A new report from Symantec security researchers contends that Microsoft's much-awaited Vista operating system could harbor a range of vulnerabilities that will make it less secure than previous iterations of Windows. According to research published July 18 by Symantec, a number of Vista's software components, specifically a handful of protocols related to its redesigned networking technologies, could become security loopholes if Microsoft does not fix the problems or ensure that the product is configured appropriately to hide the glitches when it is shipped.

Will Woods, the new test lead for the Fedora Project, has only been in his position a few weeks, but already he has a clear goal in mind. Whenever Fedora is mentioned on Slashdot, he notes, "There's always someone who will comment that Fedora is just Red Hat's beta test for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. It's not true, and I want no one to have cause to say that ever again."

"The next-generation protocol, Internet Protocol version 6, is becoming widely accepted as the future of the Internet and networking world. This acceptance has encouraged various IT companies to develop applications that support and talk with each other through the IPv6 address format. In this article, learn to configure the File Transfer Protocol server for IPv6, and to communicate with FTP servers through a simple Java program that uses the IPv6 address."

Apple on Wednesday announced financial results for its fiscal 2006 third quarter ended July 1, 2006, posting revenue of USD 4.37 billion and a net quarterly profit of USD 472 million, or USD 0.54 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of USD 3.52 billion and a net profit of USD 320 million, or USD 0.37 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Apple shipped 1327000 Macintosh computers and 8111000 iPods during the quarter, representing 12 percent growth in Macs and 32 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

eWEEK Labs got a hold of Vista Build 5472 on July 18, loaded it up on a test machine and took a quick tour. eWEEK Labs' tests show a smooth upgrade from Windows XP and helpful new utilities, but the overhauled Windows Explorer still needs work.

"Canonical's Ubuntu 6.06 LTS is an excellent Linux-based operating system - so excellent, in fact, that it not only earned eWEEK Labs' Analyst's Choice designation but has also become our clear favorite among Linux desktop distributions. This latest Ubuntu release, which became available in June, has won our ardor with a tight focus on desktop usability; an extremely active, helpful and organized user community; and a software installation and management framework that's unsurpassed on any OS platform."

'Why Reiser4 is not merged' is a widespread question around forums, Slashdot, OSNews, and wherever else Linux-related new appears on the web. The flame-wars on this topic have gotten to the 'mine is bigger than yours' level. Hence, it's not easy to see where the real problem lies. This document tries to make clear the 'official' point of view of Linux developers on this matter.

"Right at this moment, big changes have or are about to occur in three well-known browsers: Internet Explorer is finally being updated, with version 7 in its third beta and almost ready to roll out the door; Firefox is also ripening an upgrade beta for its Version 2.0 - it's in beta 1; and finally Opera, which has a devoted but smaller following, has recently come out with Version 9.0. So, three new browsers in the same year, after no action for a half decade. How do they stack up?"

Intel launched its 'Montecito' Itanium, doubling performance compared with its predecessor. Each Montecito chip has two processor cores. Of the six Montecito models introduced, the top-end 9050 has 1.7 billion transistors and 24MB of high-speed cache memory. The models range in clock speed from 1.4GHz to 1.6GHz.

Object-oriented programming with imperative languages like C, C++ and Java has been the norm over the years. But some visionaries argue that other paradigms are more productive. In imperative languages, any method that can possibly return different values, given the same input, has side effects. This article explores the basics of functional programming using Haskell. You to can come to appreciate the raw productivity and power that a functional language can provide and how it eliminates programming side effects.

There is an update for the next Debian release plan. According to Marc Brockschmidt Etch will carry 4.0 as version number and should be released on December 4th, 2006. "Please note that as of now, RC bugs and problematic transitions are our main concern. There has been progress, but we still need to lower the number of release critical bugs further."

"Due to the recent media hype surrounding the new MacBooks and the lack of actual experimentation, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Since I work in the IT department of a factory that uses all Dell computers, I was able to borrow a brand new Dell Latitude D620 for a few hours. Also readily available to me was an Oakton InfraPro infrared thermometer and my very own MacBook. There has been a significant negative response to the amount of heat emitted from the MacBooks. Since I own a MacBook, why not put it to the test!"

SLED 10 is finally here, and so begins Novell's effort to get it onto as many business computers as possible. This event also comes shortly after the departure of Jack Messman as CEO, an event which has dramatically changed Novell's business strategy, especially as it relates to its SUSE Linux products. To find out more about SLED, its cousin SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and the company's plans for the future, I got in touch with senior Novell executive John Dragoon.

OpenOffice.org has been increasing in both popularity and visibility over the past several months. Version 2.0 has added a number of new features to bring it closer to feature parity with Microsoft Office, and it also offers full support for the Open Document format. However, a report just released by the French Ministry of Defense says that it still falls short of Microsoft's office suite in one important area: security.