Topics for next Tech Talk Show. (1-21-07)

Sunday 02:36:43 pm   > Add my comments about Mac OSX x86. > They are locking the os to a specific chip to try to prevent the average > user from being able to install OSX on a non-Apple-x86 system. > However, this has apparently already been hacked, at least with 10.4. > This is too close a parallel attitude between Apple and Microsoft, I'm > quite disappointed with their "Taking" from the open source community, but > not being as free in contributing "back" to the open source community as > much as they could/should. > They are encouraging the ever growing trend towards more restrictions, for > example their iTunes DRM, and few choices for users, rather than the > opposite, freedom of choice, which is what people are demanding, but the > media industry (and by proxy now through MS and Apple, the computer > industry) are refusing to acknowledge, trying to hold onto their higher > margins. Whatever happened to the adage "the customer is always right"? > I saw an interesting video clip in one of my courses in Recreation > Programming. > It was about a grocery store in < RESEARCH> named > It listens to the customers, they actually RESPOND to customer requests and > committees. > And it's a huge success. > I couldn't help but blurt out "no one does that anymore", "except them". > How I miss the days of full-service gasoline stations, clerks and managers > who cared about the customer, and corporations that actually "ate their own > dog food" and ACTUALLY placed the customer first, rather than their stock > holders or some other stakeholder. > > > > > 1. Brief summary of email clients available, and their history.

Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird). Opensource, free, all operating systems. Mozilla Seamonkey Email Client Eudora Opera Email Mulberry Outlook Express (free) Outlook (not-free) cost=$??? Pegasus Email Incredimail Foxmail i.Scribe Courier AK-Mail Barca Mail Becky! Eureka Email Kaufman Mail LCARS Email Mail Commander Marlin Nelson Email Pimmy PMMail 2000 PocoMail & Portable Edition Scientific Letter Email (email equations) Scribe & InScribe STarfish TabMail The Bat! VM Free (Emacs Email) Wanderlust (Emacs Email) WikMail WordPerfect Mail

> 2. Basics of reducing risks of email (preview pane, antivirus, caution, > etc.) 3. Phishing > 4. Opera browser status update of free/opensource/ads, etc.

History of web browsers and "browser wars". --------------- World Wide Web (later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion), released in 1991 for NeXTStep Platform (later next bought out by apple in 1997, some code which was used in Mac OSX). Nexus was the first app to support both ftp and http. This was the worlds first "web-browser", but only on next. -------------------- Erwise was the first gui-based web-browser available on non-next systems released April 1992. But it only ran on unix & x-windows based computers. Developed by 4 finnish students. The project ended when they graduated, and since it's source code notes were written in finnish (suomi), no one continued the project. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A month later in 1992 came VoilaWWW, created by a chinese student at the university of california, berkeley. again only usable on x-windows-based systems (unix/linux/bsd). This however had a lot of features ahead of it's time, that influenced all web-browsers to come in the future many years later. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mosaic brought the web to the mainstream. First "official" release in summer of 1993 for unix platforms, then ended development in 1997. Developed by the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications). it was the first browser to include images in the page with the text, rather than having the images displayed in a separate window. originally created for x-windows unix platforms based on funding from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a program created by the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (or The Gore Bill after its author, then-Senator Al Gore). Thus Al Gore's statement that he said he "Created the Internet". In october 1993 it was ported to the Commodore amiga. In december 1993 2.0 was released to the previous platforms, while 1.0 was ported to the Apple Mac and Windows PC platforms. Though Tom Bruce's little-known browser "Cello" was the first PC-based browser, it didn't have a development team, and did not catch on the way mosaic did. marc Andreesen was a student when he worked on this project as the team leader. They then left and created the company Mosaic Communications Corp. Which later became netscape communications corp. Spyglass acquired the rights to mosaic, but then in 1994 MS bought the rights for 2M$ and renamed it to Internet Explorer. ("Fondly" referred to by many as exploder). ;-) Versions of Internet Explorer before version 7 contained a credit to Spyglass and also NCSA Mosaic in the About box. Internet Explorer 7 is not based on Mosaic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Netscape navigator/Communicator, Navigator was the original just web-browser. Communicator was the later complete suite released in 1997 to include navigator (web-browser), messenger (email client), collabra (news reader), address book, composer (html editor), netcaster (push technology, later dropped), conference (later dropped), calendar (later dropped due to license expiration). First release was 4.0 June 1997. Last release was 4.8 August 2002. Navigator was released in 1994. It's popularity peaked in 1996, as MS bundled IE and the rise of open-source based browsers.It quickly dwindled by late 2000. Additionally MS invested 150M$ into Apple to make IE the default browser instead of netscape. 1998 Netscape released most of it's code-base as open-source, which later became Mozilla, and then even later that forked into Firefox and others ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet Explorer (aka "Exploder") closed source but free, limited oses. Originally released:in 1995 with the OEM of Win95. Became the dominant browser in 1999. Based originally on Spyglass/NCSA/Mosaic. Originally only available for Windows platforms. In 1997 MS & Apple signed a 5 year MS investment of 150M$ into then nearly bankrupt Apple to make IE the default browser for a minimum of 5 years instead of netscape This remained an option until 2006, and there were no updates since 2000 in the Mac version. IE for Unix (Solaris,  & HP-UX) released 1998, ended development in 2001, yanked the pages without notice in 2002. Market dominance peaked in 2002, and has slowly declined since, due to other browsers such as Firefox, Opera, and others.Though they hope to thwart this with Windows Vista and it's restrictions on software "certification" for installation if they get their way on their proposed roadmap of specifications. Though they did work a deal with the Firefox team for allowing it to work on Vista. in 2002 IE was around 96% market share (usage). It's steady decline now has it around 85% in 2006. With asia being higher, and europe lower in market share. For example: Japane 94%, Germany  56%. IE is consider the LEAST secure browser available, if for no other reason than it's ubiquitousness. Also it is the LEAST standards compliant in rendering web-pages, multi-media, etc.  huge security flaws and slow to fix: "The Washington Post reported that exploit code for critical unpatched security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days out of the 365 days in 2006"  In comparison, exploit code for critical security vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for only 9 days before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/01/internet_explorer_unsafe_for_2.html The trial started in May 1998 with the U.S. Justice Department and the Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states suing Microsoft for illegally thwarting competition in order to protect and extend its software monopoly. Later, in October the US Justice Department also sued Microsoft for violating a 1994 consent decree by forcing computer makers to include its Internet browser as a part of the installation of Windows software. During the antitrust case it was revealed that Microsoft had threatened PC manufacturers with revoking their license to distribute Windows if they removed the Internet Explorer icon from the initial desktop, something that Netscape had requested of its licensees. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was called "evasive and nonresponsive" by a source present at a session in which Gates was questioned on his deposition. [1] He argued over the definitions of words such as "compete", "jihad", "concerned", "ask", and "we". [2] BusinessWeek reported, "Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory answers and saying 'I don't recall' so many times that even the presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's denials and pleas of ignorance have been directly refuted by prosecutors with snippets of E-mail Gates both sent and received." [3] Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president as having stated an intention to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications Corporation and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of Netscape's flagship product for free. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mozilla,   the mozilla suite project based on the netscape communications code base forked just before the AOL acquisition. based on the netscape communicator source code. Versions 6 and 7 of the Netscape suite were based on the Mozilla Suite. The last official version is 1.7.13, as Mozilla Foundation is now focusing on the development of Firefox and Thunderbird Seamonkey, The mozilla suite has been superseded by SeaMonkey, a community-driven internet suite that is based on the same source code. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Firefox, open source & free, most oses But weak "opensource". because allows proprietary derivatives. Maybe some privacy concerns with the advanced phishing features enabled, because reports back to google. Firefox is open source It was started as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. "They believed that the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser" Firefox 1.0 was released November 2004. Firefox 2.0 was released October 2006 includes anti-phishing features from google. Also: In August 2006, Microsoft made an offer to Mozilla to help integrate Firefox with the forthcoming Windows Vista,[59] which Mozilla accepted.[60] Upon the release of Firefox 2, the Internet Explorer 7 development team shipped a cake to Mozilla as a sign of appreciation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flock

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Songbird

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Konqueror, open source & free,

------------------------------------------------------------------------- Epiphany,

------------------------------------------------------------------------- History of Opera development. Opera closed-source but free, most oses Opera is now free, and has been for a while. My mistake. BUT it is proprietary and closed-source. (So what is their business model?) The company is based in Oslo, Norway. Support most OSes. In addition to pc's, macs, solaris, handhelds and cellphones, it's also available for nintendo ds, nintendo wii, and licensed in the Adober Creative Suite. Opera began as a research project in 1994 by Norway's largest telecom   company "Telenor". it became independent in 1995. Though wasn't available to the general public until 1996 as 2.0 for Windows only, and only as shareware. 1997 3.0 for multiple oses released. 2000 is changed from trial/shareware to adware. January 2005 they started making opera (7/8x) available to large schools for free) September 2005, with version 8.50 they removed the ads and made it available for free, but continue to sell support contracts. One of their main goals has been to try to remain w3c standards compliant unlike many other browsers (Especially IE). Opera 9.1 is latest version. Released December 2006. Opera for Linux is free. 9.10, Includes anti-phishing filters. Opera mini for cell phones. (free) Opera for 8.x for various handhelds and phones costs around $24 USD Opera for Nintendo DS Opera for the Nintendo Wii Maybe less resource demanding in cpu and memory than firefox under heavier loads. Maybe faster web-page loading (though many browsers claim this). Some people complain that the support in the forums by the opera people was elitist, even rude and condescending. I've witnessed that with other developers such as Debian Linux.

------------------------------------------------------------------------- Safari (Apple/Mac): Originally released 2003. Default browser with Mac OS X, and coming iPhone. Developed in-house by Apple. Though the webkit portion is now open-sourced by Apple, Safari itself is proprietary-closed-source.

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> 5. Maybe I should try to clearly define the differences between: freeware, > shareware, adware, opensource (various types of opensource, probably too > much information to define all the different types of open source?)? > 6. I think (if there's time), I'll take a little time to define the > different types of malware out there: viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, > adware. - This will be in next weeks show. > >