Monthly Archive:: June 2004

Is a PowerPC G5 notebook at hand? An IBM chip designer details forthcoming power-saving PowerTune technology that will let the processor work in mobile and server platforms.

Gambas is a Visual Basic-like programming framework for Unix and Linux. It compiles to byte-code, and executes programs with an interpreter. Currently, Gambas GUI programs rely on the Qt toolkit, but GTK+ 2.x bindings are in the works, as seen in this Gnomefiles page.

Web surfers are no longer playing Russian roulette each time they visit a Web site, security researchers say, now that a far-reaching Internet attack has been disarmed.

"As someone who uses a Mac to do my daily work, I was pleasantly surprised by how far Windows has come when I sat down to compare the latest server OS software from Apple and Microsoft. My comparison focused on several common tasks, including adding users, managing services, and setting up Web and e-mail accounts and configurations. I used the latest server hardware from Apple, a very sexy-looking G5 Xserve rackmounted server, and compared it with an HP desktop running Microsoft's Windows Server 2003." Read the rest of the report here. Editor's Note: On second examination, this isn't a very good article, so don't bother unless you're bored.

OpenBSD now has SMP support for amd64. Learn more about it here.

"As someone who has been involved with software development for over two decades, the whole area of how you actually bring together a team and get them to successfully deliver a project on time, is one worthy of a lot of attention, if only because it is so hard to do", says David Gristwood.

This installment introduces you to the Natural Language Toolkit, a Python library for applying academic linguistic techniques to collections of textual data. Programming that goes by the name "text processing" is a start; other capabilities for syntactic and even semantic analysis are further specialized to studying natural languages.

Security researchers warned Web surfers to be on their guard after uncovering evidence that widespread Web server compromises have turned corporate home pages into points of digital infection.

Illuminata senior analyst Gordon Haff thinks Apple's recently announced deal with COLSA gives Apple the credibility to make further inroads in "sci-tech" at lower levels as well. "They are seeing wins in biotech with smaller deals, and this deal legitimizes the PowerPC architecture they are using in their products," Haff told MacNewsWorld.

"Debian is not easy enough to use to give to everyone... we are working on making it more usable, but it will still take us a while to get there", states Martin Michlmayr, The Debian Project Leader in an exclusive interview for PCTechTalk.com.

"Windows is more secure than you think, and Mac OS X is worse than you ever imagined". That is according to statistics published for the first time this week by Danish security firm Secunia. The stats, based on a database of security advisories for more than 3,500 products during 2003 and 2004 sheds light on the real security of enterprise applications and operating systems, according to the firm.

Microsoft Corp. says it is looking to turn over more of its programs to open-source software developers, playing a greater role in a process that the Redmond company has criticized strongly at times in the past. Money-makers like the company's Windows operating system and Office productivity suite aren't on the table -- or anywhere near it.

A slimmed-down version of Microsoft's Windows XP will be offered to novice computer users in Thailand beginning in September.

"I've had SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional running for about a month now, its a good step forward from version 9. As usual its fixed lots of annoyances but created more." Read More at ImAFish.co.uk.