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Here's the good news. Patent #US4,558,302 expired Friday, June 20,
2003. Officially known as (a) 'High speed data compression and decompression apparatus and method,' or Unisys's GIF tax, it now enters the public domain. The GIF image format brought image compression to the Internet.
Unfortunately, patent-owner UNISYS Corporation
TARGET='_new2'>rather doggedly insisted that Webmasters pay them royalty
to use GIFs on Web sites (few did). The company also blocked all moves to improve the basic algorithm. One fallout has been an increased use of pJPEG (progressive JPEG) and PNG image formats.
A detailed chronology is available here. With an anti-view as well. But wait! The European, Canadian, and Japanese patents expire only in 2004: making open-source GIF tools illegal
everywhere but in the US!
In other interesting software updates, there were new versions of Mozilla and MyIE2 (naturally). New in MyIE2.7.1350 is an ability to open multiple Web pages in a single program instance. This results in a lower resource footprint. And supports special plug-ins and IE extensions to let you have
an enjoyable surfing experience. My favorite text editor, NoteTab Pro, too has been updated v4.95. The new version is essentially a collection of bug fixes with ongoing process improvements to the code. It adds a quite mode to disable some sound alerts, plus an updated help file and the ability to keep you posted on software updates and
other developer news. I have the simplest sound control program: I keep my PC speakers almost permanently switched off!
Office 2003 Beta 2 Refresh has also been released via Microsoft's
The excellent
TARGET='_new2'>Metaproducts Download Express has become pain-ware. This
new term (coined by me) is for software that still free but times-out after
an indeterminate period. Necessiating frequent downloads of updated
versions. Download Express is also crippled-ware. With some advance features
only available if you register. I'm sticking with
As for the bad news, there's none. With no new worms looming on the horizon.
Just lots of older worms and viruses still attempting to gain access to your
computers, your data and your credibility. But In no particular order.
The only other security-related update has been to Zone Alarm. This now
includes a hacker attacker (sorry, hacker identification center). As well as
a cache cleaner and even outbound mail scanner. If you are one of many
surfers using a pirated serial number watch out. Existing key generators I
hear don't work with
TARGET='_new2'>ZoneAlarm 4. And the copy 'phones home' to verify the
serial entered is a legitimate one.
I'm also quite certain that the new features added to the basic firewall
won't improve things. Adding new features not part of the original mandate
is a marketing-driven strategy. But my fear is that the best firewall will
soon become the worst. With the core diluted with add-ons. I prefer the
single task software approach as it works better.
G Menon
(The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed here are those of the author and CIOL does not necessarily subscribe to the same.)