Monthly Archive:: April 2009

First Mac Botnet Activated, Engages in DDoS Attacks

Remember the Mac trojan that we reported about earlier this year? A trojan was found piggybacking on the back of copies of iWork and Photoshop CS4 found on warez sites and networks, and it would install itself after the user had entered his or her administrator password during the software's installation. This trojan didn't seem like much of a threat back then, but as it turns out, it's now in use in the first Macintosh botnet.

GlobalFoundries Announces 28nm High-K Metal Gate Process

GlobalFoundries, the former manufacturing arm of AMD, has announced they will have a 28-nanometer high-k metal gate process available in the second half of 2010. GlobalFoundries developed the 28nm process in conjunction with IBM, Chartered Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies, Samsung Electronics, and STMicroelectronics as part of the IBM Technology Alliance. According to The Tech Report, the new process will reportedly enable "40% better performance, over 20% lower power consumption, and 50% smaller die areas" versus the current 45nm process, but it was not mentioned what kind of performance numbers the 28nm process will have compared to the upcoming 32nm process.

Symbian Ported to Intel’s Atom Platform

"Some chaps at Symbian with way too much time on their hands have compiled the current version of the OS onto an Intel Atom processor - proving that you don't have to follow the ARM road to Symbian nirvana. The chaps concerned work for 'S60 in Symbian Customer Operations' and did the port to see if it would work, and if anyone would take an interest. The port is to an Atom reference board from Intel, but demonstrates that Symbian could probably run on a netbook if anyone wanted such a thing."

Cinder OS Aims to Improve Mobile Power Management

Many of the major mobile operating systems today are derived from desktop variants, leaving them with excess bagage that only hinders their functioning in a mobile environment. A group of researchers at Stanford University are building a mobile operating system from the ground up, taking various things into account that others do not. The biggest focus of the project is power management, and it's got some pretty interesting ideas in that area.

FreeBSD 7.2-RC1 Released

KenSmith announced the immediate availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RC1 in the FreeBSD-stable mailing list. "The first of two planned Release Candidates for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of some of the recent work would be particularly appreciated." The release schedule states that the final release is to be expected early May, at which point we'll cover FreeBSD 7.2 in much more detail.

Pirate Bay Founders Found Guilty, Massive Fine, 1 Year in Jail

Old World 1, New World 0. The four defendants in the landmark The Pirate Bay case, taking place in Sweden, have all been found guilty, and sentenced to one year in jail. They also received a hefty fine of USD 3.58 million to 17 American media companies, among which are Warner Bros. Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Columbia Pictures Industries, Twentieth Century Fox Film, Sony BMG, Universal, EMI, Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Entertainment, and Activision. The defendants have already stated they will appeal the decision.

Grape Impresses; OSNews Gives Away Beta Access!

About a year ago, OSNews reported on Grape, a new way to manage your desktop. Back then, Grape was only a concept, a set of ideas without an implementation. This is different now: Grape has been turned into an actual piece of working software, and the people behind the project, Yann Le Coroller and Dockland Software's Stephane, gave us early access by means of a beta release. We are also giving away beta access, se be sure to read on to the end of the article to find out how you can get beta access (hint: post a comment). Update: The response has been more substantial than I anticipated, so the cut-off point is 50 comments. Twelve comments left, guys and girls, so hurry up! Update II: Sorry guys, we're full already (that was quick)! Thanks for the enormous interest from everyone. I'll send the invites out today! Update III: All invites have been sent out. Enjoy testing Grape, and be sure to post your findings here on OSNews. Also, report any bugs here.

Ubuntu 9.04 RC Released

The Ubuntu team has released the release candidate for Ubuntu 9.04; we already covered the various changes and additions when the beta was announced. "The Ubuntu team is happy to bring you the latest and greatest software the Open Source community has to offer. This is their latest result, the Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate, which brings a host of excellent new features." The various other Ubuntu-derived distributions, like Kubuntu, have also had their RCs released.

Apple Responds to Laptop Hunters Ads

In a rare case of Apple frankness, the company has allowed a PR person to make a statement to BusinessWeek about the recent Microsoft "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign. Don't read to fast, or you'll miss it: "A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want," Apple spokesman Bill Evans told BusinessWeek, "The one thing that both Apple and Microsoft can agree on is that everyone thinks the Mac is cool. With its great designs and advanced software, nothing matches it at any price." That's it. Just thought you'd like to know.

Apple Does Relatively Well in Q1 2009

For some inexplicable reason, people treat Apple differently from other PC manufacturers, and as such, it's common to look at the company's well-being separately from others. Yesterday, we reported on the overall state of the PC market, and Apple didn't really make an appearance there. Thanks to the various Apple rumour websites digging through the IDC and Gartner figures, we can still give you all the latest figures on Apple.

Microsoft Says EU Antitrust Deadline Extended

Microsoft on Wednesday confirmed a report that it had received a one-week extension from European antitrust regulators to respond to charges that it had sought to thwart rivals by bundling its web browser with Windows systems. "Microsoft confirms that the new deadline for the company to respond to the Commission's statement of objections is 28 April," a spokeswoman said, referring to an unsourced reference to a new deadline reported on the website of the Financial Times. A spokeswoman for the European Commission said she could not immediately comment.

Your Windows 7 Predictions: True or False?

Now that Windows 7 is more or less finalised on the feature side of things, with the release candidate around the corner, I thought it would be interesting to look back upon what we thought Windows 7 would be - and what we actually hoped Windows 7 would be. So, I dove into our article and comment archive to see how many of our hopes, dreams, and predictions came true.

OSNews Asks: Who’d Be Responsible for a Linux Conficker?

Whenever the Conficker worm comes up here on OSNews (or any other site for that matter) there are always a number of people who point their fingers towards Redmond, stating that it's their fault Conifcker got out. While Microsoft has had some pretty lax responses to security threats in the past, it handled the whole Conficker thing perfectly, releasing a patch even before Conficker existed, and pushing it through Windows Update. In any case, this made me wonder about Linux distributions and security. What if a big security hole pops up in a Linux distribution - who will the Redmond-finger-pointing people hold responsible?

PulseAudio 0.9.15 Released

PulseAudio 0.9.15 has been released with many new features. Phoronix covers the changes: "PulseAudio 0.9.15 introduces native support of Bluetooth audio devices using BlueZ, Apple Airport Express support, flat volume support (similar to Vista's audio controls), on-the-fly reconfiguration of audio devices, and native support for 24-bit samples. The on-the-fly reconfiguration of audio devices is great and as a result there is now proper S/PDIF support. With the release of PulseAudio 0.9.15 also comes an update to the PulseAudio Volume Control program. The PulseAudio Volume Control 0.9.8 update brings support for configuring sound card profiles and various other updates."

Office 2007 SP2 Nears, Office 2010 Details Revealed

With the spotlight on Windows 7, you'd almost forget that there's another product category Microsoft is rather successful in: office suites. Microsoft Office 2007 was a massive change from previous versions, delivering a completely new interface that was genuinely easier to use. Office 2007 will soon be seeing its second service pack (with OpenDocument Format support for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), while the next version of of Office, dubbed Office 2010, will arrive pretty soon as well.