The LangaList

Talk about a love/hate relationship: Most of the time, I love tech--- hardware, software, gadgets, gizmos, whatever. But then there are times when the gods of silicon and software seem angry, and nothing works right.

For example, there was the site-move nightmare of a few weeks ago: Along with all the normal and expected hassles of moving a site, it was my bad luck to move at the same time my web host came under a concentrated hack attack that crippled some of its infrastructure. To their credit, they never went dark, but sites got awfully slow for a while, and email was delayed for days.

More recently, my list host has been trying to scale up his infrastructure for large volume email newsletters, like this one. He invested a ton of money in new Sun servers and Solaris software, high-bandwidth connections, and new list-processing software. But his particular setup was the first and largest of its type, and as is often the case with first tries, all the pieces didn't fit together well---even though Sun and the list software company both had technicians on site.

As a result, the last couple LangaList issues were delayed, and some of you got more than one copy. I truly apologize for any inconvenience this caused you.

If the problems don't resolve very soon, I'll move the list to another host. (I don't want to move, but delayed and duplicate issues aren't ok.) I appreciate your patience while we try to work out the glitches, and again, I truly apologize for any inconvenience.

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3) Netscape 6.0 Preview Release

Several readers were intrigued by the new "preview" edition of Netscape's flagship browser, and asked me about both it and the somewhat extravagant claims made here, where the new unshipped and unfinished browser is compared to Microsoft's currently-shipping version of IE: http://home.netscape.com/browsers/future/standards.html

In fact, if the new browser actually ships in good shape and with the promised features, then indeed, for the first time in almost 3 years, Netscape may be more web standards-compliant than IE, at least until Microsoft makes a counter-move.

It's good to see some big-gun competition returning to the browser wars---competition is a good thing. And a new version of Netscape is great news to the beleaguered and long-suffering fans of Netscape, who have had little to cheer about for a long time. In fact, there's already some euphoric "Netscape is back!" chatter.

But I think Netscape has a long, uphill battle ahead of it--- and deservedly so. Netscape has had the *least* standards-compliant major browser for *years*; they've tried to force-feed more incompatible and proprietary standards on the computing community than any other browser maker; they've ignored pleas from users and developers alike to fix longstanding, fundamental bugs in their browser that have remained uncorrected for version after version after version; and for all its strengths, this new browser is over two years late, and still only in an early preview version.

A horrendous track record like that might normally be cause for at least some token humility, but not at Netscape: In the above link and on the rest of their site, for example, you get the impression that Netscape is the righteous champion of open standards, fighting the good fight on behalf of us all. Of course, history proves that this embracing of open standards is a relatively recent development and is actually quite uncharacteristic of Netscape. Plus, the fact that Netscape is now part of AOL--- the most fundamentally proprietary and non-standards-compliant ISP/OLS giant there is--- suggests that this talk of open standards is really just sideshow posturing.

(Just in case you think my less-than-positive view of Netscape is unfair, check this out: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2458154,00.html )

If you want to try the new Netscape offering, it's here: http://www.netscape.com/download/previewrelease.html?cp=hom04t7

Note that this is a pre-beta. There are many bugs and weirdnesses, and there will be at least three more iterations before it's ready to ship. Some users have reported that they can't properly uninstall the beta, too. (A not-uncommon problem with beta software.)

But if you want it--- there you have it. 8-)

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4) ZoneAlarm Version Confusion

As mentioned in the last newsletter, the then-current shipping version of ZoneAlarm (the free personal firewall) was 2.1.7, but some readers (including me) have been using 2.1.10, a beta version. Both versions have essentially the same major features.

I say "was" because Version 2.1.10 should come out of beta and be officially released any day now--- perhaps even by the time you read this. Check http://www.zonelabs.com/ to see; if it's available on the regular download page, grab it.

Versions 2.1.10 is better than 2.1.7: On some systems, 2.1.7 caused too-frequent disk accesses. That's an annoyance in itself and can reduce system performance. But worse, it can cause some disk utilities such as Defrag and Scandisk to try to restart repeatedly until they finally give up and quit.

If 2.1.10 is *not* generally available, and if you're *not* having trouble with 2.1.7, leave well enough alone and stick with 2.1.7 until 2.1.10 ships.

But if---and only if---2.1.10 is not yet available generally, and if you've been having problems with ZA 2.1.7, then I suggest you try the beta 2.1.10 at http://www.zonelabs.com/beta_download.htm . Because of inevitable bugs and other problems,  I generally do not recommend that you try betas, but in this case, the beta may be better. 8-)

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