Apple's security update train rumbled into the station late May 11 with fixes for a whopping 43 Mac OS X and QuickTime vulnerabilities. The company's Security Update 2006-003 patches 31 flaws in the Mac OS X, most of them serious enough to cause 'arbitrary code execution attacks'. Apple also shipped QuickTime 7.1 as a major security overhaul to correct 12 code execution and denial-of-service flaws.

"The US government has given its thumbs-up to Microsoft's search box plans for Vista, shrugging off concerns raised recently by Google. While criticizing Microsoft for its implementation of its existing antitrust accord, regulators appear satisfied with the software maker's plans for Windows Vista, including a new search box that is part of Internet Explorer 7." On a related note, "the Justice Department is seeking to extend the term of its landmark antitrust settlement with Microsoft by two years, blaming Microsoft's slowness in providing technical documentation to rivals."

SoftwareInReview, well, reviews FreeBSD 6.1, and concludes: "Overall I found FreeBSD 6.1 to be another step in the right direction, and I think it's encouraging that there weren't any revolutionary base system changes in this release. Sometimes big changes are unavoidable, but historically the FreeBSD team has bungled such leaps as the switch to the ULE scheduler, the introduction of SMP, and the liberation of the base system from the big giant lock. Sometimes you have to stop and make sure that what you presently have is working properly, and it looks like now is that time for FreeBSD. I applaud their efforts with 6.1 and look forward to testing 6.2."

"Macs 'just work' so often, and so well, that I'd rather just use my computer than spend all my time maintaining it. There are already scores of religious fanboy zealots who are going to tell you how great the Mac is, and why you should switch. I'm not going to. I'll let them convince you. But beware. Just because the Mac is an excellent computer, that doesn't mean it's panacea. Here are some things you're going to want to pay attention to as you switch."

The developers behind Word 12 have added a blogging feature to Word 12. They have promised that the blogging feature wil output clean, unmangled HTML: "That's right. No more verbose Word HTML. The goal for this feature is not pure fidelity, but the right fidelity for your blog."

"Programming a UNIX system can be fun as well as educational. With the UNIX strace tool and GDB, the GNU Project Debugger, you can really dig deep into the functionality of your system and learn a lot about the various programs that comprise it. Using both tools in concert can be a rewarding experience as you look under the hood of your UNIX machine." Note: Hey don't look at me, I just copied the title...

LinuxForums reviews SUSE 10.1, and concludes: "Everything worked perfectly and the system seemed to be very stable. The boot splash, the login managers, the installer and the desktops were customized with a unified SUSE look and feel that made them beautiful and very professional. The YaST installer in particular impressed me a lot, and I was amazed to see how SUSE succeeded in making a great desktop operating system, both with Gnome and KDE, offering a lot of software, a lot of options, a lot of configuration tools without making it hard at all for the user. This release also comes with great new applications such as Xgl, Xen and AppArmor. Everywhere I looked, I saw really nice things, great ideas and a beautiful presentation."

"SELinux, the US National Security Agency's implementation of mandatory access control, is the most prominent new security subsystem in Linux. It comes installed by default in Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and is available in easy-to-install packages in other distributions. This article shows you how to convert a non-SELinux system by hand in order to expose details about how SELinux is integrated into a system."

"You might not be familiar with messages, but they're extremely important, especially when you need to perform tasks outside of the range of tasks that Microsoft programmed into the .NET Framework. All communication in Windows relies on messages. This article reveals Windows messages to you, shows you how to capture messages that a .NET application doesn't normally capture, and demonstrates how to generate messages that .NET applications don't normally generate. In short, by the time you finish this article, you'll know about an entirely different world: the one that the .NET Framework hides from view."

Alcibiades' recent article hit some sensitive nerves. One of our readers wrote a retort, stating: "The reader will notice that this author glosses over two important issues in attacking the Mac community. One of these is that Windows, at least since 95, has always been notorious for its reliability and security issues. He does not mention the 'Blue Screen of Death' even once. He does not mention the fact that, to run Windows reliably, you need anti-virus software which costs extra (unless it came bundled with the machine), and uses extra system resources. He does not mention the continual updates, which as time goes on, detract from the performance of Windows - or even that the last fresh Windows OS was released as long ago as 2001."

Linux Format has an interview with Greg Mancusi-Ungaro, the director of Linux and OSS marketing at Novell. "It's been challenging for us to work with partners in a way that's rational, but we've decided that in the next generation of our enterprise products, GNOME will be the default desktop. But we will continue to ship and support KDE."

The microkernel vs. monolithic debate, whether you boys and girls like it or not, rages on. After Tanenbaum's article and an email from Torvalds, another kernel developer steps up, this time in favour of the muK. A developer of the muK-based Coyotos writes: "Ultimately, there are two compelling reasons to consider microkernels in high-robustness or high-security environments: there are several examples of microkernel-based systems that have succeeded in these applications because of the system structuring that microkernel-based designs demand, there are zero examples of high-robustness or high-security monolithic systems."

Plans for an area of the internet dedicated to pornography were killed last night in a vote by overseeing organisation ICANN. In a split 9-5 board decision, the organisation acted ruthlessly, against its own previous position, in order to put an end to an increasingly difficult and controversial issue - the approval of a .xxx top-level domain.

Ars reviews Aperture 1.1, and concludes: "I have to admit, I was very skeptical that Apple could whip together professional-quality RAW conversion for numerous camera models in a few months. Either they bought some existing technology we don't know about or there are some seriously overworked software engineers getting some much-needed sleep right about now. But who cares? The plain fact is that Aperture 1.1's high-quality RAW processing says "we can move quickly in areas where we've had little experience" and the discount/refund says "users won't be expected to beta test at their own expense again." Ars's review of Aperture 1.0 was quite negative.