Reverse Engineering the MOS 6502
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A 50 minute talk by Michael Steil at 27C3 on the low cost CPU that arguably introduced the home computer revolution.
Archive
Samsung To Release iPod Touch Rival
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I have often wondered why there wasn't a flood of Android portable media players - now the WSJ Reports: "With the move, Samsung will round out a series of Galaxy-named gadgets that matches product for product with Apple Inc.'s line of iPods, iPad and iPhone. Samsung will have the Galaxy Player, Galaxy Tab and Galaxy smartphone. All use a variation of Google Inc.'s Android operating system and work with apps developed for it."
New Year’s Teaser: MorphOS on iMac G5
After showing in public a few times already MorphOS running on PowerBook G4 (video on YouTube) and on PowerMac G5 (AVI video), today one of the core developers has released a few screenshots (1, 2, 3, 4) of MorphOS running on an iMac G5 20" clocked at 2.1GHz and equipped with a Radeon X600 graphic card.
As usual, no promises, let alone a release date, have been given.
Microsoft’s New Browser Demos Included Vorbis, Now Removed
Microsoft added a couple of new Christmas themed HTML5 demos to their IE9 test drive site which included Vorbis audio in addition to the AAC audio in the audio tags. They've since modified both demos to remove the Vorbis audio. It seems Microsoft is happy to use Vorbis in HTML5 pages internally, just not publicly.
Creating an LVM-backed FreeBSD DomU in a Linux Dom0
Documentation on how to create a FreeBSD DomU is scarse, so I wrote this step-by-step guide, to guide users from the initial download to a complete, running FreeBSD DomU under a Linux Dom0 Xen host. The guide covers creating the initial Xen kernel, configuring the Xen host, generating the correct configurations, resizing FreeBSD partitions in Xen and cleanly booting the final OS. In the process, we will also create a template disk image which can be used to generate new VM's very quickly. The entire process can be completed in under an hour the first time, and only takes 5-10 minutes to re-generate future VM's.
Double-Clicking Patent Takes on World
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"Hopewell Culture & Design reckons it owns the act of double-clicking, and is suing Apple, Nokia, Samsung and just about everyone else for breaching its patent. It's not double-clicking per se that US patent 7,171,625 covers, just the act of clicking twice on an already-selected component to action a request for additional information or greater interactivity."
Android 3, Possibly in March
In a story about an upcoming tablet from MSI launching in March, the Taiwanese website Digitimes might just have spilled the beans about the approximate launch date of Android 3. The tablet mentioned will ship in March-April next year with Android 3. Android 3 will be optimised for tablets and some big name companies, including Motorola and Lenovo, were holding back on these tablets until the version 3 release. On Techradar, Google's Andy Rubin already showed off an Android 3 prototype tablet from Motorola that gave some clues as to what Android 3 might be capable of. This includes easier navigation requiring absolutely no physical buttons, as well as 3D processing power. Android 3 is also said to have a redesigned UI, support for higher resolution 1280x760 displays and has a strict minimum hardware requirement of a 1Ghz CPU, 512 RAM and a minimum display size of 3.5".
Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.0 Released
Oracle VM VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop computers to run multiple operating systems simultaneously, and supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, most popular flavors of Linux (including Oracle Linux), and Oracle Solaris. Version 4.0 delivers increased capacity and throughput to handle greater workloads, enhanced virtual appliance capabilities, and significant usability improvements. Support for the latest in virtual hardware, including chipsets supporting PCI Express, further extends the value delivered to customers, partners and developers.
Porting Gutenprint-based Printer Drivers to Haiku
Gutenprint is a suite of printer drivers that can be used with UNIX and Linux print spooling systems, such as CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System), lpr, LPRng, and others. Gutenprint currently supports over 700 printer models. Gutenprint was recently ported to Haiku, both increasing its printing capabilities, as well as extending its supported printer models. This article describes Gutenprint and the effort to port it to Haiku.
ScorchOS 0.1 Released
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A new version of ScorchOS has been released. ScorchOS (formerly known as ApolloOS) is still in the pre-alpha stage but aims soon to provide a minimal GUI-based operating environment which others can improve, extend and learn from. Don't expect to be using your latest productivity tools on it however for a good long while! This is a hobbyist operating kernel based on bkerndev and inspired by the MikeOS project. At the moment it shows the next step you can take with the kind of tutorials you may find on osdev.org.
Debian 6.0 Squeeze To Have Completely Free Linux Kernel
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The Debian project will release the new stable version of debian - Debian 6.0 "Squeeze" - with a completely free Linux kernel. Binary-only firmware and other non-free kernel components will only be available via the non-free repositories and the project is actively encouraging vendors that have not done so already to release their firmware in a form compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
Oracle Takes on Microsoft, Google with Cloud Office
"Oracle on Wednesday announced the availability of Cloud Office 1.0, a Web-based productivity suite that is set to give online applications from Microsoft and Google a fresh dose of competition.
Cloud Office is integrated with the on-premises Oracle Open Office, of which version 3.3 was also announced Wednesday. Like Open Office, Cloud Office is based on ODF (Open Document Format). It provides a set of spreadsheet, text and presentation applications and is compatible with Microsoft Office, according to Oracle."
openSUSE: Q&A with Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn
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Jos Poortvliet recently had the opportunity to conduct a Q&A with Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn. They covered openSUSE, SUSE and open source in general. Please see the full text of his interview at news.opensuse.org.
ExoPC Windows 7 Tablet Debuts
Steve Ballmer has promised us Windows 7 tablets in time for Christmas, and this is just what where going to get. Say hello to the ExoPC.
The ExoPC, a Windows 7 tablet, is to be sold in partnership with Microsoft straight from its Windows store. The ExoPC is the first of many ushering in a wave of new Wintel tablets.
Can Ubuntu Ride Developer Wave Into Enterprise?
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InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues sees 2010 as a watershed year for Ubuntu, one that could herald meaningful enterprise interest in the OS, thanks to a rising tide of developers - and deployment servers - adopting the OS. "As with many recent trends in the IT industry, developers become ambassadors for products they enjoy using and have quickly become an early indicator for enterprise technology usage in the future. In a seemingly perfect storm, Ubuntu is benefiting from strong developer usage, and the fact that developers are increasingly selecting Amazon's EC2 cloud platform bodes well for continued Ubuntu success on EC2," Rodrigues writes, noting that Ubuntu has surpassed Red Hat usage on deployment servers as well. "As that occurs, IT decision makers will need to consider or reconsider Ubuntu for usage within the enterprise. Rest assured that Red Hat won't sit idly by during these discussions."
MySQL 5.5 Released
MySQL 5.5 delivers significant enhancements enabling users to improve the performance and scalability of web applications across multiple operating environments, including Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris, and Mac OS X. The MySQL 5.5 Community Edition, which is licensed under the GNU GPL, and is available for free download, includes InnoDB as the default storage engine.
L0phtCrack 7: The Next Level of Password Auditing and Recovery
L0phtCrack is one of the most used tools by security professionals worldwide. After years of inactivity, version 6 was released in 2009 and development hasn't halted since. In a new video, L0phtCrack co-author Christien Rioux aka dildog talks about the upcoming version and introduces some of the new features.
Microsoft Patches Record 40 Vulnerabilities
Today Microsoft released 17 security bulletins which address 40 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Office, Windows, Internet Explorer, SharePoint Server and Exchange. This brings the total count for 2010 to 106 bulletins. Of note, only two of the bulletins are rated Critical, 14 are rated Important and one is Moderate. In addition to the bulletins released today, Microsoft is announcing plans to extend the Office File Validation feature currently available in Office 2010, to Office 2007 and 2003. This will help protect those using older versions of Microsoft Office from file parsing vulnerabilities.
Hacktivism and social engineering emerge as top threats
Hacktivism and more profit-oriented malware, social engineering and malicious codes with the ability to adapt to avoid detection will be the main threats in the coming year, according to PandaLabs. There will also be an increase in the threats to Mac users, new efforts to attack 64-bit systems and zero-day exploits.
Top 50 Programming Quotes of All Time
On his website, Jun Auza list his top 50 programming quotes.
"Most of the programming quotes I've collected are made by some of the famous names in the industry, while others came from not-so-famous people. Nevertheless, they are all witty so I hope you will find them fascinating and enlightening."