"Code Reading: An Open Source Perspective", by Diomidis Spinellis, is a new kind of book. It's a foray into a domain normally left untouched by Computer Science texts and exemplifies yet another positive contribution from the Open Source movement. Simply put, Code Reading is a detailed discussion of the techniques required to read and maintain both good and bad code. As an interesting twist, the author draws on projects from the Open Source world to provide examples, both good and bad.

FreeBSD's Scott Long announced the availability of 5.2-BETA ISO images and ftp install sets for i386 and alpha. Amd64, sparc64, ia64, and pc98 sets will be available shortly.

The QNX4 driver for VMWare is now available. The package includes a graphics driver for Photon and a vmtool for accessing VMWare information (date, clipboard, etc.).

Linus Torvalds has released his final 2.6.0-test kernel, calling it the "Beaver In Detox". Following this release Linus says that 2.6 development will be lead by Andrew Morton. The kernel's name refers in jest to the previous release, which Linus had named "Stoned Beaver". It contains a fix for the aic7xxx driver, proper error handling in do_fork(), some firewire fixes, and correction of a few skbuff leakage points. Download it from a kernel.org mirror.

HP displaced Sun as the market leader in Unix systems this quarter, according to IDC figures released today. Read the news at TheRegister and at LinuxElectrons.

The first round of screenshots showing off the new GUI for SkyOS 5.0 have been released. The three screenshots show various features of the new GUI, including the new WindUI theme, new Viewer window, and various window effects such as curves, shadows, and transparency. In addition to the new GUI, SkyOS 5.0 will have other additions, such as more support for hardware (e.g. an ATI driver to go alongside the NVidia driver), speed and stability improvements, anti-aliased text, and Bochs support.

What’s the next killer app? What’s your biggest wish? The Microsoft chairman responds to readers’ letters in MSNBC's online forum.

As someone who is always looking to maximize performance and efficiency from my computers, I was delighted to have stumbled upon a program named Distcc a while back. According to their website distcc is a "fast, free distributed c/c++ compiler."

SuSE releases latest Linux Technology for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8: Service Pack enhancements include improved hardware support, enhanced storage access.

When I was presented with the opportunity to review The Kompany's dbRadar product, I jumped at the chance. I seem to be on a continual quest for good database tools.

QNX 6.2.1 setup.exe removed the capability of installation into a Windows FAT partition. This article tries to provide a manual way to have QNX installed under FAT partition, with or without burning a CD.

Linux is very ready for the desktop, says Tom Adelstein, consultant and member of the Open Government Interoperability Project.

An article at the register speculates that new consoles from Sony and Microsoft will be announced in Spring 2004. The speculation is that Microsoft may be planning on giving some details about its new console at the Game Developers Conference in March, but that Sony may try to steal their thunder by also giving details on the upcoming PS3.

It is 12:10 AM PST (Tuesday morning) now that I write this, we just came back from FreeBSD's 10th Year Anniversary Party at the DNA Lounge club in San Francisco. Dig in for info and some pictures.