Eugenia Loli Archive

Computer security experts said on Thursday the recent "SQL Slammer" worm, the worst in more than a year, is evidence that Microsoft Corp.'s year-old security push is not working.

Well, we all have used Unix, in one form or another (maybe even through embeded products). But which one is your favorite flavor of Unix-based/Unix-alike OSes? Read more and vote! Update: SHAME on you, who ever you are: Messing/hacking with go2poll's code and altering the results in favor of FreeBSD. By doing so, you are doing MORE BAD than good to your favorite platform.

A Sun-led Java standards group today will announce specifications designed to bring Java's write-once run-anywhere promise closer to reality for wireless handsets.

A Microsoft legal document put a late 2004 expected ship date on the next client version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn," putting in black and white what Microsoft officials have been telling partners, customers and reporters in private conversations.

AMD executives reiterated that the company is focusing on the server version of the Opteron processor, but that the 64-bit Athlon 64 will still appear in 2003."You saw our financials; I'm not going to lie to you. It doesn't make a lot of sense to build a new processor for a niche market," said John Crank, senior brand manager for desktop product marketing for AMD's Computation Products Group. Although PCs certainly dominate the computing landscape, Crank and other AMD officials said they believed servers and their applications would be better positioned to take advantage of the Opteron's capabilities at launch, rather than PCs.

Andrew D. Balsa has been following the progress of Mandrake Linux 9.1 and its hectic pace of development. In the first two articles of this series he described his initial impressions of both betas to give us the taste of things to come. In this third part he delves deeper. He investigates various ways to improve that desktop look - with anti-aliasing, true type fonts, menu and cursor shadows, desktop icons and KGamma colour calibration. All accompanied by suggestions to developers and some new screenshots.

When National Semiconductor decided to challenge Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the market for low-end microprocessors in 1997, CEO Brian Halla teased a group of skeptical analysts, saying they probably thought he had been sprinkling testosterone on his corn flakes. Brian Halla predicts a technology transformation in which analog chips displace the zeros and ones at the heart of the binary language used in computing.

In 1998, Apple ran a television commercial aimed squarely at its competitors. The "Toasted Bunny" ad, as it came to be known, portrayed one of Intel's Bunny-suited workers being hosed down by a firefighter. "Apple Computer would like to apologize for toasting the Pentium II processor in public," the voiceover intoned. "But the fact remains, the chip inside every new Macintosh G3 is up to twice as fast." Read the article at Wired.

Linux distributions have come a long way in easing the tasks of system administrators. From software installation to hardware configuration, Linux is moving away from making you manually edit text configuration files by providing you with elegant GUI tools to make system administration easier. In this article, LinuxOrbit takes a look at some of the latest GUI tools you can use to help configure and administrate your GNU/Linux system.

"A federal judge's order that would force Microsoft Corp. to include Sun Microsystems Inc.'s programming language in the latest version of Windows is necessary to prevent the language from becoming extinct, Sun argued in a court filing. The company filed its response Tuesday to Microsoft's appeal of the order. Sun said its Java programming language is damaged each day the injunction is not imposed because the market tilts toward Microsoft's .NET framework." Read the reports here and here. Good to see Sun being realistic regarding the status of and race between Java and .NET's framework.

LinuxHardware is featuring a review of Vector Linux 2.5 Soho Edition. However, Vector Linux is available now with version 3.0. In the meantime, the Lehigh Valley Linux Users Group has partnered with a startup nfp called Computers for Kids (cfk) which is refurbishing donated computers, setting them up with Vector Linux, and providing limited, ongoing training and support.

Xandros today announced the release of the Xandros Desktop Standard Edition 1.0. Unlike Xandros Desktop Deluxe ($99), Xandros Standard Edition cannot reallocate space from a Windows NTFS during the install, though it still can reallocate space from a FAT, VFAT, or FAT32 partition. By removing such Deluxe features such as CodeWeavers CrossOver Office and Plugin, the printed user guide, and the Technology Preview CD, Xandros Desktop can be made available at $40 USD. Desktop Standard provides one incident of e-mail installation support, as opposed to 30-day support with Desktop Deluxe.

Apple Computer on Tuesday harvested a new crop of Power Macs outfitted with faster processors and lower prices on some configurations. The high-end system tops out with twin 1.42GHz PowerPC G4 processors. The new low-end Power Mac costs $1,499--a $200 reduction over the previous starter system--and packs a single 1GHz processor. But the megahertz boost and price cut is a trade-off. The previous entry-level Mac packed dual 867MHz processors.

Opera Software expressed significant doubts it would continue producing a browser for the Macintosh operating system, illustrating a growing problem for third-party Mac developers as Apple Computer steps up its own application development efforts. Also, Opera Software on Tuesday will release the final version of its newly rewritten browser for the Windows operating system, adding features without increasing the browser's size. Update: Opera 7.00 for Windows is available. Update2: Official announcement and feature-list. Update3: I just added an OSNews sidebar panel for Opera.