Good information at MacNN: "A PDF slideshow used at Siggraph 2002, written by Peter Graffagnino of Apple, provides information on Quartz Extreme. It will be available with Jaguar (10.2) on August 24th, and is the first OpenGL-based windowing system. It will feature true system integration (Quartz2D on a texture, Video on a texture), improved texture upload performance, programmable shaders, many new extensions, and new tools.". Read more to check out if your Mac can support Quartz Extreme.

About two months old, but still, important news for the IRIX users: "As of May 8, 2002 IRIX 6.5.16 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers. The IRIX 6.5.16 release contains updates for both the maintenance (6.5.16m) and feature (6.5.16f) streams. This release continues the focus on stability, reliability and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.X quarterly release process." On a related note on releases of heavy-weight Unix OSes, HP extendeded its leading HP-UX with 11i Version 1.6 on June, while as we already reported a few days ago that IBM plans to bring new releases for its AIX too.

"In the fight for Web services dominance, the scuffle has barely begun and vendors are still scrambling for places in the ring. Although all the initiatives are still relatively young, IBM and Microsoft are eager to be the top Web services heavyweights. Each is heavily touting its offerings to companies interested in moving further toward e-commerce integration." Read the article at Yahoo!News. The article does not include any information about SunONE though.

"BeOS is a marvel of software engineering and creativity. We all know it, use it, and love it. We are also re-creating it for the pure fact that we want to see it continue and thrive. But before it can be successful three things need to happen" Editorial from BeUnited's Simon Gauvin about the future of OpenBeOS. Also, yellowTab and BeUnited are to join development and promote the open source BeOS standards.

"Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past few years, you know what Mozilla is in general. For those of you in the dark, check out the overview provided by Mozilla for a decent breakdown of the project. The purpose of this review is to assess the win32 port of Mozilla 1.0 and its immediate successors (1.1a and .1b) as a milestone in the development of what may prove to be the greatest challenger to the Internet Explorer empire. We'll consider the pros and cons of Mozilla's core renderer, its implementation (Navigator), Mail, Chatzilla (an IRC client), and the bundle as a whole." Read the review over at ArsTechnica.

"Microsoft announced Wednesday a partnership with AT&T Wireless to offer wireless software and services to corporate customers. As expected, the companies said they plan to distribute software on Pocket PCs, Smartphones and laptops that will provide wireless access to e-mail, information and applications behind corporate firewalls." Read the report at News.com.

The NetBSD team has decided to do away with any selective moderation for postings originating from the openbsd.org domain based on an email announcement on behalf of NetBSD. This rule was instated to protect the NetBSD mailing lists from abuse or denial of service attacks by the founder of OpenBSD, Theo De Raadt, who some time ago threatened to attack the NetBSD project machines. The original report can be found at BSDForums.org.

After several months of beta testing, the most important service pack ever issued for Windows 2000 is at last available for download. The Service Pack 3 (124 MB, German here) is a collection of bug fixes that addresses all the issues that were discovered since Windows 2000 shipped. This new Service Pack 3 also adds some new features like the ability to configure the middleware and an automatic updater.

"As we reported back in March, IBM Corp is said to be readying the next release of its Unix operating system, AIX 5L V5.2, to get it into the market by October of this year. It is expected to deliver the kicker to this release sometime in the second half of 2003." Read the report at TheRegister.

"He's hardly as well-known as Bill Gates but Eric Rudder will have more influence over the future of Microsoft's bet-the-company .Net software strategy than his more famous boss. Rudder, Microsoft's 35-year-old senior vice president of developer and platform evangelism, is in charge of enlisting software developers to the cause--and keeping them happy. That's a big job because, simply put, without a large corps of developers behind it, .Net will remain a pipe dream." Read the interview at C|Net.

"A letter was received by one member of the KDE development team asking the KDE Project to use Red Hat Linux on machines at LWCE and to display RedHat's shadow man logo on those machines. In exchange, the letter from RedHat explained, KDE would "benefit from many valuable marketing benefits in our booth, on our website, and in our newsletter." At press time, Open for Business was unaware of any response by Mann or others at RedHat concerning this PR disaster. It does, however, raise an interesting question of what the software vendor hopes to accomplish with its continuing near boycotting of KDE. As Red Hat's might is considerably weaker in the desktop segment, with its preferred desktop (GNOME) taking only about 20% of the desktop market versus KDE's over 50%, they would be wise to change course. While being at 70% market share 2-3 years ago, Red Hat hardly enjoys more than 25% market share nowdays." Read the whole story about the PR fiasko at OfB.

"Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates today responded to critics who call his company's .NET initiative incomplete and lacking innovation by acknowledging that it will take at least four or five years before the promise of .Net is realized. ".Net is not an overnight thing," Gates told 325 university facility members as he opened the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit here. "A lot of work needs to be done to put standards such as reliable messaging and transaction support in place. We have a commitment to XML to allow for information exchange." Read the report at eWeek.

In light of all the controversy surrounding the price of Apple's new OSX 10.2 Jaguar upgrade scheme, it is interesting that is today obtainable from Amazon.com for $79 USD ($129 - $50 rebate). On a related note, Macintouch is reporting that Apple is extending the MacOSX Up-to-Date and MacOSX Server Up-to-Date programs to include Jaguar Server upgrades for just $19.95 in response to intense criticism. Apple also added that people who bought MacOSX 10.1 retail in its own box, can get an upgrade if purchased July 17 or later.

"With great excitiment, Lycoris releases a new and incredible update to its flagship desktop operating system, Desktop/LX. Desktop/LX now includes a powerful new Control Center, Desktop Sharing, Iris (Internet Rapid Installer for Software) and much more." Read more for the rest of the press release.