Aaron Hillegass' new book, titled "Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming", is now available in the stores. In the past, we reviewed his previous book "Cocoa Programming for MacOSX" and we got a good idea of Aaron's elegant writing style, descriptive chapters and advanced development under Mac OS X. In this book, he goes down under, teaching us how to handle and develop for the underpinnings of OSX, the core of the OS.

At this week's CA World 2003 show in Las Vegas, Torvalds sat down with InfoWorld to talk about the completion this past weekend of Version 2.6's first test release; what will keep him up at night worrying about that test release; his thoughts about the impending SCO-IBM suit and possible impact on Linux development; and something of a wish list of technologies to be included in upcoming versions of the open source operating system.

Stéphane Guillard published recently a comprehensive report of the current status of the Amiga OS4 project. The documents are available in English and in French, in PDF/JPEG or PowerPoint.

When Netcraft first reported on Windows Server 2003 they gave an indication on the numbers of sites that had been put up prior to the official launch. In the three months since the launch the number of active sites has increased by over 300% and now stands at 88,400. Microsoft will take some considerable encouragement at the number of sites that have switched from Linux (8,000).

Visionaries are using photons to develop data-security systems that may prove the ultimate defense against eavesdropping hackers.

Researchers are trying to get a grip on one of the problems with computers:the human on the other end.

A Grid computing environment provides the virtual computing resource that will be used to execute applications. The functional components(security, resource managament, informations services, and data managament)of a grid environment, as well as non-functional considerations such as performance requirements or operating system requirements, must be well understood when considering enabling an application to execute in a grid environment. This article helps you determine whether an application is a good candidate to execute in a grid environment.

In response to Adobe's decision to drop the Mac version of Premiere, Apple now offers a trade-in program to entice Premiere users to move to Final Cut Pro/Express. If Adobe users trade in their disks with Apple, they will receive a free copy of Final Cut Express, or a $500 rebate for Final Cut Pro. In other Apple multimedia news, Apple released Soundtrack for $299, a music composing application.

A CA World panel of Linux luminaries that included Linus Torvalds predicted the demise of Unix over time, saying it will be replaced by Linux. Again, our recent editorial on the subject.

"It has been learned through public and private sources that AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (they've even pulled the logos off the buildings). Some will remain working on Mozilla during the transition, and will move to other jobs within AOL." Read the article at MozillaZine. Elsewhere, the MozillaFoundation was created. In other browser news, Epiphany 0.8 was released, and OmniWeb 4.5 beta3 too.

Here are a few screenshots of applications on YellowTAB's Zeta: "BeTunes is coming along well, the TimeLiner management app looks promising, the Tracker configuration is easy and very useful. MeTOS, the developing tool is fully functional and will speed up your coding adventures. AbiWord is a tight word processor and for simple editing use Zedit, the enhanced text editor. As you will see, the Network configuration has dramatically improved over R5. If you develop an app that requires network settings you can add a tab to the configuration panel."

Lycoris unveiled its new OS for the tablet PC, Desktop/LX Tablet Edition, into the hands of tablet manufacturers and resellers this week. Seen as a giant step into a new market for the Linux software company. Tablet Edition gives OEMs and vertical markets access to an inexpensive operating system capable of running on the Tablet PC platform. Read the rest of the press release here.

Sun Microsystems Inc. is hoping to lure users of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Alpha server technology with an incentive program that includes no-risk assessments of migrating to the SPARC/Solaris platform.

A few days ago we published an editorial suggesting that Apple should be selling the eMac for 500 bucks or a bare-bones G3-based machine for $200-300 USD, in order to compete with the "cheap PCs" trend today. I was wrong. Creating such price differentation between the G5 and the G3 or eMac would cannibalize the sales of the high-end machines (where more margin for profit exists) and even worse, it would destroy the Apple brand name. But hey, you know me, I am as stubborn as it goes. I discussed the situation with some more people around me and we came up with an alternative plan, which in my opinion, makes more sense business-wise and it has some good potential.