OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 579

Software Industry Lobbies Against EU Consumer Rights Laws

Thom Holwerda 2011-03-07 Legal 102 Comments

Well, how about some positive news to end this day? How about annoying the heck out of the Business Software Alliance? There's a new proposal for a directive on consumer rights in the EU, and in it, digital goods - software, online services, and so on - are explicitly defined as goods that are no different than any other good - like bread, watches, or cars. In other words, you would suddenly own the copies of software you buy, effectively declaring the EULA as a worthless piece of paper. Surprise - the BSA is not happy about this.

GNOME 3 Removes Minimise, Maximise Buttons

Submitted by Debjit 2011-03-07 Gnome 128 Comments

I have to admit I've been struggling with this one for a while, most importantly because I haven't used GNOME 3 yet; I'm setting up my own little company right now, so time's a little short. As such, all I can do here is cover the arguments given - which, in my book, have both their strong as well as their weak points. Yes, GNOME 3 will not have buttons for minimising or maximising windows.

FreeBSD Needs Fresh Blood

David Adams 2011-03-07 FreeBSD 50 Comments

"How long have you been using FreeBSD. Months? Years? Decades? And you love using it because of whatever reason but at the same time you're feeling a bit guilty to use it all for free without giving anything back? Well now you'll have the chance to change that. We at FreeBSD are always in need of new people who are willing to spare some of their time and effort into FreeBSD development."

Nokia Sells Qt Licensing, Services Business to Digia

Submitted by Geoff Floding 2011-03-07 Qt 36 Comments

Since the web has a tendency to overstate things: no, Nokia is not selling Qt. Today, Nokia announced that Digia will acquire the Qt Commercial software licensing and professional services business from Nokia. So I repeat: Nokia is not selling Qt.

Inside Details of the Next Version of webOS Revealed

Guest post by Moochman 2011-03-06 Wireless 23 Comments

HP recently posted new videos of their developer sessions at Mobile World Congress. As it turns out they aren't just interesting for developers - in particular, Part 3 offers a glimpse of the TouchPad UI that's a bit more in-depth than what we've seen so far. For developers, there's also an overview of the development environment(s) (part 4) and an introduction to the new SDK "Enyo" (part 5).

Judge Hands Over IP Logs of Several Geohot Sites to Sony

Thom Holwerda 2011-03-06 Legal 51 Comments

Ever visited the website of famed iOS and Playstation 3 hacker Geohot? Or watched his video on YouTube? Or read his Blogspot blog? Well, you're now part of a criminal investigation. A US judge has given Sony complete and unrestricted access to all IP addresses which ever visited his website and blog, or watched his YouTube video.

Nokia CTO Rich Green Explains Three Year Vision, Announces N950 Meego Device

Submitted by JCinSpain 2011-03-06 Wireless 14 Comments

"Despite Nokia's decision to partner up with Microsoft and introduce a new ecosystem to the mobile industry, it was announced by Nokia's CTO Rich Green at last months Mobile World Congress during his keynote speech at the Developer's day workshop, that Nokia will still be launching a new MeeGo device this year. Green went on to give reassurances that Nokia will continue to be committed to the MeeGo, Symbian, Qt and S40 platforms and their future in Nokia's three year ecosystem vision."

Build Your Own Supercomputer With Ubuntu 10.04

Submitted by Petur 2011-03-06 Ubuntu 29 Comments

"In this post I show step-by-step how you can setup your own "Super computer cluster" using Ubuntu MPI Cluster from multiple machines with the goal of bruteforcing strong encrypted passwords with John the Ripper for academic purposes. Owners of quad core machines will also benefit from this setup as the "john" binaries found in the Ubuntu Repositories are compiled to run on only one core. I managed to decrease the time required to crack password hashes using this setup."

What Apple Mean by ‘Post-PC’

Kroc 2011-03-06 OS News 81 Comments

It's not the return of the OSNews comic, but it was too good to let pass. Our coverage of the Apple event was minimal this week, so I decided to round the key points up in an illustration...

News Round Up of the Week

Submitted by fran 2011-03-06 In the News 7 Comments

I would like to thank osnews user fran for submitting this as-is; a quick round up of other news happenings this week that OSNews missed. Read More for "Red Hat's 'Obfuscated' Kernel Source", "LibreOffice Enterprise Support From Novell", "Microsoft Want You to Stop Using IE6", "Facebook Can Screw With Google, But Google Can't Screw With Facebook" and lastly "Thom Has Three PS3s, Whereas You, Conversely, Have None".

WSJ: DoJ Lobs Antitrust Probe to MPEG-LA

Submitted by lemur2 2011-03-05 Legal 40 Comments

Well, this rumour, coming from the reputable Wall Street Journal, isn't entirely unsurprising. Apparently, the omnipotent people familiar with the matter have told the WJS that the US Department of Justice and the California State Attorney General's office are investigating the MPEG-LA for possible anti-competitive practices regarding VP8.

IDC Shows Sales of All Servers Growing; Except Unix

Submitted by Amy Bennett 2011-03-03 Hardware 43 Comments

IDC's newest survey of server vendors shows boxes running every kind of operating system -- except Unix -- sold more during the last three months of 2010. Sales of Linux servers rose 29 percent; Windows rose 16.8 percent, but most surprisingly, sales of mainframes shot up 69 percent â€“ the highest growth rate IDC ever found on mainframes.

Apple Unveils iPad 2

Thom Holwerda 2011-03-03 Apple 68 Comments

Yeah I was quite busy yesterday, and nobody else picked it up, so we didn't report on the launch of the iPad 2. Since other websites went completely bonkers over this, we'll keep it short: there's a new iPad out. It's thinner, has a dual-core processor, faster graphics, and has a "new" case developed by ~~Incase~~ Apple. Contrary to all the "later this year" announcements from the likes of HP and RIM, Apple is shipping this thing March 11.

Oracle Making Java, Solaris Certifications Pricier

Submitted by Amy Bennett 2011-03-03 Java 23 Comments

Later this year, Oracle will begin requiring people interested in gaining Java and Solaris certifications to attend "hands-on" training courses, at an additional cost of thousands of dollars. The new rule goes into effect Aug. 1 and regards Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification paths, according to a notice on Oracle's website.

Upgrading from Windows 1.0 to 7

David Adams 2011-03-03 Windows 71 Comments

If you had asked me, I would have guessed that this wouldn't be possible. One intrepid OS explorer has made a video wherein he not only installs every version of Windows since 1985's Windows 1.0, but proceeds to upgrade from one to another. The video, titled Chain of Fools: an Exploration of Windows upgrade procedures, shows how DOS and Windows are installed in a VMWare VM, and how a couple of DOS games were installed to see how newer versions of Windows handle backward compatibility. Similarly, various customizations were made to the Windows preferences to see how they survived the upgrades. Video embedded after the break.

Early Benchmarks of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion

Guest post by Michael 2011-03-02 macOS 13 Comments

"By now you have likely read all about the features announced for Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" thus far along with seeing plenty of screenshots and videos showing off Launchpad, Mission Control, Versions, the improved mail client, and much more. But how does Apple's next-generation operating system perform? Well, here is a look at the performance of Mac OS X 10.7, including what are likely the first public benchmarks of Mac OS X Lion."

Shuttleworth on the Ubuntu Banshee Controversy: Mistakes Were Made

Submitted by sjvn 2011-03-01 Ubuntu 19 Comments

"The conflict between Banshee and Canonical over what should be done with Banshee's Amazon Store revenue stream, while it was finally resolved, was not Ubuntu's most shining moment. At the matter's conclusion, Banshee developers were not happy with the results. This is not how open-source communities should work together and no one knows that better than Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, who wrote, "We made some mistakes in our handling of the discussion around revenue share with the Banshee team.""

Microsoft Releases Windows Embedded Compact 7

Submitted by BloopFloop 2011-03-01 Windows 12 Comments

The new Windows Embedded website just announced the official release of Windows Embedded Compact 7, featuring SMP support for multicore CPUs, Flash 10.1, updated Silverlight for Windows Embedded technology based on Silverlight 3, and more. Update: And here's a demo, for those interested.

Using the /proc Filesystem

Submitted by Petur 2011-03-01 Unix 9 Comments

"The proc filesystem is a special filesystem found on most UNIX-based systems. It holds a great deal of information, in ASCII format, most of which is not very friendly to the average user. I've made a list of some of the files i find to be of most use."

Vodafone Executive – Germany – Nokia-Microsoft Deal a Good Thing

Guest post by JCinSpain 2011-03-01 Wireless 5 Comments

"Many well known bloggers, analysts, journalists and customers alike most probably have valid arguments to back this belief, but there are even more that believe otherwise and foresee a success in this partnership. But for Nokia's upcoming Windows Phone-based smartphones to succeed, Microsoft and Nokia need backing from the worlds mobile operators and Vodafone in Germany seems to be on their side, for now - Jan Geldmacher, managing director, enterprise business at Vodafone Germany, said in an interview with PC World at the Cebit trade show in Hanover."