"Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac launched today with a number of new features and refinements for users looking to run alternative operating systems in virtual environments on their Macs. As summarized on Parallels' site, the update brings enhancements to gaming and graphics, simpler setup and integration, greater manageability and mobility, and better performance. Beyond improvements to the standard Parallels Desktop application for Mac OS X, the company has also released a new, free iOS application, Parallels Mobile, bringing remote access on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch to users running the desktop software."

The OpenIndiana project has been officially announced. OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos foundation and a community distribution which aims to to continue OpenSolaris, previously shut down by Oracle. Some details of the announcement were published on c0t0d0s0.org.

"Intel kicked off the second day of its developers conference by officially launching its app store and rolling out new Atom processors. The chip maker's AppUp center, which went into beta early this year, went live today, Renee James, an Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, said during the morning's first keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. The AppUp center is a consumer-centric store that focuses on free and paid apps for entertainment, productivity, networking and gaming. The apps are optimized for netbooks in terms of screen size and mobility, according to Intel. Intel also launched a new Atom chip that was formerly known as Groveland. Doug Davis, vice president of Intel's architecture group, took the wraps off the Atom CE4200, which is designed for smart TVs."

I never get tired of pictures like this.

HP and ArcSight have signed a definitive agreement for HP to acquire ArcSight, a security and compliance management company, for $43.50 per share, or an enterprise value of $1.5 billion.

"For the vast majority of Mac users, the September 13, 2000 appearance of the Mac OS X Public Beta was the first glimpse of Apple's attempt to produce a modern operating system. Hop in the Classic.Ars time machine and check out John Siracusa's original review of the Mac OS X Public Beta." I've read all Siracusa's Mac OS X reviews in one day once. Very much worth it.

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister offers 20 questions to test your knowledge of the open source and free software movements. Which was the first commercial Linux distribution? How many separate clauses make up the typical BSD-style open source license? What is the difference between the GPL and the LGPL?

With bad news after bad news when it comes to consumer rights in relation to software and copyright, it's always refreshing to see that there are still people in high places who aren't yet bought by big content. Late last week, a major battle was won for consumer rights in Switzerland: Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court has ruled that IP addresses are personal information, and therefore, fall under the country's strict privacy laws, and may not be used by anti-piracy companies.

Technologists fear (and loathe) that which has no purpose. Why must some insist in deriding an operating system like Haiku that doesn't fit their particular needs or precepts of what has a purpose, when, it's advanced enough to have a decent web-browser and productivity software? Today I shall be further offending these people's tastes with a look into LoseThos--a pure 64-bit, preemptive-multitasking, multicored PC operating system that is intended to be used as a secondary operating system for user's recreational programming on their best PC while dual booting a primary system such as Linux or Windows where they do networking and other modern activities such as multimedia. Yes, LoseThos has no networking, no security of any kind, and VGA graphics; but it certainly has a purpose: to be fun! (for programmers, at least)

The iPhone jailbreak community is on a roll lately. Not only did the US Library of Congress do the right thing by adding the jailbreaking DMCA exemption, the two major jailbreak application stores - Rock and Cydia - will merge into one. Cydia will acquire Rock, an all Rock applications will be moved into Cydia. There's also some impressive statistics in here that indicate just how popular jailbreaking really is.

Yesterday's back-pedaling from Apple has been very well received in the industry. Two companies who were bitten pretty hard by Apple's policies - Google (through AdMob) and Adobe - have both responded to yesterday's changes, and as you can expect, they're both pretty happy.

"Mozilla has published the first Firefox build that integrates a new JavaScript engine that aims to match the performance in IE9 and reduces the gap to Safari, Opera and Chrome. The JavaScript performance is pretty dramatic and, at least on our test system, Firefox 4 is now faster than IE9 PP4."

This one doesn't come as a total surprise: Nokia has replaced its CEO. Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is on his way out, and he's being replaced by Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft's Business division. This will be the first time someone from Foreign (from Nokia's perspective) will lead the company, but some fresh, outside blood may be just what the doctor ordered.

TechCrunch held a little in-promptu poll a few days ago, asking its readers why they chose to go with Android instead of something else. Most people stated they choose Android because of "openness". The author of the article calls this "a load of crap", arguing that because carriers can do with Android as they so desire, the reality now is that Android isn't open. Clearly, the author doesn't get openness.