OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Send Messages in a Post PostMessage() API

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-15 Haiku 28 Comments

"There is an unfortunate holdover in the BeOS API which has been depricated in the next version of Zeta: BLooper::PostMessage(). This method has a few special cases which make it dangerous to play with, at least one of which is detailed in the BeBook's entry for it. But judging from numerous bits of code I have seen, no one really reads the BeBook that closely anyway." Read the dev article here. Update: Ex-Be engineer Dianne Hackborn replied to the topic.

Editorial: Not Everyone Understands the Patent Situation

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-15 Editorial 90 Comments

It is when I read articles like this that I have "my blood all going up to my head" (that's a Greek saying for people that get angry). So apparently, Apple is trying to patent "transparent windows that do a certain action after fading away". While I don't personally find this "innovation/invention" patentable, it's fine with me: Apple is doing the best it can to secure its business (maybe I would do the same if I had shareholders on my back).

New Video/Screenshots of SkyOS

Submitted by Robert 2004-05-15 SkyOS 58 Comments

Video and new screenshots of SkyOS 5.0-beta6 available for download. (MPG, 352x240, ~7min). In other news, the Diff-Filesystem is almost finished. The Diff-Filesystem is a layer between the VFS and any disk's file system. Elsewhere, the Syllable team released experimental new USB drivers.

FreeBSD: GEOM Gate Committed

Submitted by FreeBSD_User 2004-05-15 FreeBSD 5 Comments

Pawel Dawidek has been working on GEOM Gate since Aug. of last year, adding incremental features and making requests for testing as required. Earlier this month the code was committed to -current.

Intel can Switch on 64-bitness for Prescotts at Will

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-15 Intel 25 Comments

Paul Otellini showed an interesting slide at the NY analyst meeting last night which shows how fast Intel hopes to move to multicore processors. Otellini said: "What's next is something more profound, moving our product line from logical to physical parallelism. Parallelism is computer speak for taking a serial of tasks and doing them together. You need parallelism in the hardware and operating systems and apps that are aware the machine can handle multiple threads".

Articles and Shows on Mono

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-15 Mono 47 Comments

Following Paul Ferrill's article "What is Mono and why should you care?" on DevChannel.org, find an all-around Linux article by Dee-Ann LeBlanc "And Then There's Mono", while yesterday the LUGRadio had a show dedicated to the controversial nature of Mono.

Opinion: The Changing Sun

Guest post by Tim H. of Rack64.com 2004-05-14 Oracle and SUN 24 Comments

Sun Microsystems, once a great enterprise computer company, has been shrinking. Sun is also shrinking in other ways, such as the enterprise-only part, by entering to the consumer markets. Sun has getting slow at some things, such as copying off competitors.

Red Hat Updating Both Linux Versions

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 Red Hat 55 Comments

The update for the company's Enterprise Linux product was released Wednesday, with added support for x86 chips and IBM JS20 blade servers. Up next, the new release of the cutting edge Fedora, News.com reports. Update and mini-commentary: Editorial at eWEEK: "Why Linux users hate Red Hat". We don't think so, Red Hat is still the most used/downloaded distro of all. However, it is true that people usually hate the No1 (just because it is No1) and favor any underdog. Having said that, I prefer Slackware because of its simplicity, app stability, fewer distro bugs and speed compared to Fedora.

WinOE Likely To Join Indigo, WinFS In Longhorn

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 Windows 8 Comments

It's looking more like the next-generation Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, will get key orchestration features derived from BizTalk Server. Microsoft is working on workflow and orchestration technology, called the Windows Orchestration Engine (WinOE), for the Longhorn/Orcas time frame, several sources familiar with the company's plans said. The technology manages how processes or software services interact in distributed systems. Elsewhere, Microsoft will 'componentize' both the client and server versions of Windows Longhorn, its next-generation platform.

Gnome 2.6.1 Released

Submitted by adel 2004-05-14 Gnome 30 Comments

Gnome 2.6.1 was made available, a bugfix version which was pending release for about a week. Update: Michael Hall replies to Petreley's review of Gnome 2.6.

Seven Open Source Business Strategies for Competitive Advantage

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 In the News 7 Comments

Open source presents a large potential competitive advantage for hardware and software vendors, and vendors of complementary or substitute services. Linux has contributed greatly to the adoption and success of OSS. In this article, ITManagersJournal examines seven open source strategies that can give your company a competitive advantage.

Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.4 build 7H56

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 macOS 10 Comments

Apple Computer seeded its developers this week with a new build of Mac OS X 10.3.4 Panther, labeled Mac OS X 10.3.4 build 7H56.

File Alteration Monitoring Techniques under Linux

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 Linux 30 Comments

In a multi-user, multi-process operating system, files are continually being created, modified, and deleted, often by apparently unrelated processes. This means that any software that needs to keep aware of what is happening in a filesystem needs to employ a file monitoring technique. Monitoring, in this sense, means keeping a watch over a set of files, waiting for any of them to change. Read the article at DevChannel.

Get Started with Slackware

Submitted by Adam Patterson 2004-05-14 Slackware, Slax 33 Comments

Here are two articles introducing Slackware to new users: a Slackware installation guide and a "quick and dirty guide to packages". Update: One more article: "Slackware Linux with pkgsrc Packages".

Improving .NET Application Performance and Scalability

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 .NET 6 Comments

Join MSDN TV for a glimpse at the newest release from the patterns & practices team. In this episode they discuss memory management, COM Interop and the Dispose pattern.

Opinions on the Open Source Economy Model

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 Open Source 51 Comments

.NET developer John Carroll wrote two articles on F/OSS claiming that the proprietary model is what drives the economy (article 1, article 2) while Rebecca Reid wrote her own piece "Open-source development models fall flat". What these articles don't discuss is the "fully open standards" model, which is a model Sun Microsystems is particularly fond of, and in a way it falls in between of "closed" and "open". Here's a reply from Sun engineer Glynn Foster to the second article.

First Look at Linare Professional

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-14 Linux 62 Comments

OSNews will feature a review of the upcoming Linare Professional edition next month. For this new version Linare has developed a new KDE theme along with other updates to their distro. Screenshots.

On Scripting Languages

Guest post by Ritesh Kumar 2004-05-13 General Development 84 Comments

In recent years "scripting languages" are becoming a path which is a must go for rapid application development. The open source community has seen many scripting language implementations. Some really popular and good ones available are perl and python.

Interview with Mike Hearn of Wine and Autopackage Fame

Submitted by BV 2004-05-13 Linux 6 Comments

WineHQ has an interview with Mike Hearn, the Wine and Autopackage developer (and also frequent OSNews reader). You can read 12 more interviews with Wine developers in their archives.

Longhorn Goes to Pieces

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-13 Windows 19 Comments

Bill Gates' dream of an end-to-end search tool for corporate networks remains just that: a dream, at least until the end of the decade, says News.com.