Eugenia Loli Archive

Microsoft on Monday released an updated version of Windows XP SP1 without the company's version of Java, complying with a court order that was stayed just hours later. However, today Microsoft received a reprieve on Monday from a court order requiring the company to ship Sun's Java software.

It's Intel's most powerful processor ever. It has the ability to take on IBM, sink Sun, make or break HP, and crush or revive AMD. It's keeping every CEO in computing up at night. And it's just getting started. The multibillion-dollar battle between Itanium 2 and its rivals has begun.

One of the most prolific and active developers of FreeBSD, Matt Dillon, responsible for a lot of the latest advances in the FreeBSD kernel, lost his right to commit code to the source tree. The FreeBSD Project didn't give a solid reason on what lead them to this decision. Last year, OSNews interviewed Matt about his (truly immense) work on FreeBSD.

"$99, give or take $20, seems to be the new price point for full-featured, consumer-level Linux distributions. This is a great deal for non-technical users, since most of the new-wave consumer Linux products give users a much prettier and easier experience than traditional, all-GPL distributions tailored for a geeky user base. Whether or not the current explosion of Linux use by ordinary people is "good" is still open to question, but I suspect the answer depends more on who is doing the answering than any other factor." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

Apple Computer Co. has been hit by a growing number of lawsuits filed by Mac dealers who are upset by the company's alleged efforts to lure their customers to outlets that Apple owns. They are also fed up with what they say are long-standing problems in the company's service and billing systems. Tom Santos, owner of San Francisco's Macadam, one of the largest Apple- authorized storefront dealerships in the nation, filed a multimillion-dollar complaint last month that accuses the Cupertino company of fraud, breach of contract, unfair competition, false advertising and even violation of the federal RacketeerInfluenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

How music labels, Hollywood studios and consumers answer that question could determine whether the software giant dominates digital media the way it does Web browsers or desktop productivity applications, say analysts.

OneStat.com, today reported that Apple's Safari browser has shown a fast adoptation rate with a global usage share of 0.11 percent in the first weeks of its public launch. Opera 7 is not so successful as Apple's Safari. Opera 7 has a global usage share of 0.03 percent in the first weeks (since December) of its public launch. Microsoft still dominates the browser market. As of February 03, 2003, all versions of Microsoft accounted for 95,2 percent of the global usage share market. The total global usage share of Netscape is 2.9 percent and the global usage share of Netscape 7 is 0.64 percent. Mozilla is at 1.2%.

No, this is not a traditional "Linux distro". The RoxOS guys are feeling like innovating today, even by breaking legacy and some compatibility at places with other Linux distros or Unix. RoxOS is a desktop OS which is evolving by using existing tools (Linux kernel, X11, ROX Filer, gnu etc), but somewhat modified (e.g. new filesystem hieriarchy and dependancy on filesystem's metadata). Most apps will probably need repackaging or altering in some way in order to run on RoxOS. Join the discussion or the project. This project was made known to us after the long discussion we had the other day about innovation and on creating a new OS, but by re-using existing tools and extensively modifying them, in order to cut production time and to easily get hardware support (via X11 & Linux or FreeBSD's kernel).

The space shuttle Columbia broke up Saturday as it descended over central Texas toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seven crew members were aboard. Many believe that a debris that hit some shielding during take off might be the culprit for the explosion during the return of the shuttle. Our condolences go out to the families of the brave astronauts.

The three CDs for the third beta of Mandrake Linux 9.1 are still getting uploaded to most mirrors around the world, but you can already download it from here or here for now, until all the mirrors receive the files.

Independent consultant Thomas E. Besemer writes for Embedded.com: "Is embedded Linux viable? You bet. Is it free? No way. If time-to-market matters, you get a lot from companies like Wind River with stable environments, or perhaps the current embedded Linux vendors." The December's article is accompanied by a number of insightful comments, and an additional response by the author.

"Nobody can deny that Sun has the technology and expertise to continue doing good things. But do they have the right direction? IT consultant Paul Murphy says what must be done if Sun is to correct weaknesses eroding its position. Here's his analysis on where Solaris and SPARC are headed, and the kind of management focus that can place Sun on higher ground." Read the article at Open Magzine.

From the OpenBSD Journal: In his post, Theo deRaadt gives a brief technical overview of the four major security changes in OpenBSD: POSIX page protection schemes, WorX, read only segments, and Propolice. Not all of these are on all platforms, but every platform has some protection. To quote Theo in his message, "We feel that these 4 technologies together will be a a royal pain in the a$$ for the typical buffer overflow attacker."

According to heise.de and news.com, AMD finalized their CPU roadmap this Friday. Opteron is scheduled for April, Athlon 64 for September. The Barton core will debut on Februar 10th in the Athlon XP 3000+. The Barthon increases the L2 cache from 256 (Thoroughbred-B) to 512 kByte, and will probably run only with FSB333. A Athlon XP 3200+ will probably appear by the middle of the year.