Red Hat is readying the first major update to its free Fedora Core Linux distribution since November 2004. Expected June 13, a week behind schedule, Fedora Core 4 will be the first release of the Raleigh, North Carolina, company’s Linux operating system to include support for the Xen virtualization software. It will also mark the first time the company has included new community-contributed features, called Extras, in a new release of the operating system.

Source: InfoWorld

Toshiba is gearing up to mass produce a new type of flat-panel display. The SED is a joint venture of Toshiba and Canon that promises to offer the same image quality as a CRT with all of the benefits of flat-panel displays. The first model is expected to feature a 50-inch screen with full 1,920-by-1,080 pixel resolution. Toshiba said it expects its first batch of SED products in late 2006, with volume production slated for January 2007.

Source: News.com

German computer magazine C’T claims that by changing only 2 bytes from the file setupreg.hiv in Windows’s XP Home kit, users can get access to certain functions only avalaible in Windows XP Professional, such as Remote Desktop, User management and enhanced security features.

C’T writes in its latest print issue (in German only) that you need to copy the root directory and the i386 directory of the WindowsXP CD to your harddisk, extract the Bootsector of your WindowsXP CD and change only 2 bytes in i386Setupreg.hiv by using Regedit. In fact all you have to do is edit the binary key “default” and change “01″ to “00″ and “02″ to “00″ in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Homekey\ControlSet001\Services\setupdd, C’T claims.

There is one big drawback, though. Users won’t be able to install Service Pack 2, unless they integrate SP2 in the installation CD.

Source: The Register

Microsoft acknowledged Thursday that hackers booby-trapped its popular MSN Web site in
South Korea to try to steal passwords from visitors. The company said it was unclear how many Internet users might have been victimized.

Microsoft said it cleaned the Web site, www.msn.co.kr, and removed the dangerous software code that unknown hackers had added earlier this week. A spokesman, Adam Sohn, said Microsoft was confident its English-language Web sites were not vulnerable to the same type of attack.

Source: AP

Yonah, a notebook chip coming from Intel in the first part of next year, is going to be a lot different than its predecessors, company executives say.

The chip, which is being developed in Israel will be made on the 65-nanometer process, will come with a number of enhancements over the current Pentium M line of notebook chips, said Mooly Eden, vice president of the mobility group, at a briefing here.

For one thing, it will contain two cores, instead of the single core on current notebook chips. The two separate cores will also share a 2MB cache. Current dual-core desktop chips from Advanced Micro Devices and Intel come with similar sized caches, but each core accesses only 1MB of cache memory dedicated to it. Sharing the cache will significantly boost performance. (The chips communicate with the cache through a single bus embedded in the chip.)

Yonah will also come with improved technology for curbing power consumption and heat dissipation. It will also sport features, currently found on desktops, to enhance security.

Source: News.com