Opera 9.10 has been released with the big new thing being protection against phishing. "Opera Software today introduced real-time Fraud Protection in its Web browser. Fraud Protection includes technology from GeoTrust and PhishTank, a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet. Fraud Protection is available in Opera 9.1, the newest version of Opera's Web browser."

With the recent release of Microsoft's newest potential cash cows, Windows Vista and Office 2007, the company is expecting a wave of upgrades from users seeking the latest functionality. But what if you're not looking for new bells and whistles? What if you want to keep your old operating systems, such as Windows 2000, running as long as possible? Microsoft isn't making it easy for you.

Performance testing is usually left for last in the application development cycle - not because it's unimportant, but because it's hard to test effectively with so many unknown variables. In this month's In pursuit of code quality, Andrew Glover makes a case for performance testing as part of the development cycle and shows you two easy ways to do it.

With two Intel Quad-Core Clovertown processors and eight sticks of Kingston FB-DIMM DDR2 Phoronix set out to see the level of memory performance in an octal-core environment. Phoronix has tested the memory in single, dual, and quad memory channel configurations. Read the article to see how the Intel Xeon 5300 performs in various Fully Buffered Dual Inline Memory Module configurations.

KVM, the kernel-based virtual machine for Linux, will be merged into the Linux kernel , according to Andrew Morton's merge plans for 2.6.20. Besides VMware, Xen, qemu, etc., Linux users now have a full virtualization solution built in the kernel which supports running unmodified Linux or Windows images.

The Observer and GigaOM reveal the Google Phone, a device currently early in development that will integrate many of Google's services in a mobile manner. It is not expected to be released before 2008.

"If you could ask Bill Gates one question, what would you ask? I spent an hour today with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the company's Redmond campus. I chose to ask Bill about Microsoft's intellectual property stance against Linux and its open source developers, from the SCO Group's litigation against IBM to Steve Ballmer's recent claim Linux infringes on Microsoft patents after signing a patent indemnity with Novell."

Underground hackers are hawking zero-day exploits for Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system at USD 50000 a pop, according to computer security researchers at Trend Micro. The Windows Vista exploit - which has not been independently verified - was just one of many zero-days available for sale at an auction-style marketplace infiltrated by the Tokyo-based anti-virus vendor.

eComStation 2.0 beta 3, the new evolution of OS/2, is available to download for registered users. The new features of this beta version are available on the online readme file. Among other things, this new release includes better support for wireless chipsets and advanced power management features.

A French user has discovered that ZFS is now 'officially' supported in Leopard , while testing the latest build of Apple's upcoming operating system. Indeed it is now possible to create disk images or partitions formated in ZFS (screen capture included). However, it seems that it is not possible yet to install the OS on a ZFS partition.

"The FSF today launched a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users' security and privacy rights. "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care", said FSF program administrator John Sullivan."

As Apple and Dell continue wrestling with the degree of false value unreported options grants gave their respective companies, both announced they would be delaying their quarterly earnings filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

"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."

"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."