Monthly Archive:: May 2011

Mozilla Resists DHS’ Request to Take Down Firefox Extension

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-06 Mozilla, Gecko 12 Comments

Hooray for Mozilla. That about sums this story up. Remember all those domain names ICE keeps seizing? There are countless ways to get around these silly seizures,like using your operating system's hosts file. To make this a less cumbersome process, several Firefox extensions dot he work for you. Well, since copyright infringement is naturally a threat to the security of the United States, the Department of Homeland Security contacted Mozilla, asking them to take down one of these extensions. Mozilla declined.

‘Android To Surpass iOS App Store in Size by August 2011’

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-05 Wireless 30 Comments

"There's no doubt Android Market will at some point offer more applications for download and/or purchase than Apple's App Store, as the latter's growth has been slowing down of late, while the Android application store's growth rate has been accelerating. In a recent report, app store analytics company Distimo forecasted that Android would surpass the App Store in size before the end of July 2011. Another research firm, Germany-based research2guidance, corroborates Distimo's findings; the firm forecasts Android to blow past Apple's App Store by August 2011."

Wall Street’s Cult Calculator Turns 30

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-05 Geek stuff 7 Comments

Matthew Rothman bought an HP 12c financial calculator for his first job out of college in 1989. Years later, he still has the same calculator. And he still uses it constantly, just like thousands of other 12c enthusiasts. "Whenever I switch jobs, I just peel the old business card that is on the back and tape my newest one on," says Mr. Rothman, head of quantitative equity strategies at Barclays Capital in New York. Sales of the device, which debuted in 1981, haven't slipped even after its manufacturer, Hewlett-Packard Co., introduced more-advanced devices or even, two years ago, a 12c iPhone application, which replicates all the calculator's functions, the company says.

Submitted by sawboss 2011-05-05 Games 75 Comments

There's fail, there's epic fail, and then there's Sony. You may've thought it wasn't possible, but Sony has just outdone itself on the fail scale, forcing us to add yet another notch. During the congressional testimony this morning, Dr Gene Spafford of Purdue University revealed just how badly Sony managed its Playstation Network servers. It's... Bad.

Submitted by poundsmack 2011-05-04 macOS 41 Comments

"With the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion this summer, Apple will make the switch to a new kind of digital distribution for its operating system upgrades by releasing the software first through its new Mac App Store, AppleInsider has learned. The Mac App Store, available to all users running the most recent version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, will become the de facto method for obtaining the Lion upgrade, people familiar with the matter have revealed. Users will be able to upgrade instantly without the need for physical media by purchasing Lion through the Mac App Store." The old-fashioned regular disc version (and hopefully, on a USB drive for Air owners such as myself) will still be available.

Submitted by poundsmack 2011-05-04 Opera 3 Comments

"Opera has released an alpha build of Opera Next 11.50. As the name implies, this new release is a separate version of the cross-platform Opera browser. It's designed to allow users to install the latest developmental version of Opera alongside the current stable version, allowing users to road-test the latest new features without risking their current, stable installation."

Using a RISC Accelerator Chip to Speed up Smartphones

Guest post by anonymous 2011-05-04 Hardware 2 Comments

Startup chip design company Adapteva has announced the multicore Epiphany processor, which is designed to accelerate applications in servers and low-power devices such as smartphones and tablets. The RISC-based processor is scalable to thousands of cores on a single chip, and can sit alongside CPUs to provide real-time execution of diverse applications. The processor can accelerate tasks like hand gesture recognition, face matching or face tracking, but is not designed to be a full-fledged CPU.

Microsoft Drawbridge: OS Modularity

Guest post by Dan Massameno 2011-05-04 Microsoft 31 Comments

Microsoft has released new details on an experimental operating system concept named Drawbridge. In early March Microsoft researchers presented a paper entitled Rethinking the Library OS from the Top Down. The paper describes a new interaction between a user-level application and its OS. The paper can be found at the ACM Digital Library . It describes an ambitious plan to separate the traditional API parts of an OS from the underlying kernel of the OS. But a full analysis requires some background.

Submitted by SReilly 2011-05-04 Intel 24 Comments

Intel has just announced its new line of processors, called Ivy Bridge, which uses a new type of transistor to reach the 22nm production process as well as maintain Moore's Law. They call it the 3D transistor, and in all honesty, this stuff goes way over my head. Even the incredibly cheesy n00b-video from Intel doesn't really make any lightbulbs appear in my head. So...

Look Out Apple: Spotify Is Coming After iTunes Users

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-04 Multimedia, AV 6 Comments

"Music service Spotify has decided to target iTunes users by introducing iPod syncing capabilities to its own software. That's not all, though: Spotify is introducing its own MP3 download store, and can now wirelessly sync MP3s to iPhones and Android devices." Well, if they manage to build client software that's better than iTunes, then more power to 'm. Ah what am I saying, it would be a bigger achievement to write client software that's worse than iTunes.

Submitted by lemur2 2011-05-04 SuSE, openSUSE 62 Comments

The first major effect of Attachmate buying Novell (and thus, SUSE) has come into, uh, effect. Novell, of course, is the birth place of Mono, the open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework. Reports indicate Mono developers have been fired as part of the streamlining process, but according to Attachmate's CEO, they weren't fired because of Mono.

US Carriers Work with Google to Block Tethering

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-03 Google 26 Comments

Surprising it is not, but unfortunate it remains. Carriers in the United States have started working together with Google to block tethering applications in the Android Market from running on certain Android devices. While this pretty much seems like a US-only thing, it's still bad.

US Offered to Bankroll New Zealand Piracy Crackdown

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-03 In the News 6 Comments

"New Wikileaks cables indicate that the US has been keeping a close watch on IP enforcement policy in New Zealand, going so far as to propose funding anti-piracy efforts there to the tune of around $427,000. US diplomats have also offered to help New Zealand rewrite its 'three strikes' illegal file sharing law."

IP-Address Is Not a Person, BitTorrent Case Judge Says

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-03 Legal 9 Comments

"A possible landmark ruling in one of the mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the U.S. may spell the end of the 'pay-up-or-else-schemes' that have targeted over 100,000 Internet users in the last year. District Court Judge Harold Baker has denied a copyright holder the right to subpoena the ISPs of alleged copyright infringers, because an IP-address does not equal a person."

RIM Shows Android Apps on PlayBook, Partners with Microsoft

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-03 Wireless 23 Comments

Research In Motion is holding its big event right now, BlackBerry World 2011, and some interesting things have already come out. First, RIM is entering into a rather pervasive partnership with Microsoft to make Bing the default through all levels of the BlackBerry operating system (includig the QNX-based one). Second, the first piece of videographic evidence of Android applications running on the PlayBook.

Apple Refreshes iMac, Adds Thunderbolt

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-03 Apple 33 Comments

Apple has updated its line of iMac desktops, with new processors and bumped graphical specifications. They also includes an HD FaceTime camera, which is certainly useful. The most interesting feature is, of course, that they include Thunderbolt ports - one on the 21.5" model, and two on the 27" model.

Sony Suffers Another Major Security Breach

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-02 Privacy, Security 41 Comments

"Nikkei.com on Monday reported that an online Sony gaming network has once again fallen victim to a cyberattack. This time, the attack may have exposed the credit card numbers of thousands of Sony customers from around the world. According to the report, over 12,700 customer credit card numbers were stolen during a breach of Sony’s online gaming network, Sony Online Entertainment. According to Nikkei.com, Sony discovered the possible attack on Sunday."

Jeff Johnson About to Fork rpm – Again

Guest post by Sebastien Onglis 2011-05-02 Linux 54 Comments

Like Britney Spears, Jeff Johnson did it again and decided to fork rpm once more. Following a week long outage of the main website, he announced on the Mandriva development mailing list the launch of rpm6.org, without giving much explanation. Without more information, some people speculate this was caused by an intrusive merge by a Mandriva coder without discussing beforehand, while some others speak of the heavy criticism due to the migration, which still causing issues after several months.

IonMonkey: Mozillaâ€™s New JavaScript JIT Compiler

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-02 Mozilla, Gecko 13 Comments

"IonMonkey is the name of Mozilla's new JavaScript JIT compiler, which aims to enable many new optimizations in the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. InfoQ had a small Q&A with Lead Developer David Anderson, about this new development that could bring significant improvements in products that use the SpiderMonkey engine like Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe Acrobat, MongoDB and more."

RIM Unveils BlackBerry OS 7.0, Bold 9900, 9930

Thom Holwerda 2011-05-02 Wireless 15 Comments

Well, this is a bit surprising. Research In Motion, which isn't exactly doing well at this point, has just launched version 7.0 of the BlackBerry OS. Curiously enough, this release has nothing to do with the QNX-based operating system of the PlayBook.