Mozilla Betas Thunderbird 2.0

Mozilla, Gecko 29 Comments
"The Thunderbird email client doesn't get half the attention that its big brother, the Firefox browser, gets, but the Mozilla Foundation has finally gotten around to lavishing some love on it, and the first beta of version 2 is now out. If you think there's nothing more that can added to an email client - except for the fabled seek-out-and-destroy-spam option - prepare to be pleasantly surprised. The new Thunderbird comes with numerous new features."
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Non-OS-Dependant Malware

  Submitted by anonymous Privacy, Security 20 Comments
"All too often people talk about the disadvantages of the Windows operating system: it has too many security flaws, it is not properly patched, it is not security oriented… Until the much talked about Vista system finally reaches our computers, there will still be plenty of time to protest. However, with the new malware dynamic, the idea that malware is restricted to specific operating systems is becoming anachronistic. It no longer matters whether the victim is a home-user or a company employee. It is now irrelevant whether the system administrator is just someone who lives round the corner or a highly qualified IT manager."
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GNU Classpath 0.93 ‘Dreamland’ Released

  Submitted by Mark Wielaard Java 11 Comments
GNU Classpath 0.93 'Dreamland', a core class library for the Java programming language, has been released with lots of enhancements (free swing, html, corba, new i/o, graphics2d/cairo support). The release announcement also details pointers to supported applications and screenshots, the status and future of the 1.4 and 1.5 generics branches. An update on the Summer of Code student work. Plus some prelimenary ideas on cooperating with the Sun GPL OpenJDK Java project. And the GNU Classpath commitments to the Free Software community for the future of various projects around GNU Classpath, the users and GNU/Linux distros relying on GNU Classpath.
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Vista: Why Bother?

Windows 83 Comments
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has written article in which he wonders if your operating system isn't broke, why 'fix' it? If what you're running now works for you, why should you move 'up' to Vista? Joe Wilcox responds to SJVN: "Colleague Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols asks 'If your operating system isn't broke, why 'fix' it?' The very question is the problem. The question reflects a sentiment I hear too often as an excuse for keeping old technologies in place - long after their real usefulness is gone."
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David Pogue Reviews Vista

Windows 46 Comments
"It doesn't matter what you (or tech reviewers) think of Windows Vista; sooner or later, it's what most people will have on their PCs. In that light, it's fortunate that Vista is better looking, better designed and better insulated against the annoyances of the Internet. At the very least, it's well equipped to pull the world's PCs along for the next five years - or whenever the next version of Windows drops down the chimney." More here. Free registration might be required.
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Get Vista and Samba to Work

  Submitted by c Internet 104 Comments
Early adopters of Vista may notice that it will not connect to Samba share folders out of the box. This will be a bit of a pain for many enterprise customers. The technical reason is because Microsoft Vista’s default security policy is to only use NTLMv2 authentication. To get Vista to work with Samba follow this simple tutorial.
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Rule-Based Access Control

Privacy, Security 3 Comments
"Although Web servers can perform user authentication and coarse-grained authorization checking for applications, developers of Web services and SOAs often must write custom code to restrict access to certain features of their system, or customize the behavior or appearance, based on the identity of a user. Embedding authorization checking within an application is inflexible, prone to error, and increases its complexity. What if it were data-driven instead of implemented by program logic?"
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RPM: Plans, Goals

Fedora Core 61 Comments
"There has been a lot of discussion in the past few months about RPM - its present state, its future plans, and its leadership team. In particular, the Fedora Project has received numerous requests asking us, "what are you guys doing about RPM?" Here is our answer: The Fedora Project is leading the creation of a new community around RPM. One in which the leaders can come from Fedora, from Red Hat, from Novell, from Mandriva, or from anywhere. Job #1 is to take the current RPM codebase and clean it up, and in doing so work with all the other people and groups who rely on RPM to build a first-rate upstream project."
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Follow Up: Why I Stay with RISC OS

  Submitted by teigetje RISC OS 46 Comments
"Gosh! I didn't realize how much discussion my original article would create. A lot of people seemed to accuse me of living in cloud cuckoo land, whereas a lot more agreed with me. I think those who disagreed have either never used RISC OS or just liked a good rant! In either case, I feel compelled to write a short follow up article clarifying some of the points I made in the original article - all of which were perfectly valid." Read the follow up article.
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Symphony OS 2006-12 Released

  Submitted by brewin Linux 35 Comments
The Symphony OS Project is pleased to announce the release of Symphony OS 2006-12. This release, the first since May, brings more stability and enhanced features to the young desktop environment and Linux Distro. Based on Debian Testing, Symphony OS 2006-12 also now includes the gnome-system-tools within it's System target menu providing GUI system management functions that were missing from previous releases. The system also features Firefox 2, many other updated packages, and performance improvements.
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