Opera 11.50 Released

"Opera 11.50 introduces a new and novel type of browser extension: Speed Dial extensions. Instead of handy thumbnails and links to your top sites, you can embed your Speed Dial with extensions that keep you updated - instantly - on what is happening around the Web." Other cool stuff includes more updates to the interface, password synchronisation between your Opera installations, and lots under-the-hood stuff.

Apple’s Overseas Demand in a Word: Exploding

"In today's world, most companies span several regions and sell across the world. As Foolish colleague Morgan Housel notes, 10 years ago, less than a third of S&P 500 revenue came from outside the United States. Today, more than half of the S&P 500's growth comes from overseas. And that number is growing. The truth is, investors regularly underestimate how much demand comes from abroad. More importantly, for large, multinational corporations that have already established a presence in their home markets, much of their future growth comes from foreign markets. With that in mind, today we're looking at Apple. We'll examine not only where its sales and earnings come from, but also how its sales abroad have changed over time."

Security Vendor Applauds LulzSec Attacks

In an unexpected move for a security company, SecurEnvoy today said that cyber break-ins and advanced malware incidents, such as the recent DDoS attack by LulzSec, should actually be welcomed and their initiators applauded. The company's CTO Andy Kemshall said: "I firmly believe that the media attention LulzSec’s DDoS attack has recently received is deserving. It’s thanks to these guys, who’re exposing the blase attitudes of government and businesses without any personal financial gain, that will make a difference in the long term to the security being put in place to protect our own personal data!"

Mango In-depth Preview

Make no mistake, Microsoft isn't playing coy in the smartphone market any longer. The folks in Redmond are making a significant jump forward in the mobile arena, announcing that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed "Mango," will be heading to a device near you in time for the holidays. As its competitors have raised the bar of expectations to a much higher level, Microsoft followed suit by adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, which the company hopes will plug all of the gaping holes the first two versions left open.

Developers Defecting from Blackberry to iPhone

Developers are stepping back from BlackBerry because they say creating apps is too complex and costly for the size of the market. RIM’s devices have different screens sizes, varied operating systems and several ways to navigate, from a physical keyboard to touchscreen to a scroll button. In deploying Apple applications, there are very few surprises . . . In Android, there are increasingly more surprises. But in BlackBerry, there are immediately lots of gotchas across the board.

The BeOS File System

The Be operating system file system, known simply as BFS, is the file system for the Haiku, BeOS, and SkyOS operating systems. When it was created in the late '90s as part of the ill-fated BeOS project, BFS's ahead-of-its-time feature set immediately struck the fancy OS geeks . . . we'll take a look at the legendary BFS, starting with some filesystem basics and moving on to a discussion of the above features.

Firefox Update Policy: The Enterprise Is Wrong, Not Mozilla

A remarkably well reasoned editorial by Peter Bright at Ars discusses the implications of the new Firefox release schedule. The Crux of the argument is that by complaining about the "new" Firefox release, corporate customers are fundamentally misunderstanding the web and their place in it. He also reflects on historical reasons for their attitude and what they should do in the future to maintain parity with the evolution of the web.

Object-oriented Design Patterns in the Kernel, Part 2

"In the first part of this analysis we looked at how the polymorphic side of object-oriented programming was implemented in the Linux kernel using regular C constructs. In particular we examined method dispatch, looked at the different forms that vtables could take, and the circumstances where separate vtables were eschewed in preference for storing function pointers directly in objects. In this conclusion we will explore a second important aspect of object-oriented programming - inheritance, and in particular data inheritance."

KDE 4.7 RC Released

"KDE has released a release candidate of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing last-minute showstopper bugs and finishing translation and documentation that comes along with the releases." Focuses of this release are Kwin support for OpenGL-ES 2.0 (oooh purty!), an interface refresh for Dolphin, and loads of other stuff.

OS X – Safe, Yet Horribly Insecure

"Using a Mac may certainly be a safer choice for a lot of people as despite being vulnerable they are not targeted. However this is not the same as Macs being secure, something Eric Schmidt erroneously advised recently. I may be able to browse impervious to malware on a Mac at the moment, however I personally would not be comfortable using a platform so easily compromised if someone had the motivation to do so. In this article I address just why OS X is so insecure including the technical shortcomings of OS X as well as Apples policies as a company that contribute to the situation."

The Origin of the Word Daemon

"I write a trivia column for a newspaper called The Austin Chronicle. Someone has asked me the origin of the word daemon as it applies to computing. Best I can tell based on my research, the word was first used by people on your team at Project MAC using the IBM 7094 in 1963. The first daemon (an abbreviation for Disk And Executive MONitor) was a program that automatically made tape backups of the file system. Does this sound about right? Any corrections or additions? Thank you for your time!"

High Tech Investors Slam Hollywood, Blast Internet Censorship Bill

"The battle lines over online copyright enforcement sharpened on Thursday when dozens of prominent high-tech entrepreneurs and investors signed a letter urging members of Congress to reject the PROTECT IP Act. The legislation, which has been making rapid progress through Congress in recent weeks, would establish a blacklist of 'rogue sites' and compel a variety of intermediaries to block access to them. It is strongly supported by Hollywood and the recording industry."

The History of ‘App’ and the Demise of the Programmer

As we reported earlier this week, Apple is busy sending out cease and desist letters to small, defenceless projects to defend its trademark application (it doesn't actually own the trademark yet) for 'app store'. This has prompted many a discussion over the trademarkability of such a generic term, and over the origins of the abbreviation 'app'. Who came up with it? How old is it? To my surprise - the abbreviation is much older than you'd think, and in a way, it illustrates quite well the demise of the programmer. What? Read on.

Windows 8 for Software Developers: the Longhorn Dream Reborn?

"Early milestone builds of Windows 8 have leaked onto the Internet, and considerable effort has been put into figuring out how they work. Though officially tight-lipped, snippets of information have escaped Redmond's walls. So far, it appears that Windows 8 development doesn't just look not bad - there are signs that it will actually resolve many long-standing annoyances with writing Windows software. If Microsoft can pull off everything it's hoping to achieve with the platform, Windows 8 will be as important and radical a release as Windows Longhorn was going to be." Fantastic article by Ars' Peter Bright. His stance on H264 and WebM may boil my blood at times, but this is a good piece of writing. Highly recommended.

House Takes up Overhaul of Patent System

"The House on Wednesday took up the most far-reaching overhaul of the patent system in 60 years, a bill that leaders in both parties said would make it easier for inventors to get their innovations to market and help put people back to work. The legislation, supported by the Obama administration and a broad range of business groups and high tech companies, aims to ease the lengthy backlog in patent applications, clean up some of the procedures that can lead to costly litigation and put the United States under the same filing system as the rest of the industrialized world." In other words, more protection for large companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft, and an increasing number of nonsense patents due to faster application procedures.

Big Content, ISPs Nearing Agreement on Piracy Crackdown in the US

So, while The Netherlands just adopted net neutrality, the US is now nearing a comprehensive agreement on a piracy crackdown system. It will include throttling internet speeds, limiting access to e.g. only the top 200 websites, and forced participation in an educational program on copyright. The system has been drafted by the White House, big content, and ISPs. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for net neutrality in the land of the 'free'.