(N.B. I wrote this article a while ago, when the FreeBSD site was first updated, but have only just got around to finishing it and hitting the ‘publish’ button).
The official FreeBSD web site has recently received a makeover as part of Google’s Summer of Code programme. As with most redesigns nowadays, the old site was a hideous collection of tables and HTML that lacked any form of semantics, whereas the new site uses CSS for the layout and styling (although I should point out that the old site did validate as XHTML, so it wasn’t as bad as some people might think).
As someone who has been using FreeBSD for some time, I’ve been a regular visitor to the web site so here’s what I think of the new design compared to the old one. First of all, the front page looks a lot cleaner, there’s less clutter and more whitespace. A lot of the marketing blurb about “what is FreeBSD, what is it good for etc.” has been moved off the home page and now the central content is dominated by news, events and media stories. Personally I think this is a big improvement, because when I go to the home page of any web site I’m generally looking for something specific, so I’d rather be greeted by some well organised links that point me to where I want to go rather than a page of text that doesn’t contain anything of interest.
Overall, I think the new design is a lot better, although I still feel a certain fondness for the old one, which always looked somewhat old school – a bit like FreeBSD.
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 updated (r1) via Debian – Latest News
The popular GNU/Linux distribution, Debian, has released its first update to the current stable branch of packages, codenamed “Sarge”. It’s mainly a bunch of security patches, so if you already update from security.debian.org on a regular basis you have probably downloaded and installed the changes by now. I run Debian on a Bytemark Virtual Machine to provide secondary DNS and mail services for some of my domains (including datacircle.org) and I haven’t noticed any updates recently, although I only have a very small number of packages installed so that limits potential changes anyway.
If you’re running Debian Sarge on any of your machines and haven’t updated, now’s the time to check to see if you need any of the patches. Most installations will add security.debian.org to your sources list anyway so you shouldn’t have to do anything other than run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to download and apply the updates. There is also a list of packages which were accepted or rejected should you be interested in further details.
End nears for Mac version of IE via BBC News – Technology
Microsoft appears to be finally killing off Internet Explorer for the Macintosh platform, two years after it stopped development on what was then the most popular browser for Mac users. Not only will security updates cease, but the download links for the software will be removed in January 2006 so even if you want to get hold of the browser (there are some reasons for wanting to – for example parts of the web interface for my router don’t work in other browsers on OS X) you won’t be able to, at least not officially. Microsoft actually suggests that: “Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple’s Safari”, although there is no link to Apple’s site or even a mention of Firefox.
In my opinion, it’s a decision that’s long overdue and it’s about time that the final nail was put into the coffin of IE on the Mac. There was once was a time, several years ago, when it was one of the better browsers out there and included features – such as better CSS support – that you couldn’t get anywhere else. However, it has now fallen by the wayside compared to its Windows counterpart, and with other browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Opera now available for the Mac, there really was no point in Microsoft continuing to support a piece of software that wasn’t maintaining a large chunk of market share or helping to tighten its grip on the desktop.
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Gaim 2.0.0beta1 Released via Slashdot
The first beta release of version 2 of Gaim, the popular instant messaging program with support for multiple protocols including MSN, AIM and Jabber, was released a couple of days ago. The changelog lists a huge array of improvements and new features, including several added as a result of Google’s Summer of Code programme, for which Gaim produced plenty of ideas for budding developers to get their teeth stuck into.
As an example of how fast open source development can go, the Gaim developers have already been flooded with feedback on the new beta, showing both the anticipation for the 2.0 release line and the willingness of users to say what they like and what could be improved. It’s great to see such a postive response from both Gaim users and developers – often the latter group can be quite protective of their software (this is often a trait of developers in general, I’m not singling out the Gaim programmers specifically here) and don’t respond well to critism so I’m glad to see that they’re taking ideas on board and hopefully working to make the software do what users want rather than what the programmers think the users should have.
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WordPress 2.0 Release Candidate via Photo Matt
WordPress, the popular blog software that powers this site and most of the others on the network that I’m building (with the exception of Rogue Tory, which uses a custom blogging system that I wrote from scratch), has reached the third release candidate in preparation for version 2.0. A lot of WordPress users seem to think that this may be the final RC before 2.0 is officially marked as “stable”, although I’ve not yet plucked up the courage to upgrade any of my main sites yet for fear of losing data or having to reverse the process or restore from a backup if things goes wrong. However, I am planning to give the latest version a whirl tonight when I install it on one of the domains that I’m not currently using, so expect a post later on about how 2.0 stands up to the 1.5.x release line.
A.com, B.com, C.com on the way? via Forever Geek
Back in December 1993, IANA decided to reserve all one letter domains in the .com/.net/.org top level domain systems for “infrastructure purposes to help ensure stable operation of the Internet.” However, ICANN (IANA’s ruling body), has recently indicated that single letter domains may soon become available, though how they would be distributed remains to be seen. The best way in terms of generating windfall revenue for ICANN would be to auction the names to the highest bidder, which would almost certainly generate several million dollars in one fell swoop.
Some domains, such as x.com (which now redirects to PayPal), were registered before the restriction came into effect and are therefore still available regardless of whether the registration restrictions are lifted or not.
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Found in rec.arts.comics via chapter 5 of The Art of Unix Programming:
“Everyone knows that the concept of computering devices goes back thousands of years to the abacus and the like. But it’s a lesser known fact that the first use of a common computer protocol was in the Old Testament. This, of course, was when Moses aborted the Egyptians’ process with a control-sea.”
Full original post via Google Groups
XFS (read-only) support committed to CURRENT via FreeBSD News
Support for XFS, the native filesystem for SGI systems, has been added to FreeBSD, although it is limited to just reading files at the present moment in time. Being a 64 bit filesystem means that theorectical file limits are raised to 9 million terabytes, should you have that amount of disk space on your BSD server farm. 
XFS has been available in Linux kernels since the 2.4 series, so it’s good to see the BSD chaps catching up at last.
Adium, the popular multi-protocol instant messaging software for OS X, has released version 0.87. You can view the full version history if you are interested, although there aren’t any new features to drool over, just a range of bug fixes and updates.
