Monthly Archive:: November 2010

After announcing the move to Unity, and the eventual move to Wayland further down the line (someday one day perhaps eventually maybe once when unicorns roam the earth), Ubuntu is announcing yet another major change, this time in its release policy. While they're not moving to a rolling release as some websites are claiming, they will update components and applications more often.

"While we are still waiting on open-source support for the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series of graphics cards that were released last month, today AMD is releasing their initial open-source support for their Ontario hardware. AMD's Ontario is their low-powered Fusion processor designed for use in netbooks and other such devices. This dual-core chip with integrated Radeon HD 6250 graphics is only starting to ship now, but the open-source support for this first AMD Fusion chip is now available to Linux users, complete with 3D support."

"If you've ever been interested in artificial intelligence, you've seen that promise broken countless times. Way back in the 1960s, the relatively recent invention of the transistor prompted breathless predictions that machines would outsmart their human handlers within 20 years. Now, 50 years later, it seems the best we can do is automated tech support, intoned with a preternatural calm that may or may not send callers into a murderous rage.To build a brain, you need to throw away the conceit of separate hardware and software because the brain doesn't work that way. In the brain it's all just wetware. If you really wanted to replicate a mammalian brain, software and hardware would need to be inextricable. We have no idea how to build such a system at the moment, but the memristor has allowed us to take a big step closer by approximating the biological form factor: hardware that can be both small and ultralow power."

Usually, the only live press events which garner any attention are those by Apple, and sometimes those by Microsoft. This time around, though, Acer's been the center of attention, and it has paid off: the company has unveiled a boatload of interesting hardware - including a dual-screen laptop, a high-resolution Android phone, and several tablets.

"Apple on Monday said that it plans to release the promised update to iOS 4.2 for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. The update brings a number of long-awaited iOS 4 features to the iPad and adds the new AirPlay and AirPrint features for all iOS devices. In somewhat of a surprise, owners of the latest iOS devices can now use the Find My iPhone feature for free."

"There has been work by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in porting ZFS to Linux as a native Linux kernel module. This LLNL ZFS work though is incomplete but still progressing due to a US Department of Energy contract. It is though via this work that developers in India at KQ Infotech have made working a Linux kernel module for ZFS. In this article are some new details on KQ Infotech's ZFS kernel module and our results from testing out the ZFS file-system on Linux."

It's no secret that the webOS is no speed demon. Sure, it has the most elegant multitasking interface (the fact that it multitasks at all means it bests both Android and iOS), but it's not exactly fast. This is all going to change. Palm held its Developer Day in New York this weekend, and unveiled its new application development framework, set to replace the current Mojo framework. Not only will this new framework, named Enyo, be a lot faster than Mojo, it will also be designed around multiple display resolutions.

Another version of the extremely portable unix-like operating system NetBSD was released today. This release fixes many security issues and bugs. It also includes a good amount of new features. Please read the announcement here.

Well, this is fascinating. There have been rumours going around for a while now that Apple is working with Gemalto on an integrated sim card, allowing customers to choose their own carrier and then activate the phone through Apple. European mobile phone carriers aren't particularly pleased with this.

"The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act sets up a system through which the US government can blacklist a pirate website from the Domain Name System, ban credit card companies from processing US payments to the site, and forbid online ad networks from working with the site. This morning, COICA unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee."

...and finally it pays off for OSNews to have a Dutch editor. Yes, I knew this glorious day would one day be upon us, the day upon which the rest of the technology world would be struggling with Google Translate to decipher a Dutch article with news in it. But not for OSNews, oh no! Anyway, Steve Wozniak, Apple founder and still technically an employee, gave an interview to a Dutch newspaper (the worst we have, but still) in which he made some interesting remarks. Update: Told you it's the worst newspaper we have.

Windows NT name size limits, network cabling and protocols, Linux printer daemon commands, AD&D character alignments -- find out how much you know where it really counts by taking InfoWorld's 2010 Geek IQ Test.

"In a move that holds great significance for the semiconductor industry, a team of researchers has created an alternative to conventional logic gates, demonstrated them in silicon, and dubbed them chaogates. The researchers present their findings in Chaos, a journal published by the American Institute of Physics."

"Ah, JooJoo, we hardly knew ye. That 0.2.4 firmware update did a number on your speed woes, but alas, it wasn't enough. Fusion Garage founder Chandrashekar Rathakrishnan told e27 that the tablet didn't meet sales expectations and that, despite his rant against the iPad business model, people apparently do want those 'non-web experiences', in his words. But like all good soap operas, this one still goes on: Rathakrishnan confirmed the company is still going, meaning there's at least one new project in the pipeline, and yes, there's also still a lawsuit that'll stay alive and kicking."