"Internet streaming music service Pandora announced on Tuesday that it is phasing out Flash in favor of HTML 5. The change means users won't have to rely on the Flash plug-in in their Web browser to listen to the service's music offerings, and the company claims switching to HTML 5 has improved overall performance, too. 'The front-end technology has been rebuilt in HTML 5 and together with a host of other improvements results in a much faster experience,' the Pandora Web site stated."

ACROS Security has discovered a vulnerability in Sun Java, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The vulnerability is caused due to the application loading an executable file in an insecure manner when an out of memory condition occurs.

A recent Retrevo Gadgetology survey suggests that users are unclear on what exactly 4G means, don't know whether their current mobile service is 4G or not, and even if they do know, are unsure of the benefit. It also seems that mobile device owners' loyalty to their chosen platform is more important to them than higher network speeds.

I've described how to refurbish mature computers in several articles. The emphasis has been on machines in the four to ten year old range -- Pentium IV's, D's, M's, III's and Celerons. But what if you have a really old computer, like a Pentium II, I, or even a 486? Can you use it for anything worthwhile? A vintage distro named Damn Small Linux answers "yes." This article describes DSL and tells how to make 1990's computers useful again. Screenshots follow the article.

This is a problem I hadn't yet heard of, so it fascinates me to no end. We all know VLC, right? It's one of the best video players out there, and while I myself generally just install the K-Lite Codec Pack, VLC is definitely a good alternative - and pretty much the norm on Linux. They're having a problem, though: malicious folk are bundling VLC with malware, offering it up for download as the official VLC, and misleading users in the process. Not only does this violate the GPL - it's pretty damn low, too.

"We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of CentOS-6.0 for i386 and x86_64 Architectures. CentOS-6.0 is based on the upstream release EL 6.0 and includes packages from all variants. All upstream repositories have been combined into one, to make it easier for end users to work with. There are some important changes to this release compared with the previous versions of CentOS and we highly recommend reading this announcement along with the Release Notes."

"The Microsoft and ETH Zurich research teams have published the source code of Barrelfish, a multikernel operating system for the multicore heterogeneous hardware of the future. Today's operating systems have been adapted to work on multiprocessor and multicore hardware, but they were not initially designed with multicore in mind, and they are not ready for heterogeneous hardware with hundreds of cores that is to come in the following ten years. The main problem is the concept of shared-memory and the contention arising from accessing the same data protected by locks. This is the problem that Barrelfish wants to address."

"After an initial round of testing we've declared build 147 to be the first Release Candidate of JDK 7. There are only thirteen changes in this build. Over half of them are administrivial updates that don't affect the actual code; the remainder are true showstoppers, including several hard VM crashes and a JIT correctness bug identified by an Eclipse unit test. If no new showstopper issues are reported, and if JSR 336 and the component JSRs pass their Final Approval Ballots in the JCP, then this will be the GA build for release later this month per the schedule posted back in January."

"A payment system devised by online retail giant Amazon is too obvious to patent, the European Patent Office (EPO) has ruled. Amazon had hoped to patent the way its customers pay for products through the click of a single webpage button. The company was previously granted patent rights to the payment system in the US."

Linux.FR has an interview with Lennart Poettering of PulseAudio and systemd fame (among others). Regarding PulseAudio: "I can understand why people were upset, but quite frankly we didn't really have another option than to push it into the distributions when we did. While PulseAudio certainly wasn't bug-free when the distributions picked it up the majority of issues were actually not in PulseAudio itself but simply in the audio drivers. PulseAudio's timer-based scheduling requires correct timing information supplied by the audio driver, and back then the drivers weren't really providing that. And that not because the drivers were really broken, but more because the hardware was, and the drivers just lacked the right set of work-arounds, quirks and fixes to compensate for it."

Well, paint me red and call me a girl scout, I totally did not see this one coming at all. This is so utterly surprising it made my brain explode. Hold on to your panties, because this will rock your world. After pressuring several smaller Android vendors into submission (and yes, HTC is still relatively small compared to other players), Microsoft is now moving on to the big one: Redmond is demanding $15 for every Samsung Android device sold. Samsung's choices are simple: pay up, or face another epic lawsuit.

"One of Microsoft's hottest new profit centers is a smartphone platform you've definitely heard of: Android. Google's Linux-based mobile operating system is a favorite target for Microsoft's patent attorneys, who are suing numerous Android vendors and just today announced that another manufacturer has agreed to write checks to Microsoft every time it ships an Android device. Microsoft's latest target is Wistron Corp., which has signed a patent agreement 'that provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for Wistron's tablets, mobile phones, e-readers and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome platform', Microsoft announced." That's the reality we live in, folks. This is at least as criminal - if not more so - than Microsoft's monopoly abuse late last century. After the Nortel crap, it's completely left the black helicopter camp for me: Microsoft, Apple, and several others are working together to fight Android the only way they know how: with underhand mafia tactics. Absolutely sickening. Hey Anonymous, are you listening? YES I WENT THERE.

Red is a new programming language inspired by REBOL, but compiled and open source. The language is currently being bootstrapped by first implementing a lower level dialect, in which the high level, dynamic language will be written. This C class dialect for systems programming, Red/System, has reached beta status after only half a year of development. It now supports using dynamic libraries on Syllable. Also, a new version of Syllable Desktop's FTP client, Transferrer, was released (screenshot accessing Syllable Server).

A few days ago Sony released the 11th version of their consumer "Movie Studio HD Platinum" version of their popular PC video editing platform, Vegas. A variety of new features can be found in it, most importantly 3D stereoscopic editing support, and a faster h.264 decoder for AVCHD/digicam/dSLR footage.