"Novell has lifted the lid on enhancements integrated into the next major release of Mono, its development platform for enabling Microsoft .Net applications to run unchanged on Linux. The forthcoming version, due to ship next March, will implement a native Visual Basic (VB.Net) compiler and Windows Forms (WinForms)." Read more at vnunet.com.

Rsync is a command line utility traditionally used in synchronizing files between two computers, but rsync can also be used as an effective backup tool. This article explain how to use rsync to backup your computer to a drive attached to your system. You can use a removable drive, such as an external USB hard drive, so that you can store the backups in a safe place away from your working environment.

From ActiveWin: Daniel C. Robbins is a 3D User Interface Designer working at Microsoft Research. His current projects include visual presentation of large information spaces and scenarios for intelligent environments. View and experience research prototypes that span back to the 1990s, yet may give a glimpse of what's in store for future Microsoft products.

Sun Microsystems plans to announce a plan Tuesday to let customers rent supercomputing power from the company's data centers, paying for exactly as much muscle as they need. Also, Sun is in talks to purchase a profitable Linux distributor, sources have told internetnews.com. Sources close to the discussions said they expected that company to be embedded Linux player MontaVista, but cautioned that the deal wasn't finalized and talks could still break down.

After a month of the KDE 3.3 release, userinstinct has put together a usability study with user testing.

Among the many wonders of director Kerry Conran’s debut feature movie, “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” none is more remarkable than how he tried to make it — on a single desktop computer, in 1994, before desktop computers were ready to fully cooperate. Conran used a Mac IIsi and later a Mac Quadra 840AV which was point he realized that he needed hardware and special software to help him realize the dream, as the available resources back then were less than satisfiable.

Some say the Browser Wars are over. They couldn't be more wrong. Microsoft won Round One, and Round Two is just beginning, with the impending release of Firefox 1.0. Who'll be the ultimate victor? Only time will tell. But ExtremeTech thinks that Firefox has a decent shot at taking the crown... especially since Microsoft seems to have taken its eye off the browser ball.

Microsoft officials earlier this month announced the company is cutting some key features, such as the WinFS file system, from Longhorn, the next major version of Windows, to meet its late-2006 deadline. That time frame, however, is also putting in question two significant development efforts: "Orcas," a future version of the Visual Studio tool set, and "Avalon," Longhorn's presentation-layer subsystem.

Cuting throught the hype: RSS feeds can improve a range of corporate communications. But for many, it's a technology in need of a vendor.

This release marks an important milestone in the history of OpenZaurus, since it has been created from scratch using the OpenEmbedded build system. More information about the overall project status can be found in the next edition of the official newsletter. Editor's question: Anyone knows if the WiFi hardware works with OpenZaurus and what web browsers are used when you install GPE or Opie?

Cameron and Tracey Hughes explore how to use object streaming with the STL containers by combining inserters, extractors, and manipulators with stream iterators. Two more programming articles follow:

From the Fedora site: "The second test release of Fedora Core 3 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. This test release is available for both x86-64 and i386. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc3test2, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this test release on fedora-test-list."

This update helps resolve an issue on computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Programs that connect to IP addresses in the loopback address range may not work as expected and you may receive an error message indicating you cannot establish a connection. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. Elsewhere, this download installs Microsoft Windows Script containing Visual Basic Script Edition (VBScript.) Version 5.6, JScript Version 5.6, Windows Script Components, Windows Script Host 5.6, and Windows Script Runtime Version 5.6.

The X.Org Foundation announced the release of an update for the X Window System, which addresses the possible security vulnerability announced on September 15, 2004. This bug affects all known versions and releases of the X Window System shipping versions of libXpm, whether from X.Org or other vendors. Slackware upgraded to it today.