Eugenia Loli Archive

"Java inventor James Gosling says he isn't losing much sleep over Microsoft these days, despite the software giant's effort to stem Java's popularity with its own Java-like language. The next battle in Web services software development pits Microsoft against Java creator Sun Microsystems, along with Java adherents IBM, Oracle and others. Crucial to Microsoft's effort is C#, a Java-like language that will soon be part of the company's new Visual Studio.Net package of software-development tools, which was released to developers Wednesday." Read the rest of the interview with James Gosling at C|Net News.

An alpha version of the new GTK+ 2.0 based, Gnome 2.0, is now available for download and testing. The new version enhances anti-aliased text and internationalisation support, accessibility features and more. Screenshots available. Our Take: Note on the Gnome roadmap that they expect to also break binary and source compatibility for version 3.0 as they currently do now for 2.0. I wonder if this is what makes proprierty systems (eg. Windows) more successful commercially. The support for backwards compatibility is certainly something that users will always appreciate if they can run their closed source programs for the years to come or, for open source apps, users will be able to compile for the new Gnome version without changes in the app's source code. However, supporting older versions, can cause "bloat". Is the trade off acceptable? Discuss.

From TheRegister article regarding the Be liquidation auction that took place yesterday: "Afternoon engagements called us, and we never got the chance to bid for the 29 Be mugs, the lot of a hundred Be T-shirts (we'd dearly one of either - will swap), or the iMac we'd promised shacker. Let alone the BeBoxes. Or, gasp! the Hobbit prototypes which preceded the PPC BeBox." In the second photo you can also see sitting Marco Nellisen (SoundPlay author, Palm engineer now) and behind him, Arve Hjonnevag (ex-Be kernel engineer, at Palm now too). In the meantime, BeUnited, after was rejected a license from Palm, they now state that they will focus on supporting Open BeOS, while Palm, Inc. revealed some information about PalmOS 5: "Three significant improvements include the ability to use multitasking and multithreading in applications, improved performance using OS 5 with the faster processor, and compatibility with current applications." However, not all Palm developers are happy because: "Some of the old programs will run faster, some will run slower, and some won't run at all."

"AMD competes with Intel, and the public wins. The right Microsoft antitrust settlement can bring the same energy back to the software market. The personal computer industry may be in its worst slump in history, but you wouldn't know it by following the news from the processor wars. Over the past two years, Intel and AMD have unleashed an incredible competitive cycle in Silicon Valley." Read the interesting editorial at Salon.com.

"Online vandals are using a two-month-old security hole in Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system to break into servers on the Internet, a security expert said Tuesday. Researchers witnessed the attack when one intruder broke into a Solaris server under intense observation as part of the Honeynet Project, an initiative to develop ways to turn spare computers into digital fly traps to study and document actual Internet attacks." Get the rest of the story at C|Net News.com.

"For desktops, the 2.4 version of the kernel is just fine. If you have heavy-duty processing needs, 2.4 has been a series of disappointments. Sysadmins of big iron have two choices -- go back in time or play upgrade hopscotch. Both have problems. Let's start from the beginning. In July 2001, I was responsible for upgrading a customer's server from Red Hat 6.2 to Mandrake 8.0. The machine was built from scratch, and Mandrake was installed onto a freshly formatted RAID 5 array. We then migrated the Red Hat 6.2 applications to the new machine." Read the rest of the story at InfoWorld.