"The success of the iPod, Apple's biggest ever consumer hit, was bound to overshadow the company's mainstay business in 2004. In the numbers that really count: revenue, margins and profit, the Macintosh remains Apple's core business. So where did it go?" Read the editorial at TheRegister.

As a recent ACM Queue article observes the evolution of computer language is toward later and later binding and evaluation. So while one might quibble about the virtues of Java or the CLI (also known as microsoft.net) it seems inevitable that more and more software will be written for or at least compiled to virtual machines. While this trend has many virtues, not the least of which is compatibility, current implementations have several drawbacks. However, by cleverly incorporating these features into the OS, or at least including support for them, we can overcome these limitations and in some cases even turn them into strengths.

Since the arrival of the very first versions of Gentoo, some people have announced that "Debian is good, but that's not optimized for ". And this is wrong, you are free to recompile software you use on Debian, using the apt system. Downloading a tarball, uncompressing it, running configure scripts and make install, is an easy task for every Linux user, but this is not adapted for the Debian package management system. Stow was a way which worked without too much effort, but compiled programs were not really integrated in the apt dependancies. The ultimate solution is to use apt-build to recompile a software already packaged for Debian. Read in English - Read in Portuguese (Brazilian)

Flexbeta compares Microsoft's new anti-spyware utility with the two leading spyware stoppers, Ad-Aware and SpyBot. They find that Microsoft's is actually more effective than the other choices, though with the monthly fee for the MS solution, it's not a clear winner.

Eugene Blanchard made his Introduction to Data Communications (also known as Introduction to Networking) available for free. The book covers a broad variety of topics such as RS-232, Ethernet, RF, TCP/IP and many other topics in its 63 chapters. This is a valuable reference and read for those just starting to understand networking and data communications as well as seasoned professionals in the field.

Kerneltrap has a discussion on the proposed patches to Linux kernel which enables Linux to use genetic algorithm for use in CPU and IO schedulers. Genetic algorthims are self optimising over time for particular kinds of workloads and this could be one way of smarter kinds of scheduling. An interesting idea though it yet remains to be seen what would turn up

"A vulnerability in Firefox could expose users of the open-source browser to the risk of phishing scams, security experts have warned. " In a related note, security firm Secunia has discovered three very critical security flaws in IE.

Businessweek asks: Flash memory in a cheaper iPod? A $500 Mac? If the rumors about what Steve Jobs has planned for Apple are true, those moves could be just the start. Also: spy photos of headless iMac or internet hoax? you decide.

SoftPear is a user mode Mac OS X emulator for Linux. As the news on our site say, we have just released a Preview Release that can run some Mac OS X command line tools in Linux and FreeBSD. (The download includes the GPL'ed source, binaries for Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, some test programs and a README.) We do this by with our Mach-O executable loader, PearPC's PowerPC interpreter core, and our libc wrapper. We hope to be able to run the complete Mac OS X "Quartz" UI on Linux, FreeBSD and Darwin/x86 one day, this way.

The December issue of the Syllable Development Newsletter is now available, covering news and updates for the open source desktop OS. Highlights: 0.5.5 release, ABrowse updates, patches aplenty and more. Additionally, the SYL-CON user/coder meetup has been set for 19th and 20th of February in London - let them know if you're going.

To help TXSeries Encina users leverage the J2EE environment, this article describes how to develop Web-based applications using the Encina J2EE Connector. It walks you through various programming and configuration techniques for developing and deploying applications using the Encina J2EE Connector, introduced in TXSeries V5.1.

Linux Magazine has an extensive article the technical details and motivation behind Xen by one the developers.

SUSE Linux 9.2 was released to mirrors today. Novell is providing both the traditional Net Install Disc as well as DVD ISO's for i386 and x86_64. Here's the Distrowatch Link.

News.com has a review of the struggles of Longhorn. Among other delays and setbacks noted, word from Microsoft that the WinFS file system wouldn't be released in Windows Server until 2009.