"Symantec's comprehensive security report on the malware industry from July 1 to December 31, 2007, is now available in its 100+ page glory. Symantec broke down information on patch development time by operating system and by the type of vulnerability encountered. Surprisingly, Microsoft had the shortest time-to-patch over both halves of 2007. In the first part of the year, Microsoft released 38 patches (two of which involved third-party applications) with an average deployment time of 18 days. From July to December, Microsoft released 22 patches with an average patch time of six days. Red Hat came in second, at 32 days for the second half of the year and 36 days in the first half. That's quite a bit higher than Microsoft's average, but of the 227 vulnerabilities Red Hat patched in 2007, 226 of them involved third-party applications. Apple, Sun, and HP all lag well behind Microsoft and Red Hat, though the gap for each company differs significantly between the first and second halves of last year."

SEMI, the semiconductor manufacturing equipment trade group, interviewed Gordon Moore, the retired chairman and CEO of Intel Corporation, which he co-founded in 1968. Moore is widely known for 'Moore’s Law', a 1965 prediction that the number of components on a computer chip would double every year. The interview details the early days of semiconductor manufacturing.

Comic: "Copyright".

Ars Technica has an article about recent proposals to evolve the GTK+ toolkit: "The developers of GTK are preparing for a major overhaul that aims to resolve many of the framework's most significant deficiencies and add next-generation features that will increase flexibility and simplify development. This effort is still in the earliest planning stage, but several intriguing proposals provide valuable insight into some of the changes envisioned by prominent developers."

GNOME 2.22.1 has been released. "This is the first update to GNOME 2.22. Come and see all the bug fixing, all the new translations and all the updated documentation brought to you by the wonderful team of GNOME contributors! A lot of work has been done in the stable branch to make it even more solid than it was."

Microsoft plans to make a key Internet Explorer default change to thwart attackers trying to hack into its Web browser. The software maker will enable DEP/NX by default in IE 8 when the browser is running on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, a major tweak aimed at mitigating browser-based vulnerabilities. DEP/NX (Data Execution Prevention/No Execute) is already available in IE 7, but it's turned off by default because of compatibility issues.

Sun Microsystems is today officially debuting its two new 'massively threaded' servers based on the UltraSPARC T2+ processor. The major advancement in Sun's new CMT SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers is that both systems support two processors - whereas previous offerings topped out at a single socket. Each processor - part of the 'Niagara' line - is equipped with up to eight cores and 64 threads, which is par with the chip's predecessors. But with a fresh ability to double-up, a single machine is able to process 128 instructional threads at the same time. Sun heralds the chip consolidation as leading to better performance per watt and space efficiency.

"The rest of the server world can play with their piddling 2-3GHz chips. IBM, meanwhile, is prepared to deal in the 5GHz realm. The hardware maker has unveiled a Power6-based version of its highest-end Unix server - the Power 595. The box runs on 32 dual-core 5GHz Power6 processors, making it a true performance beast. This big box completes a protracted roll out of the Power6 chip across IBM's Unix server line."

Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring has been released. This new release brings features like full support for the Asus Eee, easy synchronization with Windows Mobile 5 and later, Blackberry, and Nokia devices, a new parental control utility, the Elisa multimedia centrer, Codeina for easy installation of necessary media codecs, and PulseAudio by default. Software updates include KDE 3.5.9 (with 4.0.2 available from the official repositories), GNOME 2.22, OpenOffice.org 2.4, Linux kernel 2.6.24.4, X.org 7.3, and Compiz 0.7. You can download the One (live/install CD) or Free (traditional installer, 100% free/open source software) editions of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring right here. BitTorrent download links can be found here. The main 2008 Spring page on the Mandriva Wiki has more information.

MikeOS 1.3.0 has been released, with a new Minicom-like serial terminal program, a PCX image viewer, and many updates to the system calls and documentation. MikeOS is designed to teach x86 assembly language and basic OS construction, as detailed in the Handbook.

"Microsoft will make available the preliminary versions of technical documentation for the protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. This documentation, which defines how these high-volume Microsoft products communicate with some of its other products, is 14000 pages and is in addition to the 30000 pages posted when the software giant first introduced its new Interoperability Principles last month. They will be made available April 8."

No matter where I live, it always seems that I don't have good mobile phone reception. All I want is to be able to take calls that ring in on my mobile, which is my main business line, without having to stand in the corner, on tiptoes, and have to apologize to clients when they can't hear me or the call is dropped. Is that so much to ask? Hey, why don't I get those calls to ring through on my landline handset? That would be a great solution. Not so fast!

IBM is discontinuing the System p and System i server brands and changing the name of the i5/OS operating system to "i" or "i for business." An IT Jungle article notes that "servers developed and manufactured by its newly christened Power Systems division with the name--drum roll please--"Power." As in Power 520, Power 550, Power 570, and Power 595, whether the machine is running AIX, Linux, or the operating system formerly known as i5/OS."

Due to the success of the previous incarnation, I'd figure we do another 'OSNews Asks' item; it's a nice way to get to know each other a little more on matters that are in itself fairly irrelevant. We'll continue down the path of irrelevance by asking: What Star Trek race would you want to be, given the choice? And, of course, why? I'll start: definitely Betazoid. Reading minds, telepathy, maybe even empathic abilities, no weird ridges or other facial deformations, black eyes - what's not to like? Post your choice in the comments!