OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The Future of Computing is Remote-Controlling Everything

Eugenia Loli 2010-08-23 Wireless 29 Comments

Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, wrote a blog post yesterday about the upcoming revolution of the TV. A sentiment that I of course agree with. However, trying to think one step ahead, it makes sense to envision that the next big device that will get "smart," is the car. And when this happens soon, everything else will follow.

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Go Gold September 16

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-23 Windows 8 Comments

Can you believe it's been only six months since Microsoft first unveiled its brand-new and most likely last-ditch effort to regain some significance in the smartphone market? Well, today the company announced that the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools will go gold September 16, and applications submissions will be accepted from early October onwards.

Malware Implicated in Fatal Spanair Plane Crash

David Adams 2010-08-23 Bugs & Viruses 11 Comments

Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware.

The Dirty Little Secret About Google Android

David Adams 2010-08-23 Wireless 19 Comments

Here's the dirty little secret about Android: After all the work Apple did to get AT&T to relinquish device control for the iPhone and all the great efforts Google made to get the FCC and the U.S. telecoms to agree to open access rules as part of the 700 MHz auction, Android is taking all of those gains and handing the power back to the telecoms.

Guest post by diegocg 2010-08-23 Linux 24 Comments

Lennart Poettering has posted a status update about systemd, an init/upstart alternative. systemd is able now to replace /etc/fstab and cron, and it seems it will be the default init system for Fedora 14. He has also written a post about systemd for administrators.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-08-22 Office 14 Comments

"This is a minor release of Vim. It consists of Vim 7.2 plus all patches, updated runtime files and some more, see below. It has been two years since the 7.2 release, thus it's not that 'minor'. But not 'major' either. Something in between, don't know how to call that."

Kernel Testing in Userspace with ‘rump’ on NetBSD.

Submitted by Ed 2010-08-22 NetBSD No Comments

On the NetBSD Blog, there's an in depth article about how rump can be used for testing and debugging the NetBSD kernel in userspace. "This article explains how rump is the enabling technology for a safe, fast and run-anywhere kernel test suite which requires absolutely no configuration from the person running the tests."

Open Source 2D, 3D for ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series GPUs

Submitted by Michael 2010-08-22 AMD 7 Comments

"AMD continues to abide by their commitment to provide open-source support for their graphics cards and as proof of that this afternoon they have released their initial hardware acceleration code that supports the ATI Radeon HD 5000 "Evergreen" family of consumer grade graphics processors. While this Evergreen support isn't yet finished and for the time being is targeted towards Linux developers and enthusiasts, you can now play around with your ATI Radeon HD 5000 graphics processor on an open-source driver while having 2D EXA, X-Video, and OpenGL acceleration."

Ubuntu Drops SPARC, IA64

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-22 Ubuntu 3 Comments

"Maverick Meerkat is set to become the last version of Ubuntu that'll run on Oracle's Sparc, ending a four-year relationship. Also getting canned is Ubuntu running on Hewlett-Packard's Itanic 64-bit challenger. Meerkat is currently in feature-freeze ahead of October's official launch, and apparently nobody's stepped up to maintain the Linux ports to either Sparc or Itanium. The Ubuntu Sparc port has fallen out of use and updates have slipped, meaning it's fallen below the level of quality needed for an Ubuntu port. Ubuntu on HP's IA64 is in slightly better shape, but - still - nobody's actively maintaining it."

Submitted by koki 2010-08-20 Haiku 89 Comments

This summer, too, the Haikuproject is part of the Google Summer of Code event. One of the more interesting projects is the Services Kit (draft document!) by Christophe "Shusui" Huriaux, which is an API to facilitate the creation of native web-enabled programs using standard web protocols and data exchange mechanisms.

Google Chrome Web Store Coming in October

Guest post by fran 2010-08-20 Google 16 Comments

Rumours were abound that the first Google ChromeOS device would emerge towards the end of the year. Although this rumour turned out to be false, other snippets of news surrounding Google and the ChromeOS also emerged. One of these stories consists of rumours reported by TechCrunch, and two others are not rumours but simply confirmed facts.

Submitted by anilg 2010-08-20 Solaris 15 Comments

The Nexenta Core Platform marches on with the release of version 3.0 of the OpenSolaris based distribution, based on b134. It has also officially unveiled plans of moving from OpenSolaris to Illumos, the fully open branch of OpenSolaris. It will also now plan on moving to a new userland release. Grab the iso here.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-08-20 Hardware 15 Comments

"Toshiba said Wednesday that it had made a breakthrough in hard disk design that will allow hard drives to have much higher capacities than what is currently possible today. The research is in something called bit-patterned media, a magnetic storage technology. The recording surface is broken up into tiny magnetic bits, each of which can hold a single bit of data. The bits are made up of several grains, which are organized in rows. This organization is what makes it possible for data to be found easily."

Gmail Videochat Comes to Linux

Submitted by Debjit 2010-08-20 Google 2 Comments

"The long wait is over and Linux users can finally use the Gmail Videochat! The GMail team recently announced the availability of voice and video chat on Linux. This feature is currently supported on Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions. RPM Support for Fedora Linux and other Red Hat based distributions (like CentOS) is going to be added soon." Some screenshots of GMail Video Chat on Linux in action

NAB, RIAA: Congress Should Mandate FM Radio in Portable Devices

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-19 Multimedia, AV 61 Comments

You know, I really like America and its citizens. Beautiful country, lovely people, nothing but good experiences on my end. However, like everyone else, the US has its problems, and one particular annoying one is the power of lobby and interests groups. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that the RIAA and NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) are asking Congress to mandate FM chips in all portable devices - cell phones, mp3 players, PDAs, everything. Wait, what?

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-08-19 Intel 47 Comments

Chalk this one up on the 'uh, what?'-list of acquisitions. Intel announced today that it has acquired Mcafee, the security and antivirus company we all know ~~and love~~. The press release is a bit vague on why, exactly, Intel made this rather odd acquisition.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-08-19 Wireless 41 Comments

Fascinating stuff, but not entirely unexpected. As most of you will know, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is working on a tablet dubbed the BlackPad, and according to several sources reporting to Bloomberg, the device will ship with software written by QNs Software Systems, which RIM purchased earlier this year.

WebKit Gets MathML Support

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-19 Internet 8 Comments

"If you've been following check-ins for the last year or so, then you already know that some dedicated contributors have been working on a MathML implementation in WebKit. I am very pleased to announce that the implementation is now turned on by default in the WebKit build and in WebKit Nightlies! Big thanks to Alex Milowski, Francois Sausset, and everyone else who has worked on MathML in WebKit."

A New Kind of Microchip

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-19 Hardware 20 Comments

"A computer chip that performs calculations using probabilities, instead of binary logic, could accelerate everything from online banking systems to the flash memory in smart phones and other gadgets. Rewriting some fundamental features of computer chips, Lyric Semiconductor has unveiled its first "probability processor," a silicon chip that computes with electrical signals that represent chances, not digital 1s and 0s."

Rumour: Google Chrome OS Tablet on Verizon in November

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-18 Wireless 12 Comments

I don't trust the site that brought the rumour, but hey, we don't have much else to report on so bear with me. DownloadSquad is reporting that they've heard from a reliable source that Verizon and Google are going to unveil a Chrome OS tablet in November. So basically, Chrome OS is going to compete with Android on tablets. Excellent idea. Oh and also, Engadget has compiled Verizon's roadmap for the rest of the year, and it's Android, Android, Android, Andrdoid. Update: Surprising - it's nonsense.

The Future of Computing is Remote-Controlling Everything

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Go Gold September 16

Malware Implicated in Fatal Spanair Plane Crash

The Dirty Little Secret About Google Android

systemd Status Update

Vim 7.3 Released

Kernel Testing in Userspace with ‘rump’ on NetBSD.

Open Source 2D, 3D for ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series GPUs

Ubuntu Drops SPARC, IA64

New Haiku Services Kit Takes Shape

Google Chrome Web Store Coming in October

Nexenta Core Platform 3 Released

Toshiba’s Breakthough Could Herald Mega-capacity Drives

Gmail Videochat Comes to Linux

NAB, RIAA: Congress Should Mandate FM Radio in Portable Devices

Intel To Acquire McAfee

RIM To Use QNX Software in Upcoming Tablet?

WebKit Gets MathML Support

A New Kind of Microchip

Rumour: Google Chrome OS Tablet on Verizon in November