This document contains a summary of Microsoft's plan for Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework over the next two releases. Designed to assist customers in their planning process, it is not a comprehensive "feature dump," but more an overview of general themes and direction—an explanation of the development issues that Microsoft is planning to help customers address in each new release.

"Open source is supposed to be about freedom. Unfortunately, certain advocates have lost sight of that goal. People should be free to use software which best fits their needs, whether or not it adheres to a particular programming philosophy. I suggest that open source proponents spend their time crafting interoperability guidelines rather than creating a protected environment, which artificially boosts open-source adoption while hiding it from the full rigors of competition." Read the editorial at ZDNet.

SGI IRIX 6.5.17 is released and all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide include it. The IRIX 6.5.17 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.17m) and feature (6.5.17f) streams. This release continues the focus on stability, reliability, security and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.X quarterly release process.

Slow news day today, but this product is truly interesting and it deserves our attention. It is the most innovative graphics application I've seen since Painter (demo here), and that was many years ago. ZBrush from Pixologic is neither strictly 2D or 3D, but it is "2.5D". In addition to new features, ZBrush1.5, which comes out tomorrow, also provides significant enhancements in nearly every tool and palette. You'll get expanded and improved 2.5D painting capabilities, texturing options, and sculpting utilities, plus many behind-the-scene changes. The available demo for download (Mac/Win) is only for version 1.23b currently, but it will give you an idea of what this is all about. Also, CorelDraw 11 is out.

This is just a follow-up to our previous story about Apple designing the new Sherlock 3 to be very similar to Watson. We raised the question if this policy (the OS company competing with its own third party developers in the application space) was a good thing or not in the long run. Now the company behind Watson, Karelia, openly speak against Apple's policy and they are planning to port their (great) application to Windows. On a similar note, did anyone got even close to start working on this? Update: Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell, wrote an editorial related to the question above.

An article on Japanese site PCWatch writes about a briefing Microsoft gave journalists earlier this week about 64-bit products it is proposing. One 64-bit OS is conspicuous by its absence, it would appear. Microsoft has outlined, according to the article, four different types of .NET server – Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter – and the article gives an interesting table describing the differences between these products. In particular, the table outlines IA-64 support, memory requirements, Numa support and also whether the products will support multiple CPUs. But Opteron support is still a mystery.

From Slashdot: "FatPort (a wireless Internet service provider in Vancouver, BC) just released CompactBSD. It's a set of tools that allow you to build your own customized, lightweight distribution of OpenBSD and then burns it onto compact flash (or similar) so that it can be run on an embedded PC platform (like FatPort's own FatPoint). CompactBSD takes the security and networking features of OpenBSD that we know and love, and combines them with ease-of-build and small footprint, which is great for embedded devices. Check out the project on SourceForge."

Download and beta test the version 9-beta 4, of the popular Linux distribution, Mandrake.

IBM just released a tutorial detailing the process involved in transforming "out of the box" Red Hat OS into a stable, secure, and better performing system customized to individual needs. Its based on Red Hat 7.3 but most of the techniques and procedures discussed are equally applicable to other Linux systems. This is also related to a "Speed Start Your Linux Program" and CD.

Apple plans a contrarian celebration for the anniversary of the Windows 95 launch, unleashing a new operating system aimed at stealing customers away from Microsoft. Saturday, the official release date of MacOSX 10.2, also is the seventh anniversary of the day that Microsoft presented Windows95 to the world in the most extravagant product kickoff in computing history. Apple hopes to make a little history of its own with software it sees as capable of wooing Windows users to the Mac. Read more at C|Net.

From PCLinuxOnline: "Red Hat isnt the only one getting into dressing up their main menus. Mandrake's upcoming release will also be sporting new icons for their main menu. I posted some screenshots of the default KDE and Gnome look as it stands now. You can take a peek at them here. The mandrake screenshots are named mandrakexx.jpg." Our Take: Nice touches, but Mandrake's changes are not nearly as extensive as Red Hat's. Their menus are still cluttered and this very grey color they use everywhere by default makes everything feeling a bit "moody".

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for OSNews entitled "Update on Red Hat's Limbo Progress." It was to be a short article on how much Red Hat's beta releases have impressed me - to share with everyone some of the changes a desktop user sees and maybe generate some additional interest in my choice, Linux. Little did I know, one of my comments nearly incited a riot- it would flood my Inbox, leave me feeling silly about something that I still think is true...it was just poorly stated.
So, let's try a little experiment.

"The rev formerly known as Pinot has been renamed Panther, sources reported, hinting that the faux-fur motif of the Jaguar release will continue when Panther ships in early 2003. Sources this month told eWEEK that the Panther release will mark another step away from MacOS 9, the "classic" MacOS that Apple continues to upgrade for compatibility with older applications. They said Apple is planning to "block" next-generation Macs preloaded with Panther from booting into MacOS 9 although the company will continue to support applications running within MacOSX's Classic environment." The report can be found at eWeek. In other Mac news, Microsoft is readying MSN for OSX.

The company plans to reset its tools to work with new products expected to ship in the coming months, including Windows.Net Server and an update to the SQL Server database. Stories at C|Net and eWeek.