Apple has posted Mac OS X 10.1.1 and it is installable via via System Preferences' Software Update pane. Last week's Installer Update 1.0 must be installed first. MacOSX 10.1.1 "delivers improvements for many USB and FireWire devices, including support for additional digital cameras, and overall improvements to CD and DVD Burning. The update includes enhancements to AFP, SMB and WebDAV networking, updates to the Finder and Mail applications, as well as improved support for printing. In addition, hardware accelerated video mirroring has been enabled for the new PowerBook G4." The download weighs in at 14.4 MB.

"It's hard to browse the Web or read a computer magazine without finding a reference to Linux, the operating-system wunderkind created by Linus Torvalds and developed by a host of others. But although Linux steals the headlines, ISPs and system administrators often choose one of the BSDs - a group of operating systems based on code polished during more than 20 years of research at one of America's leading academic institutions. What are the BSDs? And why should you consider using them if you're looking for a non-Windows operating system?"

Opera Software ASA today unveiled Opera 6.0 for Windows Beta 1, introducing a browser with an array of new and improved features, including a completely new default user interface, skins, buttons and panels. With the release of Opera 6.0 for Windows (3.2 MB), Opera reaches out to users accustomed to competing browsers' single document interface (SDI) and targets users in regions that previously could not use Opera.

Be, Inc. announced that the stockholders of Be have approved the sale of substantially all of its intellectual property and other technology assets to a subsidiary of Palm, Inc., pursuant to the terms of a previously announced asset purchase agreement between Be and Palm. The stockholders of Be have also approved the proposed dissolution of Be pursuant to the terms of a plan of dissolution. It is anticipated that the transaction with Palm will close within the next two business days. We hope that the sale of Be's IP to Palm will have a positive outcome regarding the BeOS and the BeUnited effort to license the BeOS source code.

"ATi and nVidia both launched mobile graphics chips yesterday, the first aimed at retaining ATi's leadership of this market segment, while the nVidia part is designed to wrest the crown away from it. ATi's part is the Mobility FireGL 7800, a high-end mobile workstation-oriented chip (hence the FireGL branding) that supports up to 64MB of 128-bit DDR SDRAM. The chip is clocked at 270MHz. nVidia's NV17M is the successor to the GeForce2Go. The new part clocks in at 250MHz and supports up to 64MB of frame buffer memory." Read the rest of the news report at TheRegister.

"Will your next portable computer be a tablet PC? Microsoft hopes so, and it has lined up a handful of partners that are showing prototype models of its reference design and plan to ship the real thing in mid-2002. For the second year here at Comdex, the software behemoth is pushing tablet computing that combines the portability of a laptop, the convenience of pen and paper, and of course Microsoft software." Read the rest of the news report at PCWorld.

"Linux is the long-term threat against our core business. Never forget that!" Microsoft Windows Division Veep Brian Valentine exclaims in a confidential memo to his Sales Brownshirts obtained by TheRegister. Microsoft was winning ground against Unix the last few years and they were converting companies to x86 (intead of expensive SPARCs etc), but many companies were just converting to x86 Unices (and especially, Linux) instead of Windows. And Microsoft does not seem too happy about that.

A new snapshot of the (AMD's 64-bit Hammer CPU) x86-64 Linux kernel tree has been released. It is based now on the 2.4.14 kernel. Changes to previous snapshot: Merged to 2.4.14 and some bug fixes. For information on how to compile and use it see at their main web site, full source tarball and patch against Linux 2.4.14 are available.

"Alan Cox is not only a long-time Linux kernel contributor and maintainer, he also isn't afraid to make waves once in awhile. While Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds usually stays above the fray of the politics of Open Source and related topics, the U.K.-based Cox, sometimes referred to as Torvalds' second in command, isn't afraid to weigh in on several topics, including his opposition to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act." Read the interesting interview at NewsForge.

The journaling file system ext3 made it to the test version of 2.4.15 Linux kernel and it seems that it will be as standard of the final version of the kernel. ext3 has pretty much the same design and capabilities of ext2, but it adds journaling. Our Take: Can't wait for the day that SGI's next generation, truly advanced file system, XFS, will make it to the main source tree. Update: In a related note, the NTFS driver for Linux was updated today with support for WindowsXP's NTFS 5 among other new features.

"Microsoft will make its first move into the cutthroat business with the Xbox on Nov. 15. Three days later, Nintendo plans to start U.S. sales of the GameCube, its first new console since the 1996 launch of the Nintendo 64. Meanwhile, market leader Sony has built a strong bunker against the interlopers, having shipped more than 20 million PlayStation 2 machines since its debut last year." Never in the history of the $20 billion video-game industry have two home consoles made their debuts in the same week. It's shaping up to be a battle royal between Microsoft and Nintendo.

AMD will drive its Hammer family of 64-bit processors into the mobile market in the second half of 2003, a year or so after it makes its debut in servers, the company revealed at its analysts confab yesterday. However, the company also revealed their full roadmap with details about their desktop add the ClawHammer CPUs.

Another excellent series of articles at ExtremeTech. This time, they are discussing the Bus technologies of the future. "It's almost counterintuitive, but serial buses are blowing away parallel buses in the PC. We tell you why and take you beyond the hype."

Sun has published an article describing how they "transformed the Unix into the leading environment for technical and enterprise computing" with Solaris. The article features a timeline description from SunOS in 1982 to 2001 and Solaris 8. In the meantime, Solaris 9 is still in beta and it is scheduled to be released next year with the following new features: