OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

MSN Admits to Sharing Search Data

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-23 Microsoft 31 Comments

Following news that Google refused to comply with a subpoena requiring the company to turn over search records from its database, much speculation swirled about the response from rivals MSN and Yahoo. MSN has broken its silence and now acknowledges that it did share search data, but no personal information. The subpoena was handed down by the US Department of Justice last summer, and was reportedly issued to gather data to support a child protection law that was struck down two years ago by the Supreme Court. Under that law, the government could punish pornography sites that made content easily accessible to minors.

The Death of Alpha

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-23 Hardware 9 Comments

"To the outside observer, improvements in PC architecture are evolutionary but logical. Processors advance inevitably in speed and performance, in happy accordance with Moore's Law. For Nebojsa Novakovic, a consultant in high-end computing systems, that's hardly the case. The demise of the DEC Alpha processor is a case in point. A performance leader was killed off by corporate whim."

Worm Set to Delete Data Files on February 3

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-23 Bugs & Viruses 10 Comments

While the most high-profile security vulnerability of late was almost certainly the WMF hole recently patched by Microsoft, in terms of actual numbers of infections it was barely a blip on the radar. According to the anti-virus company F-Secure, one of the most populous and dangerous infections today is not some sophisticated bit of code exploiting a new and exotic security hole, but an old-school e-mail worm written in Visual Basic that spreads by tempting users with free pornography.

HP Outlines Long-Term Strategy

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-23 Hardware 1 Comment

Hewlett-Packard executives are mulling plans to improve over the next 18 months the technology the company uses to manage its direct sales, while it continues with commercial printing efforts and acquisitions of software companies. Two weeks ago, HP CEO Mark Hurd, the company's board of directors and senior executives gathered at the computer giant's annual management retreat to discuss long-term strategies.

Rexx – the Practical Programming Language

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-23 General Development 8 Comments

"What is it with old languages? I only have to mention REXX while talking about Mumps and someone (the sort of person who remembers that the original, circa 1970-80, MUMPS was actually an O/S, language and integrated DBMS all in one - I can relate to that, perhaps why I like iSeries too) jumps up to say how much they liked it. I liked REXX partly because (like many other much-loved languages), it actually had a personality attached to it - Mike Cowlishaw."

Rosetta Memory Overhead

Submitted by Sean Long 2006-01-23 Apple 12 Comments

"I decided to do some simple tests to see how important RAM is when running applications under Rosetta. If you rely heavily on applications that are not yet universal make sure you load that new Intel Mac up with 1.5 - 3.77 times the RAM in your current PowerPC machine."

Submitted by Linuxfanboy 2006-01-23 Linux 47 Comments

"With the traditional Microsoft news media turning their collective ear to the rest of the industry, you have to suspect a changing of the guard. But Linux companies don't seem to guage their efforts by what the industry says about Microsoft. Linux just keeps chugging along. So what does the Industry have to say about Microsoft? They say that though many people will swear by the invincibility of Microsoft's ship, it hasn't maneuvered all the icebergs. Collectively, the competition has started ringing up wins. With alternatives in Linux, FireFox, OpenOffice.org and Apple the Microsoft floating casino has begun to list and sway. Here's how and some of it might surprise you."

FreeNas 0.52 Released

Submitted by Fredrik Rudin 2006-01-23 General Development 5 Comments

"FreeNAS is a free NAS server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS protocols, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 16MB once installed on Ccompact flash, hard drive or USB key. The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall."

Review: Toshiba e800 (Accessory Edition)

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-22 Wireless 8 Comments

Geeks.com sent us a special edition of the Toshiba e800 Pocket PC PDA. What's special about this new revision we review today is that it comes by default with a very high capacity battery and the ability to use USB devices through its "presentation pack" accessory, making it a product best suited for professionals, but also for geeks.

GPE 2.7 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-22 Wireless 2 Comments

A new version of the GPE PDA environment was released, version 2.7. It now includes a new web browser, a sync module, a Gaim and GkDial port and more. Screenshots here.

BSD: The Other Free UNIX Family

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-22 BSD & Darwin 42 Comments

There are a lot of options in the Free UNIX market at the moment. Everyone's favorite buzzword is Linux, and Sun is in the process of releasing Solaris under a Free Software license. One family, however, receives less attention than it is due. Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) has grown into almost a complete replacement for UNIX, with numerous enhancements. David Chisnall explains why the BSD family has found its way into a large number of systems and what these systems can do for you.

Mac OS X Server: The Basics of Share Points and Home Directories

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-22 macOS 22 Comments

Want to share your stuff with Mac OS X Server? If you need to understand the basics of file sharing using Mac OS X Server, Ryan Faas walks you through both the underlying concepts and the actual steps involved in setting up file sharing and share points. This article is everything you need to know about creating a file server using Mac OS X Server: from the basics of share points to customizing user home directories and everything in-between.

Crafting Java with Test-Driven Development, Part 2: Testing Equality

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-22 Java 5 Comments

If you've been coding in Java for awhile, you know how to write a method to test equality. Why write tests for something you can code in your sleep? Because, as Jeff Langr points out, you've probably made plenty of dumb mistakes in your career, either while asleep or while wide awake. It's simpler and safer to just think of tests as specifications that you always have to code.

PC Viruses Hit 20 Year Milestone

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-22 Bugs & Viruses 43 Comments

"It was during the opening weeks of 1986 that the first PC virus, called Brain, was discovered in the wild. Though it achieved fame because it was the first of its type, the virus was not widespread as it could only travel by hitching a ride on floppy disks swapped between users. Now 20 years after they first appeared there are more than 150000 malicious programs in existence."

Running a MySQL-Based DNS Server: MyDNS

Submitted by Falko Timme 2006-01-22 Databases 9 Comments

"In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure MyDNS, a DNS server that uses a MySQL database as backend instead of configuration files like, for example, Bind or djbdns. This has the advantage that you can easily use web-based frontends to administrate your DNS records. MyDNS simply reads the records from the database, and it does not have to be restarted/reloaded when DNS records change or zones are created/edited/deleted! I will also show how to set up a secondary DNS server, but I will not use normal zone transfers to get the records from the primary to the secondary DNS server; instead, I will use MySQL database replication. I will simply replicate the data from the primary to the secondary server."

Submitted by PlatformAgnostic 2006-01-21 Windows 107 Comments

"With little fanfare, Microsoft just announced that the x64 version of Windows Vista will require all kernel-mode code to be digitally signed. This is very different than the current WHQL program, where the user ultimately decides how they want to handle unsigned drivers. Vista driver developers must obtain a Publisher Identity Certificate (PIC) from Microsoft. Microsoft says they won't charge for it, but they require that you have a Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate from Verisign. This costs $500 per year, and as the name implies, is only available to commercial entities."

Cool Tool: The Sharp Family

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-21 Mono 48 Comments

"The combination of Mono, Gtk#, C#, Glade, Glade# and Monodevelop will get you knocking out desktop and Web apps like a pro in no time. The best part is that Gtk# is available on both Windows and Linux, so it's pretty easy to make a cross-platform application that uses the .Net framework on Windows, and Mono on Linux." Read more here.

PC-BSD 1.0RC2 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-21 PC-BSD 58 Comments

The second release candidate of PC-BSD 1.0 has been released. From the announcement: "The latest cut of PC-BSD, version 1.0RC2 is now available! This update adds KDE 3.5 support, as well as some additional features/bugfixes. ISO's may now be downloaded from our main download page. Users currently running under PC-BSD 1.0RC1 can also download a self-installing system update, which upgrades the system to 1.0RC2. This file is available on our Updates page, as Patch #6."

HP Confirms Plan to Attack Sun Via Solaris

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-21 Solaris 23 Comments

HP has gone really, really public about its support for Sun's Solaris 10 operating system by sending out an internal memo. HP has long 'officially' supported various versions of Solaris on its Xeon- and Opteron-based servers. Now, however, it's kind of ready to talk about this support. The company this week 'announced' support of Sun's version of Unix in a statement to staff, according to insiders. The Solaris embrace is being pitched as HP's answer to disgruntled Sun customers trying to make their way off SPARC systems and onto HP's x86 kit.

Review: Intel’s Pentium-D 900 Series

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-21 Intel 14 Comments

GamePC reviews the latest Pentium D, the 900, and concludes: "Perhaps given our low initial expectations for these processors, we actually are finishing up this lab report with a fairly positive impression of the Pentium-D 900-series processors. AMD's Athlon64 X2 processors are still a superior product, that's somewhat hard to argue against at this point. However, Intel has worked to address all of the major qualms we had with this processor lineup, and have delivered a far better product this time around. With a few clock speed bursts thrown in over the next few months, the Pentium-D 900 should have enough firepower to hold the fort until Intel's white knight (Merom) rides into view later this year."