Eugenia Loli Archive

The people at SuntekStore were very kind to send us in a review unit of their latest special product, the Universal Bluetooth Keyboard (BK600) for PDAs & phones. It is dubbed the "Smart Keyboard" and it sells for $109. It is compatible with the most recent PalmOS/PocketPCs PDAs and a large number of Bluetooth phones. We tested it against the Dell Axim x50v. UPDATE: Pictures added.

With the increasing convergence of phone and network aware devices, come new and often unnoticed threats. Features such as built-in cameras, wireless networking, Bluetooth, calendars, phone books, all present their own particular problems, and associated risks. My Take: Some claim that mobile devices are developed with less security in mind than any desktop OS ever was and that this will bite back users in a few years when the "mobile platform" becomes less diverse and instead more compatible.

Functions are the wonderful and powerful building blocks of computer programs. Functions allow you to break code down into simpler, more manageable steps. They also allow you to break programs into reusable parts -- parts that are both reusable within the program and in other programs as well. In this article, learn how to create new functions at runtime based on templates, how to create functions that are configurable at runtime using function parameters, and how the Scheme language can be a valuable tool with functions.

New version of Kaffe has been released. Kaffe is a clean room implementation of the Java virtual machine, plus the associated class libraries needed to provide a Java runtime environment. 1.1.5 release sports improved AWT implementation, new garbage collector, internationalization support, new ports to FreeBSD on x86-64, Darwin on x86 and HP-UX on ia64 and much more.

The first release candidate of FreeBSD 5.4 is now available for general testing.

Jonathan Schwartz proclaimed ardent support for the open-source software realm but criticized the GPL.

A 64-bit environment and the ability to address more than 4 GB of memory can greatly enhance the scalability and performance of databases. With IDS v10, IBM has optimized native 64-bit editions for all major Linux platforms. This article contains information on all the new features of Informix Dynamic Server Version 10.0 that are unique on Linux platforms.

Microsoft has offered the European Commission about 20 concessions over the EU executive's order that it share data with rival makers of servers, the software firm said Monday.

The operating system is based on the kernel WindowsCE version 5.1. It differs from its predecessor in Direct3D Mobile (initially optimized for Wireless MMX), Windows Error Reporting, the possibility to work as a USB storage without drivers, improved support of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and so on.

Point-counterpoint at DaringFireball's interesting editorials.

For the first time that we know of, Federal Computer Week magazine is reporting on open source software. This weekly, which gets onto the desks of all Federal IT managers, has hardly acknowledged in the past that alternative solutions exist.

In this program from Oct 2004, Jeff Dean of Google describes some of these challenges, discusses applications Google has developed, and highlights systems they've built, including GFS, a large-scale distributed file system, and MapReduce, a library for automatic parallelization and distribution of large-scale computation. He also shares some interesting observations derived from Google's web data.

In a Clear Choice test of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0, (tested RHEL 4.0 Advanced Server, Red Hat’s most robust Linux distribution), ComputerWorld found huge performance gains over previous editions, beefed up security options and vastly improved hardware detection mechanisms.

Microsoft has urged businesses running Windows XP to upgrade their machines to take advantage of added security features, but only a quarter of XP corporate machines have been upgraded to Service Pack 2, according to a new study.