Monthly Archive:: November 2007

"After seeing Miod Vallat's commit to source-changes@ today, I thought it'd be nice to ask Miod a few questions about mvme88k and the work he did to enable multiprocessor support for the architecture (more information about this hardware platform is available the OpenBSD mvme88k page)."

"The management of video hardware has long been an area of weakness in the Linux system (and free operating systems in general). The X Window System tends to get a lot of the blame for problems in this area, but the truth of the matter is that the problems are more widespread and the kernel has never made it easy for X to do this job properly. Graphics processors have gotten steadily more powerful, to the point that, by some measures, they are the fastest processor on most systems, but kernel support for the programming of GPUs has lagged behind. A lot of work is being done to remedy this situation, though, and an important component of that work has just been put forward for inclusion into the mainline kernel."

Erstwhile bitter rivals Dell and Sun Microsystems are set to announce that Sun's Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems will be supported in all of Dell's servers. Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz plan to make the announcement during a joint appearance at the Oracle OpenWorld 2007 conference today.

Access, owners of the Palm OS now known as Garnet, have released a version of that platform for the Nokia Internet tablets N810, N800 and N770, providing access to the thousands of Palm applications still out there. The release is a free download, and prominently labelled 'beta', but can be installed alongside the pre-installed Linux-based OS and run when needed. Users are invited to report applications which work, and any that don't, but Access is promoting the software as being able to run 30000+ Palm OS apps.

"The Asus Eee PC challenges many conventional assumptions about mobile computing. The daring, diminutive device combines a svelte subnotebook form factor with a unique Linux software platform and a budget-friendly price - factors that could make this unprecedented product a mainstream marvel. Last week, my colleague Jon described the Eee PC as game-changing: a characterization that we will put to the test in this review."

Perhaps huffing at your computer might get you somewhere if research at the Georgia Institute of Technology comes to fruition. Shwetak Patel and Gregory Abowd from Georgia Tech have published a paper that describes how to use a computer microphone to determine where on a screen a person is blowing. The technique, which they call BLUI for Blowable and Localized User Interaction, can distinguish between the different sounds air makes depending on where the breath is directed. Note: This won't be part of Grow. Just so you know.

"This is the listing of the open bugs that are relatively new, around 2.6.22 and up. They are vaguely classified by specific area," Natalie Protasevich said, posting a current list of bugs each linking to an appropriate bugzilla.kernel.org entry. Andrew Morton reviewed the list, noting 'no response from developers' in response to many of the bugs. David Miller pointed out that in some cases this wasn't true, referring to 46 bug fixes queued in his networking tree and another 10 already pushed upstream, "when someone like me is bug fixing full time, I take massive offense to the impression you're trying to give especially when it's directed at the networking. So turn it down a notch Andrew." Andrew wasn't convinced, "first we need to work out whether we have a problem. If we do this, then we can then have a think about what to do about it. I tried to convince the 2006 KS attendees that we have a problem and I resoundingly failed. People seemed to think that we're doing OK."

Having this recent infatuation with video, I embarked on a trip in the video editor world for Mac, Windows and Linux a few months ago. After days of intense searching and testing last June, I decided on the Windows platform and Sony Vegas. Vegas is one of the quickly rising video applications on the market today. This is an introduction of the application and the features that sets it apart from all the rest.

Delve into some of the compiler options used to build Visual C++ projects and the UNIX and g++ equivalents, take a closer look at the g++ attribute mechanism as it relates to porting, and examines some common problems you might encounter while porting from a 32-bit Windows environment to a 64-bit UNIX environment.

The past few weeks, as you surely have noticed, I have written a few articles on various usability terms . I explain what they mean, their origins, as well as their implications for graphical user interface design. Even though the series is far from over, I would like to offer a bit more insight into why I am diving into these subjects.

"With the introduction of Windows Vista, Microsoft has added a new form of mandatory access control to the core operating system. Internally known as 'integrity levels', this new addition to the security manager allows security controls to be placed on a per-process basis. This is different from the traditional model of per-user security controls used in all prior versions of Windows NT. In this manner, integrity levels are essentially a bolt-on to the existing Windows NT security architecture. While the idea is theoretically sound, there does exist a great possibility for implementation errors with respect to how integrity levels work in practice. Integrity levels are the core of Internet Explorer Protected Mode, a new 'low-rights' mode where Internet Explorer runs without permission to modify most files or registry keys. This places both Internet Explorer and integrity levels as a whole at the forefront of the computer security battle with respect to Windows Vista."

"Of all the ultra-mobile PC's that arrived and will be arriving in 2007, Fujitsu's has been the most highly awaited. That's a serious claim, but as soon as people got a look at this device they started to get excited about it. After all, the first generation of UMPCs had some high points, but they missed the mark in a number of areas. The hope was that the arrival of the next generation would mark a considerable improvement."

The second issue of the Syllable Development Newsletter has been published. It contains thirteen pages of articles, interviews and the second instalment of Kristian's programming tutorial. The newsletter is accompanied again by a software pack, rounding up seven packages that were released since the first edition.

The breakdown for the various editions of Windows Server 2008 was revealed this morning by Microsoft, and the big news there is the almost total lack of change: Retail server software editions for the next Windows Server will fall right in line with the current Windows Server 2003 R2 editions, including the number of client access licenses provided in the basic package.