Monthly Archive:: November 2008

Spotlight on Moblin.org Linux

Linux 2 Comments
Linux Devices writes about Intel's Moblin effort. Moblin is a environment for netbooks. Originally based on Ubuntu, Moblin recently switched to Fedora citing RPM and a completely Free and open source base as among the benefits. As Linux based netbooks continue to grow rapidly, efforts like Moblin are interesting to watch.
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Sun Microsystems To Lay off Up to 6000 Workers

  Submitted by pantheraleo Oracle and SUN 46 Comments
The world hasn't been kind to Sun for quite a while now, but with the economic downturn, things are getting worse. Sun announced today that it will be laying off 18% of its workforce, or about 6000 people. In addition, it was announced that Sun's software chief Rich Green has resigned for reasons that were not stated, although as part of Sun's reorganization and cost cutting efforts, many departments are being merged, and the software division is being restructured and reorganized.
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RED Announces Hardware from the Future

Multimedia, AV 14 Comments
In true uber-hype fashion, the RED Company announced today a series of cameras and imaging sensors that will revolutionize the movie (and still image) industry. Some commenters online jokingly said that this is where all the Roswell UFO reverse-engineering went into. RED announced sensors ranging from 10.1x5.35mm (2/3") size all the way to 186x56mm, and resolutions from 3k/120fps to 28k/25fps (that's 261 megapixels). If you have trouble visualizing that size, here's an image that might help. To add to all this, the RED Epic now supports stereoscopic (3D) capturing.
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Ubuntu-on-ARM to Target Handhelds

  Submitted by DeviceGuru Ubuntu 10 Comments
Canonical Ltd., commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux, says it's porting Ubuntu to the ARM RISC processor architecture. Ubuntu on ARM will target netbooks and other emerging device categories requiring a "rich, always-connected, mobile computing experience, without compromising battery life." The ARM version of Ubuntu, due next April, initially will support the ARMv7 RISC architecture, including SoCs (system-on-chip processors) based on ARM Ltd's Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 cores.
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Windows Live Gets Complete Overhaul, Adds Social Networking

  Submitted by mikemuch Microsoft No Comments
Among all the Windows 7 announcements, one of the more surprising ones was about things the new OS would not include – specifically, applications for e-mail, photos, and video editing. Instead, Microsoft decided that these programs would be updated and downloadable as part of the Windows Live Essentials. Not only did Microsoft announce Wave 3 of the Live applications on Thursday, but the company completely redesigned its online services, too.
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Major Scammer/Spammer Now Offline

Privacy, Security 13 Comments
McColo Corp, an internet service provider that has been confirmed to be the provider of choice to a rogue's gallery of unsavory clients, has been cut off by its backbone providers, cutting the world's total volume of spam by as much as 75%. Sadly, these people will undoubtedly be able to find other service eventually. But enjoy the respite while it lasts.
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Intel’s Core i7: In-Depth Reviews

Intel 28 Comments
Not too long ago, Intel unleashed Nehalem, or Core i7, upon the world. The new Core i7 chips are not just new processors; they also introduce an entirely new platform, and this combination produces some impressive performance figures, according to Ars Technica. "The new performance gap between Nehalem and pretty much everything else of comparable cost is the result of upgrades to both the CPUs core architecture and the platform on which the multicore chip now runs." Respected in-depth review sites AnandTech and Tom's Hardware agree with Ars' findings.
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3 Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Price Fixing

  Submitted by Moulinneuf Legal 15 Comments
Prices of flat panels have been dropping quite steadily ever since they first came to market, but apparently, they could've dropped a whole lot lower if it wasn't for those pesky flat panel manufacturers. Three flat panel makers, LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes (tubes...?) have pleaded guilty to engaging in price fixing schemes to the US Department of Justice, and agreed to a shared USD 585 million fine.
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Unmasked by Counting Threads?

Editorial 56 Comments
Yesterday, a story made its rounds across the internet. It was picked up by many large news websites, and I'm sure it will be quoted by people until eternity. It was published by a large website, looked all fancy, it had multiple pages - it looked like it was really something. However, anyone with even the remotest bit of knowledge knows that the article was a collection of complete and utter bogus.
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RPyC 3.00 Released

  Submitted by ganges master General Development 1 Comment
RPyC (Remote Python Call) is a transparent and symmetrical python library for remote procedure calls, clustering and distributed-computing. RPyC makes use of object-proxying, a technique that employs python's dynamic nature, to overcome the physical boundaries between processes and computers, so that remote objects can be manipulated as if they were local. Read the tutorial for a thorough overview. This release introduces remote services and capability-based security, which make RPyC an ideal remoting framework.
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What’s New in OpenBSD 4.4

  Submitted by Reyk OpenBSD 25 Comments
O'Reilly interviewed 27 OpenBSD developers to present the new release. They discussed buffer cache improvements, the new malloc(), the work to make the math library more C99 compliant, what is new in the SCSI area, crypto support for softraid, a lot of fundamental work happened in PF, a new tool to merge configuration files during upgrades, the status of OpenCVS, some cool features of OpenSSH 5.1, the initial support for USB webcams, the never-ending work on improving and extending the sensors framework, and more.
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Windows Turns 25

Windows 36 Comments
Back in 1983, 25 years ago, the world was quite different. The market for the home computer - still a fairly new market - was wide open, but Apple was about to make a major splash with its Macintosh. It was also the year in which a company from Redmond first introduced its "Windows" operating system. What is this Windows you speak of?
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‘Blue Badge’ Unlocks All Locked Features in PDC Build

Windows 6 Comments
Last week, we reported on a crude hack which allowed users of build 6801 of Windows 7 (the build handed out at PDC) to use a slightly botched version of the new taskbar. Rafael Rivera created a new tool that enables many more protected features, such as gestures, panning, and desktop slideshow. It's as simple as the click of a button, and also works on Windows 7 installations which already had the previous hack applied. I can confirm that the tool works.
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Microsoft Office Web Applications: Burning Questions Answered

  Submitted by poundsmack Microsoft 1 Comment
"Since the announcement of the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Applications at this year's PDC, there has been a lot of excitement about this new service which will allow for creating, editing, collaborating, and sharing documents using the web. However, as I've followed the blog posts about this topic, I've also come across quite a bit of misinformation about the web apps, too. In an attempt to dispel some of the rumors out there, I've created this special Q&A which will hopefully answer some of your burning questions about the new web applications."
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Former AROS Developers Start New OS Project, Much Secrecy

Amiga & AROS 51 Comments
Saturday November 8, I received an email from someone, inquiring if I would be interested in "doing a first interview/introduction into a new operating system". We get these emails and news submissions all the time, and most of the time, "new operating system" means Ubuntu-with-a-black-theme, so we don't bother. I figured this time things wouldn't be different, but after a bit of digging around, there's a little more to it this time.
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