Android Phone Sales Outpace iPhone Sales

Wireless 41 Comments
A bunch of figures travelled all over the web this past week regarding Android's remarkable growth. Its growth is indeed remarkable - bigger than the iPhone, bigger than Research In Motion's BlackBerry (in the US, at least). However, as impressive as those figures are, isn't it about time we start comparing platforms instead of devices?
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Nokia’s App Development Strategy: Qt, Qt, Qt

  Submitted by poundsmack Qt 59 Comments
Been wondering about Nokia's strategy for conquering the rapidly expanding app space? Great! So were we, which is why we joined up with a recent dev event carried out by the Finnish company for an update on how and where things are going. It's a familiar narrative by this point: Qt is all set to become the way that Nokia-friendly apps are made -- whether it be for Symbian smartphones or MeeGo-powered mobile computers, coffee machines or infotainment consoles
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Apple Loved You Pro Users; Loves Your Money More, Now

Apple 94 Comments
The "Macs are too expensive" argument is one of the most tiresome and long-lived flamewars in internet history. Obviously, Apple makes a premium product and charges premium prices, and you can always find a computer from another vendor that seems to match or exceed specs that costs less. But if you look at Apple's Mac Pro line, and compare it not so much to other vendors, but to the past lineup of Mac Pros, you discover some very unpleasant truths that help explain why Apple is enjoying record earnings for their Mac line, but doing so to the detriment of some its most loyal and valuable customers.
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AV Vendors Detect On Average 19% Of Malware Attacks

  Submitted by HAL2001 Bugs & Viruses 19 Comments
Traditional AV vendors continue to lag behind online criminals when it comes to detecting and protecting against new and quickly evolving threats on the Internet, according to a report by Cyveillance. Testing shows that even the most popular AV signature-based solutions detect on average less than 19% of malware threats. That detection rate increases only to 61.7% after 30 days. Even after 30 days, many AV vendors cannot detect known attacks.
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Threads or Cores: Which Do You Need?

  Submitted by estherschindler Hardware 44 Comments
Anyone contemplating a new computer purchase (for personal use or business) is confronted with new (and confusing) hardware choices. Intel and AMD have done their best to differentiate the x86 architecture as much as possible while retaining compatibility between the two CPUs, but the differences between the two are growing. One key differentiator is hyperthreading; Intel does it, AMD does not. This article explains what that really means, with particular attention to the way different server OSes take advantage (or don't). Plenty of meaty tech stuff.
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How to Revitalize Mature Computers

Hardware 49 Comments
In previous OSNews articles I've claimed that discarded computers up to ten years old can be refurbished and made useful to someone. They shouldn't be discarded. They should be refurbished -- fixed up and reused -- rather than recycled -- destroyed and separated into their constituent materials. So how does one do this? In this and several subsequent articles, I'll describe how to revitalize older computers.
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Blackberry OS 6

5 Comments
RIM announced Blackberry 6 yesterday, along with a new device called the Torch, to be released in the US on August 12. Users of some older Blackberry devices will be able to upgrade to the new OS, but unfortunately the upgrade will not be extending too far back in the product line (Bold 9700, Bold 9650, Pearl 3G). A Cnet article has a nice rundown of the new feature, which are no secret, because RIM has been keeping up a steady stream of information and video demos of the new OS for several months.
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Workstation Benchmarks: Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux

  Submitted by lemur2 Benchmarks 36 Comments
Here is the continuation of a series of comparison tests that is without doubt bound to cause a huge amount of controversy: Workstation Benchmarks: Windows 7 vs. Ubuntu Linux There are performance wins and losses on both sides of the fence, but Ubuntu compares very well with Windows 7, and no doubt these tests indicate a much closer performance comparison than most people would have expected.
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BlindElephant: Open Source Web Application Fingerprinting Engine

  Submitted by HAL2001 Privacy, Security 2 Comments
In this video recorded at Black Hat USA 2010, Patrick Thomas, a vulnerability researcher at Qualys, discusses the open source web application fingerprinting engine BlindElephant he created. BlindElephant is a tool that helps security professionals and systems administrators identify everything running on their servers, including any web applications users may have downloaded. It doesn't check for vulnerabilities or vulnerability to a particular exploit, but rather what version of applications are running on their site. For each application that the tool will support, BlindElephant consumes a number of version directories. All files and directories are processed, and a hash is computed for each file. This hash is stored in a temporary table, along with the path and version of the application it came from. Accuracy of the tool was demonstrated by a large-scale survey on Internet-visible hosts.
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Courage, Class, and Canonical

  Submitted by Amy Bennett Rumors 5 Comments
Greg DeKoenigsberg set off what would become a firestorm of debate in the Linux community last week when he posted rant against Canonical for their low ranking on number of commits to GNOME, based on a recent census study. Over the weekend, DeKoenigsberg apologized for the rant and explained in a more measured tone why he lashed out in anger at the findings of the GNOME Census, then again later at Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth's response to the debate, a broader argument against tribalism.
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