Monthly Archive:: April 2012

"On the Linux kernel mailing list, Willy Tarreau has announced that there will be no more releases for version 2.4 of the Linux kernel. Tarreau, who is responsible for maintaining the Linux 2.4 kernel, said that 'few people' still use this version. According to him, these users are better served by a central Git repository that collects bug fixes and that he has now created such a repository for them." I remember when 2.4.0 was released... Proper USB support! Them were the days.

Oh RIM. Already back-peddling on the whole 'let's remove sideloading to prevent the Android chaotic cesspool', are we? PR damage control mode engaged: "We're not getting rid of side-loading on the BlackBerry PlayBook OS or in BlackBerry 10." I think I know where the real chaotic cesspool is, RIM.

"The man who co-founded Apple - the world's most valuable company - in the garage of Steve Jobs' parents, fears the torrent of intellectual property lawsuits being filed by companies such as Apple, Samsung, Google, HTC and Nokia could prevent future entrepreneurs from treading a path to technology fortune." Well, mr Wozniak, you are, technically, still an Apple employee. Shouldn't be too hard for you to get an audience with mr Cook.

"All support for Windows XP and Office 2003 will end in two years as of this past Sunday. Mainstream support for two other entities ends this week however. Mainstream support for Windows Vista will end on Tuesday 10th April, and for Office 2007 ends today." You should be using Windows 7 anyway.

Very sad news indeed. Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore International and the man behind Atari, has passed away this past weekend. At 83, he passed away, surrounded by family and friends. People like this don't come in dozens, so we lost one of the great men of computing.

I hate when I have to report on stuff I just don't care about. However, it's big news, because for some reason I'm not particularly privy to, this photosharing service is more popular than god. Yes, Facebook has acquired Instagram. Update: "At the end of the day, that's what Instagram filters are: a crutch, a misguided replacement for a properly composed shot and a decent sensor."

"Windows Phone is fighting an uphill battle. Microsoft still has work to do in terms of user experience and the big hardware partners like HTC and Samsung are starting to lose interest and putting in only token efforts. But Nokia is keeping the platform in the conversation. We're not willing to consign Windows Phone to the same level of hopelessness as the open-source webOS or the out-to-pasture BB OS precisely because Nokia is too big and too active a partner." Having a big partner is by no means a guarantee. Microsoft is doing whatever it can - both legal and should-not-be-legal - to get people to buy Windows Phone, and it isn't working. A brand only gets you so far - you need a compelling product, too, and as much as I like Windows Phone, it's just not there yet compared to iOS and Android.

RIM has announced it's going to remove the PlayBook's ability to sideload applications. The company claims it's to prevent the piracy problems in the "chaotic cesspool of Android Market". However, the company provided no evidence, studies, or whatever to back up their claims. Considering the state of RIM's business, I'd say the company has bigger fish to fry, but alas. At this point, I'm just hoping they don't do a BeOS, but open the QNX code before they go belly-up.

Want something ridiculous, but at the same time incredibly entertaining story for this Easter day? The men and women over at XDA have been hard at work hacking the Nook Simple Touch, and the results are pretty amazing. They've removed the black E-ink refresh flash, and added multitouch support. Multitouch Android applications on a monochrome E-ink display - because you can.

"Punix is a Unix-like operating system for the Motorola M68000-based TI graphing calculators, starting with the TI-92+. It is currently under development and is not ready for widespread use yet. So far the kernel is being written, and user-space utilities and applications will follow." ...amazing.

"This article CPU DB (cpudb.stanford.edu), an open and extensible database collected by Stanford's VLSI (very large-scale integration) Research Group over several generations of processors (and students). We gathered information on commercial processors from 17 manufacturers and placed it in CPU DB, which now contains data on 790 processors spanning the past 40 years. In addition, we provide a methodology to separate the effect of technology scaling from improvements on other frontiers (e.g., architecture and software), allowing the comparison of machines built in different technologies."

Rage-inducing and despicable. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, three major textbook publishers, Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education, are suing a small startup company that produces open and free alternative textbooks. This startup, Boundless Learning, builds textbooks using creative commons licensed and otherwise freely available material - and this poses a threat to the three large textbook publishers. So, what do you do when you feel threatened? Well, file a copyright infringement lawsuit, of course.

After more than one year of development, the 4th version of the SCHED_DEADLINE Linux scheduler has been submitted to the kernel community. Besides taking into account prior comments and observations, this version improves the handling of rq selection for dynamic task migration and has native integration with the PREEMPT_RT project (although a patch for the standard mainline kernel is provided as well). The official development has been moved to a GitHub repository.

Google has just responded to the first set of questions from the EU regarding its new consolidated privacy policy. The EU inquiry is being headed by the French - more specifically, by France's National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties. So, the country that monitors all its citizens' internet traffic for possible copyright infringement is spearheading the investigation into Google's new privacy policy? I'm not sure I should be laughing, crying, or shoving shards of smallpox-infested glass underneath my fingernails.