Thom Holwerda Archive

The recent ruckus about the claimed growing vulnerability of Mac OSX from certain sources has caused an indignant outcry from Mac advocates who claim the stories are mostly media hype. According to an expert in Unix and Linux systems, the outcry is not without justification. Con Zymaris has been working with Unix systems for nearly three decades and for the past 15 years has been running a consultancy on open source software implementation. Zymaris says that, while it is true that a Mac can get infected with a virus, it is not easy and it is not likely to cause much damage. What's more, Mac users don't need to install firewalls and anti-virus software.

Developers of the popular Debian Linux distribution are ramping up coding efforts as they plan to release the next version of their operating system in December this year. The schedule was today outlined in an e-mail to the Debian community from developer Andreas Barth, a member of the team which coordinates the process by which Debian is formally handed over to the public. "We expect to release Etch as planned in the beginning of December 2006," Barth wrote.

The six month voting window for ISO/IEC adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format standard closed on May 1, and at midnight (Geneva time ) last night it was announced internally that ODF had been approved by the ISO members eligible and interested in casting a vote. And on a related note, an article on smart formatting for better compatibility between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.

Microsoft has shelved plans to include built-in support for RSA Security's tokens in Windows Vista, even though the company has been testing out the authentication technology for almost two years. In February 2004, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said that Windows would be able to support easy integration with RSA's popular SecurID tokens. That meant businesses would find it far easier to deploy a two-factor authentication system for logging on to networks and applications. However, almost two years after the SecurID beta-testing program kicked off, RSA's chief executive, Art Coviello, disclosed that Windows Vista will not natively support the technology.

Microsoft's long-awaited release of the upgrade to its flagship Windows operating system will likely be delayed again by at least three months, research group Gartner said on Tuesday. The research note, released to clients on Monday, said the new Windows Vista operating system is too complex to be able to meet Microsoft's targeted November release for volume licence customers and January launch for retail consumers. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company disagreed with the Gartner report and it was still on track to meet its launch dates.

"Just because you use a Macintosh, don't think you're any more secure than a Wintel user. A sharp increase in the number of flaws being discovered in Mac OS X suggests that the Apple operating system may soon be every bit as prone to malicious attacks as Windows systems, according to a report from the SANS Institute, a security training and research firm." This time no MSNBC, boys and girls, this is MacWorld.com. In the meantime, have fun with Apple's new commercials.

Google has made informal complaints to competition authorities in Europe and the US about default settings in Microsoft's IE7. The latest Microsoft browser includes a small window so users can search without opening up a specific page. The default setting sends users to MSN for searches - just as equivalent features in Opera and Firefox send browsers to Google. A spokesman for the search giant told the New York Times it was concerned Microsoft was limiting choice. My take: ...

While there is a lot of buzz about Apple using ZFS, Solaris express of course uses it, and soon Solaris regular will use it (as of Solaris update 2). Yet there are many people that say ZFS is great for servers but people don't need it at home. This blog entry seeks to clear up this falacy. ZFS is possibly more needed at home.

The day when WiFi cards 'just work' under Linux may be fast approaching. WiFi software stack specialist Devicescape has released its 'Advanced Datapath' 802.11 driver stack to the open source community under the GPL, and the Linux kernel developer community appears to be working to adapt it for mainline inclusion.

"Compiled programming languages and scripting languages each have unique advantages, but what if you could use both to create rich applications? Lua is an embeddable scripting language that is small, fast, and very powerful. Before you create yet another configuration file or resource format (and yet another parser to accompany it), try Lua."

New Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz's first 100 days at the helm are about to get interesting. First up: managing an internal debate over whether the company should open-source Java. According to sources inside Sun, an ongoing debate over whether to open-source Java is coming to a head with the JavaOne conference looming May 16.

DistroWatch has an interview with Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire. "We've learned a lot during the last five years, and two of the most important lessons were: 1) the open source and Linux community needs Linspire, and 2) Linspire needs the open source and Linux community. We've known the latter for a long time, and we started the Freespire project internally about two years ago."

The Inq reviews the Abacus WristPDA, a watch running PalmOS 4.x, and concludes: "While the 'Industry Analysts' and other professionals of spreading Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) try to convince people that "bigger is better" and that a pocket device's OS must be as fat and bloated as Windows Mobile to be of use, the Abacus WristPDA shows that smaller and less bloated code can sometimes be better."