OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

To Bundle or Not to Bundle: Microsoft’s Security Question

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-08 Microsoft 38 Comments

Microsoft has not yet launched a paid anti-virus product, but questions about software bundling and unfair competition are already swirling in Europe. Rival Symantec acknowledged late this week that it has responded to a request for information from European Union regulators regarding the state of the security market and Symantec's role in it.

Introduction to OpenOffice.org Basic

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-08 Office 13 Comments

One of the features some users overlook in OpenOffice.org is its built-in programming language, OpenOffice.org Basic. Why would you want a programming language built into your word processor? It's there to help you to automate tasks. It won't make the tea for you, but it will help you to carry out many repetitive jobs with a minimum of effort.

Java Urban Performance Legends

Submitted by anonymous 2005-10-08 Java 123 Comments

Programmers agonize over whether to allocate on the stack or on the heap. Some people think garbage collection will never be as efficient as direct memory management, and others feel it is easier to clean up a mess in one big batch than to pick up individual pieces of dust throughout the day. This article pokes some holes in the oft-repeated performance myth of slow allocation in JVMs.

Proactive Wireless Networks with OpenBSD hostapd(8)

Andrew Youll 2005-10-08 OpenBSD 11 Comments

OpenBSD developer Reyk Floeter writes in article Proactive wireless networks with hostapd(8) about his latest tool and how it can be used in wireless warfare. Defend your wireless networks from rogue nodes or "discourage" neighbours from occupying "your" frequencies.

IBM Drops Patent Suit Against SCO

Submitted by Yves R. Crevecoeur 2005-10-08 IBM 27 Comments

IBM has dropped its three remaining claims of patent infringement in a lawsuit against the SCO Group, which originally sued Big Blue in March 2003 over claims it broke a Unix licensing contract by moving technology to Linux.

Nokia Reacts to Mobile Virus Threat

Andrew Youll 2005-10-08 Wireless 11 Comments

Symantec has been signed up to protect Symbian Series 60 users from the growing threat of smartphone viruses. Nokia has entered a pact with Symantec to help secure its mobile phones from viruses that target certain kind of handsets.

Intel Leads WiFi Chipmakers in New Forum

Andrew Youll 2005-10-08 Intel 2 Comments

Leading Wi-Fi chip manufacturers will be announcing a new industry forum on Monday to help accelerate efforts to create a new, faster Wi-Fi standard, says a source close to the companies. Intel, Broadcom, Marvel and Atheros have sidestepped the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers' process to work on a draft of the new 802.11n standard, which the vendors plan to submit to the IEEE's working group for consideration, sources say.

Microsoft: Nothing To Gain From Firefox Flaws

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-07 Mozilla, Gecko 62 Comments

Peter Watson, chief security advisor at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand, said that the software maker did not get any pleasure from seeing Firefox suffer a string of security vulnerabilities, despite the open-source browser's growth seemingly being stunted over recent months. "I don't think it creates any benefit for us or anybody in the ecosystem to turn around and say, 'it's good that this company has a whole load of security vulnerabilities'," said Watson.

Review: Microsoft Virtual Server 2005

Submitted by Andrew Bragdon 2005-10-07 Microsoft 17 Comments

"Based on my experience with Virtual PC I would say that Virtual Server does not seem to have made significant performance improvements over Virtual PC. However, for many IT consolidation projects the performance penalty could be acceptable. Many older IT applications run on slower hardware and are not used heavily, and so Virtual Server will be a perfect fit. However, for your mission critical apps, you will certainly want to stick to 'real' rather than virtual servers."

Submitted by Innova 2005-10-07 Debian 48 Comments

"As many of our customers know, Libranet is a small company pioneered by the vision of Jon Danzig. The recent passing of Jon Danzig has necessitated changes to the way Libranet runs and does business. Libranet will be undergoing a period of restructuring during which we will not be be taking new orders. Libranet will continue to provide support for our existing customers, and the Libranet forum will remain open."

The BeBox’ 10th Anniversary

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-07 Haiku 42 Comments

"After feverishly working throughout 1995, it was finally decided that the results of 5 years of low profile work were ready for a public launch. When one considers that little over a year earlier, Be's entire hardware platform had been made redundant by the demise of the AT&T Hobbit processors, this was a remarkable achievement." Ten years ago, the legendary BeBox computer was introduced by Be,Inc at Agenda '95. Joseph Palmer has put up a gallery of photos of the event.

Kubuntu Breezy Badger Release Candidate Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-07 Ubuntu 45 Comments

Following yesterday's release of Ubuntu 5.10RC, the Kubuntu developers are pleased to announce the Kubuntu Breezy Release Candidate. New in Kubuntu Breezy are KDE 3.4, modularized X.org 6.8.2, a new package manager (Adept), easier control center, OOo2, and much more.

AOL-MSN Alliance Talks Resume, Says Article

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-07 In the News 10 Comments

Time Warner and Microsoft have restarted discussions about forming an alliance of their Internet units, AOL and MSN, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the situation.

Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 Released

Submitted by Anton Paulic 2005-10-07 Mozilla, Gecko 33 Comments

Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 is now available for download. Also known as the 1.8 Beta 5 milestone, this is the last beta release of the next major Firefox update and is aimed at testers, extension/theme authors and Web developers. The final release of Firefox 1.5, which will be widely promoted to end-users, is scheduled for later this year.

Announcing Dogtail: a GUI Automation and Test Framework

Submitted by David Malcolm 2005-10-07 Gnome 31 Comments

"A crack team of QA and desktop specialists working at Red Hat is pleased to announce the public release of Dogtail. Dogtail is a GUI test automation framework written in Python that uses Accessibility (a11y) technologies to communicate with desktop applications. Dogtail scripts are written in Python and executed like any other Python program."

Sockets Programming in Python

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-07 General Development 4 Comments

This tutorial shows how to develop sockets-based networking applications using Python. Python's high-level networking classes simplify the development of applications requiring application-layer networking protocols. The tutorial covers the basic sockets features of Python (free reg. req.), using a sample chat application as a guide.

Protothreads and Other Wicked C Tricks

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-07 General Development 7 Comments

For those of you interested in interesting hard-core C programming tricks: Adam Dunkels' protothreads library implements an unusually lightweight type of threads.

Slew of Windows Patches Coming; XP SP3, Anti-Spyware

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-07 Windows 41 Comments

As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release eight security alerts for flaws in the Windows operating system. They also plan to release by year's end an initial test version of a new product to protect business desktops, laptops and file servers against malicious code attacks. "Unofficial" preview of XP SP3 pack includes log-on improvements and network fixes for Windows XP PCs. Elsewhere, on Wednesday, Neil Barrett was named trustee in the European Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft.

Submitted by carbon-12 2005-10-07 GTK+ 59 Comments

Imendio announced that it has been working on a port of native Gtk+ for Mac OS X.

Submitted by Valour 2005-10-07 SuSE, openSUSE 60 Comments

When you're done installing OpenSUSE 10.0, your desktop system is not complete. You still need support for Java programs, MP3 audio files, and browser plugins for Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Video. You may also want to add support for playing DVD videos on your computer. Here's how to effectively make the open source version of OpenSUSE 10.0 into SUSE Linux 10.0.