Are the C programming language and its object-oriented offspring - C++, C#, Objective-C - still well-suited to the requirements of multithreaded, network-oriented computing environments today? That's the question on the minds of engineers at Microsoft Research, whose latest programming language is today being officially moved off the back burner. The F# language has received the company's official blessing.

Ati AMD has released a new version of its graphics drivers that fix some long overdue bugs. "Today it's now time where the fglrx driver reaches yet another milestone. Not only does today's release address many of the outstanding bugs for the earlier GPU generations while also introducing a few new features, but it also delivers AIGLX support! Yes, you read that right. You can finally run your ATI graphics card with the fglrx driver and run Compiz, Beryl, or Compiz Fusion without using XGL!"

"After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA - something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation. Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into 'reduced functionality' mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour. You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code. How can this crazy situation occur? Read on for the sorry tale."

"Not all major software versions carry the same weight. Consider the last two releases of the Fedora distribution. Fedora 7 offered little that was obvious to desktop users, despite some behind-the-scenes improvements and the opening of the release process to public scrutiny. By contrast, if Test 3 of Fedora 8 is any indication, the upcoming release, scheduled for next month, returns to the distribution's tradition of introducing a variety of innovations. Some of these innovations, like the new firewall tool, are minor, if still welcome. Others, like the IcedTea version of Java and Codec Buddy, are flawed, but may eventually find their way into other distributions."

Trolltech has discontinued its Linux-based 'Greenphone' development platform. Touted upon its introduction as the first Linux-based mobile phone with user-modifiable firmware, the device will be superseded by various third-party products, including not only open phones, but also portable media players, navigation devices, and home automation equipment, the company says.

Sun's starting to phase out mobile Java that's been the standard on cellphones and other small devices in favor of their standard edition, which are made for PCs everywhere. Sun VP James Gosling's reasoning for shifting everyone over to Java Standard Edition is because 'cellphones and TV set-top boxes are growing up', meaning they're getting enough processing power to handle all the demands of full-featured Java.

Ars Technica has published part four in their series on the history of the Amiga, starting with Amiga being bought by Commodore. "One hugely positive benefit about being owned by a large computer company was that the Amiga team no longer (for the moment, anyway) had to worry about money. The team was moved 10 miles to a spacious, rented facility in Los Gatos, California. They could afford to hire more engineers, and the software development team went from having 10 people sharing a single Sage workstation to everyone having their own SUN on their desk."

Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The defeated software giant announced it would not appeal against a decisive European Union court ruling two months ago that backed the Commission.

While newly minted Windows head Steven Sinofsky continues to play his cards close to his chest, we're seeing signs that Microsoft is rethinking its monolithic approach to not only the mass-market Windows operating system but the entire family of Windows products from servers down to CE-based embedded devices. First up is a streamlined microkernel codenamed MinWin, around which a re-engineered Windows line will be built. Described as 'the Windows 7 source-code base', in reference to the successor to Windows Vista which is slated for a 2010 release, MinWin strips back the current NT-based kernel to the barest of bare metal. Ars Technica has more, including a one hour video presentation about MinWin. Sassy quote of the day by Microsoft kernel engineer Eric Traut: "A lot of people think of Windows as this really large bloated operating system, and that may be a fair characterisation, I have to admit." My take: Maybe this will be closer to reality after all?

APCMag has a lenghty article on switching from Windows to Ubuntu. "When I was first given this task I had to sit and blink a few times, if for nothing else than dramatic pause. I'm a self-confessed Linux nut, as some of you may know, but even I'm cautious to do away with Windows completely. There's a reason I have a dual-boot Windows and Linux machine. Several of them, in fact. But have I just been conditioned into using Windows because of past experience, or applications, or file formats, or the myriad other reasons that make Windows a comfort zone because it's all so familiar?"

GNU Classpath 0.96 "Staying Alive!" and IcedTea 1.4 just got released. GNU Classpath is slowly turning into a bootstrapping platform for IcedTea/OpenJDK by providing the necessary free software plugs that are missing from Sun's OpenJDK to provide various GNU/Linux distributions with the fully free GPLed IcedTea Java platform implementation that will be in the Fedora (Werewolf), Debian, and Ubuntu (Gutsy) releases.

NetBSD 4.0 RC3 has been released. "On behalf of the NetBSD Release Engineering team, I am happy to announce the availability of NetBSD 4.0 Release Candidate 3. The list of changes from the 3.0 release is available in the release notes. This release candidate has several bug fixes and other changes since the previous release candidate."

Apple posted a Leopard guided tour video, in the same format as the earlier iPhone and iPod Touch guided tours. It mentions the new Finder, stacks, Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, and so on. In Quicktime, of course.

"Buried deep within Windows' bosom is a carbon-crusted fossil from the ancient days of computing. This aged wart on Windows' soul harkens back to a more primitive time, when computers lacked the oomph to go graphical and mice were nothing but rodents. I speak of the command prompt, whose roots lie in DOS, that antique operating system of the 1980s. DOS is gone now. Yet despite Windows' glorious graphical goodness, a wispy memory of text-based computer life still exists. It's a program called CMD.EXE, and it appears in Windows as the command prompt window. Believe it or not, the command prompt to this day still serves as a useful alternative way to control your computer. Indeed, there are some things you can do in the command prompt window that in Windows' graphical interface are tedious, slow or darn near impossible. Come with me as we discover how an old warhorse like DOS can once again find purpose."