Just as access can be granted based on a fingerprint or retina scan, biometrical analysis of the keyboard typing style can produce a unique pattern. A project to produce an authentication scheme based on hardware that every computer has already (unlike a retina scanner) was started in 1999 for BeOS but now is available on MacOS X, in a beta release.

HP will be establishing a laboratory at its Beijing facility for Red Flag Linux developers to work with HP engineers, and will be putting together packages of HP hardware running Red Flag for the Chinese market, and perhaps other markets in the future.

It is not fashionable nowadays to speak of the merits of the command line, in an age where things like streaming video and Aqua are an integral part of our daily life. However, I do not think that typed-in commands must necessarily be consigned to the dustbin of computer history. Of course, I am not suggesting that we all drop X and Windows and pretend like we are living in the early eighties. The command line interface still has much to offer us, and many of its benefits simply cannot physically be emulated or even replaced by graphical ones.

Beyond is a free magazine in PDF format, publishing in the English and Italian languages, focusing on BeOS and other alternative OSes. The first issue includes articles like "Explaining the BeOS and MacOSX filesystems", "Dossier ADSL: connect to the internet with BeOS", "Amiga Alpe Adria 2003", "REBOL Tutorial (part I)", "Preview: Zeta from YellowTab" and much more.

During development of eCS 1.1 operating system defined standards was used. The eCS DevGroup published the eCS File and Directory Standard (eFDS) so you can test your own software product to compliance of operating system standards and release updated version if needed.

Timothy R. Butler writes: "Our last consideration of Mandrake Linux was early this year when my colleague Eduardo Sanchez thoroughly reviewed Mandrake 9.0. In that review, Sanchez noted the numerous advances made in 9.0, but also reported some serious flaws that somewhat limited his enthusiasm. With that considered, we were anxious to find out if 9.1 could again return Mandrake to the amazing quality achieved in release 8.2. See what we found, here."

The company lands a big customer for its Power Mac G5: Virginia Tech, which will use 1,100 G5s as part of a cluster designed to make the list of the world's largest supercomputers. In the meantime, Apple delays the shipping of its dual-processor Power Mac G5 to individual consumers, opting instead to send the first of the fast desktops to schools, Europe and selected customers.

The GNOME Desktop 2.4 Beta 2: "Subotai", is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors since August 31st. The RC1 of Gnome 2.4 is expected to be released in a few days while work for the GTKFileChooser API has started (most possibly to be included on Gnome 2.6 next year).

Red Hat released the beta for their upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) line. The release is tagged release 2.95, Taroon. The next official release will probably be called RHEL release 3 (as usual, Red Hat does not confirm their upcoming release version and date).

"Forget SCO & Microsoft. The single biggest thing keeping Linux from the desktop is Linux itself. It's time to stop adding new features, and finish what's there." Read the 3-page editorial at ExtremeTech. Our Take: While there is no such thing as "finished software", as software by definition can always be improved, it is true that Linux projects (especially desktop apps) need to outline and release full-featured, solid, well tested versions of their software and offer less smaller ones that require the user to constantly upgrade and be in a state of flactuation. What is needed in smaller projects are real release engineers that can outline goals and releases wisely (the Gnome project, PostgreSQL and Apache are good on that for example, smaller projects could learn a thing or two from these bigger projects).

This guide will introduce you to XFce, the popular (CDE-inspired in the past) Unix/X11 graphical environment, and it will give you pointers how to install it.

From Mac news site MacMinute: "Victor Kulesh today announced the release of Veta Universal Palm Edition, which will turn a Bluetooth-enabled Palm PDA into a wireless remote control for your Mac. "Now users can use their Tungsten T Palms to remotely control many applications such as iTunes, Keynote, DVD Player and even the mouse on their computers." Veta Universal Palm Edition is priced at US$10."

Linux on Desktop is what Xandros trying to push when they took over the Corel Linux. Their effort in attracting Windows refugee with their version 1.0 was quite a success. Now Xandros released their updated version of Xandros OS Deluxe version 1.1. OSForge is reviewing this release.

"Without a doubt, Linux has become fully accepted as a powerful, scalable and stable platform for enterprise deployments. Somewhat surprisingly, however, the cost of deploying Linux is getting pretty close to the cost of deploying some other enterprise platforms." Read the editorial at eWEEK.