Monthly Archive:: November 2006

Microsoft announced the availability of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 for businesses on Nov. 30, an event company CEO Steve Ballmer said was the "biggest launch we've ever done." After delivering a media address at the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in New York to celebrate the product availability, Ballmer sat down with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli to talk about why he feels this is a new day for Microsoft, developers and its customers. CNet has more.

"DirectX 10 is probably the most important revolution in games development, at least since the introduction of the programmable shader in DirectX 8.0. Because of the way that Microsoft has designed the new driver model, DirectX 10 will only be available for Windows Vista users and there will not be a version released for Windows XP. Along with DirectX 10, Windows Vista will come with DirectX 9.0Ex - this is because pre-DirectX 10 hardware will not work under the new API due to the complete overhaul."

"Last month, I thought I left RISC OS. After 19 years of using Acorn or Acorn-derived computers, my love affair is no longer. I sit here writing this on my Mac Mini, and very happy I am with it too. My Iyonix lies abandoned - still sitting under the desk here, but not connected. And not actually used for some time. And it's weird - because, in some strange way, I thought I would be using RISC OS forever. In January 2005, I said: 'There's people who annoy me on the RISC OS scene, and I still wouldn't think of leaving. The nice people more than cancel it out, and besides - I just couldn't really do without using RISC OS.' So what changed?"

On December 28th, 2005 - a day which will live in anonymity - OSNews published an editorial of mine urging hobby and research operating system developers to implement Project UDI, because otherwise we (the small/ non-mainstream/ hobby/research OS community) would always wind up stuck with mutually incompatible sets of drivers for doing the same exact things. I also proclaimed that I would implement UDI for my own operating system kernel. Bad decision.

Intel has completed the design of Penryn, a 45-nanometer chip that will be out toward the end of next year. The company is also in the midst of making its first Penryn samples. "They aren't out of the fab yet, but they are in the fab," said Mark Bohr, director of process technology at Intel.

"The ImageIO framework, introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, allows applications to read and write popular image file formats. ImageIO works in conjunction with Quartz and is designed for maximum performance, convienient metadata access, and color management. As the definitive way to access image data on Mac OS X, you should consider using ImageIO in your application as a high-performance substitute for Image Importers or other image handling libraries. This article gets you started working with ImageIO, shows how to read and write data to and from Quartz, and points to some of the capabilities in working with Core Image that you can explore further on your own."

A new security update released by Apple on Tuesday patches several exploits recently discovered in its Mac OS X operating system, including one widely publicized issue with its disk image software. Of the twenty two vulnerabilities fixed by the updated - which is labeled Security Update 2006-007 - twelve are related to flaws that could lead to arbitrary code execution.

El Reg has reviewed the Shuttle x100. "The Shuttle X100 is an unusual Windows PC that stands out thanks to its tiny size and stylish looks. It thoroughly deserves to reclaim the many receptionists' desks that are currently occupied by iMacs across the nation and it's ideal for duties in your living room where a noisy beige tower simply won't be tolerated."

After 2 months, 2.6.19 has been released. This release includes the clustering GFS2 filesystem, Ecryptfs , the first experimental version of EXT4 (aimed at developers), support for the Atmel AVR32 architecture, sleepable RCU, improvements for NUMA-based systems, and much more.

Not necessarily what you expect from the top managers: Halamka judged three operating systems according to a variety of criteria including their performance, user interfaces and enterprise management capabilities, such as the ability to configure applications, easily organize file systems, and establish granular security control. CIO.org followed Halamka's progress, and now they have his conclusions.

Microsoft will soon start pushing out a new version of its controversial Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications antipiracy tool to Windows XP users. The updated WGA Notifications package includes additional changes in response to continued criticism Microsoft has faced over the software, the company said Tuesday. Microsoft in June also updated the tool after critics likened it to spyware because it checked in with Microsoft after each Windows restart.

Punters wondering what the RISC OS Open lads are up to may be relieved by the following sliver of news. The project to open source Castle's RISC OS 5 is awaiting the dotting of eyes and crossing of tees on its licensing paperwork, it would appear.

The GNU/DOS Project has been discontinued. From the web site: "Further development of GNU/DOS has been discontinued due to: a lack of developer time for the project; the fact that the project's objectives were not fully met; and the fact that the latest stable release of FreeDOS, when combined with the DJGPP development tools, is very much superior to the final release of GNU/DOS."

The One Laptop Per Child project yesterday received its first shipment of the low-cost Linux laptops that are intended for children in emerging-economy nations, project member Chris Blizzard reports on his blog. And it runs Doom.