Showing headlines posted by Scott_Ruecker

Clang, the C/Objective-C/C++ compiler front-end for the Low-Level Virtual Machine, and LLVM itself have a lot to be proud of lately. LLVM 2.7 was recently released with many new features, LLVM now has its own libstdc++ replacement, and LLVM is finding itself used in many places from a JIT engine in a Flash player to providing software acceleration in Gallium3D. The latest accomplishment for Clang is that the C++ library can now build the Boost libraries.

Microsoft held a "Citizenship Accelerator Summit" at its headquarters yesterday, bringing in executives (including CEO Steve Ballmer) and global nonprofit leaders to talk about how technology can tackle social challenges around the world -- citing, as Exhibit A, its own business and philanthropic partnerships in areas including the environment, energy, disaster relief, worker retraining and the fight against child pornography. Invited to sit in were reporters from national newspapers, magazines and wire services, as well as some influential university professors, social entrepreneurs and philanthropic bloggers. Complete with the obligatory Twitter hash tag, the event was an implicit (and at one point surprisingly explicit) attempt to spread the word about a different side of the Redmond software giant.

[MS showing a different side? Now I'm scared.. - Scott]

As I sat in the audience at Google's I|O conference Thursday morning, I watched Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra and others unveil Android 2.2 "Froyo," an ambitious upgrade to the company's mobile OS. Gundotra began the keynote by framing Android as a moral crusade against "a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice." In case anyone couldn't figure out who the man, company, device, and carrier were, he showed a slide that alluded to Apple's most famous commercial. Then, for the rest of the Android 2.2 announcement, Gundotra and others punctuated demos of impressive stuff -- such as dramatic speed boosts and Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities -- with asides about the iPhone and iPad that appeared to be intended to elicit snickers from the audience. Which they did.

The Linux-based Android version 2.2, dubbed Froyo (frozen yogurt), isn't even officially out yet and the blogosphere is abuzz with reports that the follow-up, Gingerbread, is due in the fourth quarter of this year. During Google's developer conference, Google I/O, the Internet giant yesterday rolled out a new royalty-free, open-source video/media format, labeled WebM, and Gingerbread is mentioned in what appears to be an inadvertent leak in the WebM FAQ.

Earlier this week we published benchmarks comparing Arch Linux and Ubuntu. There were only a few areas where the two Linux distributions actually performed differently with many of their core packages being similar, but one of the areas where the results were vastly different was with the OpenGL performance as Ubuntu uses Compiz by default (when a supported GPU driver is detected) where as Arch does not. This had surprised many within our forums so we decided to carry out a number of tests with different hardware and drivers to show off what the real performance cost is of running Compiz as a desktop compositing manager in different configurations.

Ever since the Web was spun there has been tension between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Generally, Hollywood has won. The passage of laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), and their strict enforcement not just by American cops but by foreign trade representatives, is well-known.

Ever since Google announced its purchase of video codec company On2 in August 2009, there's been an expectation that On2's VP8 codec would someday be open-sourced and promoted as a new, open option for HTML5 video. An open VP8 would offer comparable quality to H.264, but without the patent and royalty encumbrances that codec suffers. Last month, this speculation seemed confirmed, with inside sources claiming that Google would announce the open-sourcing of the VP8 codec this month at the company's I/O conference.

I am a Windows guy. I have always used Windows at home, work, school, everywhere with the exception of my phone (iPhone now Nexus One) and one Linux class at FIU. I have an A+ and MCTS in Windows Vista. Soon I will have my MCITP. I drink the kool-aid. But Linux saved me and the company I sub contract to, a large fast food giant, from near-total disaster. Last month McAfee posted a virus definition update that flagged SVCHOST.EXE as a virus. This is my story of what happened.

Ubuntu regularly claims to be the most popular Linux distribution. But, if so, Fedora is a competitive second. Both have thriving communities and are a major source of free and open source software innovation. Regularly, you can read on mailing lists of users having grown discontented with one and deciding to migrate to the other. In many users' minds, each is an alternative to the other. But how do the distributions really compare?

MeeGo is arguably the dark horse in the mobile platform race: it is new, unfinished, and unavailable on any currently-shipping product, but it is going after the same market as a number of more established platforms. MeeGo is interesting: it is a combined effort by two strong industry players which are trying, in the usual slow manner, to build a truly community-oriented development process. For the time being, though, important development decisions are still being made centrally. Recently, a significant decision has come to light: MeeGo will be based on the Btrfs file system by default.

If you remember my December Linux Journal column, I was excited about a particularly cool-looking submarine simulator, Danger from the Deep. This month, I'm proud to feature it.

Google has unveiled a new incarnation of Android: version 2.2, codenamed Froyo. And yes, it includes support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1. "It turns out that on the internet, people use Flash," Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said this morning as he unveiled the new Android at the company's annual developer conference in San Francisco. As he demoed Froyo - and hailed the continued expansion of the Android platform - Gundotra slipped in more than few sideways jabs at Steve Jobs and Apple.

KDE was recently at the second Ökumenischer Kirchentag (Ecumenical Church Day) from May 12-16 in Munich, Germany. Representing KDE were Frederik Gladhorn, Daniel Laidig, Eckhart Wörner and Irina Rempt. They (wo)manned a booth among hundreds of other projects presenting aspects of life, the universe and everything, mostly from various Christian perspectives. The KDE community in general is of course secular (and should be), but our philosophy that software is primarily for people and should be freely shared fits admirably well with such an event. Thomas Jensch and (for one day) Daniel Weuthen of FSFE made it a successful joint enterprise.

During the opening keynote at the Google I/O conference this morning in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled new Web technologies and reaffirmed its commitment to open standards. Vic Gundotra, Google's VP of engineering, started the keynote by highlighting the waning relevance of desktop applications and discussing the significance of software's ascent into the cloud. The most important applications today are Web apps, he said. Although the Web has transformed the way that software is developed, deployed, and consumed, it has introduced new challenges that have to be overcome before it can fulfill its potential. The Web is growing up, Gundotra remarked, but the diverse ecosystem of Internet stakeholders must work together to ensure that it continues to advance.

The talk of the town is that the next version of Kubuntu (10.10, codenamed Maverick Meerkat) will have a new default browser, replacing Konqueror, the longtime KDE favorite. The replacement browser may very well be Rekonq, a browser that could be viewed as a next-generation approach to Konqueror.

Android has overtaken Windows Mobile and Linux for fourth place in smartphone OS market share with 9.6 percent, says Gartner. The worldwide study of first quarter smartphone sales showed a 707 per cent year-on-year increase in Android sales in North America, while the total smartphone market saw its largest year-on-year increase since 2006, says the research firm.

During a conference call HP chief executive Mark Hurd told the Wall Street Journal that HP plans to extend Palm's webOS not only to smartphones and tablets but to other devices, including web-enabled printers. "We expect to leverage webOS in a variety of form factors, including slate computer and Web-connected printers," Hurd said.

From today, users will be able to download and install free software to play and encode the new WebM format. WebM is based on the Matroska container format - replacing Ogg - and the VP8 video codec which replaces Theora. Crucially, the Vorbis audio codec is part of the new WebM specification.

Adobe has rolled out an HTML5 development kit and announced that Flash will use Google's freshly open sourced VP8 video codec. The company wants you to know that despite its tussle with Steve Jobs, it very much believes in web standards. Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch unveiled the new HTML5 Pack - an extension to Adobe's existing HTML editing kit, Dreamweaver CS5 - at Google's annual developer conference this morning in San Francisco. The extension arrives just three weeks after release of Dreamweaver CS5.

The nice folks at ZaReason, the independent Linux OEM computer vendor, sent me their Teo tough netbook to review. Is the Teo really tough? It is usable like a real computer? Or just a toy with a funny name?