Borland Software last week unveiled the latest update of its flagship Java IDE, JBuilder 9, and disclosed plans for an upcoming line of development tools for the .NET Framework. Version 9 of Borland's venerable JBuilder development environment adds Web services support enhancements and a new integrated solution for developing mobile and wireless applications to run on many devices.

Andrew Bloo from SciTech Software sent us in a clarification to our yesterday's story: "The SciTech SNAP drivers are not actually XFree86 specific at all, but rather the XFree86 driver is just a small module that interfaces to SciTech SNAP. Once SciTech SNAP is installed on the system, developers can actually code directly to the SciTech SNAP API's via the SDK, and bypass X entirely.

A fundamental constituent of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing initiative is "Reliability. The customer can depend on the product to fulfil its functions." No-one wants to be a guinea pig and, after all, Microsoft hardly have a track record of designing secure platforms. Not entirely true. Recent accreditation to CM-EAL4 puts Windows 2000 on a security par with most hardened versions of Unix.

Microsoft's plans for "Longhorn," the next version of Windows, include a new graphics subsystem, a new file system and a new security system. But, so far, users aren't nearly as excited about the features as Microsoft is, eWeek says. In the meantime, The Register reports that Microsoft sidelines Longhorn database caper: Microsoft has scaled back its 'Big Bang', and its Future Storage initiative will build on, rather than supersede the NTFS file system, when the next version of Windows appears in 2005.

SCO executive pleads case against Linux distributors using pieces of Unix. Read the interview.

AMD released the Athlon XP 3200+ for desktops, the last scheduled member of a chip family that helped turn the company's fortunes around. Benchmarks here ("it should have been called a 2800+").

Here are 4 new server tutorial/references for Linux: Tripwire, IPTables, NFS and NFS Linux installs. Two of these are Linux Productivity Magazine issues, and two are Troubleshooters.Com documents. Taken together, these documents provide a tutorial for the new Linux administrator, and a basic reference for the more experienced.

"What? Are you nuts? Running SuSE 8.2 Linux Professional on a 150 Mhz Pentium? That will never work. That's exactly what I did do and it did work, admirably." Read the article at LinuxPlanet.

IRIX 6.5.20 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers. The IRIX 6.5.20 release contains both maintenance and feature updates.

Sun Microsystems is spitting nails over a biting report from Meta Group, a market research and consulting firm, that suggested, among other things, that Sun's customers should rethink doing business with the company in the long term, and that CEO Scott McNealy should be replaced.

Everyone loves benchmarks, so here is your daily dose: NVidia has just released the (pricey) GeForce FX 5900 and pretty much regained the speed crown from ATi (possibly until the upcoming .13 ATi card comes out). Nvidia benchmarks here, here, here, here and here.

"At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2003 trade show in New Orleans in May 2003, Microsoft finally revealed its roadmap for Longhorn, the next major Windows desktop version, and the successor to Windows XP. Longhorn, as readers of this site know, will be the most dramatic and exciting release of Windows ever, and the most important update to the product since Windows 95." Read the article at WinSuperSite.

In this article David Johnson will explain some key Qt concepts, create an example Qt program, and demonstrate how easy it is to program with Qt. This article is from the perspective of a FreeBSD developer, but the majority of it is suitable for those on any platform.

SCO has filed a lawsuit alleging that IBM has misappropriated and misused SCO's Unix code. With two thirds gone of the 100-day period before SCO is due to revoke IBM's Unix licence, vnunet.com interviewed Chris Sontag, senior vice president and general manager of SCO Source. Sontag has overall responsibility for SCO's intellectual property.