The C programming language defines two standard memory management functions: malloc() and free(). C programmers frequently use those functions to allocate buffers at run time to pass data between functions. In many situations, however, you cannot predetermine the actual sizes required for the buffers, which may cause several fundamental problems for constructing complex C programs. This article advocates a
self-managing, abstract data buffer. It outlines a pseudo-C implementation of the abstract buffer and details the advantages of adopting this mechanism.
Novell, who recently acquired both German Linux distributor SUSE and Gnome developer Ximian, Inc.,
announced Tuesday the release of
Ximian Desktop 2 for
SUSE Linux 9. The story is
also here.
A lot of waiting and criticism has being wasted on Gnome/GTK's new file selector window. I decided to give my two cents on how I would personally perceive a good GTK+ file selector and make an honest suggestion. Special thanks to
Tigert who gave me
the motivation to work on this earlier today.
Martin Hansen
draws parallels between our 8bit ancestors and today's computers.
Apple
today previewed Xgrid, a computational clustering technology from Apple’s Advanced Computation Group (ACG). Xgrid helps scientists and others working in compute intensive environments to fully utilize all IT resources, including desktops and servers, by creating a grid enabled "virtual" IT environment that takes advantage of unused computing capacity to run batch and workload processing.
On the eve of the giant annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft is set to deep-six its short-lived Windows XP Media Center Edition, according to industry
reports received by The Register.
Submitted by Marius Popa & Idean
2004-01-07
Databases
Firebird 1.5 Linux CS RC8 released. This RC has many small enhancements in install procedure made by Mark O'Donohue and it should install more "smoothly". Additionally, this is the first RC built with external debug info which
you can download separately.
Mandrake Linux
10.0-preview edition pretty much defines the shape of things to come in Linux land in 2004. With Kernel 2.6, KDE 3.2 beta and XFree86 4.4 beta, it doesn't leave much to be desired. This article refers to cooker snapshot as of December 31, 2003. Please note that this release is not a beta release. This is not even an alpha release. Its just something put together to show what we can expect from Mandrake 10.0. This release comes on only two CDs so some of the packages are missing. And as there are bound to be lot of bugs in this kind of release, I'll be concentrating more on the usability aspect. So let's see if it is worth drooling over.
As of this writing Steve Jobs' keynote is taking place, he has already announced a new Final Cut version, a new XServe, a new MS Office for Mac, iTunes and iLife 04, GarageBand, iPod Mini and more.
View the keynote live or go to
MacMinute for up to the minute updates.
The latest GNOME Development Release is
ready for testing. It is available for immediate download on
ftp.gnome.org
and mirrors.
Software maker PalmSource
confirmed Tuesday that it delivered on its promise to provide its partners with a new version of its latest operating system for mobile devices before the end of 2004.
Beyond3D
had the opportunity to speak with Chris Donahue of Microsoft recently. Being the Lead Evangelist for Windows when it comes to convincing developers that Windows is the best there is, we decided to ask him a variety of questions, ranging from what he actually does, to DirectX and its importance, to companies like NVIDIA and ATI , to the next major Microsoft operating system codenamed Longhorn. Chris was previously the manager of Developer Relations at NVIDIA so he should provide some interesting insights about working with the independent hardware vendors as well.
Submitted by Jan Schaumann
2004-01-06
NetBSD
NetBSD's
Packages Collection aka
pkgsrc now has support for an experimental new framework called ``
pkgviews''.
This framework, finally allowing multiple versions of one package to co-exist
without conflicts (among other great features), was first proposed by Alistair
Crooks at
EuroBSDCon
2002 and has been integrated into pkgsrc by Johnny C. Lam, who just posted
a
User's
guide to the tech-pkg ml.
The
OpenBeOS Translation Kit BETA 3 is now available. Many bugs have been fixed, including one in the Translation Kit which caused some applications to crash and prevented others from loading bitmap resources. Elsewhere, Waldemar Kornewald from the Networking Kit recently changed a file in the OpenBeOS CVS and posted a comment which is
pretty self-explanatory.
Submitted by Kelly McNeill
2004-01-06
Linux
"
Contributors to Linux are nothing short of dedicated when it comes to offering their coding efforts, but as many are aware, much of that effort is wasted in the way of duplicated work, a great deal of which happen to only be the "sexy" parts of the code base. The problem is not so much in getting developer support, but in getting the masses organized and motivated to tackle the otherwise neglected aspects of the open source operating system." The following osViews editorial contributor has
some interesting ideas to not only help Linux development but also the platform as a whole and even its promotion.
Microsoft has taken the wraps off of Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. It addresses security concerns, fixes previous security issues, and implements new security features. In case you are slow on the uptake, Windows XP Service Pack 2 is all about security,
says ArsTechnica.
OK, so you want to create a windows service and you're not a .NET guru? This is exactly what got me in trouble with my wife. It started off easy enough, but before the weekend was through, my wife was getting on to me for spending so much time at the computer. She thought that I should be spending quality time with our family, imagine that. I told her that I was doing some 'personal' research, that, "no, it's not work honey" and "I'm trying to learn some new technology", "think of it as reading a book, only on the computer..." Inanities like that, she wasn't having any of it, of course. Regardless, I am glad to report, I figured it out and just in the nick of time, too.
Marcelo Tosatti
has released the final 2.4.24 stable Linux kernel unchanged from 2.4.24-rc1. The main reason for the release was a local vulnerability in mremap() syscall, that can cause local users to gain privileges. It's recommended that all users upgrade their kernel. 2.4.24 is available from numerous kernel.org mirrors.
Richard Stallman wrote a short
editorial on the 20th anniversary of GNU. It's a summary of what he considers needs to be done now.
