OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

NVIDIA Unveils Optimus Seamless GPU Switching

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-09 3D 19 Comments

Notebooks with dual GPUs have been shipping for a while now, but switching between the fancy discrete GPU and the low-power integrated one hasn't exactly been painless. Today, NVIDIA introduced a technology called Optimus, which makes the switching process automatic and transparent. In Windows, that is.

Battery “Bug” Caused by Batteries, Not by Windows 7

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-08 Windows 33 Comments

The past few weeks or so, there's been a lot of interest in a supposed battery status report bug in Windows 7. After installing Windows 7, some users reported seeing "consider replacing your battery"-warnings in systems that appeared to be operating just fine on Windows XP or Vista. After extensive research, Steven Sinofsky has now explained on the Engineering 7 blog that the fault is not with Windows 7 - it really, really is your battery.

AMD Reveals Fusion CPU+GPU, To Challenge Intel in Laptops

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-08 AMD 20 Comments

"The 'Llano' processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it's not a GPU - instead, it's a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an 'application processor unit', or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die."

Concept: Stream Adaptive Computer System, Locus OS

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-08 OS News 17 Comments

Developed by industrial designer Barton Smith, the Stream Adaptive Computer System is an interesting take on making computing easier and more adaptable to suit the user's current needs. Today, he also unveiled the operating system and user interface that would run on Stream. It's... Amazing.

Power7: Big Blue Eye on UNIX

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-08 IBM 14 Comments

"The scuttlebutt is that IBM seemed perfectly content to wait until May to launch the Power7-based Power Systems servers, but something changed and compelled the company to move up the announcement of its first machines using the eight-core processor to today. Big Blue is not in a habit of explaining its motives or its timing for product launches, but it seems clear that IBM wanted to get out in front of a whole lot of processor and systems launches that are expected between now and the summer."

Dropping Mac OS X 10.4 Support in Gecko 1.9.3

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-08 Mozilla, Gecko 13 Comments

Mozilla has announced that they are going to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger definitively. "Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed since then," Josh Aas writes, "We would like to take advantage of more modern technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this."

Some Changes to OSNews Features and Information Display

David Adams 2010-02-08 OS News 52 Comments

We've been working on an "OSNews version 5" upgrade for several months, and with several months to go, we decided to make some incremental changes to OSNews on the existing codebase. The major change, as you probably already noticed, is that we've removed the "Page1/Page2" tabs and instead have OSNews stories with original content and commentary in one column, and news, items on OS-related topics gleaned from other sources in the other. Read on for more details on the changes we've implemented.

Submitted by kragil 2010-02-08 Graphics 97 Comments

You may remember that back in November last year, I wrote about the lack of a decent Paint.NET-like application for Linux (or, more specifically, for Gtk+ distributions, since Qt has Krita). As it turns out, this compelled Novell employee Jonathan Pobst to code a Paint.NET clone in Gtk+ using Cairo. Version 0.1 is here, and it's remarkably advanced for something so young.

Windows Phone 7: No Multitasking, Stricter Microsoft QA

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-07 Windows 127 Comments

Later this month, Microsoft will most likely unveil ~~Windows Mobile 7~~ Windows Phone 7 at the Mobile World Congress. Rumours abound, and the latest set of rumours paint a rather dramatic turnaround for Microsoft's mobile platform - no more multitasking, application distribution limited to official channels, and a whole lot more.

Microsoft To Patch 17-Year-Old Computer Bug

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-05 Microsoft 4 Comments

"The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs. Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7. The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it."

OGG in Silverlight, MS Join SVG, Flash Improvements, WebGL

Kroc 2010-02-05 Web 2.0 37 Comments

A quick round up of various web-related news items. First up, a new open source product entitled the "Highgate media suite" will bring OGG video decoding to Silverlight. Microsoft have just joined the SVG working group (arguably 10 years late, but it's better than nothing). Adobe promise significant improvements in Flash 10.1, including Core Animation rendering on OS X and lowered CPU usage. Finally, CoperLicht--a WebGL JavaScript 3D engine (Quake in JS will be here one day)

Zucker Misses the Mark, Wrongly Accuses Boxee of Stealing

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-05 Multimedia, AV 19 Comments

In a way, it's kind of sad. The old media squealing and squirming, trying pathetically to hold on to a time that has long been lost to the sands of... Well, time. Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC, made such a pathetic attempt before a US Congress committee yesterday, claiming Boxee stole Hulu's content.

Submitted by tyrione 2010-02-05 General Development 21 Comments

"Today, Clang completed its first complete self-host! We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM's regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap."

Virtio: An I/O Virtualisation Framework for Linux

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-05 Linux 3 Comments

With all the virtualization schemes running on top of Linux, how do they exploit the underlying kernel for I/O virtualization? The answer is virtio, which provides an efficient abstraction for hypervisors and a common set of I/O virtualization drivers. Discover virtio, and learn why Linux will soon be the hypervisor of choice.

Mono Project Delivers Moonlight 3.0 Preview

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-05 Mono 11 Comments

"The Mono Project releases the first preview of Moonlight 3.0, giving application developers a first look at the open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight 3 technology for the Linux platform." Sadly, it's still Firefox-only.

Fusion Garage: Market Big Enough for iPad and Joo Joo

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-04 Wireless 30 Comments

Finally something we can work with. While both the iPad and the Joo Joo are technically still vapourware, people have at least had the opportunity to play with the former, while the latter remained somewhat illusive. Now that the device has been set to ship at the end of this month, Ars Technica finally had some time to play with the Joo Joo and talk to Fusion Garage's CEO, Chandra Rathakrishnan. There's good news, and there's (potentially) bad news.

Studios Crushed: ISP Can’t Be Forced to Play Copyright Cop

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-04 Legal 16 Comments

"In a definitive defeat for film studios - and in a first case of its kind worldwide - Australia's Federal Court has ruled that ISPs have no obligation to act on copyright infringement notices or to disconnect subscribers after receiving multiple letters. If copyright holders want justice for illegal file-sharing, they need to start by targeting the right people: those who committed the infringement."

Sun CEO Announces Resignation on Twitter

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-04 Oracle and SUN 23 Comments

Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, an advocate of Web 2.0, used Twitter early Thursday to announce his resignation. He was named CEO in 2006 as Sun faced a switch in strategic direction away from proprietary systems and toward open source code, including its valued Solaris 10 operating system. "Today's my last day at Sun. I'll miss it", he said in a tweet to his followers, reported the New York Times on its Web site at 1:12 a.m. Thursday. He added a bit of haiku: "Financial crisis, Stalled too many customers, CEO no more."

Former Microsoft VP on “Microsoft’s Creative Destruction”

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-04 Microsoft 95 Comments

Now this is something you don't read every day. Dick Brass, vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004, has written an article for The New York Times' Op-Ed section, detailing the flaws in Microsoft's corporate culture, and how they've severely affected the company in a negative way. Telling, and painful. And, in a way, very sad. Update: Microsoft responds. "For Microsoft, it is not sufficient to simply have a good idea, or a great idea, or even a cool idea. We measure our work by its broad impact."

Hands-on: New Single-Window Mode Makes GIMP Less Gimpy

Thom Holwerda 2010-02-04 Graphics 15 Comments

"The venerable GNU Image Manipulation Program is undergoing a significant transformation. The next major release, version 2.8, will introduce an improved user interface with an optional single-window mode. Although this update is still under heavy development, users can get an early look by compiling the latest source code of the development version from the GIMP's version control repository."