The IE problem has been around for at least five years and could allow an attacker to intercept credit card and/or personl data when a user is making a purchase. Konqueror also had the same problem, but Waldo Bastian fixed the problem 95 minutes after it was reported. You can get the fixed Konqueror version from the KDE CVS, or if you wait for KDE 3.03 next week. Read about the IE flaw at ZDNews.

You can call Jeff Raikes, Microsoft's group vice president of Productivity and Business Services, just about anything you want, just don't call him a desktop guy. Raikes is charged with the responsibility of guiding Microsoft's enormously successful desktop business -- the jewel of which is Office XP -- into the new era of computing where desktop, server, and peer-to-peer technologies are beginning to all swirl together as a seamless whole. Read the interview at InfoWorld.

QNXZone reports that the eQip Project has recently gone open source and it is available via anonymous CVS. The eQip project supports several models of the HP/Compaq iPaq PDA, and rumour has it that the Sharp Zaurus has been running QNX on the test bench. Plenty of screenshots here.

According to IDC, the Linux installed base, currently at 3.5 million units, will climb to 8.6 million server units alone by 2005. By contrast, Unix will drop from 2.61 million units to 2.53 million units. But Windows will still lead the way with an installed base of 8.6 million units in 2002 and 13.84 million server units in 2005. How far Linux climbs in the OS market remains to be seen. "In five to 10 years, Unix will be overtaken by it. Whether we will get by Windows, we'll get close," deVisser said. Read the report at InfoWorld. As for the LinuxWorld, ZDNews has an interesting all-around article.

OEone has released their source code and have now a free download of the HomeBase Desktop, a desktop enviroment based on Mozilla's API that runs on top of Red Hat Linux. Update: OfB hosts an interview with Peter Bojanic who is the VP, Software Development of OEone.

Prologue by the editor-in-chief: "A bit more than two years ago, while I was still serving at BeNews, I asked Jeremy Friesner to write an article and present his cross-platform client-server messaging system for dynamic distributed applications, MUSCLE. Two weeks later, he came back to me with a multi-page article, explaining MUSCLE. To demonstrate the power of MUSCLE, Jeremy created a demo application based on it. The result was BeShare.

The prospect that a vital element of Microsoft's .NET will debut in a Java IDE has come a step closer. A plug-in that connects Microsoft's Corp's C Sharp programming language with the Eclipse Framework has been built by Puteaux, France-based Improve SA. Eclipse is built in Java's Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). Read the report at TheRegister.

The news from the Gobe Software front seem to be slightly sad, but only at first glance. Sad because, Gobe as we know it is no more, as it sold the gobeProductive source code and rights to FreeRadicalSoftware, Inc. However, FreeRadicalSoftware's business plan requires them to GPL the popular office suite, allowing everyone to access gobeProductive's source for Windows, Linux and even BeOS. The official announcement is expected next week. FreeRadicalSoftware was created recently by the ex-boss of Gobe Software, Bruce Hammond, and some other ex-Gobe and non-Gobe people. Read more for our exclusive interview with Bruce regarding the open sourcing of GP3 under the GPL.
Update: And an additional comment from Gobe's Tom Hoke.

If there are two individuals in the Linux game scene today that they brought a lot and very good Free games to all Linux users, these should be Michael Speck of LGames and Bill Kendrick of NewBreedSoftware. Their games have been played not only by Linux users, but by users on all major platforms via the portability of the SDL game library. Today, we interview Michael Speck, regarding his games, his opinions about the Linux game market, about Linux's performance as a multimedia platform, his future plans and much more.

"Although it's been quite some time since MacOS X first hit the shelves, and although many hordes of users have made their homes on the system, MacOS 10.2 is the first version of X that I would really recommend for someone to use. MacOS versions 10.0 and 10.1 had vast amounts of potential, yet they remained nothing to write home to mom about. Finally Apple has capitalized on their potential, and created a system that is refined, streamlined, and ready to take out of the oven." Read the preview over at ArtificialCheese. In the meantime, SpyMac listed a number of incompatibilities between Jaguar 10.2 and previous versions of OSX (which are pretty natural to occure when you bump up a whole new version of an OS, especially when using a very different version of the compiler). I could add one more to the list.

The company announced this week it will post nearly 300 new APIs to the Microsoft Developer Network on Aug. 28 as part of a plan to adopt some of the remedies proposed by the long-running antitrust settlement. Also touted is the September release of a Service Pack for Windows XP that's designed to let system manufacturers and users select or remove middleware offerings such as Internet Explorer browser, Media Player, Outlook Express, Microsoft Messenger, and Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. Read the full report at InfoWorld.

Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications Monday that the companies hope will help drive adoption of Web services. Read the report at ZDNews, but where is Sun's involvement? Clearly there should be some.

Slashdot runs an (unconfirmed so far though) story regarding Dell and other PC sellers, literally taking orders from Microsoft, that effectively from Aug, 26, are not allowed to sell PCs without an OS pre-installed. The rule does not specifically speak about not installing alternative OSes, but about having an OS always installed in the sold hardware. We should not forget the related Be, Inc.'s suit against Microsoft for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. Our Take: IF true, Microsoft is gone too far and they should answer for it or recall this rule to the hardware vendors immediately. I like some of Microsoft's technology, but their business practices continue to be as smelly as ever. UPDATE: We contacted MicroTel's Rich Hindman regarding their "no OS" PCs sold through Wal-Mart, and here is what he replied for the OSNews readers:

Browsing Freshmeat tonight, the premier online Linux software repository, I came across to these two great (and brand new) applications, ReBorn and ReZound. Reborn, a Rebirth clone that will soon become open source according to the developer, provides a software emulation of three of Roland's most famous electronic musical instruments. It got me thinking as to how much more viable Linux is today as a professional (or semi-professional) audio platform than it used to be two years ago. Update: On a related multimedia notice, WinAMP 3.0 for Windows was released yesterday.