" has existed (at least in concept) since the mid-90s, when IBM was going to use OpenDoc to add similar features to OS/2 Warp 5. DesktopX 1.0 was released in 2000. Five years later, we have version 3.1 in our hands. DesktopX in its present state is more than a mere widget manager. While it does include a widget manager, it does a couple other things."

"In a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid."

AmigaWorld.net (by the way, check their brand new mobile site too) reader Olegil demonstrates how to read Windows' clipboard, by using the IE 5+ clipboard API. IE's clipboard API is a known design-decision feature which allows for better interoperability with Office/VBA. But as Olegil shows, the rules of the game are too loose and information can be stolen and stored on a remote server.

After a long, exhausting, yet very productive third quarter of 2005 FreeBSD 6.0 has been released. Many activities were put into the background in order to make this release the success it has become. Read the status report here.

The first preview release of (K)Ubuntu 6.04 Dapper Drake has been released. You can download Ubuntu here, and Kubuntu here. Screenshots can be found here and here.

"Well, it is that time of the year again. With Halloween done and over with its time for Thanksgiving and, before you know it, the holiday season. Every company realizes this and has made sure the stores are packed with cool new gadgets, gifts, and gizmos. This guide is going to go over a few of the items which appear of the wishlists of a few of the staff members. Nothing too formal, but you can get an idea of some of the cool products to keep an eye out for this season."

Matthias Scheler, on behalf of the NetBSD Release engineering team, announced that the release process for NetBSD 3.0 has officially begun. The first release candidate is available for download here.It is expected to have RC2 available on the FTP server in about a week, which hopefully will be the final release candidate. So if all goes well the release of 3.0 is approximately three weeks away.

The Eclipse platform allows pluggable components -- plug-ins -- to help create a rich graphical user interface (GUI) application. With Eclipse you can enhance a user's app experience by adding views to the GUI. This article will teach you how Eclipse makes it easy to link views and provides ways to adapt view linking to non-UI scenarios.

In an email to the GCC development mailing list, one of the main developers of LLVM revealed that his recent employment at Apple has been focused on integrating LLVM with GCC, and is now proposing a long-term merge of the two projects.

Channel9 recently visited the Vista Print team and learned about the new Print stack in Vista and took a tour of the team and the lab where print testing happens. The 1-hour WMV video is 228 MB.

Intel's Hyperthreading Technology is being blamed for server performance problems. With both SQL Server and Citrix Terminal Server installations, HT-enabled motherboards show markedly degraded performance under heavy load. Disabling HT restores expected levels, according to reports from within the IT industry.

LinuxDevices has once again published the proceedings of the annual Real-Time Linux Workshop. This one, the seventh, was held in France earlier this month, at the University for Science and Technology of Lille (USTL). The papers span a range of topics, from fundamental real-time technologies to applications, hardware, and tools.

The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the release of Firebird 2.0 Beta 1 kits for immediate download and testing. This version of Firebird 2 is an beta version, meant for field testing only and not for use in production. Please read the Release Notes for more details.

"Red Hat Desktop is sensible to the point of austerity, but practical in the way it supports updates and other features. It's not for individuals or very small businesses, but larger companies who calculate the total cost of ownership (TCO) may well find it worth considering." More here.