply as IE7 beta, though."
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Patent spat Forces Businesses to Upgrade Office

  Submitted by Mystic TaCo Microsoft 12 Comments
Microsoft has begun e-mailing its corporate customers worldwide, letting them know that they may need to start using a different version of Office as a result of a recent legal setback. The software maker said Monday that it has been forced to issue new versions of Office 2003 and Office XP, which change the way Microsoft's Access database interacts with its Excel spreadsheet. "It was recently decided in a court of law that certain portions of code found in Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office XP Professional and Microsoft Access 2002 infringe a third-party patent," Microsoft said in an e-mail to customers. "As a result, Microsoft must make available a revised version of these products with the allegedly infringing code replaced."
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IBM Brings Power5+ to iSeries Servers

IBM No Comments
IBM is outfitting its line of System i5 servers with the new Power5+ processor and is introducing the newest version of its i5/OS operating system. The enhancements are designed to improve the performance and reach of the systems - which are targeted at SMBs - while upgrading the flexibility, security and disaster recovery capabilities in the operating system, according to Ian Jarmen, product manager for IBM's iSeries platform.
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