OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Sun, Google Expand Technology Reach and Global Opportunity

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-04 Google 44 Comments

Sun and Google today announced an agreement to promote and distribute their software technologies to millions of users around the world. The agreement aims to make it easier for users to freely obtain Sun's Java Runtime Environment, the Google Toolbar and the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite, helping millions of users worldwide to participate in the next wave of Internet growth. More here.

Microsoft’s Complete Longhorn Terminal Server Feature List

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-04 Windows 14 Comments

A lot of information about the new features of Terminal Server in Longhorn has come out over the past few weeks. In this article, Brian Madden has collected, organized, and commented on all the new stuff.

Microsoft, Motorola Form New Alliance

Submitted by skurk 2005-10-04 Microsoft 9 Comments

Motorola plans to enhance the reliability of its emergency services software applications by integrating them on the Microsoft platform, the companies announced Tuesday. However, Motorola in July announced that it would expand its use of Linux beyond high-end products and into midrange items by revising most of its phones to run on Linux.

Office Beta Coming in November, More on OpenDocument and PDF

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-04 Office 65 Comments

This week, Microsoft announced that, with the next version of Office, it will support saving files to Adobe's Portable Document Format, or PDF. While logical, the move raises questions about how the PDF support will coexist with Windows Vista's move to its own page description format, known as Metro. Sinofsky also addressed how Microsoft views the controversy surrounding Massachusetts' mandate for the OpenDocument standard.

Netscape Lands Browser Distribution Deal with HP

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-04 Internet 22 Comments

In a potential blow to Microsoft, Netscape's Internet browser will be included inside every new Hewlett-Packard and Compaq computer sold starting early next year, Netscape said Monday. The arrangement allows for those buying new HP or Compaq personal computers to choose Netscape as their default Web browser and to start the Web browser using icons on the desktop or Start menu.

FAQ About Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-04 Windows 25 Comments

"In this column, I'd like to try to answer some of the questions that we've seen asked repeatedly in the new Microsoft Windows 64-bit Newsgroup. The newsgroup became available during the launch of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and has been quite active since the launch."

IBM Goes After Sun with New Low-End Systems

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-04 IBM 28 Comments

IBM has revamped its entry-level Unix servers with new processors and an Integrated Virtualisation Manager aimed at the SME market, and launched a vitriolic attack on rival Sun Microsystems. Launching four new servers, three of them based on the new Power5+ processor, as well as a 16-way system for the high-end, IBM claimed leadership in power and performance in the low-end Unix systems market.

Open Graphics Project Status Update

Submitted by Timothy Miller 2005-10-04 3D 26 Comments

"It's been a while since the last update on the Open Graphics Project, so I've put together this article to fill in the community on what's been happening, what's going to happen, and how we can make what happens happen faster."

OpenSUSE and SpreadFirefox Cracked

Submitted by LogError 2005-10-04 Internet 35 Comments

Schools are apparantly closed for 12 year olds this week, since two large websites got cracked. Earlier this week, the OpenSUSE website got cracked by political activists, and today, the SpreadFirefox website was the target (again).

Unsolved Language Error Haunts Tiger

Submitted by Anonymous linguist 2005-10-04 macOS 10 Comments

"Many languages that worked flawlessly in Panther do not work in Tiger, due to an ill-conceived attempt at better cross-platform font support. For the first time in a decade, Windows is actually ahead of the Mac in supporting complex typography and Asian languages."

Getting Started with Monad

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-04 Windows 3 Comments

The documents included are: the Getting Started guide (an 80-page introduction to using the shell and the MSH language supported by the Windows Monad Shell), a single-page summary of the MSH language, formatted as a tri-fold, a quick-start guide to tracing in the Windows Monad Shell, and the three Hands-On Labs from the 2005 Professional Developers Conference; "Monad Scripting", "Building Monad Cmdlets" and "Creating Monad Providers".

Taking Advantage of the Accelerate Framework

Submitted by Hakime Seddik 2005-10-04 macOS No Comments

If your application is computationally intensive, you need to know about the Accelerate framework. The Accelerate framework is a set of libraries containing high-performance vector-accelerated libraries that run on PowerPC-based Macintosh computers and Intel-based Macintosh computers. Using the framework can be advantageous, in terms of code maintenance and reliability across the architectures.

Where Might Google Go Next?

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-04 Google 30 Comments

In just seven years, Google Inc. has morphed from a bare-bones online search engine into a technological octopus that seems to sprout another intriguing tentacle every other week.

Preview of the Firebird Conference 2005

Guest post by Paul Richter 2005-10-03 Databases 29 Comments

In about six weeks time developers from all over the world will convene in Prague for the 2005 edition of the Firebird Conference. This year's conference has an even greater abundance of speakers and topics than the previous editions of the event. The various tracks on the conference will cover Firebird itself, development languages and solution stacks, development tools and issues and applications. And, of course, it is a great opportunity to meet the community.

Google and Sun to Collaborate

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-03 Google 47 Comments

Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt will sit down with Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy on Tuesday morning to outline a collaborative effort between the two companies. It's not clear what the partnership will entail, but Sun has already begun to hype the event. More about this here.

Mark Shuttleworth Addresses Ubuntu Issues

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-03 Ubuntu 86 Comments

Mark Shuttleworth just posted an Ubuntu FAQ on his wiki page. In this FAQ, he addresses some of the more controversial subjects surrounding Ubuntu, including the fork (non-) issue, whether or not Ubuntu will ever go commercial, the brown desktop color, and much more.

Ye Olde Museum of Office Past

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-03 Office 38 Comments

"Today, I want to take you on a journey. A journey that starts back into the cold recesses of the mid-1980s, back into the days of EGA and serial port mice and the MS-DOS Executive. Microsoft Word 1.0 for Windows shipped in 1989 after a long development cycle and was designed to run on Windows 386. There's not much more to the program than what you see here, but it gives you an idea of how far Word's come."

Visopsys 0.58 Released

Submitted by Andy McLaughlin 2005-10-03 OS News 2 Comments

Likely the last of the Visopsys 0.5x series (a sparkly new 0.6 is imminent), this maintenance and bugfix release sports some new features such as EXT2 formatting, German keyboard layouts, GUID generation, and filesystem clobber. Version 0.58 also includes a number of important bugfixes to the featured Disk Manager partitioning program. Change log here and downloads here. As always, you can demo this tiny, full-GUI hobby OS from the ISO image or from a single floppy disk.

OpenDocument Could ‘Turn Everything Inside Out’

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-03 Office 52 Comments

Tim Bray, the director of Web technologies at Sun, said at the OpenOffice.org conference in Slovenia late last week that the file format developed by standards body OASIS has the potential to transform the world as much as the World Wide Web did.

Linus on Specifications

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-03 Linux 55 Comments

In a conversation that began as a request to include the SAS Transport Layer in the mainline Linux kernel, there was an interesting thread regarding specifications. Linux creator Linus Torvalds began the discussion saying, "a 'spec' is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality."