David Adams – OSnews

Intel Plans for Exascale Computing

Submitted by rohan_p 2011-11-16 Intel 13 Comments

Intel is drumming up support for its latest 50-core Knights Corner and Xeon E5 server chips, which are key elements in the company's plans to scale performance while reducing power consumption moving toward an exascale supercomputer by 2018.

Open Source Biometrics Technology

Submitted by HAL2001 2011-11-16 Privacy, Security 5 Comments

DigitalPersona has open sourced its new MINEX-certified FingerJetFX fingerprint feature extraction technology. FingerJetFX, Open Source Edition (OSE), is free, portable software that device manufacturers and application developers can use to convert bulky fingerprint images into small, mathematical representations called fingerprint "templates" for efficient storage or comparison.

FreeBSD Hypervisor: Call For Testers

Submitted by al 2011-11-14 BSD & Darwin 5 Comments

Via Ivan Voras' blog (yes a few days late....but this place needs more BSD news). Michael Dexter of CFT has published a tutorial on FreeBSD's upcoming type 2 hypervisor known as BHyVe. The article guides the reader through the procedures to configure, build & boot a hypervisor capable host and guest system. BHyVe currently only supports Intel's x86 virtualization hardware & the project itself is still currently under early development.

Adobe: HTML5 > Mobile Flash

David Adams 2011-11-09 Wireless 50 Comments

"Sources close to Adobe that have been briefed on the company's future development plans have revealed this forthcoming announcement to ZDNet: Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations.. . ."

iOS Dev Sneaks Malware Into App Store, Feels Wrath of Apple

Submitted by Al Sacco 2011-11-08 Privacy, Security 12 Comments

An iOS security researcher who submitted a tainted iPhone application meant to expose a weakness in Apple's App Store security process has been suspended from Apple's developer program. And rightly so -- he violated clear terms of service. But what does that say about the security of all those random apps on your iPhone, iPad and iPod?

SaaS might be stalling Native Linux App Development

Submitted by twitterfire 2011-11-06 Linux 22 Comments

Linux advocates have for so long advocated browser-accessed software as a service as a way to break out of Microsoft's proprietary desktop. Now that this world has arrived, there's less incentive to work on native Linux apps.

Support Linux by Not Writing Linux-Only Software

David Adams 2011-11-06 Linux 60 Comments

While it may seem like Linux-only projects are betraying their loyal base by developing Windows or OSX versions, I would argue that cross-platform development is actually better for Linux as a whole, better for individual software projects and their developers, and ultimately better for Linux users.

SunSolve Resurrected Independent of Oracle

David Adams 2011-11-04 Solaris 12 Comments

If you have ever administered Sun machines, updates were a big part of your work. In the past, information about them were available on SunSolve, the Sun support website, to help sysadmins sort everything out. SunSolve has been decomissioned by Oracle and its replacement hasn't received a warm welcome from the Solaris community due in large part to technologies used (Flash,...). We Sun Solve was created to avoid this problem.

It May Be A While For WebM In Adobe’s Flash

Submitted by RichterKuato 2011-10-31 Multimedia, AV 31 Comments

While Adobe previously said it would support Google's WebM video format within their Flash Player software, it doesn't look like this support will be arriving soon. Adobe's MAX 2011 conference took place last week in Los Angeles. During a Q&A session, WebM support in Flash was talked about. After Adobe was questioned about the WebM support, the response was, "Yes, on the priority list it's not very high because we don't have a lot of customers or real customers who want to do production with WebM. The problem on the production side is that encoding WebM is simply too slow, it's not real time. And it's not JDI too (just do it). Yes, it's a lot of work for us."

Windows 7 Installed Base Finally Exceeds XP

Submitted by Debjit 2011-10-17 Windows 43 Comments

Well, its not official yet, but Microsoft's Windows 7 has now become the most widely used operating system. . . Windows 7 now has a strong 40.21% share of all desktop operating systems around the world whereas, the usage share of Windows XP has slipped to 38.64%. All this happened a couple of days back (in October). The rise in usage of Windows 7 and the drop in usage of Windows XP has been consistent since the time Windows 7 was first launched.

Dennis Ritchie: The Other Man Inside Your iPhone

Submitted by twitterfire 2011-10-17 Unix 6 Comments

The groundbreaking work he did with Ken Thompson led to the operating system behind everything from set-top boxes to the iPhone, but who sings the praises of the late Dennis Ritchie?

Cray Jaguar Is Getting a GPU Upgrade and a Name Change

Submitted by jefro 2011-10-13 Hardware 16 Comments

According to physorg.com (via popsci), the Cray Inc. XT5-HE supercomputer (Jaguar) is getting updated. The Department of Energy's Jaguar computer will be renamed Titan. This reported $97 million upgrade will be using AMD CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and is claimed to "be at least twice as fast and three times as energy efficient as today's fastest supercomputer, which is located in Japan." Good news for gamers.

Microsoft flags Firefox and Chrome for security failings

Submitted by lucas_maximus 2011-10-11 Internet Explorer 89 Comments

Microsoft has unveiled a website aimed at raising awareness of browser security by comparing the ability of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome to withstand attacks from malware, phishing, and other types of threats. Your Browser Matters gives the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome a paltry 2 and 2.5 points respectively out of a possible score of 4. Visit the site using the IE 9, however, and the browser gets a perfect score. IE 7 gets only 1 point, and IE 6 receives no points at all. The site refused to rate Apple's Safari browser in tests run by The Register.

HTC Android Phones Leak Personal Data to Any App With Internet Permissions

Submitted by sawboss 2011-10-03 Privacy, Security 3 Comments

If you are running a HTC Android smartphone with the latest updates applied, chances are your personal data is freely accessible to any app you have given network access to in the form of full Internet permissions. This vulnerability isn't a backdoor or some inherent flaw in Android, it is instead HTC failing to lock down its data sharing policies used in the Tell HTC software users have to allow or disallow on their phone. The problem being, not only is your data vulnerable when Tell HTC is turned on, it's just as vulnerable when it is turned off.

Appeals Court: Apple Can Continue to Restrict OS X to Mac Hardware

Submitted by Adurbe 2011-10-03 Legal 64 Comments

Apple has the right to continue restricting its operating systems to its own hardware thanks to a decision handed down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday. Circuit Judge Mary Schroeder wrote in her opinion that Apple's Mac OS X licensing agreement was indeed enforceable against Psystar, which had sold non-Mac computers with Mac OS X installed.

Smart Cities Get Their Own Operating System

Submitted by Dale Smoker 2011-10-03 In the News 3 Comments

The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area. The sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms. The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life.

Linux has Only 10 Great Desktop Apps

Submitted by lucas_maximus 2011-09-29 Linux 305 Comments

Linux is struggling on the desktop because it only has a small number of "great" apps, according to the Gnome co-creator. Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the Gnome desktop, told tech journalist Tim Anderson at the recent Windows 8 Build conference "When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10," de Icaza said, according to a post on Anderson's IT Writing blog. "You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We've managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time."

RIM Bailing on Playbook (Or Not)

David Adams 2011-09-29 Wireless 2 Comments

Collins Stewart analyst John Vinh made the claims in a note to investors Thursday morning, citing anonymous sources at RIM’s manufacturing partner Quanta. . . A RIM spokesperson dismissed Vinh's report and supplied BGR with an official statement.

Inferno OS running hosted on Android phones

Submitted by John 2011-09-19 OS News 8 Comments

Inferno for Android (codename: Hellaphone) has just been announced. Inferno runs on top of the Linux kernel in Android phones, replacing the Java services and UI that ship by default. Inferno's programming language, Limbo, allows applications to be developed quickly and easily. A video demonstrating the device is up on youtube.

Intel’s RISC-y Business

Submitted by estherschindler 2011-09-19 Intel 33 Comments

With the Xeon 7600 line, Intel is finally using the 'R' word: RISC. It's targeting the mission-critical market dominated by Sun SPARC and IBM Power with the new chips, a first. Can the Xeon E7 processor deliver Intel's final blow to the RISC market, which includes its own Itanium?

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