Well its a slow day, and since I saw GalaxyQuest last night, I figured I'd pop up and write a quick review of the film. The quick summary is that it stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman, and it is a sort of parody/lampoon of Star Trek, Trekkies, and the whole Trek phenomenon. The quick rating is that if you've got a sense of humor, you'll enjoy it. Read on for more stuff, and hopefully with minimal spoilers.

Wil Mahan writes "According to the LWN daily updates page, a beta version of the Opera browser has been released for Linux, and is available at Metalab (1.9 MB). Looks like Opera fufilled its promise of a full public beta before Christmas."

Apparently the folks who make the Opera Web Browser have updated their status on the Linux version of Opera. They also have a screenshot in there and are hoping to get a version out before Christmas - barring any unforseen problems.

bigdan writes "A new interview with the lead programmer of the Linux team porting Opera has him (Darren Starr) stating that they hope to have a public beta by Christmas (of Opera 4.0). The interview also goes on to mention a Sparc version coming soon. "

We all know about Mozilla. It's one of the major 'poster children' for the entire Open Source concept. Build 9, Build 10, Build 11, and so on. Someday there will be a Mozilla that will run without crashing, and we'll love it. Someday. Then there's Opera's Linux - and BeOS, Mac, EPOC and OS/2 - ports. Over the last week we've had 100+ readers submit the news that (proprietary shareware) Opera for Linux is close to beta release. But there's another potentially exciting Linux browser in the works that has hardly gotten any publicity. (continued)

reformhead writes "Just found this article over at Canoe about how The Who's Pete Townshend is planning on releasing 3 box sets of his rock opera "Lifehouse". The third box set will be a limited edition that will include a software key you can use to import personal data about yourself that will in turn be used to generate an individual piece of music for you. " 1. Pete Townshend==God. 2. Generative Music==Cool. 3. The original Lifehouse was based on this same idea, but its pretty cool that its finally gonna happen. And if any of Townshend's PR people stumble on this, I wanna interview Pete for Slashdot.

S7 writes "Opera Software has indicated that it is currently diversifying its browser to accomodate a wider flavour of Linux distributions, not just RedHat and its derivatives. Hope they finish soon!" Yeah, I know Mozilla is going to have wonderful features like instant messenger and changeable themes and I don't know what-all else if and when it ever gets end user-usable, but Opera is a plenty good enough browser for the likes of me; it's fast, compact, simple, and reliable, all of which are software qualities I admire immensely. In fact, the only two things I really miss from Windows are Opera and NoteTab, which is IMO the worlds's finest text processing tool for online journalists. Now that Opera's on its way to Linux, all I need is a Linux version of NoteTab or something like it and I'll be in PC heaven!

There's been quite a bit of attention to Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon as well as The Diamond Age. The Big U, reviewed here by Sebbo, is one of his earliest books. Click below to read more - and to try your hand at the questions at the end of the review.

Samawi writes "Opera Software has issued this interview with cofounder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner. Highlights include screenshots, a new text only browser to compete with Lynx support for Free BSD and other variants of UNIX/X11 (using cross-platform features of Qt). I can't wait to retire good 'ol buggy and bloated Netscape:-) " Its a bit thin on the details, but its nice to know that its coming.

By Hollywood standards, the "The Blair Witch Project" is shockingly Lo-Tech, employing none of the expensive techno-tricks that increasingly overwhelm movie after movie. But the BWP, thumping expensive hi-tech competitors like "The Haunting" and "Deep Blue Sea," uses technology brilliantly, if minimally, in its making and marketing. Here's to a new Lo-Tech genre in cinema.

Steelehead wrote in to tell us that Opera Software's Project Magic page has a Linux Port. From their page: "The Linux port of Opera will be built on the new and redesigned Opera 4.0 code....the entire front and user interface in Qt...you, the Linux user, should have the latest version of our code along with the Windows user. "

Migrant Programmer writes "Opera Software has finally announced a prototype of Opera for Linux. It will be shown at the Expo this week.. a speedy, efficient browser for a speedy, efficient operating system. Check their news page and the Project Magic page for more information. "

Oliver Lineham writes "My friend and I have found a security flaw in the implementation of cookies in Navigator, Internet Explorer, and Opera. The full details of this bug are on the Cookie Monster advisory, including a working demonstration. The problem is to do with the way the browsers restrict the "domain" setting on domains outside the US. There are several implications arising from this bug. "

David Raufeisen writes "Opera Software has had an ongoing project to port its lightweight web browser to non-ms operating systems such as Linux,macos,BeOS and OS/2. In their latest status report they noted that the Linux and Macos teams have failed and they are shifting the project to another team, Delays suck.. I personally can't weight to try out their web browser in Linux.. I used it heavily in windows before and it is superb. "

Microsoft is not going to wait for the outcome of its trial with the DOJ before attacking Linux. The battle scene is France, where Microsoft's new (expendable?) regional director Marc Chardon has just issued an open letter to his clients. Click below to read the translation of the Linux-section (it's in French) and some commentary.

A new study came out today, containing it in the estimated market share of each of the major browsers. For the first time, it appears that Netscape's Communicator fell below the 50% mark. Internet Explorer is up to 27.5%, the AOL version of IE is at 16.1%, Netscape is at 41.5%, and "other browsers" rose to 14.7%. Well, looks like Opera is doing better at least. (/me looks for silver lining)

Brett A. Thomas writes "The Opera guys have hired contractors to do Linux, BeOS, Mac and Solaris versions (no release dates, yet)." Very cool. Opera is a speed demon- I dig fast.

This is fairly sizable. Michael McLagan, better known to most readers as the brave soul responsible for Linux.org has written a response to the criticism he has recieved lately about the web site. I feel Linux.org is an important resource and Michael is working hard to do a good job. I think it's important that we work together to make sure that Linux.org is all it should be. I guess the first step is to hit the link below and read what he has to say, and talk about it.

Just going to take a minute here to throw a few notes out to everyone so I can stop getting a few of these FAQs in my mailbox. hit the link below to read several notes, some of which are quite important and some of which, well, really don't matter much in the grand scheme of things. I cover fonts, NS2/Opera, Flat Comments, Mugs, CDs, Books, Southpark and MST.

Allright I have a whole slew of announcements worth making related to the site, so I'm just going to get them out in a bundle. First off, the variable width thing is now working pretty well. Hopefulyl everybody likes it. Next, we've been having server problems- I'm not sure if its Mysql, Mod_perl, or one of my scripts, it just seems that occasionally the database connections slip up. Quite wierd. Hit the link below to read a bunch more notes.