Thom Holwerda Archive

LonghornBlogs thinks that it has found out what the Origami project really is about: and we've all seen it before. They have photo's of what might be the device: a mini-tablet PC running XP Tablet Edition. "I have an extremely reliable source that told me the device pictured above exists for real now, will cost $500, and will be available before the end of the year." Speculate at will, boys and girls!

Two articles about the Intel Mac Mini: "As a fan of faster computers from Apple, I’m heartened by this week’s release of an Intel-based Mac mini. In fact, with the SPECint_rate_base2000 benchmark indicating speeds of up to four times faster than the Mac mini G4, this new crop of minis sounds just about perfect. I say 'just about', because of one particular issue." And secondly, "Our first Intel-based Mac minis have arrived, straight from the Apple Store, and what was the first thing the cold, cruel alien intellects at Macworld did with one of these innocents? That’s right. We got out our putty knife, popped it open, and spilled its guts out." Here are some XBench tests between an Intel and a G4 Mac Mini.

Steve Wozniak did a talk at the Computer Museum on January 12th 2006 and it is now on Google video. "Woz serves up Apple Computer history in his own unique way. Steve will describe a sequence for providing a rational understanding of many of the innovations leading to early Apple designs. He'll look at early company structure, the personalities that influenced him, and personalities within the company. In addition, he'll discuss the reasons he wants to be an engineer for life but not a CEO. Don't miss this sure to be entertaining, informative, and very personal view."

Apparantly 3D browsers are the latest fad, as after uBrowser based on Mozilla Firefox, there is now SphereXplorer, a 3D browser based on Internet Explorer and SphereXP. Indulge yourself in screenshots, or just download and try it. Then, go to our comment section and explain the usefulness, if there is any.

The cooperation between the XGL and AIGLX projects to bring better interfaces for the Linux desktop continues as David Reveman (Novell) of XGL has agreed to adopt many changes from the AIGLX project sent in by Kristian Hogsberg (Red Hat).

Apple on Wednesday released Security Update 2006-001, available for download through Software Update system preference pane and from Apple's Downloads Web page. The update addresses a recently reported exploit that left Safari users vulnerable to malicious shell scripts, corrects a vulnerability in Apple's Mail software, and also changes the way iChat handles file transfers to help prevent the Leap-A malware.

Ars has published review of a Macbook Pro in which they feature benchmarks contrasting the performance of the Macbook Pro, a G4 PowerBook, and an Inspiron 9100 with a hacked version of OS X. Interestingly, one of the benchmarks, Cinebench, also features the same Inspiron running Windows, in which the Inspiron/Windows combination does better overall. Of course an unfair comparison (hacked OSX vs. normal XP), but interesting nonetheless. Ars concludes: "All in all, the MacBook Pro is an extremely solid machine that makes me happy to be back in the Apple Pro notebook world after a six month hiatus in 12" iBook-land."

Alerts went out Tuesday from several security companies warning users of an in-the-wild Trojan horse able to infect nearly any cell phone. The Trojan, named Redbrowser.a by McAfee, F-Secure, and the discovering vendor Kaspersky Labs, can attack any device - smart phone, PDA, or cell phone - that runs Java 2 Micro Edition, Sun Microsystem's version for consumer electronics devices.

The Open Graphics Project is dedicated to producing open-architecture graphics hardware that is friendly to free and open source operating systems like Linux and BSD. Yesterday morning, they released schematics for OGD1 for public review and critique. OGD1 is an FPGA-based development and prototyping platform that they decided to turn into a commercial product to raise funds. Check out an article on KernelTrap. The release of these schematics was accompanied by a discussion about how to price the OGD1 to maximize fund-raising while keeping it accessible to hobbyists; KernelTrap has another article about that as well.

Origami cought some attention this week and now you would expect to see the real thing. Wrong. If you haven't seen the video on Digital Kitchen , you're out of the picture here. The new flash on the Origami Project site further hints on the mobility of this thing, but that's it. We'll have to wait until the 9th of March for the third flash, and maybe, just maybe, some real Microsoft data on the device.

GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, version 4.1 has been released. The list of changes details the improvements. The Fedora team has already incorporated it and Fedora Core 5 will have 4.1 as the system compiler with GCC 3.2 provided as an alternative for compatibility reasons.

"On January 26th, 2005, the Itanium Solutions Alliance (Intel, Hewlett-Packard, SGI, NEC, Hitachi, Bull SA, Fujitsu, and Unisys) proudly announced that its members had banded together to invest $10 billion over the next four years to improve Itanium's features and functions and strengthen its market position. This huge investment in this architecture at this time forces us to ask a lot of tough questions about the wisdom of this action... "

Microsoft doesn't believe hands are the only vehicle for driving computers. Feet are equally valid for scrolling and cataloging e-mail and photos, among other tasks, according to researchers working in Microsoft's main Redmond research lab. In fact, for those for whom hands are less of an option, as a result of disabilities or injuries, feet might be the optimal solution. Microsoft Research's StepUI, or Step User Interface, is custom-made for these individuals.

"As a Linux user, there are times when you have to play nicely with users of Windows or Mac OS - such as when they send you Microsoft Word files. When you receive a Word file, you can either follow Richard Stallman's advice and refuse it, or bite the bullet and work with it. Modern Linux word processors - such as OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, KWord, and TextMaker - can deal with most Word files. But if you don't want to fire up a word processor in order to read or print the document, you can turn to the command line. A handful of small but powerful Linux command line utilities make viewing, printing, and even converting Word files to another format, a breeze."