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Monthly Archive:: August 2009

Snow Leopard Reviews Positive, Upgrades Tiger Too

We're certainly not done yet with Snow Leopard on OSNews! The operating system will be officially released tomorrow, but that hasn't stopped various news outlets from cranking out reviews of Apple's latest big cat. As usual, the reviews are fairly consistent: this latest release is the best yet. In addition, very welcome news for Tiger users: the Snow Leopard "upgrade" disk can upgrade Tiger installations too, and performs no checks to see if Leopard is installed.

Inside Windows 7: Fault Tolerant Heap

"The Fault Tolerant Heap is a subsystem of Windows 7 responsible for monitoring application crashes and autonomously applying mitigations to prevent future crashes on a per application basis. For the vast majority of users, FTH will function with no need for intervention or change on their part. Principal Development Lead and rock star developer Silviu Calinoiu is the mastermind behind FTH. Here, we go deep into how FTH works and why it's designed the way it is."

FSF Launches ‘Windows 7 Sins’ Campaign

When Windows Vista was launched, the Free Software Foundation started its BadVista campaign, which was aimed at informing users about what the FSF considered user-restrictive features in Vista. Luckily for the FSF, Vista didn't really need a bad-mouthing campaign to fail. Now that Windows 7 is receiving a lot of positive press, the FSF dusted off the BadVista drum, and gave it a fresh coat of paint.

Apple’s Five Worst Products, Ever

It just goes to show you how much people love Apple. Would anyone ever post an article about SanDisk's five worst products, or Toshiba's five worst products? We complain because we love, so stop yer whinin' fanboys. Wired compiled an entertaining list from the Apple rogue's gallery. I spent a few minutes trying to think of my own list of crummy Apple products, and I realized that they were mostly things that I hated not because they weren't good, but because they didn't live up to the hype, or my high expectations, or they were just too ahead of the curve. The QuickTake, mentioned by Wired, is a great example of that. Too early.

Sun Plans On-Chip Security Boost for UltraSPARC

"Sun Microsystems' product plans are up in the air pending its acquisition by Oracle, but the company's chip engineers continue to present new designs in the hope they'll see the light of day. At the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University on Tuesday, Sun presented plans for a security accelerator chip that it said would reduce encryption costs for applications such as VoIP calls and online banking Web sites. The chip, known as a coprocessor, will be included on the same silicon as Rainbow Falls, the code name for the follow-on to Sun's multithreaded Ultrasparc T2 processor."

How Are USB Drives Made?

"No, Billy, USB thumb drives are not made in a magical land with fairy dust and Unicorn tears, and they're not born in the space beneath the Razzleberry waterfall. Yes, we're as shocked as you are. Luckily, the gang at Netbook News are on hand to set us straight with this video of the Kingston Manufacturing Plant, which offers us a rare glimpse into all of the stamping, printing, baking, cutting, and packaging that goes into getting you the portable storage you crave."

Dutch Court Orders Mininova To Remove Offending Torrents

Not too long ago we had a semi-loss for The Pirate Bay in The Netherlands, which was convicted 'by default' because the defendants did not show up in court to plea their case. Today, The Netherlands once again saw a ruling in a high-profile piracy case, and again, there's a loss for the defendants. Update: Oh, and by the way - thought about putting some lyrics you like on your website or blog? Think again. We live in a crazy world, people.

Snow Leopard To Include Anti-Virus/Malware?

With Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system arriving on people's doorsteps over the coming weekend, you'd think that all the new features are known by now, and there will be no more major surprises. Well, that's not entirely true: on Intego's Mac Security Blog, it is reported that Snow Leopard comes with anti-virus/malware functionality built-in. Update: Snow Leopard testers on MacRumors confirmed the functionality. How, exactly, it works, is not yet known, however.

Win a Nail Puller

Okay, if ever there was an off-topic post, this is it. In yesterday's Ask OSNews article I drew a comparison between using a hard-to-learn but superior nail puller and an "easy-to-use" one and similar truths about OSes. An OSNews reader who has also invented a better nail puller emailed me to tell me about his tool, the Nail Jack, and I think it's pretty cool. So I thought, "I'd bet that there are some tool-loving OSNews readers out there who would be interested in winning a cool hand tool." So I'd like to announce OSNews' very first hand tool giveaway drawing. Read More for details. Updated: winners announced

Opera 10 Hits Release Candidate Status

Opera 10 has hit the release candidate status. "The Opera 10 release candidate is feature complete, with a surprising array of new features, a fresh look and feel, a new application icon, and enhanced speed and performance. Opera 10 features Opera Turbo, the new bandwidth-booster for slow Internet connections. It also features a significantly improved Opera Mail, Opera's built-in e-mail client. Tabbed browsing enters the next phase of its evolution with resizeable, thumbnail tabs. The upgrade of Opera's Speed Dial now gives users a chance to personalize their favorite online destinations and the overall look and feel of their start page. Finally, Opera has always been about speed and performance. Opera 10 is now much faster on resource intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook and is more than 40% faster than Opera 9.6. Web developers can enjoy Web Fonts support, RGBA/HSLA color and new SVG improvements."

Appeals Court Resurrects SCO Lawsuit

Not too long ago, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw explained he had found the perfect husband for Lara Croft: Jason Voorhees. They both have way too many sequels all following a default plot, they both murder a lot and spend a lot of time underground, but most of all: none of them will ever just die. In that light, I suggest another husband for Miss Croft: Darl McBride. Instant update: Darl McBride responds. See inside.

Introducing QScopedPointer

Qt usually takes the boring memory allocation and deallocation from you, either through its implicitly shared containers, or with QObject's parent child relationship model. But every once in a while, we need to allocate something on the heap, and then the stress starts - where do we delete it, and how do we make sure to not leak the memory? To fix this problem, QScopedPointer was born. It will delete the object it is pointing to automatically when it goes out of scope.

Linux User-Friendliness

A reader asks: Why is Linux still not as user friendly as the two other main OSes with all the people developing for Linux? Is it because it is mainly developed by geeks? My initial feeling when reading this question was that it was kind of a throwaway, kind of a slam in disguise as a genuine question. But the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I felt. There truly are a large amount of resources being dedicated to the development of Linux and its operating system halo (DEs, drivers, apps, etc). Some of these resources are from large companies (IBM, Red Hat, Novell). Why isn't Linux more user-friendly? Is this an inherent limitation with open source software?