No 'Code Crisis' for Vista

No 'Code Crisis' for Vista: "Ars is contradicting the 60% claim made earlier today, stating: 'Reportedly, the Media Center code in the OS is in shambles, and needs to be saved by the Xbox code team. Curiosity piqued, I contacted my usual sources. In short, the story is an extreme exaggeration. I suppose this much is obvious from the mere fact that what was once a late November shipping date has now moved to January 2007: would the revelation that more than half of the code is in need of repair only translate into a two month delay? Of course not. I suppose the cynic could still invest in this rumor by arguing that the delay will stretch into 2007, but that has yet to be seen, and it really amounts to FUD at this point.'"

Mac OS X Turns 5

Mac OS X Turns 5: "Exactly five years ago, 24th March 2001, Apple officially launched its new operating system, Mac OS X, the highly anticipated (and highly needed) successor to Mac OS 9. From the official press release: 'Apple today announced that beginning this Saturday, March 24, customers can buy Mac OS X in retail stores around the world. Mac OS X is the world's most advanced operating system, combining the power and openness of UNIX with the legendary ease of use and broad applications base of Macintosh.'"

Comparison: Firefox 2.0a1 vs. IE7b2 memory usage

Comparison: Firefox 2.0a1 vs. IE7b2 memory usage: "Filed under: Internet, Windows, Microsoft, Mozilla Josiah Cole at Oomny, a very odd little gem of a blog, has posted an interesting comparison of the memory usage of Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 ('Bon Echo') and Internet Explorer 7 beta 2, both of which were released this week? The results are a little surprising. Firefox consistently outperforms IE, using slightly more than half the memory for single pages. Cole notes, however, that IE's memory use drops significantly when the browser is in the background or minimized, wheras Firefox's stays constant. Cole also does some tests using multiple tabs in which Firefox again performs well, but these results are offset by the fact that he's using an about:config tweak that makes his experience atypical. Still, though both browsers are early in their development cycles, it's interesting to see how Mozilla's alpha browser compares to Microsoft's beta.

Red Hat Opens Knowledge Base

Red Hat Opens Knowledge Base: "Red Hat has opened its knowledge base to the general public today. You no longer need to login to access it. 'Red Hat Knowledgebase is a library of tips, troubleshooting advice, and current information updated daily by Red Hat technicians.'"

Switching Art Students to GNU/Linux

Switching Art Students to GNU/Linux: "'I'm an art professor, and last semester I embarked on an exciting new adventure by erasing Mac OS X from nearly all of the Macintoshes in our digital media lab and installing Ubuntu in its place. I began seriously planning this change last school year, when I realized how fully the current feature sets of free software programs could satisfy the technical needs of the students in my classes. I decided that the time had come to teach our undergraduate art students about free software programs such as the GIMP, Scribus, and Quanta Plus, instead of proprietary programs such as Photoshop, QuarkXpress, and Dreamweaver.'"

A new Internet Explorer every year

A new Internet Explorer every year: "Filed under: Internet, Windows, Microsoft During Monday's keynote at Microsoft's MIX06 conference, Bill Gates turned a few heads by admitting that they had screwed up in allowing Internet Explorer to languish for so long without an update. Duh for sure, but it's refreshing to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. Gates said that beginning with Internet Explorer 7, set to make its debut later this year, the Big Blue E will be seeing a new version every 9 to 12 months in order to keep up with the quick pace of web innovation. Gates also revealed that IE7 will include not only an RSS reader, but an 'RSS subscription database,' by which I assume he means a directory of popular feeds. 'The amount of RSS going on,' he says, 'is going to skyrocket.' Whatever that means.

Official: Windows Vista Available January 2007

Official: Windows Vista Available January 2007: "Microsoft has officially announced to ActiveWin (over a conference call) the release date of Windows Vista. Windows Vista will be made officially to consumers in January 2007, while making Windows Vista available to businesses only in November 2006. In addition, there will be a feature complete Beta 2 CTP released in the next quarter."

An Inside Look at Windows Vista

An Inside Look at Windows Vista: "'The new OS is designed to offer a shiny new user interface, better security, improved data organization and near-instantaneous search. It will be a major gaming platform release because it includes DirectX 10, an upgraded and rebuilt collection of application programming interfaces that, according to Microsoft, will offer six to eight times the graphics performance of DirectX 9.0. We're opening our series of Windows Vista features with a look at the most striking feature of Vista, the 3D desktop and the new Aero interface.'"

Sun Expands OpenSPARC Program

Sun Expands OpenSPARC Program: "A month after releasing the architecture specifications and hypervisor APIs for its UltraSPARC T1 processor to the open-source community, Sun is putting out more information on the chip. Sun on March 21 will publish the hardware design for the T1 - formerly codenamed Niagara - and the Solaris operating system simulation specifications for the chip. The move is the latest in the company's OpenSPARC project, designed to enable hardware and software developers to build atop the new chip's architecture. The goal is to build an ecosystem around the processor that will expand the reach of the SPARC platform. In addition, Sun's grid will finally launch this week."

Install XP on Mac video tutorial

Install XP on Mac video tutorial: "Filed under: Video, Windows, Macintosh, Apple, Microsoft I have to wonder what it's like at Apple right now, what with everybody and their grandma installing Windows XP on their Intel Macs. Are heads rolling? Are doves being released into the sky? Do they even care? Well, if one thing's sure, it's that installing XP on your Mac is only going to get easier, ergo this video tutorial from UNEASYsilence, which donated $500 to the cause. The tutorial is about 12 minutes long, formatted for your iPod (a higher-resolution version is coming soon), and pretty easy to follow.In related news, I'm pleased to report than OnMac.net (the home of the $13,000 bounty) has gotten a nice redesign, its forums are back up, and its wiki is coming along nicely, with a constantly improving HOWTO and a very handy FAQ for would-be installers

Google Finance launched

Google Finance launched: "Filed under: Business, Finance, Web services, Google After last month's rumors, Google took nobody by surprise today with the launch of Google Finance. The new financial portal is pretty slick, with a similar feel to Google Maps. Stock charts are powered by Flash rather than AJAX and have a very flexible interface. Along with all the usual info like market cap, volume, and so on, Google Finance also annotates its charts with recent news articles and even blog and newsgroup chatter. One feature I found cute is the 'Management' are of the page that lists the company's higher ups—if you hover your mouse over one of their names, a little headshot of them will pop up. Ironically, when I hit the page for Apple (AAPL), it showed no photo for Steve Jobs, possibly the most-photographed CEO in the valley.

Red Hat posts Fedora Core 5

Red Hat posts Fedora Core 5: "Filed under: OS Updates, Linux, Red Hat, Open Source
The latest edition of Red Hat's community-supported Linux distribution is now available for download. If you're a Linux geek, it doesn't get much better than this. Slashdot is linking to a video describing the improvements over Fedora Core 4. What's one to do with Fedora Core Linux, you ask? Well, why not build a bicycle-powered telephone system? Or do some wicked pagination? Or, perhaps coolest of all, build your own Tivo-killer

Vista to directly support HD DVD; Blu-ray to come from 3rd parties

Vista to directly support HD DVD; Blu-ray to come from 3rd parties: "Filed under: Desktops, Laptops We were pretty surprised last week when an unnamed Microsoft spokesperson declared that Windows Vista would include 'a great HD DVD and Blu-ray DVD experience.' The statement, after all, seemed inconsistent with Microsoft's previous position that the company would directly support only HD DVD. Now it turns out that this is still the case. Microsoft Corporate VP Amir Majidimehr spoke to Chris Lanier, and confirmed that 'Microsoft is hard at work in developing native HD DVD playback in Windows Vista ... as we have mentioned time and time again, Microsoft has no plans to provide native Blu-ray playback functionality in Windows Vista. Such functionality will be provided by third parties.' We assume the spokesperson who said otherwise is relieved that we don't know his/her name.

Linux 2.6.16 Released

Linux 2.6.16 Released: "Linus Torvalds has released Linux 2.6.16 today. 'Not a lot of changes since -rc6, but there's various random one-liners here and there (a number of Coverity bugs found, for example), and there are small MIPS and PowerPC updates. It looks like both Fedora and SuSE end up using a kernel that is pretty close to this 2.6.16 release, so let's all hope it's good. Give it a good testing, please.'"

Launchy - Today's Free File

Launchy - Today's Free File: "Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware It seems like this series of application launchers just won't stop. In the comments for our post about the application launcher Colibri, Taylor mentions yet another launcher called, appropriately, Launchy. Being a sucker for this type of application, I couldn't wait to give it a try. Launchy is a very slick application launcher. It sports a Vista-inspired theme complete with see-through glass edges, and is extremely small and fast. By default it only indexes your Start menu, however it can be manually configured to index any folder you like, and can even be told which file extensions to index. If you've tried some of the other launchers we've recommended here but found them not quite your cup of tea, give Launchy a try. Read Permalink Email this Linking Blogs Comments "

DeskTask - Outlook desktop plugin

DeskTask - Outlook desktop plugin: "Filed under: Business, Utilities, Windows, Office, Productivity, Freeware DeskTask is one of those 'best of breed' standalone desktop widgets like Rainlendar that doesn't require an engine like the Yahoo! product formerly known as Konfabulator or DesktopX. DeskTask is simply a utility that will take your Outlook tasks and calendar information and put it right on your desktop. If you're one of those people that keeps their system uncluttered with windows, then this could be a very valuable addition to your desktop.

Email graphic traceroute

Email graphic traceroute: "Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Web services, Google
If you've ever wanted to see the geographical route an email took to get to you, a new Google Maps mash-up offers the ability to copy and paste email headers into a text field, and have it analyzed for the route the email took. It doesn't always work, and sometimes the results are somewhat strange, but this is definitely one of the more fun Google Maps mash-ups to come along.

Review: GNOME 2.14

Review: GNOME 2.14: "Linux.com reviews GNOME 2.14, and concludes: 'GNOME 2.14 continues the steady improvement visible in the last few releases. It is an incremental upgrade, consisting largely of tweaks and the filling in of gaps in functionality. If few of these changes are major by themselves, the overall result is welcome. Perhaps the best way of looking at the release is not as an end in itself, but as a milestone on the road to desktop usability in free operation systems. From this perspective, GNOME 2.14 is a sign that much of the journey is already over - and that the remaining distance is less than many observers think.'"