David Adams Archive

According to a CRN article, Intel has "has made good on its vow last year to rewrite its product road map to focus on dual-core and multicore processors." In addition to imagining chips aimed at mobile, lightweight, and other boutique applications, the processor giant also (with MIcrosoft's backing) reiterated its commitment to move desktop processors to 64 bit with all possible haste.

The results are in! The winners of the giveaway are: In the "new member" category: Pascal Hos. In the "existing members" category: Robert Kerby and Jeremy Messenger. In the "commenters" category: Rayiner Hashem and "therandthem." If you are one of these winners, and you haven't received an email from us yet, contact us right away. Thanks to all the new members who signed up in the past two weeks. We'll try to have more giveaways soon!

Technology Insider has a skeptical review of the new Mac Mini. It gives a good overview of a Windows user's impression of the Mini and Macs in general. Note: read the whole review before rushing to judgement. If you read it carefully, you might be able to discern the author's hidden adgenda. Also check out the same site's article on setting grandma up with a Linux box.

Apple has unseated Google for the number one spot of major global brands, compiled by Interbrand, a marketing industry analyst. Ikea and Starbucks were numbers three and four, and number five was a surprising newcomer: al-Jazerra. I guess being on the front lines of a major world conflict really gets your name out there.

1.0 versions of Voice over IP application Skype have been released for Linux and OS X. They've been in Beta for several months. These versions seem to have feature parity with the Windows versions, and cross-platform communication is possible.

I've got some great books that I'll be giving away to OSNews members next week. Here's how it will work: Two books will go to OSNews members picked at random, including people who sign up for new memberships this week. One book will go to a new member who signs up between now and next friday. And two books will go to regular OSNews readers, members or not, picked at random from people who post an insightful, non-troll, non-flame, comment on an OSNews story between now and next friday. Read more to see the books and learn more about signing up.

A judge overseeing the legal fight between the SCO Group and IBM over Linux and Unix on Tuesday ordered Big Blue to show all versions of its two Unix products, AIX and Dynix

Has the Object-Oriented Programming been hyped too much, or do we suffer from the OO paradigms exposed in languages such as C++, Java, C#? How about languages that support features such as prototyping and/or multi-dispatch?

Since the arrival of the very first versions of Gentoo, some people have announced that "Debian is good, but that's not optimized for ". And this is wrong, you are free to recompile software you use on Debian, using the apt system. Downloading a tarball, uncompressing it, running configure scripts and make install, is an easy task for every Linux user, but this is not adapted for the Debian package management system. Stow was a way which worked without too much effort, but compiled programs were not really integrated in the apt dependancies. The ultimate solution is to use apt-build to recompile a software already packaged for Debian. Read in English - Read in Portuguese (Brazilian)

Flexbeta compares Microsoft's new anti-spyware utility with the two leading spyware stoppers, Ad-Aware and SpyBot. They find that Microsoft's is actually more effective than the other choices, though with the monthly fee for the MS solution, it's not a clear winner.

Eugene Blanchard made his Introduction to Data Communications (also known as Introduction to Networking) available for free. The book covers a broad variety of topics such as RS-232, Ethernet, RF, TCP/IP and many other topics in its 63 chapters. This is a valuable reference and read for those just starting to understand networking and data communications as well as seasoned professionals in the field.

Kerneltrap has a discussion on the proposed patches to Linux kernel which enables Linux to use genetic algorithm for use in CPU and IO schedulers. Genetic algorthims are self optimising over time for particular kinds of workloads and this could be one way of smarter kinds of scheduling. An interesting idea though it yet remains to be seen what would turn up

"A vulnerability in Firefox could expose users of the open-source browser to the risk of phishing scams, security experts have warned. " In a related note, security firm Secunia has discovered three very critical security flaws in IE.

Businessweek asks: Flash memory in a cheaper iPod? A $500 Mac? If the rumors about what Steve Jobs has planned for Apple are true, those moves could be just the start. Also: spy photos of headless iMac or internet hoax? you decide.