OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

720p HD Video with the Kodak Z1485 IS

Eugenia Loli 2009-03-07 Multimedia, AV 11 Comments

Geeks.com, known for their cheap digital cameras, sent us in the Kodak EasyShare Z1485 IS, a 14 megapixel digital camera with a 720p HD video recording capability. Geeks also threw in a Peak 8 GB Class 6 SDHC card to properly test the camera's HD capability. We are taking the camera for a spin, and we have a small HD video shot for your own evaluation.

DTV Coupons Available Again

weildish 2009-03-07 In the News 12 Comments

Now's the time for a congregational sigh of relief. After the DTV transition was postponed from February 17th to June 12th, several millions of Americans waited impatiently for government funding to get their $40 converter-box coupons. Now our reliable Congress has approved another $650 million for the program, and the 4.1 million-deep waiting list can begin to flow again. NITA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, plans to eliminate that pending list in a mere three weeks. If you're not already on the waiting list, you had better skedaddle and get on it because who knows if the money poured into this project will dry up again?

Guest post by Flatland_Spider 2009-03-07 Wireless 5 Comments

Following in the footsteps of Apple and Google, Research in Motion is planning to open an online store for its popular Blackberry smartphone. The store, dubbed Blackberry App World, aims to be a "convenient location for BlackBerry owners to download 'games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more.'" App World will feature freeware apps along with for-pay apps. The pricing for applications will start at free then jump to $2.99 at the low end and $999.99 on the high end. At the moment Blackberry App World is only open to developers, but there is a sign up page for users who want to be notified of when App World goes live for the public.

openSUSE Moves to Fixed Release Schedule

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-06 SuSE, openSUSE 20 Comments

Following in the footsteps of distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, the openSUSE project has announced it will move to a fixed release schedule. However, contrary to the two aforementioned distributions, openSUSE will have an eight month release schedule. The new schedule was announced in an email by release manager Stephan Kulow.

Firefox Faced More Flaws in 2008, But Fixed Them Faster

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-06 Mozilla, Gecko 38 Comments

We've got two bits of good news, and one bit of bad news about Mozilla's Firefox web browser. Starting with the bad news - in 2008, Fiefox suffered from considerably more security holes than Internet Explorer and Safari. However, the first bit of good news is that Mozilla was much faster at patching zero-day exploits, according to a report by Secunia. The zero-day flaws of Firefox were also less severe than those of IE. The other bit of good news is that Firefox' upcoming Tracemonkey JavaScript engine is so good, the next Firefox release has been bumped from 3.1 to 3.5.

Palm Pre Not Delayed, Marketing Machine Ramping Up

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-06 Wireless 9 Comments

The Palm Pre made some serious splashes earlier this year when it was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was promised the device would ship in the first half of 2009, and despite rumours the Pre was going to be delayed, Palm has now officially stated (the page break hides the fact that those are two separate links) that the Pre is still on track for H1 of 2009. The marketing machine is also ramping up.

Guest post by Rahul 2009-03-06 Wayland 18 Comments

Plymouth is a freedesktop.org project to create a flicker free graphical bootup system designed and developed by Red Hat and included in Fedora 10. Red Hat has been working on Xorg drivers and within the Linux kernel to improve and enhance the kernel mode support needed for Plymouth. Fedora 10 included support for many ATI cards and this is being developed further in Fedora 11 to cover Intel and Nvidia cards as well. Plymouth supports a flexible and powerful plug-in system which can be used to create Plymouth themes. Fedora includes several of them including a simple progress bar and the solar plugin. Now additional work is being done to improve many things and this will land up in Fedora 11 as well.

Miller: Safari on Mac First to Fall During PWN2OWN Contest

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-05 Privacy, Security 28 Comments

With the infamous PWN2OWN contest drawing ever closer, the heat is ramping up. This year's instalment pitches Apple's Safari (on the Mac), Google's Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, and Firefox (all on Windows 7) against one another, while also allowing crackers to take on mobile platforms. Last year's winner, Charlie Miller, who won by cracking Mac OS X within minutes last year, says Safari on the Mac will be the first to fall.

‘AxDroid’: Android on Dell Axim X51v

Submitted by Ertan D. 2009-03-05 Wireless 1 Comment

Ertan D. has managed to install and run Android on the Dell Axim X51v, and there's a video demonstrating the working system, complete with a lovely sound track to keep one company. Android currently isn't completely friendly with the handheld computer as it still lacks WiFi support and has some power management issues (to name a few), but it's still a good beginning. Though the Axim was discontinued several years ago and is aging and getting more and more out of date when compared to today's mobile devices, the X51v still packs a punch with its 624 MHz processor, 3.7-inch VGA screen, and 2700G graphics processor. Ertan hopes to develop the project further to a point when Android can be a viable replacement OS to Windows Mobile 5 on the X51v.

ReactOS Targets Windows 2003, Vista

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-05 ReactOS 28 Comments

The ReactOS team has just put out its latest newsletter, and it contains some interesting information on the progress being made. However, it also provides some definitive insight into what, exactly, the project is trying to recreate - a topic of some confusion.

Guest post by Rahul 2009-03-05 Red Hat 5 Comments

InformationWeek reports that Red Hat is being sued for patent infringement by Software Tree. The patent involved is of an impedance-matching layer between an object-oriented system and a relational database. "Red Hat acquired open source developer JBoss in 2006 for $420 million. Software Tree contends that certain of Red Hat's JBoss products, including the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, which includes JBoss Hibernate, step on its patent. 'The infringing products have no substantial noninfringing uses,' Software Tree says in court papers. The lawsuit also names Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Genuitec as defendants because the companies sell JBoss-based software or include it on their products." This is not the first time Red Hat has been sued over JBoss technology. A previous suit was the first public GPL compatible patent settlement and protected not only Red Hat but downstream users and developers as well.

Editorial: Windows 7’s UAC Is Broken and Insecure

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-05 Windows 93 Comments

For Windows 7, Microsoft has made some changes to User Account Control to counter the criticism that UAC was too intrusive. It didn't take long before several holes were poked in Windows 7's default UAC settings, and now one is left to wonder: is it wise to sacrifice security for (perceived?) usability? Ars has an editorial that deals with this question.

Ballmer Promises Faster Windows Mobile Development

Submitted by caffeine deprived 2009-03-05 Wireless 6 Comments

Under pressure from popular phones from Apple and Research In Motion, Microsoft hopes it has put in place changes that will help it meet that mobile competition faster, said CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday. "There are opportunities for us to accelerate our execution in this area," he said. "We've done a lot of work to make sure we have a team that will be able to accelerate it." Microsoft, which recently said that a Windows Mobile software update will come later this year, has been criticized for failing to improve its platform to better compete with the iPhone and other new touch screen phones.

Submitted by elsewhere 2009-03-05 KDE 13 Comments

The KDE team has released KDE 4.2.1. "The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of "Cream", (a.k.a KDE 4.2.1), another bugfix and maintenance update for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop." You can wait for your distribution to package it, or download it yourself.

Review: Acer Aspire One with Moblin 2, Ubuntu 8.10, Windows

weildish 2009-03-04 Hardware 48 Comments

To add to the amounting anecdotes of late, another Acer Aspire One review appears. Not to be confused with Thom's or Eugenia's, which were different models, this review concentrates on the ZG5 version of the Acer Aspire One and how well Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 8.10, and Moblin 2 run on it, particularly in the everyday-netbooker's sense of functionality with word processing and Internet applications. Read on to get the full scoop on the One and these selected systems.

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Bourne Shell, or sh

Submitted by FrankLopez 2009-03-04 General Development No Comments

"We speak to Steve Bourne, creator of the Bourne shell, or sh. In the early 1970s Bourne was at the Computer Laboratory in Cambridge, England working on a compiler for ALGOL68 as part of his PhD work in dynamical astronomy. This work paved the way for him to travel to IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center in New York in 1973, in part to undertake research into compilers. Through this work, and a series of connections and circumstance, Bourne got to know people at Bell Labs who then offered him a job in the Unix group in 1975. It was during this time Bourne developed sh."

EU: Interoperability Documents from Microsoft Already Complete

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-04 Legal 3 Comments

Well, it's a bit of a Microsoft day today, for better or worse. In any case, the European Commission has announced that it will scale back its monitoring of Microsoft. According to the EC, Microsoft has made progress in complying with the 2004 Statement of Objections - in fact, the company has already provided all the necessary documentation required by the EC's ruling.

SP2 RC for Vista and Server 2008 Goes Public

Thom Holwerda 2009-03-04 Windows 1 Comment

Microsoft has released the release candidate for Vista's second service pack to the public. "Microsoft has released the Release Candidate build of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 to the public. The build number is 6002.16670.090130 and it contains 691 hotfixes."

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-03-04 Internet Explorer 36 Comments

Details are scarce at the moment, but testers familiar with the recently leaked Windows 7 build 7048 confirm that Internet Explorer 8 is now an optional component in Windows 7. This is most likely a direct consequence of the EU investigation into the bundling of IE. Still, a few questions remain.

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-03-04 Hardware 28 Comments

NVIDIA's aspirations to enter the general purpose processor market may never have been clearly spelled out by the company before, but it was getting more and more obvious as each week passed by. Now, it's pretty much official: NVIDIA says it's not a question of "if", but "when".