OS News Archive

A new operating system for the Cambridge Computer Z88 (Sinclair latest portable computer) is available. This version runs from an external flash eprom slot and thus is easily upgradeable. It uses a code hook present in the original ROM. This version is now international and handles ISO characters and lots of keyboards. All details are on the wiki.

"Parallels has released their latest Parallels 3.0 virtualization software for the Mac. Along with Elgato's EyeTV software, I find Parallels to be the best third party applications for the OS X desktop. If you have never used Parallels before you are in for a treat. If you already are a Parallels user, version 3.0 has enough new features and improvements to make it an essential upgrade."

You might have noticed some user icons next to some comments today, this is because we enabled Gravatar support. Gravatar acts as a centralized identity pool where blogs, news sites (and recently Revver.com) can use their service and offer a universal icon for each unique email address. As long as you register on Gravatar with the same email address registered on OSNews, your personalized icon will be shown on OSNews (and on all other sites that support Gravatar) automatically. This is a testing period for Gravatar here at OSNews, and there are no guarantees whatsoever that the v4 version of OSNews will use that icon system or its own. It all depends on the kind of quality, stability and responsiveness we get from Gravatar's servers. So, upload your own icon at Gravatar.com and test away! Ability to turn off user icons will be built-in on v4.

A minor extra release of MINIX 3.1.3 was done, called 3.1.3a, correcting some flaws in 3.1.3. "Found after release time and fixed in 3.1.3a: mkfs does not check for overflow of firstdatazone field in superblock; a missing check in rename caused moving directories to hang sometimes; autopart truncates new partitions at 4GB. If you want to create a larger partition, use part (expert mode) to do that first; and more."

"I remember the day I was interviewed at VMware. I was asked what I would do to improve Workstation, and one of the things I said was that it would be nice to make a VM go rootless. That is, pull application windows out of the VM and make them integrate well with the operating system. I wasn’t the only one. A lot of people wanted this type of feature. It’s been discussed for years, but it’s always been hard to find the manpower to do it. But competition is good, and we finally got some people on this feature. And it turned out spectacularly."

"Those in search of eternal life need look no further than the computer industry. Here, last gasps are rarely taken, as aging systems crank away in back rooms across the U.S., not unlike 1970s reruns on Nickelodeon's TV Land. So while it may not be exactly easy for Novell NetWare engineers and OS/2 administrators to find employers who require their services, it's very difficult to declare these skills -- or any computer skill, really -- dead." My Take: "C" dying should have been "x86 Assembly".