", we reported on a Trojan horse for Mac OS X that is just like the entry for Earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in that it is mostly harmless. A new vulnerability targeted at Apple's home-grown web browser, Safari, is another matter entirely. A German security firm appears to have been the first to discover the Safari flaw, which allows for shell scripts to be executed after clicking a link."

A new version of RISC OS 5 is today available via Castle's Internet based update distribution software. RISC OS 5.11 contains bug fixes to the Iyonix's ethernet networking driver, EtherK, to address a fault with stalling connections - as seen occasionally in ShareFS. The USB stack has been tweaked to support USB radio projects and similar software. The RISC OS Flash ROM image was also built using optimisations included in the latest publically available version of the Norcroft C/C++ compiler, as sold by Castle. RISC OS 5.11 is a stable release, unlike its earlier cousin 5.10, which saw the introduction of improved Nvidia card handling during the start up of the computer.

Scientists at IBM say they have figured out how to produce smaller and more powerful microchips than previously thought possible. It is hoped IBM's announcement at San Jose on Monday will mean the creation of miniscule microprocessors which will save the IT manufacturing sector billions of dollars. The breakthrough revolves around the distance between the circuit-lines chip makers must 'draw' onto the surface of a computer processor. IBM scientists declared they can now draw lines on silicon much closer together than ever before.

"We reported a few days ago that we had Linux booting on the Intel-based Macintosh. We have been looking at Linux on this hardware some more, and we are glad to report that we now have a full-fledged Knoppix distribution working, complete with the X Window system. We are releasing the first pictures of Knoppix 4.0 running on a 17-inch iMac Core Duo. The X Window system is shown running at full resolution (rather, fuller resolution - 1472x900 - notice that the bottom right edge of the KDE dock is cut off). Most (but not all) aspects of the hardware seem to work, but we have yet to analyse exactly what doesn't work and assess how much work it might take to get such things working."

"Most computer users today are familar with the Portable Document Format that was created by Adobe, and which has been an integral part of Mac OS X from the start. What makes PDF so successful is that it is a proven technology, the specification is public and platform-independent, and PDF files can be both compact and secure. In short, PDF has become a de facto standard in the world because it makes it easy for users to create, distribute, and view documents. This article provides an overview of developing with PDF Kit and the benefits it provides, and helps you get started as quickly as possible."

"The Fedora Project announces the third release of the Fedora Core 5 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and PPC/PPC64 architectures. Beware that Test releases are recommended only for Linux experts/enthusiasts or for technology evaluation, as many parts are likely to be broken and the rate of change is rapid." The final release is planned for March 15th. Release notes will be uploaded soon, and download locations are listed in the release announcement.

"The introduction of new object-oriented programming features in PHP V5 has significantly raised the level of functionality in this programming language. Not only can you have private, protected, and public member variables and functions - just as you would in the Java, C++, or C# programming languages - but you can also create objects that bend at runtime, creating new methods and member variables on the fly. You can't do that with the Java, C++, or C# languages. This kind of functionality makes super-rapid application development systems, such as Ruby on Rails, possible."

According to a benchmark, Sun's Niagara processor is over 4 times faster at serving dynamic PHP pages than a dual Xeon server. "We did real production benchmarks using different servers. Servers were put into production behind load-balancers, then weights on load-balancers were changed so we got highest number of dynamic PHP requests per second. It must sustain that number of requests for some time and no drops or request queue were allowed. With static requests numbers for Opteron and T2000 were even better but we are mostly interested in dynamic pages."

Updated: Fedora was right in the middle of announcing all this properly, so here is the updated item containing the official names. Videos included, as well as the inevitable 'Why not Xgl?'. "AIGLX is a project that aims to enable GL-accelerated effects on a standard desktop. We have a lightly modified X server (that includes a couple of extensions), an updated Mesa package that adds some new protocol support and a version of metacity with a composite manager. The end result is that you can use GL effects on your desktop with very few changes, the ability to turn it on and off at will, and you don't have to replace your X server in the process." This is part of Fedora's Rendering Project, and instructions on how to install all this are available too.

"The IEEE and The Open Group have granted permission to the NetBSD Foundation to incorporate more than 1400 interfaces from the joint IEEE 1003.1 POSIX standard and The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6 into its NetBSD operating system. This step benefits developers in the NetBSD Project and software engineers using NetBSD as their target platform. NetBSD developers can now use standard documentation to express that a NetBSD operating system conforms to the POSIX standard. The step also gives engineers who write software to run on NetBSD a better understanding of how to create portable programs using IEEE 1003.1."