OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

EU planning massive fine against Microsoft

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-23 Microsoft 35 Comments

With last week's failure to agree on a settlement, the European Union is set to rule in the Microsoft antitrust case Wednesday. It's likely to impose a massive fine and demand concessions from the software maker. European regulators plan to levy a record fine of more than $600 million against Microsoft as part of a strongly worded rebuke of the company's business practices.

XPDE 0.5.0 Released

Submitted by XulChris 2004-03-23 Desktop environments 26 Comments

This is the first release of XPDE with a completely rewritten code base. A screenshot can be seen here. Go at TechDigest to pose your question for an interview with XPDE.

MegaJogos: The case of the fully utilized CPU

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-23 General Development 5 Comments

Do you like playing detective and solving mysteries? Performance problems come in many guises, giving you ample opportunity to indulge your clue-hunting proclivities to identify and resolve them. The main man behind the MegaJogos multi-player game site and a member of the Java Games community, recently altered the application behind the site to use the NIO package to enhance its scalability.

Video Production with Linux

Guest post by Paul Gallant 2004-03-22 Multimedia, AV 75 Comments

I've recently started a video production business. I decided to use Linux for my "office" type applications for security, stability, and budget reasons. I've really been impressed with the quality of these applications. I use Open Office, KOrganizer, Mozilla, and Gnucash for most of my work. After having such a pleasant experience with these programs I began to investigate what Linux apps were available for video production. I found a linux counterpart of just about every program I use:

Sun Wants to Make Linux 3D

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Oracle and SUN 54 Comments

Sun Microsystems, a company that has been making noise lately in the Linux desktop market with StarOffice 7 and Java Desktop System, is currently working on an experimental 3D successor to Java Desktop that they believe will change the way we interact with computers, and in the end elevate the popularity of Linux in general.

VMWare 4.5.1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 OS News 12 Comments

VMWare 4.5.1 includes updates and fixes include changes to the EULA, a more reliable SCSI implementation, better support for Linux guest operating systems using kernels in the 2.6 series, and support for Windows 95 guest operating systems on high-speed processors. Some of the new features are an increased memory range up to 3.6GB per virtual machine (4GB to all vms), experimental support for Longhorn, support for PXE on virtual network hardware, and support for Novell NetWare 5.1, 6, and 6.5 and SUSE LINUX 9.0.

How Secure Is OS X?

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 macOS 40 Comments

What is the big picture when it comes to Apple security? Is OS X safe enough to be a viable contender for running public Web sites and general enterprise applications? Read the article at NewsFactor.

Mobile Java Apps to Make Enterprise Splash

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Wireless 1 Comment

Sun Microsystems Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. and Sybase Inc. are each readying products and services that could expedite the development of mobile enterprise applications. Sun and RIM will join forces at the CTIA Wireless conference in Atlanta this week to announce plans to bring Java Web services to RIM's corporate customers. In the meantime, Microsoft aims to score with sports fans with the launch Monday of its first add-on service for so-called "smart" watches.

Dispelling the myths of Gentoo Linux

Submitted by Dave Whitinger 2004-03-22 Gentoo 48 Comments

This long-term Red Hat Linux user has given an honest look at Gentoo, and has concluded that the stereotypes surrounding this distribution are false. After all these years, he has finally found his new distribution: Gentoo Linux.

Get to Know Nemerle

Submitted by Konrad Mrożek 2004-03-22 .NET 17 Comments

Student's team from University of Wroclaw (Poland), developing new .NET platform hybrid language Nemerle, get a grant from Microsoft in the amount to 25 thousand EURO. That was a reward in a competition which was in connection with the ROTOR platform. Mono was also used.

Tracing in a multithreaded, multiplatform environment

Submitted by Frank 2004-03-22 Java 1 Comment

Most Java programmers use some kind of tracing system to keep track of potential errors and problems in code that is under development. However, multithreaded and multiplatform systems can generate a large and baffling amount of tracing data.

Linux Kernel: Kernel Preemption, Updating Microcode on Intel CPUs

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Linux 31 Comments

A recent bug report on the lkml complained of significant performance degradation from enabling CONFIG_PREEMPT, kernel preemption. 2.6 kernel maintainer Andrew Morton pointed out that such degradation from enabling kernel preemption is not normal, instead likely from it triggering a bug. Also, it was recently asked on the lkml what value there is in upgrading the microcode on an Intel processor. Tigran Aivazian, author of the IA32 microcode driver and Microcode Update Utility for Linux explained.

An Introduction to the Rational Unified Process

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 General Development 25 Comments

The Rational Unified Process is a software development process that covers the entire software development lifecycle. In this book chapter, you'll learn its key features and how they can benefit you.

An Introduction to Generics in Java

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Java 21 Comments

Genericity? One of the most anticipated and debated enhancements to the Java language in Sun's new 1.5 release is generics. John Anthony and Scott Chalfant provide an introduction to this new feature and help you explore some of its more-advanced features and avoid potential difficulties.

Business Process Virtualization, Outsourcing & Process Reengineering

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 OS News 6 Comments

Reengineering left a bad taste in many managers' mouths, and Business Process Virtualization looks very similar on the surface. However, as Martha Young and Michael Jude explain, BPV can deliver the benefits that reengineering promised, but never delivere. They also illustrate the differences and similarities of BPV to two earlier approaches: process reengineering and outsourcing.

Preventing Buffer Overflow In Visual C++ Applications

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 General Development 16 Comments

Buffer overflows are currently the most common cause of security flaws in applications. Discover the techniques that professionals use to thwart this problem in this article by John Mueller.

More troubles await Microsoft in Europe

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Microsoft 39 Comments

While the European Commission this week goes through the final steps to conclude its five-year case against Microsoft, the company's legal problems in Europe are far from over and appear to be accelerating, antitrust lawyers and officials said.

12 Reasons Andreessen Is Hot On Open Source

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Open Source 49 Comments

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of trailblazer Netscape Communications, can spot a long-term trend. So when Opsware Inc.--another company Andreessen co-founded and chairs--introduced its Opsware System 4 software on Linux in December, some of his faithful fans doubtless took the move as a sign of things to come.

Systems Management Server 2003 Administration Feature Pack

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-22 Windows No Comments

The SMS 2003 Administration Feature Pack contains three tools: the Manage Site Accounts Tool, the Transfer Site Settings Wizard, and the Elevated Rights Deployment Tool.

On the Button Order of Gnome 2

Submitted by Anonymous 2004-03-21 Gnome 125 Comments

"Mr Shrap" has written an interesting write-up on a (still) touchy topic: the button order adopted in Gnome 2 and why he doesn't like it.