New Zealand's Yoper Ltd announced the release of version 1.2 of Yoper Ydesktop V1. This release contains a large number of bugfixes and software changes.

Ian Griffiths posted to Longhorn user group detailing some of the kernel improvements that we can be expecting from Longhorn. Longhorn will feature CPU time reservation, and disk access scheduling. These changes are being added mainly for the benefit of the media services. MS wants movies and other media to play without interruptions. Additionally, GotDotNet is featuring a diagram showing how Longhorn is built.

"There are loads of things to consider when buying a PC or a Mac, things like API’s, software and hardware support, networking capabilities, usability and security then you have the major one, the price. You also have to consider that Mac’s are certainly aimed at the consumer market while Windows is aiming for both Consumer and Business users". Read the comparison at ActiveMac.

"Lindows is sleak, flashy, fun, quick, and way easy to use!  If you are a computer user and are looking for an alternative to Windows, or just want to try out a user friendly Linux distro, try out Lindows.  If you are a Linux guru and are happy with your current distro, excellent, that is what make Linux great - variety.  If you are curious, give that 15 day trial period a try." Read the review at NeoLinkComputers.

The same protocols that make secure e-commerce over traditional wired networks possible can also help make wireless transactions safe. This article demonstrate secure messaging between J2ME clients and server-side Java applications using the Kerberos protocol.

In the past week a lot of discussion was around Windows Longhorn, as Microsoft revealed their upcoming OS to their developer's conference, officially presenting many new features.

Robert Watson posted another bi-weekly version of the FreeBSD 5.2 open issues list, slightly restructured. At this time, there are four "show stopper defects" listed: panics when building ata-raid arrays, ATAng crashdump causes disk corruption, pipe/VM corruption on Alpha, and lingering PSE instability. There are only 5 issues left of on the "required features" list: KSE support for sparc64, KSE support for alpha, Fine-grained network stack locking without Giant, MAC framework devfs path fixes, and ACL_MASK override of umask support in UFS.

Here is a chat log of Microsoft/Neowin/Stardock chat regarding PDC and Longhorn. On the last day of the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference, Stardock's Brad Wardell, Jed and Jana from Microsoft and Creamhackered from Neowin hosted a Neowin.net live chat to answer questions and provide information on Longhorn, the next version of Windows due out in 2006. The chat is very interesting and should help more people understand --in plain english-- what Longhorn has to offer. Elsewhere, ExtremeTech posted a preview of Longhorn with screenshots. Update: Another preview.

Mozilla 1.6a, the next alpha release from the "classic" codebase was announced at mozilla.org recently. The mail app now has vCard support, "remove from server after x days" and the (much requested) option of separate recipient and sender columns in the thread pane. Check out the Changelog to see a list of the other new features/fixes.

Apple Computer said Friday that it plans to issue an update to older versions of Mac OS X to fix security flaws that were patched as part of the new Panther. Read on for more Apple news.

There's been much discussion over the past few months about the marriage of databases and filesystems - with Microsoft's Longhorn reportedly sporting the Yukon integrated SQL Server, and GNOME Storage in heaty debate, if not development, there's been lots to talk about.

Microsoft introduced the next version of Windows, code-named “Longhorn,” at its Professional Developers Conference this week in Los Angeles. Although Microsoft has leaked details of Longhorn before, the conference offered the first official look at many of the technologies coming when the operating system ships sometime in 2005 or 2006. Elsewhere: "Today was the 4th and final day of the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference in LA. If you were there, things were a lot quieter than previously. Most sessions had to do with creating software with all the new goodies." Read it here.

In one of the most overlooked cool things at the PDC, the new Command Shell that will be in Longhorn blew me away when I saw it. I walked up to the booth asking if unix-like file aliases would be in the new shell, and was given a demo by the team that had my mind racing." Read the article at ASP.net.

With Mac OS X Version 10.3, Apple delivers what's probably the most polished desktop operating system available today, says eWEEK Labs.