"Windows Vista Beta 2 includes a new defense against buffer overrun exploits called address space layout randomization. Not only is it in Beta 2, it's on by default too. Now before I continue, I want to level set ASLR. It is not a panacea, it is not a replacement for insecure code, but when used in conjunction with other technologies, which I will explain shortly, it is a useful defense because it makes Windows systems look 'different' to malware, making automated attacks harder." On a related note, Microsoft is having difficulties in reaching parity between the 64bit and 32bit version of Vista concerning the amount of drivers shipped.

GNU-Darwin has gotten support for AMD's Opteron processors. "Mac OS X users are welcome to give free software a try now. I finally got a chance to try GNU-Darwin-1.1 on an Opteron machine with Darwin-7.2. Testing with glxgears confirms that the MesaGL is performing about twice as fast as on a comparable 32-bit CPU, although some other tasks are clearly not yet optimized. The machines are otherwise roughly identical. Here is a screenshot."

Sun dtrace developer Bryan Cantrill reports on the progress being made by John Birrel on porting dtrace to FreeBSD. "While John has quite a bit further to go before one could call it a complete port, what he has now is indisputably useful. If you run FreeBSD in production, you're going to want John's port as it stands today - and if you develop for the FreeBSD kernel (drivers or otherwise), you're going to need it (once you've done kernel development with DTrace, there's no going back)."

Dell and Google have struck a deal, Google's CEO confirmed on May 25. Speaking at an investor conference in Las Vegas, Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged that Dell and Google have reached an agreement. Schmidt provided few details of the agreement that earlier speculation had placed in the $1 billion range. So far a co-branded Web site is the most visible aspect of the collaboration, but the cracks that occurred in the Microsoft/Dell/Intel troika when Dell allowed AMD to come to its party, have now reached the earthquake stage.

Whichever BSD you use, the basics of package management are similar. Each member of the BSD family has a slightly different approach in this area, but all share common themes, as David Chisnall discusses in this article.

A gaping security flaw in the latest versions of Symantec's anti-virus software suite could put millions of users at risk of a debilitating worm attack, Internet security experts warned May 25. Researchers at eEye Digital Security, the company that discovered the flaw, said it could be exploited by remote hackers to take complete control of the target machine "without any user action".

From eWeek: "Symantec Corp. has admitted to using a rootkit-type feature in Norton SystemWorks that could provide the perfect hiding place for attackers to place malicious files on computers. The anti-virus vendor acknowledged that it was hiding a directory from Windows APIs as a feature to stop customers from accidentally deleting files but, prompted by warnings from security experts, the company shipped a SystemWorks update to eliminate the risk."

Remote Python Call (RPyC) is a python library providing transparent and symmetric IPC/RPC and distributed computing. It supports both synchronous and asynchronous operations. It works by giving you transparent control over a remote python interpreter: you can import remote modules, access remote classes, functions, and instances, just as you would do locally. Typical use cases are remote administration, distributed testing, resource sharing, and tunneling. Version 2.60 was released last week, adding supports for secure (TLS) connections.

Remember Yoper? Yoper is working towards version 3.0 of their Linux distro. For those of you that want to help with the beta testing, a download is now available. Yoper is optimized for i686 processors and speed. You can also find a short review of Yoper 3.0 beta over at Tuxmachines.

Some Friday fun: OSDir has some sweet screencaps of Ubuntu 6.06 RC, Kubuntu 6.06 RC, Xubuntu 6.06 RC, and Edubuntu 6.06 RC. Along with Fedora Core 5 and SuSE 10.1, this generation of desktop Linux distros has really stepped up the polish. Updated by AS: Added Xubuntu and Edubuntu links.

Google Labs has released Picasa for Linux, ported using Wine by CodeWeavers. The free Picasa download is available now. My Take: The software requirements are fairly hefty in that some features require cutting edge programs like HAL and a 2.6+ kernel, but this is fantastic news for Linux users. Picasa is an excellent program that rivals iPhoto. Update by AS : Google ported Picasa using Wine, but it was still a LOT of work and the result was completely effective. Please read more on the WineHQ mailing list. Update 2: You do not need Wine installed to run this - it's a self-contained Wine lib. Also, the Picasa download apparently doesn't work from all countries. Update by TH: Here's a review.

"The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Release Candidate for version 6.06 LTS of Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu - codenamed 'Dapper Drake'. The Release Candidate includes installable live Desktop CDs, server images, alternate text-mode installation CDs and an upgrade wizard for users of the current stable release."

"It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.5-RELEASE. Work done between the 5.4-RELEASE and this release has mostly been bugfixes. Some 'vendor supplied' software has also been updated, mostly due to security concerns (specifically BIND and sendmail). This is the last planned release on the 5-STABLE branch."

The numbers in the Unix market may be flat, but Hewlett-Packard sees a bright future for its HP-UX operating system. The company this fall will release HP-UX 11i v3 - the first major revamp of the OS in three years - with enhancements in its virtualization and automation capabilities, according to Don Jenkins, vice president of HP's Business Critical Servers unit.