Windows 8's desktop mode: Microsoft's 'Classic' Linked by Thom Holwerda on 03/06/12 23:27 UTC As you may have seen, David's been taking care of OSNews for a few days because I'm quite busy with work. Still, there's one thing I'd like to talk about: the desktop mode in Windows 8. I wish I could've added this to the first impressions article, but I only arrived at this conclusion yesterday: desktop mode in Windows 8 is Microsoft's equivalent of Mac OS X's Classic mode. 0Read More 10 Comment(s) US government claims right to seize any .com domain Linked by David Adams on 03/06/12 16:23 UTC If you run a web site or service that runs afoul of US law, and that site is hosted overseas, then the US legal system doesn't have much recourse, right? Wrong. Because the .com, .net, and .org top level domains are managed by a US company, the government can come to Verisign with a court order and seize your domain, effectively shutting you down. And because of a quirk of internet history that made the US-controlled domains the de-facto standard for web sites, this is a situation that's quite possibly permanent. 2Read More 18 Comment(s) "Deep" layoffs at Yahoo Linked by David Adams on 03/05/12 21:26 UTC I ran across a business news story about Yahoo's impending layoffs today, and if you're a deep-into-the-internet person like me, it certainly comes as no surprise to read yet again that Yahoo is on the skids. In fact, you're more likely to be surprised to learn that Yahoo has more than 14,000 employees and made something like $6 billion in revenue last year. Yahoo ceased to be relevant a long time ago, and even the Yahoo services that still get some love, like Flickr, seem to be tainted by association. But the question I asked myself when I read the article was, "why didn't Yahoo become a technology leader?" 1Read More 22 Comment(s) First impressions: Windows 8 consumer preview Linked by Thom Holwerda on 03/02/12 16:16 UTC Wednesday was the big day for Microsoft - the largest overhaul of its operating system since Windows 95 (heck, I'd argue the overhaul is far larger than Windows 95) went into consumer preview. I've been running it on my Asus ZenBook since its release, and in all honesty, it's not as arduous as I expected. I'm not planning on doing a full review, but I do want to mention a number of things - both positive and negative - that stood out to me. 5Read More 108 Comment(s) Microsoft up to its old tricks with Windows 8 versions Linked by David Adams on 03/02/12 15:55 UTC, submitted by sawboss By all early reports, Windows 8 is going to be a good operating system. Microsoft's hegemony may be crumbling in a mobile computing onslaught, but its core empire remains undimmed. However, whereas Windows 7 had three versions, Windows 8 will apparently be ballooning to 9 versions. 0Read More 79 Comment(s) Raspberry Pi launch turns into frenzy Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/29/12 9:47 UTC This morning, I experienced the nerd equivalent of a Black Friday $50 iPad sale. At 07:00 CET, the first batch of the much-anticipated Raspberry Pi went on sale, and while Raspberry Pi itself was very properly prepared, the two large international retailers actually selling the device weren't - despite warnings from Raspberry Pi about the enormous amount of traffic that would come their way, the two sites crumbled to dust within seconds. There's good news too - the cheaper model A has seen its RAM doubled at no additional cost. 9Read More 104 Comment(s) How to Integrate SATA and IDE Drives Linked by Howard Fosdick on 02/29/12 0:56 UTC Current computers use SATA disk drives. Pentium IV's and earlier computers used the IDE drive standards. How can you intermix SATA and IDE disk drives? This article discusses the options. It is the next in my series of articles on computer refurbishing. 0Read More 15 Comment(s) Genode 12.02 released, now with open development process Linked by nfeske on 02/28/12 11:51 UTC The just released version 12.02 of the Genode OS Framework takes the first steps to carry out the plan to turn the framework into a general-purpose OS for the daily use by its developers until the end of the year. It features a new ACPI driver, the first bits of a device-driver manager, support for using the fork syscall in GNU programs, and a PDF rendering engine. The most significant point of this release, however, is the way it was conducted. It represents the first version carried out using a completely open development process. 4Read More 8 Comment(s) Mozilla, Telefonica announce Boot to Gecko partnership Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/27/12 12:22 UTC And even more news from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Mozilla has announced a partnership with Telefonica and Qualcomm, which will bring Mozilla's Boot to Gecko HTML5-based mobile interface to devices later his year. This is a huge boon for the fully open source environment. 3Read More 30 Comment(s) Windows Phone 7.5 update lowers system requirements Linked by Thom Holwerda on 02/27/12 11:19 UTC There's a lot of news coming out of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, but since we can't compete with the well-funded gadget blogs, I suggest you read up on the details at The Verge (or Engadget). One thing stood out to me, though. While the entire industry is moving towards more cores, more megapixels, more gigahertz, more display inches - Microsoft is doing the exact opposite. Windows Phone has been updated and optimised to run on slower hardware. 1Read More 43 Comment(s)
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