g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Way back in January 2007, after years of hype and anticipation, Microsoft unveiled Windows Vista to a decidedly lukewarm reception by the PC community, IT pros, and tech journalists alike. Instead of a revolutionary next-generation OS that was chock-full of new features, the Windows community got an underwhelming rehash with very little going for it. Oh, and Vista was plagued with performance and incompatibility problems to boot.

Since then, the PC community has taken the idea that Vista is underwhelming and turned it into a mantra. We’ve all heard about Vista’s poor network transfer speeds, low frame rates in games, and driver issues—shoot, we’ve experienced the problems ourselves. But over the last 18 months, Vista has undergone myriad changes, including the release of Service Pack 1, making the OS worth a second look. It’s time we determine once and for all whether we should stick with XP for the next 18 months while we wait for Windows 7. But before we answer that question, let’s review exactly what’s wrong with Windows Vista.

Read the article here: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/shattered_dreams_and_broken_pr...

Question? How do you take the Cell Broadband Engine™ (Cell/B.E.) processor from an off-the-shelf Sony® PLAYSTATION® 3 (PS3) and use it to construct a piece of Linux®-based laboratory equipment (in essence, taking the Cell/B.E. from fab to hab to lab)? In this series, Lewin Edwards shows you how to go from game console to simple audio-bandwidth spectrum analyzer and function generator. First up, uncover the design intent of the project and then make a close inspection of the details of the user interface implementation as you start a journey to generate and analyze signals on the Cell/B.E. processor.

Find the answer here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-ps3lab1

Next year's 10.6 reference release of Mac OS X promises to deliver technology updates throughout the system without focusing on the customer-facing marketing features that typically sell a new operating system. Here's a look at what those behind-the-scenes enhancements will mean to you, starting with new 64-bit support.

The move toward 64-bit computing is often generalized behind the assumption that "more bits must be better," but that's not always true. In some cases, expanding support for more bits of memory addressing only results in requiring more RAM and computing overhead to do the same thing. However, Apple's progressive expansion of 64-bit support in Snow Leopard will bring performance enhancements across the board for users of new 64-bit Intel Macs. Here's a look at why, along with how it is that every version of Mac OS X since Tiger has advertised "64-bit support" as a key feature.

Read more at: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/26/road_to_mac_os_x_10_6_snow...

Although Apple is marketing Mac OS X Snow Leopard as an operating system update with "no new features," under the hood improvements will actually translate into a slew of new enhancements, five of which are described herein.

Citing sources, RoughlyDrafted is offering of an overview of some of the big new features that are due to make an impact when Snow Leopard drops next Spring. Among them are previously disclosed or well known additions such as SproutCore, the LLVM Compiler, the CUPS printing engine, native exchange support in Mail (as well as iCal and Address Book), and self-contained Web apps.

Finally, a modern file system on a consumer OS
As if Grand Central weren’t enough bad news for Microsoft, now they have ZFS to contend with. Building a reliable, high-performance file system takes years and Microsoft doesn’t have years to respond.

The formal announcement is for Snow Leopard server, which is how Apple introduces new file systems. HFS+ first arrived on a server version as well.

Who cares?
Anyone who stores data should.

Microsoft’s NTFS is 20 year old technology borrowed from DEC. Fine for small disks and puny CPUs. Not so great for today’s data intensive systems and applications.

Silent data corruption is common - only you don’t know it - because the corruption shows up as other problems, like missing DLLs.

IBM and Toshiba are looking toward the next generation of RAM. They want it to be faster, of course, but they're also hoping to score two of the biggest unobtained prizes in RAM:

1. Instant Boot
2. Unpowered Storage

Instant boots save energy in several indirect ways. It promotes powering down computers at night, as the powering up becomes less inconvenient. Unpowered storage decreases power use dramatically because the RAM can continue to hold data without having to constantly pull from the power supply. Toshiba estimates that the MRAM will use about 10% less energy per megabyte than today's RAM.

Unfortunately, MRAM currently has problems operating at a wide variety of temperatures. The inside of a computer has a pretty wide temperature range. Toshiba says that they have overcome this problem, and they expect MRAM to take over the market by 2015.

Google unveiled the software for its much-anticipated new phone last week, and it's loaded with fun features, including an unlocking tool that allows users to create a secret shape that must be drawn on the screen.

The phone will, naturally, feature the Google Web browser, Google Mail and Google Maps. The Street View feature, similar to what you can get on your desktop with Google Maps, will turn in The same direction as the person holding the phone.

The phone will also include a compass, magnifying tool and a version of the game Pac-Man. Its touch-screen technology will be similar to that of an Apple iPhone, but it will also be able to work with a tracking ball.

Google is not making the phones, just working to develop the Android operating system that manufacturers will install. Companies such as Samsung and Motorola have said they will make phones that run on Android.

Public Universities are always running on a limited budget which means they sometimes come up with “innovative” solutions. A couple of years back, an X-Box with some variant of Linux installed had been put in the server room to support a subject designed to teach computer-illiterate Philosophy students how to build their own web pages. This unorthodox platform was chosen because one of the techs was a Linux enthusiast and had convinced “the powers that be” that a cheap web server solution for this subject could be implemented using an X-Box rather than a standard PC or server. Grateful to save money where they could, the project was approved.

Several years later and most of the staff in the department had moved on to bigger and better things. There was a new manager and a brand new set of helpdesk techs. The department’s Unix administrator was one of the few people left who knew what the X-Box was used for. Each year before the second semester class began he powered up the X-Box and updated its software. Few of the other staff ventured into the server room so there was little reason to wonder why an X-Box was sitting on the rack.

Ulteo unveiled their Virtual Desktop (screenshots, download) which is a free, full Linux desktop that runs seamlessly on Windows. It's interesting because it's not running under Xen or VMWare, but instead uses the coLinux patch, which they claim allows the system to achieve 'great performance, close to a native installation on the PC.' No need to reboot the system anymore to switch from Windows to Linux.

Windows developers are confirming the results of a survey released yesterday that found fewer than 1 in 12 programmers currently writing applications targeting Windows Vista.

"None of our customers are saying, 'G******it, we need those WPF controls now!'" said Julian Bucknall, CTO for Windows programming tools maker Developer Express Inc. , referring to one of Vista's most highly-touted features, its new graphical subsystem, Windows Presentation Foundation . Rather, "we find most are still sticking with ASP.Net and Windows Forms applications."