CNet reports that some critics are saying Netscape 6 was released at the wrong time, and problems with the release indicate Netscape should have waited until its
open-source group, Mozilla.org, released its own version 1.0 browser, which isn’t due for another five
months.

From The Register: “Hacker legend Kevin Mitnick’s prison ID card has finally found a home on auction
site Dutchbid.com after being yanked by socially-conscious competitors eBay,
Yahoo! and Amazon, who judiciously draw the line at Nazi memorabilia. The item has attracted two bids thus far and stands at $1400. An autographed ‘Free
Kevin’ bumper sticker will sweeten the pot for the eventual proud owner. “

A ZDNet column asks: “Would anyone miss Corel if if left the Linux market? … Corel has never seemed to grasp where the Linux market was, is, or is going.”

Slashdot readers discuss the annoucement from the European Patent Office saying software patents will not be granted for another year.

Reuters reports: Transmeta officials say flawed Crusoe chips may have been used on other laptops besides Japan’s NEC, which is recalling 284 computers with faulty chips, but it was unlikely that the chips are in other computers.

From Internet Wire: Multicast Technologies, Inc., announced today that the company is releasing the Internet’s first
multicast audio player, The MCT Player. The MCT Player is available to the public starting today, November 29, 2000, as a FREE downloadable file on the
company’s audio station, www.On-The-I.com . The MCT Player is the first to deliver CD quality sound and the first to track multicast traffic. The MCT Player
also features Staggered Erasure Protection, a patent pending technology developed by Multicast Technologies that corrects for missing data, which
otherwise causes drop-outs in sound.

The MCT Player is being released under an open-source license, which will enable other programmers to contribute
improvements to subsequent player updates.

From a press release at LWN.net: “Reasons to use this:
* More hardware detected. If you still have any hardware you think we
should be able to autodetect, we would love to know.
* Kickstart is as always very close, but we never got it all the way. Sorry.
* Installer now lets you specify serveral network cards along with
serveral nameservers.
* We think it is pretty stable, and would love for you to agree with us.” Here’s a more formal press release.

Slashdotters talk about a CNet interview with Sun COO Ed Zander in which he brings up the often-repeated fear that Linux will fragment: “The thing with Linux today — I call it the bathtub. I can throw source in there. It’s all floating around and it’s available to everybody. But I as a
vendor can take anything I want out of that bathtub and call it Linux.

Now if you think that’s going to work for application developers, call me in a year or two when IBM’s Linux is different than HP’s Linux is
different than Dell’s Linux and (a customer) will have to recompile five times. You’ve broken it effectively. So you cannot depend on one Linux.”

On ZioBudda.net (the Italian Linux Portal) there is a review (in italian language) of the italian book “Imparare Linux in 24ore” (say: how to learn Linux programming in 24h).
From the original: “Sono davvero lieto di poter recensire uno dei pochi libri in italiano che parlino della programmazione sotto Linux, soprattutto se il testo in questione è davvero di buon livello…”
–Michel Morelli

Microsoft today released a free 120-day downloadable version of
its Commerce Server 2000 software, which is slated to be
generally available at retail outlets next month, reports ZDCOUK.