ajm writes "The Scar is China Mieville's second novel set in the world of Bas-Lag. His first, Perdido Street Station, has already been reviewed on Slashdot. However, The Scar is not a sequel. Though the events it describes take place after those in Perdido Street Station, they don't depend on them. The setting isn't the city of New Crobuzon, and the story of Issac Dan der Grimneblin, Lin, and Yagharek is not continued in The Scar." Read on for the rest of ajm's review.

smd4985 writes "Next year MS will release a XP service pack that enables IE to block pop-up ads. Only a few years late. Maybe Mozilla.org/Opera should patent the technology to make it hard for Bill 'embrace and extend' Gates to kill those XCam ads...."

rocketjam writes "Web developers are expressing frustration with Microsoft's apparent abandonment of its 'operating-system-integrated' Internet Explorer web browser. An article on C-Net points up the efforts of the Web Standards Project as well as Adobe Systems to prompt Microsoft to fix long-standing Cascading Style Sheet bugs in IE as well as continuing to add other improvements which have virtually ceased since Microsoft won the browser war. While alternatives such as the Mozilla Project and the Opera browser still exist, their marketshare is miniscule." In a related story, an anonymous reader points out that the bugs aren't just in rendering, they're security holes as well: "iDefense and eEye have basically said that Internet Explorer is full of holes and just surfing the Web using it is "unsafe". There's 31 un-patched holes in IE, but MS won't talk about it... It took them nearly a month to roll out a new patch after this one was found to be more or less useless."

what_the_frell writes "Wired has an interesting article on the increased use of laptops as a replacement for a recording studio. The article touches on how music schools are requiring the purchase of a Powerbook and software for this very reason, and also highlights artists like Steve Vai who are moving over to the more portable platform. Does this mean I can finally record that rock opera I've always dreamed about?"

Robotech_Master writes "For a long time, A Fire Upon the Deep has been one of my favorite books. Combining interesting technological prognostication, fascinating concepts, amusing characters, and an enthralling story, this novel brings together science fiction and present-day science fact in a deeply compelling read. For a long time, this book had been available in electronic form from Palm Digital Media, and it was the first e-book I ever bought for my Palm PDA. Recently a new 'special edition' of the book was published electronically, containing the annotations that had previously only been available on the 1993 Hugo/Nebula CDROM, and I knew I had to make the purchase--and then, since I couldn't dig up any other mention of it on Slashdot, review it." Robotech Master warns that his (lengthy) review below of the updated version "contains some minor spoilers for plot, but not for ending."

Slashback tonight brings you more on the recent cracking of GSM encryption,the odds of file sharers escaping industry scrutiny in Canada, the recently found (and stomped) OpenSSH bug, installation-time ads in Mandrake, and more. Read on below for the details.

aWalrus writes "Microsoft has outlined some of the strategies they may pursue for modifying the way Internet Explorer handles plugins (annoying the user may circumvent the patent) if they lose their legal battle against Eolas Technologies (which claims they invented the seamless procedure for running plugins). There has already been a previous ruling against MS which they continue to appeal. This is likely to have repercussions in the Open Source Community too. If MS is found to be infringing the patent, that ruling could be extended to other browsers like Opera and Mozilla. Usability expert Jeffrey Zeldman provides an in-depth commentary on this issue and its implications."

ptaff asks: "Web developing can burn some braincells when trying to get a page to render fine in all browsers. Using XHTML/CSS on Win/Linux, thou can get a 'satisfying' result among PC browsers (MSIE, Mozilla-and-derivatives, Konqueror, Opera) - but when it comes to Apple browsers (Mac-MSIE, Safari, Omniweb, iCab, and others), and there's no Mac around to test, how can you tell if things will work out fine? I personally experienced a CSS border directive on an input tag that completely messed up a simple document. There are some CSS compatablity sheets (this comes to mind), but can you test further than that? is there any way a web developer can check for Apple-browser-compliance without a Mac?" If only HTML validation were as simple as submitting pages to the proper emulator, and viewing the results.

mpawlo writes "Wendy Seltzer was recently appointed staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Seltzer is also a fellow with the Berkman Center. Greplaw has picked Seltzer's brain on her new position with the EFF, Chilling Effects and the greatest opera tunes."

zpok writes "The Register runs an interview with the two only Mac OS X coders on the OpenOffice Project. In short: no, OO.org for Mac OS X won't be delayed until 2005, but they could really really use some help." jeblucas writes "There are new versions of Macromedia's media suite: Macromedia Studio MX 2004 with new versions of Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. There's also a professional version of Flash (for PDA, phone, and video authoring with direct links to Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier, and Avid Express) to be had for $700." A user writes, "Cricket Media has released a Mac OS X application for hardcore Netflix users who want to manage their accounts without using the website. The app is an interesting example of what can be done with WebKit." lordDallan writes "Opera had recently released Opera 6.03 for Mac OS X. Purchase of this version includes a free upgrade to 7.0 when it becomes available."

Misha writes "AMD has demonstrated a new Linux-based handheld at LinuxWorld. The OpenPDA runs on low-power Alchemy chips, with support for USB, Ethernet, UARTS. Here is press release. Among the highlights are: A comprehensive Metrowerks suit as the basis of OpenPDA applications, Qt, Java, Opera browser."

A lot is going on these days, ranging from the endlessly amusing SCO soap opera to plenty of mostly positive news about Linux and Open Source adoption by both corporate and government users, not to mention an increasing number of commercial applications being ported to Linux. And, of course, LinuxWorld is right around the corner. Bruce Perens is certainly as appropriate a person as any to help us get a handle on the current (and possibly future) state of Linux and Open Source. We'll send him 10 of the highest moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us. As usual, one question per post, please, and don't bother asking questions that can easily be answered with a couple of minutes' worth of online research.

eLoco asks: "What support do today's browsers have for XHTML? Maybe a better question would be: what support do the major browsers in current use have for formatting/display of XML with DTD defined? I don't have any browser prejudice per se (I use MSIE, Mozilla, Safari/KHTML, and Opera depending on the system I am working on and my mood), but I am primarily interested in the browsers with greater 'market share,' since my main reason for asking is this: If at least the "main" browsers in current use have decent support (vague, I know) for XHTML/XML rendering, why haven't we all converted over yet?" While it doesn't cover all browsers out there, this chart serves as a good starting point. For those of you working with application/xhtml+xml files, what issues have you run into when serving up your files to various browsers?

danny writes "Friends have been recommending Ken MacLeod's science fiction to me for some time, and I've finally read The Cassini Division. Read on for my review - and check out my other science fiction reviews." Nothing says the start of summer like some paperback science fiction.

Ant writes "Synopsis: Opera, Mozilla & Netscape with javascript enabled are vulnerable to remote command execution. This has been tested on Microsoft, and many many Unices. Macintosh may also be vuln. Ironically enough, IE is unaffected." Update: 06/08 23:56 GMT by H : The problem seems to be one in the Java security model itself; but the evidence seems to be that if you turn off JavaScript, you turn off the vulnerability. Update: 06/09 00:56 GMT by T : According to this followup message from Mozilla security group member Daniel Veditz, the problem is actually one that's already been fixed in Mozilla 1.3, and not a remote command execution vulnerability at all. (Thanks to reader Jared Klett and others.)

EconolineCrush writes "Futuremark and NVIDIA have been embroiled in a spat over various cheat/optimizations in 3DMark03 for several weeks now. Last week, the soap opera appeared to be over; Futuremark and NVIDIA released a joint statement in which Futuremark clarified that NVIDIA was optimizing its drivers for 3DMark03 rather than cheating. This story, however, appears to be far from over. Tech Report has uncovered a new series of optimizations in NVIDIA's Detonator FX drivers that affect image quality in even Futuremark's latest 3DMark03 build. What's more, if you rename the 3DMark03 executable, the optimizations disappear."

hoist2k writes "CNET is reporting that Opera 7 is going to be released for Mac OS X. I might have to take advantage of their discount for buying the Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all at once!" Opera 6.02 is slated for release on Thursday (the download page currently has Opera 6.0 for Mac OS and Mac OS X, though it erroneously says it is only for Mac OS). Opera 7 is expected "soon," with no word given in the CNET articles for whether it will be for Mac OS X only.

Wee writes "I happened to notice this morning that Opera 7 for Linux has been released. New features include fastforward and rewind, the ability to take notes in conjuction with web pages, a cookie manager, a password manager, and a very serviceable integrated email client called M2 (which was previously only available for the Windows version). Version 7 of Opera also represents a complete code rewrite, from the rendering engine up, and the improvements are fairly significant. Mirrors for debs, rpms and tarballs are on Opera's download page."

book_reader asks: "I recently came across a set of (the alas) out of print The Phoenix Legacy by M. K. Wren. This is/was an amazingly good classic space opera trilogy. So it got me thinking...what other great sci-fi books have vanished into the ether that I don't know about?"

LevJohnson writes "KCGeek gives a gushing review of EVE Online, the new MMORPG space opera for PC by CCP Games, with screenshots from the beta. From the review: 'It's like Trade Wars 2002, had it been designed in 2002.'" Now the NDA is lifted ahead of its release next month (press release), there are some great guides and handy previews to this intriguing title.