"AROS has finally got a new, faster and smarter file system: Michal Schulz has ported SFS to the Amiga Research Operating System, so opening and saving lots of files won't take ages anymore, but just few seconds. Neil Cafferkey has written a Intel Pro/100 NIC driver, allowing support for i8255x family of network adapters. Marcel 'Frostwork' Unbehaun has created an AROS/PPC Live-CD for Pegasos computers."

"I'm very sorry to report that Peter Quinn, the CIO of Massachusetts who has been at the center of a controversy relating to his efforts at the Information Technology Division to adopt the OpenDocument format for the use of the Commonwealth's Executive Agencies, has resigned."

Two articles on OS/2: "IBM’s farewell to OS/2 next month shouldn’t take anyone by surprise. Long before Big Blue announced its plans to pull the plug, industry watchers were drafting OS/2’s obituary." And, "Yesterday saw IBM cease the sale of the OS/2 Operating system. Come the 31st of December, standard support for the OS will end also. However, a significant number of companies and people continue to use it, and they are finding ways for OS/2 to live on."

"After trying out PCLinuxOS, I have included this wonderful Linux distribution in my list of Linux OSes I would recommend to newbies and power users alike. I am certainly impressed by its structure, stability and the choice of software bundled with it. Not to mention its out of the box support for proprietary file formats."

"There are a number of things preventing Windows users from moving en masse to Linux. While the naming of applications is probably not a make-or-break issue when considering a new operating system, it is a legitimate consideration. This is the case because many of the names chosen for Linux programs are downright confusing, and the last thing desktop Linux needs right now is to make the transition from Windows or the acquisition of new users any harder than it has to be."

"In 2005, vendors competed to provide ever-increasing processor power, with 64-bit chips and dual-core technology. Now AMD and Intel are shaping their multicore plans for 2006 and beyond. In the world of hardware, 2005 proved to be the year vendors pushed processor power to new heights as competition in the multicore processor space came to a head. AMD gained a 64-bit head start on Intel last year when it unveiled 64-bit extensions that allow x86 chips to accommodate more than 4GB of memory." In related news, Intel is going to dump its 'Intel Inside' tagline in favour of something new-- after using it for 15 years.

"Once upon a time, 3D for the Web promised to be as easy as building a Web page. Unfortunately, 3D - even simple 3D - is more complex than displaying scrolling text and pictures. Each VRML vendor implemented a different subset of the spec, and it never gained traction. And so 3D on the Web faded away. Or did it? It turns out that VRML lives on in its XML flavor, X3D, which has grown to encompass VRML's siblings H-Anim (Humanoid Animation) and GeoVRML."

There are always exceptions to the rule, right? In Java, those exceptions allow a clean break from normal program flow in the event of an exceptional situation. They're not used for program flow interruption, but for program flow branching, which can sometimes lead to difficult-to-maintain code. Marcus Zarra walks you through several best practices for using exceptions in Java.

"Data validation is a common chore in programming any user interface. The Java language's regular-expression support can make data validation easier. You can define a regular expression that describes valid data and then let the Java runtime see if it matches. But certain types of data have different formats in different locales. The ResourceBundle class lets you work with locale-specific data in an elegant way. This article shows how to combine the two techniques to solve a common data-entry problem."

"With December upon us, rife with rumors of labor disputes (again!) at the North Pole, it seems about time to talk about the ELF standard. ELF (ELF is an acronym for Executable and Linking Format) is a standard for object modules, libraries, executables, and core files. Many UNIX and UNIX-like systems use ELF, and the ELF standard has contributed substantially to the development of compiler toolchains and debugging tools for a variety of systems."

Ex-Amiga hacker and ex-BeOS engineer Tinic Uro, now at Macromedia, blogged about the next version of Flash Player for Linux. Apparently version 8 will be skipped and the Linux version will see some extra love on upcoming version 8.5.

Love-him-hate-him Paul Thurrot has released a four part in-depth review of Vista's December CTP. "I think people are going to be surprised by how good the Windows Vista December 2005 Community Technical Preview (CTP, or build 5270) really is. After years of painful delays and an uncertain couple of months since the last CTP, Microsoft shipped a near-feature-complete Vista build to testers this week, and the prognosis is extremely positive. From what I can see, Vista has turned the corner. The December CTP is an exciting release, stable and full of new features. In this review, I'll examine those new features, and the features that have changed since the previous CTP, build 5231" Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.

"It's finally arrived - the first Mac Mini clone. Our review system was supplied by Evesham, but the barebone chassis is manufactured by AOpen and has been known as the 'Pandora'. Sadly this catchy name is gone - AOpen has re-named it the Mini PC, which is just plain boring. Anyhow, name aside, this is a really cool-looking little machine - it arguably looks even better than the Mac Mini, mainly due to its aluminium case."

"Ruby on Rails is just one facet of what makes Ruby great, just like EJB is only part of the Java enterprise platform. Andrew Glover digs beneath the hype for a look at what Java developers can do with Ruby, all by itself. Ruby's syntax is quite different from that of the Java language, but it's amazingly easy to pick up. Moreover, some things are just plain easier to do in Ruby than they are in the Java language."