NASA will soon be installing a new voice-activated computer system on the International Space Station that bears a striking resemblance to Star Trek's computer system. Called Clarissa, the system will initially be able to support about 75 individual commands, which can be accessed using a vocabulary of some 260 words.

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.

It's the old catch-22 of the job market: It's hard to get a good job without experience, but it's hard to get respectable experience without a good job. But if you're looking to enter the job market, why not take advantage of the huge opportunity that Open Source Software provides? You can make a meaningful contribution to a high-profile project, based merely on your skills and initiative.

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.

At LinuxTag, Wikimedia Foundation chairman Jimmy Wales has announced plans for a co-operation with KDE to create "The knowledge-integrated desktop". This will comprise two components 1) a Wikipedia web services API (applicable to any application / desktop environment) and 2) KDE APIs for easy integration of applications with Wikipedia / Wiktionary. This announcement follows news that the next release of the Amarok media player will incorporate Wikipedia lookup for instant access to band biographies.

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.

A new technology allows IBM Tivoli Access Manager to be exploited in a Microsoft .NET environment. For the .net environment this technology provides AznAPI and Administration API, Web Security manager, and role membership decisions using. Version 1.6 now includes integration with Microsoft Web Services Enhancements 2.0.

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."

One of my popular articles shortly after I joined OSNews in 2001 proved to be "the big *BSD interview" and so it is only appropriate to end my serving at OSNews with a similar theme. Today we are very happy to host a Q&A with well-known FreeBSD developers John Baldwin, Robert Watson and Scott Long. We discuss about FreeBSD 6 and its new features, the competition, TrustedBSD, Darwin etc.

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.

Given the rapid rate of technological change, how much can I -- or should I -- teach my students about specific tools? Professor Gary Pollice discusses the virtues of Eclipse technology and explains why he and other instructors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute use it in their courses.

A Bangalore programmer has managed to break Microsoft’s anti-counterfeiting system called Windows Genuine Advantage.

Apple's Intel-based Mac development kits have started trickling into developer's hands, Think Secret has learned. Elsewhere, CodeWeavers CrossOver to support Intel-based Macs.

Debian is a Linux distribution started by Ian Murdock in 1993. Debian is DEB from his wife Debra and IAN is from Ian Murdock. One thing that Debian has is rock solid stability and security. Its packages are thoroughly tested before becoming categorized as stable. Review here.