Numerous Slashdot tidbits to report today. For those of you who are interested, you can click the following. Hear about the new comments code, read the exciting bugs list, behold the wacky comments about SlashNET, admire my response to Segfault's recent article, and of course, behold the results of my adventures with my new breadmaker.

Nick writes "California joins Washington and Nevada in the list of states making it illegal to send spam using a fake return address. California ISP's may sue for $50/e-mail sent, up to a $25k maximum fine! (Plus attorney fees). You can read it here. "

Wade Naveja writes "Study Links Internet And Depression according to this Seattle Times story." Allright, I think this warrants some discussion. Hit the link below to read things that depress me about The Internet, you can add your own if you're bored.

An Anonymous contributor wrote to us "NTK is reporting JAMIE ZAWINSKI's forthcoming sabbatical from Netscape (about time, too, judging from his personal page's posts: "my employer can blow me and "really bad attitude": Netscape has pulled all the about: sites, and Microsoft has subpoenaed all the posts from the Netscape in house Really Bad Attitude mailing list." (Ed: I should remember that when venting frustration at work: not in an email)

Joe writes "Apparently, a person by the name of Julie is going to be undergoing a sex change operation, live on the internet (From male to female). She believes it will inform, and perhaps even save lives." I guess the good news is that we're probably fairly near to running out of 'firsts' on the 'net. Wonder how longer before we start watching 'lasts'.

Roberto Jung Drebes writes "This story from Wired News is pretty nice, not simply because Netscape had any profit, but because it had such profit after "changing the focus of its business to avoid direct competition with rival Microsoft". It's a good example for the open-source cause. "

This site explains how to disable PICS in Netscape. I guess it was a good idea for awhile at least :) The hack was created (and sent in by) Brian Ristuccia. Update News.com picked up the story too. They have a writeup here. Thanks again to Brian for letting us know.

lc writes "This article in LAN Times basically tells about Linux and what it is, and how its stability and speed are why NT professionals are switching to Linux. It also goes on to tell about the software companies that recently stated that they're supporting Linux such as IBM, Oracle, Informix Corp, and Netscape. Cover story too..."
As well, PC Week is running a good review of Caldera Netware, and tying Linux into x-nets.

Jauder Ho writes "Get it here" Or, probably because of /.-ing, another FTP server.

Brock wrote in to tell us that LinuxPPC is now released. Comes with KDE, The Gimp, Netscape, and all the fixin'z you'd expect in a modern *nix. If you got the hardware, you know what to do.

Tsu writes "The much-referenced Netcraft web survey has turned three years old this month. It's interesting to look at how the fortunes of certain servers have changed, especially the declines in Netscape and NCSA servers and the gains made by Apache and Microsoft. This also marks the first month that plain-old Apache (not including derivatives) has had over 50% market share. "

mukesh agrawal writes "I'm surprised that this hasn't been played up much. But from the FAQ, it looks like JINI will be open source.
"Q: How will Jini technology be licensed?
A: To drive innovation for the vision of Jini and to gain rapid acceptance in the market the Jini source code will be open to the developer community, similar to Netscape's Mozilla model and Linux's GPL. To guarantee compatibility and quality a mark for commercial products is being considered. The specific details around the licensing model are still being finalized. A draft of the proposed license will be available in August. " " Very cool-good to see that Sun has seen the light of day.

David Rusting writes "Interesting tidbit from CNN Digital Jam on how Microsoft will argue they thought of the browser first (before Netscape). Does anyone really buy this? "

The X Windows / UNIX team for Communicator 4.5 wrote in with a request for linux users. They say "We are are the team of programmers who are working on the X Windows / UNIX version of Communicator 4.5 We hate it when Communicator crashes. We're sure you do too. We know linux is rock solid, and our goal is to make the 4.5 that run on Linux that rock solid. We want people who may be thinking about using Linux to think: "And another reason I should try Linux is the Communicator never crashes on Linux. Never." We admit we aren't there yet. But this is our team's top priority. Here is what we need from you: If you found a *reproducable* way to make 4.5 crash, tell us how. We'll fix it. Send mail to rocksolid@netscape.com, and when make the fix, we'll let you know so that you'll know that it won't happen again. If you are using a version of 4.5 that has the Full Circle Talkback feature, please turn it on and let us know what you did to cause the crash. If you don't have 4.5 PR 1, get it here."

Microsoft has counterclaimed the DOJ suit, saying that the devel of IE began before Navigator, saying that the planned browser integration was begun before IE was born. Huh. The counterclaim is going to seek to force the states and DOJ to pay for the legal costs of the battle. In related news, Robert Bork, of almost-Supreme Court fame, was interviewed saying that the DOJ case is rock solid. It should be noted that Bork is a legal consultant for Netscape. But as long as I am in caveat mood, I'd like to say that he wasn't nominated to Supreme Court for being an idiot.

Nate writes "Ed Di Cristofaro of HardWire has announced he will extend his hardware testing to Linux along with the usual Windows testing. "It's quickly spreading in popularity and has the potential to fall right behind Windows and into the #2 spot for desktop operating system users." Click below to read on.

Jeffrey Davis writes "LinuxPPC has a big fresh new release, R4. link ". Indeed they do. The new release features Netscape Communicator, The GIMP, and a very "Kontroversial" Desktop Enviornment. Interestingly enough, the LinuxPPC folk are incorporated, and some of their stuff seems to imply they're for-profit. Can anyone clarify? It's good to see some commercial development work being done (and some good work, at that)!

Back at Infoworld Nicholas Petreley keeps writing about Linux. In this week's forum article he compares the dominant operating system to Tolkien's One Ring: the one who has it will inevitably be corrupt. Linux is like Tom Bombadil, the only character immune to the seduction of the evil Ring. A short article with an insightful comparison that might explain recent moves by Netscape, Oracle, SUN and many others. Go check it out.

Chomsky writes "The linux/technical community was both shocked and dismayed this morning, as reports filtered through the internet of a linux enthusiast successfully loading the Slashdot news website in Netscape. The news was at first met with mostly suspicion and skepticism. "It just seems so unlikely", said longtime linux advocate Pengo the Penguin. "In the past week I've gotten through like, twice at the most. It's that cursed 'Everything' section, I'm telling ya." The interviewee then ate a bucket of raw fish and belched loudly. Not everyone is as skeptical though. An anonymous caller claimed to be using a beowulf cluster comprised of 64 alphas to calculate and predict successful connections to the Slashdot website. "Although it sounds like a hoax, we predicted this connection", said the caller. "According to our calculations, someone will connect again early next week". " In all seriousness, we're getting more RAM and moving to a faster connection in the next week or so- hang in there. And stop emailing me already. It's very disheartening to delete 50 of these things each morning :)

Dean Olson has written up his opinions on Linux and Corporations. It's an interesting read in which he discusses what needs to happen for linux to be practically accepted in many corporate worlds. Check it out.