From the O’Reilly Network Mac Devcenter: “In an in-depth Mac programming article, O’Reilly Network’s Cocoa columnist
Mike Beam takes a look at the two classes that make up the majority of
Cocoa’s string-handling ability, and includes a peek at various ways to
create strings.”

In this week’s edition of links and news of interest to the Tcl user/developer communities: “Compiling Tcl with the free Borland C++ 5.5 compiler”, “Iain B. Findleton offers a Tcl binding to the Fast Light Toolkit (fltk)”, and the announcement of a Web-based general purpose help desk application. Posted at Linux Weekly News.

Patrick Mullen writes “The Duke of URL has just posted its review of Trustix XSentry
Firewall 1.5. XSentry is a high-end firewall for both Linux and Windows produced by
Trustix, the makers of Trustix Secure Linux. The review covers the
technology behind the firewall, installation, configuration and more.”

ZDNET: “Users of older Power Macs last week gained new access
to Mac OS X, courtesy of a free utility.

Ryan Rempel’s Unsupported UtilityX, available for free
download from Other World Computing Inc.’s Web site,
enables processor-upgraded Macs or other Power Mac
systems outside Apple Computer Inc.’s designated
specification to run Mac OS X.”

“For the militant advocates of “open source”
programming – the movement that holds that software should
be shared and collectively improved and that Microsoft must be
destroyed – it was as if the world stopped for a while.” More at MSNBC.com.

The Register: “The reasons for buying a Red Hat Database are very compelling. Our unique selling
point is based around the open source principles and the considerable cost benefits
that can be experienced by making such a choice. Add into that the global support
that we provide and Red Hat Database is a very strong solution.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
Though not officially scheduled to be announced until this afternoon (July 3), KDE 2.2beta1 was spotted on several FTP mirrors around the world early this morning.The primary goals of the release, according to KDE officials, are to “provide a preview of KDE 2.2 and to involve users and developers who wish to request/implement missing features or identify problems. Code development is currently focused on stabilizing KDE 2.2, scheduled for final release later this quarter.”

The changes from 2.1.2 to this pre-release of KDE 2.2 are listed in a changelog at http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelog2_1to2_2.html. A list of FTP mirrors is at http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html.

A notable caveat from the KDE project: They don’t recommend the use of gcc 3.0 in compiling the sources. According to KDE, “several known miscompilations
of production C++ code” occur with the popular GNU compiler. KDE officials say they are working with the gcc team to get the problems resolved.

Peter Revill writes: “HTML/php Ide written by me has just been released, includes SQL statement testing, Single keystroke development, ftp facilities and a bit more, check out the download at: http://scorpius.spaceports.com/~nolimits/nolimits1.zip.
Homepage (with very outdated screenshots of the developer): Aqua Nuke.“

Wired: “Denial-of-service attacks and garden-variety site defacements obscure the much larger issue of international cyberwar, members of an Israeli-Palestinian Internet panel say.”

The Register: “IBM’s Global Services group is laying off 1,000 people who don’t have the
necessary skills to develop its business.

Despite the involuntary redundancies, IBM will continue to hire people and a
spokesman for the firm told the Wall Street Journal that the layoffs are no indication
of the current health of its business.”