The concept of Namespaces provides a way to help avoid problems with multiple functions, classes, and constants of the same name being defined multiple times. PHP 5.3 borrows much of the syntax and design of Namespaces from other languages — most notably C++. However, it does deal with Namespaces in a somewhat unique way, which may cause problems for those familiar with Namespaces. This article takes a close look at PHP V5.3 namespaces, which is one of the most anticipated and the most debated feature in this release of PHP.

Yesterday we ran a story on how educational institutions defaulting to Microsoft Office may stifle some people who do not own a copy of Office or Windows. A Forrester Research report now states the bloody obvious by claiming that organisations stick with Microsoft Word not out of necessity, but out of habit.

Though this drive is pretty much in the average consumers' dreams (albeit a very tech-savvy average consumer) for at least the next decade or so, having one of these buggers would certainly make even those of us who have "seen it all" drool. It's estimated that in a mere five years, laser-drive hybrids could be commercially available (for a hefty price, I wager), but only reaching the sluggish access time of 1Tbits/s. It is also estimated, however, that in the future beyond, we may be seeing more modern drives with a happy 100Tbits/s. Amazing what shedding a bit of laser light on a subject can do.

There's a story making its rounds across the 'net about a woman who missed several online classes, and failed her semester, and she claims this happened because she bought a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on it - instead of Windows. She didn't know what Ubuntu was, and was surprised to see that her Windows software, such as Microsoft Office, didn't work. While this isolated case sounds a bit ridiculous, there is still a bigger problem here.

At the 2008 Professional Developer Conference, Microsoft unveiled its cloud operating system, Windows Azure. Azure is the operating system that acts as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. This platform aids developers in publishing services and applications on the internet. Microsoft has released the latest CTP for Azure.

The first screenshots of Office 14, the sucessor to Office 2007, have been leaked onto the internet. The screenshots include "Access 14, Excel 14, Groove 14, InfoPath Designer 14, InfoPath Filler 14, InterConnect 14, OneNote 14, Outlook 14, PowerPoint 14, Project 14, Publisher 14, SharePoint Designer 14, Visio 14, and Word 14." Office 14 has no official release date yet.

Netbooks using the forthcoming Intel Atom N280 are expected to tip up between the second and third quarters of 2009. The N280 is the follow-up to the Netbook class leading N270 Atom CPU that finds its home in practically every netbook on the market today.

Breaking news out of Cupertino: Apple's CEO Steve Jobs has announced he is taking a medical leave of absence, stepping down as CEO of Apple from now until June 2009. Steve Jobs announced this new turn of events in an email to all Apple employees today. Tim Cook will assume the CEO position for the time being.

Microsoft Research has been working on a new gimmick for XBox Live subscribers, something called "Kodu" that allows kids (and parents, perhaps?) to design their own games without prior knowledge of programming, and all done on the XBox console.

This article describes an implementation of high availability for a composite application using Linux-HA. Delivering high availability to composite applications can be challenging. Because composite applications consist of several distinct applications, each with different availability requirements, configuration is complex.

And so the court case between Apple and clone-maker Psystar continues. Claims are being thrown back and forth between the two companies, ranging from Apple invoking the DMCA, to Psystar claiming Apple's Mac OS X copyright is invalid. We can add a new one to the list. Court documents reveal that Psystar claims it has bought its copies of Mac OS X fair and square - including some directly from Apple.

After Nokia purchsed Trolltech last year, doubts arose about how Nokia would handle the dual licensing model of Qt, the advanced cross-platform toolkit which lies at the base of the KDE Free software desktop. As it turns out, these doubts were unfounded, as Nokia today announced it's going to add the LGPL to Qt's licensing model, starting with Qt 4.5.

In the future people may interact with computers via a touchscreen or voice commands, but presently, keyboards are still one of the major ways to interact with a computer. The Tech Report has acquired a modern buckling spring keyboard, the Das Keyboard Professional, for review. Being a hardware review site, they have to compare the Das Keyboard Professional against something, so Cyril pits it against his personal Model M.

"I discovered recently the truth of the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Yes, I finally did it. I bricked my beloved EeePc. I had just installed the Smart package manager and a subsequent reboot saw me stuck in, well, an eternal boot loop. Impulsive mixing of repositories always ends in tears - but not being able to boot? Argh! To rub salt into the wound I had mislaid the Xandros DVD to do a reinstall and I didn't even have an external CD/DVD drive anyway. Organised or what?" Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.