OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Laptop Theft: An Insider’s Guide To Prevention

Submitted by LogError 2005-07-04 Privacy, Security 8 Comments

Protecting against laptop and data theft would appear to be relatively easy, but, in a business sense, is rarely so. This article provides some basic steps for employees to follow in order to protect laptops.

Cleaning Up With AJAX

Submitted by Fatankles 2005-07-04 General Development 16 Comments

AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML seems to be all the rage at the moment. Builder has published a handy primer to get started using AJAX today.

Easy File Save And File Load Mechanism To Your C++ Program

Submitted by Eugenia 2005-07-04 General Development 20 Comments

Why waste your time figuring out an algorithm for storing things in a file? And why spend time debugging the code? Let the Boost library do it for you. Saving your data to your own custom-made file formats is easy with the help of the Boost serialization templates. Jeff Cogswell shows you how to save the data and read it back in with ease.

Anatomy Of A Hack—The Rise And Fall Of Your Network

Submitted by Eugenia 2005-07-04 Internet 15 Comments

There are myriad ways that a network can be compromised, and an administrator needs to be aware of them all (and anticipate new ways coming around the corner). This chapter will not to show how to attack something, but show how attackers take advantage of your mistakes. This will enable you to protect your network by avoiding the pitfalls attackers use.

Harvesting and Reusing Idle Compute Cycles

Eugenia Loli 2005-07-03 Hardware 11 Comments

More on the University of Texas grid project's mission to integrate numerous, diverse resources into a comprehensive campus cyber-infrastructure for research and education. This article examines the idea of harvesting unused cycles from compute resources to provide this aggregate power for compute-intensive work.

Dual Core Linux Performance: Two Penguins Are Better Than One

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-03 Linux 29 Comments

With all of the attention on dual core processors lately, it has been real easy to overlook the one application that might benefit more from multiple cores than any other; Linux. OK, so technically Linux isn't an application, but the kernel has supported SMP for nine years almost to the date. But does any of this translate to great desktop performance for dual core processors?

Pegasos I G3 To Pegasos II G4 Upgrade Program

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-03 Morphos 28 Comments

The Pegasos I G3 to Pegasos II G4 Upgrade Program is now active. Original purchasers of Pegasos I motherboards can now trade-in for the Pegasos II with G4 processor for a low price of €200 - or opt to keep their original system for €300.

Introduction to the Spring Framework

Submitted by anonymous 2005-07-02 General Development 18 Comments

This article gives an introduction to the Spring framework, including Spring aspect-oriented programming (AOP) and the Inversion of Control (IOC) container. It provides an example to inject dependencies, or services, into a working credit card account application rather than having to build them in from the ground up.

The Linux Desktop Distribution Of The Future

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-02 Linux 183 Comments

Despite the constant predictions of "This year will be the year of the Linux desktop", such predictions have yet to become reality. While the reasons for this are numerous, they all tend to boil down to Linux being built as a server and workstation OS rather than a home system. This article will focus on how a distribution might be designed to not only make Linux a competitive desktop solution, but to propel it into a leader in the Desktop market.

Sweden Bans File-Sharing

Andrew Youll 2005-07-02 Legal 92 Comments

Sweden has outlawed the downloading of copyrighted movies, games and music in an attempt to curb rampant piracy. About 10% of Swedes freely swap music, games and films on their computers, one of the highest rates in the world.With no law banning file-sharing, Sweden had become a hotbed of piracy where films, music and software were readily swapped.

Sun Opens Door To Windows

Andrew Youll 2005-07-02 Oracle and SUN 53 Comments

Sun Microsystems may be warming up to the idea of selling Microsoft's Windows operating system on its servers. Tom Goguen, vice president of operating platform marketing for Sun, said this week that while Sun currently has no definite plan to strike a deal with Microsoft to sell Windows, the vendor will consider it if customers and partners think it's a good idea.

PalmSource Halts Development On Cobalt, Puts Linux On Front Burner

Submitted by anonymous 2005-07-02 Wireless 31 Comments

PalmSource in a last attempt to reverse problems of the last year, they are going to focus 100% on Linux-Based PalmOS for SmartPhones instead of focusing on Cobalt.

Microsoft And IBM Settle Antitrust Claims

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 Legal 22 Comments

On Friday, Microsoft and IBM said they had settled many of the outstanding antitrust issues between the two companies raised during the United States Department of Justice vs. Microsoft antitrust case during the mid-1990s.

KDE Announces The 24 Google Projects

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 KDE 41 Comments

The KDE Project and Google announce the 24 KDE projects selected for the "Summer of Code" project. The lucky students and the KDE e.V. will receive a total of $120,000 if they can complete their projects in the allotted two months.

JNode 0.2.1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 OS News 15 Comments

The JNode team is proud to announce the release of the version 0.2.1 of the JNode.org operating system.This release focused on improving the GUI handling and reducing the memory usage. Download here.

Ubuntu Releases Colony CD 2

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 Ubuntu 26 Comments

Colony CD 2 is ready. This is the second in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Breezy development cycle, as images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Breezy. You can download it here.

GNU Classpath 0.16 “Harmony!” Released

Submitted by Mark Wielaard 2005-07-01 Java 11 Comments

We are pleased to announce a new developer snapshot of GNU Classpath. GNU Classpath, essential libraries for java, is a project to create free core class libraries for use with runtimes, compilers and tools for the java programming language.

Sun ‘Distorts’ Definition Of Free Software

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 Open Source 84 Comments

Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz has angered some in the free software community for appearing to misrepresent what open source is. In Schwartz's opening keynote at the JavaOne conference on Monday he spoke about how free price is the most important feature of free and open source software.

HP Cites Progress On Quantum Computer

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 Hardware 26 Comments

Scientists at Hewlett-Packard said that they had developed a new strategy for designing a quantum computer composed of switches of light beams that could be vastly more powerful than today's digital electronic computers, which are constructed from transistors.

A Cold Look At Fedora Core 4

Thom Holwerda 2005-07-01 Fedora Core 64 Comments

TuxTops reviews Fedora Core 4; the user has some requirements regarding his operating system and some of these requirements are met by FC4 and some are not. The article makes mention of bugs, problems but also some good new features like the boot speed-up and the ease of use provided by the Red Hat preference panels.