Breakthrough for Penguin-Heads

  Submitted by John J. Karcher Linux 3 Comments
"Linux users' and developers' lives have just gotten a little easier. The Free Standards Group released two tools on Thursday intended to ensure that all Linux applications can run on any Linux Standard Base-compliant version of the open source operating system: LSB 1.1 and Li18nux 1.0. Some commercial application developers, including Microsoft, have slammed open source development, saying that it lacks the necessary controls to define the common programming standards that need to be used across different projects to ensure compatibility." Read the rest of the story at Wired.
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Voice Recognition: Another Dead End

Editorial 16 Comments
"You've heard of killer apps? How about an app killer? This is what voice recognition has become over the years, because for the most part, it doesn't work. I see no evidence that it ever will, at least not in the sense that we can achieve true voice dictation capability. What annoys everyone most about voice recognition is that it almost works. This is the problem. When something almost works, developers continue with the same thinking that got them to "almost," rather than starting over with new ideas. We are now stuck in a blind alley." Who else? Dvorak is hitting the nail in the head again.
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Debugging in Visual Studio .NET & Understanding PE

Windows 8 Comments
"A powerful feature of Visual Studio .NET is its ability to debug across languages that target the common language runtime, and across execution environments. For example, if you write a Visual Basic .NET component that is called by a C# component that is in turn called by COBOL code (that targets the runtime), you can seamlessly step between languages when debugging. You can also see a single callstack that shows the different functions called in the languages you just stepped through." Read the rest of the article at MSDN. "A good understanding of the Portable Executable (PE) file format leads to a good understanding of the operating system. If you know what's in your DLLs and EXEs, you'll be a more knowledgeable programmer. This article, the first of a two-part series, looks at the changes to the PE format that have occurred over the last few years, along with an overview of the format itself. After this update, the author discusses how the PE format fits into applications written for .NET, PE file sections, RVAs, the DataDirectory, and the importing of functions. An appendix includes lists of the relevant image header structures and their descriptions." Read the rest of the article at MSDN.
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FreeBSD Week: Migrating from Linux to FreeBSD

FreeBSD 58 Comments
By now, anyone who is even remotely related to an IT-type position has heard about Linux, and has most likely used it, if only to see what all the hype is about. However, GNU/Linux is not the only "free" Unix type OS available. FreeBSD and its cousins, NetBSD and OpenBSD are all offshoots of BSD UNIX, a commercial UNIX also known as Berkeley Software Distribution. This article will help you learn more about FreeBSD, its differences from Linux, and it will ease a potential migration process.
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Geoworks Throws in Towel and Puts GEOS up for Sale

  Submitted by Jean-Baptiste Queru OS News 14 Comments
"Wireless software pioneer Geoworks Corp has thrown in the towel, giving up hope of developing its AirBoss application platform technology and has put it up for sale along with the source code for its GEOS and GEOS-SC operating systems. The Alameda, California-based company said the wireless infrastructure market is "very weak" and, while it will eventually be significant as enterprises adopt mobile data applications, Geoworks simply does not have the financial resources to support development of the AirBoss platform and wait for the market to emerge." Read the rest of the story at TheRegister.
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The Need for a Patch Penguin

Linux 9 Comments
"A proposal to help Linus Torvalds keep up with patches for Linux has sparked a controversy over whether the operating system has outgrown its creator. On Monday, Rob Landley, a computer programmer, writer and Linux evangelist, posted a proposal to the Linux kernel development list calling for a "Patch Penguin"--a person who would help integrate fixes for the myriad of small problems that plague the current development kernel, Linux 2.5." Read the rest of the story at C|Net News. In other Linux news, test kernel 2.5.3 was released yesterday.
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Caldera Releases OpenLinux 3.1.1

SCO 7 Comments
Caldera International, Inc. announced the immediate availability of Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1.1 and Caldera OpenLinux Server 3.1.1. These versions of OpenLinux Workstation and OpenLinux Server feature several technical enhancements and capture the best tools for Linux software development and deployment. In addition to these technical updates, each release features localization in English, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified languages. The new version includes Linux 2.4.13 kernel, KDE 2.2.1, support for Caldera Volution Messaging Server and Caldera Volution Manager 1.1 & Samba version 2.2.2 (OpenLinux Server only).
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Looking for a Few Good ‘Code Demons’

.NET No Comments
"A year after Australia's one-man army started pounding out code for GNU/Linux's version of .Net, he's looking to double the quarter of a million lines of code already written before done, and hopes to do so in six months if he can convince some new "code demons" to sign up to the cause. "We're moving full-steam ahead," said Rhys Weatherley, the Brisbane developer who had written 254,423 lines of code by December last year - just 12 months after throwing himself into his Portable.NET project." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews.
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OSNews Web Site News

OS News 41 Comments
It has been 5.5 months since OSNews is online in this form and we have grown incredibly. The scary part (bandwidth-wise) is that we are continuing to grow incredibly fast. For example, when we started back in mid-August 2001, we were merely receiving 600 page views per day, while January 2002 has awarded us with 23,500 page views per day on average (~740,000 page views per month). I would like to thank you all for participating in this growth and encouraging us continue... news hunting. I would also like to inform you that the site layout of OSNews will change soon slightly and also I would like to prompt everyone who would like to have up to the minute access to OS News and other well known sites (Slashdot, CNet, FreshMeat and 90 more sites) from his/her Windows desktop, to download KlipFolio and the needed OSNews klip file (to get it, browse their Directory page after the necessary registration). Screenshot available.
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FreeBSD Week: Book Review of “FreeBSD Unleashed”

FreeBSD 9 Comments
With more and more people migrating away from Microsoft's platforms, it's increasingly important for alternative operating systems to be well documented in order to attract and maintain new users. FreeBSD is already well documented; its on-line handbook is an extremely well detailed guide to the OS as a whole. But for the user new to FreeBSD, or even Unix as a whole, salvation may come in the form of SAMS' FreeBSD Unleashed by Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann.
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Windows XP Successor Longhorn Goes SQL, P2P

Windows No Comments
"Sources close to Microsoft confirm that The Beast is set to include a new relational file store at the core of its next version of Windows. Some roadmap slippage has apparently occurred, too, as the database core will be introduced into Longhorn, and Blackcomb has been pushed further back. That leaves a gap for a point revision of XP next year, although there's no sign of this on the roadmap just yet. The final feature set for Longhorn - the codename for the successor to Windows XP - hasn't been nailed down yet, and the database core had been rumored for inclusion in Blackcomb, the next Windows after Longhorn. It's highly significant, as it signals a much tighter integration between Microsoft's enterprise server products and the client. Microsoft will also offer a new peer-to-peer networking feature, say sources briefed by The Beast. A new "sub-workgroup" network level - a subset of the current "workgroup" - offers a finer granularity of network access for ad hoc collaboration. Microsoft is intent on P2P-style workgroup collaboration looks seamless, with additional updates to NetMeeting built in to the OS." Read the rest of the (leaked) report at TheRegister. An interesting reply from Dominic Giampaolo (creator of BeFS and author of the "Practical File System Design" book) on the database capabilities of BeFS, can be found at the bottom of the mentioned article.
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LinuxWorld: Services Aimed at Businesses

Linux No Comments
"Last year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in New York was a time for major vendors like IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. to debut new hardware offerings running various flavors of the Linux open-source operating system. This year, with Linux-based server sales holding their own, the focus is on keeping those customers happy by giving them the kind of service and support that until now has mainly gone to customers running Unix and Windows. The Linux community is also looking for ways to broaden use of the operating system in business computing. About 150 vendors are expected at the show, which is down from about 200 at last year's LinuxWorld, said Rob Schescherareg, a vice president of sales, marketing and product development at Boston-based IDG, which runs the event. Some of the decrease is due to the economy, because some of pure-play Linux companies no longer exist, he said. IDG expects up to 19,000 visitors to the show, down from about 25,000 last year." Read the rest of the report at CNN.
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FreeBSD Week: Interview with Robert Watson

Original OSNews Interviews 4 Comments
Robert Watson is a member of the FreeBSD Project's core and security-officer teams, and founder of the TrustedBSD Project. For his day job, he is a Research Scientist in the network security research group at NAI Labs, studying operating and network security issues. His primary contributions on the FreeBSD Project come in the form of security enhancements to the system; the TrustedBSD feature set arriving in FreeBSD 5.0 will include file system access control lists, mandatory access control, and support for fine-grained privileges. DARPA is now funding a FreeBSD security research and development project at NAI Labs, and they also sub-contract to a number of independent developers in the FreeBSD community to complete that work. Read more for our exclusive interview with Robert.
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SGI Introduces Silicon Graphics Fuel Visual Workstation

SGI and IRIX 12 Comments
SGI today announced the first in a powerful new line of next-generation workstation products, the Silicon Graphics Fuel visual workstation. The new workstation includes a single 500MHz R14000A MIPS processor with 2MB L2 cache or 600 MHz with 4MB L2 cache, 200 MHz front side bus VPro V10 or V12 graphics with up to 128 MB configurable graphics memory, 104MB texture memory and 48-bit RGBA (or 12-bit per color component - 4-bits higher than any other desktop system) with 16-bit Z buffer capability, industry-leading memory bandwidth (3.2GB per second) and graphics bandwidth (1.6GB per second) on the desktop, Dual Channel Display capability for double the screen real estate with a single graphics board at resolutions up to 1920 x 1200 at 72Hz on each screen, a wide range of peripheral options including internal CD-ROM and four integrated PCI slots, and the fifth-generation 64-bit IRIX 6.5 operating system.
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