"Is Fedora for its users, or is Fedora for Red Hat? That is, is Fedora a distribution that people should run and to which people should contribute, or is it really, as detractors have often claimed, simply a playground for new ideas on their way to Red Hat Enterprise Linux?"

Coming Monday, 'His Steveness' will once again hold a keynote, at WWDC 2006, in which he at least will talk about Mac OS 10.5, Leopard. Rumours abound: virtual desktops, .Mac file syncing. iChat Mobile. Improved Spotlight, Safari 3.0. Xeon-based Xserves, Mac Pro, and more. For me, it means ten Firefox windows open with live-text streams, spread out over three monitors. Also fun.

Firefox 1.5.0.6 is a stability update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version. Fixed an issue with playing Windows Media content.

"Two weeks ago Microsoft and XenSource announced an agreement to grant interoperability of virtual machines on upcoming Windows Server Virtualization and XenEnterprise virtualization platforms. The move raised the attention of the whole IT world, involving license, support, security, and performance issues. Virtualization.info interviewed both companies to understand the details of the agreement and shed light on what customers can expect from the Microsoft hypervisor release."

The KDE team announced a new project to re-synchronize our HTML engine, KHTML, with the WebKit engine. Code named Unity, the project has so far focused on porting the WebKit engine to Qt 4 with minimal changes to the existing code-base. WebKit is a derivative of the KHTML engine by Apple.

Intel has issued patches for flaws in its Centrino device drivers and ProSet management software that affect the security of the wireless products. One could allow an attacker to break into a PC via Wi-Fi or even create a worm that jumps from one wireless-enabled laptop to another, provided the computers are within each other's range. Another security hole makes the system vulnerable to attacks that let a malicious user gain additional privileges.

With beta testing underway for Windows Service 2003 Service Pack 2, which also is designed for Windows XP x64 edition, Microsoft is providing a bit more details about the impending upgrade. Window Server program manager Ward Ralston says SP2 will be much less painful than SP1.

"Following on the heels of the Firefox 2.0 beta in mid-July, Mozilla has released the first 2.0 previews of its Thunderbird email client. Firefox may get most of the attention, thanks to its flashier job, but it is the trusty email reader that conducts most of the killer-app conversations on a daily basis. Let's see what the new build holds in store."

Microsoft will focus on rapid acquisitions to quickly build its security capability, the company said this week. Recent acquisitions such as Winternals and virtual private network specialist Whale will help Microsoft build a comprehensive range of integrated services that cover every aspect of security, according to Gopal Kutwaroo, Microsoft's UK security product manager.

Apple issued on Tuesday updates for its Mac OS X operating system to fix 26 security flaws, some serious. Several of the vulnerabilities affect the way in which Mac OS X handles images and the file-sharing capabilities of the software, according to an Apple security advisory. Other flaws were found and fixed within components such as Fetchmail, file compression features, and DHCP networking functionality, Apple said.

DesktopLinux.com reviews the Freespire release candidate, and concludes: "In short, I found it to be a fine Windows replacement desktop for home users. Without better network support, however, I still must recommend Xandros for business users who want a Windows-like experience, and SLED 10 for Linux friendly or heavy-duty office users."

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.4, a maintenance release. Significant enhancements include improved support for removable devices. Multiple holidays can now start on the same date in KOrganizer. Lots of fixes have been applied to Konqueror's HTML engine, KHTML. The dialog for sending client-side SSL certificates is now more usable, the StartCom SSL certificate was added and KNetworkConf now supports Fedora Core 5 and handles WEP better.

Any computer gaming enthusiast has probably seen his fair share of gaming benchmarks in the past, but how accurate are benchmarks determined by recorded playbacks? ExtremeTech's Jason Cross built both Intel and AMD-based systems and recorded performance based on actual gameplay of six popular gaming titles, using FRAPS to measure performance. High-end systems from Intel and AMD, in this case the Core 2 Duo and Athlon 64 X2 5000+, delivered superb performance, although Intel's newest architecture takes the cake across the board.

"As Ruby experiences increasing success, developers are seeking to integrate their Ruby applications with applications written in other languages. Rails provides excellent support for Web services. This article introduces Web services in Rails and focuses on a strategy known as Representational State Transfer."