News for the Week Ending Jan 1, 2003

• OS2 RIP | Born April, 1987 - Died Dec. 10, 2002

• US Air Force Readies Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon

• Canadian IT Salaries On The Way Down

• Quick Benchmark: How Does Your Video Card Stack Up

• Full Lindows for $49 For a Short Time

• A Christmas Story

• RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up to Piracy

• Commodore.ca Questions About Click-n-Run

• Microsoft Shares Windows XP Holiday Packs

• Tom's Overclocks a P4 3Ghz to Run At 4.1Ghz

• Google Introduces Web site for Comp. Shopping, "Froogle"

PCMag.com | OS2 Born April, 1987 - Died Dec. 10, 2002
By John C. Dvorak

Cause of death: neglect. Place of death: Armonk, New York. Next of kin: none. Attending funeral: nobody. Official announcement appeared on IBM Website.

I suppose this poor fellow has been dead for a long time, but perhaps nobody remembered to pick up the corpse (yes, I said the same about CP/M 10 years ago). While CP/M died from the ravages of progress, OS/2 died from neglect and lack of will. And yes, backing away from OS/2 was a pragmatic move, since IBM could not compete with Microsoft or its tactics. But how amazing to see a company that large cowed into submission by a bunch of whippersnappers in Washington who already had taken IBM to the cleaners when they convinced the Goliath to let them own PC-DOS at the outset. The death of OS/2 must be humiliating for IBM.

The history of OS/2 is a ragged mess. Although begun as a joint Microsoft-IBM project to create the next generation of operating systems, it was apparent early on that the partnership was not going to work. Microsoft had too many coders who hated to work with IBM, and IBM was too slow-moving for the rest of the caffeine-jacked Microsoft folks.

I was an OS/2 fan, and even did a book on the OS for Random House. The OS was generally faster and less prone to crashing than any of the early versions of Windows. But IBM didn't know how to prime the pump and get people to develop for OS/2. The company stupidly reckoned that if you give developers a good operating system, coders will code for it. Microsoft saw this issue differently, and would do anything to get people to code apps for Windows. Many of the early Windows programs ran on OS/2 through a piece of shared code that let Windows code work. But we all knew that wouldn't last. Microsoft was forever changing the Windows API, and had done so since the first release of the product. The API has only recently stabilized, and we still don't know how long that will last.

OS/2 wasn't perfect, and my last days with the product came when I did a reboot or a shutdown and OS/2 went into limbo. If you ran into this situation, you had to completely reinstall the OS, and it happened one time too many for me. That was that. IBM was already making noises about giving up on OS/2, and Windows 96 was just around the corner.

Over the years, I noticed that many of the cooler features of OS/2 became incorporated into Windows. For all practical purposes, if you are using Windows 2000, you are probably running what would have been OS/2. The only exception is that all the money goes to Microsoft. And before you object to that, you should note that the original OS/2 was called Microsoft OS/2 (there were even little pins around with that moniker).

Some years ago, I wrote a column called "Free the Code," where I made the point that abandoned software should become public domain, and that code should be shared by the public. I noticed recently that this is becoming an issue on many discussion forums since a lot of abandonware seems prevalent in the post-dot-com bust. In the column I suggested that IBM free the OS/2 code if it really wanted to get Microsoft. Instead of screwing around with Linux, we all could have been playing with the source code for OS/2. What a great idea. OS/2 could have just been freeware.

Anyway, someone pointed out to me that there was no way that IBM would ever do such a thing, since much of the code was likely under license or, worse, much of it owned by Microsoft anyway! I agree with this assessment. OS/2, of course, will continue to find its place in the kernel of various stagnant or proprietary systems where it will evolve into something far removed from what could have been. It goes the way of the other genuine operating systems that couldn't get a foothold, like the Amiga OS and GEM on the Atari and the PC. This fate for OS/2 is a shame.

As to how and why the OS failed to become a huge success—I'm leaving the debate open this week. Steve Ballmer comes to mind. He started the ball rolling by proclaiming OS/2 to be the next great operating system, and within a few years he was walking around the floor of a computer show putting disks into computers running OS/2 to crash the systems and prove that OS/2 wasn't crash-proof!

The whole history of OS/2 is quite odd indeed. Before you proceed, a quick look at former IBMer David Both's personal history of the product might give you some ideas.

FeedRoom.com | US Air Force Readies Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon

Click the Graphic to launch the video.

 

ITWorldCanada.com | Canadian IT Salaries On The Way Down
By Albert Leonardo

According to Robert Half Technology (RHI) Inc 2003 Salary Guide for IT professionals, IT workers can expect starting salaries to fall by 2.3 per cent, compared to the 0.1 increase originally projected this time last year.

The survey also revealed that Internet and e-commerce positions, which experienced growth during the dot-com haze, could experience salary decreases of up to 7.4 per cent.

But it isn’t all bad news— for the third consecutive year, IT security-related jobs will see salaries raised by an expected 4.7 per cent and data security analysts should see the most financial gains. Starting salaries are expected to soar by 6.9 per cent.

According to Stephen Mill, regional manager at RHI in Toronto, it was quite expected that security-related positions would again command lucrative salaries for the upcoming year. "It took the market by storm earlier this year and really the training and the development of these folks hasn’t kept up with the demand and as a result they’re going to see a big increase in what they get paid," he said.

Where there is cause for concern is in the demand for project leaders in applications development — the study found that this will remain unchanged until at least the Q3 next year, reinforcing a trend in IT that is nearly two years old: companies aren’t spending money on any new upgrades but are working with what they already have in-house. Still, Mill remained optimistic, saying that large enterprises that have remained fiscally restrained will start spending on new technologies again, which will create a demand for project leaders as a result.

Industries that are forecasting an exceptionally strong demand for IT workers next year include government services, natural resources and health care.

Some of the other key findings of the study included that systems administrators will earn between $61,500 and $85,000 annually, which represents over a three per cent gain from last year; network security administrators’ starting salaries will increase by 3.2 per cent; database administrators’ salaries will decrease by nearly three per cent; Internet and intranet administrators’ salaries will plummet by 5.3 per cent and project leaders working in application development can expect their salaries to remain the same for the upcoming year.

The report looked at companies with revenues between the $2 million to $20 million and the $200 million to $1 billion ranges. On the whole, IT workers still earn better-than-average salaries...

TomsHardware.com | Quick Benchmark: How Does Your Video Card Stack Up

This must be an old summary because it does not include the ATI 9000, 9500, 9500 Pro, 9700...

Lindows.com | Full Lindows for $49 For a Short Time

This deal is only available to insiders.  Fortunately I have been a Lindows insider for most of the last year: if you want Lindows for $49, send me an email.

Through the end of this calendar year, any Insider may buy a "Holiday Gift Membership" to give to a friend or family member for just $49 plus shipping and handling. And you can purchase as many Holiday Gift Memberships as you like.

eEye Digital Security - A Christmas Story
by Derek Soeder  Thanx for Rollando for this one

Twas the night before Christmas, and deep in IE
A creature was stirring, a vulnerability
MS02-066 was posted on the website with care
In hopes that Team eEye would not see it there

But the engineers weren't nestled all snug in their beds,
No, PNG images danced in their heads
And Riley at his computer, with Drew's and my backing
Had just settled down for a little PNG cracking

When rendering an image, we saw IE shatter
And with just a glance we knew what was the matter
Away into SoftICE we flew in a flash
Tore open the core dumps, and threw RFC 1951 in the trash

The bug in the thick of the poorly-written code
Caused an AV exception when the image tried to load
Then what in our wondering eyes should we see
But our data overwriting all of heap memory

With heap management structures all hijacked so quick
We knew in a moment we could exploit this $#!%
More rapid than eagles our malicious pic came --
The hardest part of this exploit was choosing its name

azoz.com | RIAA's Statistics Don't Add Up to Piracy
By George Ziemann  Thanx to Rollando for This One

This is a very long article which I have aggressively truncated here.  You should read the full article if you have time.

The sky is falling! The music industry is doomed!  ...U.S. shipments dropped from 1.08 billion units shipped in 2000 to 968.58 million in 2001-a 10.3 percent decrease. The dollar value of all music product shipments decreased from $14.3 billion in 2000 to $13.7 billion in 2001-a 4.1 percent decrease, according to figures released today by the RIAA...  a large factor contributing to the decrease in overall shipments last year is online piracy and CD-burning," said Hilary Rosen, President and CEO of the RIAA.

Time out. Total number of units fell 10.3 percent. Total sales dropped 4.1 percent. Sorry, Hilary, there is a simple explanation -- The economy sucks, you guys raised prices anyway while promising to copy-protect everything and make it harder to listen to.

...So the record industry cut their inventory (and artist investment) by 25 percent and sales only dropped 4.1 percent, even though the economy is at rock bottom. There were almost 12,000 fewer new releases for the consumer to choose from in 2001 than 1999. The record companies are making more money per release than ever....

Lindows Technical Support Answers Commodore.ca Questions About Click-n-Run

Insiders, like yourself, fall under the "family license" of the End user license agreement at http://www.lindows.com/eula If you want to install LindowsOS on computers or build computers to sell with LindowsOS installed, you need to sign up for either the builder program or the reseller program. You will be able to find information about these programs and their costs on the "Partners" link on the top of our web page.

BetaNews | Microsoft Shares Windows XP Holiday Packs
By Nate Mook,

To get into the spirit of the holidays, Microsoft has released special "Fun Packs" for Windows XP featuring winter-themed skins, sounds and templates. The three Fun Packs integrate with Windows Media Player 9 Series and Movie Maker 2 betas, along with Internet Explorer 6...

...Digital Photography, Communications, and Browsing Winter Fun Pack includes templates for turning pictures into customized greeting cards, and a Favorites list for Internet Explorer containing 50 holiday-oriented Web sites.

The Fun Packs and additional winter screensavers may be downloaded from Microsoft's Windows XP Web site. Windows Media Player 9 Series Release Candidate and Movie Maker 2 Beta are required to use their respective Fun Packs.

TomsHardware.com | Tom's Overclocks a P4 3Ghz to Run At 4.1Ghz

...The evaporation temperature of the R134a coolant is minus 26 degrees Celsius at normal pressure (1 bar). Danfoss quotes an operating temperature of - 10 to - 35 degrees Celsius. - 35 degrees requires a vacuum of 0.5 bar. In theory, temperatures of up to minus 100 degrees are possible - given enough vacuum in the cooling system...
 

...Compared to overclocking with liquid hydrogen, where systems will only operate stably for a few minutes beyond 4000 MHz, our solution is perfectly suited for everyday use and can be used in a professional environment. This is proved in spectacular fashion by the 30 different benchmarks.

TomsHardware.com | Google Introduces Web site for Comparison Shopping, "Froogle"

The Internet search engine, Google, has launched a test site for comparison online shopping on the Web. Known as "Froogle," it focuses on products that are for sale, posting images and prices of merchandise for sale at various online merchants. Other Web sites actually have more information on their shopping portals for more efficient product comparison-shopping. But the difference between those sites and Froogle is that Froogle doesn't charge merchants that are included in its search engine. Froogle maintains that it will be profitable by selling advertising on the Web site, as Google does on its Web site. The Froogle beta site is up and running at www.froogle.com .