Writing to text files or to the console in a C++ program? You might need to format some text data, and the C++ streams class includes some handy formatting features that allow you to do great things. Jeff Cogswell shows you how to use it to line up your text columns, right- or left-justify your text, and set the precision of your floating point numbers.

Security experts are monitoring widespread use of exploit code that takes advantage of a recently disclosed vulnerability in Windows. A worm, although anticipated, hasn't yet been spotted.

iPod's runaway success virtually transformed the firm. Revenues up; Jobs' big job now is to outrun competition. Both TheStar and NYTimes are discussing an apparent "focus shift" of Apple away from the personal computers market and towards the digital music business.

Microsoft Corp is doing a U-turn on its Longhorn roadmap, with plans for a server operating system version alongside the long-expected client due in 2006. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed Friday that there will be a Longhorn server sometime after the company delivers the Longhorn client OS.

One of the greatest advantages that *BSD has over other Unix variants is the cvsup/make world process. The cvsup/make world process allows you to update your system at any time.

"I thought I had a pretty good handle on the differences between the open-source community and the traditional proprietary approach to software development. But watching a Microsoft spokesperson defend his company and its whole approach to business in front of a room full of Linux zealots last week helped crystallize the gulf between the two camps--not just in business strategy but in fundamental philosophy and political bent." Read the editorial at ZDNet.

The open-source operating must make key cosmetic adjustments, according to speakers at the Desktop Linux Summit. Elsewhere, the software giant ventured into hostile territory on Wednesday to argue its case during a live debate over the future of the Linux desktop.

Am I the only one amazed at the progress being made on SkyOS? Kelly writes in to tell us that SkyOS has just gotten sticky note support (screenshot). Read on for more.

The open source community has mastered many challenges and has been successful in numerous areas. However, there is one glaring weakness that needs to be remedied.

The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce a better solution to upgrading KDE, one that will allow a user to get his/her hands on a release the night it hits the mirrors, without having to overwrite the base OS install. Konstruct compiles KDE into a new desktop rather than using RPM or DEB.

In Miguel de Icaza's latest blog entry the Mono project leader discusses the threat Longhorn's new technologies and frameworks pose to Linux and open source. He also directs uses to this recent USENET post about the goals of Mozilla, which is a very interesting read.

ISS (Integrated sound system) has been implemented into SkyOS. The ISS is a very well integrated sound system which makes it very easy to access the audio multimedia services of SkyOS, though providing a very powerful interface.

"People tend to develop strong ties to a specific computer, even if it means waiting to use their favourite machine, say researchers. A team at Pennsylvania State University found that people were drawn to a PC because of their tendency to assign human attributes to machines." Read the article here.

This article introduces some of the basic data-access performance issues to consider while developing database applications using ADO.NET. It shows you how to analyze network load, load on the database server, un-optimized SQL, opening and closing a connection, fetching a result set, blob access, and metadata retrieval. It then provides suggestions for improving database application performance.