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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 46 declined, 14 accepted (60 total, 23.33% accepted)

Android

Submission + - Microsoft's worst nightmare or feature limited toy? (pcworld.com)

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "A company that makes keyboard docks has announced a laptop-like peripheral that uses smartphones for processing and storage.

Since many Android and Apple phones have multi-core processors powerful enough to deliver laptop-level performance, they only lack usable screens and keyboards to be productive for most office work.

ClamCase believes their 13.3-inch 1,280 x 720 ClamBook with keyboard, multi-touch touchpad, and dedicated Android keys will make up for the lack, and turn smartphones into fully-functional laptops.

A device like the Clambook could be a real game-changer for the computer industry. If it succeeds, peripheral makers could build docks which would allow any monitor, keyboard, mouse and storage to be powered by any Android phone. It's a combination which would make BYOD offices very tempting for the corporations who are the Windows/Office combination's remaining cash-cow."
Android

Submission + - Android ICS will require 16GB RAM to compile (tabletroms.com)

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "New smartphones may be lightweight, compact objects, but their OSs are anything but.

Ice Cream Sandwich will need workstations with no less than 16 GB RAM to build the source code, twice the amount GingerBread needed. It will take 5 hours to compile on a dual quad-core 2+GHz workstation, and need 80GB disk space for all AOSP configs.

Android developers are also being warned to be cautious of undocumented APIs

In almost every case, there’s only one reason for leaving APIs undocumented: We’re not sure that what we have now is the best solution, and we think we might have to improve it, and we’re not prepared to make those commitments to testing and preservation.
We’re not claiming that they’re “Private” or “Secret” — How could they be, when anyone in the world can discover them? We’re also not claiming they’re forbidden: If you use them, your code will compile and probably run.

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/10/ics-and-non-public-apis.html"

Patents

Submission + - Followup: CSIRO reinvests patent earnings. (theage.com.au)

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "Will all the Slashdotters who called the recent CSIRO win a triumph for patent trolls please step forward.

The Australian government research agency has announced it will reinvest the windfall back into wireless research.

"It's very important that when you have a success like this, you re-invest it back into the wellspring," CSIRO boss Megan Clark said."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's GPL code because of breach. (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "While Microsoft presented its recent embrace of the GPL as "a break from the ordinary", and the press spoke of them as going "to great lengths to engage the open source community", as is often the case with Microsoft, it turns out they had an ulterior motive.

According to Stephen Hemminger, an engineer with Vyatta, Microsoft's Hyper-V used open-source components in a network driver and the company released the code to avoid legal action over a GPL violation.

Microsoft's decision to embrace the GPL was welcomed by many in the open source community, but their failure to honestly explain the reason behind the release will have squandered this opportunity to build trust, something which is sadly lacking in most people's dealings with Microsoft."
Microsoft

Submission + - Dell helps Microsoft: Vista to XP upgrade now $150 (pcworld.com)

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "Dell has tripled the charge to upgrade Vista PCs to XP.

Under current licensing "downgrade" agreements, system builders can install XP Pro instead of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, however Dell has opted for a surcharge of $150 over the price of Vista for the older but more popular XP Professional operating system.

Rob Enderle says the downgrade fees could potentially be disastrous for Microsoft;

The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," says Enderle. "Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop.

"
Operating Systems

Submission + - Windows drops below 90% market share. (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "Online market share of the dominant Windows operating system has taken its biggest monthly fall in years to drop below 90% market share, according to Net Applications Inc.

Computerworld reports that Microsoft's flagship product has been steadily losing ground to Mac OS X and Linux, and is at its lowest ebb in the market since 1995. The stats show that while some customers are "upgrading" from XP to Vista, many are jumping ship to Apple, while Linux is also steadily gaining ground.

Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing, Vince Vizzaccarro, suggests the slide may be caused by many of the same factors that caused the fall in Internet Explorer use; "The more home users who are online, using Macs and Firefox and Safari, the more those shares go up," he said. November has more weekend days, as well Thanksgiving in the U.S, a result which emphasises the importance of corporate sales to Microsoft Inc."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows XP SP3 creates havoc. (informationweek.com) 2

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "tech sites say "Beware of XP SP3".

According to Information Week, Microsoft's Service Pack 3 for Windows XP has drawn hundreds of complaints from users who claim the update is wreaking havoc on their computers.

I downloaded and installed [the SP3] package for IT Professionals and Developers on one of my computers. Now I can't get the computer to boot. I don't think Microsoft should have made this a critical update,"
said one user a Microsoft newsgroup.

Other sites, including IT Wire are also reporting problems, which include include random reboots or the inability to boot at all."
Input Devices

Submission + - Apple Patents Pinching.

Submitted by
ozmanjusri
ozmanjusri writes: "Wired is reporting that Apple is trying to gain control of multitouch gestures by patenting the motions used to control devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

While multitouch devices have been demonstrated by other companies, including Microsoft, Apple's gadgets are the first mainstream devices to use the technology. Apple have applied for more than 200 patents relating to the compact devices, many for the multitouch screens. They also acquired multitouch patents by taking over a company called FingerWorks.

Synaptics, supplier of most laptop touchpads, has developed a set of getstures they hope will be adopted across all multitouch devices, but if Apple's patents succeed, users may have to learn different gestures for every multitouch device.

"My guess would be that 80 to 90 percent of consumer notebooks will have these new multigestures by the end of the year,"
says Mark Vena, vice president of Synaptics' PC business unit.

There's no doubt a unified set of gestures would be the best option moving forward, but the Apple patents look like fragmenting the fledgling interface before it can be truly established."
Data Storage

Submission + - Live Drive vs GDrive vs Pen Drive

Submitted by
ozmanjusri writes: At a blogger's breakfast prior to the opening of Tech.Ed in Sydney, Microsoft Australia technical specialist John Hodgson has confirmed that Microsoft will introduce its LiveDrive online storage system which can be mapped directly as a Vista drive. Zdnet Australia The service will offer 2GB of space free, with additional capacity available at a cost.

Earlier this year, rumours surfaced regarding a similar scheme from Google, the GDrive Ars Technica. There are already hacks to do this with GMail, but Google's goal with GDrive appears to be infinite storage, accessible from anywhere.

Meanwhile, the price of portable USB flash drives has been falling to the point where 2GB drives are cheap enough for every day storage purposes.

Is this the start of a new era of (nearly) free online storage, thin clients and OS independent services? Will data storage which is tightly integrated to the OS be more attractive to the average user, or will we prefer to have our information stored on a physical media we can put in our pockets?

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