Microsoft is expected to announce on Tuesday that it is making its virtualization file format available for free and without a license. At an interoperability conference in Brussels, the software giant said that its Virtual Hard Disk Image Format specification can be used by third parties without the need for them to get a commercial license. The virtualization technology will be available under the terms of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, which it introduced in September.

"Whenever IT managers complain about their jobs, one of the things that always tops the list of their complaints is the time, money, and annoyance that comes from simply integrating the servers, storage, and networking gear they acquire. If integration is a big pain point, then so is building out data centers. In many cases, companies simply do not have the power and cooling to add more gear to their data centers without causing a meltdown. Enter Sun with Project Blackbox."

Softpedia posted today a small review of three anti-virus software that are free to use, complete with screenshots. Consider using Microsoft's or Adaware's anti-spyware utilities too to keep your XP healthy.

A recent security advisory announced today by Rapid7 explains, "the NVIDIA Binary Graphics Driver for Linux is vulnerable to a buffer overflow that allows an attacker to run arbitrary code as root. This bug can be exploited both locally or remotely (via a remote X client or an X client which visits a malicious web page). A working proof-of-concept root exploit is attached to this advisory." The advisory goes on to note that the FreeBSD and Solaris binary drivers are also likely vulnerable and cautions, "it is our opinion that NVIDIA's binary driver remains an unacceptable security risk based on the large numbers of reproducible, unfixed crashes that have been reported in public forums and bug databases."

The Enlightenment team has released 0.16.8.4, and as usual, this is mainly a bugfix and maintenance release. You can grab the release from the Sourceforge page.

Yellow Dog Linux 5 has been announced. Surprisingly, it will first be released for Sony's Playstation 3, and then later for PPC Macs. Yellow Dog Linux 5 for the Playstation 3 will use E17 as its desktop environment (YDL's page on E17), which will be a boost to E17's adoption rate. Sony had mentioned the PS3 would include Linux in some capacity, but it has been unclear how Linux would fit into the rest of the system.

"The Firefox web browser has come a long way since the project was announced as a fork from the open-sourced Mozilla project. Version 1.0 was released in 2004 and quickly won critical acclaim for its speed, compatibility with web standards, and features. In a couple of years, Firefox managed to reach a milestone that its predecessor never quite reached: hitting 10 percent market share worldwide. Version 2 of the browser recently hit RC2, but the team is already making plans for 3.0. The Mozilla organization has set up a feature brainstorming web site that allows everyone to enter their favorite wish lists for the open source browser."

NEC confirmed that it was exiting the European PC market, announcing it had reached a deal to sell its Netherlands-based Packard Bell subsidiary to Chinese entrepreneur Lap Shun 'John' Hui. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Although a popular brand of computers in for a short period of time in the mid 1990s worldwide, Packard Bell quickly was eclipsed by competitors, mainly for a reputation of lackluster quality and poor customer support.

NeoSmart has just released EasyBCD 1.5, complete with support for Vista, Windows NT/2k/XP, and Windows 9x/ME. EasyBCD 1.5 adds experimental support for dual-booting any of these along with Linux, Mac OS X, or BSD - straight from the Windows Vista bootloader without any additional configuration needed. "Windows Vista's new bootmanager is a double-edged sword. It's one of the most powerful booting scripts in existence, and a far cry from the very limiting boot.ini of legacy Windows operating systems. But it overwrites the MBR without a second thought, and doesn't provide any means for users of alternate operating systems and boot managers to use their old system. That's where EasyBCD 1.5 comes in!"

"Microsoft has compromised with security vendors who've been demanding access to the kernel of the upcoming Vista operating system so that they can update their security offerings, two analysts confirmed Friday. Following conversations with the European Union, Microsoft will make two security-related changes to Vista. First, it will create a new set of APIs, which will let third-party security vendors access information from the kernel. Microsoft will also build additional APIs to make sure Vista's security status dashboard - Windows Security Center - doesn't send duplicate alerts to users who have installed a rival dashboard."

With Namesys founder Hans Reiser recently arrested as the prime suspect in the disappearance of his estranged wife, a brief thread on the lkml discussed the future of ReiserFS.According to a report at Linux.com, employees at Namesys are circling their wagons and plan to continue working on the project 'in the short term.' One employee admits, "we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming."

"Arno Klenke has completed the first version of a new audio framework for Syllable. The new system is inspired by ALSA, which makes it more Object Oriented, streams oriented and more flexible. Parts of the stream handling have been 'pushed up' into user-space as part of the media server. The first version supports Intel ICH and Via VT82xx AC'97 chipsets and the new HD-Audio standard."

"Since SkyOS build 6179 was released many important milestones have been reached. Among them include USB support, printing support, a new Python port, but I think most importantly, DMA support. We set out to determine how much of a difference DMA made on the installation time, speed of indexing, program loading time, and general hard disk performance."

"Throughout the 1990's, Microsoft established families of integrated products that all contributed toward a successful platform, with many parallels to what Apple is doing today. Despite the two companies' very different motivations, products, and markets, both shared many common threads. Here's a look at how the two cautiously and enviously watched each other with the intent to learn from each other's actions, hoping to copy successes and avoid failures."