An Apple Computer patch released last week doesn't completely fix a high-profile Mac OS X flaw, leaving a toehold for cyberattacks, experts said. The update added a function called 'download validation' to the Safari Web browser, Apple Mail client and iChat instant messaging tool. "While Apple added a checkpoint to the downloading and execution process, they did not eliminate this vulnerability," said Kevin Long, an analyst at security specialist Cybertrust and a Mac user for 11 years. "If a user can be tricked into opening a file that looks like a picture, the user may actually be opening a malicious script."

Transitive's translation software will be used to let software from rival RISC processors run on Intel's Itanium and Xeon server processors. The partnership is designed to make it easier for customers to scrap competitors' gear in favor of Intel-based systems. "With this relationship with Intel, Intel is funding development and providing us access to engineers so we can accelerate the development of processor-operating system combinations," Transitive Chief Executive Bob Wiederhold said in an interview.

The results of the LinuxQuestions member's choice awards are in. The results: Ubuntu is the best distribution, OpenOffice.org the best office suite, GAIM the best instant messenger, KDE the best desktop environment (Run! Run! Duck! Duck!), Konqueror the best filemanager, etc. Do with the results as you please.

Kristian Hogsberg (Red Hat) has been hacking on Compiz and AIGLX to run them together and has managed to do it with impressive performance. "With a bit of hacking, I managed to get compiz (and glxcompmgr) running on aiglx. I'm running it on my i830 laptop, and the performance is actually quite impressive."

GNU Classpath 0.90 "A La Mort Subite" has been released. Some highlights of this release: JTables can be rearranged and resized. Free Swing text components support highlighting and clipboard. Much improved styled text. Fast event dispatching and lower memory consumption. Better support for mixing lightweight and heavyweight components in AWT containers. GNU Crypto and Jessie cryptographic algorithms have been added providing ssl3/tls1 and https support. Unicode 4.0.0 support. GIOP and RMI stub and tie source code tools. XML validaton support for RELAX NG and W3C XML schemas. New file backend for util.prefs. Updated gnu.regexp from POSIX to util.regex syntax.

"In response to the woefully misleading ZDnet article, 'Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes', the academic Mac OS X Security Challenge has been launched. The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it was given a local account on the machine (which could be accessed via ssh). The challenge is as follows: simply alter the web page on this machine, test.doit.wisc.edu. The machine is a Mac mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with Security Update 2006-001, has two local accounts, and has ssh and http open - a lot more than most Mac OS X machines will ever have open."

"It was recently annouced that desktop Linux's golden child, Ubuntu, may begin to offer Linspire's Click-N-Run service. This story which hit the internet just a few days ago is big news for the desktop Linux community. Ubuntu, which is the most popular Linux distribution (according to DistroWatch) has had a profound impact on the desktop operating system industry and any move it makes is going to be a critical one. Overall, feelings about this are understandably mixed."

Ars reviews the Mac Mini Core Solo, and concludes: "Because this machine maintains the same great form factor and adds a ton of new, standard features in addition to having substantially better performance with only a price increase of $100 on each model, I'm giving the Mac Mini Solo a score of 8. The integrated graphics issue is an issue to be sure, but the impacted population is so small and the cure so easily fixed, that I don't feel that knocking the score down any further is warranted. From nearly all other perspectives, this is a great entry level machine with a great footprint and the ability to utilize peripherals most people already have." On a related note, the new Mini's processor is upgradable.

Gaining root access to a Mac is 'easy pickings', according to an individual who won an OS X hacking challenge last month by gaining root control of a machine using an unpublished security vulnerability. On February 22, a Sweden-based Mac enthusiast set his Mac Mini as a server and invited hackers to break through the computer's security and gain root control, which would allow the attacker to take charge of the computer and delete files and folders or install applications. Within hours of going live, the 'rm-my-mac' competition was over. The challenger posted this message on his Web site: "This sucks. Six hours later this poor little Mac was owned and this page got defaced".

Did you know that there are three different C++ namespace types? Namespaces, which are simple to learn and apply, offer a clever means of packaging your code and can assist when symbol conflicts occur. And how well does your code handle exceptions? Inserting exception-handling code can make your code more ready for packaging as external functions. Stephen Morris contends that just as namespaces offer an efficient way to package code, the skillful use of exception handling can quickly simplify that code.

In .NET 1.0, the DataGrid control was the primary Windows Forms control for presenting tabular data. Even though that control had a lot of capability and could present basic tabular data well, it was fairly difficult to customize many aspects of the control. Additionally, the DataGrid control didn’t expose enough information to the programmer about the user interactions with the grid and changes occurring in the grid due to programmatic modifications of the data or formatting. Due to these factors and a large number of new features that customers requested, the Windows Client team at Microsoft decided to introduce a replacement control for the DataGrid in .NET 2.0. That new control, the DataGridView control, is the focus of this chapter.

This week saw the introduction of various new Apple products. Everybody has their own opinions on these new products, and websites all over the world saw enough discussions about the integrated video card of the Mini, the 'HiFi-ness' of the iPod HiFi, and more. Another issue, however, which got considerable less attention, was that of pricing. And no, I'm not talking about expensive-or-not (God, no). I'm talking about price differences between the US and Europe. And quite frankly, it's pissing me off. Note: This is this week's Sunday Eve Column.

PCMag reviews the MacBook Pro, and concludes: "For typical users running the iLife '06 suite, iTunes, and even nonuniversal applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe products, the Apple MacBook Pro is a solid notebook. It's a sweet upgrade from the PowerBook G4, and Windows users switching over will like it just the same. But for sophisticated media enthusiasts or professionals, we suggest you wait a couple of months, or at least until the software can catch up with the Intel components, before diving in." They did some benchmarks too (the MacBook Pro beats the PowerBook G4 in every area, at the cost of 7 minutes of battery life), and they made a slideshow with photos of the device.

"Tonight's People Behind KDE interview is with the author of the most active program in KDE, Krita. Not only has he made the premier free software painting application he has also added the vital vertical-maximise feature to KWin. Find out what the most inspirational thing is for a hacker fixing his bugs in our interview with Boudewijn Rempt."