"Sometimes System Administrators need to determine where applications spend most of their time, in order to tune their systems better. The traditional method, when the source code for the application and gcc are available, is just to recompile the application with the – pg flag and to use gprof to profile it. Other than the inconvenience of the recompilation process, the solution is pretty straightforward. But what happens when you don’t have the source code for the application? And what if you’d like to profile the system as a whole? That’s when oprofile comes in handy."

YellowTab recently announced the opening of a "job centre" on its web site, with three jobs listed: Bug hunter, Builder Engineer and RAD GUI. You'd need to move to Germany and know German, but there are few actual jobs in alternative OS development these days, so bust out those "Learn German in Three Days Under Hypnosis" tapes, and get going!

Microsoft is obliged to open up its protocols as a result of an anti-trust settlement, but with fees for protocol licensing starting at $50,000 for any hardware or software that wants to connect with the Microsoft file system, competitors complain that Microsoft is treating its obligation to open up as a lucrative revenue stream rather than the punishment that it was intended to be. They note that "the general practice in the industry is to license protocols for free.''

Microsoft is planning for tight integration of RSS in Longhorn. Many potential users are surely happy at the idea of good, free tools for managing syndicated content, but others fear that Microsoft's embrace of the fledgling standard might signal an "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy in the works.

Red Hat Scholarships is a coding contest for Indian college students whose aim is to "speed up the adoption of open source software in India and make India a proud contributor to the global open source community." Contest organizers have posted eight challenges, such as "Development of open source Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) frameworks," and individuals or teams will recive support during their creation of the new software, and the best contribution will win a cash prize. All sumbissions must be licensed under an Open Source license.

Versions of Outlook Express in Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003 contain a flaw that would allow malicous code to take control of their machines. Launching Outlook Express is not necessary, apparently. Luckily, only users who visit particular malicious newsgroups are vulunerable. A patch is available.

Roomba manufacturer iRobot has released a new, programmable vacuuming robot with a "virtual walls" feature to keep the little guy penned in to a particular area. A $60 software/hardware upgrade is also available to late-model Roomba owners. Also from iRobot comes PackBot, a small reconnaissance robot for military use.

The Intel-backed Mobile PC Extended Battery Life Working Group has published guidelines for vendors keen to create fuel cells to power portable PCs. The document is intended to provide fuel-cell developers will details of the devices their products will have to power, whether the cells will sit inside the devices in place of regular rechargeable batteries, or operate as an alternative to an external AC adaptor. Essentially, it defines the problem the fuel cell developers have to solve.

The technology behind the G4 and G5's AltiVec (AKA Velocity Engine) has much to do with the performance advantage that Apple hardware had over its x86 PC competition in certain tests. Apple, along with Motorola and IBM co-developed the PowerPC processor, and each entity has some rights to it.But what about Altivec/Velocity Engine? Does this three-way ownership extend to this this technology as well? Norman Shutler submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews, which theorizes that Apple may bring its Altivec/Velocity Engine along for the ride for the company's move to Intel processors and thus retain that same speed advantage for apps that utilized the technology.

The SCO Group has released a new version of their SCO OpenServer product, version 6. It's based on the same core as Unixware, and can run software for both systems.

The Sun Times has published an article discussing Linux and its viability as a desktop operating system. Be warned: this article can safely be filed under "flamebait."

In a follow-up to last week's Linux distro roundup, TipMonkies has published an article introducing users to partitioning and filesystems, and explains how to set up a dual-boot environment.

The newest versions of the next Windows add graphics sizzle and more search features but lack visible productivity enhancements. Also, Microsoft is battling the perception that there's little to get excited about in the long-awaited and much-ballyhooed Longhorn. Elsewhere, here is Longhorn's lengthy security wish list.

ACCESS's NetFront is a popular mobile browser for PDAs and phones. The English release of version 3.2 is now out, including support for WM2003SE, integrated Flash, Rapid Render technology that gradually renders the page, a new Java VM for applets, and some other features, but it still comes with no VGA support.