RockClimbingFool writes "Tom's Hardware has a pretty good overview of what the current beta version of Microsoft Windows Vista has to offer. The article is written from an average user's perspective, specifically highlighting exactly which differences the average computer user can expect to see from Windows XP to Windows Vista. It covers everything from IE7, to the new Windows Aero interface, to brand new games." But if you'd like your eye candy open source and downloadable now, check out Lunapark6's review of the current version of Ubuntu Dapper, with "emphasis placed on helping someone set up the system for everyday desktop usage."

Graeme Williams writes " Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World is a frustrating book. You'll stumble across something on every second page which will infuriate you, but it's also true that almost every page discusses an important legal case, raises an interesting question, or presents an important problem. By describing recent Internet cases and the international legal environment in which they have been resolved, Goldsmith and Wu have illuminated an area which deserves clear and systematic analysis. But the Internet is not a unitary thing to be controlled, and the authors don't clearly distinguish its various protocols and services." Read the rest of Graeme's review.

Havoc Pennington writes "A small team of us have been working on a new project called Mugshot, we're calling it a "live social experience" and hoping it will bring open source to more people who aren't using it already. The project is public as of this morning. Check out the developer site for more."

The_Toad08 writes "Apparently June 11th didn't mean a thing to the Big Box retailers, as the Nintendo DS Lite has been spotted for sale in several of these stores." From Ars Technica's coverage: "After some digging through all the blogs running the story, I discovered it originated from Cheap Ass Gamer, where one of their mods was able to grab a system from Target. There's even a picture of the system next to its US packaging, so this looks legit. Until finding them gets a little bit more widespread though, I wouldn't get your hopes up. Even though I'm lovingly cradling my Enamel Blue DS Liite that I imported, I'm going to hit the streets in a few hours to see if I can't track one down and confirm this, so look for an update to this story." Anybody lucky enough to pick one up yet?

GregStevensLA asks: "I'm considering paying for a 'premium' domain name for a small web start-up I want to form. The company that currently holds the domain name is offering it for $1500, but they made it clear to me that they expect a counter-offer and are 'willing to make a deal.' I've never done this before, and I have no idea what a reasonable counter-offer is. If I say 'I can't go above $1000' am I being too easy? Should I try to push for lower than that? My understanding is that these prices are hugely inflated anyway (i.e. pure profit going to companies that probably scooped up the domains for free). In some sense, paying anything beyond a registration fee is gouging, in my opinion. I don't want to be conned... on the other hand, this is the reality of business, and I don't want to come across as amateurish. Does anyone have any advice for this new-comer to domain name purchasing?"

Videogames may be nothing more than evening diversions to most Americans, but the industry as a whole is a multi-billion dollar heavyweight. Microsoft broke ground in the business when the Xbox launched in 2001, and came back swinging last year with the Xbox 360. The war for the seventh generation of game consoles has barely begun, and it's hard to know the score without a scorecard. We can get a good look at the odds, though, thanks to the reporting of Dean Takahashi. The author of the definitive book on the original Microsoft console, Opening the Xbox, offers the complete story of their next-gen offering in the recently published The Xbox 360 Uncloaked. A sometimes exhausting read that could have been more concisely edited, Uncloaked still highlights the human side of a complicated technical and business endeavor. Read on for my impressions of Takahashi's new look behind the curtains at Microsoft.

Boudewijn Rempt writes "Amazon's recommendation system recommended me "Open Source Game Development: Qt Games for KDE, PDA's and Windows" when I was looking for an introduction to OpenGL. While it does contain two chapters on OpenGL, there's much, much more. It's not just an introduction to writing open source games, it's a complete introduction to participating in open source projects like KDE." Read the rest of Boudewijn's review.

jschauma writes "The NetBSD Project is proud to announce the list of projects accepted for this year's Summer of Code. While the list of proposals was impressive and of particularly high quality, a choice of eight applications had to be made, yielding the following projects: "Support for journaling for FFS", "Support for MIPS64 ISA", "PowerPC G5 support", "Improved Writing to FileSystem Using Congestion Control", "TCP ECN support", "Fast_ipsec and ipv6", "pkg_install rewrite for pkgsrc" and "Improving the mbuf API and implementation". Details about each project will be posted to the NetBSD SoC SourceForge website."

pankaj_kumar writes "The business of software usually gets tons of footage by the tech media covering its various facets: products, people, organizations, its economics, business models, technology trends and myriad other related things. So one would think that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to say something original. However, this collection of blog entries by noted blogger Eric Sink, founder of SourceGear, a vendor of source code control system, and developer of a Web browser at Spyglass that later came to become Internet Explorer, manages to do just that. He does so by focusing on workings of a lesser known niche in software business, that of privately held small ISVs, relating to his own personal experiences in a very engaging manner." Read the rest of Pankaj's review.

Ravi Kumar writes "PHP and MySQL use is so prevalent that nowadays it is hard to miss seeing a website on the net which has been built using these technologies. The beauty of PHP is in its open nature and the rich set of libraries and modules which imparts a lot of power and flexibility to the programmer. Similarly MySQL is a free database which is ideal for use as a backend for any website. And not surprisingly there are a plethora of books in the market which explains these two topics. One such book is Beginning PHP and MySQL 5 from Novice to Professional authored by W.Jason Gilmore published by Apress." Read the rest of Ravi's review.

osopolar asks: "I work as a security analyst for a 10 billion dollar bank and we are currently looking for biometric thumb drives as emergency backup/recovery solutions for our local branches. We do not have IT people at every branch so the backup must be done by a branch manager, so the device needs to be easy to use. How would you backup information securely? What thumb drives do you recommend?"