Microsoft has been granted a patent on the double-click by the US Patents and Trademark Office. The patent, number 6,727,830, was granted on April 27. An abstract of the application says: "A method and system are provided for extending the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device. Alternative application functions are launched based on the length of time an application button is pressed. A default function for an application is launched if the button is pressed for a short, i.e., normal, period of time." Our editorial on patents.

BW's technology columnist, Stephen Wildstrom, discusses the impact of Microsoft's upcoming software release, plus other IT trends. Elsewhere, WMP 10-beta is set to be released today.

A comprehensive UBoot AmigaOne guide has been released on IntuitionBase.com. You'll find everything required to use Uboot and start/configure your next boot, be it with AmigaOS 4.0 or Linux.

Bosko Milekic imported mbuma, an mbuf and cluster allocator built on the UMA (Uniform Memory Access) framework, that will replace mballoc, the old allocator. Bosko has written a paper talking about the new allocator.

Sun introduced recently the second version of Java Desktop System (JDS) for a flat fee per employee/per year. We tried it and here is what we found out about:

Novell announced the second Beta release of Mono: It includes a C# compiler, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure and two stacks of APIs: a Unix, Linux, GNOME, Mono stack for APIs that takes the most advantage of your Unix server and desktop and a set of APIs compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 that provides support for ASP.NET (web services and web forms), ADO.NET and many other components.

The scope of Network Distributed Computing (NDC) is quite impressive. This chapter presents an overview of some of the many relevant areas of NDC research and development today. If you're looking for a solid overview of all things NDC — from the Semantic Web, P2P, and Pervasive Computing to Distributed Databases, Filesystems, Media, and Storage — you've come to the right place.

The purpose of this chapter is to make you, a Java and J2EE programmer, feel at home with cryptographic capabilities of Java, and is structured around cryptography information that is both useful and practical to Java programmers.

MUSCLE is a robust, somewhat scalable, cross-platform client-server messaging system for dynamic distributed applications that runs under any POSIX-compliant operating system and Windows. Version 2.50 was released today including additions and fixes. The author of MUSCLE, Jeremy Friesner, wrote a very enjoyable article for OSNews back in the day to better introduce the system: "Using MUSCLE to Implement a Multiplayer Networked Game".

Intel said today that it plans to release the "Foundation code" of its next-generation firmware technology -- a successor to the PC BIOS -- under the Common Public License (CPL), an open source license, later this year. More than 20 years old, the BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) is the oldest software technology in PC platforms.

Most of the advice on the use of exceptions in the Java language suggests that checked exceptions should be preferred in any case where an exception conceivably might be caught.

There's been a lot of chatter about Mono, recently, varying from "its a killer dev platform!" all the way to, "the patent issues are going to destroy us all!" And yet, in all this chatter, there has been relatively little chatter about DotGNU or Portable.NET. Well, you know what they say: learning is FUNdamental...

Sun Microsystems Inc. this week is planning to give users of its Solaris operating system a sneak peek at the next version and its new file system. Among the many new features of Solaris 10, due by year's end, is the DFS (Dynamic File System)—a 128-bit system that will automate many common tasks for system administrators.

PHP enters the standalone GUI application arena with PHP-GTK. Learn the basic building blocks of PHP-GTK coding with a tutorial for first installing the language and then building and connecting its widgets, buttons, and functions.