Thom Holwerda Archive

The releases just keep on coming, don't they? The GNUstep live CD has been updated "The GNUstep live CD contains a lot of software for GNUstep, a free implementation of the OPENSTEP framework (which was also the base as Cocoa in Mac OS X)." The GNUstep page can tell you more about GNUstep itself.

And Slackware too puts out a test release. Patrick writes in the changelog: "OK, we're going to call this Slackware 12.1-rc1, though there is still some more minor work to do." So there. Just so you know.

"It's easy to view the computer interface as nearly static. Since the advent of mouse-driven, windowed interfaces over 20 years ago, much of human-computer interface (HCI) has gone the same route. But a proliferation of mobile devices is beginning to change that and, even if that weren't the case, important differences are developing in what information is available to computers, and how we access it. In March 2007, Microsoft Research invited 45 leading researchers to discuss where HCI would be in 2020; a report summarizing their conclusions has now been made available."

People shouldn't read anything into the fact that of the three laptops set up for last week's 'PWN to OWN' hack challenge, the only one left standing was running Linux, said the security expert who oversaw the contest. "There was just no interest in Ubuntu," said Terri Forslof, manager of security response at 3Com Corp.'s TippingPoint subsidiary, which put up the cash prizes awarded at the contest last week at CanSecWest. "A contest such as this is not a measure of relative security between operating systems. It's not an accurate barometer."

A first release candidate of version 4.4 of Qt, the cross-platform C++ development toolkit, was released today. Thiago Macieira says that this is considered release quality and good enough to use for most tasks. Major new features include support for Windows CE, a WebKit-based HTML rendering module (WebKit is based on KHTML and used in Safari), a Phonon-based multimedia module, XQuery 1.0 (and thus XPath 2.0) support in XML, a concurrency framework allowing multi-threading without the mutexes needed previously, and a new help system. Downloads are available (source, Windows and Mac installers) from Trolltech.

The SkyOS team has released build 6915. "This build features the complete new software store as well as the new viewer supporting location favorites and a query panel. Additionally the new C++ API got a lot of new features like Job support, HTTP download, etc. Just take a loot at this video to see the new features in action."

"Testing 64-bit performance is still a somewhat dicey proposition. Major benchmarks are either lacking, or don't work properly. For example, SYSmark 2007 simply doesn't run on a 64-bit OS (Vista or XP). And while there's now a 3ds Max 9 SPECapc benchmark, the benchmark crashes consistently with a scripting error before it completes when running on 3ds Max 9 64-bit under Vista 64-bit. On the other hand, there are more 64-bit applications and benchmarks now. That system-sapping game, Crysis, ships with a 64-bit client. 3ds Max 9, Lightwave 9, POV-Ray, and the Cinebench rendering benchmark all have 64-bit versions. Futuremark's PCMark Vantage offers a 64-bit version of that Vista-centric, synthetic test. On top of that, anyone using 64-bit Vista will still be running a lot of 32-bit applications. So we benchmarked some of those as well. Let's take a look at the benchmarks and test system."

"The next security and maintenance release for Apple's Leopard operating system could arrive sooner than later if the company maintains its current cadence, which has seen two successive pre-release builds land in the hands of developers in just five days. On the heels of the first external test build labeled Mac OS X 10.5.3 build 9D10 and released privately late last week, the Mac maker on Tuesday followed up with build 9D11, which adds nearly 20 more fixes and code corrections, bringing the new total expected with software's release to nearly 100."

From a Microsoft press release: "AT&T will become the first company in the world to bring Microsoft Surface to life in a retail environment, giving customers the ability to explore their mobile worlds using touch and device recognition technology. Microsoft Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft. Beginning April 17, customers can experience Microsoft Surface in select AT&T retail locations, including stores in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco. Based on the success and learning from these initial pilot deployments, plans for further expansion across AT&T's 2200 US retail stores will be determined."

"Microsoft's embattled Office Open XML document format received ISO fast-track approval after receiving support from approximately 86 percent of the national bodies that participated in the vote. ISO approval will be broadly perceived as a sign of validation for the document format which has received widespread criticism from technical experts and standards advocacy groups."

"What do you do if your flagship operating system isn't designed to run well on a popular new class of hardware? It's a problem currently faced by Microsoft. Budget laptops like the Asus Eee PC with minimal amounts of RAM, relatively slow CPUs, and solid state storage have proven popular, and Vista wasn't designed to operate well within such hardware confines. In response, Microsoft is reportedly planning to extend the availability of Windows XP for the budget laptop category."

PC Magazine has a review of Windows Mobile 6.1, released today. "Windows Mobile 6.1, the latest upgrade to Microsoft's main operating system for handhelds, has a few important invisible patches and a bunch of minor interface tweaks. It leaves all of Windows Mobile 6's core strengths and weaknesses intact. On the positive side, Windows Mobile is still a flexible OS with unparalleled Windows and Exchange support, and the greatest number of handset choices by far. No matter which carrier, manufacturer, or form factor you choose, you'll find a Windows Mobile device to suit your taste." Update: Ars reports that Microsoft has announced a desktop-grade browser for Windows Mobile, scheduled for Q3 2008.

The Haiku project has reached a very important milestone. Bruno G. Albuquerque (bga) wrote the following note attached to a commit a few moments ago: "vnode_path_to_vnode() now returns B_NOT_A_DIRECTORY instead of B_NOT_ALLOWED as expected by POSIX programs. This allowed me to compile Haiku under itself without any hacks at all, so I guess this means that now we are officially self-hosting!" The official announcement can be found in the mailing list. In addition, there's a new Haiku alpha 1 status update.

Intel today revealed it can convert single threaded software to multithreaded mode without any code modification. The new 'speculative parallel threading' process monitors software and examines whether its processes can be run in parallel. If they can execute succesfully, the software can be recompiled to run as a multithreaded app. Intel says it has realised that programmers are going to need machine help to get software running as multithreaded. "We can't blame the programmers," an Intel spokesman said. "The industry has been complaining for 30 years about how difficult parallel programming is."