Eugenia Loli Archive

One fundamental difference guarantees that Windows will continue to dominate says Tom Yager.

Spurred by another quarter of strong Mac and iPod sales, Apple Computer reported on Wednesday earnings that surged past Wall Street estimates.

This is supposed to be the "smartphone for the masses" selling at around $400 without a contract in US (the phone hasn't been released officially in US yet so it's rare to find). Here's a comprehensive review of the unit at GSMArena with plenty of pictures. The device comes with a recent build of Symbian OS v7. Pros: GPRS class 10, EDGE class 5, 1.3 MP camera, Bluetooth, includes a 32 MB MMC card, FM radio, image/video editor, Real player, 176x208 hi-res screen, email, XHTML browser. Drawbacks: It seems to be using a rare kind of MMC (about $55 for 256 MB), only 6 MBs of internal memory, earphones only deliver mono sound for mp3 playback and they don't seem reliable with FM either.

The Linux based Compound XML Document Editor (CXDE) from IBM’s software group uses Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) to provide a more customized editing experience for developers. CXDE offers a standards-based, model-driven editor for mixed-namespace XML documents such as: XHTML, XForms, XML-Events, SMIL, SVG, VoiceXML, XUL, and MathML. Another good Java-based XML free alternative is Vex.

Amiga, Inc. today announced the launch of the new AmigaAnywhere™ SDK (software development kit) version 1.5, providing increased performance, time to market and revenue opportunity for Amiga's global developer community.

Moore's Law has helped keep the IT industry riding along on ever faster and more complex hardware for 40 years, but its author now says the software side of the equation needs some serious work.

Linuxlookup.com is reporting the first Mandriva Linux release is now available. Mandriva Linux Limited Edition 2005 is a transitional release which provides all the best and up to date open source applications to power-users, 32-bit/64-bit trouble-free coexistence, capability to boot from a USB key and many other features, with an excellent stability.

PalmOne released today a sequel for its popular Tungsten E. The Tungsten E2, looks essentially identical to its predecessor, but offers Bluetooth wireless networking, and a more powerful battery. Like the original, the E2 has a 320-by-320-pixel display. This is 30% brighter and has 40% better color saturation. This handheld has 32 MB of NVFS memory, with 26 MB available to the user. NVFS memory holds information without a charge or power. It runs at 200 Mhz, it has a headphones-in jack, but it lacks a microphone. It uses PalmOS Garnet 5.4.7 and sells for $249. Reviews here, here and here.

VIA releases Linux Driver source packages: On top of the UniChrome drivers, VIA also offers display driver sources for the VIA ProSavage and ProSavage DDR integrated graphics controllers as well as the integrated Network driver source supporting six VIA Chipset South Bridges.

The phrase "de facto standard" can denote anything from proprietary tyranny to a healthy, vibrant, market. What makes a standard viable without the formal blessing of a standards organization? Should you use such informal standards, or ignore them?

GeekOS is a tiny operating system kernel for x86 PCs. Its goal is to be simple enough for beginners to understand and modify, but realistic enough to be interesting and fun. Version 0.3.0 has been released. In addition to many critical bug fixes, there's now seamless support for compiling under Cygwin.

"Microsoft aims to kill BlackBerry," an insider told CRN. "Every corporate type has a BlackBerry, and they all have Outlook. What is the cost going to be to RIM Server when Exchange Service Pack and Magneto come out and they're not priced? Microsoft is giving it away for free." Read the article at TheRegister. On a related PDA note, this is the best PDA deal on the web judging from the feature-set and extra free accessories included (note: we are not affiliated with that shop in any way). There is also a hack available to update that Dell Axim X5-Advanced model to Windows Mobile 2003.

Over the past several weeks, Tom Lane has been working on replacing our old Cache Management Alorithm (ARC) with a new, patent free one (2Q). In order to reduce the number of 8.x deployments out there that are using the old manager, they have just released 8.0.2, and encourage adminstrators to upgrade at their earliest convience.

Being the best doesn't always mean being the most popular. We all know of many inferior products that are immensely, sometimes perplexingly, popular. However, this does not mean that one must forsake the pursuit of excellence when pursuing a broad market share. As proponents of open source software, it should not be beneath us to pursue popularity or to look to proprietary developers as examples. And by following the right examples, we can help spread the usage of open source software without sacrificing the goal of software excellence, says NewsForge.