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 a small seminar room of the De La Salle University (DLSU)in the Philippines, Caslon Chua, chief software architect of SpecOps made a demonstration of the "bridge" software "David". More at inq7.net.

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.

Majorgeeks.com has posted a link to an unofficial independent release of a Service Pack for Windows 98SE. While it does introduce some fixes and additional support, it is important to note that this is not official software.

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.

"The battle to create and own a proprietary industry standard generates rapid improvements in price and performance, at least until somebody emerges totally dominant. If fact, even after a monopolist emerges, there is still considerable pressure to innovate, because unless you can induce your installed base to upgrade frequently, you have a hard time continuing to grow." More at streamingmedia.com.

TiVo finally launched its High Definition-capable unit. Designed by TiVo for DirecTV, it sports a 250 GB Hard drive and four tuners for $999. But neat new products aside, TiVo faces some daunting challenges. It has not made inroads with cable companies, many of whom have commissioned cheap TiVo knock-offs from companies like Scientific Atlanta. Many owner of these off-brand DVRs don't even know that they aren't TiVos, and, having never used the real thing, don't know the difference.

Continuing yesterday's Gnome story where we mentioned the webcam/voice project for Gaim, Tim Ringenbach wrote us in with more info and a preliminary screenshot from their project, gaim-vv.

Jamie Clarkson released a screenshot of his work on a Mesa3d port to Syllable. In other news: Syllable 0.5.3 is slated to come out the 1st or 2nd in May. This release has many new features including: a updated Radeon driver, a VMWare driver, a new ATA driver, new Yamaha DS-XG drivers, new install scripts, and a whole lot more. This release also contains a humongus number of patches by the whole Syllable team for GCC 3.x. More info here.

In this article, Jim Menard is going to describe testing frameworks and walk through the process of adding unit tests to CheckbooX.

Much has happened since the days when the first Beowulf cluster was deployed, but while cost still matters, today technology is the differentiator that helps keep costs in check. To get an update on IBM clustering technology, the industry and what customers are doing with clusters take a look at this interview with Dave Turek, Vice President, IBM's Deep Computing.

A least privileged environment is going to significantly increase the security of the "Longhorn" Windows platform. Get started today by writing managed code, first of all, and when building desktop applications, make them LUA (Logical Unit Application programming interface) compliant.

One place Stardock sees things moving in the future, especially as Longhorn nears and Windows XP becomes more widespread, is the concept of Micro-Shells, says Brad Wardell of Stardock. In the old days, programs tried to replace the entire shell (explorer). Micro-Shells instead extend pieces of the shell. Stardock is particularly interested in extending in the future is the folder views.

And where everyone thought that BayStar pulled out their investment off SCO because they didn't like the bad press and any SCO involvement, it seems to be the exact opposite: they want to see even more IP enforcement from SCO! "It's questionable whether SCO Group should continue in the (Unix) market," BayStar's spokesman Bob McGrath said. "We're looking for the best return we can, and we think the focus should be on IP licensing (and enforcement)."