Sean Michael Kerner

Fifteen years to the day since Linux creator Linus Torvalds bought the machine that started it all, the first new Linux kernel of the year has hit the street only two months after its predecessor hit. In a mailing list posting, Torvalds said the changes in 2.6.15, “are really pretty much all over the place, […]

Among the many things developers can look forward to in 2006 is a new Java Standard Edition release from Sun. Sun is now soliciting comment from the programming community on the Java Specification Request (JSR) specification for Java SE 6.0, code-named Mustang. A JSR is the formal mechanism for a new Java API. Mustang includes […]

Almost 20 years after its birth, the ubiquitous VGA video interface may soon become an endangered species. A group of leading PC and consumer electronics firms, including Intel, Apple, LG Electronics and Samsung, have come together to develop a next generation video display specification to replace VGA. The new unified display interface (UDI) will work […]

Though virtualization has long been the playing field of players like IBM and VMWare. The open source Xen project is trying to open up the playing field by providing a freely available virtualization hypervisor. Xen has garnered the support of IBM and is set to be adopted by Red Hat, Novell SUSE Linux and Sun […]

Even before many security firms and even Microsoft issued advisories for the recent zero day Windows Metafile exploit, the open source Metasploit tool was allowing users to make hay with the vulnerability. So is Metasploit helping to spread the zero day outbreak, or is it helping security professionals to protect against it? The answer depends. […]

The GNU  Telephony stack is out and aiming to provide users of proprietary VoIP  stacks with a free software alternative. The GNU Telephony stack is backed by support from Tycho Softworks, whose owner is also the maintainer of GNU Bayonne, one of the key components of the stack. The GNU Telephony stack includes a long […]

The next version of MSN Messenger is still some months away, so if you happen to get a message or visit a Web site that promises otherwise, beware. Finnish security firm F-Secure is reporting a new scam that is masquerading as the MSN Messenger 8 Beta, which will be called Windows Live Messenger. Rather than […]

Linux, once thought of as just a server play, is poised to reap $100 million this year as an embedded operating system, according to a new research report. Venture Development Corp. (VDC) has forecast that the market for embedded software services for Linux-based devices is on an upward trend and will “grow significantly” by 2007. […]

Just in time for the Holidays, Britain’s BT (formerly known as British Telecom) has inked deals with four of its partners for a US $17 billion dollar network overhaul. Ciena, Huawei, Lucent and Siemens are the first four of an expected eight preferred vendors to sign deals with BT. The telco’s 21st Century Network (21CN) […]

PHP  has long been a favorite dynamic programming language for Web developers. After 10 years of growth, 2006 looks to be a banner year for the open source language as its collaboration framework, partner ecosystem and the language itself are expected to grow and gain new users. Look for a confluence of three distinct branches […]

As of today, IBM is officially withdrawing OS/2 from the market, and product CDs are no longer available. The move had originally been announced in July and affects the final two versions of IBM’s OS/2 effort, OS/2 Warp V4 and OS/2 Warp Server for e-business. IBM’s OS/2 effort originally began as a joint effort with […]

In the open source world, changing an application license from open source to a non-open source license is generally not viewed as a particularly community friendly thing to do. Yet, that’s exactly what the popular Nessus vulnerability scanner’s overseers announced they were doing back in October. Tenable Network Security, the firm that sponsors and commercially […]