OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Analyst Predicts Breakup of Hewlett-Packard

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-08 In the News 23 Comments

A few weeks after Hewlett-Packard disappointed Wall Street for the first time since its $19 billion mega-merger with Compaq, an influential stock analyst has told clients he sees the eventual breakup of the company. Steve Milunovich, who follows big computer companies for Merrill Lynch, said he thinks HP will have to spin off its printer business or separate its consumer business from its corporate business.

Moving from Visual Basic to ASP.NET

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-08 .NET 4 Comments

Learn the similarities and differences between Web application development using ASP.NET and classic desktop application development. This article is aimed toward Visual Basic 6.0 developers who are interested in getting started with creating ASP.NET Web applications, and examines the differences between creating desktop applications with Visual Basic 6.0 and creating ASP.NET Web applications with Visual Basic .NET.

Portable.NET 0.5.12 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-07 .NET 11 Comments

Portable.NET 0.5.12 has been released, and is available for download. This is mostly a bug fix release, heading up towards 0.6.0, but with substantial improvements throughout the system, particularly WinForms. The release date for DotGNU 0.1 has been fixed at end-September. For Portable.NET the goals are to get pnetC to basic usefulness, fix as many system.xml bugs as possible, and make the core button/textbox/scroll widgets work in WinForms. Screenshots available.

InfoWorld: Moving to a Mac

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-07 Apple 65 Comments

Chad Dickerson, CTO at InfoWorld, takes a ride with a forgotten 450 Mhz G4 Mac on his workplace and moves it home. Soon, he would be so impressed that the Mac would replace his Linux home server and one of his two Windows PCs. Last week, Chad gave us his opinion regarding Linux too.

The Age of Corporate Open Source Enlightenment

Submitted by Anonymous Coward 2003-09-07 Open Source 16 Comments

What will happen as more corporations see the open source light? Paul Ferris editorializes: "Like it or not, zealots and heretics are finding common ground in the open source holy war."

Plugging The Holes In Windows

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-07 Windows 38 Comments

Microsoft isn't known for the security of its software. But that's something the company is trying to change. Read the article at Forbes.

RISC OS Select 3i2 Update Available to Subscribers

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-06 RISC OS 12 Comments

Version 3i2 of RISC OS Select has been published online this evening by developers RISCOS Ltd., for Select subscribers. The install includes RISC OS 4.37 and this week's Toolbox release. Select 3i2 is described as the "final release version of Select 3" and is presumably the stabilised online release that will precede the eventual CD distribution in a few weeks. For more RISC OS news, make sure you visit the Drobe and IconBar sites daily.

Apple Seeds Panther build 7B59, 10.2.8 to Testers

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-06 macOS 22 Comments

Apple seeded build 7B59 of Mac OS X 10.3, Panther, as well as build 6R57 of OS X 10.2.8. The updates were posted to the Apple Developer Connection web site Friday, ThinkSecret reports.

GCC 3.3.1 Switch Coming Soon on NetBSD

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-06 NetBSD 18 Comments

Matthew Green says he is ready to switch Sparc, Sparc64, i386 & Alpha ports to using GCC3.3.1 by default. He's uploaded 4 snapshots, all cross compiled from i386-netbsd. However, there appears to be work involved with fixing approximately 193 broken packages, BSDForums reports.

IBM’s JFS 1.1.3 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-06 General Development 23 Comments

Dave Kleikamp announced the release of JFS 1.1.3 on the lkml yesterday. Anyone using JFS who recently upgraded to the 2.6-test Linux kernel will want to take note of the new version of the utilities.

Genesi News: Pegasos II Offer

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-06 Morphos 20 Comments

The Pegasos II will go on sale soon. The first limited production of the Pegasos II will be for 600 units. More information can be found at Amiga.org.

Microsoft Corp. and Be, Inc. Reach Agreement to Settle Lawsuit

Submitted by Jill 2003-09-06 Haiku 134 Comments

Be Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced that the parties have reached a mutually acceptable mediated settlement of an antitrust lawsuit filed by Be Inc. in February 2002. Be claimed that Microsoft maintained its monopoly by having exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled OSes. Be will receive a payment from Microsoft, after attorney's fees, in the amount of $23,250,000 USD to end further litigation, and Microsoft... admits no wrongdoing. UPDATE: BeOSJournal.org has an interview with ex-Be employees Dan Sandler, Baron Arnold, and Dave Brown. Interesting is also Frank Boosman's blog on the issue:

Novell Bulks Up on Linux Tools, Projects

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-05 Novell and Ximian 16 Comments

In 1999, Novell Inc. conceded that it would never again dominate the network operating system market with NetWare alone. Still licking wounds from disastrous office productivity crusades against Microsoft, the company shed its WordPerfect albatross, retrenched and embraced what was then an up-and-comer: Linux. It has been slowly melding its products and services with the open-source platform ever since. Read the rest of the report on Novell, Ximian and Mono at SDTimes.

Mix-and-Matching Software?

Submitted by Bolo 2003-09-05 General Development 9 Comments

SDTimes has an article about Transitive Technologies which claims to have a software-based binary translation package. The software, called QuickTransit, "decodes application binaries into an intermediate form, optimizes blocks of code and stores them in cache, then encodes for the target processor." There's nothing on the Transitive website, but there this page explaining (in very general terms) the software means for binary translation. Mix-and-match your software perhaps?

Microsoft To Unveil New NAS OS With OEM Partners

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-05 Windows 9 Comments

Microsoft is expected to announce with vendor partners the pending rollout of a number of NAS appliances based on its Windows Storage Server 2003 operating system. Microsoft initially unveiled details of this OS and released it to NAS OEMs last June. The OS allows the creation of point-in-time copies of a single volume or multiple volumes using Volume Shadow Copy Services.

Is Java Finished?

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-05 Java 61 Comments

"If Sun does not get its act together and light a fire under the JCP, it might find itself losing the tiny battles that make up its war with .NET. Letting Java stagnate will open doors for .NET that Java might never again be able to enter." Read the editorial at NewsFactor by Vincent Ryan.

Microsoft: Asia Not Playing Fair Over OS

Submitted by Bishop 2003-09-05 Microsoft 98 Comments

A plan by Japan, China and South Korea to develop an operating system alternative to Microsoft's Windows software could raise concerns over fair competition, Microsoft said on Friday. "Governments should not be in the position to decide who the winners are, " Microsoft said.

SCO’s Next Target: SGI?

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-05 SCO 27 Comments

SCO Group, which has sued IBM for more than $3 billion for allegedly moving Unix code into Linux, may also have Silicon Graphics in its crosshairs. SCO on Friday declined to comment on future legal action, but Chris Sontag, the senior vice president in charge of SCO's effort to derive more revenue from its Unix intellectual property, has said two things that suggest SGI is a likely target. SCO said sometime ago that "their" NUMA code found in Linux, has come from SGI engineers working in the Linux kernel.

Benchmark: PowerMac G4/G5 Vs P4, Dual Xeon & Dual Athlon

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-05 Benchmarks 52 Comments

The benchmark at Barefeats -- Power Mac G4 and G5 versus Pentium 4, Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon -- has being updated to include new information and tests.

First Look: Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for AMD64

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-05 Windows 23 Comments

"While it's common knowledge that Microsoft has been working on Windows XP and Server 2003 for the AMD64 architecture for some-time, little is known about the workings and limitations of this new operating system. We recently got the chance to try out the first publicly released variant of the operating system (Build 3790), and combined with reading through loads of tech docs and talking with folks over at AMD, we've comprised a summary of how we think the OS is shaping up, where it's headed, and we'll try to answer some of the common questions about the OS in general." Read the preview article at the GamePC web site.