Is the official new name for the Longhorn operating system is Microsoft Windows Vista? Flexbeta seems to think so, and has posted a domain registration from MS that seems to support this idea. Update: Looks like it's official.

IBM has begun participating in open-source Java project Harmony and intends to contribute code to the initiative, according to a Big Blue executive.

Running a background process on the Windows platform requires running a Windows Service. To run a Windows Service, you must have an application that is Windows Service aware. A Bash script is not Windows Service aware and neither are many console applications. XYNTService allows an administrator to define a console program and its options to execute. The XYNTService application is a Windows Service that reads a configuration file to know which applications to run. Read more...

Here is an interview with Wil Shipley, software developer for OS X and prior to that for NeXTSTEP.

LANguard Network Security Scanner will scan computers for known vulnerabilities and common misconfigurations and other potential security issues. It produces reports that can be used to assist in the tracking and mitigation of security issues that have been identified.

In this first of a two-part series, learn about system and environment requirements, the best ways to acquire Linux source code, how to configure and boot your new kernel, and how to use the printk function to print messages during bootup.

Microsoft is facing an uphill battle to push copies of Office 2003 on customers and its ISV partner ecosystem, ahead of next year's predicted launch of Office 12.

The non-profit foundation has decided to increase the version number of the next major release to 1.5 from 1.1, reflecting the sheer number of bug fixes and features that have been worked into the next version of the browser. Mozilla still plans to ship the next version of Firefox around September of this year. Read the updated roadmap here.

Faces for Laszlo makes use of multiple J2EE (Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition) emerging technologies for rich Internet applications, resulting in a rich user experience on the browser. Through a JSF custom tag library, developers using Faces for Laszlo can integrate OpenLaszlo components into their web application. These components can bind to server-side data that is made available as JavaScript data structures within the browser at runtime.

Epiphany is a web browser for the GNOME desktop that aims to be simple and easy-to-use. FootNotes, a GNOME news site, has posted the Epiphany: The Web through the eyes of GNOME article.

KDE 3.4.1 is the first modern desktop environment being compiled, packaged and working fully on the OpenSolaris platform. While KDE is known to compile out of the box on Solaris with GCC, using the Sun ONE Studio 10 Compiler still presents a challenge which requires a lot of patches. Dot.KDE has an interview with the Kde on Solaris team leader.

Asa Dotzler, from the Mozilla foundation, has just written an interesting analysis describing why Linux is not ready for desktops yet, and suggests four main categories that must be addressed to improve this.

Linux powered roughly three times the number of smartphones as Windows Mobile, in worldwide shipments during Q1 of 2005, according to an article at LinuxDevices.com. Additionally, the data cited from Gartner research says smartphones comprise the fastest-growing portion of the "mobile terminal" market, with sales expected to double year-over-year in 2006, reaching 200 million by 2008.

Groovy took a gigantic leap this past April, with the formal release of a new parser aimed at standardizing the language as part of the JSR process. If you weren't paying attention before, now's the time to start. The new syntax is chock full of enhancements to the language designed for a short learning curve and a big payoff. Resident Groovy practitioner Andrew Glover walks through most important changes to Groovy's syntax and shows you a handy feature you won't find in classic Groovy.