Thom Holwerda Archive

"After a long and arduous journey that included a suspended validation last year, the Open Source Software Institute has announced that OpenSSL has regained its FIPS 140-2 validation and is now available for download. The validation process, which normally lasts a few months, took an astounding five years to complete, and those involved with the projects say they are already devising ways to avoid such long delays in future validations."

Apple plans to crank up the anti-Vista rhetoric at its international chain of retail stores later this week, the latest move in a broader bid by the Mac maker to undermine the new operating system release from rival Microsoft. The campaign, set to get underway this Saturday, will include new store displays and employee t-shirts gently mocking Vista as little more than a washed-up attempt at a modern operating system, those familiar with the matter say. In a multi-page training manual made available through the company's internal retail system this week, Apple challenged its employees to learn and tout the Mac's many existing advantages over Vista-equipped Windows PCs.

"The ROX Desktop is a lightweight alternative to GNOME or KDE built around the ROX-Filer file manager. The project's name is an abbreviation of 'RISC OS on X'. The ROX Desktop's performance is reminiscent of IceWM, and it's noticeably faster opening programs than GNOME or KDE. However, its speed comes at the expense of a needlessly redundant default configuration, and some users may balk at some of the assumptions its design makes about how they prefer to work."

Red Hat today announced the worldwide availability of Red Hat Certificate System 7.2 from the RSA conference in San Francisco. A complete public key infrastructure solution, Red Hat Certificate System 7.2 provides a security framework that guarantees the identity of users and ensures the privacy of communications in heterogeneous environments. The newest release includes enhancements that simplify deployment, management and integration of certificates as a core part of the security architecture in the enterprise.

Microsoft will not close a loophole that offers consumers a cheaper way to upgrade to Windows Vista. Users can install the upgrade version of the new operating system as a fresh installation, even if they do not currently own a licensed copy of Windows XP. The procedure is time consuming, but allows users to save about 35 per cent of the purchase price for the regular Windows Vista.

Ever since Apple launched its 'Get a Mac' campaign, with the accompanying 'I'm a Mac - and I'm a PC' ads, lots of people have voiced their opinions on the campaign; the content has been discussed, the actors, the humour; however, relatively little has been said about the actual goals - and consequently the effectiveness - of the campaign.