Friday, July 29th, 2005, is the 6th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. "Let's face it," the website reads, "System Administrators get no respect 364 days a year. This is the day that all fellow System Administrators across the globe, will be showered with expensive sports cars and large piles of cash in appreciation of their diligent work."

This week, Microsoft began requiring customers to validate their copies of Windows in order to use their Windows Update service. Crackers responded by circumventing the check and within days.

For the "bleeding edge," the FreeDOS distribution GNU/DOS 2005 has had 15 software updates so far, including those dealing with speed and bug fixes, an improved menu system, a new screen saver, and a new package management system since its release last month to prepare for GNU/DOS 2006, which should be released by this winter. You can download these updates at the official GNU/DOS Web page. Meanwhile, the operating system/programming language TextOS has been updated to versions v1.0b9 and v2.0b8, which are both faster and include an updated version of the supplied editor/file viewer. Download both versions at the official TextOS Web page.

Ever have trouble getting your Internet Explorer-specific Web applications to work with Mozilla? This article covers common issues associated with migrating applications to the open source Mozilla-based browser. You'll first learn basic cross-browser development techniques, and then develop strategies for overcoming the differences between Mozilla and Internet Explorer.

KDE 3.4.2 is the second maintenance release which provides corrections of problems reported using the KDE bug tracking system and greatly enhanced support for existing translations and new translations. Changelog and download.

Based on Debian Linux and promoted by Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu Linux has gained a loyal following since it's inception. Today we'll be taking a look at Ubuntu Hoary Hedgehog and see what this South African based distribution with a global appeal is all about.

GNOME 2.12 Beta 1 has been released. Download: platform, desktop and bindings.

Microsoft released it's much anticipated Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 today, but only to MSDN subscribers and a pretty small set of pre-enrolled beta test participants. FlexBeta goes inside the new beta.

Although many people claim that Linux is well on its way to replacing Unix, the reality is that Linux is Unix: a particular stream within a much wider community whose traditions and ideas both surround and extend those found in the Linux group.

In June 2005 the Ecma General Assembly approved the third edition of the standards for C# and CLI. With the first edition of the standards in 2002 and their adoption by ISO/IEC in 2003, the industry was given powerful tools to enable vendor-neutral development of Web services. Today, Ecma is keeping pace with the growing needs of the developer community by publishing the third edition.

Ever since Be, Inc. was dissolved and its BeOS technology was turned over to the Palm OS charnel house in '01, Be fans have been eagerly awaiting a successor to their favorite operating system, with very few rays of hope since. Earlier this month, however, yellowTAB released their BeOS descendent Zeta. Have Be fans finally found their savior, or is this just another failed attempt at reviving the dead? Read on — this review will help you decide exactly that.

Today, Microsoft released the first beta of Windows Vista. PC Mag reviews it. "After several years of waiting to see the successor to Windows XP, code-named Longhorn, we've finally gotten our hands on Beta 1 of what now will be called Windows Vista." They also have 40 screenshots. Elsewhere, MS has announced the official names for Avalon and Indigo.

Yesterday Firefox's dowloads reached it's 75 million mark. That's 25 million downloads in less then 3 months, well above all previous expectations. Due to its imense popularity and the upcoming release of Firefox 1.5, the team is hoping to reach 100 million downloads in the next 2 months.

Microsoft has released some official screenshots of the just released beta 1 of Windows Vista, their upcoming Windows version. Microsoft has passed a major milestone with the release of its first full test version of Windows Vista, the next generation of its flagship operating system.