Is AMD Being Coy with its Clockspeeds?

With Opteron now officially set to debut at 1.6 and 1.8 GHz clockspeeds (and no 2 GHz model as initially hoped) discussions have resurfaced as to how well AMD is able to scale the Hammer architecture. 1.8 GHz, after all, is nothing new for the AthlonXP? AMD reached this speed nine months ago with the nuclear-furnace original-model 2200+ and shot nimbly past that speed once AMD revised their .13 micron process and cut their heat dissipation." Read the article at The Inquirer. Athlon64 benchmarks here.

NeXT Still Stands Out in its Mac Incarnation

During the past few weeks, I've installed a batch of new programs on my Macintosh computer running the OS X operating system. In this case, however, 'new' is a relative term. All share a legacy from NeXT -- the technology Apple Computer acquired in 1997 as the foundation of what became OS X. NeXT, founded about a decade earlier by Steve Jobs, was so advanced for its time that the world is still catching up in some ways." Read the article at SiliconValley.com.

SkyOS 3.9.7 Released

After six months of bug-fixing and development of new features, SkyOS 3.9.7 is now available to download. There is a new installer, automatic device mounting, VMWare 3/4 support, a media player, SkyKruzer the web browser and more. The OS can be installed on the hard drive or can be used with the ISO "live" CD (29 MB).

C# is just Java? Only a Little Worse

"C# and Java are both nice languages. They reach similar goals through similar means, although C# adds some syntactical touches to Java, such as the foreach keyword and a more pleasant extends/implements construct. Unfortunately, the improvements are outweighed by the instances of regression. In this article, I'll compare the languages, while trying to avoid dipping to the JVM and CLR level." Read the article at Builder.com. Update: A similar comparison article, about security.

Unofficial USB 2.0 Drivers for MDD Power Macs

It seems that the SMP 1.25 & 1.42 GHz Apple PowerMacs came by default with a NEC USB 2.0 controller and no one knew about it. A Korean site broke the news that while these Macs are currently sold as "USB 1.1", in reality they are USB 2.0-capable, missing only the drivers needed to function as such. Some users claim that these drivers work fine with that NEC chipset, as USB 2.0. Caution: Installation on other Mac models could render the system inoperable.

Darwin 6.5 Source Now Available

MacNN reports that the Darwin team today posted the Darwin 6.5 source code, corresponding to Mac OS X 10.2.5. "Darwin 6.5 is what we call an 'on-cycle' source-code release, where the corresponding Darwin source is made available soon after a new release of Mac OS X to customers." Several projects (e.g., gcc, gdb, CUPS, Rendezvous) will continue to do 'off-cycle' releases, according to the developer, whereby the source code is updated more frequently than our commercial releases.

DARPA Pulls OpenBSD Funding

The open-source project's leader says the unused portion of a $2.3 million grant has been withdrawn due to concerns that it was mainly funding foreign researchers. OpenBSD would have 60 developers flying in from around the world (they bought their own tickets, non-refundable) for a Hackathon May 8 - 20, which is a major part of OpenBSD's development cycle. Follow the discussion here.