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."

AtariDatacenter asks: "Randomly surfing the Web, I stumbled across Intel's Open Arcade Architecture overview. It was billed as an open architecture PC reference platform for the arcades and the home. Was Microsoft's X-box a response to this, or was this a failed attempt by Intel to fight back?"

Keepiru writes "AOL is the target of a class action lawsuit that accuses it of violating federal privacy laws." Basically it says that the SmartDownload feature in communicator is dumping back user download information to big brother, and this violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Mozilla's latest milestone, M17, arrived today(ish); early adopters, go thou and download. And while you're waiting, check out this summary of the state of the art of PNG written by Greg Roelofs. PNG is ready for prime time in its Mozilla incarnation (though there are a few outstanding issues). Imminent takeover of the net predicted. Film at 11. Update later by J: OK, so M17 isn't available yet. Mea culpa; Greg and I misread a planning page. Here are Greg's comments/corrections to clear up the matter.

Element5 asks: "Recently I've noticed more and more Web pages are requiring plug-ins to be viewed at all. Most notable of these such pages are movie sites. Some sites are built entirely with Director or Flash (I only use Flash as an example as it is seemingly the most prevalent plug-in requirement out there). Am I the only one who finds this trend disturbing? It's almost as if Web site developers are skipping the whole process of learning HTML entirely and instead rely on an authoring tool based on a proprietary technology. Don't get me wrong, Macromedia's products are fantastic ones; but I'd much rather see them used in throw-away aspects of a Web site that can be dropped if a user doesn't have the plug-ins, or on a site which also hosts an HTML version with exactly the same features. At any rate, I'm just wondering what other people think about this trend." Read on...

David Symonds asks: "We've all known our fair share of easter eggs, in the form of hidden screens or messages that are activated by a certain keystroke sequence, or clicking on a certain pixel, and so on. Easter Eggs have been around for ages, from the old "xyzzy" command for "Colossal Cave" (a text-based adventure), to that move in International Karate (for the C64) which would cause your opponents pants to drop, to the various "about:..." entries in Netscape. My question is, are Easter Eggs a dying breed, and has anyone found any good ones in open source software?" I've always thought that the best Easter Eggs in Free Software was found in the comments of the source-code. What was your favorite easter-egg? I remember the secret room from the Atari 2600 Adventure game, mainly because I had found that one all on my own.

Wister285 writes: "In a rather intersting turn of events, Netscape co-founder Jim Clark said that he would rather see Microsoft's Internet Explorer stay with the Windows software, should the company be broken up as planned, despite Microsoft's promised appeals. He says that the Microsoft-Other-Software-Company could use the software in a more harmful manner than Microsoft-Windows-Company would. Makes sense... Microsoft-Other Software-Company has a larger grasp on the market (which would most likely be all OSs)." The difficulty with directed outcomes raises its ugly little head again. Where's Harry [that's "Hari" -- mea culpa. timothy] Seldon when you need him?

An anonymous reader writes "A Debian General Resolution for removing the non-free section from Debian archives is being discussed by Debian Folks and the debate is turning into a flamefest. The proposal is aimed to clarify the position of Debian toward Free Software and the fact that non-free is not (and has never been) a part of the Debian System. But this would exclude packages such as Netscape, the JDK or pine of the Debian archives and opponents argue that the proposal breaks the section 5 of the Debian Social Contract. Here's where it started." Since I'm not a Debian Maintainer (hey, but a few of my old apps are in there, can I vote? ;) I've only got an opinion. I think Debian users should be able to install things like Netscape and Pine too, but I think they should be told the implications. The reality tho, is that if it gets yanked from non-free, other servers will pick it up. Maybe that is the hint that the non-free section is different from Debian's goal. Some people use Debian because it's better, not because it's the most free.

Leto2 asks: "I was wondering what the preferred way of setting up a local cache is. Since I'm low on RAM, and my computer swaps a lot, I installed a squid-proxy on a spare computer in my room. But now I wonder, would it be beneficial to use a squid-proxy instead of a Netscape/IE disk-cache in general? Are there differences between the caching-mechanisms that would make one preferable over the other."

Chris Benard asks: "I frequently have problems with X just taking control of my keyboard, but not my mouse. My mouse still moves, but it isn't able to interact with X (not unlike a windows freeze). However, I would like to know if there is a program to listen on a serial port for commands and execute them as root. I have an HP48G calculator, and I would like to make a few short commands to execute from it to my serial port, such as killall -9 X and killall -9 netscape-communicator. Please let me know of any programs existing and any SDKs that I might use to produce my own program. " Has anyone managed to come up with a hack that might work for this situation?

Moderator writes: "Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft ported Internet Explorer to FreeBSD? Apparently, someone else thinks so, and set up a petition for Microsoft to port IE to FreeBSD. Hey, I'm no Microsoft lover, but IE is better than Netscape." Hmm. Personally, I'm more of a "xterm -geometry =120x50 -e w3m" man, but to each his own I suppose.

theguy writes: "HP is offering a refund for dissatisfied Jornada owners. Hooray, I'm a big HP fan and its good to see some of the big ones listen." Check out the original news bit we wrote about this, if you're just tuning in.

Jason Haas writes: "We now have instructions for playing MPEG movies under LinuxPPC, and they're posted on our Web site on this page. Sam Lantinga of Loki Software wrote a number of the utilities we use (thanks!), along with one by Jan Hubicka. Happily, they're all in RPM format, which shouldn't be a problem for anyone to handle. We also have instructions for editing Netscape's setup to automagically play MPEGs when they're downloaded. It is most cool to see and hear your LinuxPPC box playing a movie." Maybe I can find a nice cheap green iMac to try this on.

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.

mjgamble writes: "PHP 4.0 Release Candidate 2 is out. Check it out here. From the site: Highlights of this release include support for new Web servers (Zeus, Netscape Enterprise, Apache Win32 module), improved portability of the Unix build framework and tons of bug fixes. We expect this to be the final release candidate before PHP 4.0. " I've found the PHP4 RCs to be extremely stable. If you are only familiar with PHP3, take a look. You should also look at the Zend site, to read more about the engine behind PHP4.

The source code for this news story is the bugzilla report, so read the source if you really want to know what's going on. Mozilla's M15 build has a feature to block webpage images that come from another site: it blocks banner ads. The feature's a little buggy, but it could probably be worked out. Four weeks ago, the feature was removed: "it went the way of management decree" says a Netscape employee. It sounds like AOL-Time-Warner-Netscape didn't want an ad-unfriendly feature in the web browser they're financing. But Mozilla contributors say this has been misinterpreted. What's the real story?

Nick writes: "Salon has an interesting interview with Napster CEO Eileen Richardson. She brings up some good analogies about Napster, mp3 and the music industry." And nevertheless points out that the 9th Circuit Northern District court has ruled that Napster is not protected as a service provider by the DMCA: "Judge Patel's opinion is available in PDF form." Napster hasn't lost the suit yet but they've lost what could have been a valuable legal defense.

charper writes: "News.com is reporting that a firm hired by Metallica has fingered more than 335,000 Napster users (who were allegedly) trading their music. They're seeking to have them banned from Napster. " Check out our original piece, and remember - you can always PayLars!

Rob Kaper writes: "The KDE team has launched www.konqueror.org, a site devoted to their browser component for KDE2. "Konqi" can do HTML4, CSS2, SSL, Java, Javascript, SMB shares and soon even Netscape plug-ins such as Flash. I've seen it in action and looks like a very worthy competitor to Mozilla."

C. Adam Kuether asks: "I like the concept of the open directory project and am considering joining the effort and contributing my bit to organizing the Web. I am concerned about the ownership rights to this compilation. The useage agreements seem reasonable enough now, but what assurance is there that this work will not become just another asset of the Time/Warner/AOL (read Netscape) media empire? Could this project convert to a legally enforceable open and free use license? Are the existing open content licenses practical? "