Archive for the ‘Closed-Source’ Category

« Older Entries

Miracle of Miracles, Adobe Releases Preview of 64-bit Flash For Linux

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Can it be?  Is it really possible?  Adobe has finally put up with a 64-bit Flash player for Linux.  Admittedly, it’s still a preview release, but still it seems too good to be true.  It isn’t April Fool’s, is it?

The pre-release release was announced with a bit of, what I hope is, sarcasm:

We are pleased to announce that there is now a version of the Flash Player for Linux that supports 16 theoretical exabytes of physical memory. This technological feat is accomplished using a bleeding edge type of processor known as a 64-bit CPU.

I feel a bit sentimental about it all. It’s weird, but I think I’m going to miss the hundreds of comments on every post gently requesting a 64-bit version. So don’t be afraid to pop in with a “64-BIT NOW!!!1!!” comment every so often, you know, just for old time’s sake.

The alpha release of 64-bit Flash for Linux is now available for download at Adobe Labs, go and get it if you dare.

Adobe Penquin.SWF blog [via Slashdot]

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Software | No Comments »

Adobe releases Flash Player 10, still no 64-bit support

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Adobe has today released version 10 of their Flash Player. This new version comes with numerous improvements and is designed to compete with Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, thankfully which is yet to gain a significant foothold on web sites…

“We’re providing unprecedented creative control for developers and designers,” with Flash Player 10, Barclay said. In addition, he said the new release is available immediately on Windows, Mac and Linux, including new support for Ubuntu 7 and 8. “Linux is a first-class citizen for us,” he said.

It might be available for Linux, but Adobe still hasn’t managed to produce a 64-bit build. Seriously speaking, this is getting ridiculous… I guess we’ll be getting 64-bit Flash support at around the same time that Sun releases a 64-bit browser plug-in for Java…

Adobe Flash Player [via eWEEK]

Tags: ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Software | No Comments »

10 alternative operating systems

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Royal Pingdom has a post covering some of the more obscure operating systems out there.  On the list you’ll find SyllableOS, Haiku, AmigaOS 4.1, and seven others.  How big a role these niche OSes will play in tomorrow’s computing is debatable, but they are options for the chronically OS curious.

Royal Pingdom [via Tectonic]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Distributions, Free, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Follow up to the follow up: iPhone 3G, why to avoid.

Monday, August 11th, 2008

It seems that Apple may have thrown us another reason why to avoid the iPhone 3G. Apparently Apple may have included a kill switch in every iPhone that can remotely disable any application.  That’s right, AFTER you paid for it.

According to iPhone hacker Jonathan Zdziarski he has found a blacklisting system embedded in the iPhone 2.x firmware by Apple.

This suggests that the iPhone calls home once in a while to find out what applications it should turn off. At the moment, no apps have been blacklisted, but by all appearances, this has been added to disable applications that the user has already downloaded and paid for, if Apple so chooses to shut them down.

I discovered this doing a forensic examination of an iPhone 3G. It appears to be tucked away in a configuration file deep inside CoreLocation.

Not only does this make it possible for Apple to remotely disable any application it doesn’t like, it also opens up the issue of privacy.  Is Apple spying on it’s customers?

Engadget [via Slashdot]

UPDATE: Steve Jobs has confirmed [Wired] the kill switch:

“Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull” he told the Wall Street Journal.

I wonder if he would include such a “lever” on normal PC or Mac applications?

Tags: , ,
Posted in Analysis, Closed-Source, Software | No Comments »

Open Source vs. Proprietary Software, Part 1

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

The Intranet Journal has a conside article comparing open source and proprietary intranet software.  T It is set to be a three part series, and atleast this first part is general enough to be applicable to most OSS vs. non-free choices.

The article covers the pros and cons in terms of:

  • Freedom from “The Man”
  • Cost of ownership
  • Experienced support communities
  • Software customization
  • Product longevity

So if you need to convince someone to go with OSS instead of proprietary, take a look.

Intranet Journal

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Non-free, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

No (Australian) tax support for Mac or Linux yet

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has a program called e-Tax for filling tax returns electronically. This would be a good idea except that e-Tax was (apparently) written in VB6 and so can’t run on non-Windows machines.

While the ATO has plans to make the software available for other platforms, at the moment they recommend that customers “come into a Tax Office shopfront and use e-tax on a shopfront computer” if they wish to file electronically.

ZDNet

Tags: , ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Public Systems, Software | No Comments »

Top 10 Linux financial tools

Monday, June 30th, 2008

If you’re looking for financial tools to run on a Linux system, it’ll be worth your time to have a look at this article on TechRepublic.  Note that not all of the tools are open source.

  1. GnuCash (I personally use this)
  2. KMyMoney
  3. Moneydance
  4. Appgen MyBooks
  5. NolaPro
  6. Linux Business Accounting Systems BasicBooks
  7. Quasar Accounting
  8. SQL-Ledger
  9. Rapid Graphing Software for Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities
  10. Crossover Office

TechRepublic

Tags: ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Media Coverage, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Open Source Exchange Alternative

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Most folks who have used email in an enterprise environment will be familiar with Microsoft Exchange.  The most obvious dowsside of exchange (besides the cost) is that it only works on Microsoft Windows servers.

A solution to this conumdrum is might be to deploy OpenChange instead of MS Exchange.  What is OpenChange?  As the official site puts it “OpenChange aims to provide a portable Open Source implementation of Microsoft Exchange Server and Exchange protocols.”

OpenChange [via GCN]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

Nokia to open up Symbian

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Nokia announced to day that it is buying the remaining share of Symbian Limited that it doesn’t yet control for about 264 million euros.  Nokia plans to turn Symbian over to to a newly created Symbian Foundation.  Other members of the foundation include Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo.

The foundation is commited to moving Symbian to the open source realm within two years and plans to use the Eclipse Public License.

Press Releases:

[via Engadget]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Closed-Source, Open Source | No Comments »

Open Source Alternatives

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Want to replace Nero (or Office, or AIM, etc…) with an open source alternative, but don’t know sure what it would be?  Kasi Viswanath has a nice list of the most popular alternatives to proprietary software.  Or you could just Google for “open source alternative to x”…

Kasi Viswanath’s Blog

Tags:
Posted in Closed-Source, Open Source | No Comments »

« Older Entries

Bad Behavior has blocked 314 access attempts in the last 7 days.