An anonymous reader writes " The first milestone of xouvert, the X-server replacement has been released. Xouvert includes MAS giving the X server its very own sound server. Nice. :) Also, just noticed that enlightenment quietly released an update to the 0.16 series. " (Here's a link to the Xouvert download page.)

rjnagle writes "Eric S. Raymond (or ESR) is widely known for the groundbreaking series of essays in his book, The Cathedral and the Bazaar. In TCatB, he makes a credible case for why open source sofware works so well, and why community-supported software won't put developers out of a job. (I once attended a delightful talk he gave where, among other things, he gave sartorial advice to open source developers, urging them to avoid formal suits at presentations to CEO's as a way to give off the auras of foreign dignitaries unused to local customs). The arguments presented in Cathedral and the Bazaar were persuasive and original and now regarded as obvious. In his new book, Art of Unix Programming (available for free on the web), ESR stakes an even bolder claim: that initial design decisions make Unix uniquely well-suited to take advantage of open source's power. This book is an attempt to explain why Unix is so...well, Unixy." Read on for the rest of Nagle's review of The Art of Unix Programming.

Thanks to Buzzcut.com for their article exploring the most dubious claims made in relation to videogames, in which the author takes some time to refute game-related maxims such as 'Old people play video games' ("assuming the fact that older women playing Bridge online... can be generalized into broad statements about the general appeal of games lacks a sense of perspective"), 'Games will revolutionize education' ("We are not on the cusp of a breakthrough or entering an era of educational enlightenment. People learn from anything, so they can learn from games"), and 'Games are a social activity' ("Video games can be social. But so can knitting and reading. That doesn't mean they are deeply or purposefully social.")

Neon Spiral Injector writes "Rasterman of Enlightenment fame has finally updated the news page of his personal site. It seems that the behind the scenes work for E is coming along. He is investigating rendering backends for Evas. The default backend is a software renderer written by Raster. Trying to gain a little more speed he ported it to the XRender extension, only to find that it became 20-50 times slower on his NVidia card. He has placed some sample code on this same news page for people to try, and see if this is also experienced on other setups."

PlanetThoughtful writes "Later this year I'm taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to backpack around the U.S. and Canada (Sept 2003 to whenever I have to come home again). Being a lifelong Australian geek (think of Steve Irwin and then stop, because I'm nothing like that and neither is anyone else, Steve Irwin included) I'm desperately curious: what would make it to the travel itinerary of Slashdot's all-time geek-tour of North America? Think electronics, architecture, astronomy, enlightenment! Think gadgets, bookstores, software, comics, The Library Of Congress, The Smithsonian, Wanting To See Really Amazing Things! Think travelling on a budget, then forget about that if it's a 'You Must See This Before You Die' sort of suggestion. And then stop thinking about these things, and actually tell me!"

ChristTrekker submitted a story that we probably have run once upon a time, but hey, it's a holiday weekend, and who doesn't enjoy reading about a X11 in ASCII graphics? Complete with screenshots and code for you do it yourselfers. I like the enlightenment screenshots. Painful.

ChrisJones writes "According to rasterman, Enlightenment has hit 1.0! Tarball is available here. Happy building!" And you guys all thought it would never happen! BGDM!

An anonymous reader writes: "Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) has posted a "state of the union" for the enlightenment project on their mailing list. It has been over 2 years since the last major release of the Enlightenment window manager. It looks like 0.17 is a ways off but it's nice to see an update."

PinglePongle writes with this review of Addison Wesley's Extreme Programming for Web Projects, writing "The authors work for a web shop, building websites for customers, and try to use their experience to make life easier for their readers. Their main point concerns how traditional web projects are structured to leave at least one of the parties taking a big risk on the project: if the project is 'fixed price, fixed scope' the developers take all the risk, if it's 'time & materials' the customer takes a risk -- they can not be sure their money will lead to whatever it is they want." Read on to see whether the authors have successfully outlined a fairer, more successful system in the rest of PinglePongle's review, below.

Most of the questions we got for LinuxWorld exhibitors were pretty general, with no specific exhibitor attached to them. I did my best to get appropriate people to answer them. Here are the results. (And for those who wonder... Kevin Mitnick emailed - he's been traveling and busy, but hopes to get his answers to us shortly.)

oxgoad writes "Sun Microsystems, Federal Express, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory -- what do they have in common? All have used, or are currently using, the programming language Forth in critical subsystems of their products or processes. 'What is this language Forth?' you ask. Forth has been called 'One of the best-kept secrets in the computing world.' Read on for a review of the book Forth Application Techniques authored by Elizabeth D. Rather."

EnlightenmentFan writes "In When Things Start to Think, MIT Media Lab whiz Neil Gershenfeld predicts an appealing future of seamless, foolproof computers. User alert: Relentless optimism ahead. (I am ready to let MIT graft smart chips into my skin some day after my PC goes a week without crashing.) This is the book to buy for your folks to get them excited about nerds. It does also have some interesting stuff for nerds themselves." Read on for Enlightenment Fan's review.

canadian_right sent in this review of a self-published book available through the Xlibris service. He writes, "You've heard of the web service that will publish anyone's book for a reasonable fee, but wondered if any of the books are worth buying? If you like fantasy with a dash of science fiction you will likely enjoy Reflecting Fires."

anguished writes "The future of Linux, its best hopes for blowing past everything else on an x86 machine, once was located in a little Austrailai website, with a window manager called Enlightenment, which we all hoped to be good enough to build and configure. In an interview with Linux and Main, the recently silent Rasterman talks about GNOME, KDE, E, and his view that the future of Linux requires new playing fields."

Once in awhile a story comes along that warrants mention just so that people know to be careful. Mosfet is a KDE coder (who has had tension with KDE in the past and left some ill will over there). He was hired by Future Technology to continue work on his Liquid KDE style and theme (my personal favorite). But they never paid him, so he removed their name and mentioned it in the Changelog. Now FT is threatening legal action to get the Changelog off the net. But it's more bizarre because MandrakeSoft is the host, and the site remains up. Keep reading if you're interested in a few more bits.

al3x asks: "When I first got into Linux nearly five years ago, the new releases of competing window managers (like Blackbox, Enlightenment, Sawfish, etc.) were a constant thrill, and great strides were made with every release. I can't count the number of nights spent trying to get that sexy new E build to work, and what fun it was! But these days, window manager development seems to be stagnating. The last stable release of Enlightenment is from last year. Sawfish hasn't done much of anything in months, nor has Blackbox. WindowMaker had a recent update, but not with any exciting new features (it is rock solid, however). Now, verging from the paths of window manager favoritism or "they haven't been updated because they just work," why has development in this arena slowed to a crawl, and what's on the horizon?"

JigSaw writes: "The team consisting of TheRasterman and Mandrake (among others) are hard at work to bring Enlightenment 0.17 to the Linux desktop. E17 will be a lot more than a window manager, something closer to a complete GUI solution for X. OSNews hosts an interesting interview with Rasterman and also features some (unseen-before) screenshots of E17. Some say that E17 will be the next big thing in the GUI design (even if Rasterman states in the interview that Linux won't probably take over the Desktop), with plans to incorporate libraries like eVas, which look very modern in concept, design and implementation."

Danny Yee wrote this review of a classic work (from way back in 1968) from one of the classic science fiction authors, Roger Zelazny. A third of a century later, Danny seems to think it holds up pretty well.

David Findlay writes "Found this cool website that has heaps of RealAudio and MPEG clips of the Apollo missions. You can listen to Apollo 12 being hit by lightning and having to restart the computer, or Apollo 13's O2 tank blowing up. Some good pictures that would make great wallpapers for Enlightenment as well. Just follow the links to "Multimedia" and "Image Gallery"."

SirFlakey writes: "Just browsing the Patents database at delphion I came across this patent from a couple of weeks back. Apparently Apple Computer has patented a method of theming the OS. I wonder how this affects theming on Linux ?" Perhaps unsurprizing, considering Apple's general unhappiness with Apple-like themes, and that they convinced themes.org to remove Aqua, AquaX and others. Apple obviously has a lot tied up in their look-and-feel, but the patent's actual claims strike me as pretty thin. Sounds like Apple wants to be the sole owner of complex desktop customization, which I think some people might object to.