The Question: With the emergence of .NET, J2EE, Python, PHP, et. al, has Perl lost its niche as a scripting glue language? The Answer: Tim O'Reilly gives his two cents.
The NetBSD Foundation published its second quarterly status report in 2005, covering the months April through June of 2005. Among many other things, this status report covers NetBSD's participation in Google's “Summer of Code”, the new stable pkgsrc branch and various port-specific items.
MacNN reports that Apple today released Mac OS X 10.4.2, which the company says delivers overall improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X v10.4 and is recommended for all users. It includes fixes for file sharing, authentication, autologin, AirPort/wireless access, several graphics updates, .Mac fixes, Apple's core applications, and more.
Two companies previously mentioned as being involved with the project, Mandriva and Turbolinux, appear to not be participating at this time. Progeny Linux Systems continues to leading the way.
At a company-sponsored conference in Japan, Microsoft announced that it has finished development of Windows Automotive 5.0. The update is based on the latest version of Windows CE, the CE 5.0 release that came out in May.
Macromedia has released a beta version of the 8th incarnation of their web content player, Flash. This beta version is only available for Windows and Macintosh.
The US Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme, the body that grants Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) ratings in the US has granted an EAL5 Augmented to BAE System’s XTS-400 and the STOP Unix operating system. This is the first OS to be granted a EAL5 or better and is the first public EAL5 granted in the US. Read more for details.
DeveloperWorks has released updates to two downloads: Version 1.05 of the 970FX Evaluation Kit, also known as PIBS (PowerPC Initialization Boot Software); register to download here. As well, part 2 of the SLOF download has been released: JS20 low-level firmware provides the base functionality to run Slimline Open Firmware (SLOF) on a JS20 server.
The Tor Desktop Virtual Privacy Machine is a USB JumpDrive preloaded with a complete Linux OS and a roster of useful applications. Plug it into a Windows or Linux machine and launch a virtual Linux desktop that routes all network traffic through multiple network proxies using the Tor network. This provides a totally secure way to access your data, even when using an internet cafe PC or an untrusted network.
Hot on the heels of an AMD antitrust lawsuit against Intel and a recent ruling in Japan that found that Intel abused its monopoly power, European Comission officials and competition authorities from several European countries raided the offices of Intel and several computer manufacturers. These "inspections" were probably carried out under article 81 of the EU Treaty, which prohibits price fixing and other distortions of competition within the EU.
Microsoft has paid two unnamed informers $250,000 for help in tracking down the author of the Sasser worm. The Sasser worm infected over 18 million computers worldwide within its first week in the wild, costing businesses estimated millions.
Longhorn will have some new features that will be particularly interesting for hardware hackers: The Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat) is basically a built-in benchmarking tool that should help with determining what affect a new component is having on the system, and another, unnamed feature looks for hardware changes on boot, and, if it finds any, will restart the hardware configuration process.
Have you ever gone on vacation and missed a day's news? Ever have a busy day and need to quickly catch up on what you missed? Well, your problems are solved with the new OSNews Digest. Read on for details. UPDATED
The head of Open Source Development Labs, Stuart Cohen, has added weight to rumours of greater collaboration between Microsoft and the open source community. He said: "I would not be surprised to see them participate in software that runs on top of Linux in the future."
Mike Nash, Microsoft's security business and technology unit corporate vice president, has said Longhorn would accord end-users certain rights and privileges apparently ending the concept that everyone using their PC is also the PC's administrator. Update: More on new Longhorn features here.
The People Behind KDE interviews are back with a new series. First in the hot seat is aKademy organiser Antonio Larrosa. The People Behind KDE interviews take a look at the human side of KDE development by asking the important questions to our team of coders, artists, translators and everyone else who helps KDE.
Consumers will soon be able to recognize Web sites specially designed for use by mobile phones by the new .mobi suffix, which will be introduced alongside the popular .com and other top-level domain names. Update:Opinion of a mobile phone web browser engineer on this (& ex-Be kernel engineer).
