"I have a vision of an application which provides me with an idea of the sort of features I would like Syllable to have. Its time I wrote it down so that you can all see where I'm going with Syllable. If I compare my fantasy application with the current abilities of Syllable, then it gives me a set of features which we still need to implement, so it sort of serves as a roadmap and a high level design all in one." Read the article at Syllable's web site.

The major PostgreSQL news this week is the upcoming release of 7.3.1, which will provide some fixes for early adopters of 7.3. In other SQL news, the Firebird team is pleased to announce the release of the Firebird v1.0.2 update for Win32 and Linux.

LinuxDevices.com is pleased to publish the proceedings from the Fourth Real-Time Linux Workshop held December 6-7, 2002 in Boston, MA at the Computer Science Department, Boston University. The conference was organized by the Real-Time Linux Foundation.

In an article for OSOpinion, Mike Berman has a thing or two to say about the past, present, and future of the BeOS. Although he makes some acute observations in an effort to generate discussion, he doesn't mention any of the developing BeOS replacements, Zeta, OpenBeOS, or BlueEyedOS. Read the article here.

Bochs 2.0 x86 emulator was released today with many new features and support for MMX/SSE/SSE2 and more modern operating systems in graphics mode.

The stable version of GTK+ 2.2 was released today, along with GLib2 2.2.0 and Pango 1.2.0. This version of the GTK+ libraries will be used in the upcoming Gnome 2.2 release, which is the first version truly geared towards end-users.

The new version of Virtual PC has speed improvements up to 25% faster on Mac OS X, Mac OS X Dock integration, enhanced back-up support in Mac OS X, improved USB printing support for increased compatibility, video support for Apple's monitors, including the 23" Cinema Display Self-contained configurations; makes installation on several machines a snap. According to Connectix test, optimal performance requires Mac OS X - version 10.2.3 (Jaguar), L3 cache, NVIDIA Ge Force or ATI Radeon video card.

Apple released the December 2002 Developer tools update today, available for download for ADC Members. Among the list of updates is Project Builder 2.1 with "better CVS support".

"Welcome back to our series on IRIX binary compatibility. In this part, we will study IRIX and NetBSD threading models. We will also examine how it is possible to emulate IRIX native threads on NetBSD, though NetBSD does not support a similar feature for its native binaries." Read the article at OnLamp.

"Well Red Hat came out with 8.0 and I was cautioned about trying out a new release and that maybe I should wait for 8.1 to come out. I was going to follow that advice but I got tired of my sound not working so I decided it's either going to be Red Hat 8.0 or back to Windows XP, but one way or the other my sound was going to work." Read the full article at Linux Orbit.

Jackson was one of many who wrote to tell us about an e-mail from MandrakeSoft, makers of the popular Linux-Mandrake desktop Linux distribution. The press release can be read online or here at OSNews.com. Update: An interview with Gael Duval at ofb.biz.

Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed to make Windows-based computers an ideal platform for running and displaying applications rich in multimedia elements such as full-color graphics, video, 3D animation, and rich audio. DirectX 9.0 includes security and performance updates, along with many new features across all technologies, which can be accessed by applications using the DirectX 9.0 APIs.Update: SDK download listing.

"Over the last ten years, SuSE's distribution has matured into a polished product for the professional user. It is the fine detail which sets this distribution apart from the rest -- the little touches that make the system easier, and more enjoyable to use. 10 years ago, few dreamt that SuSE, and Linux, would be where they are today -- so, with that in mind, SuSE can look forward to the next ten years with a solid product base on which to build." Read the review at LinuxFormat.co.uk.

CRM wrote in to tell us that the folks at Distrowatch have tried Slackware on for size. The review can be found in its entirety here. Conclusions are not surprising: impressive, stable distro, but if you like bells and whistles, stay away.