Ongoing discussions on improving the kernel release structure and naming has caused the kernel developers to have a more fine grained release number for major fixes.
Zones are one of the many useful new features in Solaris 10, both for adminstrators and developers. This article gives an example of using zones to replicate a multi tiered environment for use in development.
Tipping points aren't made out of technical reality. They're made out of perceptual change. Thus, it was the legend of Torvalds, not the reality of his actions, that gave Linux the patina of political correctness needed for it to gain widespread public acceptance. Read the editorial here.
"This potential threat to first amendment rights and Apple's crackdown on Web sites that, in general, love the company and its products, do nothing to bolster Apple's image. In fact, the company's success of late has yielded accusations of bullying and potentially unlawful business tactics, not to mention complaints that songs purchased from its iTunes music service, the dominant digital music store, don't work with music players other than its own. To some, that might sound like its neighbor to the north," says Forbes.
The NetBSD Foundation has published a press release reporting on the benefits of the NetBSD/xen port, initially committed by Christian Limpach as previously reported. Since then, much progress has been made, and the NetBSD Project is now using NetBSD/xen internally. See the press release for further details.
AmigaWorld.net is hosting a translated OS4 pre-release review from the latest issue of the popular Swedish computer magazine DatorMagazin. Also Michael "The Terminator" Rozeboom has written an article for IntuitionBase.com within which he tries to explain why the PPC platform is currently a good choice for AmigaOS4.
The wireless USB protocol will be completed by the end of March and the access controller specification should be approved by the end of the year. Wireless USB is designed to be used at ranges of less than 10 metres and will allow peak data speeds of 480Mbps. Also, Intel has unveiled its first proposals for 802.11s, a new mesh wireless networking standard.
With a rapid succession of people moving towards Open Source, advocacy and evangelism is increasingly important in helping organizations to move over. The O'Reilly Network have started publishing a series of articles about Open Source by Jono Bacon that teaches how to approach advocacy sensibly and more productively. Read the first article here.
I have interviewed the author of the fascinating software Contiki OS, lwIP, uIP and protothreads, and asked him questions about the software itself, the way he develops on embedded platforms, as well as his interests in sensor networks and opensource.
Two of the biggest forces in the IT industry called on developers to begin porting their applications to x86-based 64-bit architectures. Microsoft and Intel said hardware and software pieces are in place to convert the computing industry away from a 32-bit Wintel ecosystem (define) to a world where all platforms, from servers and workstations through desktop and mobile, can run at nearly twice the speed with a larger address space. Elsewher, Microsoft's Longhorn Windows client product team will be led by G. Michael Sievert.
Close on the heels of the release of Linux 2.6.11 is the discussion of what should be included in the next revision. Andrew Morton who maintains the MM tree considered as the soft development tree from which things are later pushed to Linus lists the status for various new features here.
The IT industry isn’t as boring and technically obsessed as many outsiders believe. Viruses and malicious hacker threats in particular have been increasingly sensationalised in the popular press, squeezing the issues gradually into the public consciousness.
Porting large numbers of programs to RISC OS introduces many new problems - most notably, how to keep them all up to date. In this drobe.co.uk article I discuss the development of an autobuilder for RISC OS ports, and encourage people to contribute to it.
