OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Jobs: Android’s Openness “Disingenuous”

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-19 Rumors 79 Comments

Catfight! Get out your mobile phones and start filming, because two important personalities in the mobile world just got into a catfight. After the presentation of Apple's (once again) stellar quarterly results (what's with the low iPad sales, though?), Apple's CEO Steve Jobs went on a bit of a tangent regarding Android (among other things). Google's Andy Rubin, the father of Android, responded in a pretty fun way via Twitter.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-10-18 Office 47 Comments

"A group of key OpenOffice.org contributors and community members recently decided to fork the project and establish The Document Foundation in order to drive forward community-driven development of the open source office suite. Oracle has responded to the move by asking several members of TDF to step down from their positions as representatives on the OOo community council."

Desktop Linux Is Dead, But Who Cares?

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-18 Linux 119 Comments

Well, it's been a while since we've opened this particular jar (box is not historically accurate) owned by Pandora. Desktop Linux... Yes, that ever elusive readiness of the desktop that is Linux-powered. Some story on ComputerWorld argues that the desktop Linux dream is dead, and apparently, the story is causing some stir on the web. Well, paint me pink and call me a lightbulb, but of course desktop Linux is dead. However - who gives a flying monkey? Linux is being used by more people than ever!

Should Sites Be Held Liable for User Comments?

Submitted by fran 2010-10-18 Legal 31 Comments

Britain's Attorney General has said that website owners should be made legally responsible for comments made by visitors. According to a report on Out-law.com, Dominic Grieve told members of the Criminal Bar Association that the spiralling number of internet news web sites meant it was becoming more and more difficult for courts to ensure that trials were fair, and that juries were not exposed to material that could prejudice a hearing.

Microsoft Tool to Aid Windows 7 Migrations

Submitted by fran 2010-10-18 Windows 1 Comment

Microsoft began the second beta test of a key virtualization tool this week, with the aim of helping to ease the way for corporate customers who are held back from migrating to Windows 7 by incompatibilities with required older applications. Version 2 of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) is now available for download for users interested in beta testing the upcoming release.

Microsoft’s 3-D Strategy

David Adams 2010-10-18 3D 8 Comments

Microsoft has joined the wave of companies betting that 3-D is the next big thing for computing. At a recent talk at MIT, chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie said he sees the technology as an innovation that "will get people out of treating a computer as a tool" and into treating the device as a natural extension of how they interact with the world around them. Microsoft plans to introduce consumers to the change through its gaming products, but Mundie outlined a vision that would eventually have people shopping and searching in 3-D as well.

Microsoft Release Regez Fuzzer Tool

Submitted by fran 2010-10-18 Privacy, Security 4 Comments

Microsoft has released a free tool to help programmers test their regular expressions for vulnerability to denial of service attacks. The JSDL Regex Fuzzer, released by the software giant earlier this week, is designed to test programmers' regular expressions - a ubiquitous formal language for matching strings of text - for clauses that execute in exponential time and which stand the chance of being exploited for nefarious means.

If the iPad Is a PC, Then So Is Every Modern Smartphone

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-18 In the News 110 Comments

An interesting discussion is currently raging through the world of computing, or more accurately, through the world of bloggers and analysts. It basically comes down to this: should the iPad be included in laptop and desktop sales figures? If it is included - Apple becomes the largest PC manufacturer in the United States. But, if the iPad should be included - why not the modern smartphone?

More Stuff Happens in Mobile Patent World War

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-17 Legal 43 Comments

And we have another interesting development in the ongoing and ever-expanding idiocy that is the ~~War of the High-Fiving Lawyers~~ Mobile Patent World War. Motorola, now a central player in this worldwide conflict that is hurting consumers' wallets and clogging legal systems all over the world, has come to HTC's rescue by seeking to invalidate the patents Apple sued HTC with earlier this year.

Guest post by lemur2 2010-10-15 Mozilla, Gecko 151 Comments

For its upcoming Firefox 4.0 release, Mozilla has been concentrating a great deal on what is often cited as the main shortcoming of Firefox ... its speed. For example, Firefox 4.0 will include GPU acceleration for both rendering and compositing on Windows 7/Vista, OSX and Linux, and it will have GPU acceleration for compositing only for Windows XP.

John Sculley: Steve Jobs Wanted to Be Sony

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-15 Apple 52 Comments

Is it an indication of Steve Jobs' (in)famous strive for perfection, or just stupid bone-headedness? The white variant of the iPhone 4 was first delayed for a few weeks, but those few weeks became 'end of the year'. Now we know why: the manufacturers Apple employs are apparently having issues matching the shades of white of the various components. This anecdote ties in nicely with a very interesting interview with John Sculley about Steve Jobs' ways of doing business.

Engadget on Nokia N8: Hardware Good, Software Not so Much

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-14 Wireless 71 Comments

Nokia. The smartphone business is booming, and yet, the Finnish company - the quintessential phone maker - is getting pretty much none of the glitz and glamour. Their latest the device, the Nokia N8, is supposed to turn the tide, and Engadget has a thorough review of the device. Conclusion? It's getting repetitive, but hardware - awesome, software - not so much.

Submitted by addoula 2010-10-14 Opera 36 Comments

Opera Extensions have been confirmed as a feature of Opera 11. "Extensions in Opera is a way for you to easily add new functionality to your Opera browser experience. Developers can easily create extensions using open standards (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript) and supported APIs. Extensions will be based on the W3C Widget specifications and this is being considered for an Open Standard effort."

Guest post by vivainio 2010-10-14 KDE 79 Comments

In his lengthy and interesting blog post covering the future of Plasma, KDE's Aaron Seigo proposes Qt Quick and QML (a declarative language that embeds JavaScript) as replacement of the Graphics View architecture currently used by Plasma. This holds a promise of massive speedups and cheap effects as all paint operations become candidates for OpenGL acceleration, contrary to the aging Graphics View architecture that is still stuck with various inefficiencies caused by the underlying QPainter approach. Expressiveness and easy programmability of QML is a nice bonus, of course.

Apple Announces ‘Back to Mac’ Event

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-13 Apple 85 Comments

In this day and age of iOS this and iPad that you'd nearly forget it, but the gadget maker from Cupertino actually makes personal computers and an accompanying operating system as well. It's been nearly three years since the last substantial release, so it's about time: Apple has just announced a press event titled 'Back to Mac', with a lion on the invite.

Submitted by diegocg 2010-10-13 Linux 22 Comments

Well, this is quite interesting. This is one of those items where I have to make sure everybody realises I'm no developer as to not make myself look like an idiot. Having said that - LinSched. It's a user-space program that hosts the Linux kernel scheduler, so you can create and test scheduling policies on arbitrary hardware topologies - without actually having to work with the real hardware.

IBM Joins OpenJDK Community

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-12 Java 64 Comments

"Oracle and IBM today announced that the companies will collaborate to allow developers and customers to build and innovate based on existing Java investments and the OpenJDK reference implementation. Specifically, the companies will collaborate in the OpenJDK community to develop the leading open source Java environment."

Chrome OS Hits Release Candidate Status

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-12 Google 18 Comments

Interesting little digging from TechCrunch's MG Siegler: as it turns out, Google's Chrome OS is nearing completion. The company is currently testing a release candidate build, and has reiterated that devices running Chrome OS will arrive later this year.

Palm Pre 2 Detailed

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-11 Wireless 31 Comments

More mobile phone news! Rumours of an upcoming Palm Pre 2 have been swirling for a while, but now a French carrier has jumped the gun and spilled all the beans. Clearly a transitional device to bridge the gap between the first true HP devices, the devices updates and streamlines the Palm Pre Plus with an updated case, display, and internals. Also, it will pack webOS 2.0.

Microsoft Launches Windows Phone 7

Thom Holwerda 2010-10-11 Windows 37 Comments

So, today was the big day for Microsoft. It's all or nothing. Die tot oder die gladiolen (cookie if you get that one without using Google). The software giant from Redmond officially launched its Windows Phone 7 operating system, alongside about ten handsets from different OEMs. Since Windows Phone 7 has been covered quite a lot already, leaving little to the imagination, did something actually new come out of all this? Yes, it did.