OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

AOL Testing New “Plus” Version for OS X

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-02-16 Internet 6 Comments

"According to testers for America Online, the company is moving forward with improving its client software for Mac OS X. The upgrade is called "AOL for Mac OS X Plus," and build 200 B is available under the beta section at AOL. This past summer, America Online publicly released AOL for OS X." Read more at ThinkSecret.

GCC Myths and Facts

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-16 General Development 13 Comments

"Since my good old Pentium 166 days, I've liked to search for the best optimizations possible so programs can take the maximum advantage of hardware/CPU cycles. If I have a nice piece of hardware, why not run it at its full power, using every little feature? Shouldn't we all try to get the best results from the money invested in our machines?" Read the article at FreshMeat.

XPde 0.2.0 Released

Submitted by FH 2003-02-16 Desktop environments 63 Comments

There is a new version of the X11 desktop environment which emulates Windows, XPde.

YellowTab Updates Web Site, Secures Finance and… OS

Submitted by Andre Reavis 2003-02-16 Zeta 73 Comments

YellowTab has updated its web site, added some screenshots from Zeta's betas, while recent press releases from the group are mentioning YellowTab getting financial support and collaborating with another firm on securing Zeta.

FreeBSD 4.8 Release Schedule Announced, Firewire Updates Added

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-15 FreeBSD 17 Comments

The new FreeBSD 4.8 Release schedule has been announced. Hidetoshi Shimokawa has added new functionality to Firewire on this scheduled FreeBSD 4.8 release. New features include built-in DV support, improved recovery process & timeout stability and Write/ioctl support for /dev/fwmem0. He has not tested this on PAL and is looking for volunteers.

Preview 1 of Opera 7 for Linux Available

Submitted by Many 2003-02-15 Opera 29 Comments

Espen Sand announces the availability of first preview of Opera 7 for Linux. The Linux specific features from 6.1 no longer exist, the new preview release comes with an email and news client. You can pick from a static or shared (dynamically linked) packages. Read the email and get the download links from BSDForums. Additionally, Opera released yesterday a funny version of Opera 7 for Windows, as an answer to the MSN problems. In other browser news, Apple released a third Safari beta (v60) recently.

Windows XP Passwords Rendered Useless

Submitted by Matthias Toth 2003-02-15 Windows 49 Comments

"Windows XP, which has been marketed by Microsoft as "the most secure version ever," has been found to have a flaw so bone-headed that it renders passwords ineffective as a means of keeping people out of your PC. Reader Tony DeMartino alerted me to the problem, which all administrators of Windows XP machines should immediately take to heart:" Read Brian's article at BrianBuzz.com.

Intel, Red Hat Cure Open-source Hiccup

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-15 Open Source 11 Comments

Red Hat and Intel have settled a licensing hiccup that threatened to prevent the Linux company from contributing to Intel's open-source project--a reminder of the frictions that can arise between the commercial tech world and the open-source community.

New Linux Support Policies are Ominous

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-15 Privacy, Security 35 Comments

Red Hat and Mandrake are cutting support for older versions of their Linux distributions... The results will be a security nightmare for the Internet, says Jon Lasser.

Gotchas when Porting UNIX Software to Mac OS X

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-15 macOS 2 Comments

"Over the past year and change I've worked on porting quite a few projects to OS X. At first, it's a pretty scary ordeal, but most of the issues you'll run into are easily solved if you know how. To save yourself the trouble of figuring this out yourself, read on..." The article is located at Advogato. More porting tips at Fink's site.

A Chat with Bill Gates

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-15 Microsoft 25 Comments

At January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, PC Magazine editor-in-chief Michael Miller talked with Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates. The conversation ranged from Tablet PCs and Microsoft's effort—dubbed SPOT—to infuse watches and other everyday objects with online intelligence, Longhorn, to a slated Xbox Live showdown between Gates and NBA star Shaquille O'Neal. "I'm a little worried," Gates conceded, regarding the face-off with Shaq.

MacSlash Interviews Andrew Zamler-Carhart

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-02-14 Games No Comments

"Andrew Zamler-Carhart of KavaSoft, maker of iConquer, was kind enough to answer our questions this week, and here on a Friday morning, we're posting them for our inquisitive readers. He talks about the upcoming version 2 of iConquer, Rendezvous technology in MacOS X and the perils of being a game programmer." Read the full interview at MacSlash.

Bush Unveils Final Cybersecurity Plan

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-14 Privacy, Security 110 Comments

The Bush administration signed off Friday on the final version of the United States' strategy for protecting the Internet and securing information systems. Additionally, Attorney General John Ashcroft wants even more power to snoop on the Internet, spy on private conversations and install secret microphones, spyware and keystroke loggers.

Genesi Announces New Pegasos Computer for CeBit Release

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-14 Morphos 18 Comments

Plexuscom, a designer and manufactures of broadband Internet access solutions and appliances, has reached an agreement with Genesi Sarl to produce and deliver limited quantities of the PegasosPPC computer for release at CeBIT 2003. Genesi and Plexuscom will share a Booth at CeBIT, 12-19 March in Hannover, Germany. Read the specs and see the pictures at the morphos-news.de site.

Linux is Giving Sun a Burn

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-14 Oracle and SUN 27 Comments

"When Sun Microsystems got started in 1982, companies such as Wang and Data General dominated the hardware business. In less than a decade, this upstart Unix outfit was a billion-dollar-plus phenom while the once-mighty minicomputer makers had been consigned to irrelevance." Read the commentary on ZDNews and a comment a few days ago, explaining Sun's Linux strategy, which is different of what IBM, DELL or HP does with Linux. Also, another Sun article says that Java servers feel the open source heat.

Getting to Grips with Grid Computing

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-14 Internet 7 Comments

Until now, the internet has largely been used as a tool for communication - but new applications are starting to use the internet to coordinate work between machines. This could lay the basis for a whole new level of automation across society, leading to great gains in productivity. The first step in this process is 'grid computing'.

The Roadmap for FreeBSD 5-STABLE

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-14 FreeBSD 53 Comments

FreeBSD team's Scott Long lays out a roadmap for FreeBSD-5 stable in this informative email. He says that although the latest release of FreeBSD 5 marks a major milestone in FreeBSD's history, there are significant improvements necessary in the areas of SMP, kernel lockdown, performance, network driver stability, ACPI and much more. He also presents a tentative schedule for the rest of the year for FreeBSD 5.1 and 5.2 releases.

Lindows at the Showdown

Submitted by Timothy R. Butler 2003-02-14 Linspire 21 Comments

Lindows has aimed to become the GNU/Linux distribution for anyone coming from Windows to Linux (hence the name). They have, without a doubt, pushed the envelope for marketing and pushed the Linux operating system into the mainstream media and retailers. Still, does LindowsOS have what it takes to be the victor of the Penguin Shootout? Find out at OfB.biz.

Mandrake PPC 9.1 Beta 2 – Mandrake Linux for the Rest of Us

Submitted by ladislav 2003-02-14 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 24 Comments

"For the last few weeks I have been reporting on the development cycle of Mandrake 9.1. Then, the presence of an ISO image for Mandrake PPC 9.1 Beta 1 piqued my curiosity, and some days later two ISO images for Mandrake PPC 9.1 Beta 2 were made available on the various mandrake mirrors. Among my obsol... err, I mean, my old computers, I have a 350 MHz iMac which hasn't seen much use for the last 8 months. So without any extraordinary expectations, I decided to attempt the installation of this different flavour of Mandrake Linux. I was in for a few good surprises..." Read the article at DistroWatch.

Solaris, Java Had Growing Pains

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-02-14 Oracle and SUN 31 Comments

"Sun Microsystems' Java software and Solaris operating system haven't always gotten along, an internal memo indicates, but Sun says it has fixed the problems in the two years since the memo was written. The version of Java for Solaris is a poor choice for many types of programs, is slow to load, isn't well-supported within Sun and requires too much memory to run, several Sun engineers said in the memo." Read the rest at ZDNet.