"I described the working of the Apple Motion Sensor (AMS), a feature of the PowerBook line of computers, in previous document called The PowerBook Sudden Motion Sensor". As I noted earlier, my original reason for investigating the AMS was to fabricate some interesting programming examples for my forthcoming book on Mac OS X internals. The discussion of the AMS generated a substantial amount of interest — perhaps more than I had expected. It is quite interesting to observe how one's fantasy is tickled by abnormal ways of doing the normal." Read more here.

A group of underground programmers has posted code online they say will reopen a back door in Apple Computer's iTunes store, allowing Linux computer users to purchase music free of copy protection. The release comes just a day after Apple blocked a previous version of the program, called PyMusique.

A report released today indicates Windows Server 2003 may actually be more secure than its most popular Linux competitor when it comes to vulnerabilities and the time it takes to patch them.

This alpha release contains a large number of new features, including derived tables, support for Execute Block, increased table sizes, new improved index code (the 252-byte index length limit is no longer applicable), expression indices, numerous optimiser improvements, enhanced security features, support for on-line incremental backups along with many other improvements & bug fixes.

This article provides an introduction to Java Plug-ins and describes the configuration details of Java Plug-ins from different flavors of Java Runtime Environment (JRE), such as Runtime Environment for IBM OS/2 Warp Developer Kit, Java 2 Technology Edition, Version 1.3.1 and InnoTek OS/2 Kit for Java 1.4.2, Runtime, for the Web browsers viz. IBM Web Browser (IWB) and Netscape Communicator; available on the OS/2 Operating System.

Visopsys is an alternative operating system for PC compatible computers. This is a maintenance release, with numerous small improvements and bugfixes including some general back- porting from the 0.6 development branch. In addition, IDE disk-to-disk operations have been improved so that they can happen in parallel, the kernel hardware drivers have been given a new interrupt handing interface, and there is some improved efficiency in a performance-critical section of the multitasker.

Mozilla 1.7.6 was released and Thunderbird-1.0.2 was too, with security updates.

After some months without releases, MonoDevelop 0.6 is now available . It uses GTK# 2.0.

At its BrainShare conference, the company says its Novell Linux Desktop 10 will include a new desktop search technology, named Beagle, along with a technology for rendering the desktop using the GPU.

eComStation is an Internet enabled platform for business desktop computing. To keep users informed, Serenity Systems International published their roadmap.

Focusing on the best desktop candidates for deployment in enterprises, this article takes a look at Novell Linux Desktop 9.

A mass market exists for the mobile Internet, but it will remain untapped until designers make simpler Web pages that can be viewed properly on handsets, a pioneer of the World Wide Web said. More editorials on the subjects here and here. This is a good opportunity to remind everyone that both OSNews.com and GnomeFiles.org support ~120 mobile HTML-capable devices automatically (no reason to enter special URLs) in addition to our WAP-only sites. About 2,000 readers visit daily OSNews with such devices (out of ~250,000 readers, on average, daily).

Microsoft boss Bill Gates pledged further action to help users and firms improve security when he opened the RSA conference in San Francisco late February. Also, Longhorn Aero UI won't debut until PDC 2005 while while Microsoft delays major developer tools and database releases.

As we already know, the performance of DOOM 3 for Mac in comparison to its Windows counterpart is a little depressing - but those tests were on a Mac running Panther. Now running Tiger, some have seen an incredible performance boost. A clean install of both the latest Tiger beta (8A414) and DOOM 3 saw a steady 35-40 FPS at 1024x768 on High quality, with 2x Anti-aliasing enabled. Quite an improvement over Panther.