Apple Computer on Tuesday unveiled souped-up Power Macs, in the first major upgrade to the professional system in about a year and half. The low-end model retains the 133Mhz bus, while on the mid- and high-end models it's cranked up to 167Mhz; the high-end model boasts 2MB of L3 cache. The creaking ATA-66 IDE controller is retained, but all models also have an additional ATA-100 bus. The Apple store lists the 2x867Mhz model (256MB RAM/60GB HD/DVD-CDRW) at $1,699; the 2x1Ghz model 256/80/Superdrive) at $2,499 - and both available for delivery right away. Read the reports at C|Net News.com and TheRegister. You can check the new Macs here or order them.

The IE problem has been around for at least five years and could allow an attacker to intercept credit card and/or personl data when a user is making a purchase. Konqueror also had the same problem, but Waldo Bastian fixed the problem 95 minutes after it was reported. You can get the fixed Konqueror version from the KDE CVS, or if you wait for KDE 3.03 next week. Read about the IE flaw at ZDNews.

Exactly a whole year passed since we re-launched OSNews last August. This was our first story in the newly redesigned site back then. The old site is also available for browsing, while this was the first version of our redesign. Although OSNews is live since 1997, the site was not updated for many months, until we took over. Immediately after the redesign last August, we were serving around 700 pages per day, but today, we average around 51,000 web pages per day, and it seems that the only way is up! Today, OSNews is among the (pretty) big tech news sites on the web, but we could not have made it without you. So, a big thank you from the OSNews crew to all of you!

QNXZone reports that the eQip Project has recently gone open source and it is available via anonymous CVS. The eQip project supports several models of the HP/Compaq iPaq PDA, and rumour has it that the Sharp Zaurus has been running QNX on the test bench. Plenty of screenshots here.

FreeBSD has long been known for stability, security, and good performance, as well as for its strong developer community. But this open-source operating system has been dogged during the past few years by its inability to draw on the wealth of commercial and open-source applications available for Linux. Read the preview at InfoWorld.

OEone has released their source code and have now a free download of the HomeBase Desktop, a desktop enviroment based on Mozilla's API that runs on top of Red Hat Linux. Update: OfB hosts an interview with Peter Bojanic who is the VP, Software Development of OEone.

Sun Microsystems made two strategic moves Monday to answer calls from its user base, by announcing the company's first general-purpose server to run Linux and bringing back a version of its Solaris operating system that runs on Intel chips. From September, Sun will offer Solaris x86 8.0, alongside Linux on its new 'Big Bear' Intel hardware that it will announce this morning in San Francisco. And from early next year, Solaris 9.0 for Intel will be an option, too. Read the news at InfoWorld and TheRegister. Our Take: It seems that the SecretSix team made it! x86 Solaris 9 is back!

The prospect that a vital element of Microsoft's .NET will debut in a Java IDE has come a step closer. A plug-in that connects Microsoft's Corp's C Sharp programming language with the Eclipse Framework has been built by Puteaux, France-based Improve SA. Eclipse is built in Java's Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). Read the report at TheRegister.

"As the economic downturn has taken its toll on GNU/Linux companies, many surviving companies have decided to move away from the desktop market, and focus on the server instead. This escalated to an alarming pace after the death of Eazel, a startup that created the Nautilus file manager, and while the focus-on-server mania has calmed down lately, it is still very much alive. Yet, it seems to me, that focusing on the server will in the end cause these companies to loose not only the desktop, but the server as well." Find out why at OfB.biz.

If there are two individuals in the Linux game scene today that they brought a lot and very good Free games to all Linux users, these should be Michael Speck of LGames and Bill Kendrick of NewBreedSoftware. Their games have been played not only by Linux users, but by users on all major platforms via the portability of the SDL game library. Today, we interview Michael Speck, regarding his games, his opinions about the Linux game market, about Linux's performance as a multimedia platform, his future plans and much more.

Sams Publishing sent us in "UNIX Unleashed", Fourth Edition, by Robin Anderson and Andy Johnston. Read further, for our review of this very interesting 1150-page book.

The company announced this week it will post nearly 300 new APIs to the Microsoft Developer Network on Aug. 28 as part of a plan to adopt some of the remedies proposed by the long-running antitrust settlement. Also touted is the September release of a Service Pack for Windows XP that's designed to let system manufacturers and users select or remove middleware offerings such as Internet Explorer browser, Media Player, Outlook Express, Microsoft Messenger, and Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. Read the full report at InfoWorld.

This article at OnLamp details the IRIX binary compatibility implementation for the NetBSD operating system. This includes the creation of a new emulation subsystem inside the NetBSD kernel and a lot of reverse engineering to understand and reproduce how IRIX internals work.

Slashdot runs an (unconfirmed so far though) story regarding Dell and other PC sellers, literally taking orders from Microsoft, that effectively from Aug, 26, are not allowed to sell PCs without an OS pre-installed. The rule does not specifically speak about not installing alternative OSes, but about having an OS always installed in the sold hardware. We should not forget the related Be, Inc.'s suit against Microsoft for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. Our Take: IF true, Microsoft is gone too far and they should answer for it or recall this rule to the hardware vendors immediately. I like some of Microsoft's technology, but their business practices continue to be as smelly as ever. UPDATE: We contacted MicroTel's Rich Hindman regarding their "no OS" PCs sold through Wal-Mart, and here is what he replied for the OSNews readers: