Monthly Archive:: September 2011

The OpenIndiana project is pleased to announce the next development release of the open source, enterprise operating system. OpenIndiana build 151a is now available for 32 and 64-bit x86 architecture systems. We hope you're as excited as we are for the first complete platform for servers and desktops that offers the full power of the virtualisation, observability, management, networking, and storage technologies from the illumos project. Please see the release notes for full details of what's new. This milestone also marks the one year anniversary of our first release. Look for our first stable release in the near future!

Chip Hazard posted a pic of a Windows 8 error screen, which in keeping with the overall trend in Windows8, is actually a lot more aesthetically pleasing than the old Blue Screen of Death. Plus: frowny face!

"We are confirming that we will be bringing Xbox LIVE to the PC with Xbox LIVE on Windows. We are very excited about Xbox LIVE coming to Windows 8. Xbox LIVE brings your games, music, movies, and TV shows to your favorite Microsoft and Windows devices. Bringing Xbox LIVE to Windows 8 is part of our vision to bring you all the entertainment you want, shared with the people you care about, made easy." Xbox Live on desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, and the Xbox. Pretty awesome.

I usually write about topics like operating systems and computer refurbishing. Today let's ditch that trivial stuff and tackle something really important like... How have computers and operating systems been portrayed on TV and in films? It's time we seek our inner geek. With this hearty sign of approval we're on our way...

"During his visit to the school, President Medvedev spoke with the school's students, including Marat Karatov. Marat made a short presentation of the latest build of ReactOS, including system boot up and running a few Windows-compatible applications. During conversation with the president, Marat said that the OS was ready approximately for 80% of real world usage and that roughly one million euros would be needed to complete its development within a year. 'This is an interesting project indeed', was President Medvedev's response."

The Contiki operating system allows tiny wireless battery-operated devices to communicate using IPv6 - a concept known as the Internet of Things. The Contiki team has just released Contiki 2.5, which brings ContikiRPL, the new default low-power IPv6 routing protocol, and ContikiMAC, which allows nodes to keep their radios off more than 99% of the time yet communicate with each other using wireless multi-hop networking. The Contiki Wiki has more information on Contiki.

Well, that's interesting. What some already speculated has now been confirmed by Reuters: Apple's 'victory' in Germany turns out to be remarkably hollow. While Samsung Germany may no longer sell or advertise the Galaxy Tab 10.1, this ban does not cover anybody else. So, retailers will still be able to sell the device - including purchasing new stock from other Samsung branches.

More news on Windows 8. This time around, Gabe Aul, a director of program management in Windows, blogged about the changes Microsoft has made to Windows 8's boot process. The results are impressive - a boot time not much slower than waking from sleep on current Windows 7 and Mac OS X machines. This is, of course, a vital component of getting Windows NT ready for tablets.

Remember the Raspberry Pi ARM board we talked about last week? Well, while running Quake III is all fine and dandy and illustrates the board is capable of something, it didn't really tell me anything since I'd guess few people are going to use such a board for gaming. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Raspberry Pi team posted another demo today - running 1080p video for eight hours straight. The chip was still cool to the touch. And just to reiterate: $25.

"The new chief executive of MediaNews Group, publisher of the Denver Post and 50 other newspapers, said it was 'a dumb idea' for the nation's second-largest newspaper chain to sign up with copyright troll Righthaven. The Denver-based publisher's year-long copyright infringement litigation deal with Righthaven is terminating at month's end."

After a few relatively small changes and not-so-earth-shattering features, the Windows 8 blog has now unveiled something many of you will surely appreciate: Hyper-V, Microsoft's hypervisor-based virtualisation software, will be integrated into the client releases of Windows 8 - not just the server releases.

Microsoft has announced today that it has reached patent licensing agreements with Acer and ViewSonic that cover Android smart phones and tablets. These companies join HTC in paying Microsoft for each deployed Android device. Microsoft's strategic approach to Android is very different from Apple's. Where Apple is attempting to stop or otherwise delay the deployment of Android devices Microsoft is lining their coffers with royalties paid by OEMs for the privilege of shipping them. It's a strategy that is already generating more profit for Microsoft the its less then successful Windows Phone platform and could contribute dramatically to Microsofts bottom line going forward.

The MorphOS Team has just released an update to the MorphOS 2 SDK. The archive comes with a brand new programmer's editor offering autocomplete, syntax highlighting, jumping to definitions, declarations and documentation, etc for C based projects. Scribble's display layer is based on a port of the well known Scintilla engine. You can see Scribble in action in this video. The full news item can be found here.

"The typical way to increase capacity on a network is to add more infrastructure, but that's an expensive undertaking. It can also be time consuming and frustrating for network operators who have to get permission to put up new towers, or dig up the ground to lay cables. This is especially true in heavily populated areas where more antennas and traffic disruption are not what anyone wants to see. Rice University has come up with a groundbreaking solution, though. One that promises to at least double the capacity of existing networks with the addition of minimal extra hardware. That solution is full duplex wireless communication. This isn't a new concept, but one that hasn't been possible until now due to the inherent obstacles it throws up."