Microsoft: Longhorn beta will arrive by June

Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Monday. Also, Microsoft this week will reaffirm its promise to have Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 finished by the end of the quarter and its intent to have "Avalon" and "Indigo" subsystems available for Windows XP and Server 2003 in the near future.

Experts predict Firefox spyware will show up this year

One of the main reasons for the Firefox browser's successful seizure of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the desire to escape the inundation of PC-slowing spyware. However, spyware experts indicate that with its increased popularity, Firefox itself will become a target for spyware creators, who are already poking at the open source browser alternative. Elsewhere, a new security hole found affecting most browsers except IE.

Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows

The Dot reports: "Trolltech, maker of the Qt toolkit which forms the basis for KDE, announced today that the Qt version for Microsoft Windows will be available under the GPL in addition to its current commercial license offerings for that platform. This change will take place with the release of Qt 4. The Qt version for Linux has been available under a similar dual licensing scheme for several years already. The availability of a GPL'ed Qt for Microsoft Windows will make it much easier to distribute KDE applications that run on the Microsoft Windows platform."

Asus A730W PDA Review

BargainPDA has published an informative review of the Asus A730W Pocket PC PDA. The Asus device seems to add points with its integrated camera and USB host capabilities compared to the Dell x50v competition (arguably the most advanced PDA today), but lose many points with its bad battery life, limited graphics capabilities, price ($600 over $425) and questionable built quality (and also not enough built-in storage, older Bluetooth protocol support, slower CPU than Dell's). No matter what though, these two PDAs along the HP iPaq hx4700 are the best of breed today in the PDA world.

Test Driven Development: Programming by Intention

Have you ever had to work on a piece of code and found that it was hard to understand? Maybe the logic was convoluted, the identifiers meaningless, or worse, misleading. You say there was documentation? Was it readable? Did it make sense? Was it up to date with the code? Are you sure? How do you know? This chapter discusses programming by intention, a central idea in XP. It means making your intent clear when you write code.

Bill Gates on Spiegel

Microsoft founder Bill Gates, 49, talks about the thorny issues of computer security, competition, software bundling and how he lives with the downsides of his wealth and fame. In addition to being the world's richest man, Gates is the founder of the world's most powerful software company.

Release of the GNUSTEP LiveCD version 0.9.4

Following the NeXT tradition with mixed case, GNUSTEP is a livecd/distribution while GNUstep is an implementation of the OpenStep API. GNUSTEP is based on morphix, and use the GNUstep libraries and GNUstep-based applications to provides a NeXTSTEP-like environment that people can easily test and use. This new release comes 8 month since the precedent 0.5 release, and brings a lot of new GNUstep applications with it, as well as an upgrade of the GNUstep libraries and the development tools.