A security researcher has released a proof-of-concept program that hackers could use to exploit Windows Vista digital rights management processes to hide malware. Alex Ionescu claims to have developed the program - D-Pin Purr v1.0 - that will arbitrarily enable and disable protected processes in Vista, Microsoft's latest operating system.

"Accepted student applications for Google Summer of Code have been announced! We accepted over 900 student applicants from a pool of nearly 6,200 applications. All the mentoring organizations that will participate in Google Summer of Code 2007 are listed. You can learn more about the accepted students and their projects by visiting each organization's 'about' page."

Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite strong ongoing demand for the OS. Analysts and computer makers are wondering if the move is premature given Vista's ongoing performance and compatibility issues. Dell recently said it would reintroduce XP on a range of machines due to customer demand but Microsoft will only allow this until the end of the year.

"In the beginning... open source was pure and unadulterated. Over time, the idea of community-build software that is free and unfettered by sticky licensing terms and fees caught on with IT buyers, and the disruption of the old order began. Now, open source (Linux, Eclipse, Java, etc.) is mainstream, with many companies giving away valuable software for free and looking to gain profits from their largess."

The GNOME team has released the first maintenance release for the GNOME 2.18 series, logically dubbed GNOME 2.18.1. "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! While development has started on the GNOME 2.19/2.20 road, work on the stable branch continues to make it even more solid."

Version 9.2 of the Opera web browser has been released. "Opera 9.2 is not only an important update with bug fixes and the new Speed Dial functionality, it's also a milestone in spreading Opera to new users around the world: Opera 9.2 for Windows ships with 31 languages." Download it from the download page.

"What makes programming languages are suitable or unsuitable as introductory languages? Which languages are better learnt first and at which order? And why what the masses think is the most suitable introductory programming language is not in fact that. This paper examines several approaches to which programming language is the best, and afterwards gives several useful relations for which languages should come first. Finally it gives a final verdict, defends it and then gives some other good food for thought."

"Anyone else remember when Microsoft used to talk about making Windows Vista (or Longhorn, as it was then known) a fast-booting operating system. Fast, as in cold boots that were 50 percent faster than those possible with Windows XP? Something obviously went awry. As Computerworld is reporting, a number of Vista users are none too happy about Vista boot-up times. Some are questioning whether Microsoft is advocating that users just put Vista into sleep mode, as opposed to shutting down systems on a daily basis, to mask the sluggish boot up."

So, it's April 2007 and Sun Microsystems has just popped one of its 16-core Rock chips on CEO Jonathan Schwartz's desk. Schwartz posted pictures of the Rock silicon on his blog, bragging that 'the chips are running billions of instructions already'. Sun's customers must be encouraged by the Rock display, having suffered from about five years of delayed UltraSPARC chips. Servers based on the Rock family - Boulder and Pebble - should begin shipping in 2008.

Dell has stopped selling its Axim line of handhelds and is not planning a new product in the category, the computer maker said on Monday. "The Axim X51 family is no longer being offered, and we have no plans for a follow-on product at this time," Dell spokeswoman Anne Camden said in an email. Camden noted that the company does sell handhelds from other makers on its website, including GPS devices and smartphones.

The Xfce project just announced the first maintenance release of the Xfce 4.4 branch, Xfce 4.4.1. There is a changelog, and you can download it from the Sourceforge download page. In case you lived under a rock the past few years: "Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment for unix-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use."

A new development in the Zeta legality issue: BeOSFrance says to have written confirmation from Jean-Louis Gassee that to JLG's knowledge, YellowTAB did not have an agreement with Palmsource . My French isn't exactly what it should be (I should've paid more attention during high school), but with the help of Adam and others we managed to translate the most important bit: "The impropriety and absence of an agreement between yellowTAB and PalmSource (at the time, still the owner of the BeOS IP) had been confirmed to me in writing by the person best-placed to talk about it in those circumstances: Jean-Louis Gassee."

As reported by Slashdot, debate has risen over ClearType in Linux. OpenSUSE recently disabled this technology, saying "that this feature is covered by several Microsoft patents and should not be activated in any default build of the library". Other websites have picked up on this as well: "The strange thing is though: no matter the fact that Novell and Microsoft are now buddies, openSUSE still has to be concerned about the ClearType patents!"

"With Etch you get the best package manager around in APT, a rock solid stable system, and the ability to tinker with the desktop all that you want - without having the procedure become too arcane. If you are familiar with Linux then I would strongly recommend you try out Debian Etch - just an awesome release by the Debian group."