Unix Turns 40: Past, Present, Future of a Revolutionary OS

Gary Anthes offers an overview history of Unix forty years since Ken Thompson banged out the first version in assembly language for a wimpy DEC PDP-7 minicomputer, spending one week each on the operating system, a shell, an editor, and an assembler. Also included in the package are a year-by-year time line of its evolution, and profiles of Unix giants David Korn, Rick Rashid, and Gordon Bell.

The Return of the Kitchen Computer

A while ago, I made a list of my ten most beautiful computers, which ignited some heavy debate since Cray wasn't mentioned. Anyway, one of the items on the list was the Honeywell Kitchen Computer, the H316. This was a very basic and incredibly difficult to handle machine which was supposed to store and display recipes, but its most awesome feature was a built-in cutting board. Despite its ridiculousness, I think it's a beautiful piece of design, a pre-cursor to a type of computer everyone in the '50s thought we would have now (get it?). Well, the idea of a kitchen computer is supposed to make a comeback. Update: Eugenia just pointed me to a photo her husband took of the H316 at the Computer History Museum in California, as well as a product photo of Be, Inc.'s take on the kitchen computer.

Palm Pre Review: Hardware Could Be Better, WebOS Solid

The Palm Pre will hit the stores on Saturday, June 6, and it has a very important task to fulfil. Contrary to what the sensationlist media want you to believe, that task is not to dethrone the iPhone, but to save a flailing company. Palm requires for its very survival that the Pre and its brand-new operating system webOS is a success. CNet has taken the Palm Pre through its paces, and despite some flaws, they were quite pleased, especially on the software front. Update: Another review, from Engadget: "To put it simply, the Pre is a great phone, and we don't feel any hesitation saying that."

Opera 10 Beta Is Out

Opera have announced the general availability of Opera 10 beta. Opera 10 includes an improved rendering engine Presto v2.2. The beta adds a new default skin and a couple of new features, notably "Turbo", a proxy compressor for dial-up users, and tab previews. The result? Complete fail. Read More for why and a quick screenshot tour. addendum: As an apology to the community for the reckless and inadequate review I will be doing it again, properly, taking into consideration your fine comments.

Acer To Use Moblin Linux Across Range of Products

The world's third-largest PC vendor plans to roll out Moblin Linux across a range of machines, including its Aspire One nettops, as well as regular laptop and desktop PCs, the company announced at Computex in Taipei. A number of netbooks running several different versions of Moblin were also on display at Computex, including Suse Moblin, Xandros Moblin, Linpus Moblin, Red Flag Moblin and Ubuntu Moblin running on netbooks from Hewlett-Packard, Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International, and Hasee Computer.

Chrome Sandboxing: Easy on Mac OS X, a Mess on Linux

One of the defining features of Google's Chrome web browse is its sandboxing feature. You probably won't realise it's there, but from a security point of view, sand-boxing is one of the most impotant factors in browser security, as it severely limits the amount of damage a security hole can do: sure, you've got a hole in the browser, but thanks to sandboxing, you're pretty much locked in - until you break out of the sandbox, of course. Sandboxing on the Windows variant of Chrome was a "complicated affair", says Chromium developer Jeremy Moskovich, but for the Mac version, it's all a bit easier and more straightforward. On Linux, however, it's a mess.

E3 Roundup: Natal, Left 4 Dead 2, The Last Guardian

The E3 is underway, and with OSNews having a renewed casual interest in gaming, I figured I'd summarise the news around the big three console players, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. Microsoft probably had the most interesting news to give us, Nintendo suffers from a severe case of milking the cow (and who would blame them), and Sony repackaged the PSP, announced a few games, and gave the promise it would come with motion sensing technology at some point in the future too.

Flash To Be Optimised for Intel, NVIDIA Netbooks

De wonderen zijn de wereld nog niet uit. As we all know, Flash is a terrible resource hog on just about any device. Even my quad-core desktop space age computer sees spikes in processor usage whenever Flash rears it ugly head, let alone my poor Intel Atom-based devices. Well, it seems Adobe finally pulled its head out of its behind, and has committed itself to enabling proper Flash performance on Atom-base devices. The catch? You need a Broadcom Media Accelerator, or an NVIDIA graphics chip.

Windows 7 To Launch October 22

Microsoft's original plan was to release Windows 7 three years after Windows Vista, which would put the release date somewhere in January of 2010. Microsoft already made it clear that it would ship sooner, before the holiday season, but we've now got what is most likely the official release dates. Windows 7 will be released to manufacturing at the end of July, with the actual release date being set for October 22 - 2009, that is.

NVIDIA’s Tegra 650 ARM Platform Ships Before End of the Year

Netbooks, netbooks, netbooks, netbooks, netbooks. That's basicaly Computex in a nutshell. If you've seen one Atom-based netbook, you've seen them all, but luckily for us, NVIDIA is about to shake the world of netbooks up with a new Tegra chipset, the Tegra 650. Full high definition playback, battery life from outer space, and a processor that is always-on. Well, that's what NVIDIA promises, anyway. Twelve Tegra 650 devices were announced, with the first devices shipping before the end of the year - at USD 199 or less.

Episode 11: Hurting Cats

Where do we begin in choosing good topics for discussion for the podcast with so many big articles this week? We settled on tackling the contentious issues: Thom's Hackintosh, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, Mono and then ran out of time. See if you can work out where this week's title comes from in the show! Bonus points if you can count how many times I say "you know...", and then proceed to kick me for each one, good grief I need more tea.