"Apple issued the first Mac OS X 10.5.3 seed (9d10) to developers yesterday. The latest update to Apple's Mac OS X Leopard addresses dozens of outstanding issues. Fixes range from Dashboard, Parental Controls, iCal Synchronization, memory leaks and stability issues. All in all, 75 distinct bug fixes are listed in the accompanying seed notes."

Version 2.4 of the OpenOffice productivity suite was released on Thursday, boasting enhancements to all its core components. Possibly the most significant alteration in the new version of the free suite is in the description of file types. The 'OpenDocument' description has been replaced by 'ODF', which stands for 'OpenDocument Format' and is becoming a well-known acronym thanks to rivalry with Microsoft's controversial OOXML format.

"An Apple Mac was the first victim in a hacker shoot-out to determine which operating system is the most secure. A former US National Security Agency employee has trousered USD 10000 for breaking into a MacBook Air at CanSecWest security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest. The MacBook was lined up against Linux and Vista PCs - which have so far remained uncracked. Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but yesterday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organisers using the computers to do things like visit websites or open email messages. The MacBook was the only system to be hacked by Thursday. Miller didn't need much time. He quickly directed the contest's organisers to visit a website that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on. He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems." There is more bad news for Apple: "If you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple." Update: The contest is over. Vista got hacked using Adobe's Flash, Ubuntu was left standing.

An outside contributor to Syllable going under the name Bean has rewritten the AFS filesystem driver for GRUB 2. The original driver was for GRUB 1 and was derived from the full AFS driver. This meant that the copyright could not be reassigned to the FSF, so the GRUB project didn't want to integrate the code. The new driver is much smaller and looks like it will be integrated into GRUB, so Syllable will have a new boot loader and maintenance will become much easier. Before that happens, though, more porting work needs to be done on GRUB 2 to integrate it in the build process and installer. Eventually, this will lead to EFI support and support by other operating systems to boot Syllable. Here is a separate test CD that is capable of booting an existing Syllable installation on disk. In addition, Ruwen Boehm got the newest version of PHP to work, so for the first time since AtheOS times there is a new PHP port. A binary package for version 5.2.5 is now available for download.

"Well the day has finally come, development of Automatix has been discontinued. We are doing this, not because we think Automatix is no longer necessary on Ubuntu and Debian, but because all of the Automatix developers have become wrapped up in more pressing commitments. I, Jared, have been asked by Technalign Inc. to assist in the development of the next version of their GNU/Linux distribution, Pioneer Warrior. I will use what I have learned as an Automatix developer to make Pioneer Warrior the best GNU/Linux distribution for the average user. Arnie, and the other Automatix Team members, currently are too involved in their personal lives to do justice to the Automatix project as well. We thank our loyal users for the years of support they have given us, and we wish them well on their journey in the world of free software."

As posted recently in the Haiku blogs, the April 2008 issue of the Japanese publication Software Design Magazine carries an article titled 'Writing Haiku: Begun in 2001, an open source replication of BeOS finally nears its alpha release' in its Pacific Connections series written by Bart Eisenberg. This is an eight pages long article that includes a full interview of Axel Dorfler, as well as comments from Bryan Varner (Haiku Java Port team lead) and Dane Scott, of TuneTracker fame. Go ahead and check out the English version of the article.

The web has been abuzz the past two days with the 'news' that it was supposedly illegal to run Safari for Windows on anything but an Apple-branded computer. It was obviously a mistake, so I decided to run no story on it. Now, however, it has specifically been fixed by Apple; Ars decided to phone Apple PR, and they fixed the issue. The WebKit guys also offer a fix for the 'fuzzy fonts' issue on Safari for Windows.

In targeting casinos, restaurants, and hotels, Microsoft knows it is barely scratching the surface of the demand for its tabletop computer. The company is convinced there is a mass market for an interactive touch-screen computer, but perhaps not in its current USD 10000 version. CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last month that Microsoft had a plan to speed up the arrival of a consumer version of the tabletop computer Surface.

Despite reports that Windows XP Service Pack SP3 would hit Release to Manufacturing soon after the RTW of Vista SP1, Microsoft has released yet another build of the next (and possibly last) service pack for its most popular operating system. The build, dubbed 'Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 Refresh' (not to be confused with SP3 RC2), does not contain many changes. According to Microsoft Technet, "Beyond fixes for common Windows Update issues and the inclusion of support for HD Audio, there are no substantial differences between this beta release (build 5508) and XP SP3 RC2 (build 3311)."

"Fashion often repeats itself, with dated products reborn into popular products. Just think of VolksWagen’s Beetle or BMW's Mini. And now we can add the Commodore Amiga to the list, sort of, thanks to a new all-in-one PC with a look rather reminiscent of the home computer." This design was also used by the MSX, my actual first computer experience (apart from a Binatone Mk. IV).

"It's been almost two months since Fedora 9 Alpha was released, which we subsequently previewed. Now with the release of Fedora 9 just being 35 days out, Red Hat has pushed out the beta release of Fedora 9 (codenamed Sulphur) with many more features implemented and ready to be tested. We have taken the time to explore the features of Fedora 9 and the progress that has been made."

"Whitix is a 32-bit operating system for the Intel and AMD range of processors, licensed under the GNU GPL. It features a C compiler (tcc), Python, assembler (nasm), text editor, shell and filesystem formatter. See the Introduction to Whitix for more information." Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren't we sharp today.

It is that time of year again: a new Ubuntu release is upon us. The beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 was released a few days ago, so I decided to give it a try and see what new features and improvements they have shoved into this one. As always, this is as much a preview of the latest GNOME release (2.22) as it is of Ubuntu itself. Read on for the preview.

New Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst says his company must be a defining technology company of the 21st century and provide more leadership to companies that are willing to co-develop software with open source projects and with other companies. "Ninety-five percent of software is developed by enterprises each year and is not for resale," involving a lot of re-inventing of the wheel by different firms. "There's hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted software assets each year," he said in an address to the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco Tuesday.