Review: Nokia 8800/8801

I have been wanting to test and use this phone ever since it came out, in 2005. So when Hi-Mobile.net provided us with the opportunity to review the Nokia 8801, I did not think twice about accepting the review. Usually, Eugenia does our phone reviews, since she knows a lot more about phones than the rest of the staff does; however, this phone is not a phone which you can dissect feature-for-feature, assessing its potential based on what it can do. No, this phone focusses on style, exclusivity, and stunning looks. Read on for the complete review.

A9Home First Impressions

"Launched in 2005 for developers to beta test, the A9home went on general sale in time for the Wakefield show in May this year. The machine is still missing a few features, but seeing as it is mostly complete, it's high time a review was published. Having ditched his aging RiscPC for an A9home, Paul Stewart reveals his first impressions with AdvantageSix's ARM9-powered computer and its 32bit build of RISC OS 4."

Xfce 4.4 RC2 Released

The Xfce development team is pleased to announce that the second and hopefully last release candidate of the upcoming Xfce 4.4 desktop is available for download now. The release focuses primarily on bug fixes and optimizations; see the release notes for a complete list of changes. The source tarballs and the graphical installer are available from the download page.

Managing Xen with Xen-Tools, Xen-Shell, Argo

"This guide describes how to install and use xen-tools, xen-shell, and Argo on a Debian system. All three packages provide useful tools for the administration of virtual Xen machines. Xen-tools is a collection of Perl scripts that allow you to easily create, update, and delete Xen guest domains. The xen-shell provides a command-line interface to owners of Xen domains so that they can manage their Xen domains without the help of the server administrator. And with Argo, you can control Xen domains through a web interface or through a menu on the command line. All three packages were developed for Debian systems, but might work on other distributions as well."

Novell-Microsoft: Miguel de Icaza Responds

Some interesting bits of his blog entry in which De Icaza replies to emails he has received concerning the Novell-Microsoft deal: "I do not know of any patents which Mono infringes. (...) Although I did not take part of the actual negotiations, and was only told about this deal less than a week before the announcement, I had been calling for a long time for a collaboration between Microsoft and Open Source and Microsoft and Novell. (...) Similar deals have been done in the past, in 1997 Microsoft signed a similar deal with Apple, and Apple used that agreement and the incoming monies to turn the company around. Sun signed a similar agreement with Microsoft in 2004, which at the time I realized enabled Sun to ship Mono on Solaris (which we already supported at that time)."

‘Macarena’ Virus Targets Macs

Source code for a Mac virus has gone public, a security company warned Friday, and although the original doesn't carry a malicious payload, more dangerous variants can be expected. The virus, dubbed 'OSX.Macarena' by Symantec, targets some, but not all, Mac OS X Mach-O executables. "Although methods of infecting Mach-O binaries have been publicly available for some time, this marks the first known fully functional Mach-O file infecter virus," Symantec noted in an alert to customers of its DeepSight threat network on Friday. "The source code for this virus is publicly available and as such it is possible that variants may be trivially developed to extend the virus's functionality."

Open Source Is Not a Verb

"I am a linguist by training. Long before I delved into free software and was snagged by the quagmire of marketing, I pondered the marvels of morphology, the grimness of grammar and the splendor of semantics. It is only natural then that my wrangling criticism of industry-speak, in both technical and literary modes, is informed by ingrained linguistic sensibilities, descriptive and proscriptive. Given my background, I find it vexing when open source is used as a verb."

NetBSD 3.0.2, 3.1 Released

NetBSD 3.0.2 and 3.1 have been released simultaneously. NetBSD 3.0.2 is a critical/security-only update for NetBSD 3.0, while NetBSD 3.1 brings much broader fixes and improvements, including: Xen3 domU support, LFS stability improvements, Postfix 2.2.11, BIND 9.3.2, msdosfs write optimization, addition of scan_ffs/scan_lfs tools, driver updates, and many, many other bug fixes and enhancements. Binaries and ISO's for both releases are available via FTP and BitTorrent.

Review: ADS MXL-581 Media-Link Entertainment Receiver

Apple is working furiously to get their ITV product into market early next year. However, this type of product is not a new idea. There have been a number of similar remote multimedia products since 2003, most based off the Syabas software stack. Geeks.com were very generous sending us over ADS' MXL-581 Media-Link Entertainment Receiver for a review, a Syabas-based device that's using the uCOS-II real-time kernel (introduction ). Check inside for our review and many screenshots of the system.

Novell-Microsoft: MS Open To More Distros, Red Hat Responds

Some more reactions to the Novell-Microsoft deal. Firstly, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company is open to talking to other Linux distributors about reaching mutual patent coverage deals similar to the agreement signed Nov. 2 with Novell. Secondly, according to Red Hat, this deal means that 'Linux has won', while also saying they would never make such an agreement with Microsoft: "An innovation tax is unthinkable. Free and open source software provide the necessary environment for true innovation. Innovation without fear or threat. Activities that isolate communities or limit upstream adoption will inevitably stifle innovation." More reactions here and here. Update: Another response from Red Hat. In one year's time, a Red Hat general counsil said, Red Hat will be the only Linux commercial vendor left standing, Microsoft support or not.

‘The World Just Isn’t Ready for Linux’

"Windows Vista brings with it a new era of DRM and restrictive license agreements that aren't going to sit well with even your basic power user and some are looking for an escape route. These changes are making some users question their commitment to Microsoft. The obvious step is to make the leap to Linux. But what's holding people back from escaping Microsoft's shackles and moving to a free, easy platform? My guess is that the platform isn't everything. In fact, it's only a small part of the equation."

Novell-Microsoft: What They Aren’t Telling You

Of course the net is buzzing with reactions to the Novell-Microsoft agreement of yesterday. Bruce Perens is very negative about it all: "What aren't they telling you? First, you can be sure that Microsoft's not out to help a competitor. This announcement paves the way for Microsoft to implement significant control over commercial customer's use of Free Software. And it has significant negative implications for Open Source in general." Eben Moglen of the FSF says about the possible GPL issues: "If you make an agreement which requires you to pay a royalty to anybody for the right to distribute GPL software, you may not distribute it under the GPL."

Why Software Sucks

"Software sucks, 80% of projects fail, and most developers are unhappy individuals. Why is this? My answer; complexity. Complexity is the single factor I would attribute poor software to. The more you have to do, the harder you make it on yourself, the way requirements seem to change, the worse the final result is; right? Software needs to be simple", says Chris Stewart.