A small but growing software company is rolling out a major upgrade that lets developers build standards-based Java and .Net applications with no coding. Kinzan Inc. this week will release Kinzan Studio & Server 4.0, a development and deployment environment that lets developers build enterprise applications through an assembly model by simply linking components in a drag-and-drop format.

Microsoft this year will seek to distance itself from Java rivals with tools designed to streamline how Windows-based business software is built and used.

"The other day something happened that left me a little speechless. A friend of mine brought over a copy of Yellowtab's Zeta OS RC1." Read the review at Beta10, but please note that they are reviewing an older version of Zeta, RC1, while RC2+more_patches are already available. Yesterday OSNews featured shots of ZintrO, YellowTAB's newest work, and ZetaNews has some info as well on this.

"Apple is about to show off just how innovative it can really be. Without giving it all away, we’ve decided it would be great to goose the Mac faithful a bit with a peek into what will most assuredly be the biggest advance in OS X’s short history." Read the (unconfirmed) report at MacNet2. In the meantime, Apple released a new Panther security update.

AMD's Athlon-64 (for PCs) and Opteron (for servers) will protect against buffer overflows when used with a new version of Windows XP. Intel plans similar features on next generation Pentium chips.

"Linux Kernel 2.6 has been in stable release for months now, which is like dog's years in kernel time. Kernel releases are exciting times for Linux geeks, because it's just plain fun to be able to replace the kernel on a system, or have several different kernels installed, and choose among them as the whim strikes. Oh yes, you want to gain improved performance and functionality, too." Read the article at ITManagement.

"Our main goal is to complete the Rhapsody OS and make it an OS that people would like to use. We aim for end users and hope to bring them what Apple has brought their customers for the past 20 years - the simplicity and style which Mac OS has." Check out the project here.

This technical whitepaper by Rafael Kolic, a technology marketing manager in Intel's Corporate Technology Group, introduces Wireless USB (WUSB) and explains how it will impact device performance and mobility. The latest iteration of USB technology, WUSB will offer the same functionality as standard wired USB devices -- but without the cabling.

The use of inheritance in VB.NET requires you to make several extra design decisions. This chapter from "Building Applications and Components with Visual Basic .NET" will help you learn how to make those decisions.

Apple has introduced many improvements that goes beyond small incremental improvements to existing technologies (think Quartz Extreme, Rendezvous etc.). They have succeeded in integrating complex technologies without the complexity.

Along with the development environment, Datschge and Henrique Pinto look at the large number of new KDE apps, the project structure, and even the philosophy behind KDE. If you are thinking about checking out KDE 3.2, are a long-time user, or just want to know what's up, this review has everything you need to know.

A post by Torvalds on the linux-kernel mailing list suggests that Intel should be more than a little ashamed of itself when it announced its 64-bit extensions last week. Torvalds was replying to a post which asked whether there was any difference between X86_64 and X86-64. He said the real name for the instruction set should be X86-64, and always has been. Torvalds said he was "a bit disgusted" at Intel for not even mentioning AMD in its documentation or its press releases. Read more at the Inquirer.

As RAM increasingly becomes a commodity, the prices drop and computer users are able to buy more. 32-bit archictectures face certain limitations in regards to accessing these growing amounts of RAM. To better understand the problem and the various solutions, we begin with an overview of Linux memory management. Understanding how basic memory management works, we are better able to define the problem, and finally to review the various solutions. This article was written by examining the Linux 2.6 kernel source code for the x86 architecture types.

Recently, Ken Farmer of LinuxHPC.org and David Kanter of Real World Technologies had an opportunity to interview Jason Pettit, of SGI. Jason is the Product Line Manager for the SGI Altix 3000 at SGI, and has been working with various Linux based systems since 1998.