"You expect a few surprises on a visit to the headquarters of Apple Computer Inc. But Jordan Hubbard? What's he doing here? The same thing he's been doing for the past decade: trying to take over the world. Or at least the part that uses desktop computers. Did you miss last week's column? Check the archive to stay up-to-date. Hubbard is one of the leaders of the open-source software movement, along with guys like the legendary Linus Torvalds, cocreator of Linux. Their goal is to supplant traditional software with powerful programs that come with raw computer code and programming tools, so skilled users can modify the software themselves." Read the interview with Jordan at Boston.com.

Microsoft released a number of free entertainment enhancements to its Windows XP operating system today. Called Windows Media Bonus Pack for Windows XP, the free download includes tools for the OS' built-in media player. The download includes new visualizations and skins, playlist-to-spreadsheet export utility, and extra tools for amateur moviemakers. In the meantime, ActiveWin reports that MSN Explorer 8 has just passed the "M0" milestone and it is in closed beta. The aim for a release is for late spring/early summer 2002. This will be the first major release since the original release in 2000. There is work on integrating "natural language" instrumentation, meaning "speaking" or ordering MSN Explorer to do this task or that task. Also, Microsoft has released a new version 4.6.0071 of MSN Messenger. Features inlcude improved support for computer-to-phone calls, more flexibility in resizing the conversation window, Add-ins available, banner ads (If you download the Add-in).

"Researchers have discovered that hackers are already developing tools to take advantage of a hole that could allow the takeover of key servers in corporations and universities." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews.

Gobe Software, Inc. is now shipping gobeProductive for Microsoft Windows, "the "all-in-one" productivity package that brings increased productivity to "all-in-one" computer users - people who "wear many hats" in their computer use - including office workers, educators and small office/home office computer users." Read the rest of the press release ahead of everyone else on the Net, sent to OSAlert directly from Gobe.

Last week OSAlert held a competition for Trumpet Software's promotional items. We received 83 entries in 20 hours that the competition was open. OSAlert would like to thank Trumpet Software for their kind give-away to OSAlert readers. Are you one of the winners though? Read inside who are the 10 lucky readers (picked randomly with the help of... rand()) who will be sent, for free, the prizes this Christmas.

Version 1.2 of the Athene Operating Environment is now available from the Rocklyte Systems web site. OSAlert featured an exclusive interview with Rocklyte's Paul Manias recently. The new release (read more to see a brand new screenshot from version 1.2) is for Windows only (the Linux version will come in a few weeks) and includes the following changes:

It is always tough to find nice gifts for the holidays that your geek friends will appreciate. Even if you would like to buy something special this Christmas, just for yourself, we will help you choose. Jon Campbell has put together a list of... geek-oriented devices and softare to make your life easier when choosing gifts. Inside you will find which PC game, gaming console, software, mp3 player etc you could buy for the holidays.

The Bochs IA-32 Emulator Project unveiled a new version of the popular Bochs emulator to the public today, improving on the stability and ground breaking improvements of Bochs 1.2. Bochs 1.3 includes many major enhancements including a powerful menu-based configuration system and networking support for Linux and Windows NT/2000. Other additions in this release include support for ISO-format disk images, improved mouse performance, physical CD-ROM support for all versions of Windows, parallel port emulation, enhanced debugger, and many cpu and device model improvements. Bochs 1.3 also adds native support for Mac OS X and Amiga MorphOS, along with improved support for BeOS.

The new version of the PHP programming language, PHP 4.1.0, includes several other key improvements: A new input interface for improved security (read below), Highly improved performance in general, Revolutionary performance and stability improvements under Windows. The multithreaded server modules under Windows (ISAPI, Apache, etc.) perform as much as 30 times faster under load! We want to thank Brett Brewer and his team in Microsoft for working with us to improve PHP for Windows. Versioning support for extensions. Right now it's barely being used, but the infrastructure was put in place to support separate version numbers for different extensions. The negative side effect is that loading extensions that were built against old versions of PHP will now result in a crash, instead of in a nice clear message. Make sure you only use extensions built with PHP 4.1.0. Turn-key output compression support. Lots of fixes and new functions.

"Antivirus software vendors said Monday they don't want to create a loophole in their security products to let the FBI or other government agencies use a virus to eavesdrop on the computer communications of suspected criminals. Under a project code-named "Magic Lantern," the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is creating an e-mail-borne virus or Trojan horse that hides itself on the computer and captures all keystrokes made, including passwords that could be used to read encrypted mail. Despite subsequent reports to the contrary, officials at Symantec and Network Associates said they had no intention of voluntarily modifying their products to satisfy the FBI. Spokesmen at two other computer security companies, Japan-based Trend Micro and the U.S. subsidiary of U.K.-based Sophos made similar statements." Read the rest of the story on ZDNews.

Many computer users who want to try out Linux or Linux users who only access the Internet via dial-up, resort on buying cheap, Linux or FreeBSD, CDs from CheapBytes, UnixCD, Walnut Creek etc. Most of these cheap CDs are based on well known Linux distributions. This business is extremely common and perfectly legal so far, as it is going on since 1994 without any problems. You could buy, let's say, the latest version of Red Hat Linux for less than $5. But Red Hat now puts an end in these deals regarding their software.

Linux, the BeOS, Solaris, QNX, AtheOS... the list of "alternative OSes" seems ever-growing, and an increasing amount of computer users want to keep their options open. Meanwhile, sitting quieting on millions of servers --very likely on your ISP's servers-- is FreeBSD, originally developed at University of California Berkley, based on the same core as the new MacOS X, currently at version 4.4. FreeBSD is a complete, free, stable, multi-user, Unix-based Operating System available for download at freebsd.org. While FreeBSD has come a long way of late, it's far from ready for the average user, however, as it matures, it has great promise in becoming a serious player in the OS market next to Linux.

More than 1.5 years has past since the last release of the BlackBox window manager, and its development seems to have stopped. However, based on the latest version of BlackBox's sources, FluxBox was born. The FluxBox X11 window manager fixes a number of problems found in the original BlackBox and it introduces some new GUI concepts like the use of the tabs along with the addition of some more tradititional functionality like iconbar, keygrabbers and more.

"Windows XP is much more than flash and color. Turn it into a stone cold performance machine with these tweaks and tricks." An in-depth ExtremeTech article on how to optimize your WindowsXP. If you are interested in such tweaks for your system, the ultimate web site for this kind of job is of course TweakXP.