Mac OS X 10.6.1 Released

macOS 15 Comments
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is barely out the door, and Apple has already released the first update, Mac OS X 10.6.1, which includes, among other things, the latest version of Adobe's Flash Player. "This update is recommended for Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard users and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac."
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Carrier Pigeon Faster Than South-African Broadband

Humor 26 Comments
In an attempt to show just how slow South Africa's Telkom broadband is, a frustrated IT company had a race to see which would be faster: transferring 4GB by sending a USB drive via pigeon 60 miles away, or transferring the files via the broadband connection. There were even rules in place so as to not have any unfair advantage over the broadband such as "birdseed must not have any performance-enhancing seeds within." It was faster to send the data by pigeon than by broadband. It took the bird about an hour to reach the recipient station, and it took another hour to transfer the data to the other computer. The file being transferred via the broadband connection was still at 4%. Telkom said that it is not responsible for the firm's slow Internet speed. Winston, the bird, is safely back in the IT office, probably enjoying birdseed without any performance-enhancing caplets mixed in.
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Microsoft Launches Non-Profit Open Source Foundation

Microsoft 33 Comments
Microsoft is creating a 501.c non-profit organization (called the CodePlex Foundation) that will support open source projects from the community. That's a little funny since proof was uncovered that they were providing anti-Linux training in this very same week. The foundation is different from the CodePlex website, launched in 2006. The website is rather a complementing factor to the foundation, or vise versa. A FAQ about the project said, "The Foundation is solving similar challenges; ultimately aiming to bring open source and commercial software developers together in a place where they can collaborate. This is absolutely independent from the project hosting site, but it is essentially trying to support the same mission. It is just solving a different part of the challenge, a part that Codeplex.com isn't designed to solve... We believe that commercial software companies and the developers that work for them under-participate in open source projects."
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FreeBSD 8 Getting New Routing Architecture

  Submitted by poundsmack FreeBSD 12 Comments
"Though the open source FreeBSD operating system has changed in many aspects over the last 16 years of its life, one item that has remained relatively static is its underlying network routing architecture. No more: It's getting an overhaul with the upcoming FreeBSD 8.0 release. FreeBSD 8.0, due out next month, will include a new routing architecture that takes advantage of parallel processing capabilities. According to its developers, the update will provide FreeBSD 8.0 with a faster more advanced routing architecture than the legacy architecture."
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Linux 2.6.31 Released

  Submitted by diegocg Linux 3 Comments
Linux 2.6.31 has finally been released. The list of new features includes USB 3.0 support, a equivalent of FUSE for character devices that can be used for proxying OSS sound through ALSA, memory management changes that improve interactivity in desktops, ATI Radeon KMS support, Intel's Wireless Multicomm 3200 support, readahead improvements, a tool for using hardware performance counters, a memory checker and a memory leak detector, btrfs improvements, support for IEEE 802.15.4, IPv4 over Firewire and other improvements.
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The Real-World State of Windows Use

Windows 7 Comments
Performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software has released an array of real-world Windows use data as compiled by its exo.performance.network, a community-based monitoring tool that receives real-time data from about 10,000 PCs throughout the world. Tracking users specific configurations, as well as the applications they actually use, the tool provides insights into real-world Windows use, including browser share, multicore adoption, service pack adoption, and which anti-virus, productivity, and media software users are most prevalent among Windows users. Of note is the fact that, two years after Vista's release, not even 30 percent of PCs actually run it, that OpenOffice.org is making inroads into the Microsoft Office user base, and that, despite the rise of Firefox, Internet Explorer remains the standard option for inside-the-firewall apps.
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Linux 2.6.32 To Get R600 Kernel Mode Setting

  Submitted by lemur2 Linux 112 Comments
Open source 3D graphics drivers for ATI R600 garphics cards has been submitted to the kernel-next tree for possible inclusion in the Linux kernel 2.6.32. "David Airlie has pushed a horde of new code into his drm-next Git tree, which is what will get pulled into the Linux 2.6.32 kernel once the merge window is open. Most prominently, this new DRM code brings support for kernel mode-setting with R600 class hardware as well as 3D support."
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Jobs Makes First Public Appearance Since Transplant

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Apple 51 Comments
After back and forth rumors about the health of Apple's revered Steve Jobs way back in last year and the beginning of 2009, it turned out that he really did have some health problems: complications with his liver requiring a transplant. It was supposed that he'd return to Apple by the end of June, and now he's finally made his first public appearance since he first took his medical leave of absence earlier this year.
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The Problem with Design and Implementation

General Development 82 Comments
I've been developing software for quite a few years. One of the issues that seems to come up again and again in my work is this concept of design and implementation. I recall it being a significant part of my education at the University of Waterloo's Computer Engineering program as well. The message was always the same. Never write code first. First you must design software by writing a design document, flow charts, pseudo-code, timing charts... then it's merely a trivial matter of implementing it. Make note of the attitude here given towards implementing. The real work is in the design, and it's just a trivial matter of implementing it. It sounds so simple doesn't it? Now, how often does this work out in real life?
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Windows 7, Vista Suffer from Critical SMB 2.0 Flaw

Windows 23 Comments
We usually don't report on security flaws, unless they're on platforms that usually don't see such flaws, or when the flaw in question is pretty serious. Well, a new zero-day flaw has been discovered in Windows Vista and Windows 7 which will trigger a blue screen of death using the new SMB 2.0 protocol. Update: Windows 7 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 are not affected by the flaw. So, this is less of a problem than expected.
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