The MorphOS development team is proud to announce the public release of MorphOS 2.2, a free update for users of MorphOS 2.1 and 2.0. In addition to numerous bug fixes, MorphOS 2.2 includes additional optimizations and new features such as Kryptos, a disk encryption suite.

A new version of MikeOS has been released. MikeOS is aiming to be the best documented hobby OS project; three Handbooks explain how to run the OS, write software for it and modify the internals, providing an easy entry point for those interested in OS development.

Microsoft and Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs in Cambridge demoed their nifty NanoTouch, a small device fitting in the palm of one's hand, boasting a 2.4 inch screen and a touch pad on the back so as to utilize the small screen without having to block it with one's fingers. The developers say this technology could develop into electronic jewelry and high-tech clothing, though that NanoTouch looks an awful lot like one of those iPods or Zunes we keep hearing about. Anyone up for a touch-t-shirt with customizable images on front and back? You'd never have to buy another shirt again.

Though the cause is still unknown, three of the four undersea Internet cables that run from North America to Asia were cut, causing outages in Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, and a dozen or so other countries. That is a lot of angry World of Warcraft players. It's supposed to have been from ships' anchors, though even two downed cables at one time is very rare, so who's to say it wasn't sabotage?

There might be a lot of companies stating that netbooks are just a fad, and that the whole thing will pass (Sony, Apple), but that isn't stopping several chip companies from putting serious effort into improving the performance of these small netbooks. NVIDIA, AMD, and VIA are all hard at work at improving several aspects of netbook computing.

There's an interesting article over at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com about what you can do with the free time the coming holidays will likely present you with. This being an article at the Free Software Magazine, it focusses mainly on - you guessed it - Free software. The suggestions are interesting, but we have a few of our own to add.

With ever increasing amounts of Javascript on the client side, maintenance is increased by duplicating business logic on the client side;"In this series, learn how to run JavaScript files on the server side, call remote JavaScript functions with Ajax, and use the Java Scripting API with the JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology." Part 1 of IBM's "Javascript EE" series- "Combine JavaScript with Java code on the server to get the freedom to use the same JavaScript routines on both servers and clients, and allow you to maintain a single code base for both Ajax and non-Ajax clients."

Sun just released xVM VirtualBox 2.1.0, a major update with several new features, among them: better 64-bit support, hardware-assisted virtualization on MacOS, OpenGL 3D acceleration, easier networking on Windows and Linux, emulated SCSI controllers and full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots.

I interviewed Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier, who is the Community Manager for openSUSE and I asked him about his role in bringing this release to light and how the open source community drives this type of project.Full Story on DaniWeb

I read in InfoQ: "Ja.NET is a port of Java 1.5 SE to the .NET platform. The compiler is based on the Eclipse JDT, which has been modified to generate IL as well as Java Byte Code. Java traditionally compiles each class into a separate file, but this creates an unacceptable overhead for .NET. To address this, a tool based on Cecil is used to create larger assemblies much in the same way Jar files are created for Java."

Most of the attention has been going to Microsoft and its Internet Explorer web browser for having a severe zero-day security hole fixed, but Microsoft wasn't the only one hastily fixing its browser. Both Mozilla as well as Opera had to issue quick patches to fix several security flaws in their browsers.

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.

The French competition council has ordered the iPhone be opened up to other French carriers (Google-translated), breaking the exclusivity deal with Orange (France Telecom). The complaint was filed by France's third largest operator Bouygues Telecom who said that the deal violated local competition laws. Though the ruling is temporary whilst the issue is investigated further, the ruling did state that the arrangement reduced the effects of price competition, network quality and customer service.

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.