Lord cautioned that little of this has actually been built yet. The version that will be released early next year will largely be a demonstration of how a media player can be built on top of the Mozilla technology. Most of the advanced features people now expect from modern music software will be added over the course of further development, he said.

In other news, Cat Got Your Tongue Software is creating a package that will determine in advance if a user's appendix is ready to burst. With the optional Scalpel Hardware System, the software will remove the organ while the user sleeps.

"We have this great idea," a company spokesman noted, "and we have a few guys who are working out some of the details. All we know for sure is that this is going to revolutionize medicine."

John Armstrong, M.D., of the American Medical Association, refused to comment on this story.