Monthly Archive:: July 2009

The number of Mac clone makers is growing by the week, so it seems. We have Psystar in the United States, a clone maker in Russia, another one in the UK, and PearC who now cover Germany, The Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. We can add a new one to the list, one that I personally thought was a fake, but is apparently very real. One that has a retail store. In California. Quo Computer (in case you're wondering, you use that thing on the right to navigate - it's weird).

A day earlier than expected, Microsoft has released version 3 of its Flash alternative Silverlight, including a number of related tools to aid in Silverlight development. It comes with a whole lot of new features.

The past few days a newly discovered flaw in the Internet Explorer web browser has been making its rounds across the internet. The flaw allows people with malicious intent to install viruses or malware onto affected computers running Windows XP or Server 2003 (2000, Vista, and Server 2008 are not affected). Even though it was assumed this flaw was new, Microsoft was actually alerted of this issue a year ago.

During the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (and the Superfluous Introduction Award goes to...) gave a keynote speech. Said keynote speech raised a few eyebrows in the Free software community because of a number of questionable remarks regarding women in technology. David "Lefty" Schlesinger, member of the GNOME Advisory Board and active in the mobile open source community, took issue with RMS' remarks and decided to call him out on it. The response he got was... Less than satisfying.

Chromium/Chrome, everyone's favourite web browser that descended from heaven to take us by the hand and guide us to the promised land of web browsers (that's how I look at it, anyway, but I'm insane) has been steadily evolving its Linux port. The latest feature addition? The first signs of native themeing.

In part-1 you can begin to understand the fundamental components of the Vimscript programming language with simple script examples. In Part-2 you can learn how to create and deploy new user defined functions in the Vimscript language.

A new update for Icaros Desktop, the leading AROS distribution, has been released. It includes some new programs and features like the Protrekkr music tracker, the DosBox emulator, but this release is mainly a "mantainance one": it includes dozens of big and small bug fixes, a better desktop environment and improved support for Amiga Forever and 68K applications. Icaros Desktop 1.1.2 is available in two formats: the whole package on a Live DVD for new installations, and an update CD for Icaros 1.1.1 users. The update can be automatically downloaded, mounted, and installed directly from Icaros using the brand new LiveUpdater program, also available on the Icaros site.

In the past several days, it appears that at least 35 US- and South Korea-based websites were under attack by a botnet group of computers, causing the attacked domains to become very slow and unresponsive and even putting many out of commission for periods of time. Among the domains were many government websites of their respective countries. It's unconfirmed as to where exactly the attack is being launched from, but South Korean officials believe it to be North Koran forces or those sympathetic to their cause.

When I read this item in the backend submission queue, I must admit that I thought it was a fake, and I must say that I'm still not confident enough about this one. A Korean company held a press event today during which it launched its Tmax Window operating system. Built on in-house technology, they claim it has 100% compatibility with Windows software. Update: A lot more information in this article.

From NYTimes: "In a post on its company blog, Google said the operating system would initially be aimed at netbooks, the compact, low-cost computers that have turned the PC world on its head. It said the open-source software, called Chrome OS, would be available in the second half of next year. Read more for a quick observation on the announcement.

After an 8 year long development process, the team behind the VLC Media Player has released version 1.0.0 of their popular and capable media player. Even though previous versions weren't necessarily unstable, reaching version 1.0 is still somewhat of a milestone.

It almost sounds like a joke, but it's true enough. Ever since Gmail was instituted in April of 2004 with the invitation scheme, it and many other of Google's Apps have been wearing the beta tag. At long last, however, Google's ripping it off like a bandage.

The PC-BSD team has pushed out a bug-fix release of their operating system. "Version 7.1.1 contains a number of bugfixes and improvements from PC-BSD 7.1, including KDE 4.2.4, improvements to printing support, Xorg Server 1.6.1, and much more." Get it from their download page.

"CompuServe, the first commercially successful online and email provider in America, has been shut down by AOL after 30 years of service. The original CompuServe — later renamed CompuServe Classic — was laid to rest July 1, 2009. In a message sent to its remaining subscribers, AOL urged customers sticking with cheap dial-up to move on to the company's surviving sub-brand ISP, CompuServe 2000."