The BSD Certification Group are running a new survey: the BSD Usage Survey. This survey aims to collect detailed statistics on how and where BSD systems are used around the world. The survey is short - only 19 questions - and should only take a few minutes to complete.

"There's lots of innovation going on in security - we're inundated with a steady stream of new stuff and it all sounds like it works just great. Every couple of months I'm invited to a new computer security conference, or I'm asked to write a foreword for a new computer security book. And, thanks to the fact that it's a topic of public concern and a "safe issue" for politicians, we can expect a flood of computer security-related legislation from lawmakers. So: computer security is definitely still a "hot topic." But why are we spending all this time and money and still having problems?"

Mac OS X provides a kernel extension mechanism as a means of allowing dynamic loading of pieces of code into the kernel, without the need to recompile. These pieces of code are known generically as plug-ins or, in the Darwin kernel, as kernel extensions or KEXTs.

The framework is intentionally designed to support only the basic functionality, as it will ultimately be used to support many RAID controllers. Theo explains, "the functionality supplied is also very basic, almost minimal. But this is done like this on purpose, since we believe that we could support this functionality on all RAID controllers in the same way, without special 'but that controller is so different' mindsets entering the picture. RAID management should (and can be) be no more complicated than ifconfig managing network interfaces."

While Dell recommends the use of Windows XP Professional, in France Dell and Mandriva have announced the availability of a Dell laptop preloaded with Mandriva Linux. This is the first time any Dell laptop with pre-installed Linux has been sold or supported by Dell. Previously, only Dell N-Series Precision Workstations with Red Hat Linux were available from Dell.

Bob Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president for Windows Server, on Thursday shed some light on the upcoming Windows Server 2003 R2 release during his keynote address at the Professional Developers Conference here. R2, which is due later this year, would bring features such as Services for Unix, the WS-Management standard, along with the next generation of the management console, MMC 3.0.

Apple's PowerMac line will see an upgrade in the near future, possibly before the close of the month. IBM's July announcement noted that the PowerPC 970MP would be available in speeds of 1.4GHz to 2.5GHz. Apple is expected to adopt the 970MP at least at the high-end of the new Power Mac G5 line. So, what are your thoughts on the 970MP? Does it nullify Apple's reasoning behind the switch to Intel? Also note the low-power G5 IBM has released alongside the 970MP.

Vista's development tools use cross-platform standards, so you can use them to write normal apps that will run on multiple platforms or Web-based apps with multiple browser support. Also, new security features planned for the Vista version of Windows Server will include an automatic patch check and a file system that can fix itself, Microsoft said. Watch some videos of Vista here.

Palm has revolutionized the PDA industry. In 1996, it released the Pilot and in less than ten years, sold 38 million devices outfitted with Palm OS. Read about the development of the Pilot (and the ill-fated Casio Zoomer and Graffiti for Newton) here.

Red Hat has been working on an adaptation of Multi Level Security called Multi Category Security which is planned to be enabled by default on FC 5 along with other security enhancements

Linus Torvalds' bid to have the word 'Linux' trademarked in Australia has failed, with the local intellectual property regulator sending his lawyer a vitriolic letter deriding efforts to provide evidence the trademark application was legitimate. In the letter, published by ZDNet, the regulator points out that information from Wikipedia and Google used by the lawyer to support the trademark application is simply not effective in making the case for a trademark to be registered.

According to Cola-Coder, a yellowTAB employee, the first stable SATA driver for ZETA has been implemented. Currently, the driver supports VIA VT6420/6421 chipsets, which will most likely be followed with support for nVidia (nForce) chipsets.

Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Solution brings together the power of commodity x64 (64-bit x86) computers, the ease-of-use and security of Active Directory, and the Windows operating system to provide a secure and affordable high performance computing (HPC) solution.

A lot of hooplah has been distributed by Sun Microsystems on the advantages of their OpenSolaris/Solaris 10 release. Martin C. Brown has been using said software for the past few months and files his review that helps answer the question: has someone finally found a Linux killer?