Monthly Archive:: June 2006

Linux has one, last, chance to become the No1 OS in a particular consumer-oriented market (not counting servers): the mobile phone market. The open nature and yes, the hype around Linux has made lots of mobile-oriented companies to consider using Linux for their next-generation cellphones. But there is a major problem on the way to success, a problem which is created not by Linux itself, but by the greed and close-mindness of these same companies that endorse Linux.

A US Senate panel narrowly rejected strict Net neutrality rules on Wednesday, dealing a grave setback to companies like eBay, Google and Amazon that had made enacting them a top political priority this year. By an 11-11 tie, the Senate Commerce Committee failed to approve a Democrat-backed amendment that would have ensured all Internet traffic is treated the same no matter what its source or destination might be. A majority was needed for the amendment to succeed.

Could many smaller Linux distributions be in violation of the GPL? That's what Warren Woodford, the man behind the popular MEPIS distribution thinks. As detailed in Bruce Byfield's excellent NewsForge story, "A GPL requirement could have a chilling effect on derivative distro", Woodford recently ran afoul of the GNU GPL (General Public License) requirement that downstream distributors of GPL code are obligated to provide source code to users in an easily accessible format.

At Windows Vista lab in Redmond before the release of Beta 2, Microsoft developers showed off the new OS to a room full of MVPs and enthusiasts. But even the company's most loyal fan base turned ugly when User Account Control took the stage. Now, Microsoft is begging users not to disable the controversial feature. User Account Control, or UAC, is a fundamental security change coming in Windows Vista and one of the most important additions to protect users from threats, Microsoft says. But the company is struggling to find a balance between security and usability.

A new version of Plan 9 has been released. "Major changes were made to /sys/src/fs, removing some dead code. Some major bugs were fixed. New features were added and the memory limit was increased." More information can be found in the mailing list message. For those that don't know: "Plan 9 was born in the same lab where Unix began. Underneath, though, lies a new kind of system, organized around communication and naming rather than files and processes. In Plan 9, distributed computing is a central premise, not an evolutionary add-on."

A Sun Microsystems Inc. executive said Tuesday said the company is "months" away from releasing its trademark Java programming language under an open-source license. Simon Phipps, chief open-source officer for Sun, said the company is ruminating over two major issues: how to keep Java compatible and ensure no particular company uses market forces as muscle for its own implementation, a move that would threaten Java's "write once, run anywhere" mantra.

"Western Digital has settled a class action lawsuit concerning the deceptive labeling of their hard drives. The problem occured when consumers bought hard drives with a stated capacity. As an example, let’s say you purchased a Western Digital 250 gigabyte hard drive. After you install the drive into your computer, you will notice that the drive size has become 231 gigabytes. The reason for this is that Western Digital, along with most hard drive manufacturers, calculates the storage capacity of their hard drives using the decimal system. This in contrast to virtually all operating systems that calculates the capacity of the hard drives with the binary system. As hard drives become larger, this discrepancy grows larger."

FreeDos has been declared dead, and the homepage been moved to Sourceforge. From the FreeDos.org site: "On 28 June 1994, the project that became FreeDOS was announced to the world. It's 12 years later, we still haven't reached "1.0", and there's no sign of getting there anytime soon. I have given up. I've stopped waiting for "1.0". FreeDOS is dead." You can still see the message if your DNS servers haven't been updated yet.

"It's been known that the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) phones home for quite some time now. For most of us, we've come to live with Microsoft's decision to relegate the software to only contacting the company's servers once every few weeks . Of course, the software is only in beta right now, so what might happen once it goes into production? Will it phone home even less? Ed Bott has an idea. Bott has reason to believe that Microsoft might have a special treat in store for those that do not want any part of the WGA. Citing Dave Farber as his source, Bott thinks that the WGA could become mandatory for Windows users. Those that don't want to install the software must suffer the consequences - install it in 30 days or Windows will stop working, period."

"The impending release of Windows Vista with its fancy Aero Glass special effects, along with the hasty addition of the similar XGL and Compiz technologies to the latest SUSE Linux release makes me think that programmers have a warped idea of what desktop computing is about. For some reason, many GNU/Linux users are concerned about competing feature-for-feature with Vista, while Apple and Microsoft struggle to add more graphical extras to their already graphics-intensive desktop OSes. It's gotten so that you need a serious 3D video card (with proprietary drivers) and a fairly fast computer just to keep up with desktop environments. Whatever happened to being productive and having fun?"

A preview edition of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, the desktop Novell's been working on for the last two years, is now available for download. Reviews are also available, as well as a demo. Get it from Novell's download page.

Apple Computer on Tuesday released Mac OS X 10.4.7, a maintenance and security update to its Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system. The update is recommended for all users and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes for applications and technologies.

"There are obviously a lot of questions on people's minds. So I post again today trying to answer some of them. To those who think I am not a real person but rather a name in front of PR machinery – that's just not true. I am flesh and blood – with a job, a team, and a passion for what we have been pursuing in WinFS. And even a life outside of Microsoft Building 35 with a wife, kids and other interests. Certainly seems like I might have been too careful in wording last week – was not my intention to offend bloggers everywhere, really."

"When DirectX 10 rocks your PC with the release of Windows Vista early next year, it will come courtesy of a trio of forces: The graphics card companies obviously play a huge role, as do the game developers, but DirectX is Microsoft's baby. Ultimately it is up to Microsoft engineers to work together with IHVs and game developers to define the API. We managed to sneak some time into the busy schedules of two key Microsofties to find out what makes DX10 tick, and why they think you're going to want to migrate to a DX10-capable computer for the best experience the PC has to offer."