David Adams Archive

ATI released new drivers for Linux. This release includes a new graphical install utility.

Many virus attacks aren't really exploiting weaknesses in your operating sytem: they're simply tricking you into telling the OS to do things that it shouldn't do. The OS is just doing its job, executing code when you say so. Researchers at HP Labs are working on a solution to this problem using the Principle of Least Authority, or POLA -- "limiting the rights of each program to only the ones needed for the job the user wants done"

Today Miguel de Icaza announced that Wikipedia is using Mono and dotLucene (the same search backend used by Beagle) to enable indexing and search for their large content base. As well, his blog announced that Mono 1.1.x has been integrated into Ubuntu and Debian.

Nokia will donate the proceeds from the sales of 500 Nokia 770 Internet Tablets to the GNOME foundation.

According to this Computerworld report, industry hype surrounding Microsoft's decision to go with IBM's Power processors over Intel for its next generation Xbox, won't translate into Windows for Power servers in the near future, despite a pledge by IBM to support the operating system.

Software developed by S.R.D. (Systems Research and Development), recently acquired by IBM, allows huge collections of personal data (travel manifests, medical data) to be compared with other databases, such as terrorist watch lists, while not actually disclosing the data between two entities. What's actually compared is a one-way hash, and any "hits" between two lists, would identify a record number that would presumably lead to a request for the whole record. S.R.D. was originally funded by the CIA's In-Q-Tel venture capital arm.

In an editorial at Newsforge, Richard Stallman notes that, unlike IBM's announcement last year granting open source software authors amnesty from 500 patents, Nokia has only made its recent pledge about the Linux kernel, leaving the door open for an attack on other software projects. Meanwhile, Nokia continues to push for more software patent protection from government. He says their gesture isn't nothing, but it's next to nothing.

Desert Spring-Time (DST) is an OS based on the OCaml runtime+native code compiler. Their goal is to build a robust system through extensive use of OCaml language features, such as static type checking. Currently, this is only a prototype, and is best tested with qemu. More information can be found here.

VIA issued a press release on Friday announcing their new C7 Processor. Noteworthy PVR related features include its low power consumption (2.0GHz at 20W, idle at 0.1W) and support for SSE2 and SSE3 (in addition to existing MMX and SSE support). In the crypto department, they've expanded their PadLock™ hardware crypto/security suite with this CPU by adding in full hardware SHA-1 and SHA-256 (20BGps), hardware assisted RSA (hardware Montgomery Multiplier), a beefed up RNG that feeds directly into the SHA units, and the NX bit.

Power consumption, supply voltage, junction temperature, system cooling requirements, and processor clock rate are all physically and thermodynamically related. By understanding the relationships, system cost and complexity trade-offs, and resource requirements, system designers can strike a better balance between requirements. See how you can incorporate emergent cooling and adaptive power control methods into embedded system designs.

One of the biggest difficulties in migrating from Windows to Linux is the lack of knowledge about comparable software. Newbies usually search for Linux analogs of Windows software, and advanced Linux-users cannot answer their questions since they may not know much about available Windows software. This list of Linux equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software is based on our own experience and on the information obtained from the visitors of this page on English, Russian, Italian, Spanish, French & German.

Artist Futurismo Zugakousaku has posted some creations on his web site that he made with Quartz Composer, a new great technology in Tiger. (the videos are apparently only visible using the latest version of Quicktime in Tiger) If it makes you feel inspired, here a small tutorial that will help you get started with Quartz Composer and to develop a customized RSS Screen Saver.

Since most of OSNews' U.S. readers are enjoying their Memorial Day holiday weekend still, here's something for a segment of our Eurpoean readership: Belgian business-oriented tv channel KanaalZ has a (dutch) report on its website on open Source. Two case studies are explored, one of which is the town of Schoten's switch to FOSS for its intranet solution. The opposing case is presented by a Microsoft spokesman.

The Financial Express reports that, for the first time, sales of servers running Windows matched the revenues of Unix servers: Revenue for Windows servers grew 12.3 per cent to $4.2 billion in the quarter while unit shipments grew 10.7 per cent. Unix servers saw 2.8 per cent revenue growth to $4.2 billion while unit shipments increased 5 per cent. HP made gains on leader IBM, Dell posted huge growth, and Linux made up an ever larger share. It appears that both Windows and Linux continue to chip away at proprietary Unix from both ends.