Eugenia Loli Archive

The major skin sites and several tech news sites (including OSNews) have gotten together with Stardock to create the first GUI Olympics. It is the ultimate user interface design contest in which users from around the world can submit their WindowBlinds skins and represent the website of their choice. Stardock is putting up $10,000 in cash and prizes that will be distributed to 75 different award categories (which means that just submitting a skin gives you a reasonable chance of winning something). Half of the cash award goes to the website a user represents. In this way, users can support the websites they enjoy using as well as win for themselves and have a lot of fun.

"When it was first introduced, it seemed that Java native compilation would surely topple the JVM, taking with it the Java platform's hard-fought platform independence. But even with its growing popularity and the increasing number of native compilers on the market, native compilation has a way to go before it poses a real threat to Java code's portability. Unfortunately, it also may be a while before the technology is mature enough to resolve the Java performance issues so many of us struggle with today." The article discusses the pros and cons of generating native code from Java source. Update: Steve Klingsporn says "TowerJ compiles java byte code into native code, and works quite well."

"X Windows and GTK+ are not the bloated monsters you think they are. Here's how we modified GTK+/X for our device's GUI." Read the rest of the feature article at LinuxDevices.

"In a showdown with Microsoft Windows CE, the QNX RTOS once again defended its position as the most powerful and reliable realtime operating systems for embedded developers. According to a study by Dedicated Systems Experts, the QNX RTOS v6.1 significantly outperformed Windows CE 3.0 in several tests." Read the rest of the press release at QNX.

"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.

"Some people can use Linux, and some can't. No matter how many Linux zealots talk nasty about Windows or Mac users or say that Linux is wonderful, not everyone can do their work in Linux." A thoughtful editorial at NewsForge.

"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.

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).

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.

"Sony says it will begin selling disks to install Linux on PlayStation 2 and tools to develop Linux applications. Kits will include a 40GB hard drive, keyboard and mouse." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews.

Join Nick Stam at his interesting ExtremeTech article as he sheds more light on key differences between various interconnect technologies. See what's on the cutting edge: Hypertransport, 3GIO & PCI-X.

"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.

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.

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.