Monthly Archive:: March 2010

At least two major GNU/Linux distributions have decided to drop PowerPC support; OpenSUSE has dropped support already, and Fedora is going to drop it in Fedora 13.

"Search has become an integral part of Windows, particularly in later versions. While the major search improvements began with Windows Vista and were backported to Windows XP, it's really only with Windows 7 that the larger majority of users are discovering the search bar all over in the operating system. Search is built into every aspect of Windows 7 to help users cope with the increasingly rapidly growing number of files, be they work documents and e-mails, personal photos and videos, or music collections. Many users perform searches without thinking nowadays: it's an ingrained habit of using the operating system. Like many habits, this one is worth breaking in order to to develop an even better one. Here we take a quick look at a few basic search techniques and a few more advanced ones. Force yourself to use them and you'll soon become a master of Windows Search. A bit of extra time now will save you loads of effort in the long run."

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly told the Wall Street Journal it would be 'trivial' for the newspaper to ditch Adobe's Flash software in preparation for the iPad. Media-industry types who disagree have been emailing us. 'Oh, sure, just use Javascript: well guess what, we don't have a bunch of code junkies in our newsroom. We do have some great designers who've picked up Flash and enough Actionscript to be very effective.'"

"For many users of Mozilla's open source Firefox Web browser, Firefox is simply a tool for looking at Web content. For others, Firefox is an enabling tool to actually help develop content and code for the Web. This week, Mozilla released the results of a developer survey it conducted in November 2009. The survey received responses from 5054 developers spread across 119 countries and provides some insights into how developers work with Firefox - and what about Firefox makes it so critical as a tool for developing."

This Sunday, Nintendo will launch its newest portable gaming gadget -- the Nintendo DSi XL. This latest version of Nintendo's best-selling DS game machine is large and in charge with not only an expanded waistline but two super-sized screens. But while the DSi XL hasn't even had a chance to sashay out of its box yet, another portable gaming gadget is already hogging its spotlight. And it's another portable gaming gadget from Nintendo. It's called the Nintendo 3DS ... and it doesn't exist yet.

Yesterday on the radio I heard a segment about the magazine and newspaper business' excitement about the iPad platform, and what it means for their (ailing) business. Let me just say I'm skeptical. It sounds like the primary innovation they're planning is rich-media, interactive advertisements. Because if there's one thing that's wrong with the publishing industry, it's that their ads aren't intrusive enough. At the end of the radio segment, they announced that virtual "issues" of popular magazines on the iPad will cost $3. Let me predict now that this will end in tears. On the other hand, Apple's decision to pre-populate their bookstore with 30K books from Project Gutenberg is a great idea, and will do more for the iPad platform than $3 magazines and Auto ads disguised as VR racing games.

Codezero microkernel developers announced support for the quad core Cortex-A9 processors in their recently released v0.3 kernel. Codezero is an open source L4 microkernel variant written in C that evolves the L4 API for security and virtualization purposes. With the recent announcement Codezero team is probing the possibility of having their microkernel as an open source option for enabling virtual rooms of execution on high-end, multi-core mobile platforms. Cortex-A9 is the latest flagship product of ARM plc UK. With its unbeatable performance to power ratio, it is known as the biggest rival of Intel Atom line of cpus on the mobile cpu arena.

"We noticed a minor textual change on the JooJoo order page just a few days back, and apparently it was no mistake - Fusion Garage has announced today that its long-awaited tablet PC has started to ship from the factory. For those who pre-ordered (and stuck with it), they'll get theirs as early as March 29th, while everyone can get in line by plopping down their USD 499 after the fact."

And so the H264/Theora debate concerning HTML5 video continues. The most recent entry into the discussion comes from John Gruber, who argues that Theora is more in danger of patent litigation than H264. He's wrong, and here's why.

"GoDaddy.com Inc., the world's largest domain name registration company, told lawmakers Wednesday that it will cease registering Web sites in China in response to intrusive new government rules that require applicants to provide extensive personal data, including photographs of themselves. The rules, the company believes, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of Web site content and could put individuals who register their sites with the firm at risk. The company also believes the rules will have a "chilling effect" on new domain name registrations."

The FreeBSD team has released FreeBSD 7.3, the fourth release of the 7-STABLE branch. There will be one more release in this branch, but at this point, most developers are already working on the 8-STABLE branch. FreeBSD 7.3 focusses on bug fixes, but has a few new features as well.

When you spend a lot of time looking at different Linux distributions you get used to reading the phrase, "... is a general purpose operating system with a focus toward..." Sometimes it's a focus toward ease of use, sometimes it's a focus toward improved package management, other times it's security. There are a lot of general purpose Linux distributions out there, which is good, but one thing I love about Linux is its ability to fill a niche. For instance, it would be difficult for me to get through a work week without having tools such as GParted Live, for partition management; Knoppix, for hardware detection; and Clonezilla, for saving and restoring disk images. This past week I had a chance to talk with Steven Shiau, one of the developers behind Clonezilla.

When it comes to Apple, rumours are an almost essential part of the mythos. Entire websites are dedicated to publishing rumours about supposed new products, software updates, "leaked" images, and even the personal lives of its executives. These rumours are almost exclusively benign, and allow us to have silly debates nobody cares about. However, for some companies, rumours turn nasty - very nasty. Palm just went through two of these.

Microsoft has more or less confirmed the existence of its Courier tablet. In a job posting, it mentioned the device, only to quickly remove the Courier name from the job posting as soon as the news got out. "Do you already know everything about Project Natal and the Cloud? Is Blaise Aguera y Arcas' jaw-dropping TED talk on augmented-reality Bing Maps and Photosynth last month's news? Then check out some of the online chatter surrounding new releases of Window Phone 7 series handsets, Internet Explorer 9 and the upcoming Courier digital journal."