Gambit32 sent us a link to a news.com article where you can read that Netscape will release v4.5 of their browser soon. Several new features worth looking at. Should be nice to tide people over for Mozilla.

Robert Levin has written a response to Yesterday's editorial on the Tragedy of the Commons. It's an excellent rebuttal.

Nate wrote in to ask about something that I'm sure a lot of people around here have thought about- shopping online. He asks " For quite some time, I have been a big opponent of online shopping. I refused to put any kind of sensitive info across the Internet due to the insecurity of it. Well, they've had 'secure transactions' for quite some time now, yet I'm still paranoid. Is this paranoia justifiable, do I have a better chance winning the lottery than having someone sniff my credit card info, or is it quite safe?"

Elliot Lee wrote in with a link to this page which explains how you can make use of the previously-worthless-under-X knob that is now standard on Microsoft Mice (and like all microsoft innovations, is probably going to be the defacto standard everywhere by sometime next thursday). I actually like the knob sometimes (not as much as those cool IBM mice that had a trackpoint to allow left and right as well as up and down) and wouldn't mind seeing applications made aware of it. The page has Examples for KDE, Netscape and others.

Gary Nichols writes "Ralph Nader asks IBM to release the source to OS/2!" You can read about this over at ZDNet. This definately falls in the truth is stranger than fiction catagory. It's a crazy idea, but it has merit. Netscape had a crazy idea too (and they also have shallower pockets)

Jon A Christopher has risen through the ranks to become the new release coordinator for the LessTif project (for those unaware, LessTif is a free version of Motif, the defacto standard widget set from days of old, and days not so far off). He has written an editorial on LessTif, speaking of why it is still important today for this project to be finished, and why folks should be interested, and even join in. Read on to see what he has to say.

Eureka sent us a press release from Cobalt, maker of those very cool server cubes we saw at LinuxExpo. They are joining RedHat, Corel, Netscape, Caldera and the rest of the usual suspects endorsing the open source model. They are now officially releasing a MIPs port of Linux to their FTP site, and have officially scored a couple of Cool Points in my book.

Barry de la Rosa wrote in to sun to ask for more info on their recent announcement that they are joining Linux International. Hit the link below to read their PR Statement...

Tim Macinta wrote in with a very simple question, that I never thought about before. He asks " are there any Linux centric companies which are publicly traded? I've spent several hours looking for one but the closest thing I've found is Netscape. If there are any, I'd like to help them out by buying a little of their stock. Of course this would probably help me out too because I think that this would be a good time to invest in such a company."

Garrett LeSage writes "Here's a great writeup on the reasons to support DOS and Java versions of Mozilla. The author makes it pretty clear WHY both ports will be such a great tool for the future." read about it here.

zCat sent us a link to this ZD Net Link. It's a pretty fair piece on some ways; it discusses why Linux caught on when it did, but it also says Linux's 15 minutes are up, due to lack of clear direction. I disagree- Linux's direction is only up. Netscape & Caldera have thrown muscle behind it, the newbie UI issues are being ironed out as KDE and Gnome become more practical. Things are looking peachy.

Tuomas Lukka has written a feature for us on a real problem- you've heard MSs Analogy arguements in their defense (Forcing Coke to ship a can of Pepsi with each 6 pack for example). Tuomas explains how this finely crafted piece of PR is flawed, and attempts to propose an alternative Analogy that better explains the situation. This is a good one folks.

Slashdot Exclusive - Sun Microsystems has officially joined Linux International. While Sun has no plans to begin bundling Linux with their workstations, they realize their customers have taken an interest in the OS. Read on to find out more, including the upcoming announcment from Sun regarding the company's official position on all things Linux.

Bootnet has an article about Alex St John's position on all the recent Corel/Open Source hoopla. He sounds like he thinks it's more PR move than business decision. Personally, I'm itching to see Corel's new hardware at LinuxExpo, and even more so, waiting to see what additional Support Corel and Linux can give each other- I agree that the PR thing is key though- they went from 'just another non-ms company' to 'Open Source Heavyweight' overnight, bringing them to 1 notch under Netscape IMHO. Something big can work here, and I'm excited to see it happen.

Brock Sides writes "Is it possible (and if so, how) to configure the stand alone Netscape Navigator (under Linux and/or FreeBSD, of course) to launch a third-party email client, e.g. "xterm -e pine", when clicking on a mailto link? "

Caldera Inc. recently reduced the price of Netscape Fasttrack for OpenLinux to $49. Fasttrack offers interesting features like server-side Java and Javascript, log analysis and encryption. A quick look at Netscape's online store shows that Netscape itselfs sells the same entry-level webserver for $295 on other unices.
Some other news on Caldera: according to the KDE homepage Caldera Openlinux 1.2 ships with KDE, but I couldn't find details on this. Anyone got more info?

Kurt Gray writes "A very interesting collection of quotes from MS execs bullying OEMs and scheming to crush Netscape. Many people speculate about Microsoft's intentions, but it's hard to paint a pretty picture from these excerpts"

Red Hat Software recently announced they will make their latest product, Red Hat Secure Web Server, available on May 21. The package will cost $99 and contains the Apache webserver (enchanced with RSA key technology), a search engine, log analysis software and the Netscape browser. Buyers also get a $25 discount for a certificate registration at Thawte Consulting.

Benny Simon contributed a question that might be a bit more tangible then the last one. He writes " Macintosh 8.0 and 8.1 clients which mount volumes exported by netatalk from the Linux server exhibit strange and mysical behavior (not the dancing icons or incorrect free space reporting). What happens is that many programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, sometimes Netscape, others) crash or exit when opening or saving a file to the mounted volume. In addition, when using the open or save dialog boxes to navigate around folders on the mounted volume, response from the server is *really* slow. " His System is Linux 2.0.33 (redhat5) running on a VAResearch PentiumII/233 with 128MB ram unning netatalk-1.4b2+asun2.0a18.2 and he has no problems with MacOS 7.5.5 clients. So guys, whats the word?

Tim Macinta writes "The contest for designing a new Mozilla logo (to replace the animated "N" currently in Netscape, I think) has ended and a winner has been announced. The winning entry is pretty hypnotic and it looks subliminaly suggestive. " There were several pretty impressive entries, the winning one is pretty nice. What amazes me is the number of entries- people (not just programmers) want to be a part of the whole mozilla thing, even in this unofficial form. That's pretty cool.