OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Hackers Fail To Break Into Via’s StrongBox

Andrew Youll 2005-10-01 Privacy, Security 21 Comments

Hackers at a security conference failed to break into Via Technologies' StrongBox security application during a competition. The Taiwanese microprocessor vendor offered a $5000 (EUR 4157) prize to any hacker who could break into StrongBox, a secure virtual hard drive of up to 40GB designed to protect data from computer intruders. Announced on Tuesday, the application uses a combination of hardware-based SHA-1 and 256-bit AES encryption.

170Mbps Through an Electrical Socket Demoed

Andrew Youll 2005-10-01 Internet 11 Comments

Matsushita showed off an exceptionally high-speed Internet through an ordinary electrical socket at a Japanese trade-fair. Matsushita Electronics has claimed a breakthrough in powerline broadband by running an Internet connection through an ordinary electrical socket, using a new chip. At a tradeshow in Japan on Thursday the company demonstrated a network capable of running at 170Mbps over the electrical network.

Scoping Your Transition Projects

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-01 macOS 7 Comments

Read this article to determine your transition path and learn what you’ll need to do to make your application ready for Intel-based Macintosh computers.

Arch Linux Founder Lays Out Plan

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Linux 59 Comments

Judd Vinet, Arch Linux's founder, posted a message discussing the future of his distro and his plans.

Bluetooth Boogies Java File Transfer with JSR-82

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Java 5 Comments

The Bluetooth protocol stack lets you use several methods, including RFCOMM and Object Exchange (OBEX), to send and receive files between devices. Become familiar with the Java language library used to control a Bluetooth device and learn how to use JSR-82 API. OBEX is great way to send object data, context, and metadata about the payload.

Gizmo on a PocketPC via the SJPhone SIP Client

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Wireless 6 Comments

After some trial and error, I got the popular Gizmo run on my PocketPC via the SJPhone SIP client (there is no native Gizmo client for PDAs). Read more for the instructions.

Microsoft Confirms Next XP Service Pack

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Windows 51 Comments

Microsoft has revealed plans to release a third service pack for its Windows XP operating system.

Ubuntu Carves Niche in Linux Landscape

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Ubuntu 49 Comments

It's not easy building a new version of Linux and establishing a large following. But with the Ubuntu project, one team of programmers has managed to do just that.

EU Deal Threatens End to US Dominance of Internet

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-30 Internet 247 Comments

At PrepCom3, a dramatic last-minute deal drawn up by the EU may mark the end of the US government's control of the internet. In essence, a new version of the current overseeing body ICANN and an end to the US government's overall control of the DNS. The US was scathing about the proposals, within minutes telling delegates that it "can't in any way allow any changes" that would prevent it from having overall control of the internet. Other countries, like Brazil, China, Iran and Cuba support the proposal. Brazil's ambassador outlined: "It is not a question of being anti-ICANN, it's about having a very clear and open and democratic and inclusive mechanism of overview of certain functions that today are performed by ICANN with no kind of supervision."

US State Finalises Its Microsoft Snub

Submitted by Sansta 2005-09-30 In the News 100 Comments

The commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalised its decision to standardise desktop applications on OpenDocument, a format not supported by Microsoft Office. State agencies in the executive branch are now supposed to migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by 1 January, 2007, a change that will affect about 50 000 desktop PCs. The reference model also confirms that Adobe's PDF format is considered an "open format".

Apple Making Inroads in Enterprise Market

Submitted by Hakime Seddik 2005-09-30 Apple 9 Comments

A recent report by market research firm IDC gives Apple high marks for its efforts in the Enterprise storage and server markets. While Apple is best known for its iPod and Macintosh product lines, IDC analysts say the competition is taking interest in what Apple is doing in the Enterprise market, as well.

Installing Debian

Submitted by CatNap 2005-09-30 Debian 24 Comments

"The experience of installing Debian can vary widely depending on your hardware and requirements. There simply isn't room here to provide a comprehensive installation guide. Instead, you'll find an outline of the major points of the installation process, and plenty of information about where to go and what to do when things don't work as expected." In related news, work is under way to provide a gtk+ front-end to the Debian installer.

Release of Open Dylan 1.0 Beta 1

Submitted by Magnum 2005-09-30 General Development 41 Comments

"Dylan is an advanced, object-oriented, dynamic language which supports the rapid development of programs. When needed, the programmer can later optimize programs for more efficient execution by supplying type information to the compiler. Nearly all entities in Dylan (including functions, classes, and basic data types such as integers) are first class objects. Additionally Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, and many other advanced features."

Take Charge of Processor Affinity

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-30 Linux 2 Comments

Knowing a little bit about how the Linux 2.6 scheduler treats CPU affinity can help you design better userspace applications. Soft affinity means that processes do not frequently migrate between processors, whereas hard affinity means that processes run on processors you specify.

Microsoft Woos Symbian, PalmOS Developers

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Wireless 30 Comments

Microsoft has released three papers designed to help mobile application developers from other platforms migrate their applications to Windows Mobile. The first and second papers involve migrating developers and applications from Symbian OS and the third paper is a guide for developers moving from Palm OS.

GCC 4.0.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 General Development 54 Comments

Mark Mitchell announced the availability of GCC 4.0.2. He explains, "this release is a minor release, containing primarily fixes for regressions in GCC 4.0.1 relative to previous releases."

Motorola CEO: Apple ‘Going To Build a Smart Phone’

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 Apple 36 Comments

Motorola's CEO Ed Zander added fuel to persistent speculation about Apple's interest in producing its own phone. "And we know that they are going to build a smart phone - it's only a matter of time."

First Development Version of Glade 3 Available

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-29 GTK+ 51 Comments

This version of Glade (Glade-3) is a complete rewrite of the original Glade codebase. One of the main differences from glade-2 is that C code generation has been removed from glade-3; the preferred way to use glade files is with libglade. Another main difference is that glade-3 was designed to make maximal use of GObject introspection, thus easing the integration of external toolkits and handling widgets, signals and properties genericly. It has a few useful new features such as stacked Undo/Redo and Multiple Project support and respects the same XML format as glade-2.

ReactOS 0.3 SVN Shows Promise

Submitted by David Nordenberg 2005-09-29 ReactOS 66 Comments

The ReactOS website has been completely redesigned. That in itself won't get your panties in a twist, however, the screenshots section might. They show just how far ReactOS has come: OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, MS Office 2003's setup, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, Flash Player, and much more. Note that some of those apps will only run in the latest SVN version.

Submitted by BryanFeeney 2005-09-29 Java 36 Comments

Sun has released a beta edition of the upcoming version 5 of NetBeans. The most notable feature in this new release is the Matisse GUI Builder (demo) which makes it significantly easier to develop Swing GUIs. Other improvements include more refactoring tools, better CVS integration, support for more application servers, better support for web-development, and small tweaks to the editor.