OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

A Statement Regarding OSNews’ Bias

Kroc 2010-05-01 OS News 69 Comments

Hello all. Over time we have had every imaginable claim of bias levied against us. We are routinely called pro-Apple, anti-Apple as well as pro-Microsoft and anti-Microsoft (even within the same discussion thread!). OSNews is an editorial site where the content is selected by a core team of volunteers who either write up news articles themselves, or take links or submissions from users on the site. Read More for the full statement.

Submitted by kragil 2010-05-01 Wireless 16 Comments

"Android is fairly unique in the ways it allows multiple applications to run at the same time. Developers coming from a different platform may find the way it operates surprising. Understanding its behavior is important for designing applications that will work well and integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Android platform. This article covers the reasons for Android's multitasking design, its impact on how applications work, and how you can best take advantage of Android's unique features."

Jobs: Patent Pool Being Assembled To Go After Theora

Submitted by Helge 2010-04-30 Legal 163 Comments

Well, this certainly explains a whole lot. Both Apple and Microsoft have stated that the legality of Theora is highly debatable, and as it turns out, they knew more than we do - most likely courtesy of their close involvement with the MPEG-LA. Responding to an email from Free Software Foundation Europe activist Hugo Roy, Steve Jobs has stated that a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora. Update: Monty Montgomery of Xiph (Ogg and Theora's parent organisation) has responded on Slashdot: "If Jobs's email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe ('All video codecs are covered by patents'). He'd be confirming MPEG's assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple's increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don't really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs."

Submitted by diegocg 2010-04-30 Linux 29 Comments

Via LWN: "Lennart Poettering has put up a lengthy post describing the 'systemd' project, which is creating a new init system. The whole thing is an interesting discussion of how system initialization should work. Upstart maintainer Scott James Remnant has posted a response to the announcement."

Gentoo: What Does this USE Flag Do?

Submitted by anonymous 2010-04-30 Gentoo 20 Comments

This blog post details how the Gentoo Developers have added a "deblob" USE flag to remove any non-free code within the Linux Kernel. Its goal is to "remove binary blobs from kernel sources to provide libre license compliance". While we're at it, Kernel News has an in-depth look at Gentoo Linux.

Update 2 of AmigaOS 4.1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-30 Amiga & AROS 10 Comments

"Hyperion Entertainment CVBA announces the immediate availability of Update 2 for AmigaOS 4.1 for AmigaOne, SAM440EP and Pegasos II for registered users. Note that for this update you must have previously installed AmigaOS 4.1 Update 1. Installation of this Update 2 is required for the upcoming public alpha of Timberwolf . This is a minor update which contains mostly bugfixes."

IE9 HTML5 Video Will Be H264 Only

Kroc 2010-04-29 Internet Explorer 149 Comments

I am almost flabbergasted by the spin and blunt-face upon which this news is delivered. We were just discussing the pot calling the kettle black with Apple / Adobe and now Microsoft have also come out in favour of a closed video format for an open web--IE9's HTML5 video support will allow H264 only. Update Now that the initial shock is over, I've rewritten the article to actually represent news rather than something on Twitter.

Linux on 4KB-Sector Disks: Practical Advice

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-29 Linux 12 Comments

This article examines the implications of 4KB-sector disks, including benchmark tests illustrating the likely real-world effects on some common Linux file systems. As disks with 4096-byte sectors become more common throughout 2010 and beyond, strategies for coping with these new disks will become increasingly important.

Microsoft Confirms Courier Project by Cancelling it

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-29 Microsoft 30 Comments

Now this sucks. We've encountered several 'leaks'over the past few months regarding a 'secret' project within Microsoft called Courier. The demonstrations showed a highly innovative dual-touchscreen tablet thingamabob that combined multitouch and pen input to create a completely new user interface. Today, Microsoft confirmed the project's existence (yay!)... By cancelling it (boo!).

Ubuntu 10.04 Released

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-29 Ubuntu 64 Comments

It's that time of year again: a new Ubuntu release (or Kubuntu, if that's your thing). Canonical has just released Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx. This is a long term support release, meaning its supported period is far longer than that of normal releases. It comes with the latest and greatest the Free software world has to offer, while also adding some Ubuntu-specific features, of course.

Jobs on Flash: Hypocrisy So Thick You Could Cut it with a Knife

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-29 Editorial 123 Comments

Holier-than-thou, an adjective, meaning "marked by an air of superior piety or morality". Everybody has moments in their life where they get into a "holier-than-thou" attitude, and I think Steve Jobs' open letter regarding Adobe, and Flash in particular, really fits the bill. There are three specific points I want to address to illustrate just how holier-than-thou, hypocritical, and misleading this letter really is.

Opera Drop Solaris Support

Kroc 2010-04-29 Opera 26 Comments

"In order to ensure a consistently high quality browser across our most popular desktop platforms we have reluctantly decided to drop support for Solaris. This will allow our UNIX development team to focus all of their attention on bringing Opera for Linux and FreeBSD up to final release quality, meaning that a 10.5x release for these platforms will happen as soon as feasibly possible". Opera assure us that this will have no effect on the existing Linux and UNIX ports.

Adobe Implement H264 Acceleration for Flash on Mac OS X

Kroc 2010-04-29 General Development 53 Comments

I think it's about time we got an Adobe category. Apple recently made public an API to allow OS X software access to hardware H.264 acceleration (albeit such acceleration is only available on chipsets since the Nvidia 9400M--early 2008) and Adobe have already baked this in to a beta preview of Flash 10.1 "Gala"! Update: Steve Jobs himself weighs in on Flash (via Engadget): "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."

HP Buys Palm

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-28 Wireless 56 Comments

Well, if we had one of those obnoxious "BREAKING!"-tags on OSNews, this would definitely fit the bill. While we were busy discussing whether HTC or Lenovo would snap up Palm, another major worldwide computer company picked up the Sunnyvale-based mobile outfit: Hewlett-Packard has bought Palm. Updates from the conference call inside.

Microsoft Signs the Joomla! Contributor Agreement

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-28 Internet 36 Comments

So, the deal with HTC isn't the only partnership Microsoft entered into today. The Joomla! project has announced that Microsoft has signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement, meaning the Redmond company is now a contributor to this GPL project. Microsoft code has already found its way into the upcoming Joomla! 1.6 release, and closer cooperation between Joomla! and Microsoft will follow.

Microsoft, HTC Sign Patent Licensing Agreement

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-28 Wireless 23 Comments

Yeah, we're continuing with the mobile news for now. As it turns out, there are two ways to deal with ever increasing competition. Where Apple sued HTC, Microsoft has decided to do what it does best: they're trying to extract some form of profit out of the rising popularity of Android phones. This morning, the Redmond giant announced it signed a patent licensing agreement with HTC.

Submitted by ZacharyM 2010-04-28 NetBSD 24 Comments

"Since early 2009 NetBSD and rump has supported execution of stock kernel module binaries in userspace on x86 architectures. Starting in -current as of today, kernel modules will automatically be loaded from the host into the rump kernel. For example, when mounting a file system in a rump kernel, support will be automatically loaded before mounting is attempted."

Submitted by vivainio 2010-04-28 Qt 15 Comments

Piggybacking on the N8 launch, Nokia provided the first public release of the Nokia Qt SDK (beta). In essence, this product is the Qt Creator 2.0 (with the usual support for desktop development), enhanced with features necessary for Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo development: easy hardware debugging, as well as a simulator that mocks screen size and various hardware events like location changes.

LLVM/Clang 2.7 Released

Submitted by TÃ¶rÃ¶k Edwin 2010-04-28 General Development 4 Comments

The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure version 2.7 has just been released. It includes a new open source BSD licensed C/C++ compiler, clang. "This includes significantly better generated code, improvements to debug information generation and a broad number of new features in the core infrastructure. One exciting feature is that Clang is now able to bootstrap itself, a major milestone in any compiler's development and particularly notable considering the complexity of implementing C++!" LLVM also has a new official blog.

Rubin: “Open Usually Wins”

Thom Holwerda 2010-04-27 Google 59 Comments

Andy Rubin is a vice president for engineering at Google, and he is responsible for the Android mobile operating system project. He recently had an hour long chat with The New York Times' Brad Stone, sharing his insights into things like openness, the lack of secret APIs in Android, and several other things. Of course, the jabs at Apple were prevalent.