Monthly Archive:: December 2005

As 2005 draws to a close, a year with many changes for OSNews, we have one more big change to make OSNews a better place. But first, let us take a short look at all the big changes OSNews has seen this year.

Microsoft acknowledged late Wednesday the existence of a zero-day exploit for Windows Metafile images, and said it was looking into ways to better protect its customers. Even worse, by the end of the day nearly 50 variants of the exploit had already appeared. One security company said the possibilities were endless on how the flaw could be exploited. 'This vulnerability can be used to install any type of malicious code, not just Trojans and spyware, but also worms, bots or viruses that can cause irreparable damage to computers,' said Luis Corrons of Panda Software.

BentUser takes a look at OS-level DRM in upcoming operating systems, particularly Windows Vista. Protected video path, PVP-UAB and PVP-OPM, have the potential to be really obnoxious, eclipsing any annoyances one experiences with current DRM technologies.

MS is holding a contest in Europe & Pakistan, in which you have to guess what date MS will launch their long awaited next version of Windows. All legal residents of Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK who are 18 years of age or older have the chance to win from 1 of 3 prizes available in different prize bands; 1st Prize: Be live at the Launch Event in the USA: the full package with entry, flight and 3 nights in a 4-star Hotel, 2nd-4th Prize: New XBOX 360, 5th-10th Prize: XBOX Core System. NOTE: It seems to require IE to sign up, as it doesnt work in Safari, it may work in FF however.

"Many times, you want to execute a command not only on one server, but also on several servers. With the help of tool called tentakel, you run distributed command execution. It is a program for executing the same command on many hosts in parallel using ssh (it supports other methods too)."

"The world's biggest chipmaker said on Thursday it will scrap its 37-year-old logo and well-known tagline as part of a major rebranding that will emphasize its shift away from its core PC business and into consumer products. The original Intel logo featuring a lowered 'e' will be replaced with one showing an oval swirl surrounding the company's name." Here is an interview with Paul Otellini, Intel's CEO.

"I would like to announce a VMware Player image for Syllable 0.6.0a available in the normal VMware images location. This works fine with VMware Player on Linux. I haven't tried it yet on Windows, but I assume it works fine there, too. This is a default install from the ISO, just like the rest, so you'll have to install Developer's Delight and whatnot by yourself." And before people complain: Syllable is an open-source (GPL) operating system aimed at the home/office user. It is the continuation of AtheOS.

"There can be no doubt that 2005 was a stellar year for Apple. From record-breaking quarterly financial reports and the release of Mac OS X Tiger to the announced transition of the Macintosh to the Intel platform and new iPods, Apple fired on all cylinders throughout much of the year, creating unprecedented demand for many of its products." Update: Here are photos of the cooling system for the Quad-core PowerMac-- one of those could counteract global warming. Seriously.

"In December 2005, Microsoft released a Community Technology Preview of Windows Presentation Foundation, the new presentation subsystem for Windows that unifies development of documents, graphics, and applications into a common platform. In this article, we take a brief look at some of the new features that are part of the December CTP as well as the changes that have been made since the previous releases."

"The MirOS Project is proud to announce the immediate release of MirOS XP, consisting of MirOS BSD #8 and the MirPorts Framework. This release is the first in the MIRBSD_8 branch and still highly experimental in some parts, especially ports, but has been throughoutly tested and deemed stable." You can download this Net/OpenBSD-based operating system here. Note: Don't mention the war!

"Over the past several years of computer hardware engineering, raw speed has been the primary goal of hardware manufacturers. This has traditionally come at the expense of power consumption, which has skyrocketed since the first days of the x86-compatible home PC. Just how much electricity does a computer and its related devices use? Are there disadvantages to turning everything off when you're done? This article will give you an insight into computer power usage."

I was interested to see how Zenwalk differs from Slackware, and after reading on their web site that version 2.01 is 'the biggest jump in Zenwalk evolution since the beginning of the project', I wanted to see how far Zenwalk has come since it was reviewed here as MiniSlack.

Yesterday, Amiga-fans could participate in an IRC Q/A session with Hyperion Entertainment, the company behind AmigaOS4. You can read several transcripts, both edited as well as unedited, here. The main news is that AmigaOS4 will not be released this year; with the main reason for this being the lack of available hardware (which is being worked on). An update will, however, be released in January.

"This document was created to show non-KDE people what they're missing - and if you haven't used KDE a lot, you're missing a lot of things and you may interested in reading this page to learn how many wonderful things you've been missing. I promise, this is a subjective analysis of why KDE rules. I was a GNOME user for a long time, one of those users who loved GNOME UI, and I didn't know how much things I was missing with KDE until I tried it."