OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The First Digital Camera

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-29 Multimedia, AV 10 Comments

I don't think you'll find many people left in our western world who prefer an old-fashioned regular camera over a digital one. While I can still appreciate the charm of fiddling with actual film and the thrill of finding out what your photos looked like all developed, digital photography is easier in just about every possible way. Thanks to The New York Times, I found a story from 2007 on the Kodak blog, detailing the ceation of the very first digital camera. In 1975. An old story, but fascinating nonetheless.

Submitted by lfeagan 2010-08-27 Legal 37 Comments

Most of us here are not particularly big fans of the concept of patents. Most of us are aware of the significance of patents, we just believe the system has gone out of control and needs a serious kick in the butt. Well, it turns out not even the richest people on this earth are immune to the call of the patent troll. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed a massive patent lawsuit, using broad and vague patents to sue just about any big name in the business - from Apple to Google.

FCC Illustrates Its Inability to Govern the Web

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-27 Internet 28 Comments

When Google and Verizon unveiled their joint net neutrality policy proposal, in which the FCC would play a central role in governing the internet, I mentioned how the the FCC might not be the kind of institution you'd want to hand over control to over your pornography life line (also known as the internet). Over the past few days, the FCC pretty much reiterated just why they are no the right people to govern the web.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-08-26 Hardware 37 Comments

I'm not really sure what to do with this. I mean, I know how popular the Commodore 64 was and still is, and how significant a machine it really was. So, when Commodore USA sends out a press release that it has acquired the rights to produce an exact replica case of the C64 (but with Intel Atom innards), I knew a lot of people would like this. At the same time, Commodore USA's website always seemed a little... Sketchy to me.

IBM’s Million Dollar CPU Is the Fastest in the World

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-26 IBM 49 Comments

At the Hot Chips 2010 conference, IBM announced their upcoming z196 CPU, which is really, really fast. How fast? Fastest chip in the world fast. Intended for Z-series mainframe computers, the Z196 has a clock speed of 5.2GHz. Measuring just 512 square millimeters, the Z196 is fabricated on 45nm PD SOI technology, and on its surface contains almost one and a half billion transistors. My... Processor is bigger than yours.

Submitted by historyb 2010-08-26 Solaris 32 Comments

The OpenSolaris governing board fell on its collective sword Monday and resigned en masse after Oracle continued to ignore its ultimatum to appoint a liaison guy to work with it on the future of the open source project. The move was anticlimactic to say the least. Oracle last week leaked an internal e-mail into the wild effectively saying OpenSolaris is dead. The news of the mass resignation, coupled with Oracle suing Google claiming Android infringes on its Java patents, had Adobe's director of open source and standards David McAllister casting Oracle as the New Microsoft and saying "the axis of evil has shifted south about 850 miles or so".

MPEG-LA Makes Free Internet Video Royalty Free Perpetually

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-26 Multimedia, AV 28 Comments

We haven't talked about this one for a while, but now there's news from the MPEg-LA camp. The MPEG-LA, known patent troll and chief supplier of FUD for well over ten years, is apparently feeling the pressure from Google's WebM project, and has done a complete 180. While promising earlier this year not to charge royalties for internet video that is free to end users until the end of 2015, they've now extended this promise to eternity. This may sound like a big deal, but it changes nothing - H264 is still a legal minefield even lawyers and the MPEG-LA itself have trouble understanding.

Guest post by snydeq 2010-08-25 Open Source 15 Comments

The InfoWorld Test Center rounds up of the past year in open source, highlighting the best open source offerings in several software categories: "The word 'best' here can mean many things. It is sometimes equivalent to 'most promising', 'most surprising', 'most subversive', 'most unnerving', 'most opportune', 'most happening', or some weird, inchoate mixture of them all. The one thing it always means is 'most useful' - to developers, IT administrators, and users on a business network." From enterprise apps, to app dev tools, to platforms and middleware, to networking software, the list is expansive, including 39 hybrid license and community offerings.

Google Adds Voice to Gmail; US, Canada Only

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-25 Google 7 Comments

"Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer's microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don't spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, 'wouldn't it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?' Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail."

Should Daemons Just Be Frontends to the OS Auditing System?

Guest post by Dennis Heuer 2010-08-25 Linux 16 Comments

I came across a news entry at Phoronix about a new init replacement, systemd, and curiously started a read into the surprisingly heavy matter. Systemd is by no means as simple as upstart. It does far more things far more straight and in more detail. The differences are so significant that they enforce quite different configuration strategies. One can argue for both, depending on the goal to reach. However, that's not what I want to write about. After having read what systemd is capable of, and how it does it, I began to put the existence of all system daemons - in their today's forms - in question.

NAB Responds to Concerns Regarding Mandated FM Chips

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-25 Multimedia, AV 71 Comments

A couple of days ago we talked about how the RIAA and NAB are planning on asking US Congress to mandate FM radio chips inside every cell phone. This plan was met with some ridicule, so the NAB decided to write a blog post addressing the critics. Most of the post is overshadowed by an overdose of America's favourite national pastime: WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. 9/11!

Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 Introduces Panorama

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-25 Mozilla, Gecko 70 Comments

Today, Mozilla released the fourth beta of Firefox 4.0. After a period of what I would call stagnation, the Mozilla team are back on track with delivering interesting UI concepts. They were sensible enough to copy Chrome's excellent tabs-on-top UI, but have now also added something called Panorama, a new and very interesting way of managing your open tabs.

An Experimental Chip From Intel that Can Move 50Gbps

Guest post by fran 2010-08-24 Intel 21 Comments

"Intel Corporation announced an important advance in the quest to use light beams to replace the use of electrons to carry data in and around computers. The company has developed a research prototype representing the world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. The link can move data over longer distances and many times faster than today's copper technology; up to 50 gigabits of data per second. This is the equivalent of an entire HD movie being transmitted each second."

AMD Announces 8-Core Bulldozer CPU

Guest post by fran 2010-08-24 AMD 33 Comments

"You can't say that AMD is ever boring. The company says its next-generation Bulldozer CPU core will take a unique approach to computing that goes beyond Hyper-Threading, which some believe could offer phenomenal performance."

Windows 95 Turns 15

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-24 Windows 102 Comments

In what has surprised me greatly, nobody has submitted anything to us regarding this day in the history of computing. Sure, memories of her may not be fond, and with the magical unicorn power of hindsight you'd rather forget you ever dated her so intensely, but she served a purpose. She led a revolution that changed the world forever, and while you may have hoped for a more charismatic leader, I think it's unfair not to honour the fact that she turned 15 today.

Motorola Goes Legal Against Custom Droid X Froyo Build

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-24 Wireless 47 Comments

Upgrading all those countless Android devices to version 2.2, or Froyo, hasn't exactly been an easy task for many device makers and carriers. Between flat-out denying devices from Froyoness and already having Froyo updates sent out, Motorola has pretty much lost it. Where companies are incompetent, the geeks that roam the 'net seek to provide solace. What do you do, then, as a company? Why, you threaten your loyal customers with legal action, of course.

Lexmark Slaps 3rd Party Cartridge Makers with Patent Suit

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-24 Legal 15 Comments

OSNews patent watch, at your service. Lexmark, apparently under new leadership who can't recall the defeat the company suffered back in 2005, is undertaking yet another attempt to block third party cartridges for Lexmark printers to enter the market. Instead of invoking the DMCA, they got clever this time and are claiming patent violations.

Rdio: Unlimited, On-Demand, Music Streaming

Eugenia Loli 2010-08-24 Multimedia, AV 38 Comments

Earlier today I bought a $10 album from iTumes, which I wish I hadn't. The reviews were glorious, and the previews not indicative. Listening to the album all I could hear was hipster drivel. Obviously, I wanted my money back. Well, bad luck. iTunes won't give refunds. I tweeted about it, and a friend suggested Rdio. Rdio, a brand new streaming service, currently offers a 3-day free trial -- without the need for a credit card. For $5 let's you stream their huge library on your desktop via an Adobe AIR app or browser, and for $10 let's you also stream from Android/BBerry/iOS, plus be able to sync your music with you offline on these devices. Unlike Last.fm and Pandora, Rdio let's you stream on-demand.

Virtual Router Smashes Speed Records

Guest post by fran 2010-08-23 Internet 8 Comments

"Researchers in South Korea have built a networking router that transmits data at record speeds from components found in most high-end desktop computers. A team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology created the router, which transmits data at nearly 40 gigabytes per second--many times faster than the previous record for such a device."

Valve Silences Steam on Linux Rumours

Guest post by Debjit 2010-08-23 Games 55 Comments

A rumor has been going around for about four months now that Valve is coming out with a Linux version of Steam and had a lot of people in the Linux community very excited. However Valve have officially killed the rumor. And it is not what people wants to hear - there is no Linux version of Steam in development.