Thom Holwerda Archive

Microsoft Eats Humble Pie Over Office Bloat

Submitted by danwarne 2006-06-21 Microsoft 39 Comments

Microsoft Australia's Office chief today delivered a frank retrospective on how badly bloated Office had become over the years. Speaking at a briefing to journalists about Windows Vista and Office 2007, Wilkinson launched into a lengthy and frank retrospective on how Office came to be as bloated as it is today. "Little point changes to our user interface design weren't helping the problem. The real problem was the application had increased too much in complexity."

AROS Update: June

Submitted by wonea 2006-06-21 Amiga & AROS No Comments

The AROS team posted its latest monthly update. Foremost, a new version of the hosted AROS-PPC has been released: "This release depends on glibc 2.3.2 or newer. You need to give AROS some more RAM than the default allocation of 16 MB (leaves about 4 MB for applications). Start it using: ./aros -m 64 This will allocate 64 MB. As with all X11 hosted AROS versions you need to add Option "BackingStore" to the Device section of xorg.conf." The other news is that the website has been translated to German.

Why Google OS Already Exists

Submitted by Satish Shah 2006-06-21 Google 35 Comments

"Let's face it. Google pretty much owns the Internet landscape. Unless something truly unexpected happens within the web community, I see no real indicator that they'll lose their market share anytime soon. This also opens them up to other online opportunities should they decide to pursue them. One such opportunity is believed to be the much famed idea of a Google OS. The rumors have been floating around back and forth for awhile now and many people believe that it's simply a matter of time. Well I'm here to tell you that this is never going to happen; at least not in a form that we might expect to see, that is."

Fighting Microsoft’s Piracy Check

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-20 Windows 92 Comments

Counterfeiters aren't Microsoft's only opponents in its effort to combat piracy: Some of its customers are against it, too. The company is forging ahead with a program, Windows Genuine Advantage, tied to its free software downloads and updates, that checks whether the Windows installation on a PC is pirated. But some people, including some who say they own a legitimately acquired copy of Windows, have challenged the need for such validation.

Comparison of BSD Live CDs

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-20 BSD & Darwin 4 Comments

"GNU/Linux live CDs are increasingly playing an important role in the free software community. They serve as advocacy tools, they make it possible for newbies to try out software without having to install anything and they make fantastic rescue disks. While all the best known live CDs are GNU/Linux variants, there are also several *BSD live CDs out there. I decided to give them a test run."

IBM, Georgia Tech Break Silicon Speed Record

Submitted by Ronald Vos 2006-06-20 IBM 23 Comments

"IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology announced today that their researchers have demonstrated the first silicon-based chip capable of operating at frequencies above 500 GHz - 500 billion cycles per second - by cryogenically 'freezing' the chip to 451 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (4.5 Kelvins)." Now that's what I'd like to see in the new PowerBook. Oh, wait.

USD100 Laptop Project Is ‘Fundamentally Flawed’

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-20 Hardware 73 Comments

The One Laptop per Child scheme is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of the IT industry, according to Tony Roberts, chief executive and founder of UK charity Computer Aid International. Speaking to ZDNet UK last week, Roberts claimed that although he would be delighted if the OLPC scheme proved a success, he had severe reservations about the strategy underpinning the project.

Apple Acknowledges User Frustrations Over Roadmap

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-20 Apple 28 Comments

Apple yesterday conceded corporate IT workers are 'always' complaining about its secretive product roadmap - but warned the only way to get up to speed is to invest thousands of dollars and a full working week attending its annual US-based developer conference. Elsewhere, someone noticed Apple is now promoting Parallels instead of its own Boot Camp. Does it mean anything?

PC-BSD 1.11 Released

Submitted by antik 2006-06-20 PC-BSD 14 Comments

PC-BSD 1.11 has been released. Major changes: updated installed ports to current versions as of 6-12-06; updated KDE to 3.5.3 (more than 800 bugs fixed compared to 3.5.2); added additional DRM video drivers to default kernel, 3D/DRI support for Intel 3D, Voodoo, ATI, S3, SiS, Matrox, etc.; and much more. Get it from the download page (update or complete .iso), read the changelog, or read the release notes.

AMD Chips in with Cray for World’s Fastest Computer

Submitted by Max 2006-06-20 AMD 26 Comments

The world's first commercial one-petaflops supercomputer has been commissioned, Codenamed 'Baker', the 24000-socket, Opteron-based Linux system is due to be installed at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2008.

Using the QTKit Framework

Submitted by Hakime 2006-06-20 macOS 2 Comments

"QTKit brings a deeper level of integration with QuickTime to the premier programming environment on Mac OS X. This article shows how the QTKit framework is structured and introduces you to the essential concepts you'll need to understand to get up and running. First, let's review why QuickTIme is so important and what it brings to developers."

VMware To Enter Apple market, Support MS Virtualization Products

Submitted by Alessandro Perilli 2006-06-20 OS News 13 Comments

"Immediately after the release of new Virtual Infrastructure 3, Virtualization.info had the pleasure to reach Raghu Raghuram, Vice President of Platform Products at VMware, to ask him details about the just launched products, the recent Akimbi acquisition announcement, the secret VMware Integrity product, a planned presence in the Apple operating system, and further steps in the virtualization market leader's strategy. From his answers a revelation came out: VMware is going to partially support Microsoft'svirtualization technologies."

DB2 9 Express-C Released

Submitted by martini 2006-06-20 IBM 4 Comments

The no-charge version of the IBM database DB2, is now available for download in its 9th revision. DB2 9 Express-C is a no-charge relational database that can be run on up to 2 dual-core CPU servers with up to 4 GB of memory. Available for Windows (32bits, 64 bits coming soon) and Linux (Intel/AMD and Power; 32 and 64 bits)

Novell Delays SUSE 10 Release

Submitted by anonymous 2006-06-20 Novell and Ximian 79 Comments

According to a Novell confidential memo dated June 14, Novell is delaying its next release of both the server and desktop versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 "to address final issues with our new package management, registration, and update system and also fix the remaining blocker defects."

Opera 9 Released

Submitted by HankPowers 2006-06-20 Opera 56 Comments

Opera 9.0 has been released. The new features in this major release include BitTorrent support, content blocking, tab preview, widgets (small desktop applets), and a source viewer, among others. Update: First impressions.

Amiga Forever 2006 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-19 Amiga & AROS 11 Comments

Cloanto has released its 2006 version of Amiga Forever, an all-in-one package for emulating the AmigaOS (1.x as well as 3.x) on any standard PC; OSNews reviewed the previous version. This release includes about 200MB of new Amiga games, as well as enhanced support for AmigaOS add-ons such as AmiKit, AmigaSYS, and AROS for Amiga.

A Kernel of Truth

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-19 macOS 19 Comments

"There's been a lot of talk about the Mac OS X kernel in the past few months. When Avie Tevanian left Apple in March, there was much speculation that Apple had plans to abandon the Mach microkernel that underpins Mac OS X, and that Avie helped to develop many years ago. There were two lines of reasoning to support this, both pretty silly." Update: Follow-up has been posted. Thanks to eMagius pointing that out.

Why Ballmer Should Leave Microsoft

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-19 Microsoft 34 Comments

Now that Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has started his two-year goodbye from a day-to-day role at the company, it's time for CEO Steve Ballmer to set a resignation date, too. Since Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000 in favor of Ballmer, the company has floundered technically and strategically. As the company's chairman, chief software architect and supposed visionary, Gates deserves blame for missing the wave of Web-based software that has propelled Google and Yahoo. But Ballmer has made gaffes of his own in his longtime role as head of the company's business side. In addition, Microsoft has started a wiki-like thing to allow its employees to ventilate ideas to the higher echelons of the company.

Switching from MacOS to Linux

Submitted by Rehdon 2006-06-19 Apple 88 Comments

It seems that some well-known users are switching from MacOS to Linux, often after a lifetime of involvement with Apple's products. From Tim Bray's blog: " as I stood in the Apple store last weekend and drooled over the beautiful, beautiful hardware, all I could think was how much work it would take to twiddle with the default settings, install third-party software, and hide all the commercial tie-ins so I could pretend I was in control of my own computer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to my eye Apple isn't beautiful anymore."

Microsoft Preps Ultramobile PC for Second Chance

Thom Holwerda 2006-06-19 Microsoft 3 Comments

Despite having been on the market only a few months, ultramobile PCs, the keyboard-less handheld computers capable of running Windows XP, have already been panned by analysts and many reviewers. Now they're being targeted by the likes of Sony and startup OQO, who are offering their own diminutive computers for businesses. But Microsoft and partners - the UMPC has been backed by Intel and VIA Technologies - expect to see more diversity in the UMPC space in the near term.