This paper addresses operating system hardening in terms of patching, administration roles and setting passwords. It also provides information on Apple Macintosh OS X network security: namely, basic firewall configuration and hardening of network services such as FTP, SSH and the Apache web server.

If you work on large-scale development projects, then you're familiar with the advantages of writing modular code. Well-structured, modular code is easier to write, debug, understand, and reuse. The problem for Java developers is that the functional programming paradigm has long been implemented only via specialized languages such as Haskell, Scheme, Erlang, and Lisp. This article, shows you how to use functional programming constructs such as closures and higher order functions to write well-structured, modular code in the Java language.

A new UI website just opened its doors. As part of it's opening, they've posted a Gnome 2.6 usability review that includes fairly detailed user experience surveys.

Bob Ratliff of IPKonfig reviews SuSE 9.1 PRO (with screenshots).

Rudolf Cornelissen coded for Haiku/BeOS support for AGP cards (AGP cards were previously working on PCI-mode on BeOS) while Siarzhuk Zharski has released a module that allows USB storage devices to be used with BeOS 5.x (however some libraries from Dan0/Zeta are needed for the module to work).

Almost exactly one year after the idea of porting Portage to MacOS X came up - and the joint Metapkg initiative between Fink, Darwinports and Gentoo took off - a 20-head-strong developer team around Pieter van den Abeele (strategic lead) and Daniel Ostrow (operational) is now ready to release an extraordinary beast into the wild: Gentoo MacOS.

Here is Christopher Blizzard's report from the DesktopCon.

The Firebird Project announces the release of Firebird V1.5.1. this relese represents a committment by the project to develop and deliver ongoing improvements to this popular open source database engine.

Say you want to use Linux in a dual-boot arrangement, but you don't have any free space on your computer's hard drive. One solution would be to use a "live" Linux distribution such as Knoppix, which can be run directly from CD. This is certainly viable for occasional use, but it has a number of serious drawbacks.

The changes in the way Windows polices itself - particularly the newly strengthened firewall - could cause troubles for applications that are used to working with Windows' old ways. Security experts say it's tough to know how many companies may have to change their products to be compatible. However, to bring good overall security to Windows, these sacrifices needed to be made.

The way I normally use my Gnome(s) on PCs with lower resolution monitors is by having a single panel at the bottom of the screen, 32pix height. It seems like a good compromise for old PCs with monitors that can't do more than 800x600 or 1024x768. Stacking applets together though can be an exercise to the eye to try to quickly seperate them visually.

Building Subversion on Mac OS X is not hard. Building the Java bindings for Subversion is challenging until you know what to do. Hopefully you find this information helpful.

Loosely based on Red Hat Linux 9, ELX BizDesk 4.0 is designed primarily for corporate users who are looking for a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Windows and Office. DesktopOS.com has just published a comprehensive review that examines this Indian-designed distribution.

This technical overview by veteran real-time lecturer David Kalinsky examines a number of directions in which RTOSs continue to change and mature. Two main directions are alternative task scheduling algorithms, and intertask communication via asynchronous direct message passing. In order to keep at a practical level, the focus is on trends and features that can be expected to appear in RTOSs soon.