The New Order web site, recently published two interesting articles. One is a nicely written BASH programming tutorial, and the other one is an introduction article to ActiveX and its surrounding technologies. Wether you are a Unix geek or a Microsoft newbie developer, a visit to New Order's web site would be time well spent.

Saw that linked over from GeekNews: "Yes, that computer you see in the christmas tree is the actual one serving this web page and music! It is a Pentium 100 with 64MB RAM, running Red Hat Linux 7.2." Another interesting mini-report at Geeknews was about the ex-3Dfx employees, their loyalty and support (by releasing new drivers, working on them on their spare time!) to the history of 3Dfx and the never-released Voodoo5-6000 model, which had 128 MB of SDRAM on it.

"Cocktail parties and relating to the opposite sex are two very human activities that preoccupy many during the holiday season. Computers are notoriously poor at both: artificial intelligence researchers have long envied the human abilities to assign gender to faces and pick voices out of a noisy babble. Now San Diego company HNC Software has taught personal computers equivalent feats of recognition, and claims that the technique is a significant advance for AI, both theoretically and for building practical applications." Get the rest of the story at ZDNews. Our Take: Last February I wrote an editorial on Artificial Intelligence and how this can change the way we are using computers or the way operating system's... actually operate.

"Sharp's new Zaurus SL5500 is the first PDA device from a major manufacturer in a long time that uses a new operating system and a new user interface. See what it looks like! Most PDA users by now knows what the operating systems from Microsoft, Palm and maybe even Symbian looks like. That however doesn't mean there's no room for innovation, and Sharp is just nowadays taking the leap towards a major device launch with its new Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The SL-5500 uses Linux as its core operating system, with a GUI developed specifically by Norwegian Trolltech for the SL-5500 called Qtopia." Check the screenshots of the sweet-looking PDA at InfoSync.no.

"It wasn’t so long ago: 1999 and 2000 saw a great deal of innovation and interest, not to mention hype, about the Linux open-source operating system, and by extension, open-source software in general. This year the focus has been more on other technologies, such as application servers, portals, distributed component models and Web services. Does anyone still care about Linux? And if so, why the seemingly deafening silence? It seems that the open-source system moves past hype to serious implementation." Read the rest of the interesting editorial at SDTimes.

The Office XP Update Service Pack 1 released yesterday. Service Pack 1 (SP-1) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP-1 contains significant security enhancements and stability and performance improvements. Some of the fixes included with SP-1 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one integrated package, and it includes a number of other changes designed to improve the reliability and performance of your Office XP programs. You can read an overview of the service pack on the Microsoft website.

In this very interesting interview at MSDN, Miguel deIcaza, the founder of GNOME, Bonobo, Gnumeric and CTO at Ximian, talks about UNIX components, Bonobo, Mono, and Microsoft .NET.

"Microsoft on Thursday said a technology standards body has endorsed programming tools key to expanding the appeal of the company's .Net Web services plan. Microsoft said the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), an international technology standards organization, has ratified Microsoft's C# (pronounced "see sharp"), a Java-like programming language, along with a component of its .Net Web services framework called the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI). That means that C# and the CLI are now officially standards administered by ECMA. But Microsoft will retain control over who gets to license the technology and how it will be distributed, a company spokesman said." Get the rest of the story at CNet|News.

Microsoft released a number of free entertainment enhancements to its Windows XP operating system today. Called Windows Media Bonus Pack for Windows XP, the free download includes tools for the OS' built-in media player. The download includes new visualizations and skins, playlist-to-spreadsheet export utility, and extra tools for amateur moviemakers. In the meantime, ActiveWin reports that MSN Explorer 8 has just passed the "M0" milestone and it is in closed beta. The aim for a release is for late spring/early summer 2002. This will be the first major release since the original release in 2000. There is work on integrating "natural language" instrumentation, meaning "speaking" or ordering MSN Explorer to do this task or that task. Also, Microsoft has released a new version 4.6.0071 of MSN Messenger. Features inlcude improved support for computer-to-phone calls, more flexibility in resizing the conversation window, Add-ins available, banner ads (If you download the Add-in).

"IBM claims that it's achieved 339,484 operations per second on a 32-way, POWER4 Regatta on the SPECjbb2000 benchmark. Which is higher than a 72-way Sun Fire 15K. IBM also brags that its Regatta, kitted out 128GB of memory and 36.4GB storage will cost - at $2 million - half as much as a Sun Fire 15K with 288GB memory and 288GB storage." Read the rest of the story at TheRegister.

Gobe Software, Inc. is now shipping gobeProductive for Microsoft Windows, "the "all-in-one" productivity package that brings increased productivity to "all-in-one" computer users - people who "wear many hats" in their computer use - including office workers, educators and small office/home office computer users." Read the rest of the press release ahead of everyone else on the Net, sent to OSNews directly from Gobe.

Who said that Microsoft has closed the doors for the alternative operating system's success? Here is how Microsoft and their technologies can help an alternative OS distribution: "1. Make a bootable image of your OS, 2. Attach it to an e-mail, 3. Attatch Rawrite.exe to the same e-mail, 4. Make a VBS script that writes it to the disk of the e-mail receiver, and also sends copies of itself on to all the receiver's friends, 5. Send the email to all _your_ friends and addresses in your contact list (at least they'll be for now). Unconfirmed step 6: Go to jail." The joke was first published on the alt.os.develop newsgroup.

Version 1.2 of the Athene Operating Environment is now available from the Rocklyte Systems web site. OSNews featured an exclusive interview with Rocklyte's Paul Manias recently. The new release (read more to see a brand new screenshot from version 1.2) is for Windows only (the Linux version will come in a few weeks) and includes the following changes:

Exactly four years after the release of Allegro 3.0 for DOS, the team announced the release of a new major version, Allegro 4.0. This release is a very important step in Allegro's development; 4.0 officially brings multi-platform support and it is now very stable. Allegro is a game library distributed freely, supporting the following platforms: DOS, Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris), Windows, and BeOS (MacOS and QNX ports are in alpha stage).