News (99)

Windows 7 gets mixed reviews

As developers received their copies of Windows 7 on Tuesday in the US, they offered varied reactions to the Microsoft operating system update. Read more »

Mitnick cleared after customs scare

Since being released from prison eight years ago, Kevin Mitnick's brushes with the law have consisted of a few parking tickets and a citation for driving without a front license plate - that is, until he returned from a trip to Colombia two weeks ago. Read more »

Google open sources XML-alternative Protocol Buffers

XML, it seems, has run out of steam for Google. Google said Monday that it has created an open source project for a data interchange format called Protocol Buffers. Read more »

Google: Server efficiency needs new recipe

Chipmakers have been applying lessons learned in mobile computing to servers in an effort to increase efficiency by lowering power consumption. But a noted Google engineer threw some cold water on the approach on Monday, arguing the two styles of computing are too different. Read more »

ASUS to release desktop Eee PC with Linux

Asus has confirmed the existence of the Ebox, a desktop version of the popular Eee PC laptop. Like its notebook counterpart, will be available with either Windows or Linux. Read more »

Samsung unveils 'world's smallest' 256GB SSD drive

Samsung Electronics has unveiled a 256GB SSD solid state drive that is less than 10mm thick. Read more »

Microsoft DRM U-turn 'a betrayal'

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that Microsoft has "betrayed" MSN Music customers and wants the company to make things right by issuing an apology, refunds, and eliminate digital rights management technology from the Zune music player. Read more »

Canonical to launch Hardy Heron this week

Canonical plans to release Hardy Heron, its newest version of Ubuntu Linux on Thursday. Read more »

IBM's racetrack memory seeks 100x density boost

IBM researchers gave ZDNet.com.au's sister site CNET News.com an insight its latest "racetrack" memory, which IBM promises will bring a 100 fold increase in density — by storing data in long magnetised nanowires rather than disks. Read more »

Microsoft to extend life of XP for low-cost PCs

Microsoft has said it will only further extended the life of Windows XP Home Edition, and only for low-end computers that have no chance of running Vista. Read more »

Features (70)

10+ things you should know about rootkits

Malware-based rootkits fuel a multibillion dollar spyware industry by stealing individual or corporate financial information. If that weren't bad enough, rootkit-based botnets generate untold amounts of spam. Here's a look at what rootkits are and what to do about them. Read more »

10 ways to make Linux boot faster

On those infrequent occasions when you need to reboot Linux, you may find that the process takes longer than you'd like. This article gives you a number of tricks you can use to reduce boot times. Read more »

A Beginners Guide to Threading

The golden age for programmers is over. For a decade we have been able to get away with writing slow code, knowing that the hardware would pick up the slack. Not so any more, hardware developers have decided that software developers need to raise their game, and get ready for a generation of multi-core processors. Read more »

Amazon S3: For now at least, sometimes you have to reboot the cloud

Amazon.com's Simple Storage Service, S3, spent a few hours Sunday in a big pothole on the road to the glorious cloud computing future, with an outage taking the storage system offline for several hours Sunday. Should we be surprised? Read more »

Define disk quotas to keep users from hogging drive space

With massive hard drives, one might be tempted to think disk quotas a thing of the past. However, with larger capacity comes larger amounts of data, and in multi-user systems, one user can easily consume more drive space than they should, preventing other users from utilising storage space. Read more »

Interview: Simplifying Web app design

Following the Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, we interviewed Robert Hoekman Jr in an email on his presentation -- "Essential elements of great Web application design". Read more »

Process multimedia with the Java Media Framework API

The Java Media Framework (JMF) API allows developers to process media in many different ways. It deals with real-time multimedia presentations and effects processing. Read more »

Securely delete files with shred

Most users are familiar with the rm command. Most of the time, this command is sufficient for routine deletion, but for files that contain sensitive data, you might need to scrub them so that they cannot be recovered later with other data retrieval tools. Read more »

Fix Linux when it won't start

No OS is 100 percent foolproof. Eventually, even Linux may not boot one day when you want it to. Read more »

Enhance applications with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit

While the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions from Microsoft provides you with basic AJAX support, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit extends this support by offering more controls and by allowing you to create controls. Read more »

Blog (8)

Pirates rejoice!

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- This week's roundup brings news about Vista first service pack, PDF's standards push and a video of why the Web needs changing. Read more »

Apple shipping the Mark Webber of hard drives

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- The hard drives within Apple computers seem to pull mechnical failure and random incidents into play whenever you think things are fine -- just like our man in F1: M. Webber. Read more »

Hans Reiser trial gets under way

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- The murder trial of Hans Reiser, the 43-year-old Oakland, Calif.-computer programmer accused of killing his wife, is scheduled to begin Tuesday in what the San Francisco Chronicle predicts will be one of the most sensational local trials in recent memory. Read more »

Solving the network storage dilemma

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- I've had some friends and readers ask me the same question about what to do about the problem of storage in the home and how do you make it accessible to every computer or set-top box in the house on the internal network. Read more »

The return to the king

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Does the arrival of Web applications on the desktop warrant the death pronouncement of the desktop or is it just hot air? Read more »

Anti-social Web 2.0 to save your bacon

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Even if you don't buy into the whole "social" part of Web 2.0, it's still useful if you are an endemic procrastinator. Read more »

Debugging the manual #1

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- The most taxing part of solving most problems in IT is taking the effort to read the user manual and find the right documentation, right? Read more »

BitLocker experiences

[blogs:] -- With Windows Vista on the eventual Horizon, I've been working with the Betas and having a look at the security features. One of the ones I'm anticipating with great enthusiasm is Bitlocker. Bitlocker is a drive encryption system that actually encrypts the entire contents of a drive. Being the paranoid sort I am, I figured it would be a great thing to set up and use. Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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