An identified security issue in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications could allow an attacker to compromise a Microsoft Windows-based system and then take a variety of actions. Windows and Office users should update their system.

Built on grid computing and due to debut at Oracle World, Oracle 10G marks the company's biggest technology release in a decade. Can Oracle tackle the grid & PeopleSoft, too? Read it at eWEEK.

Tinyminds.org sits down with Linux International Director, Jon "Maddog" Hall. Jon has been in the computer industry since 1969, using Unix since 1977, and Linux since 1994. He has been a software engineer, systems administrator, product manager, marketing manager and professional educator. Jon has been the Executive Director of Linux International since 1995, the first four years as a volunteer. Jon has been employed by VA Linux systems, Compaq Computer Corporation in the Digital UNIX Marketing group and Bell Laboratories among other companies. Read the full interview at Tinyminds.org.

"Back in the 1980s, the folks at Digital Equipment had a problem. While their VAX systems were selling like hotcakes, the systems still couldn't deliver the kind of scale found on mainframes. Digital, which had no plans to build big iron, set out to find a way to use existing equipment to increase capacity--a search that led to the development of the VAX cluster and the concept of horizontal scaling." Read the editorial at ZDNews.

SkyEye is a simulator for typical embedded computer systems. It can simulate Atmel AT91 based on the ARM7TDMI, EP7312 based on ARM720T, StrongARM SA1100/SA1110, and 8019as NIC, etc. Some operating systems, such as ARM Linux, uClinux, and uc/OS-II(ucos-ii), can run and be debugged and analyzed at the source level. This Skyeye snapshot version it can simulate the Xscale PXA 250 Lubbock developboard.

Session 18 of the Fortnightly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss is available here. This one has some important Q&A's (rootless X server, self-hosted IDE, 32 or 64-bit platform, OpenGL support) and even a clue about the biggest question of all concerning Amiga OS 4: when will it be released.

I wrote an article a while ago on Linux packaging and Autopackage. There seemed to be quite a lot of interest in it so we got version 0.3 released today.

Lots of talk in the past month about the viruses unleashed to the open. Read more to vote!

"We all know dependencies are one thing we hated about installing application on the Linux boxes. If you worry about wiggling with those dependencies, Libranet is coming to rescue you from the apps installation nightmare." Read the short review at OSForge.

TuxReports has a team review of SuSE, Mandrake, and Lycoris with screenshots. Read it here.

DistroWatch reports that the first stable version for source-based Linux distribution Onebase Linux 1.0 has been released. Grab it from the server or support the project by buying it from their store. Read its full announcement, change-Log and base-packs or download it (222 MB).

This article revisits the working of metaclasses and their relation to other OOP concepts. It contrasts class instantiation with inheritance, distinguishes classmethods and metamethods, and explains and solves metaclass conflicts.

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.

Debian is not quite like any other distro out there. If bigger is better, then Debian wins hands down. Aside from having the largest collection of free software packages, Debian also runs on 11 platforms. But there is more to Debian than just size. Travel writer and recent Debian convert Robert Storey tackles the whole installation procedure head on and gives his report.