Monthly Archive:: February 2006

Ok, this one is just plain scary. "By combining quantum computation and quantum interrogation, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found an exotic way of determining an answer to an algorithm - without ever running the algorithm. Using an optical-based quantum computer, a research team led by physicist Paul Kwiat has presented the first demonstration of 'counterfactual computation', inferring information about an answer, even though the computer did not run." The research team published their results in Nature.

Asus has shelved plans to develop the PC of the future - literally. The Taiwanese vendor's Green PC concept computer, shown to Reg Hardware this week, is just that: a shelf. And some clever wireless connectivity and non-contact inductive power source.

FOSDEM takes place on the 25th and 26th of February 2006 in Brussels, Belgium. You are all invited to take part in the largest Free Software and Open Source event. The previous edition encountered a huge success with more than 3000 attendees coming from all over the world to attend the talks of famous figures of the Free Software and Open Source community. Read more for more info.

Quanta/O2 loaned us a unit of their brand new GSM communicator, the O2 XDA Atom. The phone is a GSM 900/1800/1900, GPRS class B, multi-slot class 10, EDGE phone running Windows Mobile 5.1 (the unit arrived loaded with the latest ROM). Dig in for more info about this interesting smartphone, mostly aimed at the Australia/Asian and European markets.

"In my last tip, we set up a single internal YaST Online Update server to pick up updated software from the SuSE mirrors. Now, we're going to answer the question: how do clients connect to the server? In setting up the single internal YaST Online Update server, the idea was to minimize the load on the existing mirrors by having one machine hit the outside servers, instead of however many client machines you have, and enhance security by keeping updates inside your firewall."

"ATI's R5xx line was first released back in October 2005. The initial launch covered the X1800 and X1300 series, with the X1600 series following suit in November. Last month we saw the release of the new X1900 series too. Now, let me count the months from October to February; it is 5 months, right? Well, believe it or not, that's the number of months the new X1000 series is out in the market without Linux support. If you are unfortunate enough to own such a card, all you have is Matthew Tippett's statement in Phoronix."

"Another release of OpenGrok, made possible due to many contributions of Trond Norbye, a new member of OpenGrok team." OpenGrok 0.3 has been released. This new version introduces support for Subversion and a new GUI. There's also an article available describing OpenGrok's internals.

"With today's release of the Windows Vista February CTP, Microsoft has publicly passed a key milestone on the road to launching its new operating system. This release of Vista is 'feature-complete', the company says, meaning that all of the fundamental capabilities that Vista will eventually offer are now baked in." Lots of screenshots included, so go ahead and praise halleluja or declare end of days, boys and girls.

"OpenLaszlo is a rich client application architecture that uses Macromedia to build Flash widgets with XML and JavaScript logic. This article details the basic concepts of OpenLaszlo, and gives examples of situations in which an OpenLaszlo solution might be beneficial and it also details how it compensates for the shortcomings of Ajax dynamic web development."

"What would happen if the beginning of file systems embedded a driver for accessing the disk? If the driver was in some sort of neutral format (similar to the X Windows drivers), then any OS could access the file system! While this concept was exciting in of itself, it didn't even begin to scratch the surface of what was possible. It wasn't long before I considered the fact that a file system is nothing more than a hierarchical database. There's nothing inherently special about it, so why can't the file system payload be replaced with some sort of other data? As long as the embedded driver can read the format and produce some sort of usable data structure, there's no reason why the concept could be extended for all types of data!"

The weak point in Apple's Mac OS X operating system is apparently worse than originally thought. In addition to attacks via the Safari web browser, Apple Mail also executes scripts without asking in certain circumstances. It suffices to disguise a script with the ending "jpg" and assign the Terminal application for opening it. If this script is then sent in the AppleDouble format as an attachment, the information is passed along so that the recipient's system also opens it with the Terminal. Apple Mail displays the attachment with a JPG file symbol, but when users click on it, the script executes within Terminal without further prompting. Update: Heise is right.

Times Square has seen the largest Windows error message ever. One of the many machines controlling one of the many electronic billboards crashed, displaying a large DirectX error message. The billboard is two stories high. Adam Gaffin happened to be at Times Square and took some pictures of the world's largest error message.

"I've been hacking on and off with W. Michael Petullo on integrating LUKS into the GNOME desktop via HAL and patches are now upstream. I think it rocks. I've prepared a small screencast." What exactly is LUKS? "LUKS is the upcoming standard for Linux hard disk encryption. By providing a standard on-disk-format, it does not only facilitate compatibility among distributions, but also provide secure management of multiple user passwords. In contrast to existing solution, LUKS stores all setup necessary setup information in the partition header, enabling the user to transport or migrate his data seamlessly."

Windows narrowly bumped Unix in 2005 to claim the top spot in server sales for the first time, according to a new report from IDC. Computer makers sold $17.7 billion worth of Windows servers worldwide in 2005 compared with $17.5 billion in Unix servers, IDC analyst Matthew Eastwood said of the firm's latest Server Tracker market share report.