Technology and UIs on Movies: Entertaining a Diverse Audience

Multimedia, AV 70 Comments
With the computer market exploding into success the last 20 years more and more movies are featuring people using computers. Being a computer geek myself, I expect a level of "technological reality" for the movies that are not in the realm of "sci-fi", but directors usually are feeding their movies with superficial scenes about computers just for the happy clapping from the computer-illiterate audience.
Read More

TheSoftwareCorner: Lindows 4.0 Review

Linspire 33 Comments
"Lindows is heading in the right direction when it is going towards the home user market. Lindows is by far the easiest distro of Linux I have tried to date, and yes I've tried Mandrake 8.x/9.x and RedHat 8. Some aspects of Lindows are a bit confusing like the network printer share and no network wizard to share your internet connection." Read the short review at TheSoftwareCorner.
Read More

Comments, Trolls, and Flamewars

OS News 65 Comments
You may have noticed that we've implemented a system that allows readers to report comments that abuse our forum rules, in an effort to improve the quality of the conversation and make the job of moderating the comments a little easier for OSNews volunteers. However, this reactive solution is only half of the effort that will be required to make OSNews a better place for reasoned debate. The proactive, and more important, effort is the responsibility of all those who use the comments system. It involves showing a little restraint before being lured into the fray and contributing to a negative atmosphere.
Read More

Eclipse 3.0 M3 Released

  Submitted by Deniz Kaan Çopur Java 37 Comments
This is the third milestone release towards Eclipse 3.0. Check out the new and noteworthy improvements this version brings. The group in charge of the open-source Eclipse project approved a three month long restructuring process this week that should reduce IBM's dominant role in the effort and make the project more attractive to Java vendors such as Sun Microsystems and BEA Systems. Also, they are thinking of changing the name of the project.
Read More

Linux 2.6: A Breakthrough for Embedded Systems

Linux 28 Comments
Linux 2.6 introduces many new features that make it an excellent operating system for embedded computing. Among these new features are enhanced real-time performance, easier porting to new computers, support for large memory models, support for microcontrollers, and an improved I/O system. This whitepaper at LinuxDevices.com describes the new functions and features of the latest Linux kernel of special interest to embedded system developers. On other Linux kernel news, Linus Torvalds released Linux 2.6.0-test5 for general testing.
Read More

How KDE & GNOME Fought their War and Got Things All Backwards

Wayland 48 Comments
What if FreeDesktop.org started to become the "free software desktop project" and GNOME and KDE slowly became "flavours aimed at different audiences", Seth Nickell wonders in his blog. Seth is having some good ideas about how the future of X11 DEs should feel like, while down that page there is an extra explanation of Storage, the technology we reported last week that Seth is developing.
Read More

Reversible Computers: Turning Back the CPU Clock

Geek stuff 15 Comments
You're working into the wee hours trying to fix that bug. But by time the debugger catches it the original cause has long since passed. How are you going to figure out just what went wrong a billion instructions earlier? It's at times like these that you need a reversible computer. The idea is simple: a computer merely executes a sequence of elementary instructions. If we could just run through that list of instructions in reverse we could work backwards and find the original cause of our error. But of course things are never quite that simple.
Read More

IBM Charges Forward with Power 5

  Submitted by emo IBM 20 Comments
IBM has previewed the designs for its upcoming 64-bit Power 5 processor, which the company states will augment total system performance by 40 percent over its predecessor. At last week's Hot Chips Conference in Palo Alto, Calif., IBM disclosed that it was incorporating simultaneous multi-threading into Power 5; the process takes chip multiprocessing to a new level where each chip tackles two threads as opposed to one.
Read More

New Windows Update to Cover More Products

  Submitted by emo Windows 18 Comments
The fifth revision of Windows Update is set to enter beta testing, as Microsoft continues efforts to improve its facility for keeping customers' systems up to date. Windows Update V5 is slated to be a significant upgrade, eventually extending the service's reach beyond Windows to all Microsoft products. The company will initially support updates to Office 2003, as well as SQL and Exchange.
Read More

Apple Releases Java 1.4.1-Update1

Java 11 Comments
MacMinute reports that Apple today released Java 1.4.1 Update 1, a new version of its Java implementation for Mac OS X. The update adds the following enhancements: improved Java applet support for Safari and other Web browsers that support the Java Internet Plug-In; improved drawing correctness and performance; changes to Java 1.3.1 that provide support for Oracle11i client applications on Mac OS X; and improved stability, memory usage, and correctness. The update is available via the Mac OS X Software Update preference pane.
Read More

Symbian Vs Linux: Who Will Win in Wireless? First 2.6 Embedded Linux

Linux 9 Comments
From NewMobileComputing: Operating systems do make a difference in mobile phones, writes Wireless Center Editor Guy Kewney—and Linux is looking stronger every day, eWEEK says. On other embedded news, LynuxWork's BlueCat Linux 5.0, based on a 2.6-series Linux kernel, is now available for public beta testing, with a projected final release date set for November. LynuxWorks claims this to be the first public availability of embedded Linux based on the new kernel. Key new features include: improved kernel preemption; 0(1) scheduler; improved POSIX threading support.
Read More