1. "Oracle to Push Red Hat from Support Chair,"
InfoWorld, 10/25
"Oracle Gambit Crushes Red Hat Shares,"
Businessweek, 10/26
Oracle was expected to announce an Oracle-branded version of Linux during its annual user conference this week in San Francisco. Instead, CEO Larry Ellison stunned Red Hat and its investors with word in his closing keynote speech that the company will provide "full support" for Red Hat’s Linux distribution to both Oracle and non-Oracle customers for a price as low as $99 per system per year. It was Ellison who sparked rumors about Oracle’s plans in April when he said that the company was weighing whether it should try to acquire Red Hat or Novell. A day after his OpenWorld conference announcement, Red Hat shares plummeted more than 26 percent, hitting a new 52-week low of $13.70 during Thursday trading, and no doubt causing much consternation at Red Hat.

2. "Microsoft Vista RTM Date Bumped Due to Bug,"
CIO.com, 10/26
"Second IE 7 Flaw Discovered, Secunia Says,"
CIO.com, 10/26
A late-inning bug that caught most of Microsoft’s Vista team by surprise will delay the OS release to manufacturers, expected Wednesday, to Nov. 8, edging ever closer to the pivotal holiday season. The business release is now expected to "barely" make its deadline next month. The surprise bug would crash the entire system and force a reinstallation of the OS. It was discovered on Friday, Oct. 13. A day after the Vista RTM delay was announced, Danish security firm Secunia said it had found a second flaw in Microsoft’s recently released Internet Explorer 7 browser that allows hackers to put a fake Web address in a browser pop-up window, possibly tricking users into downloading from a site that appears to be trusted, yet is anything but. Microsoft acknowledged there is an "issue."

3. "Mozilla Firefox 2.0 Hits the Web,"
CIO.com. 10/25
Possibly reigniting the "browser war," Mozilla released Firefox 2.0, contending that its browser has usability features not found in IE 7, including the ability to restore the browser to the page a user was on if a sudden OS restart is needed. The update also has enhanced tab features and offers antiphishing. Early reviews expressed fond appreciation for the new browser, but said it doesn’t differ all that much from version 1.5. Mozilla engineers couldn’t duplicate one of the first bugs to be reported, while another bug had already been patched. A third bug is merely annoying versus being exploitable, with large documents loaded into an iframe causing the browser to hang or crash. Engineers are working on that one.