Thom Holwerda Archive

Macromedia has released a beta version of the 8th incarnation of their web content player, Flash. This beta version is only available for Windows and Macintosh.

The US Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme, the body that grants Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) ratings in the US has granted an EAL5 Augmented to BAE System’s XTS-400 and the STOP Unix operating system. This is the first OS to be granted a EAL5 or better and is the first public EAL5 granted in the US. Read more for details.

The head of Open Source Development Labs, Stuart Cohen, has added weight to rumours of greater collaboration between Microsoft and the open source community. He said: "I would not be surprised to see them participate in software that runs on top of Linux in the future."

Mike Nash, Microsoft's security business and technology unit corporate vice president, has said Longhorn would accord end-users certain rights and privileges apparently ending the concept that everyone using their PC is also the PC's administrator. Update: More on new Longhorn features here.

Consumers will soon be able to recognize Web sites specially designed for use by mobile phones by the new .mobi suffix, which will be introduced alongside the popular .com and other top-level domain names. Update: Opinion of a mobile phone web browser engineer on this (& ex-Be kernel engineer).

Workplace Designer is an Eclipse-based integrated development environment that gives you an easy way to use document-oriented programming without requiring a comprehensive knowledge of Java. Workplace Designer pre-release supports several database platforms, including IBM Cloudscape, DB2, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server. For more in-depth information, take a look at this introduction to Workplace Designer article.

Microsoft may love its partners. But that isn't stopping the company from continuing to encroach on areas that have traditionally been its partners' turf. Ballmer warned the company's channel partners that Microsoft has its sights set on some markets that partners have had to themselves until now. Elsewhere, MS countered claims it gave preferential treatment to adware maker Claria.

During the trip that BeBug made to yT's headquarters in Mannheim, they also had a talk with CEO Bernd Korz. They discussed marketing, future releases and much more.

There's an interesting explaination of the process which Debian goes through to add packages to it's distribution over at Debian Administration website. Most of this is familiar to developers of the distribution, but users might appreciate seeing how it works behind the scenes.

Can't move to JDK 5.0? Many of the J2SE 5.0 language features would be just as useful for older JVMs, but the compiler that implements these features generates code that requires JDK 5.0 or later. Fortunately, there's an open source project that bridges the gap between J2SE 5.0 and older JVMs -- Retroweaver.

If you've been following the Apple-to-Intel transition, you're going to want to read this whole article. Why? Because I'm going to do something that I almost never do: spill insider information from unnamed sources that I can confirm are in a position to know the score.

Many OS/2-eCS users knows that we are currently requesting signatures to ask IBM to open source OS/2 (or at least the OS/2 components that are possible to be opened). We are getting close to send the petition, so if you haven't sign yet, go ahead!

Microsoft surprised many of the attendees at its annual worldwide partner show here this weekend by allowing a third party to present a "hands-on lab" that allowed attendees to play with a range of Linux desktop software. Is Microsoft toning down on its anti-Linux campaign?

Most reviews of Tiger were conducted on fairly new and fast Macs. This article, however, focuses on running it on a low-end Mac. And, to the reviewer's surprise, it runs ok.