Monthly Archive:: August 2010

Should Daemons Just Be Frontends to the OS Auditing System?

Guest post by Dennis Heuer 2010-08-25 Linux 16 Comments

I came across a news entry at Phoronix about a new init replacement, systemd, and curiously started a read into the surprisingly heavy matter. Systemd is by no means as simple as upstart. It does far more things far more straight and in more detail. The differences are so significant that they enforce quite different configuration strategies. One can argue for both, depending on the goal to reach. However, that's not what I want to write about. After having read what systemd is capable of, and how it does it, I began to put the existence of all system daemons - in their today's forms - in question.

NAB Responds to Concerns Regarding Mandated FM Chips

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-25 Multimedia, AV 71 Comments

A couple of days ago we talked about how the RIAA and NAB are planning on asking US Congress to mandate FM radio chips inside every cell phone. This plan was met with some ridicule, so the NAB decided to write a blog post addressing the critics. Most of the post is overshadowed by an overdose of America's favourite national pastime: WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. 9/11!

Firefox 4.0 Beta 4 Introduces Panorama

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-25 Mozilla, Gecko 70 Comments

Today, Mozilla released the fourth beta of Firefox 4.0. After a period of what I would call stagnation, the Mozilla team are back on track with delivering interesting UI concepts. They were sensible enough to copy Chrome's excellent tabs-on-top UI, but have now also added something called Panorama, a new and very interesting way of managing your open tabs.

An Experimental Chip From Intel that Can Move 50Gbps

Guest post by fran 2010-08-24 Intel 21 Comments

"Intel Corporation announced an important advance in the quest to use light beams to replace the use of electrons to carry data in and around computers. The company has developed a research prototype representing the world's first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. The link can move data over longer distances and many times faster than today's copper technology; up to 50 gigabits of data per second. This is the equivalent of an entire HD movie being transmitted each second."

AMD Announces 8-Core Bulldozer CPU

Guest post by fran 2010-08-24 AMD 33 Comments

"You can't say that AMD is ever boring. The company says its next-generation Bulldozer CPU core will take a unique approach to computing that goes beyond Hyper-Threading, which some believe could offer phenomenal performance."

Windows 95 Turns 15

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-24 Windows 102 Comments

In what has surprised me greatly, nobody has submitted anything to us regarding this day in the history of computing. Sure, memories of her may not be fond, and with the magical unicorn power of hindsight you'd rather forget you ever dated her so intensely, but she served a purpose. She led a revolution that changed the world forever, and while you may have hoped for a more charismatic leader, I think it's unfair not to honour the fact that she turned 15 today.

Motorola Goes Legal Against Custom Droid X Froyo Build

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-24 Wireless 47 Comments

Upgrading all those countless Android devices to version 2.2, or Froyo, hasn't exactly been an easy task for many device makers and carriers. Between flat-out denying devices from Froyoness and already having Froyo updates sent out, Motorola has pretty much lost it. Where companies are incompetent, the geeks that roam the 'net seek to provide solace. What do you do, then, as a company? Why, you threaten your loyal customers with legal action, of course.

Lexmark Slaps 3rd Party Cartridge Makers with Patent Suit

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-24 Legal 15 Comments

OSNews patent watch, at your service. Lexmark, apparently under new leadership who can't recall the defeat the company suffered back in 2005, is undertaking yet another attempt to block third party cartridges for Lexmark printers to enter the market. Instead of invoking the DMCA, they got clever this time and are claiming patent violations.

Rdio: Unlimited, On-Demand, Music Streaming

Eugenia Loli 2010-08-24 Multimedia, AV 38 Comments

Earlier today I bought a $10 album from iTumes, which I wish I hadn't. The reviews were glorious, and the previews not indicative. Listening to the album all I could hear was hipster drivel. Obviously, I wanted my money back. Well, bad luck. iTunes won't give refunds. I tweeted about it, and a friend suggested Rdio. Rdio, a brand new streaming service, currently offers a 3-day free trial -- without the need for a credit card. For $5 let's you stream their huge library on your desktop via an Adobe AIR app or browser, and for $10 let's you also stream from Android/BBerry/iOS, plus be able to sync your music with you offline on these devices. Unlike Last.fm and Pandora, Rdio let's you stream on-demand.

Virtual Router Smashes Speed Records

Guest post by fran 2010-08-23 Internet 8 Comments

"Researchers in South Korea have built a networking router that transmits data at record speeds from components found in most high-end desktop computers. A team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology created the router, which transmits data at nearly 40 gigabytes per second--many times faster than the previous record for such a device."

Valve Silences Steam on Linux Rumours

Guest post by Debjit 2010-08-23 Games 55 Comments

A rumor has been going around for about four months now that Valve is coming out with a Linux version of Steam and had a lot of people in the Linux community very excited. However Valve have officially killed the rumor. And it is not what people wants to hear - there is no Linux version of Steam in development.

The Future of Computing is Remote-Controlling Everything

Eugenia Loli 2010-08-23 Wireless 29 Comments

Kevin Rose, of Digg fame, wrote a blog post yesterday about the upcoming revolution of the TV. A sentiment that I of course agree with. However, trying to think one step ahead, it makes sense to envision that the next big device that will get "smart," is the car. And when this happens soon, everything else will follow.

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Go Gold September 16

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-23 Windows 8 Comments

Can you believe it's been only six months since Microsoft first unveiled its brand-new and most likely last-ditch effort to regain some significance in the smartphone market? Well, today the company announced that the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools will go gold September 16, and applications submissions will be accepted from early October onwards.

Malware Implicated in Fatal Spanair Plane Crash

David Adams 2010-08-23 Bugs & Viruses 11 Comments

Authorities investigating the 2008 crash of Spanair flight 5022 have discovered a central computer system used to monitor technical problems in the aircraft was infected with malware.

The Dirty Little Secret About Google Android

David Adams 2010-08-23 Wireless 19 Comments

Here's the dirty little secret about Android: After all the work Apple did to get AT&T to relinquish device control for the iPhone and all the great efforts Google made to get the FCC and the U.S. telecoms to agree to open access rules as part of the 700 MHz auction, Android is taking all of those gains and handing the power back to the telecoms.

Guest post by diegocg 2010-08-23 Linux 24 Comments

Lennart Poettering has posted a status update about systemd, an init/upstart alternative. systemd is able now to replace /etc/fstab and cron, and it seems it will be the default init system for Fedora 14. He has also written a post about systemd for administrators.

Submitted by poundsmack 2010-08-22 Office 14 Comments

"This is a minor release of Vim. It consists of Vim 7.2 plus all patches, updated runtime files and some more, see below. It has been two years since the 7.2 release, thus it's not that 'minor'. But not 'major' either. Something in between, don't know how to call that."

Kernel Testing in Userspace with ‘rump’ on NetBSD.

Submitted by Ed 2010-08-22 NetBSD No Comments

On the NetBSD Blog, there's an in depth article about how rump can be used for testing and debugging the NetBSD kernel in userspace. "This article explains how rump is the enabling technology for a safe, fast and run-anywhere kernel test suite which requires absolutely no configuration from the person running the tests."

Open Source 2D, 3D for ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series GPUs

Submitted by Michael 2010-08-22 AMD 7 Comments

"AMD continues to abide by their commitment to provide open-source support for their graphics cards and as proof of that this afternoon they have released their initial hardware acceleration code that supports the ATI Radeon HD 5000 "Evergreen" family of consumer grade graphics processors. While this Evergreen support isn't yet finished and for the time being is targeted towards Linux developers and enthusiasts, you can now play around with your ATI Radeon HD 5000 graphics processor on an open-source driver while having 2D EXA, X-Video, and OpenGL acceleration."

Ubuntu Drops SPARC, IA64

Thom Holwerda 2010-08-22 Ubuntu 3 Comments

"Maverick Meerkat is set to become the last version of Ubuntu that'll run on Oracle's Sparc, ending a four-year relationship. Also getting canned is Ubuntu running on Hewlett-Packard's Itanic 64-bit challenger. Meerkat is currently in feature-freeze ahead of October's official launch, and apparently nobody's stepped up to maintain the Linux ports to either Sparc or Itanium. The Ubuntu Sparc port has fallen out of use and updates have slipped, meaning it's fallen below the level of quality needed for an Ubuntu port. Ubuntu on HP's IA64 is in slightly better shape, but - still - nobody's actively maintaining it."