A lot of people have trouble understanding what .NET really is and what its goals are. Mostly because Microsoft has done a good job of confusing everybody using terms that are not self-explanatory or with terms that mean more that one thing. This editorial will present my thoughts on .NET, what it really is, what its motivations and goals are, and why it is the next "big thing." Should we embrace it or fear it? Both, I daresay.

SGI has released a new update to their IRIX operating system, 6.5.15. Several bugfixes as well as new features are contained in this release which can be found here.

MacOSX 10.1.3 was released today and it is available via the Update Control Panel. Specific updates include: CD Disc Recording Peripherals: expanded support for QPS, EZQuest, LaCie, Yamaha, MCE Technologies and Sony devices. Image Capture and iPhoto: Improved support for several digital camera models from Canon, Kodak and Sony. Graphics and OpenGL Improvements: DVD Playback on external VGA displays on PowerBook G4 PowerBook video mirroring will be on by default when connecting to a new display. Improvements for iTunes when the full screen visualizer is used. Networking and Security Improvements: Login authentication support for LDAP and Active Directory services, OpenSSH version 3.0.2p1, WebDAV support for Digest authentication, Mail includes support for SSL encryption.

Be, Inc. announced today it has filed suit against Microsoft for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. The lawsuit alleges, among other claims, that Microsoft harmed Be through a series of illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market and created exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems. Our Take: This suit should have been initiated 3 years ago. Furthermore, notice the black mourning stripe on the Be logo at the Be web site. Dan Johnston, Be's legal counsel, is the only person left working at Be's new tiny office in Mountain View these days. Update: News.com has more info found in the filing itself and a mini-statement from Microsoft's spokesman.

Attempting to not be out-done by newcomer Microsoft, Nokia announced it will offer mobile phone makers its own development kit and OS, according to a ZDnet article.

According to ZDNet, the final note in Corel's gradual abandonment of its ambitious Linux initiatives seems to have arrived. Corel was involved in several open source projects including its own Linux distro, WINE, Application Printing Services API, Corel Package Utilities, 10n-i18n Internationalization, and Cprof Performance Profiler. The site will only be up through the end of the month.

"We've discussed sharing filesystems via SMB a few times. SMB lets you access files shared by a Windows system after jumping through only half a dozen loops. Sharing files with another Unix system is much, much simpler. FreeBSD supports the Unix standard Network File System out of the box. NFS intimidates many junior system administrators, but it's really quite simple once you know what's going on." Read the rest of the article at O'Reilly's BSD column.

OSNews reader Jim Strawberry writes: "The BSDvault guys did an interview with Jordan Hubbard not to long ago -- unfortunately it was done as an IRC conversation and was posted as such -- making it rather hard to read & follow. For this reason it didn't really get much attention. The other day I took it upon myself to transform this IRC log into a real interview." Jim received authorization by the original posters, BSDVault, and asked us to publish his revised and cleaned-up version of the interview with Apple's & FreeBSD's Jordan Hubbard.

"Yes I’m a Linux nut, but it's also no surprise that I'm a huge fan of Mac OS X, it’s what I use on a daily basis and is what I’m using right now to write this. Well I was recently tasked with the duty of moving our servers at work over to OS X Server two of which are Linux servers. This was the first time I’d ever used OS X Server so I thought it would be a good idea to share my experiences, some good, some bad." Read the rest of the review at ReactiveLinux.

"In this document, you learn about the differences between class inheritance and interface implementation. Inheritance supports the creation of hierarchical frameworks of increasingly specialized classes that share some code and also add their own customizations. Interfaces allow multiple unrelated classes to share predictable sets of methods and properties. Both interfaces and inheritance provide polymorphism, allowing generic procedures to work with many different kinds of objects. You also saw how object composition allows you to reuse and extend implementation code without inheritance, and how it can be combined with interfaces to support polymorphism. All these techniques enable you to create and revise complex software systems by helping you add new functionality, with minimal need to dig back into old working code." Read the rest of the article at MSDN.

If you are the lucky owner of one of these Intel motherboard chipsets, you can now install the Intel Application Accelerator 2.0, a new performance software package for Intel-based desktop PCs. This new version brings the following enhancements: faster boot time, accelerated disk I/O for games, graphics Applications, disk utilities, and edia authoring applications, performance-enhancing data pre-fetcher for Intel Pentium 4 processor-based systems, support for 137+ GB IDE hard drives. Check a benchmark here. The download supports Windows NT4/2000, Windows 98/SE/Me & WindowsXP Home/Pro.

Hans-Joerg Frieden, Thomas Frieden and Steffen Haeuser will be attending an #AmigaFun meeting today at 6PM (GMT) and will be answering questions regarding AmigaOS4.x. Also this Saturday at the Alt.WoA Show in the UK, Fleecy Moss (CTO, Amiga Inc) and Alan Redhouse (CEO, Eyetech Group) will hold a presentation regarding Amiga's future plans.

"Microsoft Corp. will have to supply the computer code for its Windows program to a group of states seeking stiffer antitrust sanctions against the software giant, a federal judge ruled on Friday. Nine state attorneys general had argued that they needed to see the Windows source code in order to verify Microsoft's claim it could not offer a simpler version of the Windows personal computer operating system, stripped of features like the Internet Explorer browser." The Reuters report is at Yahoo!News.

"As someone who writes about Open Source, I spend quite a bit of time considering its future in the enterprise. I don't spend much time reflecting on how Open Source can improve on the technology of yesteryear. But there are people who do just that." Read the rest of the story at NewsForge.