A month ago Microsoft released a NetBSD port for their eMIPS ("Extensible MIPS") platform. Now the port found its way into the NetBSD source tree. "The 'extensible MIPS' is a dynamically extensible processor for general-purpose, multi-user systems. The reconfigurable logic (Extensions) dynamically load/unload application-specific circuits. Extensions add specialized instructions to the processor, security monitors, debuggers, new on-chip peripherals. Extended Instructions dramatically speedup application programs, just by patching their binaries." Besides the eMIPS port, Microsoft also contributed a machine independent framework for hardware accelerator scheduling, a scheduling policy for it, and a secure executable format.

Installing software on Linux has gotten progressively easier over the years, down to being downright foolproof in Ubuntu's Application Center. However, there is still the problem of each distribution relying on its own frontends and backends, and this needs to be addressed. Members from all the major Linux distributions have held several talks, and have come up with a solution which is already being implemented.

"Intel's chief technology officer says the chip maker is developing a technology that will be a security game changer. Justin Rattner told Computerworld on Tuesday that scientists at Intel are working on security technology that will stop all zero-day attacks."

Well, this is interesting. Research In Motion is hard at work on its PlayBook tablet, as well as on its new mobile operating system, for the device based on QNX. It's no secret that RIM intends to deliver some form of backwards compatibility for its older BlackBarryOS applications. And that's where a golden opportunity arises.

A few months ago, a bounty for porting Gallium3D to Haiku was submitted. As the target sum of $2000 has been reached, what's needed now is a developer interested in doing the actual coding work. (Gallium3D is a cross-platform video driver API, on which an increasing number of open-source Linux drivers are based.)

Thinking that HP's memristors can't arrive early enough on the market? Here's competition already! A team at North Carolina State University, led by Dr Paul Franzon, has unveiled the "double floating-gate field effect transistor", a component based on the same principles as flash memory which would allow to store data for "a couple of years" in around 15 nanoseconds.

Today, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie, the two Bell labs scientists which began creating the Unix operating system in 1969, have been named as winners of the 2011 Japan Prize for information and communications.

"A security incident on Fedora infrastructure has been reported by Jared Smith, Fedora Project's leader, who confirmed that the account of one of its contributors has been compromised. According to preliminary results of an investigation mounted by Fedora Project's Infrastructure Team, the compromise wasn't the result of an exploitation a vulnerability."

"The Debian project has now announced that from the release of Squeeze (Debian 6.0) their GNU/Linux kernels will be available without the non-free blobs."

"Fedora developer, Matt Domsch, has announced that Fedora 15 is breaking the conventional ethX naming scheme used for Ethernet devices by adopting a new scheme called Consistent Network Device Naming."

Over the last three years, we've seen a lot of impressive demonstrations of what the material graphene (a single-atom wide sheet of carbon with the atoms spread in an hexagonal mesh) can do. However, according to IBM, graphene does not have an energy gap, which means that graphene transistors can't be "switched on and off", and thus that they are unsuitable for use inside of microprocessors.

"The Document Foundation launches LibreOffice 3.3, the first stable release of the free office suite developed by the community. In less than four months, the number of developers hacking LibreOffice has grown from less than twenty in late September 2010, to well over one hundred today. This has allowed us to release ahead of the aggressive schedule set by the project."

"The developers of the first jailbreak utility for Windows Phone 7 devices ceased development of the ChevronWP7 tool after Microsoft promised to work more closely with the homebrew software community. But not everybody wants to play ball with Microsoft, and Windows Phone developer Julien Schapman says he'll soon release a new tool for jailbreaking WP7."

"The FreeBSD developers have made available a second release candidate (RC2) for FreeBSD 7.4. This is a precursor to a third release candidate, due next week, as the developers say that there are "several bugs we feel are critical enough to warrant fixing before the 8.2/7.4 releases are finalized". FreeBSD 8.2 saw its second release candidate made available last week."