Is there something fundamentally misguided about the way we write programs today? Why is it so difficult, if not impossible, to write bug-free programs that contain more than 20 to 30 million lines of code? Do we need a radical new paradigm shift in programming? If so, what might it look like? One response came from Sun's Victoria Livschitz, a senior IT architect and Java Evangelist who has an interesting history.

GarageGames announced the availability of an exporter tool that allows Blender, the Open Source 3D content creation suite, to be used with GarageGames' flagship Torque Game Engine technology (the power behind Tribes2). The Blender exporter and Torque runs on the Mac OS X, Linux and Windows platforms. The Torque Game Engine (TGE) is a fully featured AAA game engine with a multi-player network code, seamless indoor/outdoor rendering engines, skeletal animation, DnD GUI creation, a built-in world editor, and a C-like scripting language. Unlike most commercial game engines, as part of the low cost license ($100), you receive all C++ source code to the multi-platform gaming engine.

According to Neowin, the source code for Microsoft Windows NT 4 and 2000 has been leaked. A number of universities and institutes already have legal access to the source code, distributed by Microsoft. It is still not confirmed by the software giant of Redmond - but in the wrong hands, this could result in a major security catastrophe and a huge threat against Microsoft's 32-bit operating system. Update 11:37 PM EST by AS: danjr lets us know, it's official.

I received LindowsOS 4.5 for free when Lindows offered it through OSNews.com. I decided to break the review into five scored sections: Installation, First Impression, Usability, Support and Long Term Use.

Cooker is a test distro and Mandrake has come up with the idea of using testzilla to formalize hardware testing. What it does is register your hardware configuration with mandrake's bugzilla. Read the full review of Mandrake Linux 10b2 at GUILinux.

"Sun's Java Desktop System joins Novell's Ximian XD2 as a tailored GNOME desktop that's aimed at cubicle workers in large enterprise settings, such as government offices and big educational institutions. In the future, Linux will be the desktop used by the most, and the least, computer-literate folks on the planet" says the shootout review at NewsForge.

SCO is giving us their ten cents why customers should use Unixware instead of Linux.

"For our landing site work, we always get the highest-end desktop Mac we can find, so we just got one of the G5s with dual 2 GHz processors and 8 GB of RAM," Matt Golombek, a planetary geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the E-Commerce Times.

On Time specializes in providing software development tools for real-time embedded systems on Intel x86 compatible CPUs. Founded in 1989, On Time has offices in Massachusetts and Hamburg, Germany. On Time offers a complete range of real-time operating systems and development tools for 32-bit flat address protected-mode and 16-bit real-mode environments. Recently the company got a port of SciTech's SNAP graphics suite. Here is an Interview with SciTech's Dave Milici, who was responsible for porting SciTech SNAP to On Time RTOS-32.

Intel scientists will announce on Thursday that they have built a prototype of a silicon chip that can switch light on and off like electricity, blurring the line between computing and communications and bringing sweeping changes to the way digital information and entertainment are delivered.

Get the latest DB2, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, and WebSphere Linux code from IBM on DVD, for free. This is the fastest way to get access to all of IBM middleware that has been ported to Linux. The package contains almost 8 GB of IBM tools and products at no charge, including Rational Rose and PurifyPlus, WebSphere Studio Site Developer, WebSphere SDK for Web services, WebSphere Application Server, DB2 Universal Database, Tivoli Access Manager, and Lotus Domino Server.

At the end of Part 2 (Part 1 is here) I asserted that a new force would enter the world of computing completely changing the landscape. I stated that Microsoft will lose this battle. I lied, there is more than one force, but one way or another there will be one result.

Whether you are developing at the enterprise level or for the smallest venues, IT is all about automation, finding ways to allow these infernal machines to do things better, faster, or in many cases, "at all" than the human alternatives.

Chris Sells begins his "Longhorn" Solitaire project at the ground floor, exploring the initial decisions developers will make when building new applications targeting Longhorn. Elsewhere, Microsoft Research released the source code of the "Allegiance" 3D game.