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Following on the third beta release two weeks ago, we are ready to present Drupal 6.0 beta 4. Since the previous beta release, we have committed over 80 fixes to the Drupal 6.x code. This beta version includes some usability improvements and lots of bug fixes for issues which the testers and contributed module upgraders encountered. The first beta announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 5.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 6 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

Changes made since the release of Drupal 6.0 beta 3 include several multilingual support fixes, caching improvements, more clear help texts, drag and drop support for book outlines, user profile administration, taxonomy pages and file uploads, and fixes to node teaser generation. With the right to left version of the pushbutton theme, we also completed RTL support for all core themes. We have also hardened the security of the system, closing potential cross site scripting (XSS) and cross site request forgery (CSRF) security holes. This beta release also includes the security updates released in Drupal 5.4 and 4.7.9.

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To be held at the Dallas/Addison Marriott Quorum hotel.

PyCon is a community-oriented conference targeting developers of Python applications and the Python interpreter itself. The organizers aim to make the conference affordable and accessible to all.

PyCon gives you opportunities to:

* see a variety of presentations, panels, and impromptu discussions.
* learn about significant advances in the Python development community.
* meet fellow developers from around the world.
* participate in programming sprints with fellow developers.

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Want to add a couple of cool features to your Web site without delving into the world of Web programing? In this case, you might want to give GreyBox a try. It's a tiny (only 22KB) JavaScript-based tool, released under the LGPL, that allows you to add page-in-a-page and gallery features using just a few easy-to-understand lines of code (check GreyBox' Web site for some examples).

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AssKoala has submitted a great CVS article here at CodeNewbie. You can check it out from the link below.

http://cpp.codenewbie.com/articles/c...de-Page_1.html

Kutaragi stated that the purpose of today's meeting was not to show any new hardware or games, it was to offer an apology. He wanted to give the world an update since it was now Spring. He stated issues over the finalization of copy protection technology related to the Blu-ray disc drive were the cause for the delay. But Kutaragi also mentioned that the delay would allow for the latest HDMI (high-definition connection, essentially) support.

He did offer some tantalizing new details about the system, though. PS3 will include a 60GB hard drive (which is upgradeable) with Linux preinstalled. According to Kutaragi, developers should create games for the PS3 with assumption the hard drive will be present in the system (his slide was titled "HDD is required!"). He also revealed that the system will be backwards compatible with the entire PS1 and PS2 libraries, and that games will be displayed in high-definition resolutions when played on the PS3 (similar to what the Xbox 360 does with compatible Xbox 1 titles).

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Geoff Alexander, aka PUN1SH3R, has contributed a VB.NET article demonstrating how to mimick a control array since MS has decided to take that out of VB.NET.

You can check out the article here.

The GCC compiler is one of the most fundamental projects in the modern software ecosystem. It has enjoyed a long and storied history that continues to grow with this week's release of version 4.1.

Originally standing for GNU C Compiler, GCC now refers to GNU Compiler Collection and is in every GNU/Linux distribution. It is also frequently used as a compiler of choice for other operating systems.

Version 4.1 includes numerous optimization and functional improvements over its predecessor, which was released last year.

Mark Mitchell, release manager of GCC and founder of CodeSourcery, said that the GCC 4.0 release was the first to have the new TREE-SSA optimization framework.

"In GCC 4.1, as expected, that framework has become much more robust and more powerful," Mitchell told internetnews.com. "That has translated into significant performance improvements on some important benchmarks."

Among those benchmarks are PowerPC gains of several percentage points on the industry-standard SPEC benchmarks. The new release also corrects a large number of defects that were in 4.0.

GCC contributor Daniel Berlin told internetnews.com that the most significant advancements are the new infrastructure for inter-procedural optimizations and the improvements to auto-vectorization.

"Both are user visible, though the second more than the first, and can provide noticeable improvements in code quality over what 4.0 did," Berlin said. "Certainly, the optimizers are in general more tuned than they were in 4.0. You are likely to get better generated code performance."

Beyond improved code generation CodeSourcery's Mitchell explained that from the user's perspective, the most significant new features are stronger Fortran 95 support and support for more CPU architectures and new chips in existing architectures.

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Borland Software Corporation BORL today announced aggressive plans to drive its Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) business forward. As part of that plan, Borland has agreed to buy Segue Software Inc. SEGU, the Massachusetts-based provider of global software quality and testing solutions. In addition, Borland announced plans to seek a buyer for the portion of its business associated with the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), including the award-winning Borland Developer Studio (Delphi(R), C++Builder(R) and C#Builder(R)) and JBuilder(R) product lines.

Both actions are significant milestones in Borland's strategy to secure leadership in the growing ALM sector and expand its ability to offer organizations solutions that make software delivery a more predictable and manageable business process.

"Segue's quality optimization products and services will add significantly to our growing portfolio of application lifecycle management solutions," said Tod Nielsen, Borland president and chief executive officer. "This is a natural extension of our focus to expand beyond development and into software delivery, helping companies increase business value through successful software initiatives."

Nielsen continued: "The decision to expand our emphasis on ALM, and at the same time enable our IDE business to get the attention it deserves, enables us to do what's right for our business, what's right for our customers, and what's right for the future of software development."

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Apple and outside analysts said the program, referred to as Leap-A, is not a "virus" per se. Rather, it "requires a user to download the application and execute the resulting file," Apple said in a statement to CNET News.com. The company provided no further comment on the nature of the program.

The malicious software, which has also been dubbed OSX/Oompa-A and the Ooompa Loompa Trojan Horse by other security experts, appears to have spread minimally so far and has achieved low-level threat classifications from McAfee and Symantec.

But security experts cautioned Macintosh users to view the incident as a wake-up call that all operating systems have vulnerabilities.

"It's not really news as far as threats go," said Ray Wagner, a senior vice president in Gartner's information security group. "It is news because it targets OS X, and as far as I know, it's certainly the first OS X malicious content in the wild that's been noted at this point."

Classified as both a worm and a Trojan, Leap-A appears to have begun its movement earlier this week after it was posted at a forum for Mac-related rumors. The file appeared as an external link promising pre-release screenshots of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5, also known as Leopard.

Leap-A, which appears to affect only the OS X 10.4 platform, spreads primarily via the Apple iChat instant-messaging program. The program forwards itself as a compressed file called "latestpics.tgz" to all the contacts on the infected user's buddy list each time the program starts up.

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