The second beta of Arch Linux 0.7 code named Wombat has been released for public consumption and testing. Kernel 2.6.9 is included. Get it from the download mirrors.

BeOS/Zeta user group JPBE.net recently exhibited at the Kansai Open Source 2004 show held in Osaka, Japan, inviting yellowTAB Senior Development Engineer Bruno G. Albuquerque to host a seminar on OpenBFS, and to demo the latest version of Zeta OS. News site www.iscomputeron.com now carries a report of Kansai Open Source 2004, while videos of the OpenBFS session and an on stage Zeta demo are also available from JPBE.net. Also, C# for BeOS.

Here's the only recent and still valid book for Mono: "Mono: A Developer's Notebook" by Edd Dumbill and Niel M. Bornstein. The book is under O'Reilly's "notebook" series, which are meant to be books mainly consisted by notes. Here's our quick review.

The second beta of the upcoming XFce 4.2 is now available for testing.

The NetBSD project has chosen their new logo. High-res version available too.

Stan Lippman discusses issues that developers should be aware of when porting applications to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

The Darwinports project recently announced the 2000th package has been added to its collection.

OnLAMP features a new article on how to use a simple implementation of DBC with C code. If you ever wanted to know what designing by contract is, and why C's assert is not enough read this.

Viruses could stop you getting cash from an ATM Cash machine networks could soon be more susceptible to computer viruses, a security firm has warned. The warning is being issued because many banks are starting to use the Windows operating system in machines.

We've put together a short list of tech books that could keep you company this weekend.

Apple's worldwide market share fell to 1.8% in the third quarter of this year from 2.1%, and dropped to 3.2% from 3.6% in the U.S., according to figures from research company Gartner. The numbers also showed dramatic declines in the quarter-to-quarter growth rate of Macs sold while Apple's Windows-based competitors saw double digit increases in the U.S and an almost 10% rise worldwide.

VB News has posed the Mono question to Microsoft and gotten an answer. Microsoft's position appears to be that Mono is an unlicensed attempt to reverse-engineer .NET but otherwise remains noncommittal. In the meanwhile, Novell is conducting a formal patent review of Mono to settle the question once and for all.

The Office of Government Commerce's report into the viability of using open-source software in the public sector was toned down in its praise of Linux security before release, silicon.com has discovered. A copy of the report, seen by silicon.com with amendments still visible, shows changes were made to the government's stance on the particular advantages of Linux versus proprietary software regarding security.

The Abstract User Interface Markup Language toolkit is a rapid-development tool to assist developers in writing GUIs to run as either Swing applications or on the Web -- without any changes. This article takes you on a tour of the AUIML toolkit, which includes rapid prototyping with the eclipse-based Visual Builder, DataBean implementation, built-in data validation, built-in internationalization and more.