We usually don't report on games, but I would like to make an exception today. Blizzard Entertainment has announced the sequel to what many see as the best realtime strategy game ever made: they announced StarCraft II. The original StarCraft, released in 1998, tops many best-games-of-all-times lists, and has sold over 9 million copies worldwide; it is still one of the most popular online games, despite its age. In fact, in South Korea, StarCraft matches are even broadcast on TV.

Xorg 7.2 has almost been committed to the FreeBSD ports tree. "Within the next 24 hours, the long-awaited update to the X.org 7.2 windowing system will be committed to the ports tree. This upgrade has been 6 months in the making and would not have been possible without the dedicated work of Florent Thoumie, Dejan Lesjak and many others in our army of developers."

Some of the changes in the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 are a response to features and performance advantages that have made Linux an attractive option to Microsoft customers. One of these is the fact that Linux has less of a surface area, which led customers to believe that Linux is inherently more secure, Bill Laing, the general manager for Microsoft's Windows Server division, told eWEEK. "Having less surface area does reduce the servicing and the amount of code you have running and exposed, so we have done a lot of work in 2008 to make the system more modular. There are more than 30 components not installed by default, which is a huge change," Laing said. "We also have server core, which doesn't have the GUI, so I would say that is a response to the options people had with Linux that they didn't have with Windows."

"When Firefox launched in beta release five years ago, it burst on the open-source browser scene like a young Elvis Presley - slim, sexy and dangerous. Since then it has attracted millions of users, generally set the agenda for browser development and unseated Microsoft's IE as the de facto monopoly in the field. But, with Firefox 3.0 poised for release later this year, the 'IE killer' is in danger of morphing into an early Fat Elvis, if increasing numbers of die-hard fans turned reluctant critics are any guide."

"AMD recently disclosed a few details regarding their upcoming mobile platform technologies, codenamed 'Griffin' and 'Puma'. We've been given some preliminary information regarding these plans and thought we'd share a few of the more salient details with you here. The 'Griffin' codename pertains to an upcoming mobile processor that incorporates a number of features designed specifically for the mobile segment, with the intention of increasing performance and battery life. And 'Puma' is the name given to the new platform as a whole."

The 2-day by invitation only FreeBSD developer summit at BSDCan 2007 in Ottawa has just ended. Over 60 FreeBSD developers attended the summit, along with representatives from large BSD-friendly corporations such as Apple, Yahoo, Nokia, Juniper, NetApp and Ironport. A variety of topics were discussed, such as ZFS, the BLUFFS file system, SMP scalability improvements and the new virtualized network stack. Video recordings from the summit are available, as well as pictures.

"Storage manufacturers are getting ready to start shipping solid state disks, and Linux-based devices like One Laptop per Child's XO and Intel's Classmate don't contain standard hard disks. To improve performance on the wide array of flash memory storage devices now available, project leader Jern Engel has announced LogFS, a scalable filesystem specifically for flash devices."

"Bill Laing, a General Manager in the Microsoft Windows Server Division, has been quoted as saying that Windows Server 2008 will be the last 32-bit operating system. Bill is a server guy and indeed Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit server operating system - all future operating systems for server hardware from Microsoft beyond Windows Server 2008 will be 64-bit. A few folks took Bill's comments on Windows Server and applied them to Windows Client deriving that Windows Vista would be the last 32-bit operating system. That is an incorrect extension. While Windows Vista includes both 32-bit and 64-bit and there is a growing community of drivers for 64-bit Windows Vista we have not decided when Windows Client will follow Windows Server and become 64-bit only."

Most of my readers know that I love cellphones, PDAs and gadgets. Many of these gadgets do not have WiFi in them, but they do support the PAN-client Bluetooth profile which allows them to get wireless internet connectivity (e.g. the Palm Treo). To achieve this, you need to have a PAN-server. And this what Anycom's EDR-AP Bluetooth Access Point is all about.

Tired of waiting for Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard'? Make the wait easier with tools that add power, pizazz and some Leopard-like features to OS X 10.4 'Tiger' in this 4-page article at ComputerWorld.

In the GNOME bugzilla, there is an ongoing discussion about whether or not to include a patch into the default GNOME installation which would enable GNOME to (optionally) have a global application menubar, similar to that of the Mac OS and KDE (in the latter it is optional and off by default). Installation instructions and .deb packages, as well as a 60-page (and counting) discussion of the patch, are available on the UbuntuForums. Read on for a poll on this issue.

The facelift the AROS project had planned is now complete. Most importantly, due to the recent legal troubles concerning Amiga, the project has changed its name from "Amiga Research Operating System" into "AROS Research Operating System". They have also redone their website. There is also development news; the USB UHCI and OHCI support has been completed, and write support for the FAT filesystem has been added, among other things.

Craig Mundie is trying to fill Bill Gates shoes. Well, at least one of them. Keenly aware that no one person can replace Microsoft's cultural icon, the company has divided his responsibilities among two top executives. Ray Ozzie has taken over as chief software architect, but Gates' role overseeing technical strategy and policy has gone to Mundie.

"With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard pushed back to October, Apple has bought itself more time to tie loose ends in the current Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system and will put forth those fixes via its first 'dot ten' software update in quite some time, AppleInsider has learned. According to those people familiar with the matter, the first pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4.10 began making the rounds in Cupertino earlier this month."