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Google Chrome OS

Swansen — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:14:38 +0000

I’ll be as brief as Google is in the official Google blog. They are creating an OS that while overlaps Android in areas, it takes a different approach. It will be built on top of Linux but have a Google windowing system. The main focus of the OS is speed, security, being as light weight as possible, and being as web centric as possible. They are basically taking all of their online “OS” features and creating them into an actual OS.

All i can say is finally, i will admit, i basically live on various Google applications. I think if i could be transported to my Gmail inbox, i would be alright… Anyways, this should be fairly interesting regardless, and knowing Google they should do a pretty good job, and should put up a pretty good fight against the Ubuntu misguidedness… WE WILL SURE SEE

FLO TV

athomas — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:14:52 +0000

FLO TV Incorporated, provider of the FLO TV™ live mobile TV service and a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, announced that the FLO TV service will expand its service nationwide following the DTV transition on June 12, which frees up broadband spectrum for FLO TV’s dedicated network. FLO TV will expand into 39 new markets, offering its service to an additional 60 million customers with a total reach of more than 100 major markets and more than 200 million potential consumers nationwide by the end of 2009. This will complete FLO TV’s creation of the only dedicated, linear, live mobile TV network, allowing consumers to access broadcast-quality news, sports and entertainment on their mobile devices.

Fifteen new markets will go live immediately following the DTV transition on June 12, bringing service to major markets such as Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco, while others will follow throughout the year. In addition to adding new markets, immediately upon the transition, FLO TV also will expand service in existing markets including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC.

“The DTV transition is a milestone for TV lovers everywhere; with the completion of FLO TV’s nationwide network, consumers across the country now have the ability to watch TV on the go with the same high quality they’d expect in their living rooms,” said Bill Stone, president of FLO TV. ”With this national coverage, we are poised to take on the next level of consumer engagement by bringing the FLO TV service to customers on multiple entertainment devices beyond the mobile phone.”

In January, FLO TV announced that it has teamed with Audiovox, the marketer of automotive entertainment systems, to be the exclusive supplier of in-vehicle units that will work with a car’s existing video viewing equipment to enable passengers to watch FLO TV in their cars. In addition, Audiovox also will produce the only FLO TV-ready overhead drop down video as well as head rest systems units in the market. Continued cooperation with leading companies will ensure that FLO TV is available to consumers across multiple platforms in conjunction with the expansion in service coverage.

The FLO TV service is delivered using a technology that delivers video over the company’s own dedicated mobile network, offering full-length simulcast and time-shifted programming from some of the world’s top entertainment brands including CBS, ESPN, FOX, MTV and NBC. FLO TV also offers original content, having last month announced a deal with famed video blogger Amanda Congdon to bring exclusive content to subscribers.

Mobile TV Usage on the Rise

According to a recent report by Nielsen, mobile video viewing grew 52 percent in Q1 2009 compared with the previous year.* FLO TV market research shows that viewers who watch the FLO TV service are spending an average of more than 25 minutes per day watching television on their phones. This is comparable to the average time U.S. cell phone users spend per day talking on their cell phones, according to CTIA’s Semi-Annual Wireless Industry Survey 2008. The appeal of FLO TV’s live programming is illustrated by a consistent pattern of increased viewership and consumer demand for major sporting and significant news events including an increase of 80 percent or more during the Presidential Inauguration and the 2008 Summer Olympics (exclusive programming to AT&T).

The FLO TV service is available on the top two U.S. wireless carriers, including AT&T as AT&T Mobile TV.

HRD (hard rectangular drive) An SSD Killer?

Swansen — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:59:54 +0000

I’ll spare your the technical jargon, but this is a very interesting idea indeed. Simply put, the platters are plates that oscillate on heads which are built in. There are thousands of heads on the surface, each made of a semiconductor material — nano tech diamond sheet — and any one of them can read or write independently. Also realize that the movement involved is minuscule. An easy way to envision this in contrast to standard hard disk drives is that instead of large circles which each have a head, think of it as many, many tiny squares which each have their own head.

The target for this new technology is a bit of an in-between market. While HRD’s will reportedly be cheaper than an SSD, though arguably not quite as good, they are theoretically much better than a typical HDD. HRD reportedly achieves higher data rates than that of some SSDs, but uses a little more power in the process. Additionally, it is supposed to have as good or better reliability than a regular HDD. Contrast this with SSDs, which have a given number of read/writes after which the drive is useless. Another fundamental advantage HRDs have over HDDs is that sectors are arranged in rows and columns rather than being forced to make them fit on a circle.

In this writer’s opinion — very cool. Regardless if it will actually trump or compete with SSDs it is very, very cool. However, one has to contemplate that there is no such thing as a friction free material. While diamond sheet would do VERY well, it’s still not free of the constraints of physics. Even if we understand that the movements are very tiny, it’s assumed there would still be some noise and/or sensation of vibration. Would it buzz? Hum? Yell obscenities? Time will tell.

The Evernote “Seven Ate Nine” Party

Anti-Trend — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:56:23 +0000

It seems not every company in Silicon Valley is struggling in today’s sluggish economy. Evernote, the mutli-platform note-taking company with the slogan “Remember everything”, is throwing a party this July in the San Francisco bay area. The party, to take place on 07/08/09 (hence the silly mnemonic), is open to all comers, and they even be giving away free drinks. If you’re going to be in the bay area anyway, this might be worth a look.

Apple unveils Snow Leopard and new iPhone

RHochstenbach — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:08:04 +0000

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference 2009 in San Francisco has started. There was a keynote, as usual, a few hours ago. New Products have been announced. Here’s a list of the important stuff:

New 15″ Macbook Pro. This one has an SD-card slot, and a battery that keeps the MBP running for 7 hours when fully charged.
The 13″ Macbook is now replaced by a 13″ Macbook Pro. This one also includes Firewire 800.
Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is going to be launched in September this year.
The iPhone OS 3.0 is going to be launched on the 17th of June. It’s a free upgrade for all iPhones, and costs $9,95 for the iPod Touch (both generations).
A new iPhone, called the iPhone 3G S, is going to be launched in the US on the 19th of June and on the 9th of August in 80 other countries. The new version has a faster CPU, better battery, 3.0 megapixel camera with auto focus, white balance, macro and video caputure at 30 FPS.
Safari 4. This one is now available for both Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows.

Microsoft Changes Live Search to “Bing”

Swansen — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:43:07 +0000

Bing, its Microsoft’s new effort to battle the giant Google. They have spent in the area of 90 million dollars on an ad campaign promoting Bing. Their goal here is not to go head to head with Ask, Yahoo, or Google, but to convince people of all of what they have been missing. Even though its Microsoft own data, they have figured that 42% of all searches are unsuccessful in the first query. Microsoft’s answer to this is their “related categories”, for example if your searching for a game, you might find prices, reviews, and other related information in the related category.

Oddly enough, i found it in ad-words above my inbox. Also not so sure of the “decision engine” slogan, to me it sounds like they are trying to take the searcher out of the equation, how ever that works. However, it does seem fairly interesting, and they are making the jump straight to the whole “media search”, where as Google right now has their different labs in which features like what Bing includes are offered. So, will Bing revolution internet searching and topple Google? who know, maybe, but more than likely not..

Optimized Kernels for Debian “Lenny”

Anti-Trend — Sun, 31 May 2009 08:22:08 +0000

Hardwareforums.com is now hosting architecturally-optimized Linux kernels! Currently we’re packaging custom kernels for Debian “Lenny”, which should also work with many Debian-derivative distributions of Linux. These kernels are based off of the latest stable source from kernel.org, and will be updated as frequently as schedules allow. There are some advantages to running a custom Linux kernel, but also some disadvantages which should be taken into account.

Advantages:

Optimized for extremely low-latency desktop usage. Also perfect for dedicated game servers.
Will behave responsively even under excessively heavy resource loads.
Ideal for applications that require near real-time responsiveness, such as gaming and multimedia work.
Built with CPU-specific optimizations to make the most of your hardware.
Supports SMP, multi-core CPUs and up to 64gb RAM on modern architectures.
More current kernels support more hardware and provide bugfixes which may not be present in distro-maintained kernels.
The depreciated OSS (Open Sound System) is entirely removed in favor of ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) and its reverse-compatibility with OSS.

Disadvantages:

Pre-packaged binaries of proprietary video drivers, etc which are built against the vendor-provided kernel will not work; they will need to be built and installed manually.

Pre-packaged binaries of proprietary video drivers, etc which are built against the vendor-provided kernel will not work; they will need to be built and installed manually.
Receiving support from official distributor-specific channels may be hindered by using an unsupported kernel.
The vanilla kernel source from kernel.org is newer and therefore not as well-tested as the distro-provided kernel.
Only 32-bit builds are provided (with 64-bit optimizations where applicable), since this currently makes the most sense for desktops.
This kernel enjoys no official support, nor even the suggestion of any warranty whatsoever. They are to be used strictly at one’s own risk, and are supported only at a friendly capacity here at hardwareforums.com

About The Kernel Configuration

The kernel configurations for Debian Lenny on Debian’s latest official kernel configurations, with some key modifications by myself. These changes center around architecture-specific optimizations, and pruning out some stuff that doesn’t apply in that context. For example, Intel-specific options don’t make sense for an AMD Athlon kernel and vise-versa. The timing settings were also changed from the default 250Hz to 1000Hz, and the schedulers set to be aggressively desktop-friendly. This will incur a very slight amount of overhead in the raw amount of potential CPU horsepower, but the payoff is a huge boost in responsiveness when multitasking or placing the system under a heavy CPU workload. This is especially noticeable in games, multimedia, and heavy multitasking environments, so I feel it’s well justified for a non-server environment. So fundamentally, the largest differences between the official configs and my own are the CPU-specific optimizations and the scheduler settings. Each respective kernel was also compiled with the highest known-safe CPU optimizations relative to each architecture.

CPU Architectures

centrino – Built specifically for the “Pentium M” processor, which is essentially a modernized P3. Use this if you have a Pentium M, Centrino, or Celeron-M that’s based on a pre-P4 architecture.
core2 – Newer Intel multi-core CPUs, including quad-cores, i7’s and recent Xeons.
i586 – Works with any CPUs at least as recent as the Pentium 1 MMX. This includes the AMD K6 family as well as any Slot 1 CPU. Optimizations for up to a Pentium 3 or equivalent CPU are included, but not required for this kernel to work on your system.
k7 – Any AMD Athlon, Duron, or 32-bit Sempron CPUs.
k8 – AMD64, 64FX, 64-bit-capable Sempron, Turion or Opteron CPUs.
p3 – Optimized for Katmai, Coppermine, Coppermine-T and Tualatin Pentium 3 processors.
p4 – Any Pentium 4 or P4-based Celeron CPUs. Optimizations for newer P4s such as the Prescott are also included, but not required for this kernel to work on your system.
phenom – Later AMD K10-based CPUs, such as Deneb, Heka, Agena, and Toliman.
prescott – Built specifically for Prescott or later Pentium4 CPU’s before the Core2, such as the Pentium-D.
x2 – Early multi-core AMD processors such as Manchester, Toledo, Windsor, Brisbane, and Kuma.

Downloads:

⇒ Should you decide our custom kernels are for you, they can be found here: HWF Custom Kernel Wiki

If you have any questions, problems or suggestions please feel free to post them here.

IBM has plans to purchase Sun Microsystems

RHochstenbach — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:22:12 +0000

IBM has plans to purchase Sun Microsystems, and is talking with them to make a deal. They are willing to pay at least $6.5 billion in cash to Sun, if the deal goed through. And that might even happen as early as this week.

Debian 5.0 (codename “Lenny”) Goes Gold

Anti-Trend — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:49:08 +0000

The Debian Project is pleased to announce the official release of Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed “Lenny”) after 22 months of constant development. Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system which supports a total of twelve processor architectures and includes the KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. It also features compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Debian GNU/Linux runs on computers ranging from palmtops and handheld systems to supercomputers, and on nearly everything in between. A total of twelve architectures are supported: Sun SPARC (sparc), HP Alpha (alpha), Motorola/IBM PowerPC (powerpc), Intel IA-32 (i386), IA-64 (ia64), HP PA-RISC (hppa), MIPS (mips, mipsel), ARM (arm, armel), IBM S/390 (s390), and AMD64 and Intel EM64T (amd64).

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” adds support for Marvell’s Orion platform which is used in many storage devices. Supported storage devices include the QNAP Turbo Station series, HP Media Vault mv2120, and Buffalo Kurobox Pro. Additionally, “Lenny” now supports several Netbooks, in particular the Eee PC by Asus. “Lenny” also contains the build tools for Emdebian which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit embedded ARM systems.

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” includes the new ARM EABI port, “armel”. This new port provides a more efficient use of both modern and future ARM processors. As a result, the old ARM port (arm) has now been deprecated.

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6, MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl 5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11, and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).

With the integration of X.Org 7.3 the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support for Adobe(R) Flash(R) format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced, such as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling. For leisure time several new games have been added, including puzzle games as well as first-person shooters. Also notable is the introduction of “goplay”, a graphical games browser offering filters, search, screenshots and descriptions for games in Debian.

The availability and updates of OpenJDK, GNU Java compiler, GNU Java bytecode interpreter, Classpath and other free versions of Sun’s Java technology, into Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 allow us to ship Java-based applications in Debian’s “main” repository.

Further improvements in system security include the installation of available security updates before the first reboot by the Debian Installer, the reduction of setuid root binaries and open ports in the standard installation, and the use of GCC hardening features in the builds of several security-critical packages. Various applications have specific improvements, too. PHP for example is now built with the Suhosin hardening patch.

For non-native English speaking users the package management systems now support translated package descriptions and will automatically show the description of a package in the native language of the user, if available.

Debian GNU/Linux can be installed from various installation media such as DVDs, CDs, USB sticks and floppies, or from the network. GNOME is the default desktop environment and is contained on the first CD. Other desktop environments - KDE, Xfce, or LXDE - can be installed through two new alternative CD images. Again available with Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 are multi-arch CDs and DVDs supporting installation of multiple architectures from a single disc; and this release adds Blu-ray Discs, allowing the archive for an entire architecture to be shipped on a single BD.

In addition to the regular installation media, Debian GNU/Linux can now also be directly used without prior installation. The special images used, known as live images, are available for CDs, USB sticks, and netboot setups. Initially, these are provided for the amd64 and i386 architectures only.

The installation process for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 has been improved in many ways: among many other improvements, support for installation from more than one CD or DVD has been restored, firmware required by some devices can be loaded by using removable media, and installations via Braille display are supported. The installer boot process has also received much attention: a graphical menu can be used to choose front-ends and desktop environments, and to select expert or rescue mode. The installation system for Debian GNU/Linux has now been translated to 63 languages.

Debian GNU/Linux can be downloaded right now via bittorrent (the recommended way), jigdo or HTTP; see Debian GNU/Linux on CDs [1] for further information. It will soon be available on DVD, CD-ROM and Blu-ray Disc from numerous vendors [2], too.

Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 from the previous release, Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (codenamed “Etch”) are automatically handled by the aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes [3] for possible issues, and for detailed instructions on installing and upgrading. The release notes will be further improved and translated to additional languages in the weeks after the release.

Dedication

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 “Lenny” is dedicated to Thiemo Seufer, a Debian Developer who died on December 26th, 2008 in a tragic car accident. Thiemo was involved in Debian in many ways. He has maintained several packages and was the main supporter of the Debian port to the MIPS architectures. He was also a member of our kernel team, as well as a member of the Debian Installer team. His contributions reached far beyond the Debian project. He also worked on the MIPS port of the Linux kernel, the MIPS emulation of qemu, and far too many smaller projects to be named here.

Thiemo’s work, commitment, broad technical knowledge and ability to share this with others will be missed. Thiemo’s contributions will not be forgotten. The high standards of his work make it hard to pick up.

About Debian

Debian GNU/Linux is a free operating system, developed by more than a thousand volunteers from all over the world who collaborate via the Internet. Debian’s dedication to Free Software, its non-profit nature, and its open development model make it unique among GNU/Linux distributions.

The Debian project’s key strengths are its volunteer base, its dedication to the Debian Social Contract, and its commitment to provide the best operating system possible. Debian 5.0 is another important step in that direction.

Google Android’s Lack of Multi-Touch

Swansen — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 21:31:45 +0000

Yes, and the reason comes out. One of the largest complaints with the G1, first phone based on Google’s Android platform, is that it doesn’t have multi-touch and Android is very multi-touch capable. Well, now there is a reason for the exclusion of the technology and simply put, Apple asked them to. Something many don’t realize is that Apple and Google are quite intertwined, google tailors a lot of its products to the Apple iPhone and Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is on Apple’s board of directors. As well, the Android team was quite happy to learn of the exclusion, via the legal battle that would more than likely ensue.

Right, so Apple obviously has a myriad of patents under its belt, but so does Google, and so does Palm. Palm??? yeah, Palm, they are in it pretty deep with Apple right now over the whole multi-touch ordeal and their new phone. After a little searching and reading, Apples patents really only seem to apply to one of the specific motions involved in the multi-touch interface. I’m sure at some point there will be an agreement, even more so because Intel is planning to use the Android platform in its upcoming netbook, and multi-touch will be a large part of the package, but i guess we’ll wait and see.