Later this year, Oracle will begin requiring people interested in gaining Java and Solaris certifications to attend "hands-on" training courses, at an additional cost of thousands of dollars. The new rule goes into effect Aug. 1 and regards Java Architect, Java Developer, Solaris System Administrator and Solaris Security Administrator certification paths, according to a notice on Oracle's website.

If you had asked me, I would have guessed that this wouldn't be possible. One intrepid OS explorer has made a video wherein he not only installs every version of Windows since 1985's Windows 1.0, but proceeds to upgrade from one to another. The video, titled Chain of Fools: an Exploration of Windows upgrade procedures, shows how DOS and Windows are installed in a VMWare VM, and how a couple of DOS games were installed to see how newer versions of Windows handle backward compatibility. Similarly, various customizations were made to the Windows preferences to see how they survived the upgrades. Video embedded after the break.

"The conflict between Banshee and Canonical over what should be done with Banshee's Amazon Store revenue stream, while it was finally resolved, was not Ubuntu's most shining moment. At the matter's conclusion, Banshee developers were not happy with the results. This is not how open-source communities should work together and no one knows that better than Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical, Ubuntu's parent company, who wrote, "We made some mistakes in our handling of the discussion around revenue share with the Banshee team.""

The new Windows Embedded website just announced the official release of Windows Embedded Compact 7, featuring SMP support for multicore CPUs, Flash 10.1, updated Silverlight for Windows Embedded technology based on Silverlight 3, and more. Update: And here's a demo, for those interested.

"Many well known bloggers, analysts, journalists and customers alike most probably have valid arguments to back this belief, but there are even more that believe otherwise and foresee a success in this partnership. But for Nokia's upcoming Windows Phone-based smartphones to succeed, Microsoft and Nokia need backing from the worlds mobile operators and Vodafone in Germany seems to be on their side, for now - Jan Geldmacher, managing director, enterprise business at Vodafone Germany, said in an interview with PC World at the Cebit trade show in Hanover."

Ubuntu Linux has millions of fans. What's not to like? A free operating system with ten thousand free applications, websites covering everything you might ever want to know, tutorials, active forums, and more. Yet for all these benefits, situations pop up when you want a faster, lighter operating system. Perhaps you have an older computer, or maybe a netbook or a mobile device. Wouldn't it be great to have a lightweight Ubuntu? That day has finally arrived. Lubuntu offers a way to stay in the Ubuntu family -- with a product that performs better and uses fewer resources.

InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard takes a look at the past 20 years of innovative Windows malware -- an evolution that provides insights into the kinds of attacks to come. From macro viruses, to interstitial infections, to spray attacks, to industrial espionage, "there's been a clear succession, with the means, methods, and goals changing definitively over time," Leonhard writes, outlining the rise of Windows malware as a succession of ingenious breakthroughs to nefarious ends.

"Now that the dust has settled after Stephen Elop's big announcement on the 11th February 2011, many have come to realise that actually Nokia's move towards a a new Ecosystem is not as bad as what they thought. But what does all this mean for the Nokia Developers? When the proposed partnership with Microsoft was announced, many felt betrayed and worried about their future, but after having heard and assisted a number of workshops at the Nokia Developer Day at this years Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, earlier this month, their outlook towards the new ecosystem has taken a 180 degree turn and are now looking at the proposed partnership with a lot more enthusiasm, recognising the potential it will bring them in the coming months."

Earlier this week, Apple released the first developer preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. At the same time, Apple listed a number of new features we hadn't yet heard about, which are quite interesting. There are two themes: bringing iOS to Mac OS X, and adding features other operating systems have had for ages - except in such a way that you can actually use them. Update: Fixed that scrolling thing. It's the other way around of course.

This is a situation where I need the help of you OSnews readers who are experienced with low-level development on ARM, SPARC, PowerPC, MIPS, and other hardware architectures we have on computers nowadays. The issue is that I'm currently designing the part of my hobby kernel which takes care of interrupts. Although I mostly work on x86 at the moment, I'd like to keep this code portable to other hardware architectures in the future. To do that, I have to know how interrupt handling works on as much HW architectures as possible.

"Intel is pleased to announce the BIOS Implementation Test Suite, a bootable pre-OS environment for testing BIOSes and in particular their initialization of Intel processors, hardware, and technologies. BITS can verify your BIOS against many Intel recommendations. In addition, BITS includes Intel's official reference code as provided to BIOS, which you can use to override your BIOS's hardware initialization with a known-good configuration, and then boot an OS."

Google has released a new set of tools for the WebP Image format. The release includes a completely rewritten encoder with improved image quality. Also available is a Windows Imaging Component providing WebP import to any application that supports WIC such as Microsoft Office 2010. There is a side-by-side comparison between the new encoder, the old encoder and JPEG here.

Oh. My. God. When I read this, and browsed the website, my face went like this. Do you remember the Amiga? That fun little computer that was miles ahead of its competition, but in recent years has been dragged through the mud by one shady figure after the next? Here's a new one: Amiga, Inc., the one 'run' by Bill McEwen, has partnered with a company called IContain to slap the Amiga logo on a bunch of low-end, incredibly sad products. Whether this is another shady deal I don't know, but worthy of the Amiga? I don't think so. I'm not putting this in the Amiga category, by the way. I refuse to. Forget it. It's going into our generic category. Fitting. Update: As was pointed out over at AmigaWorld.net, not only are these nothing more than brandless OEM products with Photoshopped logos, the website itself is just a standard, unmodified WordPress theme. Oi. Doesn't instil a lot of confidence, now, does it?

Apple today released a developer preview of Mac OS X Lion, available to Mac Developer Program members through the Mac App Store today, and the final version of Lion will ship to customers this summer. Mac OS X Lion which features Mission Control, an new view of everything running on your Mac; Launchpad, a new home for all your Mac apps; full screen apps that use the entire Mac display; and new Multi-Touch gestures. Lion also includes the Mac App Store, a place to discover, install and automatically update Mac apps.