OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 587

KDE 4.6.0 Released

Submitted by zegenie 2011-01-26 KDE 91 Comments

Before we get underway: I'm sorry, we don't have enough headline space to write 'KDE Releases Development Platform, Applications and Plasma Workspaces 4.6.0'. Then again, do any non-anal people every refer to it that way? No? I thought so. In any case, there's a new KDE version out with lots of new features, bug fixes, and performance enhancements.

Obama Nominates Former RIAA Lawyer For Solicitor General

Submitted by brewmastre 2011-01-26 Legal 26 Comments

"President Barack Obama on Monday nominated former Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Donald Verrilli Jr. to serve as the nation's solicitor general. The solicitor general is charged with defending the government before the Supreme Court, and files friend-of-the court briefs in cases in which the government believes there is a significant legal issue. The office also determines which cases it would bring to the Supreme Court for review. Verrilli is best known for leading the recording industry's legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster's demise when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the RIAA's verdict." Cough.

Microsoft’s eMIPS Port Now Part of NetBSD

Submitted by reez 2011-01-26 NetBSD 3 Comments

A month ago Microsoft released a NetBSD port for their eMIPS ("Extensible MIPS") platform. Now the port found its way into the NetBSD source tree. "The 'extensible MIPS' is a dynamically extensible processor for general-purpose, multi-user systems. The reconfigurable logic (Extensions) dynamically load/unload application-specific circuits. Extensions add specialized instructions to the processor, security monitors, debuggers, new on-chip peripherals. Extended Instructions dramatically speedup application programs, just by patching their binaries." Besides the eMIPS port, Microsoft also contributed a machine independent framework for hardware accelerator scheduling, a scheduling policy for it, and a secure executable format.

Major Linux Distributions Collaborating on Application Store

Submitted by fran 2011-01-26 Linux 41 Comments

Installing software on Linux has gotten progressively easier over the years, down to being downright foolproof in Ubuntu's Application Center. However, there is still the problem of each distribution relying on its own frontends and backends, and this needs to be addressed. Members from all the major Linux distributions have held several talks, and have come up with a solution which is already being implemented.

AMD Supports OpenGL 4.1 for Windows, Linux

Guest post by fran 2011-01-26 AMD 11 Comments

"AMD has announced its support of Open GL 4.1 on Microsoft and Linux platforms in its latest driver release for a number of its graphics cards. The driver release, available on the AMD website for the ATI FirePro, ATI FireGl and AMD Radeon cards, will support OpenGL 4.1 for Microsoft's Windows 7, Vista, XP, as well as Linux."

Intel Developing Security ‘Game-Changer’

Guest post by fran 2011-01-26 Intel 9 Comments

"Intel's chief technology officer says the chip maker is developing a technology that will be a security game changer. Justin Rattner told Computerworld on Tuesday that scientists at Intel are working on security technology that will stop all zero-day attacks."

RIM’s New QNX-based Platform to Run Android Applications?

Submitted by fran 2011-01-26 Wireless 20 Comments

Well, this is interesting. Research In Motion is hard at work on its PlayBook tablet, as well as on its new mobile operating system, for the device based on QNX. It's no secret that RIM intends to deliver some form of backwards compatibility for its older BlackBarryOS applications. And that's where a golden opportunity arises.

Microsoft To Work with Jailbreakers on Windows Phone 7

Thom Holwerda 2011-01-25 Windows 28 Comments

Right, it's good to be back. This is news from last week, but heck, it's relevant for me since I just got my HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 device. Anyway, if you're running a very large company in the business of selling phones, gadgets, and so on, there are several ways to deal with jailbreakers. It seems like Microsoft is one of the few companies who knows what it needs to do.

Port Gallium3D to Haiku, Earn $2000!

Submitted by sparklewind 2011-01-25 Haiku 26 Comments

A few months ago, a bounty for porting Gallium3D to Haiku was submitted. As the target sum of $2000 has been reached, what's needed now is a developer interested in doing the actual coding work. (Gallium3D is a cross-platform video driver API, on which an increasing number of open-source Linux drivers are based.)

Unified Memory Device Being Developed in North Carolina

Submitted by M.Onty 2011-01-25 Hardware 19 Comments

Thinking that HP's memristors can't arrive early enough on the market? Here's competition already! A team at North Carolina State University, led by Dr Paul Franzon, has unveiled the "double floating-gate field effect transistor", a component based on the same principles as flash memory which would allow to store data for "a couple of years" in around 15 nanoseconds.

Microsoft Sued Over Refunds on Windows Copies

Submitted by jimmy1971 2011-01-25 Windows 22 Comments

"A class action lawsuit against Microsoft has been filed in Italy by a group claiming that it's too difficult to procure a refund for the copies of Windows that come bundled in new PCs."

Unix Creators Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie Win Japan Prize

Submitted by jimmy1971 2011-01-25 Unix No Comments

Today, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, the two Bell labs scientists which began creating the Unix operating system in 1969, have been named as winners of the 2011 Japan Prize for information and communications.

Fedora Project Investigates Possible Infrastructure Compromise

Submitted by HAL2001 2011-01-25 Fedora Core No Comments

"A security incident on Fedora infrastructure has been reported by Jared Smith, Fedora Project's leader, who confirmed that the account of one of its contributors has been compromised. According to preliminary results of an investigation mounted by Fedora Project's Infrastructure Team, the compromise wasn't the result of an exploitation a vulnerability."

Creating a Storyboard Animatic With Blender

Submitted by fsmag 2011-01-25 Multimedia, AV No Comments

"Previously, I demonstrated creating an animatic using Kino. That was an interesting exercise, but Kino is not really up to that kind of job. Blender, on the other hand, has a very nice "video sequence editor" built into it, and it turns out to be very well adapted for this kind of task."

Debian Frees Up the Kernel Again

Submitted by fsmag 2011-01-25 Debian 5 Comments

"The Debian project has now announced that from the release of Squeeze (Debian 6.0) their GNU/Linux kernels will be available without the non-free blobs."

Fedora 15 Changing NIC Naming Scheme

Submitted by Debjit 2011-01-25 Fedora Core 15 Comments

"Fedora developer, Matt Domsch, has announced that Fedora 15 is breaking the conventional ethX naming scheme used for Ethernet devices by adopting a new scheme called Consistent Network Device Naming."

Sepaton Unveils Next-Gen Private Cloud OS

Submitted by jimmy1971 2011-01-25 Internet No Comments

"Sepaton today announced the next-generation operating system for its grid-based deduplication, backup appliance, the S2100-ES2. The new 64-bit operating system, combined with Intel's new Westmere processor, runs the updated appliance at twice the speeds of its predecessor, the company said."

Why Graphene Won’t Replace Silicon in Microprocessors

Submitted by sawboss 2011-01-25 Hardware 1 Comment

Over the last three years, we've seen a lot of impressive demonstrations of what the material graphene (a single-atom wide sheet of carbon with the atoms spread in an hexagonal mesh) can do. However, according to IBM, graphene does not have an energy gap, which means that graphene transistors can't be "switched on and off", and thus that they are unsuitable for use inside of microprocessors.

The Document Foundation Launches LibreOffice 3.3

Kroc 2011-01-25 Office 7 Comments

"The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project."

Breakthrough Nanotape Tech Promises Cooler Chips

Submitted by fran 2011-01-25 Hardware 2 Comments

"A team of researchers comprised of members from the Semiconductor Research Corporation and Stanford University has developed a new thermal nanotape which it claims will lead to chips that run cooler and last longer."