If you want to get muddy without paying huge corporations for the privilege, you may be interested in an Open Source MUD Engine some whippernappers have put together. If the idea of a WAP browser for the VIC20 is just a bit too obscure (and you don't have an spare PC to use as a proxy for it), have no fear. More on "enterprise level" features (take 2 buzzwords and call me in the morning), and how DigitalConvergence is being beaten with a Cue stick. All this and more, below.

LLurex writes: "There's a short comment and screenshot on Ian Schmidt's Wine Page about everyone's favourite Windoze Emulator finally running Excel2000 and Word2000 (imho the only really good applications Microsoft ever published)! No more lame excuses, time to switch OS ..." The screenshot of Excel looks pretty much, well, like a screenshot of Excel. With this, two of the most persistent reasons not to run Linux appear to be fading; of course, what's to stop Microsoft from releasing versions that won't work under Wine, ever? That could be a good reason to stick with GNUmeric and pico.

chromatic is back with a mini-compendium of introductory Linux texts -- and yes, they have the famously protected "Dummies" trademark. Don't scoff at the nature of these books, though; the skill of translating the arcana of any computer topic (and boy are they all arcane to the uninitiated!) into language that mom, kids and the guy down the street can understand is not a common one. If you don't know what a root prompt (or an editor) is, or why you might want one, it's hard to do much else with your system.

Interested in a free domain for your open-source project? Huh, are ya? "Too bad, sucker," says the .cx registrar. On the other hand, you can drink beer (or sarsparilla) and talk tech with folks smarter than your average bear, create poetry using such fine poetic-sounding things as "Python" and "Java," and even let other people know the names of those who you would call Spammers. Read on, if the gist is really not enough.

kuros writes: "Apparently, these guys feel the time has come for a MS Windows clone. The Open Windows Project aim is to create a 100% Microsoft Windows compatible operating system that is totally "free" of Microsoft proprietary code. As its name implies, O.W. will be completly open source and freely re-distributable. Open Windows will draw from current open source projects to expedite its production. These include: GXExplorer, FreeDOS, ReactOS and WinE. You may have seen similar projects that intend to use a modified version of Linux, etc. Open Windows will not be a Linux distribution; it will be written Windows compatible from the ground up." Without all the APIs, is this even feasible? (And after that, is it desirable?)

identity0 asks: "I was looking at old Slashdot stories, and there seems to be a few stories about various console emulators being sued for copyright and/or patent infringement. Now I have a question: is there a legal difference between "hardware emulators" like the console emulators, and "software emulators" like WINE? And what are the legalities of both kinds of emulators? The WINE FAQ says it's not an emulator because 'Wine provides low-level binary compatibility, but currently only for OSes running on Intel-compatible chips.' - but since Windows also only runs on Intel boxes, I think I can call it an emulator."

zigzag noted a nice article Summarizing the Wine Architecture. It has some interesting technical stuff, as well as poll results asking what Wine's priorities should be (running Office came first, followed by games. I vote games, but I'm sick of having to run Diablo2 on my crappy old laptop w/o 3D Acceleration since it's my only windows box). Anyway, not a lot there, but this is a seriously important project so take a gander.

ikekrull asks: "I am, like many, stuck behind an MS Proxy Server 2 'firewall'. MS Proxy Server 2, refuses to route anything that doesn't go through a Windows-only MS Proxy Client. Supposedly it supports SOCKS5, but I have heard from various people that this support is also broken except for Windows clients. Is there a way, short of replacing the MS Proxy server with something a little more sane, to make non-Windows Operating Systems work behind this 'firewall'? Can I run another piece of proxying software alongside Proxy Server 2 just to service my Linux machines?"

Sukru Tikves writes "Today on Wine Weekly News' future issue I read from that ' The Wine team is preparing to begin on the road towards the long-awaited Wine 1.0 release, but there's still some way to go, and many usability issues to clean up before even a public beta release is possible. While the wizards churn out the machine-readable source code, the Wine Weekly News plan to help by providing human-readable language mere users can read. ' "

Welcome again to Slashdot's continuing education program. Take a seat, say hello to your neighbor (using #slashdot might help), pretend we never said that other stuff. Here's another smidgeon of truth, clarification and equivocation we've spritzed over the usual mishmash of lies, intentional misstatements and strained obfuscation that is the Slashdot home page. Enjoy!

Snaller writes "Everquest is an online roleplaying game where you have to work for long hours online to get your hands on the magical items... unless you buy them. Buy them in game using game currency, or on Ebay where players have been spending real dollars on buying virtual items. After you pay, you meet the seller in game and, hopefully, you get the item you payed for. But no longer, Sony has decreed that selling your virtual items is no longer allowed - try it and you may find yourself banned from the game. " As a somewhat related side note, obnoxious GMs are roaming the worlds and forcing people to change their nicks to crappy D&Dish names. Really ticked off friends of mine who spent months building up charachters only to have their identities forcibly stripped from them. Of course since EQ constantly crashed for me so I gave up and returned to hoping Diablo 2 runs under wine and is released before my first heart attack. But I find it interesting that virtual property is being regulated: trade restrictions between virtual worlds and the real one.

duesi writes, "According to c't 7/2000 at least one DVD contains manipulative messages. They have been sent a copy of "The march is over," about which a reader complained. He said that some scenes contained noisy pictures. The c't technicians found nothing technically incorrect. But when they filmed the DVD off the screen and checked picture after picture, they found hidden messages in some scenes. For example you see a guy drinking some wine and suddenly, just for a fraction of a second, the text "DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE" appears on the screen. There are other messages like "Respect your parents" or "No firearms at school". The best thing about the story: If you DeCSS the film, those funny messages disappear magically... To me, this seems to be like hidden censorship or even a test for mass manipulation. References: c't 7/2000 P. 42."

A nameless member from Clan Anonymous Coward asks: "I've been considering installing Linux as the primary system on my laptop, but I question how suitable it is for Win32 development. I use Delphi as my primary development environment, and have considered running WinNT under VMWare (or possibly Delphi under Wine). What experiences have you had with developing Win32 apps under Linux, using Win32-based tools?" This is a neat thought. Has anyone had any success with this?

For years, Old Media dismissed electronic competitors as frivolous and temporal. Then New Media appeared to be burying its predecessors for good. It appears both notions may have been wrong. The boundaries between new and old media are getting fuzzy, as a hybrid Middle Media emerges between the two. (Read more.)

mTor writes, "Cnet.com is reporting in this story that Microsoft is willing to open the source to Windows to settle its case with government. " Personally I think this would be pretty sweet. It'd definitely be a boost for projects like WINE. Wonder what license they would use? *grin*. CT : several folks sent us this Yahoo story where Bill denies the cnet story linked above.

I'm pretty pleased to see this one: Corel has put their internal CVS tree up for read only access so that they can more easily sync their code with the official branches. You can see more at the Corel Open Source Web site.

It's been a long time since I posted an open forum like this, but I'm curious what people think on this one. What games do you most want to see ported to Linux in the next few months? Of course, for me personally it's StarCraft and Diablo 2, but I'm curious what games have come out or are due soon that people would most like to see a port of (and note that WINE doesn't count. ;)

This week, Michael Cowpland, CEO of Corel, gives CEO-ish answers to your questions. There was one important question that didn't get asked because, sadly, it wasn't moderated high enough by the Tuesday noon (EST) cutoff time to be included in the group of questions we mailed to Corel. But as you can see, other Slashdot readers helped answer it anyway, and the other questions and answers shed a lot of light on Corel's current and future Linux plans, which is the main thing we're interested in, right? (More below.)

Frank249 writes "Corel Draw 9 for Linux appears to be on or ahead of schedule. They are currently advertising for beta testers. This is a good sign and confirms what was reported in today's ZDNet Linux article, that the wine libraries are close to production quality."

This is the big one. $30k to project that has improved the most. The project that is making Open Source dominate. The nominees are no surprise: GNOME, Mozilla, KDE, LiViD, PHP and Wine. Go Talk about it. Vote. Repeat until satisfied.