Sun Cheers Two SPARC Advances in One Week
Sun this week announced a speed boost to its 'Niagara' UltraSPARC T1 processor line and confirmed the tapeout of the 'Rock' chips due out in the second half of 2008.
Examining Secunia Unpatched Warnings
"Security, perception, reality. What security professional hasn't struggled with the gaps between those three things? Is there anything worse for security than a false sense of security?" And part II.
Use Apache Derby to Develop Eclipse Plug-Ins
Get a demonstration on how to use resource indexing with the Apache Derby database to develop Eclipse plug-ins. The Derby DB embedded in Eclipse allows you to create an SQL database on the client side with no security issues or network problems, such as an unstable connection or high latency.
Why Do Workstations No Longer Matter?
This article tries to explain why workstations are no longer an appropriate tool for the present working environment, what the alternatives are, and what consequences it has for the development of OSes.
FreeBSD 6.2: Polished, More Stable
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FreeBSD 6.2, one of the most popular versions of the free BSD Unix operating system, is out with new features and updates. It plugs holes and, in addition to the usual route of installing directly to a hard drive this time around, offers a LiveCD that can be used to rescue a broken system. Developers on the free version of the BSD Unix operating system hope it will help build momentum for what is arguably the most popular BSD variant in use.
‘Uninspiring Vista’
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"Regardless of widespread skepticism, I was confident that Vista would dazzle me, and I looked forward to saying so in print. Ironically, playing around with Vista for more than a month has done what years of experience and exhortations from Mac-loving friends could not: it has converted me into a Mac fan."
Magnussoft Delays ZETA 1.5 Pro, Adds AbiWord Port
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Magnussoft has just announced that they are delaying the release of ZETA 1.5 Professional from 10 to 15 days in order to add a port of the AbiWord open source word processor, a native PCL6 printer driver and a Radeon x-series video driver. The addition of AbiWord is seen as a move to eventually replace the word processor component of GoBe Productive, a third party lightweight office suite currently bundled with ZETA that is no longer in development. Since AbiWord is released under the GPL, the port is expected to eventually benefit Haiku as well.
Despite 100 Million IE 7 Installs, IE Still Loses Ground
Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn't had an impact on Firefox's continued climb. " January 8th, we had the 100 millionth IE7 installation," said Tony Chor, an IE group program manager, in an entry on the team's blog. "Even more important than installations is usage. According to WebSideStory (the company we use to measure browser usage), as of this week, over 25% of all visitors to sites in the U.S. were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6." While Microsoft had the WebSideStory numbers correct, it didn't tell the whole story, says Geoff Johnston, an analyst with the Web metrics company. " seems to be exclusively at the expense of IE 6," says Johnston. not eating into the Firefox share at all."
Using XenExpress to Virtualize Your Server
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"This howto covers the installation of XenExpress and the creation of virtual machines with the XenServer Administrator Console. XenExpress is the free virtualization platform from XenSource, the company behind the well known Xen virtualization engine. XenExpress makes it easy to create, run and manage Xen virtual machines with the XenServer Administrator Console. XenExpress can run up to 4 virtual machines at the same time with a max. total amount of 4GB RAM. The XenExpress installation CD contains a full Linux distribution which is customized to run XenExpress."
Docvert: MS Word to Open Standards
Ten months after its 2.0 release comes version 3 of Docvert. It builds upon OpenOffice.org or Abiword and converts any word processing document to HTML, DocBook, RSS, or any other XML format. People can migrate away from Word with this tool, or integrate it into their tool-chain with its REST interface.
Comparison of Desktop Indexers
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"A number of search engines are available for the Gnome and KDE desktop environments, many based around the open source Lucene search engine. It would be tremendous if we could adopt one of these search engines for the Gnome platform, so we can provide the type of integrated search experience for our users that they really need, irrespective of which distort they are using. So to help in this assessment we have carried out a comparison of four different Unix based indexers ."
Tutorial: Get Your Movies on Your Cellphone
This small tutorial will show you how to transcode your videos and movies to be suitable for viewing on an mpeg4-capable cellphone.
Flash Player 9 for Linux Arrives
Adobe Systems has finally released the long-awaited Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux. This version of Flash Player was meant to be feature-comparable to Adobe's latest Windows and Mac OS versions, and is the first version of Flash on Linux that really is just as good as the Windows and Mac OS versions. Additionally, a tutorial on how to install it on Ubuntu and on Fedora.
HD-PVR Out of Any Firewire-Equipped Apple Mac
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"I found that any Firewire-equipped Mac can be made into an HD-PVR for unencrypted content at the expense of an appropriate firewire cable. Apple even provides the necessary capture software that you need, provided that you know where to look." More here.
Closures 101 in Ruby
The Java community has resisted closures so far, even as competing languages such as C# add them. Closures are anonymous functions with closed scope. It's best to think of a closure as a code block that you can use as an argument, with special scoping rules. This article dives deep into Closures and uses Ruby to show how closures work.
Torvalds Surprised by Resilience of 2.6 Kernel
Linus Torvalds explains why the unexpected resilience of kernel version 2.6 has delayed the move to kernel version 2.7. In this two minute video he said that when work started on 2.6, he was worried that major changes would destabilise the kernel.
Windows-Based Installer for Ubuntu
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Work has begun on a Windows-based installer for Ubuntu. "The aim of this installer is to provide an easier way for a Windows user to install Ubuntu without having to know how to burn a CD .iso, set the BIOS to boot from CD, repartition the disks, set up a multiboot system, etc. It will not replace any of the current Ubuntu installation options, and will not require that Windows is installed prior to the installation of Ubuntu." Update: Screenshots.
Fedora 7: the Linux Knight in Shining Armor?
"Fedora Core 6 was released on October 24, 2006 and scheduled to come out a half-year later is the seventh major release for the Fedora Project. However, unlike Yarrow, Tettnang, Heidelberg, Stentz, Bordeaux, and Zod, Fedora 7 is shaping up to be the most ambitious release yet. With all the work and reform going into Fedora 7 it poses the question, will Fedora 7 be Linux's knight in shining armor?"
FreeBSD Status Report Fourth Quarter 2006
"This report covers the last quarter of a exciting year 2006 for FreeBSD development. FreeBSD 6.2 is finally out of the door and work towards FreeBSD 7.0 is gearing up." This report includes detailed information about (among others) ZFS, iSCSI, ARM, a new USB stack, Network Stack Virtualization, Wireless networking, and Sound Subsystem improvements.
Open Source OpenVG Implementation Released
OpenVG is a standard API for hardware accelerated vector graphics. It's meant to accompany OpenGL on the road to fully hardware accelerated rendering framework. Unfortunately up till now there was no Open Source implementation of it. Zack Rusin just released the first implementation. He talks about it in his blog and this posting to the Khronos OpenVG forum.