Thom Holwerda Archive

Sony PlayStation 3: the Ars Technica Review

Games 81 Comments
Ars reviews the PlayStation 3 personal computer game console, and they say: "The PS3 doesn't have any grand ideas; Sony wanted something high-tech, so they started from scratch with the processor and GPU, but what does it get them? Very little so far. The controller is a mash-up of ideas from their old systems, the 360's triggers, and the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities, but once it has that tech it doesn't really know what to do with it. The Blu-ray adds cost, but adds very little to the gaming experience for the user. It's great as a media player, but for those of us who love games first and foremost, we have to look at it skeptically. The PS3 is a system with no core message, and that is what keeps it from being elegant. Will it do great things in the future? I hope so, the possibility and potential are certainly there. For now, it's power looking for a mission statement."
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Review: Slackware 11.0

  Submitted by Rich Morgan Slackware, Slax 27 Comments
Open Addict reviews Slackware Linux 11.0, and concludes: "The latest Slackware release is more of the same pure Slackware goodness from Patrick and Company. It doesn't drastically diverge from 10.2 but adds some new software packages and includes some newer kernel support. Hardware detection is pretty much as basic as it can be with much of the configuration and tweaking on you - the end user. Thankfully, it isn't hard to configure Slackware through its easy to find textfile-based configuration files, but newbies might be lost."
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Open Letter to Novell

  Submitted by anonymous Novell and Ximian 65 Comments
Novell and Microsoft recently entered into an agreement regarding software patents (really?) that betrays the rest of the Free Software community, including the very people who wrote Novell's own system, for Novell's sole financial beneift, according to Bruce Perens. Join Perens in signing an open letter to Novell's CEO Ron Hovsepian. "As the agreement stands today, it betrays the authors of the software you re-market and their users worldwide for Novell's sole commercial benefit."
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Vista Apparently Compliant with 2002 US Antitrust Ruling

  Submitted by Flatline Legal 39 Comments
US prosecutors say Windows Vista and the latest version of Internet Explorer apparently comply with the requirements of the 2002 antitrust judgement against Microsoft. In a joint status report filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., prosecutors said Microsoft appeared to be complying with the judgement, which found Microsoft abused its Windows monopoly and set down rules for the software maker to follow to avoid future anti-competitive behaviour. Prosecutors and Microsoft have been submitting joint reports on compliance to the court every six months.
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IBM Sees Novell/MS Deal Benefiting Linux

  Submitted by anonymous IBM 79 Comments
Just about everyone has expressed an opinion on the Novell/Microsoft patent agreement - except, that is, for the 800-pound gorilla of Linux: IBM. Today, Scott Handy, IBM's VP of Worldwide Linux and Open Source, decided that enough was enough and it was time to state IBM's position. In an interview with Linux-Watch.com, Handy opened by saying that, "IBM has long supported interoperability between Windows and Linux. As supporters of open source and open standards," he continued, "we applaud any effort to bridge this gap."
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Licensing the 2007 Microsoft Office User Interface

  Submitted by jayson.knight Microsoft 54 Comments
"For the last year or so, one of the questions I've been asked again and again has been: "Can I use the new Office user interface in my own product?" On one hand, it's an immensely satisfying question to hear, because it means that others in the industry believe in the value of what we've built and see how the sound UI research we've done can benefit their own products. Creating the new user interface has been our team's passion for the last three years, and we love sharing the fruits of this hard work. On the other hand, the new Office user interface was a huge investment by Microsoft and the resulting intellectual property belongs to Microsoft."
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Multiple Security Vulerabilities Found In Apple’s Disk Image Software

  Submitted by someone macOS 29 Comments
The 'Month of Kernel Bugs' project has found two unpatched security vulnerabilities in the way Mac OS X handles .dmg files. The first vulnerability, rated 'highly critical' by security-firm Secunia, can lead to privilege escalation, denial of service, and system access by a remote user (if Safari's open 'safe' files option is checked). The second issue is similar in nature, in that a corrupted UDTO HFS+ .dmg can lead to a denial of service condition. A workaround for both issues is to disable Safari's option to open 'safe' files after downloading, and to not open any .dmg file from a source you do not trust.
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Office 2007 Includes WGA ‘Kill Switch’

  Submitted by Flatline Microsoft 88 Comments
"Buried in a Knowledge Base article that Microsoft published to the Web on November 14 are details of Microsoft's plans to combat Office 2007 piracy via new Office Genuine Advantage lockdowns. Microsoft's intentions are clear: Just as it is doing with Vista, Microsoft plans to incorporate what basically amounts to a 'kill switch' into Office 2007. Office 2007 users who can't or won't pass activation muster within a set time period will be moved into 'reduced-functionality mode', according to Microsoft."
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Hobbyist’s Review: Visual Basic 2005 Express

  Submitted by Jimmy M .NET 65 Comments
"Microsoft is pushing Visual Basic 2005 Express as the best language for hobbyists and novices, and are offering it free of charge from the Microsoft Visual Basic Express website. Since the price is right, and I fall into the hobbyist category, I decided to give it a try. This review is intended for amateur programmers, students and hobbyists who are interested in programming their computers."
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ZFS Patches for FreeBSD

  Submitted by Tanked FreeBSD 26 Comments
The first set of patches are available to compile the ZFS file system module on FreeBSD. "This is a first set of patches, which allows to use ZFS file system from OpenSolaris on FreeBSD. To apply the patch you need to have recent FreeBSD source (be sure you have rev. 1.284 of src/sys/kern/kern_synch.c). To try it out you need i386 machine (this is what I tested) and kernel without WITNESS compiled in (there are probably some warnings still). Currently it can only be compiled as a kernel module."
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SkyOS Build 6669 Released

  Submitted by Tomasz SkyOS 53 Comments
After nearly three months of work, the SkyOS team has released a new build of their operating system. Changes include, but are not limited to: desktop compositing working with every graphics card, USB 2.0 stack (with keyboard, mouse, mass storage, printer, card reader, hub, USB-CDROM, and other drivers), SATA drives support, printing stack (about a 1000 USB and network printers supported), and CD/DVD recording support.
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Interview: Mark Shuttleworth

  Submitted by editingwhiz Ubuntu 144 Comments
South Africa native and current London resident Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical Ltd. and the Ubuntu Linux distribution, told DesktopLinux.com Friday in an interview that widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop - so long-awaited by many people. "Yes - I think Linux will be the dominant platform. It already defines the landscape in the server space (from supercomputers to YouTube). The desktop is just a matter of time."
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Spad Filesystem for Linux

  Submitted by bnolsen Linux 36 Comments
"SpadFS is a new filesystem that I design and develop as my PhD thesis. It is an attempt to bring features of advanced filesystems (crash recovery, fast directories) and good performance without increasing code complexity too much. Uses crash counts instead of journaling (because journaling is too complex and bug-prone) and uses hash instead of btrees for directory organization."
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Microsoft’s Muglia Talks Longhorn, Novell, Java

Microsoft 41 Comments
Now that Windows Vista and Office 2007 have been released to manufacturing, the spotlight is on Windows Server 'Longhorn'. Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for server and tools sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli at TechEd: IT Forum to give an update on Longhorn's road map, discuss the company's controversial deal with Novell, and give his thoughts on Sun Microsystems' decision to license Java under the GNU GPL. Meanwhile, CNet interviews Bill Gates.
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FreeBSD 6.2-RC1 Released

  Submitted by James Hopton FreeBSD 29 Comments
"We have now reached the Release Candidate stage of the FreeBSD 6.2 release cycle. A few significant problems had been discovered during the initial BETA testing and those issues should now be fixed. RC1 is the first of two planned Release Candidate builds. If no more significant problems are reported 6.2-RELEASE builds will be done after RC2."
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