Intel, AMD Believe in the Power of Four

Hardware 52 Comments
The race is on to produce four-core processors for PCs. Intel, which is readying a bevy of dual-core chips for release in systems in the next month, is already plotting a move to quad cores, which some reports have said could come as soon as early 2007. AMD has already discussed a plan to begin offering a family of four-core chips in 2007, whereas Intel has only hinted about a four- core server chip thus far.
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Microsoft Plans Critical Christmas Patches

Windows 14 Comments
As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft plans to release on Tuesday two security bulletins with fixes for flaws in Windows. At least one of the alerts is deemed "critical", Microsoft's highest risk rating, the company said in a notice posted on its Web site on Thursday. Microsoft rates as critical any security threat that could allow a malicious Internet worm to spread without any action required on the part of the user.
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LaCie Portable USB Drive Boots PCs Into Mandriva

Linux 21 Comments
Hard drive vendor LaCie has teamed up with Mandriva on a bus-powered USB 2.0 hard drive preloaded with desktop Linux. The "GlobeTrotter" boots Mandriva Linux LE 2005, and is available in 40GB and 80GB models priced at $140 and $199 , respectively. The GlobeTrotter drives feature an industrial design by F.A. Porsche. The devices have rubber feet, a passively cooled case design, and a low-power drive that, unlike most USB drives, requires no separate power adapter, instead pulling power through the host PC's USB port.
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Does Free Software Make Sense for Your Enterprise?

  Submitted by Dave Guard Open Source 46 Comments
'Dude, I can, like, totally do that way cheaper with Linux and stuff.' These were the words of a bearded geek running Linux on his digital watch. As he proceeded to cut and patch alpha code into the Linux kernel running on the production database system, the manager watched on in admiration. Six months later, long after the young hacker decided to move into a commune in the Santa Cruz hills, something broke. Was it really 'way' cheaper?"
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Story of OpenGrok, Source Code Browser

  Submitted by ahmetaa Solaris 8 Comments
"OpenGrok in that sense is a true enabler for source code that is open source. It lets people easily and quickly find the source code, look at it, understand the history and changes made to the source. It certainly has made my life easy when I am looking for security holes in software."
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Niagara I Out the Door, Time for Niagara II

Oracle and SUN 25 Comments
If you thought Sun's chip division had already gone mad when they announced and built the Niagara (the UltraSPARC T1), you'll be happy to know that with the first Niagara servers out the door, they haven't exactly been resting on their laurels. Niagara II is on its way: like the T1, it has 8 cores, but now with 8 threads each instead of 4, adding up to a total of 64 threads (the T1 has 32, logically). And, instead of the much-critizised one floating point unit per processor, the Niagara II will feature one floating point unit per core. The chip is set to be released in 2007, at an initial speed of 1.4Ghz.
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If This Suite’s a Success, Why Is It So buggy?

Open Source 107 Comments
"Of all the myths that have grown up around open source software, perhaps the most pervasive is Eric Raymond's aphorism that 'Many eyes make bugs shallow', suggesting that if lots of people can view a program's source code, they will find and fix its errors more quickly than commercial products whose code is jealously guarded. The only problem with this is that it's not true - certainly not in one of the flagship projects of open source, OpenOffice."
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Microsoft Delays Next Internet Explorer Release

Internet Explorer 37 Comments
Microsoft postponed the introduction of the next test release of its Internet Explorer 7 Web browser until sometime in 2006, according to comments posted to the company's site for software developers. In a blog posting on the software giant's MSDN developer site, Dean Hachamovitch, product line manager for IE at Microsoft, said that the company will post an "updated pre-release build of IE 7 for Windows XP publicly" during the first calendar quarter of 2006. The IE team leader indicated that people interested in gaining access to the browser preview would not need to be members of the MSDN community. In related news, there's an exploit in Firefox 1.5 on Windows SP2.
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Dharma: Cocoa on Windows… Again?

  Submitted by anonymous macOS 44 Comments
"A first time poster to MacGeneration forums posted the contents of an email, which was originally sent to another website. The writer claims that Apple is reviving 'Yellow Box for Windows' - a development environment which promised Mac OS X developers the ability to develop and then deploy of both Mac OS X and Windows environments. The original plans for Yellow Box were promised during early developer sessions by Apple, but later killed. The letter claims that the project has been relaunched internally under the name 'Dharma'. Resultant applications will be true 'Universal Binaries', allowing developers to released their applications under the Windows environment also." Of course this is highly speculative, but interesting nonetheless. What is your opinion on this?
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FreeBSD List of Projects, Ideas for Volunteers

  Submitted by Joel Dahl FreeBSD 25 Comments
"The FreeBSD project has hundreds of active developers spread all over the world, and many of them have their own parts of the source-tree that they work on. However, there are always a lot of new interesting projects and ideas that needs to be investigated and evaluated, and this is where the FreeBSD project relies on heroic efforts from volunteers. The following list of possible projects is in no way complete, but it should serve as a nice starting point for volunteers who would like to become committers in the future."
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Red Hat Delivers Certified Open Source Stacks Online

  Submitted by anonymous Red Hat 4 Comments
"Starting in early 2006, Red Hat will offer three new stacks aimed at simplifying and standardizing key open source application stacks, so that developers can focus on their applications instead of configuring the underlying platform. Each stack will be certified and supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and delivered in a subscription model. These new certified stacks will help customers get to market faster with their development projects, while giving them the confidence to deploy, knowing that Red Hat's proven production support capability is behind them."
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Install a Touchscreen for Linux

  Submitted by anonymous Linux 13 Comments
What's the next step in creating an easy-to-use Linux-based product for consumers? A touchscreen facade can make back-end Linux applications very usable in such devices as custom digital media centers, DVRs and PVRs, and even control interfaces for household robots. The potential uses are limited only by the imagination. In this article, get an overview for installing an LCD taken from a Sony PSOne, creating a modeline, and installing a touchscreen -- all for Linux.
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The Unspoken Taboo – The Never Expiring Password

  Submitted by LogError Privacy, Security 37 Comments
Every security savvy professional lives with the daily fear of the "never expiring password" being exposed. It's the unspoken taboo, the wide open back door in every corporate network. But no-one ever acknowledges it or discusses it. All applications have got pre-defined passwords that never change. Which means developers, privileged users and hosting third party service providers will all have access to these passwords.
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What is it About Ubuntu?

  Submitted by anonymous Ubuntu 201 Comments
"When looking at desktop Linux by itself, any analysis of the subject quickly leads to this question: why do users choose one version over another? There are as many answers for this question as there are users to give them, but ultimately it should boil down to just a few key decisions which must be made. Considering this, it may be surprising to some people to find out how successful Ubuntu Linux has been relative to other distributions."
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Sun Open Sources UltraSPARC T1 Processor

  Submitted by Sebastian Schildt Oracle and SUN 40 Comments
Sun announced plans to publish specifications for the UltraSPARC-based chip, including the source of the design expressed in Verilog, a verification suite and simulation models, instruction set architecture specification (UltraSPARC Architecture 2005) and a Solaris OS port. The goal is to enable community members to build on proven technology at a markedly lower cost and to innovate freely. The source code will be released under an Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved open source license. The 'older' SPARC architectures were also open.
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