Like I said in the below item, it's a slow news day. This was further evidenced today by a story about the Google Chrome OS Netbook specifications, which,
according to IBTimes, were leaked - to them, obviously. Together with the iPhone/NYC thing, this story gripped the internet and blogosphere today.
Since the news is still somewhat slow today due to the holiday season, let's talk about something I initially didn't want to talk about at all: it was widely reported today that AT&T stopped online sales of the iPhone in New York City. AT&T gave a number of different reasons as to why, before resuming online sales later during the day. Storm, meet teacup.
Mozilla
won't make a 2009 deadline for releasing Firefox 3.6 and is giving itself more time to complete a major update, version 4.0. The organization behind the open-source Web browser had predicted a final release of Firefox 3.6 in December 2009, but the Mozilla Web site now includes "ship Firefox 3.6" as a goal for the first quarter of 2010. In addition, Firefox 4.0, which had been due in 2010, now is "aimed at late 2010 or early 2011," with a beta due in the summer of 2010, according to Mozilla.
"Google is one of the biggest companies supporting OpenSource movement, they released more than 500 open source projects (most of them are samples showing how to use their API). In this article I will try to write about most interesting and free releases from Google, some of them might be abandoned." Via
NewsYCombinator.
Since the stream of news is still pretty much dry, I figured I'd throw in something I've been meaning to talk about for a while now, but really didn't dare to: KDE4's performance. Since experiences with KDE4 seem to widely differ between people, it might be a good idea if we, together, can find a common cause among those of us having problems.
"Their arrival heralded a new age of communications and they played a major role in the explosion of the internet. We're talking, of course, about modems. Here we look back on
the development of this remarkable device."
"Adobe's Open Screen Project, which puts Flash acceleration support on a variety of platforms, has killed Intel's 'full Internet' rationale for mobile x86. But the same project has also brought HD YouTube and Hulu to Intel's Pine Trail platform,
which hurts the case for NVIDIA's Ion."
You really know the tumbleweeds are rolling across the dusty plains of the internet when you have not one, but two technically pointless stories about "Show us your !" Yes, I figured that while we're at it, we might as well take a look at not just our operating system's desktops, but also our real desktops.
At the end of the year, mainly to shamelessly fill slow news around the holidays, OSNews usually asks the readers to share with all the other readers something about their computer setup. Since OSNews can be quite diverse when it comes to computing environments, these threads can often be quite interesting. This year, please chime in with the setup you use to read OSNews - computer, OS, software and maybe even provide screenshots or photos of your proud workspace. Has it changed a lot this year? Maybe switched browser, maybe switched OS even? Let everybody know!
Gizmodo has compiled a rogues' gallery of buggy, disappointing, and just plain pointless
gadgets that all made their mark during the 2000s. If you've been following computing news over the past ten years, you probably remember lots of them, and may have been personally disappointed by some of them. Some highlights: Segway, wearable PC, n-Gage, Rokr.
The time of Christmas is obviously upon us. Programmers and bloggers all over the world are putting down their text editors, meaning there's no news for us to report on (unless you want to talk about yet another set of rumours about the Apple tablet). Still, I couldn't let this day go by without a story.
"Google's Chrome OS does not run local applications or store local data. Everything is handled inside the browser. But when the much-hyped operating system debuts on netbooks at the end of next year, you can bet it will execute native code on behalf of online Google applications such as Gmail or Docs and Spreadsheets. In other words, Google apps will tap directly into the netbook's processor in an effort to close the performance gap that separates them from the local software offered by its bete noire, Steve Ballmer's Microsoft. And this being Google,
they won't use Java, Flash, or Silverlight."
"I used to think the best place to design a website was in an image editor. I'd create a pixel-perfect PSD filled with generic content, send it off to the client, go through several rounds of revisions, and eventually create the markup. Does this process sound familiar? You're not alone. In a very scientific and official survey I conducted, close to 90% of respondents said they design in Photoshop before the browser. Recently, thanks in large part to the influence of design hero Dan Cederholm, I've come to the conclusion that
a website's design should begin where it's going to live: in the browser."
After two long years since the last release, Cygwin 1.7 (a Linux-like environment that runs on Windows systems)
has been released. Among many other improvement, this release adds support for Windows 7 and Server 2008R2.
The past few weeks the entire internet has been going bonkers over the Google phone, yet another in a long line of Android phones that has everyone's knickers in twists. Up until now we had to go by small photos and Twitter messages from Google employees, but now we have full specifications, a hands-on, and video.
It seems like Microsoft is accepting the
outcome of the appeal case yesterday. The company has
released an update for OEMs in the United States that strips the infringing feature from the ubiquitous word processor. "The following patch is
required for the United States."
Submitted by Karlin Fox
2009-12-23
OS News
Good news for those interested in continuing use of the OpenStep operating system:
Atomic Object has posted a new version of the community VMware driver for OpenStep on
github. You can read more about it in the
blog post or the
forum announcement over at
nextcomputers.org. The update includes support for high-resolution video modes.
This is old news, but only just crossed my radar! Opera have
made available a pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. There's a massive amount of change under the hood, and I caught wind
via taranfx.com.
Earlier this year, a judge
ruled that Microsoft willfully infringed on an XML-related patent held by i4i, and ordered the company to pay 290 million USD. In addition, if the Redmond giant didn't comply within 60 days of the ruling, Word would be banned from the US market. Microsoft later
received a stay on this injunction, pending appeal.
This appeal failed for Microsoft, as the earlier ruling has been upheld.
One of the many issues plaguing the App Store for Apple's iPhone platform is that of 'app spam'. Now that Palm is busy dotting the i's of its own offering, the App Catalog,
discussions have erupted about how Palm should combat this problem - if at all.
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