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.

Bob Cunningham asks: "Is there any US Federal and State Income Tax software for Linux? Normlly, I would just snag the evaluation copy of whichever Win9x product appeals to me (i.e., lowest cost). This year I'd like to try something different: Do my taxes under Linux. My initial searches have failed to uncover a single native tax package for Linux, nor even rumors of any related development being underway. Right now, it seems my only option will be to run a Win9x package under Wine, and hope it is well behaved. Is Win9x/Wine my only option? If so, are there any packages that have already been tested under Wine?" Financial software has traditionally been lacking under Linux, but I'm hoping that someone will soon step up and write something like this.

There are over 500 Debian maintainers today, up from 100 only a few years ago. Wichert Akkerman has been Project Leader for this brilliant, sometimes unruly (but always interesting) gang since February. Monday you posted questions for Wichert. Today you get answers. (Lots more below)

Yesterday, I posted a story speculating that Corel might drop WINE in favor of (what isn't really) a competing product. This was a huge mistake on my part, and I hope Corel, Wine developers, and the Slashdot readership in general will accept my apology. Normally on a blooper like this, I'd update the story, but I think this needs to be noticed by everyone who read the original.

Nathan Ehresman writes "According to this "Corel Corporation will use GraphOn's Bridges(TM) software to allow access to Windows applications from Corel's(R) Linux desktops." Does this mean Corel is dropping support of WINE? " I sure hope not. They've put a lot of effort in to the project, and I think they raised a lot of peoples hopes and expectations...

Egonis Similaris writes " WINE 991031 (Hallowine) has been released." My main personal WINE wish is to use it to run Quickbooks. Has anyone else gotten QB to work reliably under WINE?

Anonymous something something writes "Warcraft 3 has been announced. Check blizzard's site. No plans on doing a linux port but I'm sure we'll get it to work under wine. " Looks like quite a departure from WC 1&2 - "Role Playing Strategy". 6 races, too. Could the release of C&C: Tiberian Sun hurt sales when the game finally is released?

Douglas Ridgway writes "Alexandre Julliard, leader of the Wine project, will be moving to Silicon Valley to work full-time on Wine. See the press release for details. "

The Ottawa Linux Symposium has come and gone. It was a superb, very technical, conference that was also a great social event. Dana has put up her pictures, and the lovely Alix has put up hers. Last but not least, Alan Cox has put up his large collection. Finally, I've included my report below.

Anonymous Coward writes "The Australian government passed legislation yesterday guaranteeing the right to reverse engineer software for the purposes of diagnosing and fixing problems and for interoperability." Looks like WINE and other Windows emulation projects ought to be headquarted in Australia, doesn't it?

ghjm writes "I just got back from the Inprise/Borland Developers Conference in Philadelpha, where some results from the recent survey--as well as some actual products--were announced." Click below to read ghjm's full report on the results of their surveys, the performance of their C compiler vs GCC and more.