OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Autodesk, eBay Seller in Court Over Reselling Software

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-30 Legal 32 Comments

A very simple question for you. How often have you resold software that you legally purchased? Often enough, right? Well, if it's up to Autodesk, the company behind AutoCAD, you will no longer be allowed to resell your software. Update: As it turns out, the matter has already been resolved: Autodesk lost. A win for all of us.

Stallman: No Evidence of Backdoor in Mac OS X

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-29 Open Source 59 Comments

Well, this is refreshing. While Richard Stallman is a staunch critic of anything closed and non-Free, his ire seems mostly directed towards DRM and Microsoft. However, a lesser known fact is that he often talks about Apple's Mac OS X too in his speeches. During those speeches, he repeatedly claimed Mac OS X contained a backdoor which allowed Apple to forcibly impose software changes upon users. Stallman has now posted a retraction for those claims.

Dell Nestles ARM and Intel Processors Together

weildish 2009-09-29 Hardware 21 Comments

"ARM comes of age with a major PC design breakthrough this week. The Cambridge-based company will see a microprocessor based on one of its low power cores sitting side-by-side with an Intel Core Duo in a Dell laptop PC. The key to ARM's success is Dell's plan to run Linux as a second rapid boot operating system on its Windows latptop... The high-end laptop called the Latitude Z will use the ARM-based processor to run a second Linux based operating system which will allow the machine to boot up quickly for specific applications such as music and video playing. The PC runs Windows 7 on a 1.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor as its main CPU. Still this marks a significant design win for ARM which finds itself sitting side-by-side with its main processor rival in a big brand name PC."

Google Angers Android Community with Cease and Desist Letter

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-29 Google 37 Comments

Building custom ROM images for popular phones is a relatively common thing on the internet. There are a number of forums dedicated to hacking and creating custom Windows Mobile ROMs, and there's also a community of people working on custom Android ROMs. The latter community has been up in arms over the fact that Google has sent a cease and desist letter to one of the most popular ROM hackers.

Guest post by exien 2009-09-29 Internet 1 Comment

"The names are familiar: Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari. These relatively new browsers have been shaking the foundations of Internet Explorer's complete victory over Netscape. These new browsers are implementing fresh ideas and breaking out of the crusty browsers of the early 21st century. With the second browser wars in full swing, let's see where things stand and what's coming."

Submitted by REM2000 2009-09-29 Microsoft 34 Comments

Microsoft have released their free anti-virus and anti-malware software (codenamed 'Morro') to the public, under the name of 'Microsoft Security Essentials'.

The Myth of Crowdsourcing

David Adams 2009-09-29 In the News 26 Comments

Forbes has an interesting article that attempts to push Crowdsourcing off its pedestal by pointing out that "crowds" don't actually invent or create anything; individuals do. What the crowdsourcing phenomenon does is put an opportunity in front of a large number of people, some of whom may be uniquely suited to solve a particular problem or achieve a particular goal. The article goes on to discuss Open Source Software, and points out that Open Source's success isn't because of crowds of anonymous people, but the largely the efforts of identifiable virtuosos.

Ballmer Discusses Browser/OS Market

David Adams 2009-09-29 Microsoft 24 Comments

In part three of TechCrunch's interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, they discuss web browsers. Ballmer calls Chrome and Safari marketshare numbers a "rounding error," and takes note of the fact that Google is going to be calling both its OS and browser "Chrome," pointing out that in this modern era, "the notion of operating systems being independent of internet access and internet ability to render important things in the internet is kind of not a sensible concept." In other words, he thinks it's unfair to persecute Microsoft for tying IE to Windows. He discusses Firefox, and rags on Google's OS strategy, and finished up on an evaluation of the Netbook/MID market and how Microsoft intends to compete there.

iPhone May Face EU-Wide Recall

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-29 Apple 40 Comments

The European Union has stated today that it is taking the "exploding" iPhone issues very, very seriously. EU consumer watchdog Meglena Kuneva has explained that if national authorities find out that manufacturing faults are the cause of the issue, the iPhone will face an EU-wide recall.

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-09-28 Microsoft 31 Comments

It seems like Microsoft Research is really busy these days with research operating systems. We had Singularity, a microkernel operating system written in managed code, and late last week we were acquainted with Barrelfish, a "multikernel" system which treats a multicore system as a network of independent cores, using ideas from distributed systems. Now, we have a third contestant, and it's called Helios.

Palm Releases webOS 1.2, No iTunes Sync

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-28 Wireless 8 Comments

Palm has released webOS 1.2 today - and it doesn't fix iTunes sync. It's got a whole boatload of new features though, so have fun exploring. Your Pre will update itself automatically over-the-air.

Browser Makers Unhappy with Ballot Screen Proposal

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-28 Internet 67 Comments

As you all undoubtedly know, the European Union and Microsoft are trying to work out some sort of a settlement regarding the Internet Explorer case. Microsoft made a very detailed proposal for a browser ballot screen earlier this year, and the EU was relatively satisfied. Now, various browser makers have told Reuters that they are not satisfied with Microsoft's proposal.

HP-UX Gets Biannual Face-Lift

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-28 Unix 6 Comments

"Hewlett-Packard is rolling out Update 5 for the HP-UX Unix operating system that runs its Itanium and PA-RISC lines of Integrity and HP 9000 servers, keeping to its pattern of two updates per year for its flagship operating system. As has been the case with the prior HP-UX updates, the changes are important to existing HP-UX shops, but they're probably not going to cause a stampede of buyers for HP-UX systems. It's no different with the updates to IBM's AIX or Sun Microsystems' Solaris Unixes do."

FreeBSD 8.0, Ubuntu 9.10 Benchmarks

Submitted by Michael 2009-09-28 Benchmarks 28 Comments

Phoronix was kind enough to add a deliciously lengthy nine-page compare and contrast between FreeBSD 8 and Ubuntu 9.10 to their arsenal of articles. "Canonical will be releasing Ubuntu 9.10 at the end of next month while the final release of FreeBSD 8.0 is also expected within the next few weeks. With these two popular free software operating systems both having major updates coming out at around the same time, we decided it warranted some early benchmarking as we see how the FreeBSD 8.0 and Ubuntu 9.10 performance compares. For looking more at the FreeBSD performance we also have included test results from FreeBSD 7.2, the current stable release. In this article are mostly the server and workstation oriented benchmarks with the testing being carried out on a dual AMD Opteron quad-core workstation."

Guest post by lemur2 2009-09-28 Linux 4 Comments

Release candidate Linux 2.6.32-rc1 is out. Linus Torvalds has posted the announcement for the first release candidate of Linux kernel 2.6.32 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. "The Linux 2.6.32 kernel brings many driver updates, some new drivers, many file-system updates, and much more. Exciting us in the Linux 2.6.32 kernel is the ATI R600/700 kernel mode-setting and 3D support along with the VGA Arbitration code and the KMS page-flipping ioctl."

Apple Pushes Unwanted Software to Windows Users – Again

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-28 Apple 83 Comments

If you have Apple's QuickTime media player and/or iTunes installed on your Windows machine, you might want to keep an eye on apple's Software Update tool. Apple is once again using the update tool to push unwanted software onto users' machines without asking for permission.

Episode 25: Haiku, WinMo, Opera, Psystar, Chrome Frame

Kroc 2009-09-27 Podcasts 17 Comments

In that order. There was no show last week due to Thom being busy with work so we had two weeks of news to catch up on. Obviously, Haiku has to be mentioned once more and we are joined by Mike Ferland, an OSnews follower, halfway through the show.

Apple Driving Force Behind Intel’s Light Peak

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-27 Apple 29 Comments

When Intel unveiled its Light Peak optical interconnect (video) at IDF earlier this week, many noticed that the demonstration computer used to show the new technology was in fact a hackintosh. Well, thanks to Engadget we now know why: Apple is very, very involved in the conception of Light Peak. Let's take this opportunity to look at some of Apple's other connection standards from the past.

Chrome Frame, Bloated Linux

Thom Holwerda 2009-09-27 OS News 12 Comments

We didn't have a Week in Review last week, and I'm sorry for that - I was swamped with other things (hence no podcast either last week, we did record one today). This past week saw news items on a wide variety of topics, ranging from Google fixing Internet Explorer to Linus calling Linux bloated.

Microsoft Releases Code for ‘Multikernel’ Research OS ‘Barrelfish’

Submitted by Still Lynn 2009-09-25 Microsoft 69 Comments

Most of us are probably aware of Singularity, a research operating system out of Microsoft Research which explored a number of new ideas, which is available as open source software. Singularity isn't the only research OS out of Microsoft; they recently released the first snapshot of a new operating system, called Barrelfish. It introduces the concept of the multikernel, which treats a multicore system as a network of independent cores, using ideas from distributed systems.