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On the weekend of December 10th & 11th, a small group of nine KDE contributors met in Hamburg to work on quality assurance checks for KDE's code base. This not only covered C++ sourcecode but also other aspects such as checking the state of the API documentation, looking for common errors in KDE's manuals and evaluating the usability of KDE applications. Read on for the full report.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday warned users of its Windows operating system of a "critical" security flaw in its software that could allow attackers to take complete control of a computer.

The world's largest software maker issued a patch to fix the problem as part of its monthly security bulletin. The problem mainly affects the Windows operating system and Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser.

Computer security experts and Microsoft urged users to download and install the patch available at http://www.microsoft.com/security.

Microsoft said the vulnerability exists in its Internet Explorer Web browser, which an attacker could exploit to take over a PC by running software code after luring users to malicious Web pages.

A free software project based in Instanbul has released a portable, embedded client-server windowing system. The Xynth Windowing System, released under the GPL, offers a lightweight GUI-capable windowing system usable in Linux-based embedded systems and devices, such as handhelds and set-top boxes.

Welcome to this year's 50th issue of DWN, the weekly newsletter for the Debian community.

Here are the latest patches just released for both UT2004 and Quake 4 for Linux.

Icculus has released an update to the UT2004 3369 patch. 3369.1 fixes the following from 3369:

ARMONK, NY – IBM has said Chevron has selected an IBM cluster built with AMD Opteron™ processor-based IBM eServer 326 servers to power its extremely compute intensive depth imaging technology. Working with IBM, Chevron has been able to process data up to seven times faster, enabling the company to make quicker, more accurate choices before drilling.

Oil exploration and drilling are expensive undertakings, and both time and accuracy are critical. Chevron relies on sub-surface pictures of its land to choose where to drill and minimize the associated risks. By running its depth imaging technology on more than 700 nodes of dual AMD Opteron processor-based IBM cluster, Chevron is able to turn data around faster, improving processing time and productivity while lowering operating costs.

Linus says: This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it...Please, just tell people to use KDE.

Microsoft has posted a Q&A that is mostly reassuring, and partly just plain false.

The gratuitous and false statements about Sun, ODF and OASIS add a jarring note that represents at best a PR gaffe, and at worst an indication of the degree to which Ecma may allow Microsoft to write the script for the standards process to be conducted in its name.

Sun has initiated and participated in a number of open source projects over the years. Here is a brief guide to the communities that enable all developers to take part in Sun's Linux based collaborative projects.

India is turning into a battleground for the hearts and minds of software developers. On one side are the forces of opensourcing, ranged against them is Bill Gates's Microsoft.

Anonymous Coward writes "What's the next step in creating an easy-to-use Linux-based product for consumers? A touchscreen facade can make back-end Linux applications very usable in such devices as custom digital media centers, DVRs and PVRs, and even control interfaces for household robots.

Firefox is on fire — and if you are not using this new browser, then you are working too hard. The new 1.5 version is better, faster and offers improved features. It has about 10 percent of the browser market, which is remarkable since Microsoft’s lesser Internet Explorer browser comes bundled with millions of PCs.

[Ed: Nice for the most part, but I don't recall ever having re-installed Firefox after a security update - perhaps he meant *restart*? I have had to install new versions. - dcparris]

The first Firefox 1.5 security vulnerability, made public last Thursday, is not as critical as initially perceived, but a patch will be available to fix it early next year, a Mozilla executive was quoted by IDG News Service as saying.

[Ed: If you run across this exploit (lots of luck) just clear the history cache. - dcparris]

The final part of this series looks at how FOSS is helping Italian schools with adult education and training programs.

WiMAX SoC for Broadband Wireless and Multimedia CPU for Consumer Electronics Named in First Annual Awards

Q&A: The vice president of the dominant Linux supplier in China says government support is creating opportunities for desktop Linux to grow.

After spending a year enhancing Berkeley DB, Sleepycat Software has released version 4.4.

When we speak of Debian Linux distribution, the number one thing that come into our minds is its flag-ship utility apt-get . Infact this package management is so popular that a large part of Debian's popularity revolves around it. Ask any person why he or she thinks Debian is a better distribution and in 7 out of 10 cases the answer will be apt-get. Here is a consice but very complete article on using apt-get and dpkg the backend for apt-get.

Open-source software is used widely. This year, 69 percent of all Web servers run on open-source software developed by the Apache Foundation, according to NetCraft, an industry research company based in Bath, England. The open-source Linux operating system runs one-quarter of all file servers in the United States and one in five in Europe.

Been following the ODF/XML story? Well, there's another standards war story that's been running in the news over the past few days that has an eerie sense of familiarity. It goes like this: Two camps can't agree on a standard that is being developed within an existing, well-respected standards body. Eventually one camp takes its effort to Ecma International for approval and fast tracking to an international standard in order to outflank the first standards organization, and to thwart the success of the other camp. Now where have I heard something like that before?