Thom Holwerda Archive

Amith Singh writes about the Trusted Computing Module found in Intel Macs. "Regardless of what the media has been harping on for a long time, and regardless of what system attackers have been saying about the 'evil TPM protection' Apple uses, Apple is doing no TPM-related evil thing. In fact, Apple is doing no TPM-related cryptographic thing at all in Mac OS X. Yes, I know, there has been much talk of 'TPM keys' and such, but there are no TPM keys that Apple is hiding somewhere. More specifically, Apple simply does not use the TPM hardware. In Apple computer models that do contain a TPM, the hardware is available for use by the machine's owner. Of course, to use it you need a device driver, which Apple indeed doesn't provide."

"Mandriva 2007 may be the best distribution I have used. Looking through Mandriva's forum, you see employees of the company who care and are genuinely trying to help. Mandriva offers 'Free as in freedom' versions and versions with propriatery software. You would expect a release like this to be trumpeted. Instead, the release was met with hostility. Forums on tech sites were filled with Linux users cheering for the end of Mandriva. What happened? How did a company that was loved at one time become so unpopular? Is the hostility justified?"

Microsoft will make a surprise announcement at the Nov. 1 launch of Windows CE 6.0, according to the Web's rumor-mill. In what would be its most substantial nod to the open-source movement, Microsoft is rumored to be opening up CE 6.0's entire kernel as 'shared source'. Update: It's official.

"How do the latest versions of each browser compare? For this prizefight, we looked at Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's first new Internet browser since 2001 and Mozilla Firefox 2, Mozilla's update of its popular Firefox 1.5 browser released in November 2005." This will be the last Firefox 2 vs. IE7 article. I promise.

"Application Verifier is designed specifically to detect and help debug memory corruptions and critical security vulnerabilities. It makes it easier to create reliable applications by monitoring an application's interaction with the Windows operating system, profiling its use of objects, the registry, the file system, and Win32 APIs (including heaps, handles, locks, and more). It also includes checks to predict how well the application will perform under Least-privileged User Account operation, compatibility tests to be used in logoing, and print tests to verify your usage of the print subsystem."

"Today, I'd like to share with you a hidden gem inside of Windows Vista's search capabilities. It's a neat little feature that lets you build one saved search on top of another, and we call it Query Composition. Think composition in the mathematical sense, not in the context of writing an English paper. To explain this feature, I'd like to start by talking a bit about Libraries."

"Following the talks given at this month's South East RISC OS show in Guildford, Surrey, Leo White has kindly uploaded the video recordings he made of the theatre presentations. If you have a web browser with a recent version of Flash installed, you can go watch them now on Google Video. The three pieces, which cover RISCOS Ltd, Castle, RISC OS Open and RISC OS Now, are fairly good quality, and it's pretty clear what the speakers are saying."

"You don't need a Ph.D. in scientific visualization to have some fun with three-dimensional data. Whether you're searching for an unused nook in a cramped disk partition, or trying to find the bloated temp/ folder that's crashing your system, sometimes the flat folder view of a traditional GUI file browser is little help. Luckily, Linux offers a variety of 3-D filesystems that can make your disk usage statistics come alive."

While Ars looks into the facts behind the recent flurry of license concerns over Windows Vista, several websites are reporting that Microsoft has internally released Vista and Office 2007 final builds. In related news, Microsoft has also released shots of the packaging for Vista and Office 2007. Meanwhile, other people have noted that there seems to be no upgrade path to Windows Vista Ultimate.

"The Haiku Project had its annual conference in Orlando this past weekend, and though I have little experience with BeOS or Haiku, I decided to attend and write about the conference because it's 20 minutes from my home. It's called WalterCon because 'Walter' was one of the proposed names for what was to become a free replacement for BeOS. Be, Inc. may be dead and gone, and the BeOS source code may have been sold and warehoused, but the spirit of Be lives on in Haiku and WalterCon. If only it had a little more developer support, you'd be hearing about the Haiku operating system a lot more often. Heck, you might even be using it."

Intel and Advanced Micro Devices swapped roles in a third quarter that wasn't as bad for shipments as some had initially feared, according to new data from Mercury Research. AMD had been making strides in the server market for several quarters, while Intel dominated the notebook market. But momentum swung the other way in the third quarter, with Intel regaining market share in server processors while AMD's notebook processor shipments surged, said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research.

"The next version of Windows is just around the corner, so the next time we discuss software licensing in my course, the EULA for Vista will be front and center. You can read the Microsoft Vista EULA yourself by going to the official Software License page from Microsoft page and searching for Vista. I know many of you have never bothered to read the EULA - who really wants to, after all? - but take a few minutes and get yourself a copy and read it. I'll wait. Back? It's bad, ain't it? Real bad. I mean, previous EULAs weren't anything great - but the Vista EULA is horrendous."

Microsoft last week said that it is pushing back the next major service pack for Windows XP until the first half of 2008. The news came just ahead of reports that Vista’s RTM is being pushed back once again, from late October to early November, complicating matters for PC makers. The latest delay has some wondering whether the upgrade will ever see the light of day. "The fear is Service Pack 3 will just get killed off," said Jeff Centimano, an IT consultant at Levi, Ray & Shoup.

"The GUI's is an inter-website contest in which top graphics designers from around the world compete for USD 15000 in cash and prizes. This year's contest focuses on WindowBlinds visual styles, IconPackager Icons, and Wallpapers. Anyone can participate as an individual or part of a team." The winners in the two icon categories are already announced (most original | most usable), and the finalists in the most prestigious category, that of visual styles, are also announced.