Napster Shut Down!
In a major victory for the Recording Industry Association of America, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel today ordered that Napster, Inc. shut down it's music-swapping service by midnight this Friday. The decision was a shock to both Napster and the RIAA, which had predicted that a ruling would not come until next week.
"Napster wrote the software, it's up to them to write software that will remove from users the ability to copy copyrighted material," Patel said. "They created a monster - that's the consequence they face."
ICQ Now Ad-ware?
In a move that was not entirely unexpected, America Online took advantage of ICQ's little known 'Auto Update' Monday, modifying all ICQ
2000a clients to display advertisements while using its 'Send URL' and Birthday features. The ads are 335x57 pixels and appear below the ICQ windows.
First noticed by Internet "counter culture" group, The Kult, ICQ users started seeing advertisements late Monday afternoon after launching the ICQ application. Based on initial observations, it seems ICQ must be restarted before Auto Update kicks in to patch the client. For those not yet affected, the Auto Update feature can still be disabled before the client is patched. Although Auto Update can no longer be turned off by the ICQ preferences dialog, there is a registry value that can be changed to give the same effect.
Mozilla Team Responds
About a month ago, we took your questions regarding one of the most contentious open source projects in existence. Two years ago, Netscape
Communications released the source code to its once mighty Communicator Web browser in an effort to save the browser - and thus the company -
from Microsoft's increasing market leverage.
Did the gamble pay off? That's the question we asked some of the Netscape-employed contributors to the endeavor that has become known as Mozilla, on the eve of its first commercial incarnation: Netscape 6.0.
RealPlayer 7 Update 1 Available
RealNetworks has released Update 1 for RealPlayer 7, it's popular streaming media program. Kari Day, of RealNetworks stated "Net2Phone's IP Telephony Software will be bundled with RealPlayer 7 Update 1 for Windows, enabling millions of RealPlayer users to experience Net2Phone's PC-based Internet telephony services." Read more about it from BetaNews.
Update 1 also includes enhancments to Real's new messaging service, which enables users to be notified when new entertainment content or breaking news is available. The Real.com Message Service can now inform users when there are new movie trailers, music releases, and the video/music download of the day.
Last Chance to Ask the Mozilla Team
BetaNews' interview with Mozilla.org is rapidly approaching, and on Tuesday, March 14, we will stop taking user questions. Do not miss the opportunity to submit your questions to the Mozilla team! For more details, read our previous article, Ask the Mozilla Team Anything!.
Mozilla Releases Final Pre-Beta Milestone
Mozilla.org has taken another large step towards shipping a fully
functional version of it's open source web browser, by releasing Mozilla
Milestone 14 this afternoon. Milestone 14 is considered the last
milestone before Netscape Communicator 6.0's first beta, which will
coincide with Mozilla's second anniversary a month from now.
A recent decision by Netscape will result in cryptography (encryption) components being included in a later release of M14, a highly demanded feature by advocates of the new browser. Daniel Nunes, an "Arborist" for the mozilla source code tree, says we will probably see these additions next week. A recent post to the Mozilla.org crypto newsgroup by Bob Lord, Manager for Security Engineering at Netscape, indicated that initial support for the HTTPS protocol would be included.
Ask the Mozilla Team Anything!
eFront has lined up an interview with some of the key people behind Netscape's next generation Web browser, Mozilla. Here's your chance to ask the folks of the contentious open-source project questions about the endeavor, where it's been, and where it's going.
The interview will take place shortly after Milestone 14, which may be considered the first version near beta quality. To ask a question, post a comment below. If you aren't registered with eFront, you can sign-up here, or e-mail us your question. At the time of the interview, eFront will pick the most interesting and insightful questions and relay them to the Mozilla team.
AtGuard Sells Out to Symantec
Considered by many to be genuinely a "fine product", AtGuard was a
personal firewall, privacy retainer, ad blocker, pop-up killer, and bandwidth
saver rolled into one easy to use product. AtGuard technology will be used in
Symantec's upcoming Norton Internet Security 2000 suite, which has no announced
release date. WRQ will stop selling AtGuard at then end of today, November
22nd, and will stop supporting the product December 22nd. Naturally, registered
users of AtGuard are concerned about how the deal will affect them.
Others, are downright ticked. "Words just don't describe how purely
angry I am at WRQ's decision to pass AtGuard on to Symantec," Says Tom Gilmore,
a user. "WRQ blew it, in the most despicable fashion possible."
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