Thom Holwerda Archive

IBM has finally, finally, started shipping computers based on the Cell architecture it co-developed with Sony and Toshiba. In fact, the company claims, a number of high profile clients such as the University of Manchester and the Fraunhofer Institute are already running the much ballyhooed devices. Cnet has more.

Sun Microsystems has upgraded its low-end UltraSparc-based servers with faster 1.5GHz UltraSparc IIIi processors, the company said Wednesday. The move has been expected since August, when Sun said it scrapped its UltraSparc IIIi+ 'Serrano' processor and planned to upgrade the IIIi instead. The new chips are a notch faster than their 1.35GHz predecessors.

The August Community Technology Preview build of Longhorn Server is available for download. It's still not an RC1, but it does include performance, reliability and UI changes, according to Microsoft. On a related note, The Inq reviewed Vista RC1, and concludes "Vista's still a mess." And that's not all: Microsoft is worried that the EU might interfere with Vista's security plans.

"One of the less well known Mac clones, the MaxxBoxx was released in Germany in July 1997 to fill the needs of users with very demanding applications. In a stunning enclosure, the MaxxBoxx was easy to open and upgrade. The machine was built into a cube that was twice as wide as an ordinary mini tower with room for up to ten drives." There's more on old Macs: Sonnet has announced new CPU upgrades for G4 PowerMacs and Xserves.

Part 1 of this series discussed a mashup application, which begins to draw data from several services and combines it. Now we will discuss how to save mashup request results to a DB2 9 database, plus take some of the load off of those external services and improve performance dramatically with pureXML.

Apple held a special event for the press today. Most of the event was about iPods; prettier colours, bigger capacities, you know the drill. For the really interesting stuff, you had to sit out the whole thing: Apple gave us a sneak peek of a product coming in 2007. In Q1 2007, Apple will release a settop box, half the size of the Mac Mini, to which you can stream content. It has a built-in power supply, USB, ethernet, 802.11 'wireless component video', optical audio, HDMI ports, and old RCA stereo audio ports. It sports a Front Row-like interface, and can be controlled using the Apple remote. Its codename is 'iTV'; a different name will be chosen. It will work with iTunes on Macs and PCs, and it will cost USD 299. Update: Eugenia and I both blogged about the product announcements. Eugenia loves the gapless playback, and I miss adherence to industry standards.

"The difficulties in developing Vista stemmed from its monolithic structure and the need for 'backwards compatibility', ie ensuring that software used by customers on older versions of Windows will work under Vista. This vast accumulation of legacy applications acts like an anchor on innovation. The Vista trauma has convinced some Microsoft engineers that they will have to adopt a radically different approach." I said something similar months ago.

OSWeekly takes a look at how Microsoft and Apple each handles the blogging phenomemon. They conclude: "With all of this going on, it's easy to wonder what efforts Apple is making and I wish I could tell you, but I don't see anything worth mentioning. Instead of accepting blogging for what it is, Apple would rather sue bloggers for talking about what they're doing. Microsoft is only one of the big companies that has embraced blogging, and we can see similar efforts by Google and Yahoo!, just to name a few."

The endless stream of Ubuntu derivatives just refuses to end. "Fluxbuntu is a Ubuntu-based derivative that uses FluxBox as the desktop environment. It is lightweight, swift and efficient compared to Gnome or KDE. These features makes Fluxbuntu suitable for vast range of computers, from low-end to high-end." There's a screenshot gallery as well. Laugh at me all you want, but I want a ROXbuntu. I'm not kidding. Anyone?

Examine how to configure Secure Shell on IBM System p and System x computers to run commands in parallel in a cluster without being prompted for a password. This will allow you to perform activities more easily and quickly, and gives you flexibility to perform activities in parallel on more machines.

A few days ago we reported on the fact that applications which have administrative rights in Vista (given by the user, of course) can disable User Account Protection altogether. This was seen as a security flaw; Ars, however, begs to differ: "When UAC is disabled, Vista gripes loudly about it. The Windows Security Center immediately notes that UAC has been turned off, and it prompts you to turn it back on using a system tray notification. From our own testing, it appears impossible to disable UAC without the Security Center noticing it, which makes it rather unlikely that a user is end up in a less secure state."

A consortium of investment firms was near a deal late Sunday night to acquire Freescale Semiconductor, a former unit of Motorola, for more than USD 16 billion, according to people briefed on the negotiations. The deal, if completed, would be the largest leveraged buyout ever in the technology sector, surpassing the USD 11.3 billion sale of SunGard Data Systems last year.

Magnussoft, the company now responsible for development on Zeta, has announced it is accepting pre-orders for Zeta 1.21. This new release will include multi-user support, will be built with GCC4, among other improvements. Bernd Korz's weblog contains more information. Korz was (is?) the CEO of YellowTAB, the company that started Zeta. Read on for a short editorial on this announcement.

Intel's first quad-core processor 'Kentsfield' has found its way into the Tom's Hardware test lab. Weeks before Intel will provide evaluation processors to the press, Tom's Hardware was able to obtain a qualification sample: The chip was sent through the test parcours, showing impressive performance.