Monthly Archive:: September 2006

Having accurate information about the computers in your company can be critical for any number of tasks. General inventory, purchasing decisions, software license compliance, tracking usage patterns, theft identification, upgrade planning, and update deploying rely on knowing as much as possible about the computer you manage. Constantly keeping track of that kind of information is typically a daunting challenge unless you make use of Apple Remote Desktop's vast reporting capabilities. In this third installment of Ryan Faas' Apple Remote Desktop 3 in-depth series, find out how easy it can be to have detailed and current reports on everything you need to know.

Microsoft keeps adding interesting new controls to the Visual Studio toolbox, but John Mueller regrets to report that many developers don't even know that those controls exist. Also, every programmer wants to create applications that are free of bugs. In this article, Peter Aitken explores the debugging tools available in Visual Studio.

"OS/2 has many applications that had been created by companies, individual developers and hobbyists. Many of these applications still works under the newest version of eComStation and have demonstrated a good quality. The only issue is that they are turning into abandonware since developers had switched to other platforms, but there is a chance to extend their life with the 'Open Source Long Live Elixir'. Here at OS2World.com we will like to make a call to OS/2-eCS developers and ex-developers to open source their creations. We believe that the software can be expanded for the benefit of the community and allowing a learning experience from the code of these applications."

"Are you in need of a great partitioner? Don't want to spend lots of cash for the popular commercial products? The GParted LiveCD offers most of the features that the big boys do, and even some that they don't. The key benefit? This is free."

"With 20 years of experience in software development, Simon Phipps has helped guide Sun's open source strategy, including the OpenSolaris project. Now, as chief open source officer at Sun, Phipps has been given the weighty task of deciding how to open source all of Sun's software. Inner Circle recently sat down with Phipps to discuss open source licenses, working with communities of developers, and how governance of open source projects is critical to success."

There is at least one project that aims to build an Ajax OS from the ground up: Atomic OS. It has a ROM and a Kernel and build itself up much like a real operating system on real hardware. The only difference is that everything is written in Javascript.

BSD devcenter at onlamp.com has an interview with Charles M. Hannum, one of the creators of the NetBSD Project and the NetBSD Foundation, about the evolution of the project, funds management, problems with licenses and hardware documentation, the link with vendors, past and current mistakes, and what we can learn from the Linux development process.

Mike McCullough reviews briefly on the history of the Eclipse framework and provides details and perspective on new additions to the Web-based IDE, such as Eclipse Plugin Central (EPIC), Callisto, BIRT, and CDT. Also, learn Eclipse Callisto release GMF in 15 minutes.

By picking the brains of Web developers and IT recruiters, eWEEK selected 10 programming languages that are a bonus for developers to add to their resumes. Even better, they're great jumping-off points, with loads of job opportunities for younger recruits.

With a slight delay, the next development snapshot of Ubuntu Edgy Eft has been released. As usual, it is available for x86, PowerPC, and AMD64. Edgy Eft's final release is scheduled for coming October. The proposed goals for Edgy Eft are listed on Ubuntu's Launchpad.

"Back in the mid-nineties, Apple was a company without focus. After the explosive growth of the Macintosh in the late eighties, Apple was flush with cash, but had little strategy to guide its investments. As a result, products like eWorld were developed while Apple's core products languished. Meant as a substitute to the very expensive AppleLink online service, eWorld was based on the AOL network, and presented a friendly face to several proprietary online services and limited internet connectivity. eWorld failed to gain much of a foothold in the market, and was quietly discontinued in 1996 (only months before CEO Michael Spindler, was ousted)."

The Mozilla Corporation today issued small updates for its popular Firefox Web browser and Thunderbird e-mail applications, primarily targeting security problems. The updates take both products to version 1.5.0.7, and were issued via the vendor's automatic update system this morning, Australia-time. The less popular SeaMonkey mail and browsing suite was also updated to version 1.0.5. Update: DesktopLinux has a detailed explanation on the changelog. Also, Camino 1.0.3 of OSX was released.

Xandros has announced that it started offering a free 30-day trial edition of Xandros Desktop 4 Premium for free download. Xandros Desktop 4 is a beginner-friendly distribution with a customised version of KDE and a host of intuitive desktop utilities designed to ease migration from Windows to Linux.

"The color blindness is the inability to perceive differences between some or all colors that other people can distinguish. According to the medical studies, eight to ten percent of male population suffers from some kind of color blindness (figure for female population is much lower). What does it mean to the average Swing developer? Well, if you rely too much on color differences, you may be not conveying the information as well as you thought. Now you can run your application in debug UI mode and have a live preview of your UI as viewed by the color-blind population."