Thom Holwerda Archive

Global Business Object (GBO) is a technology that provides a portable Java library enabling developers to generate culture-sensitive GUI controls in a J2EE environment. Currently, GBO includes five globalization features: Name, Address, Pop-up Calendar, Date Chooser, and Time Chooser and supports 24 languages and their corresponding locales.

Next week's 'Patch Tuesday' was already going to be quiet, with an update only for Windows. On Friday, Microsoft pulled that update, saying more testing is needed. In related news, officials at the Mozilla Foundation on Friday acknowledged that a potentially dangerous code execution hole exists in fully patched versions of its flagship Firefox web browser. Update: Seems like there already is a (temporary) fix available.

Windows uses a file system called NTFS, today's Linux distributions primarily use ext3, and like two warring tribes, the two barely speak. Fortunately, there's a handy tool from Paragon Software Group called NTFS for Linux, which acts like an interpreter for these battling nations. For Linux users hampered by lack of communication with Windows, Paragon's NTFS for Linux presents an elegant and effective solution.

"The Sun Cobalt was open-sourced by Sun Microsystems at the end of its product lifecycle in December of 2003. OffMyServer, a provider of custom built servers and storage solutions, sponsored the porting of the Cobalt RaQ software to the FreeBSD operating system. The open source project, codenamed RAQdevil, is focused on providing an interactive community to encourage developers that are interested in working to improve the software."

"Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is now available for download. This is the first Beta release of our next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to our developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback." Read the release notes, and download.

"Until yesterday, there were 4 different variations of the Aqua theme used by Apple for OS X: the standard Aqua theme, the new Platinum theme, the much distained Brushed Metal theme, and the funky Woody theme. Commentators have pointed out on more then one occasion that while Apple's Human Interface Guidelines has guidelines for which theme to use where, even Apple disregards those rules and uses whatever theme some unknown source in the company chooses."

Engadget posted a batch of old BBS entries from 1985. Some quotes: "We still think this Macintosh thing is an overrated, underpowered poor stepchild to the Lisa." On Microsoft: "We don’t really know how they think they can take on the Macintosh user interface, though, so don’t be surprised if the little Arizona startup that could, well, can’t."

Mobile browser-maker Access announced Friday that it will acquire Palm OS developer PalmSource in an all-cash transaction for approximately $324 million. The acquisition adds operating system platform expertise and Linux development resources to Access's existing "content delivery and Internet access software" for mobile devices, the companies said.

The latest version of GNUStep's StepTalk was recently posted. StepTalk is a language independent scripting framework providing access to GNUStep's functionality, including the ability to dynamically load modules, utilize various programming languages, and other good stuff. This version contains a few additions and subtractions from the previous one.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer delivered keynote addresses from the Microsoft Redmond Conference Center that were broadcast via satellite to customer events being held simultaneously throughout the USA and at major Microsoft subsidiaries around the world. You can find links to the webcasts here.

Here is an interview with the CEO of Opera. "There are obviously some users who go between Opera and Mozilla. They have Opera one week, Mozilla the next week, and back to Opera... But we have a shared common goal: we would actually like to see open standards prevail."

"The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA4. ISO images are available for i386, amd64, pc98, alpha, powerpc, and ia64. Sparc64 is still in the process of being built and will be uploaded as soon as it is ready."

IBM has unveiled a major upgrade to its flagship platform with the launch of Lotus Notes and Domino 7. Lotus D7 includes new collaboration features and tools designed to improve productivity for IT administrators and corporate developers, as well as new productivity enhancements to help Lotus Notes users work more efficiently. They are available for multiple platforms including AIX, Solaris and Linux.

Here's a brand new series of tutorials (free reg. req.) to help you learn Linux fundamentals and prepare for system administrator certification exam 201, however they are of use to anyone willing to learn the fundamentals of Linux. These eight tutorials cover the Linux kernel, file and service sharing, system customization and automation, and more.