xtaski writes "Dana Blankenhorn bluntly states a reality that many have known: 'The war is over and Linux won'. With Oracle and Microsoft putting Linux in the spotlight and positioning themselves to grow with Linux. 'A new report shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux against 23% for Windows. ... Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.'"

Terror Alert Brown writes "Reuters is reporting that a UK woman has been charged as a terrorist because of computer files on her hard drive. According to the article, these files included 'the Al Qaeda Manual, The Terrorists Handbook, The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, a manual for a Dragunov sniper rifle, and The Firearms and RPG Handbook.' She was picked up in connection with the plot stopped in August to detonate explosives in airplanes flying out of Heathrow airport. Now might be a good time to delete any copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook you once read for amusement and still have floating around on your hard drive."

DonaldP asks: "Have any of you successfully deployed a key, token, or biometric-based access control for Windows machines to replace (or enhance) the typical login/logout authentication process (even image-recognition schemes would be considered)? I see different stuff out there but short of actually evaluating each one, it's hard to get a good idea of what the scene is like, what is crap and what actually delivers. Does anyone have experience with such systems, or can suggest other suitable solutions?"

smbarbour writes "The Mono project (the open-source .NET compatibility library acquired by Novell when Ximian was purchased) has released version 1.2. They are now including support for WinForms. Ars Technica has a detailed rundown on the new release. The Mono project supports Visual Basic.NET as well, so developers that use VB.NET now have the possibility of directly porting applications to Linux." From the article: "Relatively high memory consumption and performance bottlenecks are commonly perceived as being amongst Mono's most significant weaknesses. Some critics frequently refer to various performance issues to support arguments against broader adoption of Mono technology in open source projects, most notably within the GNOME community. The performance improvements in Mono 1.2 could potentially address such criticisms, but it is likely that a lot more work will be required before the problems are completely resolved."

Nirav Mehta writes to mention a Techworld article about this past week's virtualization announcements at VMWorld 2006. VMWare had several new offerings in the event's third year. From the article: "VMware has released details of ACE 2.0, which is due for release towards the middle of 2007. The product, which was demonstrated in alpha at VMworld this week, allows administrators to distribute pre-packaged virtual machines to users in a secure manner. This means, for instance, that contractors can be allowed to attach to the enterprise network using their own laptops but only via the ACE VM. The new version was created, according to VMware, because users asked for greater control over the VMs, especially when, for instance, large numbers of remote users need to attach to the enterprise network. Other areas due for improvement include security and integration with enterprise management tools. "

Dr. Eggman writes to mention a 1up article looking at the way things were when the PS2 launched vs. next week's PlayStation 3 launch. The question: can history repeat itself? From the article: "PS2: Released one year after the lower priced Dreamcast, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS3: Releasing one year after the lower priced Xbox 360, lauded for its great games, ease of development, and superior online service. PS2: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.' PS3: Competition from Nintendo: A smaller, cheaper 'family friendly' console with a 'focus on gameplay.'" The article also looks at how things have changed for Sony since the last time around.

GameDaily has up a piece looking at the history of Gears of War , which was released this past Tuesday. The game's history is also the tale of developer Epic Games, which grew from a garage group to one of the biggest names in FPS titles. Beyond that, though, "'Gears has a sordid history,' said [Epic Founder Tim] Sweeney. 'Initially, we planned to take the Unreal franchise in a more large-scale combat direction, more like Battlefield 1942. So we began this project called Unreal Warfare and spent a few years developing that. We realized we wanted the real focus to be on a single-player game with realistic combat. Around the same time, we were developing Unreal Tournament 2003 with Digital Extremes. We took the efforts from Unreal Warfare — it had a lot of the early ideas of Gears of War — and merged that into the Unreal 2003 project. From that you saw the Unreal game take on the large-scale combat — the Onslaught style of game.'"

munchola writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has declared that Microsoft's patent pledge to open source developers is 'worse than useless'. SFLC chief technology officer, Bradley Kuhn, has written to FOSS developers warning them that 'developers are no safer from Microsoft patents now than they were before'. According to Kuhn: 'The patent covenant only applies to software that you develop at home and keep for yourself; the promises don't extend to others when you distribute. You cannot pass the rights to your downstream recipients, even to the maintainers of larger projects on which your contribution is built.'"

Grooves writes "According to tests performed by Ars Technica, Windows Vista will need some coddling on old hardware. As a follow-up to their performance review of Vista Beta 2, Ars tested the latest public builds of Vista on hardware spanning from 2001 to a Thinkpad purchased a few months ago. The results show that Vista is extremely RAM hungry, graphical power is less of an issue unless you want eye candy, and hard drive I/O is critical. Also, their experience with 'in-place upgrades' was abysmal, and mirrored my own experiences."

jamie writes "On 'Larry King Live' Wednesday night, Bill Maher said many of 'the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay... Ken Mehlman, OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it.' When CNN re-aired the interview, the mention of Mehlman was edited out with no indication anything was missing. When a minute-long video of the original vs. censored clips was posted on YouTube, a DMCA takedown removed it (the original poster plans to resubmit a shorter clip he hopes will qualify as fair use — good luck, since the DMCA doesn't recognize fair use). Relatedly, the Washington Post today was caught silently editing its published stories to make them less informative. Unnamed GOP officials are also saying that Mehlman will step down from his post when his term ends in January."

Chris Morris, of CNN Money's Game Over column, has several final details on the next-gen consoles. He delves into availability, games, the new ads for both the Wii and the PS3 and (of course) "Who's going to win?" From the article: "For the past two generations, Sony has sold far more PlayStation units than its competitors have sold of their systems. Publishers, for their part, expect the field to be a lot more even over the next five years or so (which should be about the time you're asked to start focusing on the PS4, Xbox 720 and whatever funky name Nintendo comes up with next)."

eldavojohn writes "For a while there, I didn't know what to buy. Blu-Ray or HD-DVD? Which would be the leader? Only a fool would buy discs of the technology that would be the next Betamax. Fortunately, my dilemma has been solved by Broadcom. From the article: 'Consumer and communications chip supplier Broadcom Corp. Thurs. (Nov. 9) introduced what the company labeled the first single-chip solution to support both Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD standards.' I guess I'll just wait until I can get a player that will play them both."

It's a constant in game releases: delays. There is news today of a number of games frustratingly being put-off until (in some cases) much later. Probably most shocking is news that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is not going to be available for the PS3 launch. The title won't be available on Sony's console until Q1 2007. Somewhat less surprisingly, Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is going to be available in the summer, not in the spring. There's a raft of Xbox titles that have been pushed out to Summer as well. Forza 2, Shadowrun, and Too Human will not be available until June of 2007. Finally, the possibility for more frustrations for the often-frustrated European gamers. Via commentary on Gamasutra, a post on the Three Speech blog (a Sony organ) has Phil Harrison dodging the March launch for the PS3 in Europe. From Three Speech: "Given that all of our previous statements about launching in Europe simultaneously with the US and Japan turned out not to be the case, I would not like to make any definitive statements on that. It's not my job to comment on hardware supply issues other than to say some very smart people are working very hard to catch up. In fact, the ramp up is already starting to happen in supply and output, just obviously too late for us to have launched in Europe at the same times as the US."

ChelleChelle writes "'Cybercrime is pervasive, nondiscriminatory, and dramatically on the increase.' So states TEAM CYMRU, an altruistic group of researchers focused on making the Internet more secure. This article is a look into the root causes of Cybercrime, its participants, and their motivations, as well as suggestions on what we can do to stop this epidemic." From the article: "Many victims do not seem to draw the correlation between their losses and cybercrime; worse, they often view it as a crime that is impossible to investigate and prosecute. For cybercrime to be acknowledged as an important issue, the victims must report such incidents to a receptive law enforcement community with a well-informed judiciary. Attempts such as the president's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace represent a significant first step in the right direction. To have the desired impact, however, the detailed provisions delineated as action/recommendations must be implemented."