"If I asked you to name the internet's dominant operating system, you'd probably nominate Linux, Windows or possibly Solaris. My answer would be none of the above. Increasingly, our most value-adding interface layer is Google—and our industry's annals of operating system wars and browser wars are looking ever more like ancient history. It might seem odd to call a Web search engine an operating system, but look at the fundamentals." Read the story at eWeek by Peter Coffee.

Kim was the first to submit news of the availability of the Mozilla 1.4 beta, which is now available for download. Recently, Mozilla.org announced a new roadmap which indicates that this will be the last XPFE-based browser release before the main trunk is switched to the Phoenix/Firebird codebase.

Microsoft Corp. said it will act as a neutral arbiter in the ongoing battle between the competing recordable DVD standards, supporting all of them in the upcoming Longhorn release. Microsoft added support for DVD-R and DVD-RW into Longhorn, due in 2005. Longhorn already supports the DVD-RAM, DVD+RW and DVD+R formats. Also, here is a picture, showing the Windows Client roadmap: Windows XP Tablet PC Version 2 due 2003, Windows XP Media Center Edition Version 2 due 2004. Beta 1 and Beta 2 of Longhorn due 2004. In the meantime, here are a few screenshots and videos of Longhorn.

"It?s been a while since we had a discussion about Windows & Mac users hasn?t it? Ok well I guess it hasn?t as every Mac or Windows news site under the sun seems to be running some sort of ?Mine is better than yours? argument each day. I guess the question still remains, which one is best? Or is there even a ?best OS? out there?" Read Byron Hinson's editorial. Update: Second part, here.

One old Sawfish theme I always admired is "Friday". I liked its concept of having its window manager buttons shaped after the purpose they served (the Min button was a triangle looking down, and the max button a triangle looking up). I modified the theme to my liking (undoubtly it could still be done better by a pro graphics person) and here is its mockup. Update: An alternative design, possibly much better.

Longhorn will not ship in beta form until early 2004, and will not be released to manufacturing until 2005. Also, Microsoft revealed that the company's Blackcomb project will not be delivered as a major server upgrade as previously expected, but will instead be phased in over several years, beginning with technology that Microsoft will release this year as "out of band" upgrades to Windows Server 2003.