Slashdot reports that a post to Bugtraq from SecurityTracker.com reports an Internet Explorer 5 exploit that has been released based on the Win2K code leak: "It is reported that a remote user can create a specially crafted bitmap file that, when loaded by IE, will trigger an integer overflow and execute arbitrary code." Elsewhere, this is a quick, superficial look at the style and content of the leaked Windows 2000 source, quoting from the comments but not the code, so this should be safe for developers to read.

SkyOS is now able to handle and display text from all languages. Because of the recently introduced keyboard/UNICODE mapping and UTF8 handling in the entire GUI and applications you can type and view text from languages like English, German, Chinese and more. Check the news & shots here.

New to Java? If you've gotten past the "Hello World" stage, this chapter from "Just Java 2" will help you understand Java application structure, the runtime internals (stack and heap), and the class "object."

"After using LindowsOS for some time, many troublesome issues regarding the future of this particular flavour of Linux continually flood my mind whenever the subject of Lindows surfaces. I've followed both the company and its flagship product, LindowsOS, since its introduction over two years ago." Read the review at DesktopOS.

"XandrosOS is a good-looking, Debian-based Linux distro designed to lure Windows XP users. It's exceptionally easy to install and use, has good hardware and peripheral detection and good multimedia support, offers Windows networking compatibility, saves one money -- and the desktop, a tweaked version of KDE, even looks like XP to boot." Read the review at TheRegister.

It's easy to get lost in the world of "little languages" -- quite a few have been written to scratch some itch of a company, individual, or project. Rexx is one of these languages, with a long history of use on IBM operating systems, and good current implementations for Linux and other Free Software operating systems. Rexx occupies a useful ecological niche between the relative crudeness of shell scripting and the cumbersome formality of full systems languages.

Munich is struggling with its planned migration from proprietary software to open-source applications, according to news stories in the German press that paint an increasingly gloomy picture of what had originally been widely described as a shining success story for Linux.

This article is the second in a series of whitepapers on using the new Linux 2.6 kernel by William von Hagen of TimeSys. von Hagen's whitepapers place special emphasis on the primary issues in migrating existing drivers, applications, and embedded Linux deployments to a Linux distribution based on the 2.6 kernel.

As part of its initiative to put Linux on the desktop, IBM Corp. wants to migrate Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite to Linux. Microsoft said it's not involved and suggests that IBM might do it by emulation.

The Mono Project has released a small bug-fix release of Mono, 0.30.1. They have also a new document that describes some common tricks to improve the performance of your Mono or .NET application. These are a summary of techniques that we employed to tune our own C# compiler.

VMware's CEO, Diane Greene, gives an interesting interview to IT-Director regarding the recently acquired company.

Novell Inc. and adopted prodigy SUSE Linux struck a one-two punch at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo here in late January with declarations by top executives that Novell will be a major player in the Linux world and is committed to responsibly shepherding the operating system and Novell’s other open-source projects.

Data binding in its traditional sense means associating some underlying data with one or more user interface elements. The data provides the information to display. The user interface elements render the information in the appropriate format.

When some people hear the words "home automation," they think about the Jetsons or multi-million-dollar concept homes of the future. Others think home automation is just a geek fantasy that wouldn't add any real value to their lives. Read the article at MacDevCenter.