GNOME 2.6 Desktop & Developer Platform Release Candidate 1 (2.5.92) is now available.

Apple's recent announcement of Spoken Interface has moved speech recognition to the forefront. However, Mac OS X has included speech recognition and synthesis technologies for quite some time, and in this article MacDevCenter delves into the often misunderstood world of talking to your Mac.

The motion by Genesi in their case against Amiga Inc was granted in part, but denied in other ways. Specifically, Genesi is granted rights to AmigaDE (source code access is not specifically mentioned), but denies them access to AmigaOS. Read more to get to the actual file and description.

Microsoft recognises the benefits of open source but is not prepared to turn over its Windows operating system to the paradigm. Instead, Microsoft provides access to source code on a limited basis, said a Microsoft representative.

Novell today unveiled SUSE LINUX 9.1 Personal and SUSE LINUX 9.1 Professional, the first complete commercial Linux products based on the 2.6 kernel, providing the only significant retail Linux products on the market, says the PR. eWEEK has an article about it too and MadPenguin an interview.

Microsoft apologized to jurors for its past anticompetitive practices during opening statements Wednesday in a case alleging the company's antitrust violations include word processing and spreadsheet software. "Yes, we acknowledge that and we apologize for it," said David Tulchin, a Microsoft attorney. "The conduct involved competition that went over the line. The question for you is whether or not consumers were overcharged."

This document describes Binary Delta Compression (BDC) technology and its use in software update deployment. This implementation of BDC technology developed by Microsoft reduces the download size of software update packages by downloading only the differences between old files and new files.

In response to Havoc Pennington's post on the future of open source desktop development, GNOME's in particular, two prominent GNOME and Mono Hackers, Miguel de Icaza and Paolo provide their interesting perspective on the subject here and here.

Here is an interview with Robert and Kelly from SkyOS posted on SkyOSnet.

As a student I am quite often confronted with (closed-source) Windows programs. These days there are a few tools that can help running Windows applications on Linux. One of these tools is Win4Lin, Win4Lin allowsone to install Windows 95, 98 and ME under Linux. The Windows NT branch is not supported yet, because Win4Lin sets up a special DOS environmentin which Windows runs.

Rrevealed at SuperSite for Windows, R2 will include all of the free out-of-band updates Microsoft shipped for Windows Server 2003 since April 2003, including the Group Policy Management Console and Windows SharePoint Services.

AMD PowerNow support as found on AMD K6 cpus, the k6-2/3+ models now works on OpenBSD while SMP is going ahead too.

"Mono as it currently stands has serious problems, including strategic and intellectual property concerns. Java as provided by Sun is not open source or GPL-compatible and thus a nonstarter. Many strong proprietary companies such as Microsoft are moving full speed ahead on high-level managed language platforms. Can open source compete, or is it too unable to make hard decisions?" Read Havoc Pennington's article about the future platforms of OSS.

At the 19th annual Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference, which is taking place this week in Los Angeles, Apple announced "Spoken Interface," an upcoming Mac OS X feature that allows those with visual and learning disabilities to use a Mac through speech, audible cues and keyboard navigation. Read more at MacMinute.