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Government Announces Penguin-Proof Firewall
Tuesday 1st April 2008
Category: News
Today, government spokesman Uma Head made a startling announcement - that there were too many foreign operating systems in Britain today, and something needed to be done. She declared, "Over the past decade or so, we have seen an unprecedented rise in the choice of operating system, at the cost of our own native operating systems."
IE8; Microsoft fined by EU; Linux hurdles
Thursday 27th March 2008
Category: News
Time to catch up on some news, which is only... a month old. Ahem.
Firstly, some surprisingly good news from the Internet Explorer camp - namely, Internet Explorer 8 will be as standards compliant as possible by default, rather than emulating the behaviour of previous versions of the browser. This comes as Microsoft is fined $1.4bn by the European Comission, as well as reports of some of Microsoft's software being 425 years behind the times.
Finally, Matt Hartley lists the top 10 hurdles for Linux.
Mozilla Messaging; Laptops; Rubber
Tuesday 26th February 2008
Category: News
First up is the announcement of Mozilla Messaging, stating some of their aims as including a calendar, better search and better configuration in Thunderbird.
Meanwhile, there are some pictures of HP's new tiny laptop, while some clever folks have created self healing rubber.
Microsoft bids for Yahoo!; Nokia purchases Trolltech
Sunday 3rd February 2008
Category: News
Two interesting moves in the software market - firstly, Microsoft has bid $44.6bn for Yahoo!, which has prompted plenty of further articles from El Reg:
- Microsoft! needs! Yahoo! developers! developers! developers!
- Euro lawyers see tortuous road ahead for Microsoft's Yahoo! bid
- Ballmer! explains! hostile! Yahoo! bid!
Secondly, Nokia has snapped up Trolltech, makers of the QT toolkit used in KDE.
In the world of the other major desktop environment, Phoronix discusses eight interesting improvements in GNOME 2.22. Meanwhile, French coppers are going for Ubuntu over Windows, while the public tires of Facebook.
HTML5; ext4; Cute cats
Saturday 26th January 2008
Category: News
Firstly, something that is of interest to many web developers: the first working draft for differences between HTML4 and 5. To help people understand HTML, the W3C have also handily explained how to describe cats as cute.
Elsewhere, there are plans to merge ext4, the improvement to the filesystem ext3, into Linux 2.6.25. ext4 brings plenty of benefits to the table, although online defragmentation isn't quite ready yet.
Another trip down memory lane at El Reg, this time taking a look at the Commodore SX-64, a quarter of a century old and still with nearly as many features as the Macbook Air.
Back to the present, and Jason Clinton finds Call of Duty 4 too real - I've often wondered whether the graphics of these games getting realistic would ever actually be detrimental - now we know.
Finally, if you have a "friendly posterior", you might like to apply as a Healthcare Informaticist.
KDE 4.0; Sun buys MySQL; SimCity open sourced
Saturday 19th January 2008
Category: News
First up is the release of the long anticipated KDE 4.0. However, many people are taking the attitude that this point zero release isn't quite ready for full use yet, and plan to stick with KDE 3.5 for a while yet.
In a move that surprised some, Sun is buying MySQL for a billion dollars, while Electronic Arts has released the source code for SimCity under the name Micropolis.
Meanwhile, there are curious web infections, some more probes from the EC into Microsoft, and accusations from John Pugh MP that the BBC is championing Microsoft.
Alternatively, you could read about Jeremy Clarkson's perfect week, or ten recurring economic fallacies.
Firefox 3; Linux not about choice; Respect please!
Friday 11th January 2008
Category: News
First up is another post on improvements in Firefox 3 on Linux.
Next is a post on a Fedora mailing list stating Linux is not about choice, despite many crowds stating this time and again. Perhaps it's just more accurate to say that choice is a pleasant side-effect?
A post by Bruce Byfield on conspiracy theorists and free software, has stirred parts of the community somewhat, with some requesting a little respect.
Finally, a couple of articles from El Reg - Becta warns against Vista and Office 2007 in the classroom, while from New York a couple of doctors warn against Java, although oddly praising the close relative C++.
Red Hat's New CEO; Firefox 3; Spacial PulseAudio
Saturday 5th January 2008
Category: News
Firstly, following the news that Red Hat has a new CEO (a choice that, naturally, hasn't pleased everyone), CNET gets to interview the man himself, Jim Whitehurst. Of course, actions speak louder than words, so we'll have to wait and see what impact he'll have on the company.
Next up is a new blog called Open Source Fact Check. Its name is fairly self-explanatory - it aims to dissect some of the more salacious "news" you will see in various places, and actually look at the facts behind it - do a bit of research, see what the situation really is..
Of course, highly anticipated by some is the release of Firefox 3. Some have claimed recently that Mozilla is forgetting its GNU/Linux users - naturally, Mozilla claim otherwise. Of note is the fact that Firefox now fits in with the GTK theme better (after what I saw as a bit of a backwards step in Firefox 2), and even uses some of the GTK icons. It is also supposedly faster than before, which would be a welcome surprise - Gecko isn't exactly slow, but its not blindingly faster either.
Matt Palmer ponders over cowboys in IT, but unfortunately sees no easy solution. He's also talked about strategists and tacticians, while others have described it as wide vs deep. However you describe it, they both explore the fact that some are better suited to taking a broad view, while others go into great detail on a single project, and what happens if that's not recognised.
Finally, following on from the news that Fedora 8 now has PulseAudio to control the sounds coming out of your speakers, there's a suggestion of spatial PulseAudio in order to best use multiple speakers, especially with accessibility.
Ogg in HTML5; BBC iPlayer; Google Knol
Thursday 27th December 2007
Category: News
First up is the somewhat controversial removal of Ogg Vorbis and Theora from the HTML5 spec, with many blaming Nokia and Apple. Plenty of others have also argued against the reasoning behind this.
Naturally, although Ogg's inclusion in the spec would be a boost to the format, far more significant is the potential of being able to visit a website and have audio and video just work. Without including some sort of specific codec, the situation will be exactly the same as today - even with specific tags for audio and video, you'll still have to use whatever codec the web developer has decided is best. Yes, even if they are included in the spec, other codecs could still be used - but with some browsers already supporting Ogg Vorbis/Theora, it becomes much simpler to stick to those formats to make your website play nice with the browser. Just think of images - there are loads of image formats you could use, but people stick to JPEG, GIF and PNG because its what browsers support.
Next is the news that the BBC iPlayer is now in Flash form, allowing it to be used on many more Windows versions, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and anything else that supports Flash. Naturally, a 'freer' solution would be nice, but this is a definite improvement on "Got Windows XP? No? Tough."
Google is planning what appears to be a competitor to Wikipedia, namely Google Knol. Unlike Wikipedia, single authors will pen entire articles, with users able to rate and comment on the article. Of course, this comes at a time when Wikipedia's image of democracy is under attack. Frankly, as useful as a source for everything is, the idea is fundamentally flawed - a single resource will ultimately have a few select people that are responsible and, in some fashion, in control.
Going back to the poor old W3C, some that are dissatified with the way the CSS Working Group is, or rather isn't, working have proposed changes, which has prompted a response to the suggestions made and the wider issue.
There's also a look at Java one year after it has was GPLed, the release of Movable Type 4.0, the first version to be open source, and a post stating Programming languages are not like hand tools, contrary to the frequent statement "Choose the language according to the task".
GNOME's Interface; DRM by Western Digital; Eee PC
Monday 10th December 2007
Category: News
Firstly, an GNOME's interface warts and it's future, which restates the ever-present problem of how to fix important but boring bugs.
Next is Western Digital's software to allow you to share files from their external hard drive. Unfortunately, WD Anywhere Access now has DRM included, meaning it will prevent sharing of files with certain extensions, such as MP3 or AVI.
Finally, the author of Distrowatch writes a little about the Eee PC. The Eee PC is so interesting because it's being sold widely and runs Linux by default. Admittedly, I'd prefer a distribution besides Xandros, but work is progressing in getting everything running smoothly on other distribution.