SciTech, maker of SNAP Graphics for OS/2 and supporter of the Watcom.org site (open source C++ and Fortran cross platform compilers), has released an update to their V2 SNAP Graphics (formerly the Scitech SDD driver set).
While this SNAP is not a major update number, the list of changes is much bigger than you might expect. There is a list of the major changes in OS2 Updates, with full details available on the SciTech site. The SNAP Graphics will work on Warp 3.0 FP 35, Warp 4.0 FP 5 and eCS 1.0.
In addition to the Scitech announcement, SteveW at Scitechsoft sent me this in response to my question: "BTW, do you know the status of DVD decoding support on OS/2?"
"The best option right now is WarpVision: http://os2.kiev.ua/en/wv.php
It can use a dvdcss plugin to decode encrypted DVDs (it is a port of the Linux one)."
The Russian WarpVision site is actually working on a full multimedia suite, including a bunch of formats I didn't know existed. See the summary of information from their site in OS/2 Updates.
The Scitech SNAP Graphics package is $36.95, and well worth it IMHO. This will help support the Watcom compiler project. The WarpVision project looks to be a major improvement in OS/2 multimedia capability. I encourage you to support it as well, which can be done through the BMT Micro site.
Update: The OS/2 version is available as of March 18.
Mozilla 1.3 has been released. As of 10 AM on March 14, the OS/2 version is not posted, but I expect it in the next few days. Check out OS/2 Updates for more info.
You know the open movement has arrived when it gets its own magazine. I've found the articles excellent. Check out Open-Mag and subscribe (free) to get access to the articles. The following two articles caught my eye.
Firebird - Yet Another Open Database
"The story of Firebird is a story of a sound technology and a dedicated community, who are in for the long haul in seeking to place Firebird on the business map. A deadpan explanation of Firebird might go something like this: Firebird is an Open Source incarnation of InterBase, the relational database system, from Borland."
Also at Open-Mag, this article on open source databases that are ready for prime time, titled: "10 GOOD REASONS FOR A DATABASE RE-THINK"
"MySQL, SAP DB, Berkeley DB, PostgreSQL, and Firebird are all formulating a new database economy. It's one where superior performance, unmatched stability, and ease of deployment come affordably."
Microsoft plans to be your software supplier, your only software supplier. This article, in my Analysis and Commentary section, covers their plans, the evidence and what you can do about it.
I've long been opposed to Microsoft operating systems and software because of their poor performance, unreliability and lack of security. I've often wondered how they managed to convince the majority of people and companies to use what were and still are technically inferior products. I personally experienced a few of MS dirty tricks against DesQview and OS/2, but didn't see how that alone was enough to get a 90% market share.
Thanks to the antitrust trials and other lawsuits where MS did not pay to gag the winners, enough evidence is now in place to answer my question. The short answer is they broke the rules and covered up by spending huge amounts of money to make the public's perception of what Microsoft was doing look different from the reality.
A single example is instructive. Microsoft pays Waggener-Edstrom about $250 million dollars per year for public relations, and through this rewards their supporters and punishes their critics by changing advertising buys. When you consider that some publications were receiving one million dollars per month from MS, the threat of that income disappearing was enough to silence most of their critics. The rest were buried in the volume of pro Microsoft writings, often just slightly rewritten PR releases.
The full story is complex and hard to summarize. My article has links to a site with most of the information, but my focus is not on the past, but on what MS has planned for the future. If you don't read anything else on this site, read this to protect your options to remain in control in the future.
I've added entries for Tools and Updates in the Software Engineering section. Updates announces XFree86 4.3.0 for OS X, OS/2 and others, while Tools gets its first entry, on the Eclipse framework.
There's another new rack supercomputer, this one from TransTec, in the Supercomputer News.
Supercomputer News: Systems and Software is the full title of the new section. The link is just underneath Science Links, where I also added a link to the Hubble Telescope. Check out the awesome pictures at Hubble.
My purpose in this new section is to have a regular area where I can report the rapid developments in supercomputers, supercomputer software, applications and science being done with the new technologies. There is definitely more to come.
The agreement leaves a lot of details out, but during the six month transition, all Virtual PC products will continue to be sold. After that, who knows?
Currently, Virtual PC for OS/2 is $359 and is available as a download, CD or both. Virtual PC is also available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. More details on the OS/2 Updates page.
Update: I've confirmed that Virtual PC for OS/2 will host on eCS as well.
I've just added two more Byte columns into the 2002 index, the first covering Eight Operating Systems from off the beaten path, the second covering Digital Libraries.
The routing fiasco was at my system to DSL link when I tried to change the route to my firewall. Wotta mess! A working network descended into a mess of ifconfig, route and netstat commands with the main result being multiple 'Route not found' and 'No route to the network' messages. After some hours of frustration, I decided to sleep on it.
I then turned my chair around to get up and snagged a full glass of water, which dumped into my keyboard, actually my former keyboard. Despite an immediate cleanup and shutdown of the system, it was adding random characters this morning. This is one of the reasons I keep a few spares on hand.
Once past the keyboard replacement, I relearned how to set up the routes from the command line in OS/2 because the graphical TCP/IP menu just made things confusing. I've stored notes on how to do this when it happens again. My favorite 'Why can't you remember' bit is that the ROUTE command does everything you need except show you what the route table currently has in it. For this you need the obvious NETSTAT -r. Sure it's obvious. Right.
For some reason, my previous Journal update caused it to not refresh properly for some browsers. Maybe it was the wrong date (2002) I used. :-}
I'm not a fan of the typical inkjet color printers and did not buy one until I spotted a Christmas special on Outpost.com in their PC specials section. It wasn't just the price, this Cannon S600 refurb had what I consider the critical capability - independent ink tanks. I checked refill prices, which were relatively low and ordered the printer and two sets of refill tanks for less than $100. Cheap, who me?
Now that I've had a chance to test the printer doing color images of art for our auction, I can report that I'm impressed with this bargin. I printed over 50 arts images for resale (with permission), averaging more than a half page in size. After that run, I checked the ink tanks and was quite surprised to find 2 color tanks over 80% full, one color tank about 75% full and the black tank about 66% full.
The software gives you a lot of control over how the pictures are printed, including a lot of presets for various combinations of papers & graphics. Even better, it has a monitor that will tell you the status of the printer as well as warning on low or empty ink tanks. This is very useful because the printer is so quiet that I could not tell it was running unless I checked the monitor, which showed an active page while printing.
The S600 may not be available, but other models are. Right now there are a number of models available on Outpost, including a refurbished S520 for $50 and an S820 six color for $130. Note that new models have only a USB interface, while the S520 has parallel and USB interfaces. If you buy ink refills, make sure you ask for the model number with the 'S' in front. Older models, such as the BJ600 use different refills. Also note that NT is only supported on older models. Recommended.
I'm mostly settled in my new location, DSL active, critical computers up and connected. The move started on Jan 27 as we installed the first two new windows in the house. The move was complicated by a critical project to create the auction book and some other documents for a Feb 10 auction. That project happened before, during and after the move, complicating my life quite a bit.
Getting DSL up was also a problem. It wasn't the DSL that was the cause, it was the 'smart' DSL interface which insisted on using DHCP for connection. Past DSL had been dumb devices - hook it up and it talked to the Ethernet port. This one had to be configured, which required a web browser, and that's where the trouble started.
Since I was in the middle of the auction project, I couldn't take down my running systems and move them until DSL was up. So I recovered two old systems from storage and tried to get one working. The short version of this two week effort was eventually I had to reinstall the OS, use an obsolete browser to connect to the DSL box, get the TCP set to DHCP to finally get connected. I won't bore you with the numerous ways the hardware screwed up, exceeded only by the number of times I goofed.
This took until about Jan 21. Once the windows arrived and we could install them, I moved the main systems over and continued working. During late January and early February, a router entry got reset and I could not update this site. I was too busy to chase it until Feb 5, when I managed to get the network people to fix it. Finally I could transfer the updates below, dated Jan 25.
The auction to support the arts in our area took place the evening of February 10 and was a success. In addition to supplying the auction book and a brief 10 year history of our work in Yelm, I also built 8 small easels to display the art at the auction, took care of the paper and printing and generally overcommitted myself as usual. I slept 15 hours the next day.
Things have settled down and as soon as I finish my next Byte column, I'll be back to updating this site on a weekly or better basis. I've also trimmed this Journal back to Jan 2003, with a link to prior quarters. Thanks for your patience.
Ecomstation, the enhanced OS/2, is being sent to testers. I'll be getting a copy of RC1 shortly to test and evaluate. From what I've seen so far, this version 1.1 could justify a 2.0 label in terms of enhancements, but Bob St. John is being careful not to raise expectations too quickly. There is a lot of info on the eCS web site.
The single biggest list of sites comes from the Phoenix OS/2 Society, on the Site List page. The info on the Watcom compiler also comes from the POSSI Newsletter (strongly recommended). See POSSI Newsletters here.
There are some duplicates between the POSSI list and the other lists, but lack of time prevents any further editing right now. I thought it was important to get this up now, and clean it up later. Watcom compiler info is here.
An IBM Strategy document on Warp can be found here. They answer these questions:
The long awaited 5.0 release with support for 64 bit processors and fine grained locking in the kernel. I urge everyone to read the Early Adopters Guide as 5.0 has not been as widely tested as the 4.x releases. Production systems should probably wait for a 5.x STABLE release. These issues are explained in the early adopters guide. Announcement details and links here.
I plan to use this in my big storage system with 176 GB of disk, set up as a 132 GB software RAID 5.
Let's start with an apology to those readers who have found this site erratic in the last week. The site host had a series of unlikely events that caused a series of outages from Jan 11 - 16. The system was up some of the time, but not reliably. Plans are in place to prevent this from recurring. My apologies to those who were hit by this problem.
There are two moves planned. One was for my transfer into a new house, delayed for another week. The other is a planned move of the Technology Management section (renamed Software Management) and CP/PM into a new section named Software Engineering. (Section moves done)
Updates for the OS/2 area will happen soon with a bunch of new links from the POSSI newsletter and other places.
Another item, a section for interesting news, is under development. There have been a bunch of supercomputer announcements, items on IBM software development and miscellaneous others. The biggest problem is figuring what to name the section: News? Too broad. Tech News? Still too broad. Interesting Stuff? A bit vague.
I'm stumped for a good name for this section. It will contain the items I consider significant in the science and technology area - items that represent a new direction, a new discovery or something I consider important. I'm asking for suggestions for a name for this News Section until Jan 24. Just click on the Contact Author email link in the left frame. Thanks.