Monthly Archive:: January 2007

"Today, you can do everything you want with a Linux desktop, except play the latest games. Even there, Linux is catching up. So, why do only a handful of people run Linux instead of Windows? Here are my top-four reasons why Windows wins and Linux loses."

"This tutorial shows how to create a Debian/Ubuntu mirror for your local network with the tool apt-mirror. Having a local Debian/Ubuntu mirror is good if you have to install multiple systems in your local network because then all needed packages can be downloaded over the fast LAN connection, thus saving your internet bandwidth."

"In the street's imagination, Apple is Jobs. Or perhaps the other way around: Jobs is Apple. Whatever. This theory is still all about Jobs cracking the whip in Cupertino and speaking the Mac gospel to the public at the annual Macworld Expo and Apple Worldwide Developer Conference keynotes. But is that right? Is this personal identification necessary for the continued success of Apple?" Elsewhere, Apple's top five business decisions.

Groovy 1.0 has been released and is available for download from the project homepage. "Groovy is a dynamic language for the JVM that integrates seamlessly with the Java platform. It offers a Java-like syntax, with language features inspired by Smalltalk, Python or Ruby, and lets your reuse all your Java libraries and protect the investment you made in Java skills, tools or application servers. Groovy can be used for various purposes, from ad-hoc shell scripting leveraging Java APIs, to full-blown web applications built on Spring and Hibernate through the Grails web framework. It can also be integrated very easily in your applications to externalize business logic, create Domain-Specific Languages, or to provide templating capabilities, and much more."

A US computer scientist and a Microsoft researcher have devised a program that drastically reduces application crashes and can prevent some types attack by altering the way applications use memory. The program, called DieHard, officially launched over the holidays, following development that was funded by large grants from Microsoft, Intel and the US' National Science Foundation.

"Arguably one of today's biggest risks for network security and compliance are lingering systems that are no longer supported by their vendors. The security flaws in these systems may have been widely known for years, as is the case with Windows NT 4.0. In this article, we'll examine the risks associated with continuing to run these systems as well as provide some countermeasures that can be used to mitigate these risks."

"D is a systems programming language. Its focus is on combining the power and high performance of C and C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python. Special attention is given to the needs of quality assurance, documentation, management, portability and reliability. D is statically typed, and compiles direct to native code. It's multiparadigm: supporting imperative, object oriented, and template metaprogramming styles. It's a member of the C syntax family, and its look and feel is very close to C++'s. See this comparison of D with C, C++, C#, and Java."

The first Apple bug (Apple Quicktime rtsp URL Handler Stack-based Buffer Overflow) of Month Of Apple Bugs has been unveiled - as promised - by LMH and Kevin Finisterre. This bug is the first in a month long series.

Our friends over at MobileBurn posted an in-depth review of the Linux-based Rokr E2. This is the first phone Motorola released that doesn't use their touchscreen-based EZX Linux platform, but a very modified softkey version of it instead. A few months ago we also reviewed the Rokr E2. In related news, a few weeks ago Motorola also released in Asia the new, Linux-based Rokr E6, based on the touchscreen-based EZX version of their Linux platform. Native SDKs are not available.

Hell was already frozen anyway, but apparantly, the SkyOS team is trying to bring hell's temperature to absolute zero, since they are saying 2007 might see a release of SkyOS 5. "After what seems about 30 years worth of work (I'm sure even more to Robert), SkyOS will finally be released to the public. Lots of details are still being worked out on this one (as well as the obvious issues still present in the system), but we're really shooting to make it happen."

The winter issue of the OS2eCS eZine has been published, with various different articles on, among other subjects, OpenDOC, Warpstock Europe and North America, Lucide, and CBIRC.

"Here's a little thought experiment to take into the New Year. Not as difficult as Schrodinger's Cat, but thought provoking nevertheless. Imagine that you woke up tomorrow to a world without Microsoft. Not a world where Microsoft never existed, but one where it hit some hidden critical corporate mass and imploded, or it was discovered that the Windows source code was actually the DNA sequence for red cabbage, and all the directors disappeared to a hidden undersea stronghold. Whatever really... Microsoft existed and now it doesn't."