Monthly Archive:: July 2008

There are probably lots and lots of lawsuits going on every day in the technology world, and generally, they are quite uninteresting to all of us. Exceptions exist, of course, and the case of Apple and PsyStar is definitely one of them. It's a lawsuit that could test one of the most debated issues in the world of software: the EULA issue. To refresh your memory: PsyStar started offering Macintosh clones earlier this year, which caused quite the uproar in the Mac community. Apple was silent on the issue at first, but a few weeks ago the company decided to take legal action against PsyStar, claiming PsyStar violated Apple's copyright and license agreements (EULAs), and motivated others to do the same. While several legal experts agree that Apple's EULA will stand the test of court in The Netherlands, the situation in the US might be completely different. PsyStar seems prepared for the worst, as they have hired lawyers from Carr & Ferrell LLP, a firm who successfully fought Apple in court over IP issues before. I'm breaking out the popcorn, because this is hopefully going to be a big one.

After fixing a few specific bugs, Haiku now runs on the Asus EeePC - the 701 model, that is. "It is with great pleasure that I'm able to announce that Haiku (rev26666) runs on the Asus EeePC! I own a 701 model, and have sporadically been testing out Haiku revisions on the machine. For months I've been unable to boot Haiku, but somewhere along the line, the bug I filed got squashed, and Haiku will boot off the machine's internal 4gb fixed disk!" Wireless, LAN, and the APM do not work, but sound does thanks to the OSS driver. Installation is a tad bit complicated (it involves booting Haiku in a VM in Windows XP and copying the contents of a nightly build over to a real hardware BFS partition, and adding Haiku to the ntldr), but at least it works.

For the first time, you can hit your computer and get a meaningful response! Knock some sense into your computer with a Hard Drive Active Protection System-aware kernel, an accelerometer-enabled laptop, and a Perl script. Double tap to lock the screen, and knock in your secret code to unlock. Tap the display lid once to move your mp3 player to the next track. The possibilities are endless.

JavaScript creator and current CTO of Mozilla Corporation Brendan Eich provides a detailed history of JavaScript, including some of the more interesting programs written with JavaScript, right up to how JavaScript has been essential to the Ajax or Web 2.0 revolution. Eich started work on JS in 1995 and says he's been surprised by how popular it has been: "I was resigned for a long time to JS being unpopular due to those annoying popups, but more: due to its unconventional combination of functional and prototype-based object programming traditions." And with multicore/massively-parallel computers upon us, Eich talks about the future of JavaScript: "JS has its role to play in addressing the multicore world, starting with relatively simple extensions such as Google Gears' worker pools -- "shared nothing" background threads with which browser JS communicates by sending and receiving messages."

Microsoft appears to be assembling its game plan for the day when the Windows client OS as it has been developed for the past 20 years becomes obsolete. The incubation project, also known as Midori, seeks to create a componentized, Net-centric OS, based on connected systems - one that largely eliminates dependencies between local apps and the hardware on which they run. SDTimes is also featuring an article that has some more details about Midori.

"On those infrequent occasions when you need to reboot Linux, you may find that the process takes longer than you'd like. Jack Wallen shares a number of tricks you can use to reduce boot times." While these tips are intended to shorten Linux boot times, some can also increase the security of your system. Speed and security in ten tips, both well-known and obscure.

Mandriva is proud to announce the release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Beta 1 'thornicrofti'. This beta includes the newest release of KDE 4, KDE 4.1 final, GNOME 2.23.5, Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.26 final. The new beta also switches to using splashy (rather than bootsplash) for boot and shutdown graphics, and adds synchronization support for Windows Mobile 2003 devices. As always, Mandriva reminds you not to use pre-releases in any critical situation; install them only on a test system or partition, or in a virtual machine. Additionally, they strongly discourage using this pre-release to upgrade from any earlier release of Mandriva Linux, as the transition process from KDE 3 to KDE 4 is not yet fully implemented and you are likely to end up with an unusable system. Please make sure to read the Errata and Release Notes, and file any bugs not covered in those pages on Bugzilla.

I noticed that craigslist's for sale section now states: OFFERS TO SHIP CARS ARE 100% FRAUDULENT Well, I got a little taste of that this weekend, when I saw a Subaru WRX STi for a suspiciously cheap price. Those with delicate sensibilities may want to skip reading the classy final response from the "seller." I started off emailing a quick question:

The Syllable project has reached another long-time milestone. It was always planned to factor out the web rendering engine of its web browser, ABrowse, into a library with a native Syllable View widget on top, so it can be embedded into more applications than just a web browser. Kristian Van Der Vliet did just that: building on Arno Klenke's WebCore port, he updated that and then stepped up the modularisation by creating the WebView class. He rewrote the browser on top of that and named it Webster . The first alpha version is available in the project's applications downloads. The latest Syllable 0.6.6 development build is required to run it, as several bugs in the system were fixed for the new browser. The next development build will have Webster included. The source code is available on the development site.

At the OSCON open source software convention, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) got an unexpected new sponsor: Microsoft. The Redmond software giant, which will contribute $100,000 annually to the ASF, joins Google and Yahoo as a platinum sponsor of Apache development.

How does the system startup look like? This question usually does not come into mind of a normal computer user. Oh, he presses the power button, goes to the kitchen to make a coffee and when he comes back, the password can be entered on the screen in the prepared field. Sometimes however, in the minds of a bit more keen computer enthusiasts, the question is born "how does it actually work?" It's no black magic. Editor's Note: An in depth three part series about the computer boot up process was covered earlier in OSNews.

Create a plain old Java object (POJO)-style Web service easily using Apache CXF, an open source Web service framework. This article, Part 1 of a series, shows you how to expose POJOs as Web services using Spring and CXF. It also illustrates CXF integration with the Spring Framework.

In an interview with derStandard.at, Novell developer Michael Meeks talks mostly about Sun's lack of openness in regards to OpenOffice.org. He goes as far as stating that if Sun dropped out of OOo-development this "wouldn't be an entirely negative thing". He also goes on to talk about promoting Go-oo instead, and emphasizes the importance of breaking down the barriers between GNOME and KDE.

It's not exactly bliss and angels in the Amiga world. AmigaOS 4.0, while done, released, and updated, is hard to come by because you either need a supported classic Amiga, or one of the three Amiga Ones ever sold. With a lawsuit underway nobody really understands, and no interest whatsoever from any hardware vendor, the future looks rather grim. On the MorphOS side the grass isn't exactly a whole lot greener. MorphOS 2.0 has been released, but again, nobody is producing any decent hardware for the operating system to run on. Genesi sells the Efika-based OpenClient, but this device lacks the graphical chipset to power the new 3D features of MorphOS 2.0. In addition, MorphOS 2.0 has a hefty price tag of EUR 150. There is a third option, which has been making steady progress for years now: AROS.