Of course Ziff-Davis collectively, at the top level, is not interested supporting
OS/2. If they actually believed in alternatives to Microsoft, they would have categories
or columns every week for such software. For example, how come with all the hubbub
about Linux, there is not a regular weekly Linux column? How about a regular weekly
Java column?
ZD began pushing Windows strongly in 1990 when their publications began featuring
regular columns on Windows and Windows applications. Where are the corresponding
columns in 1999 for hot newcomers like Java and Linux? If ZD is really interested
in what happens to OS/2, why do they refuse to publish OS/2 product announcements
and refuse to do product reviews of new OS/2 releases?
The only conclusion I can come to is this: ZD just wants to make the Court believe
that OS/2 is viable, but they do not want corporate decisionmakers to believe it.
--
Tom Nadeau
Subject: WARP & NS/OS2 USERS DENIED ACCESS TO ZDNET PUBLIC WEB INFOBEADS
NEWS - HELP FIGHT THIS!
To: TEAMOS2HELP-L@NIC.SURFNET.NL
X-UIDL: 70c0b88e61fad24bf717652da0565615
In going to the Ziff Davis web site to get some info on an article relating to
a company mentioned in their News Emailing, I received the following "_REJECTION_"
that basically says OS/2 Warp users are not welcome. Perhaps if enough of us go
to the "rejection" page:
http://www.zdinfobeads.com/InfoBeads/Pages/Initialize/Unsupported.asp
or the page that pushed me over to the page rejection:
Subject: WARP & NS/OS2 USERS DENIED ACCESS TO ZDNET PUBLIC WEB INFOBEADS
NEWS - HELP FIGHT THIS!
To: TEAMOS2HELP-L@NIC.SURFNET.NL
X-UIDL: 70c0b88e61fad24bf717652da0565615
In going to the Ziff Davis web site to get some info on an article relating to
a
company mentioned in their News Emailing, I received the following "_REJECTION_"
that basically says OS/2 Warp users are not welcome. Perhaps if enough of us go
to the "rejection" page:
http://www.zdinfobeads.com/InfoBeads/Pages/Initialize/Unsupported.asp
or the page that pushed me over to the page rejection:
http://chkpt.zdnet.com/chkpt/zdnn012099/www.zdinfobeads.com/default.asp?sid=011999
we can get this situation changed. Here is the text of the rejection message:
Welcome to the ZD Market Intelligence InfoBeads Web Site!
The InfoBeads web site is designed to deliver ZD Market Intelligence's market
research information within the most compelling presentation and delivery environment
available on the Internet.
We are very sorry, but we have not yet certified your browser/platform combination.
Mozilla/2.02 (OS/2; I)
ZD Market Intelligence is committed to delivering a high degree of quality and
reliability in ZD InfoBeads.
Because we have experienced HTML and Java incompatibilities between web browsers
and operating platforms, we test and pre-certify browsers for ZD InfoBeads users.
Even though your browser \ platform combination is not currently supported, we
are continuously adding support for new browsers. Please leave us your email address
below and we will notify you when your browser is supported.
--Bruce
Editor's Note: If you wish to let ZD know what you think about this discrimination
against non-microsoft operating system users, you can send email to: mailto:infobead@zd.com.
There is no real justification for this 'Browser Certification' as I was easily
able to get into the site when I changed my Comm/2 preference file to report itself
as the windows version.
Just thought I'd mention....
I've given up on the news stories saying that OS/2 is dead (it isn't, I use it.)
and I've given up on the stories saying that such & such is going to happen
to/for/on/with OS/2. If I don't see it, it hasn't happened yet. No matter what the
surveys say, I can do as much on my Warp'd system as I can on my office system.
I can work productively with fewer hangups and crashes.
All the rest is just fluff. I'll believe it when I see it. The hype I don't need.
--
Jim Lang
I have some comments to add to the following post which I thought might be of
interest:
I too have a SparQ EIDE drive running under OS/2 and found that I needed removable
media support (of course!) to eject the disks but it would work as a hard drive
even under GA Warp 4. This was probably due to having a newer ibm1s506.add due to
installing to a 4.3 gig drive. I also referenced ibmatapi.flt in config.sys while
adding the newer IDE drivers since it came in the package. I am not sure if it was
really necessary until I updated to fixpack 9 ( was available from RSU and I'm lazy
:-) for removable media support I had to remove BusMastering from the adapter it
was on (ie: /A:1 /!BM ) in order for it to be properly seen. Then I found, as did
Allan, that I had to reformat the disks for use under OS/2. There was no need for
me to fdisk them and they work fine under win95 as well. Not a bad little drive
once the mess got sorted out.
Now I have to get the PP version running :-)
Dear Editor:
I recently bought a copy of StarOffice v5.0 for OS/2 from StarDivision in Fremont,
CA for $49.95 ($39.95 + $10 for shipping and handling). So far I have been very
impressed by this software. Here is why:
I own an IBM Thinkpad 1720i with Pentium-II 266Mhz processor, 64MByte RAM, 4.3
GByte harddisk, and IBM OS/2 Warp 4. The installation of StarOffice went very smoothly.
It was up and running within minutes. The installation already shows that StarDivision
did a great UI job! (I do some of the UI work for Borland Delphi, and Borland C++Builder).
After the reboot I couldn't wait to see more and I didn't get disappointed. Things
look very good in my opinion.
First I tried to access my e-mail via IMAP, so I double-clicked on the 'New Mail'
icon and I was told that there is no outbox. About 5 minutes later I had my outbox
and I double-clicked on 'New Mail' again. Seconds later, I saw my e-mail that I
used to access with Netscape 4.04 and Pine 3.92. I then wrote my first successful
e-mail.
I was impressed!
I continued with accessing my personal homepage at:
http://www.pawlitzek.halifax.ns.ca
and discovered that the bitmaps don't show any white lines (Netscape 4.04). Right
on, I thought. I then accessed my java pages and what a surprise: no problems! It
took me several hours to get Netscape 4.04 to recognize my Java setup. I was once
more impressed!
Next stop: newsgroups. I can't exactly remember how I setup the newsgroup access
but I posted two messages to the comp.os.os2.programmer newsgroups without any problems
in no time. LaTimes for OS/2 used to crash on me dozens of times. I hate that damn
program.
I then launched the spreadsheet in order to calculate my wealth. No problems
here as well. Things work as expected (the calculations were correct!).
Finally, I decided to load a bitmap file containing a picture of my girlfriend
and she looked good with StarDivision. A bit too bright I thought. So I changed
the brightness and discovered the first bug. No big deal. Just a minor problem with
the entrybox. (a C2 bug). No show stopper (A0). I then copied the bitmap into the
word processor, wrote a few lines of text and dumped it the network printer. Worked
very well. I was impressed!
Since my first try, I have used StarOffice on a daily base and I like it very
much. It needs quite a bit of hardware to run on, but it feels very solid and very
slick. A great piece of engineering! A job well done. It is just a matter of time
when Microsoft Office will be removed from my work machine. Sorry Microsoft!
Rene Pawlitzek
Editor's note: You can see Peter's latest response, now written in Star Office
5.0 in this issue of the newsletter - Star Office 5.0 - The
Saga Continues
Hi Mark
I just read your article on my app and though I'd let you know what
"The final configuration item is a startup list, which allows you to select
items based on object IDs to be started when the ip monitor is started. I couldn't
get this to work, and I'm not clear on it's benefit over the normal methods of starting
up items such as the Startup folder or creating a work area, the later having the
benefit of closing all the started items by just closing the folder."
this is meant for. It only activates on a dialup connection. When it detects
a new dialup connection then it starts anything in the startup list. It's for those
of us who don't have a permanent connection to the net and who want to launch apps
when we go online. The IBM dialer includes this facility in it, DOIP doesn't (well
not without some hacking of TCPOS2.INI with Rexx).
Does it make more sense now?
Hmm, /all vs /ALL sounds like a bug ;-) I'll fix it next time I'm in that code.
Trevor Hemsley, London, UK.
Editor Response: Thanks Trevor. You have your hands full now with coding the
RC5 client for OS/2 as well as Sysbench and maybe even working for a living. Any
chance you can add a reset counter option to IP Mon?
To which Trevor replied:
Next time I'm there, I'll look. It would reset back to the total if you stopped/started
it since TCPIP deals with the raw numbers so I'd have to remember how many it had
done when you asked me to reset then subtract that from the raw totals.