Is Palm Dying?

Palm. It's that big clunky part of your hand that doesn't get any of the attention - the fingers, the thumb especially, get all the glory. Just think, however, what your hands would be like if you didn't have palms, and your fingers just grew straight out of your wrist. Doesn't look so hot now, does it? Well, Palm is supposedly about to go under, if you were to believe the reports. Update: Palm has just announced that the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus will become available on AT&T in the coming months.

Kicking in Open Doors: Open Source Is Not a Democracy

How surprised would you be, if I walked up to you and told you that every human needs oxygen to survive? I'm assuming that you wouldn't at all be surprised - you might start feeling a little uneasy that a random stranger walked up to you with such a crazy question, but you wouldn't be surprised by the we-need-oxygen fact. Apparently, people are surprised that Ubuntu is not a democracy.

Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 Is Looking Good, Less Brown

"Canonical has announced the availability of the first Ubuntu 10.04 beta release. The new version of Ubuntu, codenamed Lucid Lynx, is scheduled to arrive in April. It will be a long-term support release, which means that updates will be available for three years on the desktop and five years on servers. Although the Ubuntu developers have largely focused on boosting stability for this release, they have also added a number of noteworthy new features and applications. One of the most visible changes is the introduction of a new theme - a change that is part of a broader rebranding initiative that aims to update Ubuntu's visual identity." It might just be me, but I find the new theme ghastly. Compare this to this (my desktop). Oh, and Metacity - I can has anti-aliasing?

‘Why I Am Against Software Patents’

"I am against software patents because it is not reasonable to expect that the current patent system, nor even one designed to improve or replace it, will ever be able to accurately determine what might be considered legitimately patentable from the overwhelming volume of innovations in software. Even the most trivial of software applications involves hundreds, potentially thousands of design decisions which might be considered by those aggressively seeking patents as potentially protectable inventions. If even the most basic elements of these are patentable, as they are currently, the patent system will be fundamentally unable to scale to meet that demand. As it is today."

Another Look at Online Advertising

Online advertising has been a hot topic for the past week or so, with Ars Technica trying out an interesting, somewhat desperate experiment wherein they blocked access to their content for people using Adblock. Of course, if this were to become some kind of movement among publishers, it would probably just spark a technological cat-and-mouse game that would surely be reminiscent of DRM cracking or iPhone jailbreaking. But in their post-mortem, Ars states that it was a worthwhile awareness campaign, and I hope that's true. But I thought it would be a good idea to try to bring the collective OSNews brainpower together and crowdsource the idea of how to raise money for a web site in an age where advertising is increasingly un-viable.

Windows Phone 7 Emulator Unlocked, Shows All Apps

"Many of us who tried out the Windows Phone 7 simulator were disappointed to discover the simulator didn't contain a lot of the functionality that was being shown off at Mix10. It turns out Dan Ardelean has published a modified or 'unlocked' version of the simulator that contains virtually everything that was displayed. The front page is now full of apps that work, the settings menu is a long list of options for those apps. Unfortunately the download of the .bin file has now been pulled, but I was lucky enough to get a copy. Check out the 10 minute video of Windows Phone 7 ." It even has a nice task manager and file explorer - undoubtedly for testing purposes. It's Windows CE 6.0, after all.

Palm Slumps as Forecast Trails Analysts’ Estimates

"Palm Inc., creator of the Pre smartphone, fell the most in more than 15 months in Nasdaq trading after forecasting sales this quarter that were less than half of analysts' estimates. Revenue in the period ending in May will be less than USD 150 million, Chief Financial Officer Doug Jeffries said yesterday on Palm's third-quarter conference call, compared with the USD 300 million average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company also reported its 11th straight quarterly loss."

Mozilla: Stick to Your Ideals, Shun H264

Now that Internet Explorer 9 has been let out its cage, we all know a great deal more about Microsoft's position towards the video codec situation with the HTML5 video tag. Microsoft has chosen for H264, a codec it already includes in Windows by default anyway. This means that apart from Firefox and Opera, every other major browser will support H264. Some are seeing this as a reason for Mozilla to give in to their ideals and include support for H264 as well - I say: Mozilla, stick to your ideals. The last people you should be listening to in matters like this are web developers.

Price War in ebooks: Amazon vs. Apple

A serious dispute is brewing in the world of ebooks, pitting publishers and Apple against giant online retailer Amazon. A significant part of the appeal of ebooks is that they are (or should be) much cheaper than printed editions. In the publishing world, royalties paid to the author typically represent just 10% of the retail price. Both publishers and retailers take their cut. Printing is usually 30%, and then there are warehousing and shipping costs.

How Amsterdam Was Wired for Open Access Fibre

"The city of Amsterdam has been involved for several years in building Citynet, a partnership between the city and two private investors to wire 40000 Amsterdam buildings with fiber. And it's not just fiber, it's open access fiber - any ISP can sign up to use the infrastructure and deliver ultra-fast Internet access. In 2008, the European Union ruled that the city's involvement in the project was in fact legal, and that it was not improperly interfering in the market. We asked Herman Wagter, CEO of the company that built Citynet fiber project, to talk about how he got the job done, and to explain the challenges of rolling out fiber in a densely crowded European city." In case you're wondering: no, I don't live in Amsterdam. My small hick town has plans for fibre too, however.

Windows XP Mode No Longer Requires Hardware Virtualisation

"We're announcing an update to Windows XP Mode today that will make it a more accessible to PCs in small and midsize businesses who want to migrate to Windows 7 Professional but have applications that still require Windows XP. Windows XP Mode will no longer require hardware virtualization technology to run. This change makes it extremely easy for businesses to use Windows XP Mode to address any application incompatibility roadblocks they might have in migrating to Windows 7."