OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Amar Bose Donates Majority of Bose Stock to MIT

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-29 In the News 37 Comments

Between all this bickering over who's ~~peni~~phone is the ~~largest~~ best, it's always nice to be able to post a positive story, a story which shows that for every abusive company, there's one that shows the world just how it's done. This time, it's Bose. Founder and primary stockholder of Bose, Amar G. Bose, has donated a large number of non-voting shares of the company to MIT, where he spent his university career. Dividends over these shares will be paid each year to MIT, which will use it for research and educational purposes.

Supreme Court: AT&T Can Block Class-action Suits

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-28 Legal 15 Comments

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that AT&T - and indeed, any company - could block class-action suits arising from disputes with customers and instead force those customers into binding arbitration. The ruling reverses previous lower-court decisions that classified stipulations in AT&T's service contract which barred class arbitration as 'unconscionable'."

B&N: Microsoft Tries to Make Android “Unattractive”

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-28 Legal 57 Comments

This is interesting. I've been saying for a while now that both Apple and Microsoft are hard at work making Android as undesirable as possible. Sadly, they're not doing this by making their own products better, but by trying to make it seem as if Android isn't free due to patent costs and such. It looks like Barnes & Noble is the first company to openly say the same.

Guest post by mrhasbean 2011-04-28 Google 23 Comments

In a move touted as one to "make Apps easier to adopt and manage", Google has announced that it will reduce the number of free users from 50 down to just 10 before businesses have to sign up for its paid service. This follows a previous reduction from 100 to 50. Google claims that existing users won't be affected, but we'll just have to wait and see how long that lasts. And if you don't want your whole life tracked and sold off to the highest bidder by Google's "free" and "open" technologies but would like access to actual free or low cost services there is a decent article here that shines some light on your options.

Slackware 13.37, Ubuntu 11.04 Released

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-28 Linux 66 Comments

Yeah, it's the day of double-dippin' today. And, the contradiction couldn't be bigger. In one corner we have one of the oldest and most respected distributions, and in the other corner we have the sometimes controversial but immensely popular relative newcomer. Slackware 13.37 and Ubuntu 11.04 have been released.

Dutch Lower House Opposes Carriers Blocking Services

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-27 Internet 17 Comments

Well, this is a pleasant surprise. This weekend, we ran a story about the carrier situation in the The Netherlands. The largest carrier in The Netherlands has announced it's going to charge for services like IM and Skype, while the other two carriers were thinking about following suit. I stated I expected little from our politicians - but boy, turns out I was wrong. Basically the entire lower house - left to right, progressive to conservative - is not happy with the carriers' moves, and are now exploring options to prohibit them from implementing their plans - including the option to embed net neutrality in our telecommunications act. Go go... Politicians?!

Apple Responds to Location Issue

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-27 Apple 22 Comments

Apple has responded to the location data thing, and as it turns out, most of us moderate folk were completely right. Apple claims the data isn't sent to Apple, and that the storing of the information is a bug Apple will fix in the coming weeks. Still a very nasty and potentially dangerous bug, but not the massive privacy issue many made it out to be. Also, a new colour iPhone is out, which, if you were to believe the gadget and Apple sites, is yet another Apple revolution.

Guest post by Bill Shooter of Bul 2011-04-27 Wireless 12 Comments

Nokia announced yesterday that they will transfer the Symbian Developers to Accenture. Regardless of what one feels about the merits of Symbian, this does seem like the end of the road. The proverbial selling of the horse to the glue factory.

Submitted by foldingstock 2011-04-27 BSD & Darwin 10 Comments

This release supports a much larger variety of hardware and multiprocessor systems than previous releases, thanks to updates of ACPI and APIC and ACPI interrupt routing support. Hammer volumes can now deduplicate volumes overnight in a batch process and during live operation. The 'hammer dedup-simulate' command can be used to estimate space savings for existing data. DragonFly now uses gcc 4.4 as the default system compiler, and is the first BSD to take that step. DragonFly now offers significant performance gains over previous releases, especially for machines using AHCI or implementing swapcache(8).

WP7: No On-device Location Tracking; Online Another Matter

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-26 Windows 5 Comments

"In contrast with iOS and Android, Microsoft says that its Windows Phone OS doesn't create any persistent on-phone record of where you've been. That's not to say that the company doesn't collect the information at allâ€”but the large location caches found on handsets with competing operating systems aren't found on Microsoft-powered phones."

Guest post by Martin H Hansen 2011-04-26 RISC OS 10 Comments

This year's Wakefield RISC OS computer show has given enthusiasts of the niche platform much to talk about. The show featured the release of new hardware in the form of the ARMini, a 'Beagleboard inside' computing system optimised to run RISC OS. A full account of the show has been published on RISCOScode, one of the RISC OS rolling news websites. Note from Thom: Sorry for the headline.

Amazon Cites Steve Jobs in Response to Apple’s Trademark Suit

Submitted by yoni 2011-04-26 Legal 4 Comments

"Amazon today responded to Apple's trademark suit over the term 'App Store'. Interestingly, Amazon's answer made use of quotes from Steve Jobs to prove that the term 'app store' is generic and not subject to trademark protection."

PSN Fail Turns Epic: User Data of All PSN Users Compromised

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-26 Games 123 Comments

After days and days of the Playstation Network being offline, Sony has announced it has taken the service down indefinitely. The cause is a lot more severe than previously thought: PSN has been systematically attacked, and personal information of all users has been stolen, possibly including credit card data. Sony is asking PSN users to keep close tabs on their credit card account statements. This has turned from a rather amusing slap on the wrist for Sony into a massive and truly epic security fail that could have tremendous consequences for millions and millions of people the world over.

Nielsen: Desire for iPhone Slips as Android Gains

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-26 Wireless 15 Comments

A common argument has always been that the only reason Android is as popular as it is in the US is because people are buying Android solely because they can't buy an iPhone (i.e., because they don't want AT&T, or because Verizon is their only carrier, and so on). This line of thinking would imply that now that the Verizon iPhone is here, Android would be in trouble. Well, it turns out that might not be true, exactly. For the first time, more people desire Android for their next smartphone than iOS.

Submitted by Elv13 2011-04-26 Multimedia, AV 33 Comments

And the fight continues. Only a few months after the desperate move by the MPEG-LA to get anyone - anyone - to submit patents to a possible WebM patent pool, Google and the WebM community have struck back. A whole slew of major companies have formed the WebM Community Cross-License initiative, basically a sort-of Open Invention Network for WebM.

B&N Nook Color Update Brings Froyo, Applications, Flash

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-25 Wireless 11 Comments

"We've been waiting for this day: our little reader would finally become a big boy tablet - without having to resort to any sort of hackery. We knew it was coming and, as of now, owners of the Barnes & Noble Nook Color should be receiving notices that their devices are ready to drop those training wheels and run some proper apps. Flash web browsing, downloads, games, e-mail, it's all here."

Nintendo Announces Wii Successor

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-25 Games 69 Comments

Ah yes, this was pretty inevitable. Nintendo is facing dropping sales and earnings for another year, and as such, it should come as no surprise that they have just announced the Wii's successor. The Japanese gaming giant will unveil the machine during E3 in June, and the device is scheduled for release in 2012.

Dutch Carriers To Fragment Web, Disregard Customer Privacy

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-23 Internet 63 Comments

You know all that talk about net neutrality in the US? How for instance Verizon and Google want net neutrality to apply only to something they call the 'wired' internet, which is apparently somehow different from the 'mobile' internet? Well, while you Americans are only talking about it, us Dutch are once again way ahead of the curve: the largest of the three main carriers has announced its intention to start charging extra for services like VoIP, instant messaging, Facebook, and so on, with the other two carriers contemplating similar moves. The dark future of the web, right here in my glorified swamp.

Submitted by galvanash 2011-04-22 Legal 29 Comments

A Texas jury has ruled against Google in a suit that alleged some of its use of open-source Linux code amounted to patent infringement, something that could have big implications for other companies using Linux technology and other open-source systems. In the verdict, delivered last week, the jury decided that Google should pay $5 million for the infringement.

Technical Overview of VP8

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-21 Multimedia, AV 10 Comments

"VP8 is an open source video compression format supported by a consortium of technology companies. This paper provides a technical overview of the format, with an emphasis on its unique features. The paper also discusses how these features benefit VP8 in achieving high compression efficiency and low decoding complexity at the same time."