Upside is running an interview with Linus Torvalds. As always, Linus has interesting stuff to say. I’d love to see the actual transcript for the interview, it has more words in [brackets] than [any] interview that I have [ever] read.

The Industry Standard is reporting some depressing statistics from the world of browser market share. According to one survey, only 24% of the hits on Web sites are coming through Netscape; there are more rc3.org readers that use Netscape than IE, for what it’s worth.

Mattel is going to offer really stupid looking PCs for kids. They’re offering a Hot Wheels model, and a Barbie model, if you’re into that sort of thing.

The US Military Academy has an online atlas of United States military history.

Data General is the latest of the big minicomputer companies from the seventies to go the way of the dinosaur. (By the way, I didn’t ask InfoWorld’s permission to link to their site.)

Now that Salon is a public company, they get to post their financial results for public perusal. Their revenue was just over a million bucks for the previous quarter. Ugh.

Kevin Mitnick, the most famous hacker in the world, was sentenced yesterday to 46 months in prison, and should be out by the beginning of next year thanks to credit for time served. He was also ordered to pay $4,125 in restitution, which was about $1,495,875 less than the government was asking for.

The Merck Manual is now available in its entirety online, free of charge. (If you don’t know, the Merck Manual is an encyclopedia of diseases and disorders that’s probably used by every doctor in America.)

Tomorrow both sides in the Microsoft case submit “findings of fact” to Judge Jackson. It sounds like they’re just submitting summaries of what they’ve been saying all along. Why are they called findings of fact? We all know that both sides are going to exaggerate as much as is practical to try to win. Lawyers are so arrogant.

Are you a software developer or do you work with software developers? If so, where does your organization fall on the Capability Maturity Model for software development?