Mitchell Bronze writes "Mozilla's Mike Shaver said in an interview that the upcoming Firefox 2 will have anti-phishing capability using technology that might come from Google." From the article: "With the continued rise in online attacks, security tools have become something Web browser makers can use to try to stand out. Microsoft plans to include features to protect Web surfers against online scams in Internet Explorer 7, due later in 2006. Similar functionality is already in Netscape 8 and Opera 8, both released last year. 'It is another example of the energy that has returned to the browser market,' Shaver said."

An anonymous reader writes "Mark Shuttleworth (retired cosmonaut and Ubuntu daddy) has written an informative blog entry about the problems associated with open source development. He found that paying geeks to code without assigning them managers lead to "shiny geek toys", rather than the product he was actually paying for. Shuttleworth says that left-field thinking is required when it comes to managing open source teams. See also Andrew Orlowski's analysis of why AOL eventually killed the Netscape project from a few years ago, where he describes Mozilla developers as "wandering off into Lotus-eating land"."

chrisd writes "Firefox module owner Ben Goodger has written what I think is a very interesting post about how Firefox came into being. It goes into details unheard of to date about the inner workings at Netscape and he fills in a timeline spanning from the open sourcing of Netscape to the release just recently of Firefox 1.5. Especially interesting and poignant are comments like this: 'I was told I could not expect to use Open Source tricks against folk who were employed by the Company (all hail!). I held true to my beliefs and refused to review low quality patches. I was almost fired. Others weren't so lucky.'. Anyhow, I consider this required reading for any fan of the Firefox browser." Or even just a programmer. Worth reading.

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "After years of official separation, Mozilla is just now shaking off some of the last vestiges of its parental association with Netscape. From the article: 'Mozilla's Usenet public newsgroups have been moved from netscape.public.mozilla.* to just mozilla.*. The renaming officially ends Mozilla's public Netscape news legacy after more than 8 years of active use. Most of the approximately 63 different newsgroups that began with the old moniker have now been officially abandoned.' Related: Earlier this week Netscape Communications released version 8.1 of its Netscape Browser."

Asriel86 writes "Pulling from the AFP newswire, Yahoo, CNN, and others have been reporting about how a gamer broadcast his own suicide on a gaming forum via a webcam, and that members of the forum continued to ridicule the gamer while he killed himself. Gaming Horizon has just learned that this is completely untrue. The newswire reporter failed to check the facts, and in turn painted this simple gaming forum into cruel monsters. The forum (hosted at metalgearsolid.org) has been taken offline at the request of Government agencies following these news reports."

Back in 2005 (last week) we sent Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner twelve of your questions. This year (this week), we have his answers. Enjoy!

CTho9305 writes "SeaMonkey 1.0 Beta is out! Since the alpha release in September, it has picked up numerous bugfixes, a new logo, and a few cool features (also discussed on the SeaMonkey blog). For those who don't know, SeaMonkey is the continuation of the Mozilla Suite after the Mozilla Foundation ceased shipping new releases, so if you liked Mozilla or Netscape be sure to try it."

Sara Chan writes "The Economist has a story about a trapeze artist who, in her spare time, is the Chief Lizard Wrangler at a non-profit. You perhaps know her as Mitchell Baker, leader of Firefox." From the article: "Ms Baker gradually found herself the leader of this project. Perhaps this is because she is a somewhat unusual member of the Netscape diaspora. For a start, she is a woman in a community populated, as one (male) colleague puts it, by geeky males with 'spare time and no social life'. Ms Baker herself has never even written code. She studied Chinese at Berkeley, and then became a lawyer--her role at the old Netscape was in software licensing. On all technical matters, she defers to Brendan Eich, her chief geek."

LnxAddct writes "NewsForge is reporting that the first official release of the Fedora Directory Server has been announced. This is good news for members of the open source community longing for an easy to use, enterprise class directory server. Fedora Directory Server is based off of Netscape Directory Server which Red Hat purchased a year ago and released as open source. Screenshots are available on their site." NewsForge is a Slashdot sister site.

Peaceful_Patriot writes "PCWorld's list of the 'Best Products of 2005' is out and Firefox tops the list. Also notables are GMail at number 2, Apple OS X, Tiger at number 3, Skype ranks in at 8 and Ubuntu at 26!" From their Firefox article: "Are you sick and tired of Internet Explorer? Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? Are you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century? Yeah, me too."

pdirty writes "Real networks may be close to winning a $750 million settlement agreement with Microsoft following Real's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. The deal would include Microsoft paying cash as well as advertising for Real services, and products through channels such as MSN. Real is holding a conference call after the closing bell today to announce the details." From the article: "The deal follows on the heels of the European Commission appointing a watchdog last week to monitor Microsoft's compliance with its antitrust ruling. The pact is the latest in a string of payments by Microsoft to settle charges, including $750 million in 2003 to Time Warner to end charges about Microsoft acting to suppress Netscape, and $1.95 billion to Sun Microsystems to settle a suit by Sun over Microsoft's use of incompatible Java technology."

TJ Parisi writes "News.com is reporting that HP / Compaq will begin to install all PCs sold in the US and Canada with Netscape. Users will be prompted with the option to set either Netscape or IE as the default browser." From the article: "The agreement, which the companies are set to announce Monday, is the first browser distribution deal with a major PC maker since the end of the browser wars in the 1990s, according to Netscape, a division of Time Warner's America Online subsidiary."

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is reporting that a fairly nasty exploit has been released for a security hole that Firefox patched just yesterday. This is sure to add fuel to the ongoing heated debate over whether Mozilla is any safer the Internet Explorer." From the article: "This is not your run-of-the-mill proof of concept exploit code. It appears to be quite comprehensive, and would allow any attacker to use it with only slight modifications. According to the advisory, the code is designed to be embedded in a Web site so that anyone computer visiting the evil site with Firefox or Netscape would open up a line of communication with another Internet address of the attacker's choice, effectively letting the bad guys control the victim computer from afar."

An anonymous reader writes "SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha was released last week. Users of the Mozilla Suite or Netscape should check it out - it contains numerous new features and bugfixes when compared to Mozilla 1.7, but offers the same basic look and feel. There are a few screenshots on the SeaMonkey blog showing off some of the features. For those who don't know, SeaMonkey is the continuation of the Mozilla Suite after the Mozilla Foundation ceased shipping new releases."

QED writes "Airgo Networks, a privately held maker of wireless networking components, said on Wednesday it has developed chips that will increase the Wi-Fi speed limit by a factor of four. The Palo Alto, California-based company, which designs its chipsets around Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO), a wireless technique that uses different radio channels to improve both speed and transmission quality, said it has achieved data rates up to 240 megabits per second (Mbps)... "

WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online. Further, you must have javascript enabled or face rejection. From the site: 'We are sorry for not being able to proceed your requests because you have failed our tests.' Opera and Netscape don't work either." Also reported at InformationWeek. From that story: "To file a claim online at FEMA's Individual Assistance Center, where citizens can apply for government help, the browser must be IE 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera. When TechWeb tested the site using Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.6, the message 'In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register' popped up on the screen." Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "Plans are afoot to remove support for SSL version 2.0 in Mozilla Firefox, reports MozillaZine portal. Mozilla Foundation is eager to disable support for SSL 2.0 and have all Firefox installations use only the newer and more secure SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 protocols." From the post: "Netscape Communications Corporation introduced SSL 2.0 with the launch of Netscape Navigator 1.0 in 1994. Netscape Navigator 2.0 included support for SSL 3.0 when it was released in 1996. The specification for TLS 1.0, essentially a standardized version of SSL 3.0 with some differences, was published in 1999."

Simon P. Chappell writes "I don't know about you, but I hardly bother with browser bookmarks any more. I used to have so many bookmarks, back in the early days of Netscape's 4 series, that I would have to regularly trim and edit my bookmark file to prevent my browser from crashing on startup -- that's a lot of bookmarks, folks! Now, I go to my favourite web search engine, enter a couple of appropriate search terms and voila, there's my page! Search engines are so ubiquitous that we rarely give much thought to the technology that powers them. Lucene in Action by Otis Gospodnetic and Erik Hatcher , both committers on the Lucene project, goes behind the HTML and takes you on a guided tour of Lucene, one of a generation of powerful Free and Open-Source search engines now available." Read on for the rest of Chappell's review.

An anonymous reader wrote to mention a Register article in which the possibility is raised of the current build dumping Yahoo and Google toolbars. At the same time, GWBasic writes "I've posted a review on IE 7 Beta 1. It is very clear that, unlike when Microsoft targeted Netscape, they are using their classic method of producing superior software by catering to the needs of the user. This is not IE 6 with a few features borrowed from the competition, but rather a clear step in the evolution of user-centric design." Flexbeta and ZDNet have looks at the new browser as well.

rm69990 writes "In a recently unsealed email in the SCO vs. IBM case, it appears that an outside consultant, hired by SCO in 2002, failed to find copyright violations in the Linux Kernel. This was right around the time Darl McBride, who has before been hired by litigious companies as CEO, was hired. It appears that before SCO even began its investigation, they were hoping to find a smoking gun, not believing that Linux could possibly not contain Unix code. Apparently, they ignored the advice of this consultant."