http://www.osnews.com Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2008, David Adams Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:36:01 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/story/20381/C_The_Ugly_Useful_Programming_Language http://osnews.com/story/20381/C_The_Ugly_Useful_Programming_Language Eric Raymond is working on an essay, putatively titled "Why C++ Is Not My Favorite Programming Language". In his announcement, he calls it "an overcomplexity generator", "bloated, obfuscated, unwieldy, rigid, and brittle", and alleges that these characteristics appear in C++ applications also. I contend that many of the complaints about C++ are petty or are aimed at specific libraries or poor documentation and that many of the features commonly regarded as unnecessary (and excluded from intended replacements) are, in fact, highly useful. C++: the Ugly Useful Programming Language Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:48:04 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) General Development http://osnews.com/story/20380/OpenVMS_8_4_Roadmap_Announced http://osnews.com/story/20380/OpenVMS_8_4_Roadmap_Announced HP has released a roadmap outlining future development of OpenVMS, the operating system that commercialized many features that are now considered standard requirements for any high-end server operating system. (Such as Integrated networking, Symmetrical, asymmetrical, and NUMA multiprocessing, including clustering, distributed file system (Files-11), Integrated database features, support for multiple computer programming languages, hardware partitioning of multiprocessors, etc). With over 30 years of development, OpenVMS has stood the test of time and has continued to evolve as one of the most secure and trusted mission critical OS's of our time. Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:38:37 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) OSNews, Generic OSes http://osnews.com/story/20379/OS_and_Virtualization_or_Virtualization_and_OS_ http://osnews.com/story/20379/OS_and_Virtualization_or_Virtualization_and_OS_ We each behave according to our nature. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that while a virtualization supplier believes that the operating system is, effectively, a feature, an operating system vendor would argue that the converse is true. The philosophical differences between Red Hat and VMware could not have been more apparent during their respective events - September’s VMworld gathering in Las Vegas and yesterday’s Red Hat analyst day held at the New York Stock Exchange. Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:47:38 GMT donotreply@osnews.com () Red Hat http://osnews.com/story/20378/Mozilla_Labs_Introduces_Geode_Geo-location_Software http://osnews.com/story/20378/Mozilla_Labs_Introduces_Geode_Geo-location_Software Mozilla Labs recently offered a sneak peak and download of Geode. Geode is one of the first applications to use the new W3C geolocation specification API. It is currently available as a plug-in for Firefox 3 (and seems to only support Windows and Mac systems at this time). Mozilla Labs indicates it will likely be a new feature integrated in an upcoming browser release. Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:43:43 GMT donotreply@osnews.com () Mozilla & Gecko clones http://osnews.com/story/20377/KpackageKit_Future_of_Package_Managers_on_Your_Desktop http://osnews.com/story/20377/KpackageKit_Future_of_Package_Managers_on_Your_Desktop PolishLinux has an interview with the KPackageKit developers. PackageKit is a abstraction layer over the different Linux package management tools. It is primarily designed to unify the graphical tools and provide a consistent distribution neutral framework for application developers to install add-ons as well. This project was initiated and continues to be maintained by Red Hat developer Richard Hughes who also wrote the initial GNOME frontend to it, called gpk-application. Multiple backends currently exist and it is the default for Fedora and Foresight Linux already. Other distributions including Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, and Gentoo are actively participating in the development of different backends. A KDE interface has been under rapid development recently and just did a 1.0 release last week. This interview provides more details. Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:53:01 GMT donotreply@osnews.com () Linux http://osnews.com/story/20376/Measuring_the_True_Success_of_OpenOffice_org http://osnews.com/story/20376/Measuring_the_True_Success_of_OpenOffice_org Michael Meeks who leads the OpenOffice.org development team within Novell has taken a detailed look at contributions associated by metrics to OpenOffice.org and makes the case that Sun's tight control over the codebase and the lack of enough volunteer contributors leaves the development slowly stagnating over a period of time. Michael Meeks has recently started strongly advocating the position that Sun needs to setup a more independent OpenOffice.org foundation or otherwise allow more relaxed policies for commit access and be less rigid about assignment of copyright to itself for the development community of Openoffice.org to thrive beyond Sun developers. Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:39:03 GMT donotreply@osnews.com () Features, Office http://osnews.com/story/20374/Linus_Blogs_About_2_6_27_Release http://osnews.com/story/20374/Linus_Blogs_About_2_6_27_Release Linus Torvalds who has recently started blogging, writes about the new 2.6.27 release. The developer's viewpoint on releases tend to be different from end users. Some interesting bits... Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:06:39 GMT donotreply@osnews.com () Linux http://osnews.com/story/20373/Linux_2_6_27_Released http://osnews.com/story/20373/Linux_2_6_27_Released Linux 2.6.27 has been released. It adds a new filesystem (UBIFS) for "pure" flash-based storage, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation support for ext4, multiqueue networking, data integrity support in the block layer, a function tracer, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, improved webcam support, support for the Intel wifi 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 chipsets, more new drivers, and many other improvements and fixes. Full list of changes can be found here. Fri, 10 Oct 2008 09:06:50 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Linux http://osnews.com/story/20372/Rethinking_User_Account_Control http://osnews.com/story/20372/Rethinking_User_Account_Control The Engineering 7 blog continues its trend of detailing the real issues that people deal with when it comes to Windows. We have already covered their insights, usage data, and mea culpas concerning the taskbar, as well as their musings on window management. The latest entry on the E7 blog deals with a controversial Windows issue: User Account Control. The usage data has some interesting results, to say the least. Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:46:26 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Windows http://osnews.com/story/20371/Python_2_6_Released http://osnews.com/story/20371/Python_2_6_Released Python 2.6 has been released on October 1st. The major theme of this release is preparing the migration path to Python 3.0, a major redesign of the language. Whenever possible, Python 2.6 incorporates new features and syntax from 3.0 while remaining compatible with existing code by not removing older features or syntax. See the what's new docs for more details. Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:04:40 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) General Development http://osnews.com/story/20370/Mandriva_Linux_2009_Released http://osnews.com/story/20370/Mandriva_Linux_2009_Released Mandriva has today released Mandriva Linux 2009, the new major release of the popular distribution. 2009 is a bold release which brings the new KDE 4 as the default desktop, along with a re-designed installer and Mandriva Control Center and many other new features. Other significant updates include GNOME 2.24, OpenOffice.org 3, Mozilla Firefox 3, and kernel 2.6.27. Key features include new graphical in-line upgrade capability, netbook compatibility, class-leading hardware support, and further improved support for working with mobile devices. For more details, see the Release Tour and the Release Notes. Get it at the download page, or go straight to the torrent list. Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:22:05 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris http://osnews.com/story/20369/MaXX_Interactive_Desktop_Brings_a_Little_SGI_to_Linux http://osnews.com/story/20369/MaXX_Interactive_Desktop_Brings_a_Little_SGI_to_Linux Most of you will be familiar with Silicon Graphics, Inc., once the proud leader in the graphics workstations market with their high-end MIPS workstations, running the UNIX System V based IRIX operating system. The company has been in steady decline for a long time now, and two years ago it put an end to its MIPS product line, favouring processors from Intel. Back to IRIX - it has many assets and good features (XFS, for instance), and the IRIX Interactive Desktop was certainly one of them. Sadly, it never properly made its way out of IRIX, but this is now being worked on, with the full support from SGI. Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:32:57 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) X11, Window Managers http://osnews.com/story/20368/Review_Slackware_12_1 http://osnews.com/story/20368/Review_Slackware_12_1 "Slackware remains Slackware. It's been around for a very long time and it has a very loyal following. It's an excellent choice for the Linux hobbyist who wants to build, configure, and tweak their system to the nth degree. Slackware certainly gives you absolute control over your system. Nothing is made to be easy or user friendly", writes Caitlyn Martin. Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:12:35 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Eugenia Loli-Queru) Slackware, Slax http://osnews.com/story/20367/AMD_to_Spin_off_Manufacturing_Operations http://osnews.com/story/20367/AMD_to_Spin_off_Manufacturing_Operations AMD finally fleshed out the "Asset Smart" strategy it has been talking about since, at least, last December. The result: AMD is now fabless. Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:41:20 GMT donotreply@osnews.com () AMD http://osnews.com/story/20365/pt_X_the_Window http://osnews.com/story/20365/pt_X_the_Window This is the tenth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. Fitting for this rounded number, part X will detail the window. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article... Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:04:27 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Graphics, User Interfaces