Microsoft: Still a Smartphone Player?
"Shortly after one of Microsoft's key partners unceremoniously dumped its software for one made by Nokia, the company said it remains a player in the combination cell-phone and PDA smartphone market. In a move industry analysts called a "blow" and "stumble" into the marketplace by Microsoft, cell-phone maker Sendo scrapped plans to release a Microsoft-powered smartphone just days before it was due to launch." Read the rest of the article at Wired.
Tablet PCs Mix Science Fiction and Real-World Friction
"Put an absolute beginner in front of a computer and he'll try to touch the screen to make things happen. The revolutionary thing about Microsoft's new tablet PC is that it transforms this wishful-thinking behavior into reality: You can write on its screen and the thing will respond! This is the stuff of science fiction, and it makes the tablet PC an unusually ambitious venture for Microsoft. It's just not a successful one." Rob Pegoraro tells it like it is for WashingtonPost.
OpenOffice.org Project Update
Here's the latest about what the OpenOffice Project is up to for language support, new platforms and development partnerships.
Linux Multithreading Advances
"Recent advances in Linux's threading implementation are expected to continue to ease migration from other Unix-like operating systems. These advancements have arrived with intense activity on two fronts. First, thread-handling improvements have greatly enhanced the kernel's scalability even to thousands of threads. Second, there are now two fresh, competing implementations of the POSIX pthreads standard (NGPT and NPTL) set to replace the aging LinuxThreads library." Read the article at OnLamp.
Original Mac Veteran Leads Sun Desktop Charge
"Sun's Desktop strategy - "Project Madhatter" - is taking shape and it dominated questions from the floor at an analyst session in San Francisco today. In charge of Madhatter is Curtis Sasaki - Sun's VP of Desktop Software - who was at Apple at the launch of the original Macintosh in 1984, led the IIGS project and then followed Steve Jobs to NeXT where he spent several years. More from Curtis in a moment. Read the story at TheRegister.
When Good Interfaces Go Crufty
"In Vernor Vinge’s sci-fi novel A fire upon the deep, he presents the idea of “software archeology”. Vinge’s future has software engineers spending large amounts of time digging through layers of decades-old code in a computer system — like layers of dirt and rubbish in real-world archeology — to find out how, or why, something works." Good stuff over there from UI designer Matthew "mpt" Thomas.
Updates for BlueEyedOS and Cosmoe
BlueEyedOS has made some progress in the past few months, and here are two brand new screenshots showing the progress. In the meantime, the DirectFB-based Cosmoe 0.6 is expected to be released around Christmas, but Bill Hayden has already released a developer release. Update: More BeOS-related news today: Unconfirmed rumors want OpenBeOS to have been renamed to "Walter Operating System", while OpenBFS 1.0 Beta3 is posted for testing.
Poll: Is MacOSX Slow?
Slashdoters discuss today the possibility of people finding MacOSX slow in general (regardless of hardware) or not. What do you think, is the whole MacOSX 10.2.x experience slower than other modern operating systems, generally speaking? Let's allow users to vote and decide over this!
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released to manufacturing. They'll add fun and functionality to your Tablet PC experience. Microsoft also released the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC. In the meantime, ZDNet published a 3-page article regarding Tablet PC: "What will it do for you"?
It’s Official: No Longhorn Server On Tap
"Microsoft has decided to skip a Windows server release to coincide with the Longhorn client and instead jump directly to Blackcomb, company officials confirmed Friday. Until recently, Microsoft has been talking up plans to synchronize its Windows server and client releases, starting with the next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn." Read the report at eWeek.
Of TCPA, Palladium and Werner von Braun
"Palladium is not secure Windows. Not exactly. Nor is it a standalone OS. Not exactly. Manferdelli presents it as a sort of parallel OS that is securely ringfenced from Windows, but which doesn't run all the time, and which actually you wouldn't want to run all the time. It works like this..." Read the rest of the article at TheRegister.
Microsoft’s New Open Source Mess
"What a mess. Less than a week after a court-approved deal ends the antitrust case, Microsoft's back in the spotlight. The latest Halloween memo portrays your company as utterly obsessed with the open-source software movement but utterly confused about how best to proceed. I can only imagine the state of confusion. Microsoft has tried to persuade developers and users for the last four years that there's no there there--and to no avail." Read the editorial at ZDNet. In the meantime, Business 2.0 posted a story called "Fighting Microsoft the Open-Source Way":
Apple, IBM, and Sun have opened up their software code to the public in their battle against Redmond. It just might work. And here is another, interesting, editorial about the DOJ settlement. Update: Another one at PCWorld.com.
Nvidia Releases OpenGL Graphics Drivers for FreeBSD
This is an initial FreeBSD beta driver for 2D and OpenGL for FreeBSD. It requires FreeBSD -STABLE, version 4.7 or later. It can run single threaded aplications even in linux compatability mode.
Lycoris Desktop/LX Build 61 Development Release
"New in build 61: branded hwprobe; removed "unverified" from rlsysinfo; minor khelpcenter update; changed kicker clock applet type to plain, without date; minor mozilla update; upgraded NVidia drivers and rebuilt additional kernel modules; made printk default to level 6; fixed minor adduser bug; added more sdx1 and sdx4 entries; removed rmmod -a from crontab; added change the system password entry in control center; upgraded ghostscript to espgw 7.05.4, less to build 378, libdvdcss to 1.2.3, modutils to 2.4.21, PCMCIA to 3.2.1, util-linux to 2.11x and finished the unattended installer." Download the ISO of Lycoris and report some bugs.
Stallman: Disk, I/O Issues Delay GNU OS
"The release of a production version of the free GNU operating system (OS) has been delayed beyond the end of the year, as the current development version of the system does not support large disk partitions and high speed serial I/O (input-output), according to Richard Stallman, president of the Boston-based Free Software Foundation (FSF)." Read about Hurd at LinuxWorld.au.
Mandrake Linux 9.0 Packs Now Available
MandrakeSoft today announced the availability of boxed versions of Mandrake Linux 9.0 -- the latest evolution of its popular operating system designed for both home and professional computing. Customers are provided with three packaged versions from which to choose: the Mandrake Linux PowerPack and Standard editions are designed for individual users, and the ProSuite Edition is created for small and medium-sized enterprises. Mandrake Linux 9.0 packs are available through a number of retail outlets worldwide and online.
Operating Systems Are Irrelevant
First seen the submission at Slashdot: "David Gelernter (Yale Professor of Computer Science, and Unabomber target) has a story in the NY Times which states, (1) Operating systems are relics of the past, (2) We should be able to access data anytime/anywhere, by (3) seeing a stream of 3D documents(?), so (4) he's written such software, and (5) that's all you should care about so it doesn't matter that it runs under windows. This is a fantastic (definition: based on fantasy : not real (?)) vision of the future by a premier technologist."
MS Palladium: A Must or a Menace?
"At the USENIX Security Conference held here recently, Microsoft developers touted the company's upcoming Palladium architecture as technology that would enhance privacy, stymie piracy and increase a corporation's control over its computers." Read it at ZDNews.
Microsoft a Problem for Software Rivals
"The software industry has two problems as it looks to jump-start Web services -- expected to be the next big thing in business computing -- the economy is weak and Microsoft is strong. So, when executives and chief technology officers gathered in Monterey, California on Wednesday for Merrill Lynch's Shaping Software 2002 conference, conversation centered on Microsoft Corp. -- the industry's 800-pound gorilla -- and still-slumping corporate spending." Read it at Reuters.