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One year after the debut of Firefox 1.0, and more than 100 million downloads later, Mozilla Corp. today released Firefox 1.5, the latest version of its acclaimed open source Web browser, available now as a free download from http://www.getfirefox.com. Firefox 1.5 builds upon the success of its predecessor to deliver an improved browser with significant performance and usability upgrades, security and privacy enhancements, best-in-class support for Web standards, and greater customization options.

Mr. Prentice: Who is your daddy?

Iain Ferguson actually wrote: "That idealism unfortunately manifests itself most often in online diatribes against Microsoft, in particular, and proprietary software, in general.

Gartner analyst Brian Prentice said recently the "flaming Linux bigots" who were prone to hyperbole and religious debates to advance their cause actually impeded the growth of Linux and open source software.

"People with strong ideological views are good for the community, [but] at the same time that ideology is prone towards hyperbole and religious debates around things," he told a conference in Sydney. "Those don't help us make sound business decisions."

This bunk deserves a quick analysis for its disinformation quotient.

You might want to look at the 25 Rules of Disinformation. Rule number two seems applicable: Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the "How dare you!" gambit.

Number five looks pretty good: Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as "kooks", "right-wing", "liberal", "left-wing", "terrorists", "conspiracy buffs", "radicals", "militia", "racists", "religious fanatics", "sexual deviates", and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

Comments by Tom Adelstein, Editor-in-Chief

PlayfullyClever writes "The entertainment industry has put itself on the fast-track to destruction, using well-proven tactics as explained in Preventing DVD Playback on Linux Like Prohibition in the 1920's. Are their heavy-handed tactics to lock up and control everything we touch signs of plain old human stubborness?" Or more likely- greed.

Backing up your data does not have to be hard, tedious, or expensive. This important process can be done with a few simple tools and some good, old-fashioned know-how. The method which we are going to go over is for POSIX-based (Linux/BSD/UNIX-like OSes) operating systems and leverages and open source application called Simple Backup Solution. This is a simple Python tool which has a GUI interface and is great for backing up the contents of a single system.

Bmac writes that legal DVD players exist for Linux. Can you switch the licensed components in these distributions to your own?

Related to:
The RIAA - Hollywood - DRM - Linux Suicide Pact

Mathew Broersma writes that Firefox rose to popularity after its 1.0 release in November 2004 as an alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer, lacking that browser's most serious security flaws. Now that the novelty has faded, however, some users are highlighting Firefox's shortcomings compared with competitors such as IE, Opera, Apple's Safari and the KDE project's Linux-based Konqueror.

As a fellow journalist, I find his words disturbing. You can find this sort of slant in the bowels of slashdot. Why would anyone want to subscribe to a magazine that says "now that the novelty has faded..." when referring to Firefox.

Firefox is not a novelty. It has achieved market share that the other browsers he mentioned cannot match. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has lost market share since Firefox became available. Novelties don't challenge monopolies like Microsoft.

Broersma's only real beef emerges when he writes:

One issue that has been getting attention since the Wednesday release of Firefox 1.5 is a bug that causes Mac OS X systems to use 100 percent of available processor resources in some cases, such as when scrolling in some Web-based applications (such as Google Maps) and holding down the mouse button.

The bug has been known since before the release of Firefox 1.0, but has never been fixed, critics noted. (The Mozilla project has assigned the issue bug no. 141710.)

Broersma mentions other problems with no authority other than "someone noted". Does this guy sound like a shill for Microsoft? What do you think?

Ghana's deputy minister of communications was in Cape Town this week and spent time at the city's Bandwidth Barn to gather ideas to form similar IT incubation projects in Ghana. The minister also talked about the value of open source software in developing his country's e-Government strategy.

Mozilla's servers weathered the release of Firefox 1.5 much better than last year's roll-out of 1.0, a Web performance company said Thursday, with the systems showing no evidence of downtime.

Mozilla's distributed network of mirror sites in 30 countries, said U.K.-based Netcraft, "appears to be handling current download demand with few difficulties."

Net Revenue Grows Seven Percent to $320 Million, Linux Subscriptions More Than Triple to 65,000, and Identity Solutions Grow 35 Percent Year Over Year

Philips Electronics China Group announced Wednesday that the company, together with Sony, IBM, Red Hat and Novell, has decided to join funds to create a joint venture-- the Open Invention Network (OIN), to purchase core patents of Linux operation system and offer them, free of charge, to any institutions or individuals. The effort is meant to aid the advancement of Linux and break the global dominance of Windows by Microsoft.

"IT service companies have been telling small businesses 'trust us' for a long time. With nowhere else to turn, our customers trusted us to deliver reliable and economical IT solutions. Was their trust misplaced? Happy with the status quo, failing to investigate or innovate alternatives, have we simply been feeding off our customers?"

I see a melancholy lesson here. Proprietary code can disappear when its company or creator goes away. With open-source code, however, your work can live on forever.

In a sharp change of public standpoint, the Electronic Freedom Foundation announced Wednesday that it has declined to submit comments in the US Copyright Office's DMCA rulemaking proceeding, denouncing the process as "too broken" with respect to consumers, and issuing a report that charges the Copyright Office with overstepping its legal authority.