What Are the ‘Usability Experts’ Doing?

Editorial 113 Comments
Sometimes, Apple's (or any other software maker's) complete lack of respect for usability never ceases to amaze me. Take today for example. Apart from the close, minimise, and "maximise" widgets Apple places on window decors, there is also a fourth widget programmers on the Apple platform can use. This widget resembles a sort of dash, and is placed on the top right corner of the window decor. This widget is used in many applications, both from Apple as well as from various third parties. It has one function: toggle the visibility of the window's toolbar.
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Parallels Accused of LGPL Violation

Legal 95 Comments
SWSoft, the company behind Parallels Desktop for Mac, is possibly violating the LGPL license by using LGPL libraries from the WINE project without providing access to the source code. The WINE project first discovered the violation early this June, and after several failed attempts at getting the source code to the libraries, they set up a wiki page to keep track of the ongoing violation. The WINE project wants to resolve the issue "without starting legal action". Thanks to MacWereld for pointing this out .
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Nouveau: Where It Stands Today

  Submitted by Michael Larabel 3D 15 Comments
"The last time we had written an article on Nouveau, the community project working on developing an open-source 3D display driver for NVIDIA hardware, was this past January after being enlightened by glxgears finally being able to run on NVIDIA's NV4x GPUs. Since then many developments have occurred with this open-source NVIDIA driver as we have covered in several news postings. In this article today we will share with you where the Nouveau project stands today from a user perspective as well as testing out the driver on a few more NVIDIA systems."
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Anatomy of the Linux Networking Stack

  Submitted by LinucksGirl Linux 3 Comments
"One of the greatest features of the Linux operating system is its networking stack. It was initially a derivative of the BSD stack and is well organized with a clean set of interfaces. Its interfaces range from the protocol agnostics, such as the common sockets layer interface or the device layer, to the specific interfaces of the individual networking protocols. This article explores the structure of the Linux networking stack from the perspective of its layers and also examines some of its major structures."
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iPhone Unleashed

Apple 87 Comments
The iPhone is out and about, and everyone waiting in line for hours/days got one (including Woz, and the mayor of Philadelphia who apparently had nothing better to do). Unboxing pictures here, dissecting pictures here, PDF manual, and one of the best-designed iPhone web apps can be found here: the iPhoneAppsManager (requires a Safari/Webkit browser to work). Update: Reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Update 2: It is claimed Apple UK will announce a 3G iPhone on Monday, as well as deals with Vodafone and T-Mobile. Update 3: Lots of screenshots reveal no "weekend/weekday" recurrence in the alarm app.
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GPL Version 3 Released

  Submitted by thebluesgnr Open Source 175 Comments
The FSF today released version 3 of the GNU GPL, the popular free software license. "Since we founded the free software movement, over 23 years ago, the free software community has developed thousands of useful programs that respect the user's freedom. The programs are in the GNU/Linux operating system, as well as personal computers, telephones, Internet servers, and more. Most of these programs use the GNU GPL to guarantee every user the freedom to run, study, adapt, improve, and redistribute the program," said Richard Stallman, founder and president of the FSF. This article has some interesting replies from the BSD community (right in the middle).
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How Power Consumption Will Shape the Future of Computing

  Submitted by anevilyak Hardware 11 Comments
"At the Research@Intel day last week, Intel had a huge array of technologies and active research initiatives on display for press and analysts. As I toured the company's Santa Clara offices, I was able to piece together a few major themes and directions by stepping back and looking at the places where Intel is currently focusing its forward-looking research. In my next few articles, starting with this one, I'll take an in-depth look at each of these themes and at what it tells us about where computing is headed in the next decade."
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Review: eComStation 2.0 RC1

OS/2 45 Comments
Recently, Serenity Systems released the second first release candidate of eComStation 2.0, the successor to IBM's os/2. Mensys, the online distributor of eComStation and other os/2-related products, was so kind as to provide OSNews with a review copy of this release candidate, and since my experience with os/2 and eCS is not much more than a few failed attempts at installing Warp 4, I was eager to try it out. Read on for a short history of os/2 and eCS and a review of the release candidate.
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Vista Vulnerability Report ‘Debunked’

  Submitted by shykid Privacy, Security 40 Comments
On Full Disclosure, there's a negative analysis of Jeff Jones' six-month vulnerability report. "Conclusions that are drawn are built on a lack of understanding by the Microsoft researcher. I highly encourage him to go back and take another look, and pare down the results to essential information that is absolutely critical to the conclusions, rather than just 'Other OS's have more bugs, see, look at my graphs'."
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Red Hat, IBM Get Certified

  Submitted by irbis Red Hat 15 Comments
"Red Hat and IBM recently announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 has earned the highest level of security certification achievable by commercial off-the-shelf operating systems. The certification is applicable when RHEL5 is running on IBM hardware, but all of the software is freely available, which may reduce the worries of customers regardless of which hardware they are considering running Linux on. The Fedora and CentOS distributions will immediately benefit, because they use the same software and SELinux policies, but other distributions can use the information as well."
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Microsoft To Simplify Downgrades From Vista to XP

  Submitted by jayson.knight Windows 61 Comments
Microsoft is simplifying the processes via which its PC-maker partners will be able to provide 'downgrade' rights from Windows Vista to Windows XP for their customers. Microsoft will implement the first of the policy changes for its Gold Certified (top-tier) OEM partners within the next couple of weeks. The company will streamline downgrade-rights policies and procedures for the broader channel somewhat later, said John Ball, general manager of Microsoft's US Systems Group.
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Syllable WebKit Port, Syllable Server

  Submitted by Vanders Syllable, AtheOS 36 Comments
Kaj de Vos made two big announcements at SylCon 2007. The first was a new web browser, based on a port of WebKit. The second is Syllable Server, which will bring together the Syllable GUI with the Linux kernel to create a server operating system that compliments Syllable on the desktop. Syllable Server is not based on any existing Linux distribution and will look and feel as much like Syllable as possible.
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Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder

  Submitted by Punktyras Linux 63 Comments
"Hans Reiser is waiting for me, standing on the other side of an imitation-wood table. The room is small, the concrete walls bare. A guard locks the steel door from the outside. There is no sound. Reiser is wearing the red jumpsuit of a prisoner in solitary confinement, though he has been allowed to meet with me in this chilly visiting room. There was a time when he was known as a cantankerous but visionary open source programmer. His work was funded by the government; he was widely credited (and sometimes reviled) for rethinking the structure of the Linux operating system. Now he is known as prisoner BFP563."
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Researcher Displays Parallel Processing Prototype

  Submitted by MissinBeOS Hardware 8 Comments
Researchers at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering claim to have developed a computer system that is 100 times faster than today's desktops. The research group, lead by Uzi Vishkin, developed a system based on parallel processing technology. The team built a prototype with 64 parallel processors and a special algorithm that facilitates the chips to work together and make programming for them simple.
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