The Free Operating System Zoo provides ready-to-run disk images of free operating systems for use in the qemu processor emulator. Numerous Linux distributions, *BSDs, Darwin, Plan 9, and others are available. Nice for new users who want to try out other operating systems without installing them.

"I put up my review for iWeb, the newest part of iLife from Apple Computers. My enitre personal page was designed with iWeb and a few royalty free images I found scattered around the web to give it an atmosphere that I haven't been able to create before on my own. To be honest, I'm not big on web developing, so for anyone who wants to just build a small homepage, this is for you."

"There has been a lot of talk about possible tainted code in ReactOS and or developers that had access to leaked Microsoft source code. This has caused a lot of speculation about the future of the ReactOS Project. I'm going to try to put those fears to rest and explain what has been going on and where we are going to go from here. There was one issue that started this discussion and it related to clean-room reverse engineering of certain code in ReactOS."

Advanced Micro Devices is working to ensure that no platform change will be required to move from its next-generation dual-core processors to quad-core processors. When AMD rolls out dual-core processors with built-in virtualization hooks midyear, the company also aims to show that quad-core processors can also run on the same socket on that platform, said Marty Seyer, senior vice president of AMD's Commercial Business and Performance Computing, Microprocessor Solutions Sector unit.

Intel's forthcoming 'Montecito' member of the Itanium processor family will consume 100 watts, a significant drop from the 130 watts of current models and an advantage in an era when power consumption is a top enemy. Intel spokesman Scott McLaughlin confirmed the figure at an Itanium Solutions Alliance meeting here. The change means Itanium will have about 2.5 times the performance per watt of the current Itanium 2 9M model.

"The recent move by Apple Computer to begin shipping Macintosh computers that use microprocessors from Intel could open the door to more attacks against computers running the company's OS X operating system, security experts warn. The change could put more pressure on Apple to build security features into OS X, according to interviews conducted by eWEEK. Apple declined requests for interviews. In an e-mail statement, the company said that the security technologies and processes that have made Mac OS X secure for PowerPC remain the same for Intel-based Macs." Update: Here's a rebuttal.

"Is Unix dead? My answer is no, it's not dead. As a matter of fact, I think I hear it laughing on its way to the bank. Fewer Unix systems are being shipped, but they're commanding a higher premium than ever. Unix still represents a $2 billion market, the largest operating-system market by far. Despite Windows Server recent gains, it still represents about $1.6 billion , when you're looking at operating system-only revenues. And Linux in terms of revenues represents one-tenth of what the good, gray Unixes combined represent. Granted the future belongs to Linux, but as a $2 billion market, is Unix dead?"

"Parsix GNU/Linux is a new twist on an old theme. It is one of a number of remixes of the Kanotix/Knoppix line, but with some very interesting differences. First off is the fact that it is centered around, and tailored to users of Persian languages and keyboards, while also being very usable in English. The next big difference is that Parsix uses the GNOME desktop instead of the standard KDE Desktop found in most of these remastered distros. But is there more to Parsix than just a different DE and language? The answer to that question is a definite 'yes'."

"Apple became a household name in the third quarter of SuperBowl XVIII when it aired the enormously popular 1984 ad promoting the upcoming release of the Macintosh. Apple's PR firm, Chiat/Day, had pitched a similar ad in 1982 to promote the Apple II. The basic premise was that the Apple II would only enable people, and not hinder them with inane commands and hard to understand interfaces. No executives were particularly enamored with the spot, and it was filed away for possible later use."

This Visopsys 0.61 maintenance release adds Disk Manager support for resizing NTFS filesystems and arbitrary partitions, purely unprivileged user-space processes, I/O port permissions and protection, IDE block mode I/O, Linux swap detection and clobber, improved atomic kernel locks, many C library additions, a calendar program, and bugfixes.

The second beta of OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 has been released today. Main changes: "Fixes for a number of bugs - but note that most of the bugs reported against beta1 are not fixed yet; further integration and fixing of NetworkManager; SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta1 comes with the Intrusion Prevention framework; AppArmor 2.0 which is started by default in beta2; updated to KDE 3.5.1 release packages." Downloads locations are in the release announcement.

"Shobana Balakrishnan, a program manager on the Windows Longhorn Server team, takes us through the server roadmap and demonstrates Windows Server 2003 R2. Think you know everything about Windows Server? You might be surprised by the innovations this team has shipped and is planning on shipping in Longhorn Server."

"In the 1990s, world chess champion Gary Kasparov played two historic matches against IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. He won the first match but lost the second by just a single point. As a graduate student at Stanford writing a thesis on artificial intelligence at that time, I was fascinated by the match. I'd been a computer hobbyist since the 1980s as well as a chess buff. Over the years I've tried practically every commercially available chess program on every platform, including Sargon, Socrates, Chessmaster, and others. I used TRS 80 and Apple II computers, and then IBM PCs running DOS, followed by Macintosh and Windows systems. Since that time I've wanted a chess computer as powerful as Deep Blue - my own world-champion-level sparring partner."

"While programs in the Java language are theoretically immune from memory leaks, there are situations in which objects are not garbage collected even though they are no longer part of the program's logical state. This article shows you how Soft references, like weak references, can help applications prevent object loitering by enlisting the aid of the garbage collector in making cache eviction decisions."