MacFUSE 2.0 was recently released onto the world, and now, its author, Amit Singh, as given Mac users something they've been waiting for ever since they first laid eyes on Mac OS X: access to numerous old (and more recent) file systems, through something called AncientFS. Always wanted to mount v1tap DEC tapes as ordinary volumes in Mac OS X? Here's your chance.

IBM's primer to Cygwin. Cygwin is a UNIX-like environment for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Cygwin includes a real UNIX shell, a Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) emulation library, and thousands of UNIX utilities ported to Windows. Learn how to drop to Cygwin and use its UNIX-like command line to manipulate the system.

In a muckraking Spiegel.de article, suppliers to well-known computer manufacturers are accused of mistreating workers and violating Chinese labor law: "According to a Hong-Kong based human rights organization, working hours total up to 370 hours per month, workers aren't receiving the legal minimum wage and in the run-up to Christmas, days off are cut out entirely." One of the reasons that high tech hardware has become so widespread and useful is because it's so inexpensive. As this article demonstrates, this affordability can come at a price.

Apple, which has outpaced the overall personal computer market this year despite its strategy of eschewing discounts, showed its first signs of weakness in November. NPD analyst Steve Baker blamed a 35% drop in sales of desktop Macs, noting growth in Apple's laptops still outpaced rivals . The decline marks a sharp reversal for Apple, which has enjoyed robust demand this year for its Macs, even as spending on Windows-based PCs slowed along with sales of other electronics like flat-panel TVs. Note by Kroc: With apologies to OSNews reader judgen for changing the news source provided from SmartHouse to WSJ.

In a move that will surely revive the tiring rumour that Steve Jobs has serious health issues, Apple has announced that not only will they back out of MacWorld San Francisco , but also that Steve Jobs will not hold his usual keynote address at the coming MacWorld event this January - which will be the last MacWorld attended by Apple. The keynote will instead be delivered by Phil Schiller. Surprising? Hardly.

Earlier this month we reported on RISCOS Ltd possibly undertaking legal action against RISC OS Open Ltd , with the latter being the shared source project started by Castle. This news came down pretty hard on the already small RISC OS community, but it did have a number of positive effects: representatives from both ROL and ROOL were quick to explain that there is absolutely no animosity between the two companies, and that the community has nothing to fear.

Microsoft's first-ever iPhone application is a slick photo viewer with a browsing capability that handles a large number of photos on a mobile device screen. The Seadragon mobile application is free through Apple's application store. It a product of Microsoft's Live Labs division, which focuses on developing Web-based technology and applications. Seadragon incorporates the Deep Zoom feature, which is also integrated into Silverlight 2, Microsoft's multimedia tool. It allows a user to quickly magnify a particular area of a photo, regardless of its size.

Even the most experienced Linux admin can sometimes feel frustrated trying to do a simple task in a new *nix environment like Solaris or BSD. This quick tutorial should ease the transition and clarify the most common terminologies in Solaris 10.

Apple has released the latest update to Mac OS X Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5.6. It contains a whole list of fixes and improvements, so have fun checking out if your favourite bug has been squashed. As always, it's in Software Update. Feel free to report success or epic fail in the comments.

The first "point release" of the AROS distribution VmwAROS has been published, and it's available on its website. This version introduces a lot of changes and many new features that make it visually different from regular AROS build. Ken Lester's double state icons, for instance, make VmwAROS look more Amiga-like, and former Amiga users can also continue using their applications thanks to AmiBridge, a poweful scripting system which allows launching AmigaOS programs straight from AROS. A big effort has been made to enhance VmwAROS useability and user-friendlyness.

USB 3.0 isn't even available to us mere mortals yet, but thanks to Sarah Sharp's hard work, the Linux kernel is already underway towards having basic support for the new specification. "Now that the bus specification is public, I can finally talk about the code I've been developing at work. I've been writing a Linux driver for xHCI (the new USB 3.0 host controller), and changing the Linux kernel stack to support USB 3.0 devices." Sharp got to demo her work at the USB 3.0 Superspeed Conference.

I'm sure you're all still (sadly) familiar with the recent 'debate' I had with InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy, which detailed a lot of silly things. The seed of that discussion was planted with Kennedy's first article which, among other things, claimed that Windows 7 performed similarly to Windows Vista (meaning, slower than XP). Leaving the thread count discussion behind, Kennedy did include a benchmark which showed that Windows 7 performed similar to Windows Vista. There's a new benchmark out now, comparing a slightly more recent build of Windows 7 to Vista RTM/SP1 and XP SP3, and in these tests, Windows 7 blows all of those out of the water.

In Japan at ATR Computational Science Laboratories, the first thoughts in history were successfully read via a computer -- and not just by guessing or even educationally guessing. Scientists began by showing test subjects the six letters that spell "neuron." Afterwards, by measuring the subjects' brain activity, they were able to reconstruct the six images and display them on a monitor. The images were fuzzy, of course, but obviously spelled neuron. ATR said that it's very possible that one day this technology will be able to read our dreams.

After just 100 days, Google has lifted the veil of betaness off its web browser, Chrome, by releasing version 1.0. When Chrome made its first public appearance earlier this year, it was met with positive reveiws due to its JavaScript performance, as well as its robust multithreaded model. Now that the beta label has been ripped off Chrome, Google can't hide itself anymore: Chrome will now have to take Firefox and Internet Explorer head-on.