According to a post in the Dropline forums (*unconfirmed*), Pat's situation is not getting any better. Apparently his treating doctors at the Mayo Clinic are becoming convinced that Pat suffers from Marfan's syndrome, a rather serious genetic disorder. We hope the best for Pat.

In the feline evolution of Mac OS X, Jaguar was the release we had to have, Panther is the version we wanted, and Tiger provides programmers with some of the most tantalizing application development tools we've seen to date. This article provides the latest information about Tiger from Chris Bourdon, the project's senior product line manager.

For those interested in a deeper, more technical look at Solaris Zones, the Solaris team presented a detailed paper on Zones at USENIX's LISA '04 conference. The paper is available for download.

And you think your operating system needs to be reliable. Check the interview here.

The first release candidate of Python 2.4. Python 2.4 is now close to release- there should be few or no new features, merely bug fixes.

Bugs are a common fixture with WindowsXP, but why not make the OS work when it can? See how to tap WindowsXP for sophisticated RAID functions with only a few modifications.

Linspire, Inc. today introduced native support for Windows Media Player versions 8 and 9 on its operating system. Beginning immediately, all Linspire versions in all languages will include Windows Media support -- users will now have in-line playback of audio and video on popular sites like FoxNews.com and Movies.com, all with codecs legally licensed and fully integrated in the OS.

Learn how to build a GNU cross compiler for PowerPC code development by downloading the PowerPC 750GX/FX evaluation kit (free reg. req.). The source code illustrates how to initialize and utilize various features of the processor--memory management unit, interrupts, and debugging features. The board schematics provide an example of how to connect the processor to a system controller (bridge) chip and other components in the system.

A quick Mandrake 10.1 overview on a PowerMac.

What are the sofware tools of the future going to be? It's an interesting question, with many facets. Here are some important trends in design and construction tool strategy, which will effect the kinds of software tools that will bee delivered in the future. It looks at how to improve software development efficiency through visual modeling, generating code from abstract models, and systematic reuse.

November, 15 2004. The Solaris 10/NC04Q4 Launch 2004. Dawn in San Jose, CA was a truly beautiful sight to behold on Monday. As the sun rose over the mountains and shed its light on the valley below - the city, which the night before had seemed so unimpressive, suddenly came to life in the shimmer of the sun's rays. It seemed a perfect morning for the launch of Sun's most ambitious project to date. The press and other attendees looked happy, hopeful. Sun's folks were excited - especially the engineers.

This article, is a description of my efforts to build a minimal FreeBSD system from scratch and run it under the Bochs emulator. Inspired by "FreeBSD From Scratch" by Jens Schweikhardt, this article extends its ideas by using a file backed virtual disk, as the installation directory and harddisk image under Bochs.

I've been using Linux since the Redhat days. Since then, it has grown from a curious look to a hobby, and more recently to my main operating system. Due to starting out with Redhat, I admit to being partial to the Redhat/Fedora series. Don't let that concern you though, as I've tried all of the mainstream distributions, even Lycoris and Linspire.

When Sun Microsystems releases Solaris as open-source software, it plans to provide legal protection from patent-infringement suits to outsiders using or developing the operating system--one of several ways Sun hopes to make Solaris more competitive with Linux. Elsewhere, Microsoft's Ballmer warns Asia of Linux lawsuits.