News from the OS/2 World - by Ryan Dill

reetings all, and welcome again to OS/2 e-Zine! 's monthly news update. This column is designed to go over certain topics that e-Zine! 's own News Folder might have missed, or only glossed over.

We still believe our News Folder can't be beat when it comes to up-to-the-minute, accurate information, but it usually contains more "official" things like press releases and such. This column will include a bit more detail about things we think are of interest to OS/2 users everywhere. Grass roots support, off-the-record news and updates -- stuff that other sources may have missed -- you name it, we've got it!

A bit of browser news... Opera Software has just recently (January 7th) completed negotiations and signed agreements with programmers to code an OS/2 version of their popular Opera web browser. An official press release (including expected release dates) is expected soon. Rumors from the German OS/2 magazine OS/2 Inside indicate that Communicator for OS/2 will now be ready by the third quarter of 1998 (July-September), and will include support for Java 1.1.6, which should also be released by that time. (You can find the original article in German here). In the meantime, IBM is still working on bringing Java 1.1.x support to the existing Netscape 2.02 -- A new beta copy of the updated 2.02 recently appeared on IBM's testcase FTP site, and is floating about the 'Net. Last but not least, the Internet browser/suite Internet Adventurer has been updated recently, bringing it to version 1.2.1. This version includes bug fixes and enhanced PGP (Pretty Good Privacy, for encryption of e-mail) support. Adventure Software also reports that work on a Java version of Internet Adventurer is underway, in answer to customer's desires of seeing a cross-platform version of the software.

Any virus-conscious OS/2 user may be interested in learning that IBM is now giving away free trial copies of IBM Anti-Virus for OS/2. The trial copies run for 60 days before shutting down, allowing you a good chance to try out the latest version of the product to see how it performs. Those interested can download the trial from at IBM's Anti-Virus home page.

Note that McAfee, one of IBM's competitors in the antivirus market, has offered evaluation of their products for a while as well. If you'd like to compare the two offerings, check out McAfee's evaluation offerings for OS/2, including VirusScan, GroupScan and GroupShield.

For those who use their computers to help with the Distributed.Net encryption cracking effort (see the Team Warped page for more details on the effort under OS/2), some of Distributed.Net's recent actions may need some explaining. A new contest is being held by RSA (the organization responsible for encrypting the message we're all trying to crack), but it doesn't mean that the current RC5 effort is being abandoned, just that it's put on hold while the new contest runs. In the words of Team Warped's Colin Hildinger:

Those who have been around since the DESCHALL days will recall working on the DES Challenge, one of the contests in the same set with the current RC5-64 Challenge. Well, RSA has issued a new and ongoing DES challenge. This time how fast we find the key will determine how much money we get. If we find it within 25% of the previous best DES cracking time (this time we need to do it in 22 days) we get the full $10,000. If it takes longer we'll get less."

The newest OS/2 client just released (version 2.7001 build 380) has the capability to process both RC5-64 blocks and DES blocks. Basically, by default it works on DES (because we're supposed to crack DES as fast as possible), but if your client finds that DES has already been cracked when it tries to fetch more DES stuff to work on, it goes right back to cracking RC5-64, picking up where you left off. In this way you don't need to run two clients for the two separate cracking efforts, and you never lose work you may have done on RC5 when your client switches to DES. A new DES contest will be held every six months, the object being to "attempt to produce obscenely low DES cracking times."

Magnus Olson would like to announce the availability of version 1.7 of his desktop calculator for OS/2, WarpCalc. Called a "serious calculator for serious OS/2 users", WarpCalc is just that; a full scientific calculator which can do pretty much anything a power user could want. The program allows you to save your own variables and symbols for later use, operate in various modes (normal, scientific, engineering or fixed point), use multiple statements per calculation, work with logarithms (natural or base10), factorials, trig functions in degrees, radians or gradians, and much more.

WarpCalc has been released as shareware through BMT Micro, so it can be downloaded for evaluation from its home page there. The registration fee of $20 US covers all future upgrades. Feel free to download and try it out.

InnoVal Systems Solutions took the wraps of its new e-mail client on January 14th. Company president, Dan Porter, visited the monthly meeting of the NYPC OS/2 SIG to demonstrate their new Java e-mail app, J Street Mailer.

Porter called the demonstration a great success, saying that roughly half the members present signed up for InnoVal's J Street "Charter User Group" program. He also told us that the final release of J Street Mailer is right on schedule for the end of this month (January). In an industry where missed deadlines are the norm, Porter assured us that he was able to demonstrate all features at the meeting -- more than two weeks before the shipping deadline.

Surprisingly, Porter partially credits IBM with this promised timeliness. In a phone conversation he praised the help his company has received from IBM with the Java project saying, "I couldn't be more pleased with IBM's support on this." While there is still a nagging bug in the OS/2 Java Virtual Machine, Porter sounded convinced that IBM would have it fixed soon enough to make J Street mailer platform independent when it is released.

Lastly, you may recall Panacea Software's new news client, ProNews/2, being mentioned in e-Zine! 's Beta File in previous issues. No more -- ProNews/2 finished up its beta stages since our last writing, and is now Generally Available (GA) at level 1.0. You can download it as shareware for a 45-day evaluation, after which time registration is required, for $30 US. For full details as to ProNews/2's feature set, see its web page at Panacea.

That's it for this month. If you have a tip that you want followed up or a news item you think should be reported, don't hesitate to let us know!

Ryan Dill is a student in Computer Science at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS and OS/2 e-Zine! 's Assistant Editor. He is reported to be relieved that, with the advent of Warp 4, talking to your computer is no longer considered a sign of mental instability.

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