Opera has released an update for their version 8 web browser, taking them to 8.02. The changes are various bug fixes and security patches. If you are an Opera fan, you should head over and get the updated version.

An interesting article by LinuxDevices has highlighted that embedded Linux accounts for 14% of smartphones whereas Windows only accounts for 4.5%. Between smartphones, Tivo’s and various routers, there are very likely millions of people out there using Linux devices without knowing about it. In the grand scheme of things, if people don’t know about it, it usually means that it’s doing a good job.

Due to some extension compatibility problems with Firefox 1.0.5 and Thunderbird 1.0.5, the Mozilla foundation have released versions 1.0.6 of both Firefox and Thunderbird. There are no new features added to the new versions, they simply rectify an API problem that affected some extensions. In other news, the next generation of Firefox will be called Firefox 1.5 and is not due now till around September.

Summer is a time to enjoy life, and maybe get motivated to do something you dare to do and spend time on what you enjoy. I have truly enjoyed watching Lance Armstrong ride to his seventh le Tour de France victory (well okay he has one day to go now, but he will do it). This story about a “Fat Man Walking” is interesting as well. I like to spend time at Lake Michigan as well. However, my love is barefoot waterskiing. I have been skiing on average once per day. So I am enjoying the summer and maybe ignoring our site a little. Thanks for your patience. Go enjoy life yourself a bit … and you might not miss me quite as much.

WinZip is the first thing many download when setting up a new system. It’s been around just about as long as Windows and has been downloaded many millions of times.
WinZip has now been bought by “Vector Capital” who plan to turn the company around and make it profitable.
Technically WinZip is Shareware and after 30 days of use you are supposed to register it for 29 dollars. Unfortunately it seems many don’t and now the new owners plan to get tough when encouraging users to buy it. Vector Capital also own Corel and Jasc, the later of which was famous for it’s Paint Shop Pro imaging software which was recently sold to Corel.
Read more about it at CNET.

The line between Blogging and news sites is in many cases becoming Gray and it is often hard to tell the difference between the two. While looking over HTMLfixIT, I was wondering if we should draw some distinction between those parts that focus on news and those that focused on our opinions of news. It was while doing this that I realised something important, there is no distinction between news and opinion any more. Every site, whether they consider themselves a “news” site or not, indulges in opinion to some degree or another. Even the choice of what news to report is the expression of an opinion. The opinion might be that reporting on certain types of stories will draw more visitors then others, or the choice of story might reflect the authors opinions of what is important or newsworthy, but they are both still opinions.

Take the main media’s focus on the situation in Iraq for example. How many of them focused on the death, bombings and kidnappings, and how many on the rebuilding, or the training of national troops, or the building of infrastructure like schools or hospitals? In fact the only sites covering the more positive aspects of the rebuilding are the “opinion” based Blogging sites. Isn’t it also the expression of an opinion when you only cover the sensationalist aspects of a story? Even if that opinion is that more people will read about those then the more positive aspects? In fact I’d go so far as to say that the stories of bravery and rebuilding in situations like Iraq or 9/11 are classed as “human interest” by the big media and relegated to the bottom of the heap as a result, but are they really not newsworthy?

Here at HTMLfixIT, we don’t deny that a good deal of what we write is opinion based on what we consider the news of the day in our chosen subject matter. After all, we are web developers writing a site that hopefully covers issues important to other web developers, and in that scenario, our opinions are a reflection of at least part of the industry to some degree or another. The majority of our articles start out with reporting the stories we consider important to our industry and then we discuss how we feel about them and invite comment from others. It is my suspicion that this is not that unusual a stance to take, most sites just don’t come out and make it clear that they too have a component of “opinion” in their own stories. To do so would be to indicate a bias and that word terrifies the marketing people at various media companies that provide “news” services. But don’t think for a moment that there is any escaping opinion in news. Human nature is to form opinions on various things around them, and surprisingly enough, most journalists are still human, although that’s a subject for some debate in itself.

So here at HTMLfixIT, we’ll keep on reporting the stories we consider important to our growing audience. We’ll continue to discuss or reflect our opinion of that news, and we’ll make no apologies for it. But we will never claim that there is no “opinion” in our news, and we’ll never go out of our way to word our opinion in a manner that makes it hard to define where the news stops and where the opinion begins. At the end of the day, we know that there is no such thing as totally unbiased news, so to try to make out there is, would be a lie and that’s not a good way to build a relationship with your visitors. You don’t have to agree with our “opinions” and we welcome the chance to discuss them, because the days where “news” was something somebody told you in a one way transfer of “information” are coming to an end.

Microsoft is often quick to point out in their “Get the Facts” marketing that Linux doesn’t have much protection from copyright and IP infringement to anyone that will listen. What they’d rather you didn’t know is that they have a very long and litigious history on such subjects themselves.

TheInquirer has been nice enough to compile a list of sorts, of some of their recent payout settlements with regards to such lawsuits. The numbers are huge and add up to over 9 billion dollars. Well worth the read if you were thinking of believing their version of the “facts”.