Monthly Archive:: December 2003

Security Pipeline obtained access to the first widespread beta of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) during the holidays. Microsoft has said that this beta represents a subset of what will be released when this software is finalized sometime during the first half of 2004. CRN tested the new software on a couple of test machines, and found it to be very reliable during a couple of days use.

The XFree86 core team has announced that it is disbanding. What does this mean for the pending XFree86 4.4.0 release which was going to be out in January? (currently the latest version is 4.4-RC2). We hope that someone puts a release together to give something new to users before freedesktop.org's XWin server comes out at the end of 2004 or early 2005.

GWN is featuring an interview with Daniel Robbins, Gentoo founder, as part of their weekly newsletter.

Japan, China and South Korea are reportedly planning to jointly develop Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next-generation Internet standard, a move that will challenge the U.S.-dominated market for current IPv4-based Internet technology.

Intel and Microsoft are gearing up to move toward the first major overhaul of the innermost workings of the personal computer--the boundary where software and hardware meet--during 2004.

When the technology community considers Linux, we know what sets it apart from the competition. But if you were to ask the average consumer, few could give you a legitimate answer other than maybe it doesn’t cost anything. (However there will always be those that look in vain for the free beer everyone keeps talking about.) Editorial contributor Doug Dingus offered the following opinion piece to osViews which proposes some interesting ideas to help differentiate Linux to consumers by way of hardware rather than just software.