The device was first unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January and was supposed to hit the market in mid 2010. But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project.
[ Interesting: I've been preaching desktop-Windows and Intel x86 are not suited for tablets, smartbooks and smartphones for some months now. I've even called the JooJoo, WePad and Slate 'the Epic Fail of the decade'. Would I qualify as a TechAnalyst now? - hkwint ]
Linux offers an array of free VPN alternatives, which you can set up and test in just a few hours' time. If you are running a Linux-based router as the gateway between your LAN and the Internet, the task becomes even simpler…
Well, this certainly explains a whole lot. Both Apple and Microsoft have stated that the legality of Theora is highly debatable, and as it turns out, they knew more than we do – most likely courtesy of their close involvement with the MPEG-LA. Responding to an email from Free Software Foundation Europe activist Hugo Roy, Steve Jobs has stated that a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora. Update: Monty Montgomery of Xiph (Ogg and Theora’s parent organisation) has responded on Slashdot: “If Jobs’s email is genuine, this is a powerful public gaffe (‘All video codecs are covered by patents’). He’d be confirming MPEG’s assertion in plain language anyone can understand. It would only strengthen the pushback against software patents and add to Apple’s increasing PR mess. Macbooks and iPads may be pretty sweet, but creative individuals don’t really like to give their business to jackbooted thugs.”
On April 29, the University of Colorado held a conference on
patents and free software. Your editor, having spent the morning
getting some significant dental work done, figured that an afternoon
devoted to software patents would appropriately continue the day in the
same theme – only without the anesthetic. The following is not a
comprehensive report of the event; instead, it focuses on a few of the more
interesting moments.
Hugo Roy has posted an email said
to be from Steve Jobs on Ogg Theora: “All video codecs are
covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and
other ‘open source’ codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is
open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on
others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or
open source.“
Red Hat is the dominant vendor in the
Linux server space, while the second biggest
Linux distro, Novell SUSE
Linux, struggles financially and is an acquisition target.
Linux experts make the case in this column for multiple
Linux distributions in the future.
Via LWN: “Lennart Poettering has put up a lengthy post describing the ‘systemd’ project, which is creating a new init system. The whole thing is an interesting discussion of how system initialization should work. Upstart maintainer Scott James Remnant has posted a response to the announcement.”
This blog post details how the Gentoo Developers have added a “deblob” USE flag to remove any non-free code within the Linux Kernel. Its goal is to “remove binary blobs from kernel sources to provide libre license compliance”. While we’re at it, Kernel News has an in-depth look at Gentoo Linux.
Android developer Dianne Hackborn looks
at how Android does multitasking. “A common misunderstanding about Android multitasking is the difference between a process and an application. In Android these are not tightly coupled entities: applications may seem present to the user without an actual process currently running the app; multiple applications may share processes, or one application may make use of multiple processes depending on its needs; the process(es) of an application may be kept around by Android even when that application is not actively doing something.“
Fedora has updated F12: opendchub
(arbitrary code execution).
Mandriva has updated poppler
(multiple vulnerabilities).
Red Hat has updated java (multiple
vulnerabilities).
Ubuntu has updated netpbm (denial of
service).
