David Adams Archive

Microsoft announced during the build conference, and Steve Sinofsky reiterated in a blog posting that: "For the web to move forward and for consumers to get the most out of touch-first browsing, the Metro style browser in Windows 8 is as HTML5-only as possible, and plug-in free. The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web." Sinfosky goes on explain why Microsoft will not include Flash and why it's no longer needed. It's as close as we'll get to an obituary for Flash. Update from Thom: Added a note in the 'read more'!

McAfee demonstrated the workings of its new McAfee DeepSAFE technology at the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday. It sits beyond the operating system and close to the silicon, and by operating beyond the OS, it provides a direct view of system memory and processor activity. Among the threats that it detects are Stuxnet, SpyEye, the TDSS roorkit family and the NTRootkit.

Chip Hazard posted a pic of a Windows 8 error screen, which in keeping with the overall trend in Windows8, is actually a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the old Blue Screen of Death. Plus: frowny face!

"The typical way to increase capacity on a network is to add more infrastructure, but that's an expensive undertaking. It can also be time consuming and frustrating for network operators who have to get permission to put up new towers, or dig up the ground to lay cables. This is especially true in heavily populated areas where more antennas and traffic disruption are not what anyone wants to see. Rice University has come up with a groundbreaking solution, though. One that promises to at least double the capacity of existing networks with the addition of minimal extra hardware. That solution is full duplex wireless communication. This isn't a new concept, but one that hasn't been possible until now due to the inherent obstacles it throws up."

The latest browser benchmarks are in... again - seems like there's a new one every week. This is one of the best "browser battle" articles though. Chrome 13, Firefox 6, IE9, Opera 11.50, and Safari 5.1 are put through 40-something tests on both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion. As a PC guy I was pretty impressed with the performance of Safari on OS X, and the reader feature looks awesome too. The author also uncovered a nasty Catalyst bug that makes IE9 render pages improperly and freeze up under heavy loads of tabs. The tables at the end pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of each browser, which is nicer than a 1-10 or star rating. Good article, and thorough.

Rapid7 created a $100,000 investment fund to support up to seven promising open source projects in the security industry. The "Magnificent7" projects will be identified and supported through the remainder of 2011 and into 2012. Any security-related open source project - with a preference for BSD-compatible licensing - is applicable and encouraged to submit a "Magnificent7" application.

What happens when that "new gadget smell" wears off, though? The honeymoon effect with your new, heavily-discounted device wears off and you're left with a tablet that isn't likely to get any better than it is right now unless you do something yourself. The Preware community already has a nice collection of things you can do to play with any WebOS device, but even that has its limits. So, what are you to do with that shiny new tablet? Well, eventually, you'll be able to put Android on it.

Would you believe that ARM processors, those little chips that power so many smartphones and tablets, have a future on servers? Ubuntu does.

In five years, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst sees the traditional desktop becoming obsolete.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit just rejected a patent essentially on the basis that the method used was mathematics. Hooray, they finally almost understood this point, but then they blotted their copybook by seeming to say that it would be OK to patent if the mathematics is hard. Oh dear. Well, baby steps I suppose.

While the BFS scheduler is getting ready to celebrate its second birthday, in just three weeks AMD's open-source Radeon graphics driver strategy for Linux will be turning four years old . . . which has ended up being a game-changer in the Linux world. AMD continues to support open-source hardware enablement on their latest graphics processors and recently even hired more developers to work on the code and documentation. How far have they come though in four years?

Researchers have found a weakness in the AES algorithm. They managed to come up with a clever new attack that can recover the secret key four times easier than anticipated by experts. In the last decade, many researchers have tested the security of the AES algorithm, but no flaws were found so far. The new attack applies to all versions of AES even if it used with a single key. The attack shows that finding the key of AES is four times easier than previously believed; in other words, AES-128 is more like AES-126.

Joyent recently announced and released SmartOS. From their site, "SmartOS is comprised of the Illumos kernel (with ZFS, DTrace, OS-level virtualization and next-generation KVM) with BSD package management and a GNU toolchain." They've posted the source on GitHub and a live ISO is available for download as well.

In an extensive interview with the Austrian tech site derStandard.at/web GNOME3 designer Jon McCann talks about the future of GNOME3 - and why it's all about the apps - why he is convinced that KDE and Ubuntu are actually different operating systems and also reacts to the outspoken criticism against GNOME 3 which has been making the rounds lately.