Monthly Archive:: September 2009

The first netbook preinstalled with Moblin v2 for Netbooks will launch next week, possibly at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, or else the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon in Portland. Then, within the next couple of weeks, the Moblin Project will release the first stable release of the Moblin v2 Linux distribution, which began beta testing in May. Will Linux prove a viable alternative to Windows 7 on the low-powered, low-cost computing devices released for this holiday season? We should know pretty soon.

The draft of the HTML5 specification has been under discussion for a while now, but despite the fact that it's not yet finished, all major browsers have implemented at least the most important aspects of it - except Microsoft. The company did provide substantive criticism of the specification in early August, but now the company has also endorsed the video and audio tags.

"Watching Steve take the stage and roll out a new version of iTunes got us all nostalgic for the old days, when iTunes logos changed color and our jukebox looked like it could withstand a bomb blast. Below is the history of the application that is running more than any other on our Macs. It spawned the iPod, iPhone, Apple TV and gave us an excuse to throw out those ugly CD towers that resided in the corners of our houses in the 90s. The ever present, iTunes."

The DragonFly 2.4 release was released just today. One can choose from a bare-bones CD ISO, a DVD ISO that includes an X environment, and a bare-bones bootable USB drive image. In addition, this is the first time DragonFlyBSD has had a 64-bit ISO. 64-bit support is stable, but there will only be limited pkgsrc support in the current release. All versions of the release can all be downloaded from one of the many mirrors.

Sometime ago I conjectured that Microsoft made certain changes to IE8 to force web standards forward and drop backwards compatibility as default (a very un-Microsoft move) because of the need for the web to break out of the blinkered IE6 / Desktop-Browser view of content otherwise Microsoft would find itself unable to compete in the mobile space. It's been over a year since that article and in such a short period of time it has become ever clearer that Microsoft's mobile offerings, and their overall mobile platform strategy are failing against the dominant iPhone, the newcomer Android, and a re-invigorated Palm with WebOS.

Start tuning your Linux system for power efficiency. This article will get you up to speed on the components and concepts you need to fine-tune a Linux-based System x server for power efficiency. Learn how to enable the Linux CPUfreq subsystem, get instruction on C and P states, and determine which of the five Linux in-kernel governors you need to boost power efficiency on your system

"Microsoft's search engine, Bing, was used in 10.7 percent of U.S. online searches in August, according to a new report by research firm Nielsen. That placed it third in the rankings behind Yahoo with 16 percent and Google with 64.6 percent. Microsoft’s month-over-month gain of 22.1 percent in market share suggests that the search engine may have legs even after Microsoft’s supporting ad campaign, estimated at costing between $80 million to $100 million, runs its course."

Microsoft has been very protective over its OEM pricing, and while various figures float around the web, the company has never really confirmed or denied any of them. At the Jefferies Annual Technology Conference, however, Charles Songhurst, general manager of Corporate Strategy, revealed some of the pricing details for OEMs.

"Microsoft late last week said it won't patch Windows XP for a pair of bugs it quashed Sept. 8 in Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The news adds Windows XP and SP3 to the no-patch list that previously included only Windows 2000 Server SP4. 'We're talking about code that is 12 to 15 years old in its origin, so backporting that level of code is essentially not feasible,' said security program manager Adrian Stone during Microsoft's monthly post-patch Webcast, referring to Windows 2000 and XP.... 'By default, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2 do not have a listening service configured in the client firewall and are therefore not affected by this vulnerability,' the company said. 'Windows XP SP2 and later operating systems include a stateful host firewall that provides protection for computers against incoming traffic from the Internet or from neighboring network devices on a private network.'"

Only a year after Google's Chrome entered the browser market, we're already hitting version 3. While Chrome 3 had been available in the developer and beta channels for a while now, the company has now released the first stable Chrome 3 version. Technically, this means Chrome 3 has been released.

Earlier this year, the European Commission imposed a massive fine upon Intel for its anti-competitive practices in the OEM space. Intel has been given the opportunity to respond, as is usual in cases like this, and the chip maker is claiming that the fine should be thrown out, because the EC did not prove that Intel's practices hurt the competition.

The French download law has passed the lower house (285 votes to 225). "The law must still be approved by parliament as a whole and the opposition Socialists have already announced they intend to challenge the measure in the constitutional court."

"ARM, maker of microprocessors and microcontrollers used in mobile and embedded electronics, has joined the Linux Foundation. Amanda McPherson, vice president, marketing and developer programs, at The Linux Foundation said in the announcement 'By joining the Linux Foundation, ARM is demonstrating its commitment to open standards and Linux.' To date, ARM has shipped more than 10 billion ARM processors in mobile devices, many of which run Linux. Ian Drew, EVP Marketing at ARM, said that 'joining the Linux Foundation is a natural step towards advancing innovation in the Linux community for a rich, always-connected, computing experience.'"

Jay Robinson delves into what makes up iTunes LP and comes out pleased and suprised: "The iTunes LP experience is accomplished with HTML 4.01, CSS and JS. The interface feels very Flash-like, but there is no trace of it. The CSS animations are elaborate and smooth."