Sun Microsystems has released a new version of Java 2 Enterprise Edition, 1.3, which includes a new specification for Enterprise JavaBeans, increased XML integration and a Java Message Service API. A ZDNet article has more details.

A PC World article says that all indications point to Apple releasing OS X 10.1 this month, as promised. The article covers some of the shortcomings that users dealt with in the 10.0 release, and how they've been addressed with 10.1. The article also mentions that Microsoft Office for OS X is expected in November. Update: A news.com article has more details, and reports that current Mac OS X users will be able to obtain the upgrade CD at no cost from Apple dealers and Apple retail stores. Apple had originally said it would charge $20 for the upgrade.

While high technology has had a major effect on the U.S. military arsenal, strategists warn that high tech weapons may not be enough to achieve importatnt aims in the U.S. war on terrorism. Capturing Osama bin Laden, for example, will likely be achieved only through local help and the old fasioned art of making friends with locals in the know. An Associated Press story outlines some of the major high tech tools to be used by the U.S. military in its search for bin Laden, and their recent track record.

A SiliconValley.com article discusses the latest high tech security devices available today and in the near future. Vendors have been quick to capitalize on the world's paranoia, offering gadgets that range from face recognition systems to microwave powered incapacitation rays to full-body x-ray machines.

With the U.S. government in turmoil over the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, congress will likely be forgetting several pending bills that stood to affect the technology sphere. An ISP News article covers the legislation that's likely to be swept away, like the E-government Act and the National Digital School Districts Act. Alas, other legislation, like broad new wiretapping rules, restriction of encrption technology, and other electronic surveillence-oriented bills have either already been passed or are likely to come to vote in the near future, in order to facilitate intelligence gathering and spycraft in America's new war on terrorism.

Mozilla 0.94 has been released and here you can read the Release Notes. New features, among others, include better IMAP, LDAP and MIME support. The Mozilla team writes: "The Windows-only Quick Launch feature (-turbo) is enabled by default in this release for installer builds, although you can turn it off in the installer or in Advanced Preferences. We are hoping community members will test this feature for us. The performance increase is not as great as it used to be; however, Quick Launch now works with multiple profiles."

"Trolltech is releasing version 1.4 of Qt Palmtop, a complete mobile computing platform for advanced embedded Linux devices. This release provides numerous improvements to the existing Qt Palmtop, including bug fixes, enhanced functionality, and a new user interface. Qt Palmtop provides device manufacturers and hobbyists a stunning set of productivity applications, games, multimedia software, and a Personal Information Management (PIM) suite for cutting-edge mobile computing devices. Qt Palmtop is built with Trolltech's Qt/Embedded, the embedded Linux port of the popular cross-platform application framework, Qt." The rest of the announcement can be found at TrollTech's web site.

"The European Parliament published its report into the Echelon spying system last week in which it concluded it did exist, was against the law and that the UK had a lot of explaining to do. We've sifted through about 100 of the 194 pages and decided that since no one had yet to officially admit its existence, you may be interested in how the European Parliament decided it was definitely out there." Read the rest of the scoop at TheRegister.

This commentary on ZDNews talks about the need of the Linux development community to build something new and revolutionary, something that Microsoft has not offered to its customers, instead of trying to recreate Ms Office as the main "killer application" that Linux needs in order to go mainstream. One day after the above commentary went live, there is already an answer to it made by the C|Net News.com editorial stuff here. Both editorials are a good read. Our Take: I wrote a similar editorial once, called "The Killer Application Concept", about what BeOS needs to make it through and become mainstream, and I still stand in this opinion and I believe it applies for the Linux situation as well. To summarize: The OS doors are closed, except you do create a real (r)evolution.

Two more Linux companies are taking drastic measures to cope with financial problems. Lineo is ridding itself of more than half of its work force, and Ebiz Enterprises has filed for bankruptcy protection. Get the rest of the scoop at C|Net's News.com.

The Register writes: "Compaq's iPaq PocketPC development team seems to be so unhappy with the upcoming merger with Hewlett-Packard, they have en masse offered their services to the highest bidder on the online job search site The Vault. Under the headline "iPaq PPC Engineering Team for Hire", the "core iPaq engineering team" says it is "seeking new opportunities and want to design the next winning PPC for your company. This team is responsible for the original iPaq and other designs that are yet to be released. Our team will vault your company ahead of its competitors." Our Take: I wonder if Palm will cancel the deal of the $11 million they would pay to Be, Inc. to just get the Be engineers and send offer letters and Palm Pilots as gifts (but this time, recent models with working batteries) to the iPaq engineers. ;-)

"Databases were once the forgotten stepchild of the open-source family. Companies like Red Hat Inc. included database software with their Linux distribution disks, but the main focus was on the operating system, the kernel and the graphical interface. A database was just another add-on, like a Minesweeper clone. But now, companies and users are scrambling to realize the value locked up in quality, open-source database software," ComputerWorld writes. Following the discussion we had recently on mySQL and PostgreSQL, the article seems to agree that professional closed-source database systems still have the lead on the open source counterparts.

Bonobo is the component object model of the GNOME project. Bonobo provides a COM-like model, using CORBA as a location-transparent transport. It is the foundation of the GNOME vision to provide a fully Free Gnu Network Object Model Environment. In this series of three articles, Michael Meeks, component software engineer at Ximian, examines Bonobo in more detail: The first article (already published) gives an overview of what Bonobo can do for you and how it works; the second article will focus specifically on the client side and cover how to use components others have written; and the final article of the series will discuss how to write your own components.

For a good weekend reading, amateur and pro programmers can go to Joel On Software where Joel Spolsky gives a big number of extremely valuable hints about the process of engineering software. Joel Spolsky is one of the initiators of VBA, and led its implementation in Excel. He has recently founded his own company, Fog Creek Software. Anyone who wants to become a really good software engineer should pay a lot of attention to his essays, probably starting with The Joel Test.