Microsoft has delayed a special slimmed-down version of Windows XP for legacy PCs, which is based on the Windows Embedded code base. The Redmond company had expected to make the operating system available to Software Assurance customers this month, but now says Windows Fundamentals will ship 'in late 2006.' Windows Fundamentals can run on older machines that do not support XP while providing the same level of security.

In the newest of a series of moves to try to impart momentum to Intel's Itanium processor, allies backing the chip are funding work to improve a key programming tool. Some of the $10bn in five years that members of the Itanium Solutions Alliance are spending on Itanium market and technology development will go to Itanium-specific improvements to the GCC. The Gelato Federation, an organisation dedicated to boosting Linux on Itanium computers, is overseeing the work, the allies said this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

"Bid farewell to the PowerPC-based iMac G5, ladies and gentlemen. Apple has dropped the 20" model from its online stores in the UK, Europe and Japan, though the machine remains on sale in the US. Not for long though, we'd guess. Apple pulled the 17" iMac G5 early in February, almost a month after introducing the Intel-based models in January. By the end of February, the 15" PowerBook G4 was gone from the retail site, and early this month the PowerPC G4-based Mac Mini was dropped too." That leaves us only with the iBook and PowerMac machines still being PPC (ignoring the Xserve). Reports suggest that the Intel iBook will arrive early April, and that the PowerMac might get the Intel treatmentent as soon as Intel pushes out its Conroe line.

Mark Mitchell announced the availability of GCC 4.0.3. He explains, "this release is a bug-fix release for problems in GCC 4.0.2. GCC 4.0.3 contains changes to correct regressions from previous releases, but no new features." GCC 4.0.2 was released nearly 6 months ago in September of 2005. GCC 4.1.0 was released in early March of 2006.

The OS Group of Technische Universitaet Dresden (TUD:OS) has released a live demo CD of their custom operating system project. TUD:OS is a microkernel-based operating system targeted at secure and real-time systems. Some highlights of the demo CD include a new approach for securing graphical user interfaces called Nitpicker, multiple L4Linux kernels running at the same time on top of a custom L4 microkernel, a survey on the reuse of device drivers on the TUD:OS platform, native Qt-applications, the DOpE windowing system, games, and much more. More information is available at the demo CD website. And yes, boys and girls, there are screenshots, too.

"Ekiga is a SIP and H.323 compatible VoIP, IP Telephony, and Video Conferencing application that allows you to make audio and video calls to remote users with SIP or H.323 hardware and software. It supports all modern VoIP features for both SIP and H.323. Ekiga is the first Open Source application to support both H.323 and SIP, as well as audio and video. Ekiga was formerly known as GnomeMeeting. To get started: Download Ekiga for your distribution and get a free SIP-Address at ekiga.net."

Today, I decided to give Linux a try on my iBook. I've been wanting Linux on my iBook for a long time, but I've simply never had the time to do it. I ran the occasional PowerPC live CD, but live CD's are far cries from the real, installed thing. A second showstopper was that suspend never really worked-- and I cannot use my iBook without suspend. After trying out a new live CD yesterday, I found out that suspend on lid closure now worked mighty fine on Linux/PPC; hence, it was time to do the real thing. And oh how I was left surprised. Note: This is this week's Sunday Eve Column.

A major, critical bug and possible security threat has been discovered in Ubuntu Breezy. Apparently, the 'root' password (not actually the root password because Ubuntu uses sudo) gets written into the installer's log files in clear text, and can be read by any account on the Ubuntu machine. The bug was first discovered and reproduced on the Ubuntu forums. The bug does not seem to affect Dapper, however, users upgrading from Breezy to Dapper might still be at risk because the log files are not modified. Update: Bug is fixed. Please upgrade.

In this example, Randi J. Rost applies a brick pattern to an object. The brick pattern is calculated entirely within a fragment shader. This example consists of three essential components: the source code for the vertex shader, the source code for the fragment shader, and the application code that initializes and uses these shaders. It focuses on the vertex and fragment shaders.

With the support mechanisms in place and well-tested, Jeff Langr's poker game seems to have reached the point that developers like best: banging out the code. But even at this point, he's careful to focus on test-driving classes into existence. Read more at InformIT's article.

OSNews regular Kaiwai takes a superficial look at Vista and MacOS 10.4/10.5, and concludes: "To say that the changes in Windows Vista are only skin deep is missinformed to say the least; spend some time reading those sources I have listed, and even if you don't have a desire to run Windows Vista or particular interested in Windows based technology, it does provide some good resources explaining the changes and rationale behind those choices made. So from a purely technical point of view, Windows Vista is actually looking a whole lot more interesting than what the detractors have been saying in the computer press about the current direction."

"I started OpenBGP two years ago, after getting completely fed up with Zebra, which we were running before. There were lots of bugs, bad configuration language, performance problems, and since I don't speak Japanese - I had problems understanding the documentation. Zebra makes heavy use of cooperative threads, which leads to it's main problem: combined with the central event queue, Zebra can lose sessions while busy. Zebra successor, Quagga, caught up and apparently fixed many of the bugs. However, they still used the Zebra's design, which I think is wrong. So, the issues are kind of unfixable."

Lab rats at Microsoft Research and the University of Michigan have teamed up to create prototypes for virtual machine-based rootkits that significantly push the envelope for hiding malware and that can maintain control of a target operating system. The proof-of-concept rootkit, called SubVirt, exploits known security flaws and drops a VMM (virtual machine monitor) underneath a Windows or Linux installation. Once the target operating system is hoisted into a virtual machine, the rootkit becomes impossible to detect because its state cannot be accessed by security software running in the target system.

"The Cell chip isn't just for gaming - IBM is using it to power its next generation of blade servers, and we have the pictures to prove it. IBM has showed off a prototype blade server based on the Cell processor in action this week. The company demonstrated the Cell blade server running visualisation software to display real-time three-dimensional video footage of a beating heart at the CeBIT show in Hannover."