OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 1686

MacOSX Week: Omnigroup Interview

Thom Holwerda 2001-12-18 Original OSNews Interviews 18 Comments

OSX is the beneficiary of more than NeXTStep core technology. Apple's new OS also inherited considerable expertise and terrific developers like the OmniGroup. These longtime developers for NeXTStep have been swept into the Apple world along with their preferred OS. In this significantly larger market, the Omnigroup has the advantage of exceptional depth of experience with OSX. OSNews spoke to Manny from the Omnigroup about their experiences so far.

Lineo, LynuxWorks Respond to Microsoft Attack on Embedded Linux

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-18 Rumors 7 Comments

At the end of November Microsoft posted a document on its Web site comparing the Windows XP Embedded and embedded Linux operating systems, with the emphasis on the technical and business inferiority of Linux. Embedded Linux distributors argue that the document not only distorts the value of Linux, but contains inaccuracies. Lineo, the embedded Linux company and one of the companies of which Microsoft is most critical, wrote a reply which is a point-by-point response to Microsoft's attack. Embedded Linux vendor LynuxWorks joined the growing chorus of responses to Microsoft's recent efforts to portray Embedded Linux as inferior to Windows XP Embedded from both technical and business perspectives. Read their reply at LinuxDevices.com.

Red Hat to Deliver Linux for IBM’s S/390 Mainframe

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-18 Red Hat 1 Comment

Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Linux for S/390, the latest version of its operating system for the enterprise IBM mainframe. This new version enables Red Hat to fulfill its commitment to extend the scalability of its Linux operating system to run on the smallest of handheld devices to the largest of enterprise mainframes. Previously, Red Hat had announced its delivery of open source software solutions, services and support for IBM's entire eServer product line. In the meantime, in an effort to increase the number of programs available for its relatively unknown iSeries line of special-purpose servers, IBM is courting Linux programmers by letting them tap into an iSeries server over the Internet.

MacOSX Week: Tales of a BeOS Refugee

Guest post by Scot Hacker 2001-12-17 Office 153 Comments

The story of how a BeOS refugee (and not just everyone, but the author of the 'BeOS Bible' book) lost faith in the future of computing, resigned himself to Windows but found himself bored silly, tore out half his hair at the helm of a Linux box, then rediscovered the joy of computing in MacOSX. Scot Hacker will describe his personal adventures with today's operating systems after he was set out to find an alternative to his beloved (but with no apparent future) BeOS. Update: Make sure you read the second part of the article, a rebutal, found here.

Nokia, Palm Line Up Against Microsoft

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-17 Legal 1 Comment

"Phone and PDA firms Nokia and Palm are fuelling fresh complaints about Microsoft's monopolistic practices, according to reports on Dow Jones. The nine states which decided to stick out against a DoJ (Department of Justice) settlement last month will invoke Finnish outfit Nokia and Palm as witnesses to the alleged infringements. Nokia, which some analysts see as somewhat losing its edge this year, is probably concerned about developments such as the Sendo phone, which we reported on last month." From ActiveWin.com.

BASH Programming Tutorial & ActiveX Introduction Article

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-17 General Development 9 Comments

The New Order web site, recently published two interesting articles. One is a nicely written BASH programming tutorial, and the other one is an introduction article to ActiveX and its surrounding technologies. Wether you are a Unix geek or a Microsoft newbie developer, a visit to New Order's web site would be time well spent.

Decorating a Christmas Tree with a Web Server

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-16 Geek stuff 9 Comments

Saw that linked over from GeekNews: "Yes, that computer you see in the christmas tree is the actual one serving this web page and music! It is a Pentium 100 with 64MB RAM, running Red Hat Linux 7.2." Another interesting mini-report at Geeknews was about the ex-3Dfx employees, their loyalty and support (by releasing new drivers, working on them on their spare time!) to the history of 3Dfx and the never-released Voodoo5-6000 model, which had 128 MB of SDRAM on it.

ExtremeTech Says the Time is Now for Linux

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-15 Linux 46 Comments

"If you have ever considered Linux as an alternative operating system, but were not willing to invest the time for any of the following reasons, now is the time to reconsider. If you have been concerned about the steep learning curve, potential glitches, or the possible loss of valuable data, these concerns have been addressed. For the first time, Linux is accessible to the uninitiated user with the recent releases of the best, most refined, easy to install, and more user-friendly versions." ExtremeTech reviews RedHat 7.2, Mandrake 8.1, SuSE 7.3 and the Debian-based Libranet 1.9.1.

Artificial Intelligence Gets Ready to Party

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-14 Editorial No Comments

"Cocktail parties and relating to the opposite sex are two very human activities that preoccupy many during the holiday season. Computers are notoriously poor at both: artificial intelligence researchers have long envied the human abilities to assign gender to faces and pick voices out of a noisy babble. Now San Diego company HNC Software has taught personal computers equivalent feats of recognition, and claims that the technique is a significant advance for AI, both theoretically and for building practical applications." Get the rest of the story at ZDNews. Our Take: Last February I wrote an editorial on Artificial Intelligence and how this can change the way we are using computers or the way operating system's... actually operate.

Screenshots from the QT-Based Sharp Zaurus

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-14 Qt 9 Comments

"Sharp's new Zaurus SL5500 is the first PDA device from a major manufacturer in a long time that uses a new operating system and a new user interface. See what it looks like! Most PDA users by now knows what the operating systems from Microsoft, Palm and maybe even Symbian looks like. That however doesn't mean there's no room for innovation, and Sharp is just nowadays taking the leap towards a major device launch with its new Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The SL-5500 uses Linux as its core operating system, with a GUI developed specifically by Norwegian Trolltech for the SL-5500 called Qtopia." Check the screenshots of the sweet-looking PDA at InfoSync.no.

Review of AmigaOSXL and Amithlon

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-14 Amiga & AROS 2 Comments

NWAmiga.org has published a review regarding the AmigaOSXL and Amithlon products, which let you either run the AmigaOS 3.9 in a partition on your PC, or in the AmigaOSXL case, through the QNX RtP OS. The reviewer reports that the speed is fantastic and that these products are a great way to run Amiga and lots of its applications on your fast, modern PC, for those who want to try out the Amiga OS in a all-in-one pre-configured, legal package, and can't really mess up with the UAE cryptic interface and the hunt for the... Kickstart BIOS.

All’s Quiet on the Linux Front

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-14 Linux 3 Comments

"It wasn’t so long ago: 1999 and 2000 saw a great deal of innovation and interest, not to mention hype, about the Linux open-source operating system, and by extension, open-source software in general. This year the focus has been more on other technologies, such as application servers, portals, distributed component models and Web services. Does anyone still care about Linux? And if so, why the seemingly deafening silence? It seems that the open-source system moves past hype to serious implementation." Read the rest of the interesting editorial at SDTimes.

OfficeXP SP-1 Released, SO6 and GP3 News

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-14 Office 2 Comments

The Office XP Update Service Pack 1 released yesterday. Service Pack 1 (SP-1) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP-1 contains significant security enhancements and stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP-1 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one integrated package, and it includes a number of other changes designed to improve the reliability and performance of your Office XP programs. You can read an overview of the service pack on the Microsoft website.

Introducing the Nemesis Operating System

Submitted by Andy Sy 2001-12-14 OS News 17 Comments

Nemesis is an operating system written from scratch (but it does retain some Posix compatibility layer for easy application porting), whose design is geared to the support of time-sensitive applications requiring a consistent 'Quality of Service' (QoS), such as those which use multimedia. Nemesis provides fine-grained guaranteed levels of all system resources including CPU, memory, network bandwidth and disk bandwidth. The OS has been built with the Multimedia in mind, its sole purpose of existance was the delivery and performance of multimedia content in the best way possible. Screenshots are available but read more for information and status of this interesting operating system.

Using the ECMA Standards, by Miguel deIcaza

Submitted by stew 2001-12-14 Gnome 5 Comments

In this very interesting interview at MSDN, Miguel deIcaza, the founder of GNOME, Bonobo, Gnumeric and CTO at Ximian, talks about UNIX components, Bonobo, Mono, and Microsoft .NET.

Microsoft Gets Backing for .Net Tools

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-13 .NET 11 Comments

"Microsoft on Thursday said a technology standards body has endorsed programming tools key to expanding the appeal of the company's .Net Web services plan. Microsoft said the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), an international technology standards organization, has ratified Microsoft's C# (pronounced "see sharp"), a Java-like programming language, along with a component of its .Net Web services framework called the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). That means that C# and the CLI are now officially standards administered by ECMA. But Microsoft will retain control over who gets to license the technology and how it will be distributed, a company spokesman said." Get the rest of the story at CNet|News.

Trip at the Core of MacOSX With Jordan Hubbard

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-13 macOS 10 Comments

"You expect a few surprises on a visit to the headquarters of Apple Computer Inc. But Jordan Hubbard? What's he doing here? The same thing he's been doing for the past decade: trying to take over the world. Or at least the part that uses desktop computers. Did you miss last week's column? Check the archive to stay up-to-date. Hubbard is one of the leaders of the open-source software movement, along with guys like the legendary Linus Torvalds, cocreator of Linux. Their goal is to supplant traditional software with powerful programs that come with raw computer code and programming tools, so skilled users can modify the software themselves." Read the interview with Jordan at Boston.com.

Media Player PowerToys, MSN Messanger, Explorer 8 and More

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-13 Windows 3 Comments

Microsoft released a number of free entertainment enhancements to its Windows XP operating system today. Called Windows Media Bonus Pack for Windows XP, the free download includes tools for the OS' built-in media player. The download includes new visualizations and skins, playlist-to-spreadsheet export utility, and extra tools for amateur moviemakers. In the meantime, ActiveWin reports that MSN Explorer 8 has just passed the "M0" milestone and it is in closed beta. The aim for a release is for late spring/early summer 2002. This will be the first major release since the original release in 2000. There is work on integrating "natural language" instrumentation, meaning "speaking" or ordering MSN Explorer to do this task or that task. Also, Microsoft has released a new version 4.6.0071 of MSN Messenger. Features inlcude improved support for computer-to-phone calls, more flexibility in resizing the conversation window, Add-ins available, banner ads (If you download the Add-in).

My 32 CPUs Are Better Than Your 72 CPUs

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-13 Java 5 Comments

"IBM claims that it's achieved 339,484 operations per second on a 32-way, POWER4 Regatta on the SPECjbb2000 benchmark. Which is higher than a 72-way Sun Fire 15K. IBM also brags that its Regatta, kitted out 128GB of memory and 36.4GB storage will cost - at $2 million - half as much as a Sun Fire 15K with 288GB memory and 288GB storage." Read the rest of the story at TheRegister.

Scary Solaris, AIX Hole Unearthed

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-13 Privacy, Security 3 Comments

"Researchers have discovered that hackers are already developing tools to take advantage of a hole that could allow the takeover of key servers in corporations and universities." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews.