OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The Pegasos Book: First Release of English Translation

Thom Holwerda 2005-11-20 Morphos 5 Comments

The first (not complete, though) English translation of the Pegasos Book has been released. Its goal is to gather a whole of information and articles on the Pegasos and its operating systems (MorphOS, Linux, MacOSX with MacOnLinux) in only one document which can be consulted off line or printed easily.

Review: DesktopX 3.1

Thom Holwerda 2005-11-20 Graphics 8 Comments

" has existed (at least in concept) since the mid-90s, when IBM was going to use OpenDoc to add similar features to OS/2 Warp 5. DesktopX 1.0 was released in 2000. Five years later, we have version 3.1 in our hands. DesktopX in its present state is more than a mere widget manager. While it does include a widget manager, it does a couple other things."

‘Google-Mart’

Submitted by kenny 2005-11-20 Google 32 Comments

"In a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid."

Mozilla Uncages Latest Firefox Beta

Thom Holwerda 2005-11-20 Mozilla, Gecko 29 Comments

The open-source Mozilla Foundation released the latest iteration of its Firefox Web browsing software on Friday, promising faster navigation, increased customization and improved security in the third beta version of its upcoming application. Labelled Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 3, the new installment of the Web browsing software claims many of the same types of improvements as the last several test versions of the application.

IE 5+ Clipboard Privacy Issue Demonstrated

Submitted by Stephen Robinson 2005-11-20 Internet Explorer 27 Comments

AmigaWorld.net (by the way, check their brand new mobile site too) reader Olegil demonstrates how to read Windows' clipboard, by using the IE 5+ clipboard API. IE's clipboard API is a known design-decision feature which allows for better interoperability with Office/VBA. But as Olegil shows, the rules of the game are too loose and information can be stolen and stored on a remote server.

FreeBSD Status Report Third Quarter 2005

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2005-11-20 FreeBSD 9 Comments

After a long, exhausting, yet very productive third quarter of 2005 FreeBSD 6.0 has been released. Many activities were put into the background in order to make this release the success it has become. Read the status report here.

The Power Mac G5 Quad: Seat Belt Not Included

Submitted by Richard Levangie 2005-11-19 Apple 115 Comments

"Yesterday, I had an hour to work with Apple's new Power Mac Quad G5, and for anyone in the broadcast, sciences, music, print and photography industries, I have some advice: Place your orders now!"

Submitted by chrishaney 2005-11-19 Ubuntu 220 Comments

The first preview release of (K)Ubuntu 6.04 Dapper Drake has been released. You can download Ubuntu here, and Kubuntu here. Screenshots can be found here and here.

2005 Tech Product Wishlist

Submitted by anonymous 2005-11-19 Gifts, Contests 8 Comments

"Well, it is that time of the year again. With Halloween done and over with its time for Thanksgiving and, before you know it, the holiday season. Every company realizes this and has made sure the stores are packed with cool new gadgets, gifts, and gizmos. This guide is going to go over a few of the items which appear of the wishlists of a few of the staff members. Nothing too formal, but you can get an idea of some of the cool products to keep an eye out for this season."

Skinning Primer: a Comprehensive Look at Windows Customization

Submitted by Brad Wardell 2005-11-19 Graphics 21 Comments

For users who have wanted to customize their Windows PC beyond what is part of the OS, this skin primer goes through the most popular two dozen programs commonly used to tweak, customize, and enhance the default Windows desktop environment.

Submitted by quique 2005-11-19 NetBSD 16 Comments

Matthias Scheler, on behalf of the NetBSD Release engineering team, announced that the release process for NetBSD 3.0 has officially begun. The first release candidate is available for download here.It is expected to have RC2 available on the FTP server in about a week, which hopefully will be the final release candidate. So if all goes well the release of 3.0 is approximately three weeks away.

Make Your Eclipse Applications Richer with View Linking

Submitted by Anonymous 2005-11-19 General Development 6 Comments

The Eclipse platform allows pluggable components -- plug-ins -- to help create a rich graphical user interface (GUI) application. With Eclipse you can enhance a user's app experience by adding views to the GUI. This article will teach you how Eclipse makes it easy to link views and provides ways to adapt view linking to non-UI scenarios.

Microsoft BOB Review

Submitted by Andrew Bragdon 2005-11-19 Microsoft 38 Comments

BentUser reviews what is famous for being Microsoft's worst product of all time - and finds out just exactly what is so terrible about it.

Submitted by resistor 2005-11-19 General Development 36 Comments

In an email to the GCC development mailing list, one of the main developers of LLVM revealed that his recent employment at Apple has been focused on integrating LLVM with GCC, and is now proposing a long-term merge of the two projects.

Inside Windows Vista Printing

Eugenia Loli 2005-11-18 Windows 44 Comments

Channel9 recently visited the Vista Print team and learned about the new Print stack in Vista and took a tour of the team and the lab where print testing happens. The 1-hour WMV video is 228 MB.

Still ‘No Demand’ for Media-Player-Free Windows

Thom Holwerda 2005-11-18 Windows 58 Comments

A major UK retail store and three of the largest PC vendors worldwide still have no plans to sell the version of Microsoft Windows that does not contain its media player, five months after the version was released. Microsoft started offering Windows XP N, a version of Windows without a bundled media player, in June of this year to comply with last year's antitrust ruling by the European Commission.

Hyperthreading Hurts Server Performance, Say Developers

Thom Holwerda 2005-11-18 Intel 35 Comments

Intel's Hyperthreading Technology is being blamed for server performance problems. With both SQL Server and Citrix Terminal Server installations, HT-enabled motherboards show markedly degraded performance under heavy load. Disabling HT restores expected levels, according to reports from within the IT industry.

16 Papers on Real-Time and Embedded Linux

Submitted by anonymous 2005-11-18 Linux 1 Comment

LinuxDevices has once again published the proceedings of the annual Real-Time Linux Workshop. This one, the seventh, was held in France earlier this month, at the University for Science and Technology of Lille (USTL). The papers span a range of topics, from fundamental real-time technologies to applications, hardware, and tools.

Windows Mobile 5: Where’s my RAM?

Eugenia Loli 2005-11-18 Windows 7 Comments

So you just bought a brand new WM5 device. The box says it's got 64M of RAM. You go digging through control panels on the device and find one that says it's only got 50M. Is something wrong? Should you be worried about this? The short answers are "No" and "No." This will explain why. UPDATE: On related news, ActiveSync 4.1 was released.

Firebird 2.0 Beta Released

Submitted by mariuz 2005-11-18 Databases 20 Comments

The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the release of Firebird 2.0 Beta 1 kits for immediate download and testing. This version of Firebird 2 is an beta version, meant for field testing only and not for use in production. Please read the Release Notes for more details.