Would you believe a book review written by someone who calls himself "bs" about a book called The Truth? Believe it. Terry Pratchet is hard to pin down -- is this humor? Unadulterated absurdity? Clever satire? More real than real? Whatever it is, it's The Truth.

Many of you wrote in to note that the latest version of Opera is now free... except for the part that it runs commercials while you browse. (The option still exists to buy the commercial free version if you like). The Linux version is still in a 4.x beta, and I'm unsure if this advertising thing will also be applied to the other platform. What do you guys think of ads in your software? Is it worth giving up your privacy for a free binary, or paying fifty bucks for the binary? Personally, I'll stick to mozilla.

rafa writes "Linuxworld has an informal comparison between Netscape 6, Mozilla, Opera and Netscape 4.7 with focus on resource usage. It reflects what I've been experiencing with Mozilla." A lot of this is well known, but the article does a good job of bringing it all together.

The pace of cultural change in the western world has accelerated so rapidly that it's reached the breaking point, according to the late anthropologist Margaret Mead. And that was before the Net, and the ascent of role playing and electronic gaming. No longer a subculture, gaming is becoming our ascendant culture, growing more than any other cultural form, sparking a moral panic and affecting the way people think, play, learn, communicate and work. First in a series.

Keith Whitsitt wrote in to say that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, is writing his autobiography. Published by HarperCollins, co-authored by David Diamond, entitled "Just for Fun:The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary". The article is pretty funny, talking about how it will reflect Torvalds "Quirky irreverent personality" as well as how it will be about business, Linus, and Linux. Hell I'll read it, but isn't Linus a bit young for the autobiography? I keep pitching my epic space opera about alien robots who infest our planet and live off celebrities dryer lint to various publishers, but nobody wants to publish a book written by a leader of mexican food, and starring a hero named Litmus VanCenturfuge and his sidekick Pipet Jerks. I keep telling them my parents would buy copies. I bet Linus will sell copies to people besides his parents.

Here is your regular irregular dose of Slashdot story updates and obsessive compulsion -- some of it sad, some amusing, some utterly neutral and of no caloric value. For instance: You can win more than 50 of Roblimo's personal dollars if you work really hard, and wait a really long time.

Euro was the first to point out: "I happened to browse the Opera Web site and discovered this juicy nugget: Opera 4.0b1 for Linux is available for download. Seems like the Linux browser front is getting better all the time." Well, sure. But it's been a long, long, long, long, long, long, long time.

Of course DBZ is shunned by the hardcore anime fans, but I enjoy it (20 minutes of soap opera every evening on my tivo *grin*) and have been bored all summer with the reruns. But all that changes today at 5pm when Cartoon Network begins airing the 77 episode Android Saga. Planet Namek has also confirmed that the remaining 174 DBZ episodes have also been purchased by CN. Also, the very cool site AnimeOnDvd.com has a list of Anime on DVD which includes DBZ, Tenchi, and Battle Athletes (I've recently started rewatching battle athletes while I wait for the next Bebop and Trigun, and I'm enjoying even more the second time through. Super happy fluffy, but highly entertaining). Oh, and Cowboy Bebop #5 is out tomorrow. Yum.

Eric Harlow writes: "Microsoft's newly released Internet Explorer 5.5 is trying to do something Microsoft was worried that Netscape might do -- make the browser a platform. Of course, now that IE has 86% of the market, it can lure developers into using flashy new tools that leave Netscape users out of the dust since the new IE has all kinds of 'IE only' features -- and they haven't managed to fix standard items as CSS." Here's the CNET story; a snippet reads: "Together, the proprietary innovation and the purported faults in standards compliance mean that Web pages created to work for IE--widely considered to be the dominant browser--won't work with browsers from Netscape, Opera Software and other providers."

After being purchased from Amiga earlier this year, former marketing execs Bill McEwen and Fleecy Moss are back on the road to building Amiga into the multi-platform, multimedia-savvy company that the fans have been begging for. Well known for being an on-again, off-again brand name, it looks as though things may have settled down long enough for the new team to make a difference.

drnomad writes "Finally after months of waiting, the Norwegian company Opera has announced their 4th technology preview of Opera for linux available for download. " They've got a good list of what's going on - as well as a Deb of the preview.

The idea drives the intelligentsia nuts, but it's becoming clearer all the time that culture isn't being destroyed online but re-invented here. This sensibility is behind a new Web site that takes the culture of gaming as seriously as it deserves to be. (Read More)

We got a lot of (shall we say) slightly impertinent questions for Web Standards Project co-founder Jeffrey Zeldman, but that's okay. He reads Slashdot and knows the nature of the beast, and he's hard-core enough to give as good as he gets. So set your humor module to high, then sit back and enjoy Mr. Zeldman's (appropriately impertinent) answers to the 12 questions we forwarded to him.

_xeno_ writes "psx.ign.com has a story that includes screen shots about Final Fantasy IX. This game is the last Final Fantasy game for the PlayStation, as future FF games will be for the PlayStation2. Apparently FFIX will be going back to the older-school Final Fantasy - that means swords and sorcery, MP, shorter summons, and characters that are drawn anime-style as opposed to FFVIII's attempt at having 'realistic' characters." Hey, maybe this time we won't have a big soap opera, either. A guy can dream, can't he?

Brian De Palma can direct fun movies, even good movies, but never go into one of his movies expecting too much. Written by the brothers who gave us Predator and Wild Wild West, his awful latest Mission to Mars opened this weekend. YRO authors Michael and Jamie were so appalled by this piece of work that they insisted on panning it together, and Jon Katz added his own, slightly hopeful voice to the flaying. Read more for serious spoilers ...

We gathered questions for Jakob Nielsen Monday; here are the answers. Interesting, possibly even essential reading for anyone involved in software or Web site design.

A sequel to the original, Fantasia 2000, is a series of animated shorts based on eight works of classical music, including one segment from the original Fantasia: The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Review by Joshua Marinacci.

Do any of you read newspapers regularly, or see a future for them? (This column was inspired by an e-mail from a newspaper editor, asking me if I knew what might make the people who read Slashdot want to read daily papers. I said I didn't know, but that I would ask.) I suspect a lot of newspaper people will read your answers. Read more on my thoughts and post your own below:

Senator and GOP presidential frontrunner of the week John McCain (R-Ariz.) gave a little talk this afternoon practically in the Geek Compound's back yard. Billed by a local group as a town meeting on censorware, with handouts on "Internet porn filters" passed around beforehand, this roving reporter was dying to find out what would be said. Click for more...

Mal_ writes "The first alpha version of Opera for Linux has been released. There are still a number of key features missing, but rendering of HTML 3.2 and 4.0, and CSS is apparently working. The release is binary only, and requires GLIBC 2.1 and kernel 2.2.*, although the team are working on several other Unix ports. You can get more info and download the binary at the Opera Web Site. " Update: 01/05 03:00 by N : Reports are coming in that this beta also works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI. Chris Piazza has made this screenshot available.