"Apple Friday sent its third beta release of the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.6.2 update with fixes for QuickTime, iChat, and a widely reported guest account glitch that could delete user data. People familiar with build 10C527f said the latest update has only one known issue, and has a number of fixes in 13 different focus areas. It also reportedly provides reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, iDisk, and Safari plug-ins."

For a very long time now, OSNews' comment sections were governed by a set of rules that dated back to the very early days of OSNews. This set of rules has been amended a number of times over the years, but we were never really comfortable with such a dry, silly list of arbitrary rules that nobody read anyway. They were too much like an... EULA. So, we decided a change was in order, and I started work on a completely new approach.

Today marks an entire week of using Haiku as my primary operating system. This is my first PC to get the most out of any BeOS related operating system to date. My old 200MHz Toshiba ran R5 PE just fine but without any networking. My eMachine ran Zeta just fine, but once again, there were networking issues (and Zeta was pronounced dead around this time). In the age of the Internet, this pretty much forced me away from BeOS and its decendants until now.

Mandriva's second release candidate for Mandriva 2010 adds a Moblin UI option, and (in the paid version) auto-detected support for the closed GPU in Intel's Poulsbo companion chip. So, if you've got one of those teensy CompuLab FitPC2s, an early Dell netbook, or perhaps a MID or single-board computer based on Menlow, it might be worth a look.

"Kubuntu has been my favorite Linux distribution since the very first release. It was made specifically for us KDE fans, branded with beautiful Kubuntu-specific artwork and themes, contained the best Qt-based software, and dared to be different. In a world ruled by Ubuntu, it's given us KDE fans something to root for. Unfortunately, Kubuntu later became known as Canonical's third wheel, and each release seems to steadily diminish in quality. What's responsible for its current status, and what should be done to improve it?"

On October 22, Microsoft will unleash the much-anticipated Windows 7. After the commercial disaster that is Windows Vista, it is believed the new release will turn the tide for the world's biggest software maker. A lot of people also believe it will put a halt to Mac OS X's growth, but I personally think we need to remember the timeless quote form Steve Jobs: "We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose."

In the past, OSNews' interview volume was quite a bit higher than it has been lately. I had the pleasure of having lunch with Eugenia and her husband last week, and she mentioned that we haven't done as many interviews, and that in the past they were always very popular. So I decided that I'm going to make it a personal priority to publish more interviews. I'd like to crowdsource the idea, and ask the OSNews community who they'd like to see us interview. Please let us know in the comments of this story who you'd like us to talk to, and what specific questions you'd like us to ask. Shoot for the moon. It's not as hard to get an email-based interview as you might think. Obviously OS-world luminaries will always be a priority, but feel free to recommend people from the larger tech community, or even geek-oriented popular culture.

"Microsoft says it has now recovered the personal data lost when its Sidekick servers suffered an outage on 13 October. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Roz Ho says that all data will be restored, beginning with personal contacts. She believes that only a minority of Sidekick users are still affected. 'The outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back up,' she wrote in an open letter to customers. The number of customers affected was not released, but Sidekick is believed to have more than one million subscribers overall. Microsoft says it has installed a 'more resilient back-up process' to safeguard against a repeat incident."

Let's do a little trip down memory lane. We're talking the '80s, early '90s, and we're looking at a company called Borland, which produced several well-known and popular products related to software development. Back in those days, Borland had an end user license agreement. However, contrary to the EULAs we know and despise today, Borland's 'No-Nonsense License Statement' was a whole lot simpler, and in fact, is a perfect example of how software should be treated.

Geeks.com sent us over for a whirl the highest capacity available iPod mp3 player, the 120 GB version of the iPod Classic. In the era of the touchscreen iPods and smartphones, how is the Classic design holding up?

Those who enjoy the popular television show will be happy to know that November 8, 2009 will feature a variety show from the makers of Family Guy, and it will play for its entire allotted time without any commercial interruption-- courtesy of Microsoft. The company has made a deal with Fox to have Windows 7 propaganda integrated into a special entitled "Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show," which will include varied live-action Family Guy musical performances, animated shorts, and celebrity guest appearances. Just how the show will be used to advertise Windows 7 is unclear, but the folks at Microsoft say that "you'll see us deeply integrated into the content... you'll hear a lot about how Windows 7 can help you simplify your PC -- it's simple, fast and easy to use." So sit back in the lazy chair on November 8th, take a bite out of your Windows-branded toast, and enjoy.

As we all know, the MorphOS team recently released MorphOS 2.4, which added support for the PowerPC G4 version of Apple's Mac Mini. Even though this long-awaited 'feature' is a very welcome one, I personally think that of all the G4 Macs MorphOS could support, the Mini is the least interesting. As such, I want to find out if any other G4 Macs happen to be supported too - without us knowing about it.

In what is about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning, Michael Dell has started talking down netbooks. Dell made his comments about netbooks at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley, and considering the impact of netbooks on manufacturers' bottom lines, it's really not that surprising.

We missed this one when it was announced, but since there's not much VMS news these days, I thought "better late than never." Dying to get your hands on the upcoming OpenVMS 8.4? HP is inviting participants for the field test of the next version of OpenVMS. As a field test site, you have the opportunity of trying the latest version of OpenVMS early.