"Microsoft Corp. said yesterday that the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) flaw recently uncovered by an independent researcher is in multiple versions of the Windows operating system, not its Internet Explorer Web browser. Company officials added that the flaw isn't in Microsoft's CryptoAPI application program interface (CAPI) either, which would have left a number of applications and Windows services vulnerable, not just Internet Explorer." Read the report at ComputerWorld.

A few days back we hosted an interview with one of the two big names of the hobby Linux gaming houses. Today, it is time to interview the other big name, Bill Kendrick of NewBreedSoftware.

DistroWatch reports that the Mandrake beta announcements seem to come on Mondays only, but the beta 3 ISO images are already up for grabs: MandrakeLinux-9.0beta3-CD1.i586.iso (702MB), MandrakeLinux-9.0beta3-CD2.i586.iso (699MB) and MandrakeLinux-9.0beta3-CD3.i586.iso (412MB). Update: Announcement has arrived in our mailboxes and it is also live on the Mandrake site.

FreeBSD 4.6.2 is released. Download from here, release notes and changes done here.

The GNOME 2.0.x Desktop and Developer Platform releases are devoted to bugfixes, translations, user interface consistency, and general polish of our major 2.0 release. In GNOME 2.0.1, you'll see the results of our user interface review and continued performance and stability fixes.

This GCC release is based on the GCC 3.1 sourcebase, and thus has all the changes in the GCC 3.1 series. In addition, GCC 3.2 has a number of C++ ABI fixes which make its C++ compiler generate binary code which is incompatible with the C++ compilers found in earlier GCC releases, including GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.1.1.

San Francisco, Wed. 14th Aug 2002. This was my first Linux-related exhibition, so I did not exactly know what to expect. Jill from DesktopLinux came by the house and picked me up this morning (thanks Jill :) and we arrived there around 10:40 AM, with lots of enthusiasm and some expectations for a nice geek show. However, it seems that this year's LinuxWorld is much more corporate than expected. Which is both a good and a bad thing for the Linux universe.

Xandros announced today the release date for its first-generation Linux desktop product, Xandros Desktop 1.0. The product, due to be released on September 30, 2002 and available for purchase within three weeks after that date, is built upon Linux kernel 2.4.19, XFree86 4.2, Debian 3.0, Corel LINUX 3.0, and enhanced KDE. It features the Xandros Install Express, Xandros File Manager, and extensive configuration panels and wizards. Xandros Desktop 1.0 also includes Xandros Networks - an application that enables users to obtain feature enhancements, bug fixes, and the latest Xandros news via a single mouse click. Read the rest of the press release here. Our two previous interviews with Xandros VP Michael Bego, filled with more information, can be found here and here.

A PC World article reports (thinly) on the Sergey Brin speech at LinuxWorld. Google certainly stands as one of the most high profile and impressive implementations of Linux on a massive scale. The Google co-founder attributes some of Google's success at building a cost-effective platform to the Linux OS.

In a move that could have repurcussions in the alternative OS world, Microsoft has pulled the free web fonts (Verdana, Courier New, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS etc.) that were downloadable from its site for some time. This is significant since several Linux distributions provide automatic installers for these fonts to improve the default fonts. Also, these fonts are essential for a bettet web browsing. Hopefully, distributors will now spend some money to design a good standard set of free fonts of their own.

According to an EWeek article, the The Free Standards Group will announce today that Caldera, Mandrake, Red Hat and SuSE are Linux Standard Base certified. The LSB Certification program was launched at LinuxWorld in New York in late January.

"The new DELL desktops appear to be a slick interpretation of Microsoft's new licensing terms and a way to navigate customer demand for PCs without an OS installed. The Microsoft licensing terms, which were put in place on Aug. 1, specify that PC makers must ship PCs with an operating system. The new policy exists to prevent piracy and to better track OS shipments. With the n-Series, Dell will include a copy of a free operating system--FreeDOS--inside the cardboard box. However, the OS will not be pre-installed." FreeDOS is included just to give the ability to actually use the PC in case the user have no other OSes handy to install at a given time. Read the report at News.com.

So, you want to write an operating system. We discussed earlier a generic set of considerations that are important, from my experience, for this type of adventure. We proceed to look at solutions to the problem of actually getting started with writing your system: how to do it when you know you don't know what you're doing, making it work before making it work fast, and what to do when things go wrong.

Apple Computer on Tuesday unveiled souped-up Power Macs, in the first major upgrade to the professional system in about a year and half. The low-end model retains the 133Mhz bus, while on the mid- and high-end models it's cranked up to 167Mhz; the high-end model boasts 2MB of L3 cache. The creaking ATA-66 IDE controller is retained, but all models also have an additional ATA-100 bus. The Apple store lists the 2x867Mhz model (256MB RAM/60GB HD/DVD-CDRW) at $1,699; the 2x1Ghz model 256/80/Superdrive) at $2,499 - and both available for delivery right away. Read the reports at C|Net News.com and TheRegister. You can check the new Macs here or order them.