Beyond3D
had the opportunity to speak with Chris Donahue of Microsoft recently. Being the Lead Evangelist for Windows when it comes to convincing developers that Windows is the best there is, we decided to ask him a variety of questions, ranging from what he actually does, to DirectX and its importance, to companies like NVIDIA and ATI , to the next major Microsoft operating system codenamed Longhorn. Chris was previously the manager of Developer Relations at NVIDIA so he should provide some interesting insights about working with the independent hardware vendors as well.
Submitted by Jan Schaumann
2004-01-06
NetBSD
NetBSD's
Packages Collection aka
pkgsrc now has support for an experimental new framework called ``
pkgviews''.
This framework, finally allowing multiple versions of one package to co-exist
without conflicts (among other great features), was first proposed by Alistair
Crooks at
EuroBSDCon
2002 and has been integrated into pkgsrc by Johnny C. Lam, who just posted
a
User's
guide to the tech-pkg ml.
The
OpenBeOS Translation Kit BETA 3 is now available. Many bugs have been fixed, including one in the Translation Kit which caused some applications to crash and prevented others from loading bitmap resources. Elsewhere, Waldemar Kornewald from the Networking Kit recently changed a file in the OpenBeOS CVS and posted a comment which is
pretty self-explanatory.
Submitted by Kelly McNeill
2004-01-06
Linux
"
Contributors to Linux are nothing short of dedicated when it comes to offering their coding efforts, but as many are aware, much of that effort is wasted in the way of duplicated work, a great deal of which happen to only be the "sexy" parts of the code base. The problem is not so much in getting developer support, but in getting the masses organized and motivated to tackle the otherwise neglected aspects of the open source operating system." The following osViews editorial contributor has
some interesting ideas to not only help Linux development but also the platform as a whole and even its promotion.
Microsoft has taken the wraps off of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. It addresses security concerns, fixes previous security issues, and implements new security features. In case you are slow on the uptake, Windows XP Service Pack 2 is all about security,
says ArsTechnica.
OK, so you want to create a windows service and you're not a .NET guru? This is exactly what got me in trouble with my wife. It started off easy enough, but before the weekend was through, my wife was getting on to me for spending so much time at the computer. She thought that I should be spending quality time with our family, imagine that. I told her that I was doing some 'personal' research, that, "no, it's not work honey" and "I'm trying to learn some new technology", "think of it as reading a book, only on the computer..." Inanities like that, she wasn't having any of it, of course. Regardless, I am glad to report, I figured it out and just in the nick of time, too.
Marcelo Tosatti
has released the final 2.4.24 stable Linux kernel unchanged from 2.4.24-rc1. The main reason for the release was a local vulnerability in mremap() syscall, that can cause local users to gain privileges. It's recommended that all users upgrade their kernel. 2.4.24 is available from numerous kernel.org mirrors.
Richard Stallman wrote a short
editorial on the 20th anniversary of GNU. It's a summary of what he considers needs to be done now.
This article is the fifth and final installment of my series on Debian-based commercial distros in a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) environment. It has been a wild ride (see OSNews' archives under the "Features" menu for the previous articles of the series), and I would rather eat my weight in jelly beans than go through that again. But I think it was worth it. We will see in this article
Xandros being reviewed and compared to all previous distros I used and reviewed the past 2-3 months.
AlwaysOn
sits down with Ximian founders Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza, now respectively VP of research and development and CTO for Novell, and Chris Stone, Novell vice chairman, for an update on Novell's open-source strategy.
Here is a great new, innovative product: a very intelligent 800-pound robot to help you at home,
named NS-5. At least this is what the firm "3 Laws Safe" is promising for July 16th this year. The OS used in the humanoid robot is named "Teresa" and the version shipped "
will be the 2.1.2. Future OS updates will be available for wireless download 24/7. All NS-5 owners shall receive free OS updates for the lifetime of their personal domestic assistant" their site claims.
For Windows codenamed "Longhorn," Microsoft is investing in the development infrastructure for industry partners, as well as investing in technologies and innovations that continue to expand the PC capabilities and experiences for end-users—including support for advancing technologies such as PCI Express, new storage technologies, and robust advances for both wired and wireless networking.
This site provides pointers to technical information for hardware, driver, and firmware engineers who are planning and creating new products that will run Windows "Longhorn."
In this
artile, at
Consulting Times, they discuss the costs in the terms of lives and dollars when local governments do not deploy open standards based software for data sharing. Can local governments afford to create redundant applications to meet new Federal standards for first responder alerts, emergency services, law enforcement, broadcasters? Open Source collaborative initiatives may provide the only solution for the US if the people want to create a safer environment.
Read the Fedora review article at
LinuxBeginner.org.
Submitted by Jan Schaumann
2004-01-04
NetBSD
NetBSD's Christopher Sekiya announced on New Year's Eve that he committed the final bits for Indigo (IP20) support to
the
NetBSD/sgimips Port.
Both NFS root and local root now boot multi-user. Please see
his
message to the port-sgimips MailingList for details.
This whitepaper by a veteran real-time trainer David Kalinsky provides an introduction to the subject of Priority Inversions and Mutexes, from the perspective of embedded systems software developers using a real-time operating system. It discusses unbounded priority inversions, including a detailed example. Then it surveys the differences between mutexes and “classic” semaphores, and the use of priority promotion, priority inheritance and priority ceiling protocols. More articles
here.
Submitted by Camilo Valdez
2004-01-04
Hardware
When your computer resides on another planet, service calls aren't an option. So when BAE Systems North America Inc. needed an extremely reliable operating system for the computational subsystem it was supplying for NASA's Mars rovers,
it chose an industrial-strength, real-time operating system from Wind River Systems Inc., Alameda, Calif, VXWorks.
Syllable 0.5.2 has been released and is now available for
download. Some of the changes include new graphics card drivers for the nVidia GeForceFX and the Savage IX/MX chipsets. The media framework has also been updated, so now Syllable works with multiple soundcards. A full list of
changes can be found on the Syllable website.
