Monthly Archive:: February 2009

Bespin is an experimental in-browser text/source-editor created by Mozilla Labs. Using any modern web browser (that means no IE, obviously), you can edit your projects from any computer, or with the added flexibility of the web - such as online collaboration, decentralisation, and extensibility. Read more for Kroc's review.

The iPhone, Apple's current cash cow and best selling cellular phone in the United States, is a completely closed phone in that only applications from the App Store can be installed on the phone. However, by jailbreaking the iPhone you can install applications from whatever source you want, which might be desirable if an application you want isn't allowed into the App Store by Apple. The Cupertino company has never had an official stance on jailbeaking, but this has now changed: according to them, it's a breach of copyright.

Two interface changes coming to Snow Leopard have been revealed by those who have access to the developer releases of Apple's upcoming operating system. The trash gained a feature to directly move files back to their original locations, and the stacks feature has been improved by making directories browseable within the stacks themselves. They join ZFS, on-demand printer drivers, and location awareness as new features for Snow Leopard.

There's a new essay called "Optimizing Code for Speed" available on Shlomi Fish's site. It covers the motivation, methods and terminology of optimizing code, and provides many links and examples to illustrate this important subject.

The beta release of Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring (code name Margaux) is now available. This beta version provides some updates on major desktop components of the distribution, including KDE 4.2.0, GNOME 2.25.90, Xfce 4.6 RC1, X.org server 1.5, OpenOffice.Org 3.0.1, qt 4.5.0 (RC1). This Beta version proposes step 1 of Speedboot. This should improve your boot time. It's not enabled by default. To test it, enter speedboot keyword at boot time. You can use Bootchart to test precisely effects on your boot time.

What a lovely holiday to release the latest and greatest creation brought to us by yours truly, Debian. February 14th marks Debian GNU/Linux 5.0's supposed release into the wilds of the world, nearly two years after 'etch,' lenny's predecessor. The date is set nearly in stone unless something very serious goes wrong in the final days of development or if one of the needed servers for download kicks the bucket at the wrong moment. Read on for the scoop on the most prominent of features.

With more and more information regarding the various upgrade paths to Windows 7 becoming available, Ars Technica compiled a handy guide detailing the upgrade paths Microsoft offers to its customers. Are you wondering if you can buy a cheaper upgrade version of Windows 7 once it's released? Read on.

This article discusses the architecture and the mechanism behind a generic NFS mounter, a utility that will undoubtedly help the NFS clients by providing easier, one-point access to the files on the NFS server and by offering a more consolidated view of the NFS space. See how to automatically consolidate many different NFS versions into a uniform mount.

It's time for another security report. You know, those reports that tally vulnerabilities, and then plot or graph them in such a way that their benefactors or clients come out most favourably. Ok, that might be a bit cynical, but fact remains that there is usually something wrong with such reports. The one that's making its rounds across the internet today is certainly one of them. According to IBM, AIX is the most secure operating system, and Mac OS X the least secure. Not only is the report rather slim on details when it comes to operating system vulnerabilities, it seems like most websites reporting on this story have misunderstood what it was about.

Novell's Miguel de Icaza has announced on his blog that Moonlight has hit the 1.0 milestone. Moonlight is the open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight technology, a framework similar to Adobe's Flash. Silverlight has already been used during the Olympic Games and President Obama's inauguration for streaming those events across the internet.

If you've spent hours on a task, such as debugging an application, it can be maddening to lose your work in an instant. This article shows you how to keep your shell and your work alive, even across multiple sessions and dropped connections using GNU Screen. Screen is a remarkable tool that you will quickly find invaluable in any work you perform on the command line. In fact, use it once, and you will wonder how you ever lived without it.

The Palm Pre caused a bit of a stir when it was first announced, but after that, few details have made their way onto the web about the device that needs to more or less save Palm. At the Thomas Wiesel Technology and Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Palm CEO Ed Colligan gave out some more details on the Pre, while also downplaying the possibility of a legal spat between Apple and Palm.

There are many contenders to the desktop crown, and a relative newcomer in that area is Whitix, an operating system which, despite what the name suggests, is not based on Linux. It comes with a fully pre-emptive multitasking kernel as well as ports of GCC, Python, and Mono. A bugfix release has just been posted on the website.

Intel demoed the world's first 32-nanometer processor today, showing it off in several test desktop and laptop configurations. There aren't any hard-set specifications or benchmarks just yet, but here's the scoop on the upcoming processors, according to Intel: The 45nm desktop and laptop processors (the Clarksfield and Lynnfield) with four cores will transitionally be replaced by dual core alternative 32nm processors (the Clarkdale and Arrandale) that also have an integrated graphics processor all with the same form factor as the 45nm chips. Two exciting side-notes: The first, Intel will be investing over $8 billion into the 32nm era (alright, so not immensely exciting, but definitely interesting, especially in this economy where money isn't shouldn't be thrown around without a mighty good cause). The second bit, according to one of Intel's charts, apparently there will be a 32nm high-end desktop processor (the Gulftown) that will have six cores. The good news? Parts of the platform will be going into production in 2009 for sure. The bad news? They said "parts." Be warned: that Core i7 you have your eye on will be a thing of the past come the newer and higher-end quad-core 32nm beauties.