Microsoft has come
one step closer to delivering a parallel programming language to developers. On May 8, Microsoft made Axum, the company's foray into parallel programming, available on its MSDN DevLabs portal. Axum is a .NET language for building parallel applications. According to a Microsoft description, Axum "is a language that builds upon the architecture of the Web and principles of isolation, actors and message-passing to increase application safety, responsiveness, scalability and developer productivity."
It seems like we're getting even more signs that netbooks haven't been doing very well lately.
Research figures by IDC on the processor market seem to paint a not-so-rosy picture of sales of Intel's Atom processor, and then figures coming in from DisplaySearch seem to paint a different picture. What's going on here?
The KDE team has
pushed out the first beta release of KDE 4.3. The highlights of this release are the integration of many new technologies, such as PolicyKit and Geolocation services, new window animation effects, a more usable run command popup, many new and improved addons in Plasma, Many bugfixes and improvements across all applications, and more integration of features coming with the KDE 4 platform.
"Following up on our
introductory article on Btrfs,
Jeff Layton talked with Chris Mason, Director of Linux Kernel Engineering at Oracle and the founder and lead developer of Btrfs."
The NetBSD Project recently released NetBSD 5.0, the 13th major release of its Unix operating system. If you are not familiar with the BSD mentality, it's a back-to-basics approach.
In this gallery we go from install to running a GNOME desktop in a virtualised VMware instance. This process is console-based.
Android, a complete operating environment based upon the Linux V2.6 kernel, promises to be a market-moving open source platform that will be useful well beyond cell phones. In this article, learn about the Android platform and how it can be used for mobile and nonmobile applications, then
build your first Android application. This simple first app you build will get you started quickly, but beleive me, you'll want to do more after that.
Apple's
latest Get a Mac commercial targets the recent laptop hunters ads coming from Microsoft. It shows a number of PC characters and Mac, with a woman in between who wants to buy a computer. She mentions a number of features she wants, and the number of PCs becomes ever smaller. Then she says she wants a computer without "viruses, crashes or headaches", which makes all the remaining PCs leave, with only the Mac left standing.
As was
already revealed by eWeek earlier this week, the
EU has imposed a massive fine on Intel for abusing its monopoly position. The fine is larger than the one given to Microsoft: 1.06 billion EUR, or 1.44 billion USD, opposed to the 899 million EUR fine imposed upon Microsoft.
Two weekends ago,
Apple accused Psystar of withholding information in the ongoing lawsuit between the two companies, and the Cupertino company asked the judge to order Psystar to reveal said information. Psystar replied,
explaining that some documents simply did not exist, and some were lost during a move of offices. Apparently,
judge Alsup wasn't impressed with the defence, and sided with Apple.
As we happened to be
talking about advertisements on OSNews yesterday, and the use of Adblock, I stumbled upon
a blog entry by Adblock Plus' developer, who is trying to improve Adblock in such a way that it is less harmful to webmasters. His suggestion is surely intriguing, but will it fly wth Adblock users?
Phoronix, known for their various speed tests and reviews,
compared the latest in Ubuntu and what, until recently,
used to be the lastest in Mac OS X with 29 different benchmarking tests. Some of the results were rather interesting.
InfoWorld's Neil McAllister
looks ahead at the impending netbook revolution, one sure to be fueled by the introduction of
machines based on ARM processors. As McAllister sees it, the move to ARM-based netbooks will have implications beyond cost and performance; it will also mean a new OS, opening the door for Linux, most notably Xandros and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. The emergence of ARM-based netbooks running Linux will represent a subtle shift in messaging on the part of netbook vendors. "Expect to see increased emphasis on netbooks as secondary machines or 'companion devices,' designed to be paired with a more traditional, full-featured notebook or PC, rather than standing on their own."
Steven Sinofsky has said that
Windows 7 will enter the "release to manufacturing" stage in about three months from now, meaning August '09. This means that the actual Windows 7 release would be
well in time for the holiday season.
" If the feedback and telemetry on Windows 7 match our expectations then we will enter the final phases of the RTM process in about 3 months. If we are successful in that, then we tracking to our shared goal of having PCs with Windows 7 available this Holiday season."
"
MontaVista announced a new version of its embedded Linux development platform, now offered in separate packages for major system-on-chips. In addition to providing "Market Specific Distributions" for Intel, Freescale, and Texas Instruments SoCs, MontaVista Linux 6 adds a new build engine and content server, plus an upgraded DevRocket IDE."
"With the announcement back in January of
Qt going LGPL there was a small piece of information that slipped though the cracks of the wider news reporting, namely the fact that we were planing on opening up our repositories and development model. The first major phase of this work is now complete, and we are
proud to present the results."
After a long gestation period, Apple has
updated its Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system to version 10.5.7. This latest update comes packed with lots of bug fixes for several components of the Mac OS X operating system.
Update: Various security updates for Tiger and Safari:Win
were also released.
As you may know, the global economic depression has hit the media hard, due in large part to the fact that ad rates are in the toilet. OSNews is in the same boat. Despite the fact that we still have good advertisers, our income from advertising this year will only be a fraction of what it was last year. We probably won't make enough to cover our costs. Other news sites, as they've seen revenue decrease, have responded with more, and more intrusive, advertising. We don' t want to do that. We feel we have a covenant with our readers. If you'll be respectful of our need to run ads, we'll be respectful of your need to read the site without having ads shoved down your throat. Please read on, for more discussion of our ad "covenant," and a plea for help, including a plea to all Adblock users to please unblock OSNews.
This week I received a triumphal press release from the Open Document Foundation, announcing that the just-released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 has native support for the ODF (Open Document Format) file format. This makes the latest MS Office "the last major office suite to support ODF." This set me to thinking about how movement and advancement in several areas of technology and interoperability may well invigorate the alternative OS world.
Sony is a company which is not exactly loved by technologists, despite the fact it has come up with some damn fine technology - with my personal favourite being the MiniDisc format. The problem with Sony has always been that it was stuck in the old ways of doing things (proprietary, closed, DRM), and of course things like the rootkit scandal didn't help either. It seems like things are about to change, with Sony's CEO announcing a new direction for the company -
focussed on openness.
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