"Microsoft Corp. is going on the offensive to restore confidence in its .Net platform after a security consulting firm claimed it had found a critical flaw in a new compiler Microsoft released earlier this week. In an unusual move, a member of the team that developed the product in question--the Visual C++.Net compiler--posted a lengthy message to the Bugtraq security mailing list excoriating Cigital Inc. for making what Microsoft deems to be false claims in its press release and inciting unnecessary concerns about the security of .Net applications built with the compiler. Brandon Bray, a member of the product's development team said: 'The allegation that applications compiled with Visual C++'s /GS switch somehow expose themselves to more attacks is unfounded and patently false.'" Read the rest of the story at ExtremeTech.

Just a few days ago, Java2SE version 1.4 was released by Sun. Overview page, download page and change log/incompatibilities here. Furthermore, an interesting editorial at ZDNews titled "The convergence of .NET and Java" can be found here.

"Welcome to today's multiple-choice quiz. Apple Computer is: (a) the top design shop in the computer industry; (b) the manufacturer of the best PC on the market; or (c) destined to forever remain a prisoner of its own success. Actually, the answer is all of the above." Editorial at News.com regarding the failure of Apple to attract the corporate market. OSOpinion features an editorial called "Apple Bidding To Regain Speed Throne". On ZDNews you will also find the editorial by Stephan Somogyi "Why Apple should support Microsoft's .Net".

"Since Mac OS X shipped, announcements regarding new versions of software applications designed to run natively on the new OS have become a daily occurrence. Some of these announcements mention that the application is Cocoa-based while others mention that the application is Carbon-based. The smart developers mention neither, knowing that the average Mac user doesn't know the difference and doesn't care. Apple has been talking to developers about the benefits of Cocoa and as a result, many Mac users have started to get the idea that applications that are Cocoa-based are somehow better than applications that are Carbon-based. API or framework choices have much more impact on developers than on end users. This white paper explains what Carbon and Cocoa are, how they differ, and what impact they have on users of REALbasic." Read the rest of the story at Real Software, developers of the Real Basic.

"In Ed's previous column, he focused on socket programming and performance within a single system. In a future column he will pick up where he left off, but his topic this month is management of threads and processes in Linux and Windows systems. He walks through the differences between processes and threads, shows how to create and destroy them, and writes a program you can use to study thread management on your systems." Read the intersting aricle at IBM DeveloperWorks.

"According to Anders, generics (parametic polymoprhism) is one of the directions in which C# would evolve. Microsoft already has a prototype of the runtime in generics. "The trick is to proceed with caution," he advises." Read the rest of the interview with the creator of C# at TheRegister.

Microsoft Corp. is considering bundling in the next version of Windows a pared-down version of its next-generation SQL Server database and the relational file system that goes with it. "The inclusion of a version of an SQL-based file system and engine will be one of the most killer features Microsoft has ever introduced to the PC operating system," the Microsoft partner said. But the storage technology in question allows "queries both with relational syntax and through XML-type syntax," Ressler of Microsoft said. "There's source technology under development by teams across the company." Read the rest of the article at ExtremeTech.

Continuing Part I from last week, this is the Part II article regarding the future of 64-bit CPUs, called "Under the Microarchitectural Covers": "Who will dominate 64-bit computing, AMD or Intel? AMD's Hammer architecture is compelling and compatible, but IA-64 has great long-term potential. Will Intel also hedge its bet with a 64-bit x86 design?" "Instruction Dispatch and Execution": See how Hammer's nine execution units are nothing like Itanium's. "Seamless and Powerful Multiprocessing": Hammer's onboard memory controller and HyperTransport links--big advantage. "Intel's Ace in the Hole": What's this rumored 'Yamhill' 64-bit x86. On a related note, Intel's McKinley 64-bit CPU will showcase at next week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

"Imagine computers in a group providing disk storage for their users, transparently swapping files and optimizing their collective performance, all with no central administration. But the machines providing this pool of virtual storage dare not trust one another completely. Indeed, a hacker takes over one of them and ruthlessly begins attacking others in the group. But not to worry. Thanks to an experimental operating system technology called Byzantine fault-tolerant protocols, users and their data are protected." Interesting article at CNN, exploring the FarSite project that Microsoft Research and once again exploring the idea and the potential of Distributed Operating Systems.

KDE 3, Beta 2 was released today after a short delay. There are packages for Linux and Tru64. The final release is scheduled early in the second quarter 2002, with one or more intervening "RC" releases preceding the final release. Just two weeks ago, Gnome 2 also had a second alpha release.

"The US States still pursuing Microsoft have upped the ante by asking the judge to force Microsoft to show them Windows' source code, their reasoning being that they need this to verify whether or not Microsoft is telling the truth when it says that producing a stripped-down and/or IE-free version of Windows isn't technically possible." Read the rest of the article at TheRegister. Our Take: Once again, all these hordes of lawyers are hunting the wrong thing. These days, it is inconceivable to ship an operating system without a file manager or a web browser or even a media player. What the States should be researching and demanding is clues for truly dirty business practices, not for the right (or not) to include your own software in your own OS.

Not directly operating system news, but nevertheless, interesting news for all us geeks. So, Carmack says that GeForce4-MX is not a good buy for Doom3: "Nvidia has really made a mess of the naming conventions here. I always thought it was bad enough that GF2 was just a speed bumped GF1, while GF3 had significant architectural improvements over GF2. I expected GF4 to be the speed bumped GF3, but calling the NV17 GF4-MX really sucks. GF4-MX will still run Doom properly, but it will be using the NV10 codepath with only two texture units and no vertex shaders. A GF3 or 8500 will be much better performers. The GF4-MX may still be the card of choice for many people depending on pricing, especially considering that many games won't use four textures and vertex programs, but damn, I wish they had named it something else."

With the release of MacOSX, Apple has engineered and released two new APIs: Carbon & Cocoa. Carbon is similar to MacOS 9 API and it can be programmed in C & C++. Carbon was created in order to give Macintosh developers an easy-to-walk "bridge" to easily port their MacOS applications to OSX. Through the CarbonLib, developers can now develop both MacOSX and MacOS9 applications with a single effort. Cocoa is the fully native MacOSX API; it gives access to more MacOSX-specific features and it can be programmed with Objective-C or Java. Apple, through O'Reilly, last year released two books, "Learning Carbon" and "Learning Cocoa".

Breadbox Computer Company, announced recently that they have signed a worldwide non-exclusive licensing agreement with Geoworks, to license the GEOS operating system for use on any and all hardware platforms and devices, including desktop computers, PDAs, smart phones, communicators, set-top boxes, and other embedded devices. Breadbox has been devoted to and particpated in most major GEOS projects for the past 10 years. In other operating system news, Roadrunner, a single-user, general-purpose operating system based on the POSIX standards just had a new release, while MenuetOS, the x86 assembly-only OS, had a release with support for more advanced multithreading. Last, but not least, the SkyOS folks let us know of their latest advancements on their OS, which it seems to be shaping up pretty good.