Monthly Archive:: November 2007

The first of the Release Candidate builds for FreeBSD 6.3 is now available. There is one more Release Candidate planned, which will be followed by the release unless a major show-stopper issue crops up during testing.

A new AROS status update has been published. The biggest news: "Michal Schulz has made the miracle, and a whole new chapter in AROS history begins. Starting from today, you can grab the 64 bit native flavour of AROS from our website. This new version is obviously more advanced than the usual one, and has limited memory protection and GRUB loading modules. A initial wall for 4 GB of RAM will be removed as soon as proper MMU handling is done. In order to run the 64 bit native version of AROS a 64-bit x86 processor like AMD Athlon 64s or latest Intel Core2s is needed."

GNOME 2.20.2 has been released. "This is the second update to GNOME 2.20.0. The update fixes all known and unknown bugs and crashers." Not a whole lot more to say on this one.

Geeks of the world rejoice: Futurama is back. After a long wait, today is the official release date of "Bender's Big Score!", a 90 minute direct-to-DVD film, that will later be chopped up into the first four episodes of the new season. Filled with geek and nerd references, Futurama is a popular American cartoon series, by Simpsons' creater Matt Groening, that sadly got cancelled way before its time by the Fox Network. Now, it's back, and the opening sequence, a big slap in the face of the Fox Network executives, is already a classic. I have already seen the new film, and as a big, big Futurama fan, I can tell you it will not let you down. Three more direct-to-DVD movies are already planned, so go out, buy the DVD, and just like Family Guy, let's get it back on a regular schedule! My personal favourites: Zapp (s03e02): "That young man fills me with hope and some other emotions that are weird and deeply confusing to me." And of course the classic sign over Amy Wong's parents' house (s04e06): "You came to the Wong place."

"Java is a popular programming language used both on the desktop and the net. Until recently users who wanted to use just free software have had to struggle with partial support for Java, but now that Sun have begun freeing their Java implementation the way has opened for free software developers to create an entirely free implementation. This free Java, IcedTea, was shipped by default with Fedora 8, and so we talked to Thomas Fitzsimmons, the lead developer behind this feature."

Get out your popcorn, boys and girls, this is geek soap opera at its finest. "Jeff Waugh is a psychotic failure, obstructive and destructive. He is poisonous people." GNOME's Murray Cumming blogging on Jeff Waugh, all in relation to the board elections. Cumming first detailed what he deemed good candidates, he then went on to lambast the only bad candidate (according to Cumming): Waugh. "His behavior is far beyond the acceptable and displays contempt for the people in GNOME who actually do work. We've tolerated it too long, lost several high-level contributors because of it, slowed down the work of other contributors, and made their work unpleasant. That cost is too high, and we receive almost nothing in return. Jeff Waugh's only aim is self-publicity and any responsibilities in GNOME are just a way to achieve that. As long as his abysmal destructive misuse of those responsibilities is tolerated then he will happily continue clinging to symbolic authority regardless of the effects on GNOME. He seems driven by paranoia that people seek his downfall, but he is not driven by any need to do the job. Inevitably, people soon do want him to get out of the way." The story continues on Planet GNOME, with people supporting Cumming, but also a lot of people demanding a retraction. Don't kill the messenger. Update: Waugh's response. "There's a layer of truth to some of what Murray has said, but his shockingly exaggerated, hateful message is not intended to resolve or heal. Murray does not accept or credit my commitment or contributions to the project, and he has sought to denigrate, disenfranchise and discredit me consistently over the years... Though this is obviously the loudest and most hurtful attempt."