An article at The Motley Fool lays out good financial news from Red Hat: "In its first quarter of fiscal 2009, Red Hat produced $0.08 of GAAP earnings per share on revenue of $156.6 million. That's a 32% sales increase over last year, while profits held steady. But the numbers don't tell the whole story here.The open-source software veteran released major updates to four of its key products and re-signed every expired contract with its 25 largest subscribers -- for 50% more than the worth of the old deals. It's always cool to see the big boys upgrading their pacts, don't you think? Red Hat continues to invest in its global sales and support infrastructure, funding the growth from organic cash flows.

For any given release of Windows, there are companies that choose to skip it. But when the company is Intel, it's a big deal. Intel's IT department "found no compelling case" for upgrading to Windows Vista.

TestMac.net has published a quick look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard. "The biggest changes are under the hood. Snow Leopard is fast. Very fast. Like, surprisingly fast. From boot times to general application usage, Snow Leopard was noticeably quicker then Leopard when using the same system. Apple and 3rd party applications alike, they all launched faster and performed smoother. I'm sure this can be attributed to the new 64-bit architecture, but its amazing how much of a difference it really is." Screenshots included.

"Looks like there's only room for one mobile Linux standards body in these here parts, and LiMo's recent momentum and partnership deals have apparently swept up the members of the Linux Phone Standards (LiPS) -- the two groups just announced that as of July, LiPS will be folded into LiMo", reports Engadget. This piece of news, with the recent Nokia/Symbian news too, prompted me to write this opinion piece that I had on the back of mind for a while now, where I offer an analogy as to how today's smartphone OSes compare to the 1985 personal computer OS climate and where does this may lead.

Ryan Cartwright at Freesoftware Magazine has a hot little tutorial for anyone who wants to master some very fantastically useful (but lesser known) keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org (for Writer). Read the full story at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com.

Now that Java has a fully open sourced implementation in RedHat's IcedTea, Neil McAllister questions whether an open Java even matters: "Even as Java has stretched outward to embrace more concepts and technologies - adding APIs and language features as it goes - newer, more lightweight tools have appeared that do most of what Java aims to do. And they often do it better."

On OSNews, we try to steer away from speaking of specific security incidents, trojans, or viruses, unless they are in one way or the other special, or very influential. Over the course of the past 12 months or so, many incidents concerning Mac security arose, but most, if not all, were lemons: they required the user to actively enter his administrator password, or to manually launch the malicious program. In my book, these cases do not constitute as serious breaches of security, and hence, OSNews ignored them. However, a new security breach has been making rounds around the internet lately, which does pose a serious breach in security.

We're really on the subject of software installation issues on OSNews lately, and this story, making its rounds on the internet, fits in quite well. Back in the day, during the antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft, Microsoft had to make a whole slew of corporate email public. In light of Gates' imminent withdrawal from Microsoft, SeattlePI dug up a little gem among these emails, one in which Bill Gates goes on a full-blown rant about the difficulties he had trying to download and install Windows MovieMaker, back in 2003.

In a recent interview with the British Sunday Observer, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, claimed that "it's the next billion who will change the way we think". Such a big claim deserves some critical house room. Will the internet really change the way we think? Or are we just getting carried away? Gary Richmond explores the implications of the Wikipedia open source/free software knowledge paradigm and what it might mean for the way we think. You can read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine

A Computerworld blog post reads: "You gotta love it. Microsoft has decided that it will ho ahead and kill off easy access to XP on June 30th. On behalf of desktop Linux users everywhere, and our first cousins, the Mac fans, thanks. You've given us the best shot we'll ever have of taking the desktop."

The resource usage of browsers is an important aspect in modern-day computing, because the browser is taking on an ever more important role in day-to-day computing tasks. Hence, it may come as no surprise that many complaints regarding browsers are not about rendering speed or rendering quality, but about resource usage. Dot Net Perls ran an interesting benchmark on Windows Vista SP1, comparing 5 browsers to each other.

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. Previously they have spoken to Alfred v. Aho of AWK fame, S. Tucker Taft on the Ada 1995 and 2005 revisions, Microsoft about its server-side script engine ASP, and Chet Ramey about his experience maintaining Bash. In the latest interview Computerworld chats with Bjarne Stroustrup of C++ fame about the design and development of C++, garbage collection and the role of facial hair in successful programming languages.

We already know some of the directions Windows 7 will be exploring: a system-wide multitouch user interface framework, a focus on performance, all while building on top of the groundwork Windows Vista has laid out. While off-hand remarks have been made concerning the operating system's release date, it appears Microsoft now formalised the release date of Windows 7.

One button, two buttons, three buttons, ten million buttons. Beige, black, white, red with polka dots. Glow-in-the-dark, see through. Right-handed, left-handed, both. Vertical for RSI patients, trackballs for weirdoes like myself, Apple's puck mouse for sado-masochists. The ubiquitous mouse comes in all possible shapes, forms, sizes, and colours, but according to our friend The Analyst, the glorious age of the mouse is coming to and end. Do we believe The Analyst?