Microsoft on the Ropes

Computing Service keynotes Volume 24 Number 5 April-May 1998 Microsoft on the Ropes

Can the software giant defend itself against charges from the US Department of Justice and the EC?

Also in this Issue:

york.announce

New software

New PCs in Alcuin

Library CD-ROMs over the network! keynotes Volume 24, Number 5 From the Editor

The year progresses apace, and we contents have many things to tell you about.

The Windows 95 service has been news in brief updated again—there's a lot of new Millennium news 1 software to try out. We also have an Staff news 1 article about upgrading to Windows Information Desk news 1 95, if you haven't done so already. Information Desk statistics 1 Plus we have many other articles, covering the Millennium, up-to-date administrative computing, and CD- Athens3 2 ROM networks. Quite an issue! Internet firewall 2 ❖❖❖ Changes to dialup service 2 Offensive e-mail 2 Ah yes, Microsoft. Can't live with MIS news 4 them, can't compute without them. York announces york.announce! 5 But the corporation has come under windows 95 info increasing scrutiny over the last few Upgrading to Windows 95 3 months over its practices concerning PC Classroom Windows 3.1 support 3 its Internet browser, Internet Windows 95 software update 6 Explorer. Our feature story covers Tcl/Tk 6-7 this, and gives you an idea why the issue is so very important. library information 10 ❖❖❖

Finally, a note: Keynotes will be feature article: published only once during this summer. We have many things developing in the Computing Service, microsoft on the ropes 7-9 but they will not be ready until later in the summer. Expect a large issue then!

Ray Drainville

Colophon The type in Keynotes consists of Palatino (the University's official font) at various point sizes for text and Helvetica 95 Black at various point sizes for headlines, sidelines, and pullquotes.

The content for Keynotes is assembled digitally with the following tools: Adobe Pagemaker 6.5, Adobe Illustrator 7.01, Adobe Photoshop 4.01, Adobe Streamline 4.0; MetaCreations Vector Tools; Corel WordPerfect 7.0; Microsoft Word 6.01 and 7.0.

Artwork was created on an Apple Macintosh computer, and everything was thenceforth assembled on a Viglen PC running Windows 95. The material was printed by the University of York's Printing Unit.

This issue of Keynotes was assembled by Ray Drainville; if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact him by e-mail at [email protected]. Staff News brief in news Mike Jinks tells of staff changes Trevor Bolton left the University at the end of March to take up a post at Sheffield Hallam University. Trevor has been with the University for 21 years, 2000 working initially as a programmer in the Finance Office and finally as Head of the MIS Group within the Computing Service. During this period he has seen a major growth in the use of computer systems to support administration of the University, and has been responsible for many of the develop- ments undertaken over the years. In addition to support of the central administrative departments, Trevor has been involved with academic departments and with the Library in the early days of Library systems.

Trevor has thus had a major impact throughout the University in the several posts he has held, and we wish him every success in his new role at Sheffield Hallam University. Information Desk news Brian Souter presents some good news Millennium News Mike Jinks keeps you and better figures up-to-date about the Bank Holidays Y2K problem at the The Computing Service building, including the Information Desk and en- University trance lobby, will be closed on the Early May Bank Holiday (4 May) and the As mentioned in a previous arti- Late May Bank Holiday (25 May). All computer systems will be left running cle of Keynotes, the University has with classroom facilities available as normal. set up a Millennium Working Alcuin College Study Centre Room A/140 Group. This has met on several The new multimedia PC facility in Alcuin College, room A/140, opened in occasions and has collected infor- the first week of the Easter Vacation, only slightly behind schedule. Once mation from suppliers of both again, we apologise for any inconvenience during the upgrade, and remind hardware and software on the you that the scanning equipment from A/140 is now located in Langwith compliance of their products. A College, room L/051. digest of this information will be made available on the Universi- Room A/140 is non-bookable and open twenty four hours per day, seven days per week. It is not a teaching room but intended as a study centre, form- ty’s web pages with links to more ing part of the library facilities in Alcuin College. We ask you to respect other detailed information where ap- users by being quiet at all times. Game playing is not allowed and anyone propriate. Provision of this infor- browsing the web should give way to anyone wishing to do serious aca- mation is only part of a general demic study. awareness campaign to be mounted by the group to ensure Information Desk Improvements that everyone is aware of the po- Recent staffing changes involving the merger of the computer operators and tential consequences of systems the information desk staff are reflected in recent statistics for the Information failing to be Millennium compli- Desk, showing some very encouraging improvements. The total number of abandoned calls during February were down to 201, which compares favour- ant. In addition to the web pages, ably with 512 for January. Also, the number of calls answered within 30 sec- the group will advertise some onds was up from 53% in January to 70% in February. Although the desk staff general seminars and provide dealt with 691 telephone enquiries during February this was only a small advice and guidance for Heads part of the total, as shown. of Department. Information Desk Statistics Millennium compliance is not 22 simply a computing issue. The Directorate of Facilities Manage- ment are investigating the com- 420 784 pliance of many systems with Cash Transactions embedded processors, and the Electronic Mail Registry and the Finance Office 691 are investigating some of the Answerphone main processes in their respective Telephone Enquiries areas. We will continue to provide further information both in Enquiries in Person Keynotes and on the University’s web pages as it becomes avail- 859 able. Figures shown are the most recent available, 02/98. 1 ATHENS3—Access to On-Line Data Changes to Dialup Service Service Chris Joy tells you about the new authentication Robert Demaine tells of system changesto the system

The University library subscribes to several on-line data services such as From its modest beginnings in late BIDS,EDINA and MIDAS. Usernames are currently provided by the Com- 1995 the dialup service has proved puting Service Information Desk. All access to these data services will change an increasingly useful tool for those for the next academic year and this is an early warning notice to these changes. users wishing to gain occasional access to the University network and A new authentication system, called ATHENS3, has been developed to allow the Internet while away from cam- users to have a personal username for access to these services. This is to allow pus facilities. a single username to cover many data services and allow new data services to come online with the minimum of problems. In recent months, despite the installation of some additional lines, the To accomodate this change at the national level, the Computing Service and service has come under increasing University Library are currently rationalising the procedures for requesting strain due in part to a minority of usernames and using these data services. A web-based procedure is being users who have used it in a way con- developed to be simple and fast, with new usernames becoming active 24 trary to the spirit in which it was in- hours after request. Further information will be available in a summer issue troduced. As a result, lines have been of Keynotes and through library documentation. It is expected that the new tied up for hours at a time causing procedure for requesting personal usernames will become live at the start of frustration and inconvenience to oth- the next academic year. Old style usernames will no longer be usable after ers wishing to use the limited re- October 1998 so all current staff and students will have to request a new sources available. username. In view of this, from next academic Internet firewall year dialup access will be restricted Chris Joy tells you about additional to staff and postgraduate students only. Undergraduates wishing to security at York connect to York over dialup should

up-to-date consider a subscription to the JANET National Dialup Service (JNDS) op- In conjunction with the rollout of the YHMAN initiative at York, the Comput- erated by U-Net. Full details can be ing Service would like to give an early warning notice to the implementation found at http://www.u-net.net/services/ of a new Internet Firewall. This system will provide additional security to janet. campus computer systems and will be installed over the summer months subject to appropriate funding being available. Offensive Computer systems remain the cornerstone of departmental research and administration and the protection of these systems from outside malicious at- E-mail tack is a complicated issue. As part of a continued attempt to maintain the Ray Drainville warns of investments in research and teaching at York, the Computing Service plans to a delicate issue augment current security systems with a new internet firewall. This will allow a suitable level of protection from external attack for those campus systems which are currently vulnerable. Recently the Computing Service was contacted by an individual outside There is a serious implication for all the York-based NT and UNIX systems of the University who had received which are actively used across JANET and beyond. External access to a sys- offensive electronic mail from a stu- tem will have to be explicitly enabled by the Computing Service and the pro- dent on campus. cedures are currently being considered. Further information will be available to all departments in a future issue of Keynotes. However, if any department The University frowns upon the wishes to discuss the implications of this change, they can do so by contacting abuse of e-mail or the World-Wide Chris Joy ([email protected]). Web in any form, but in the case of offensive e-mail, the damage can be much more onerous. Any individual at the University who avails him- or herself of the network tacitly agrees to comply with the SuperJANET code of conduct—which can be viewed on-line at http:// www.york.ac.uk/services/cserv/offdocs/ juse.htm. Moreover, some types of offensive messages can place the individual within the reach of a number of laws. Finally, offensive postings of any kind bring the University into disrepute. Please be careful about what you say. 2 windows 95 info 95 windows Upgrading to Windows 95 Doug Moncur tells you what to do

The existing campus pcnfs service based around the next version, ver- was to be deployed in the Univer- based around Windows 3.1 is liv- sion 5, in summer 1999. sity there would need to be sig- ing on borrowed time and is un- nificant investment in servers. likely to survive the millenium due We are also discussing what we to year 2000 compliance issues on may do regarding office machines So where does what will then be a product who’s in the future but as yet have no that leave us? development stopped several years plans, tentative or otherwise. earlier. This summer, the only place to go Hydra to is 95. Whatever happens you This summer will see the with- Hydra is Microsoft’s multi-user NT will have to upgrade by summer drawal of Windows 3.1 from Com- product where you can run a vir- 1999 or else face carrying on as puting Service managed class- tual PC on a server from some an unsupported connection after rooms—departmentally-provided other device—a bit like being able the withdrawal of the Windows facilities may continue to offer Win- to run Windows on a terminal. The 3.1 service. Unsupported really dows 3.1 for a while longer, and device could be an old slow PC or does mean unsupported, you may be thinking that it might even a Macintosh, and the client whereby our only responsibility well be time to bite the bullet and software has even been licensed to is to ensure basic connectivity to go to 95. But are you making the Psion and to Nokia—imagine be- the campus network. right choice? ing able to run MS-Word from your phone! What do I need? If you look at the IT supplements To be able to upgrade to Win- of most of the quality papers Seriously, it’s a product that would dows 95 the absolute minimum they’re full of news about Windows be ideal for either reusing older you need is a 4DX2-66 PC with 98, NT workstation and Hydra. slower PCs or for offering a way of 16MB of RAM and 200MB free on connecting remote users, eg those the hard drive. Windows 98 using a laptop over a dialup link Windows 98 is planned as an oper- or working from home a connec- Software tends to be written with ating system for the home user and tion to a standard software environ- a Pentium machine with 32MB is very tightly coupled to Internet ment. RAM in mind, so it is to be Explorer and the web. It is very un- empasised that this is a bare mini- likely that the Computing Service Such a technology also has impli- mum, and the performance of will deploy Windows 98. cations for distance learning. some applications may be less than you expect. Further, as soft- NT workstation Currently we have no plans regard- ware is updated you may see a ing Hydra but hope to carry out a further drop off in performance on A fine operating system, but it does proper investigation this summer. require a more powerful machine your 486. than 95. The current version is ver- However, it is important to realise It’s preferable if you have sion 4, and we have a tentative plan that computing power has to come Pentium based machine with to deploy a classroom service from somewhere and that if this 32MB RAM.

If your machine is less than a 4DX2-66 you should seriously consider replacing the machine, and if your budget will stretch to PC Classroom Windows 3.1 support it, you should consider replacing ?all your older 486 based machines John Illingworth clarifies the issue and older Pentium-based machines by summer 1999. Like Orson Wells’ “War of the 1st 1998 there will no longer be such Worlds” broadcast, the headlines for a choice. All the PCs will run Win- our article on the removal of Win- dows 95 only. dows 3.1 from PC classrooms spread fear and panic throughout the cam- If you have Windows 3.1 teaching pus. However, the truth, though out software currently running only on there, is really not so bad. the Windows 3.1 system and you would like it moved onto the Win- The PC classrooms referred to in this dows 95 system, first endeavour to statement are are D/114, L/117, G/ discover if there is a later, Windows 169, K/120 and W/218 only. They all 95 version of your software, and then currently offer a choice of Windows contact the Computing Service. 3.1 and Windows 95. From October 3 MIS News Kay Robinson brings you up-to-date with the administrative system

MIS Surgery User Accounts Upgrades The Surgery times have recently We are in the process of standard- The next upgrade to the MAC been amended and the new ising ADVAX user accounts with system will take place at the be- times are as follows: those used by other computing ginning of June. Exact dates have facilities in the University. Some yet to be finalised—more details Wednesday 14:30 - 16:00 ADVAX users still have accounts will follow in the next issue of Friday09:30 - 12:30 in the old format, for example, Keynotes. Data Warehouse Train- BLOGGS_J. The standard which ing MIS are holding a number of The Surgery is held in Heslington is in use now is, for example, JB1. training courses jointly with the Hall, Room H/B40. (H/B40 is lo- We intend to convert all ac- DBA’s of the Finance, Estates and cated in the same corridor as the counts in the old style into the Student Record MAC modules. Print Unit.) During these times a newer style at the end of April. The courses scheduled for May member of the MIS team will be Use of the new style will make and June are now full but we are available to help with any ques- administration of user accounts intending to operate an ongoing tions or suggestions that you easier. Those ADVAX users who program of training so look out have regarding administrative will be affected will be contacted for details of more courses in the computing e.g. MAC, reports, individually to be informed of autumn term. We aim to keep the Data Warehouse. We will be their new account name and class size small so that the needs mis news pleased to see departmental password. of individual attendees can be staff—this is not just a service for addressed. We will also be send- central administration. ing out a pre-course evaluation of training needs to those people who are registered for our current courses.

creased amount of disk storage Hardware and greater resilience.

Upgrade We have also purchased an un- Performance on the ADVAX com- interruptible power supply to puters has been very poor for enable the system to shut down some time due to the number of properly following power supply users who regularly log on to the failures—this is something which system and the volume of data we currently do not have with which the MAC system now con- ADVAX. The new hardware will tains. The poor performance has be installed and configured dur- also been hindering the developing April and after a period of ment of improved data entry and extensive testing we aim for the reporting facilities. To this end, new system to “go live” before Computing Service has pur- the end of the current financial chased replacement hardware year. which we expect will deliver a significant improvement in perform- As part of our software testing ance and see the MAC system program we will be conducting through the next three to five millenium compliance testing. years. The new hardware consists The new computers have been of two Digital AlphaServer 4100 named ALPHA1 and ALPHA2— 5/466 with disk storage consist- look out for more details of the ing of a Raid 5 Array. As well as installation project in the next is- additional processing capability sue of Keynotes. the new hardware offers an in-

4 York announces york.announce! york.announce Mike Brudenell tells you about the latest news group at York

Within the Computing Service be doing just this. Checking we have for a long time used locally-devised ways of informing In the meantime we are offering york.announce our users as they login of news to place any announcements One of the advantages of using a and changes affecting the central from departments in the newsgroup to hold announce- computing facilities. Those with “york.announce” newsgroup. ments is that there are many long memories may recall the ways of accessing the informa- A newsgroup can be thought of tion. Indeed many of them will, “news system” on the old VAX/ as a bulletin board, where peo- VMS service. This was quite ad- like the old VAX/VMS news sys- ple can display messages to be tem, keep track of which articles vanced in its ability to track read by others. The which articles individuals had you have already read and either york.announce newsgroup was hide or de-emphasise them. already read and so not show set up a couple of years ago to them again: a feature sadly lost hold messages from the Univer- Windows 95 users in the system we now use. sity, departments and others. We From the Start menu select Local are now placing greater empha- The login news and notice sys- News to see to a Web page with sis on this and are using it more tem has never been intended as Computing Service news; then proactively to help us through a general news system for the click the “york.announce” link. University, although we have on this interim period whilst the re- occasions allowed some depart- view takes place. For UNIX users ments to post important mes- So if you want to know what’s Give the command “news” (for sages on it. happening where check terminal users) or “xnews” (for Over recent months it has be- york.announce. workstation users) to see to a Web come increasingly apparent that page with Computing Service And if your department has ever more people are rea lising news; then click the something to announce — the value of being able to make “york.announce” link. events, Open Lectures, etc — announcements promptly please feel free to send in an an- For Web browsers through the electronic medium. nouncement for the Indeed the number of articles At the main University home york.announce newsgroup. If sent to the Information Desk from page select the Information for you are familiar with posting ar- other departments has grown Staff/Current Students link as ticles to Usenet News you can steadily, to the point where the appropriate. Then follow “Gen- send it direct to york.announce, system — really designed just for eral University announcements where it will appear after it has the Computing Service’s own (york.announce)”. been accepted by a member of use — is being overrun. the Computing Service. Alterna- For people familiar What is really needed is a review tively you can contact the Infor- with Usenet News of the ways in which the Univer- mation Desk and ask them to in- Subscribe to the york.announce sity as a whole can distribute an- sert the announcement on your newsgroup within your news nouncements quickly, easily and behalf. reading program, and check it efficiently. And indeed we un- when you read your other derstand that over the next few newsgroups. months the Administration will If you would like to know more about Usenet News the Comput- ing Service publishes a Quick Ref- erence Guide entitled “Accessing Usenet News from Pine”. Whilst originally written for use with Pine on UNIX it also applies to the PC-Pine program available under Windows 95.

5 Windows 95 software update Tcl/Tk 8.02p John Byrne and John Robinson tell you Rob Fletcher tells you about the latest version about the newest additions of this application builder Additions Over the vacation the Windows 95 The latest stable version of John network applications software was Ousterhout’s Tcl/Tk package is now expanded (in fact twice—theprecise available on the Silicon Graphics sys- details of the second upgrade are tems in the /usr/local/bin directory, unknown at the time of writing this). along with an interactive GUI builder, SpecTcl. Teaching software is accessed via Programs|Teaching, and then the The windowing shell (wish, see be- name of the department responsible. low) is also available on the Win- The Archaeology TLTP packages dows 3.1 systems hidden in previousl available under Windows “Courseware”/”Chemistry 3.1 have been transferred, and some CourseWare”. software for other departments. The Windows 95 versions of Tcl/Tk The Papyrus bibliography manager and SpecTcl will be mounted over the is in Programs|Databases. This is in Easter vacation. fact a DOS application, but as yet a more modern Windows based sys- Background Information tem is not available via CHEST. tclsh

software Tclsh is a shell-like application that The clip art for Powerpoint 7.0 is reads Tcl commands from its stand- now working—albeit with a mis- ard input or from a file and evalu- leading warning message. ates them. If invoked with no argu- ments then it runs interactively, read- Most of the Paradox 7.0 experts are ing Tcl commands from standard in- now working. Warning of put and printing command results and error messages to standard out- We hope to have improved the sup- removals put. It runs until the exit command port for user writing their own pro- Please note that WordPerfect 7 and is invoked or until it reaches end-of- grams—this depends on time avail- Delphi 2 (both of which have had file on its standard input. If there ex- able for installation work, and the de- later version running in parallel for ists a file .tclshrc in the home direc- livery of installation kits from our some time) will be removed at the tory of the user, tclsh evaluates the software suppliers. If all goes well, end of the summer term. file as a Tcl script just before reading the Programming section will in- the first command from standard clude Systems Software input. On office PCs, connections to users’ —Borland C++ 5.02—a later version M: drives and the teaching software If you create a Tcl script in a file of the ‘pure’ integrated development N: drive are made using a software whose first line is environment for Windows; package called PC-NFS. The version —Borland C++ Builder version 3. #!/usr/local/bin/tclsh of the package currently installed This is a programming environment (5.13) has a number of problems, for the rapid development of Win- then you can invoke the script file most notably in examining and dows 95 programs, combining a directly from your shell if you mark modifying file properties. A new ‘visual’ interactive design of the user the file as executable. version (6.01) is available for users interface with C++ for the task-spe- who wish to install it themselves. If cific code. Also known as ‘Delphi for To start the Tcl interpreter simply you have not been experiencing C++’; type the unix command problems, then there is no urgency —Jbuilder, again from Borland. This to upgrade this software. If you do % tclsh applies the visual programming wish to upgrade it, close all open paradigm used by Delphi and Wish applications, then run Cbuilder, with Java as the base lan- Wish is a simple program consisting guage. s:\95sys\nfs601\setup.exe of the Tcl command language, the Tk — TCL and an associated graphical toolkit, and a main program that user interface builder SpecTcl pro- The program should install without reads commands from standard in- vide an interpreted language system. operator intervention. Reboot your put or from a file. It creates a main —NAG C Library DLL. This will PC as requested and “cancel” the window and then processes Tcl com- give Windows programmers (prima- running of “parmset” when the PC mands. rily working in C or C++) access to boots (you can run parmset if you a library of over 250 high quality nu- know what you are doing). (continued) merical routines. 6 feature: microsoft feature: (continued from previous page) Microsoft on the Ropes Ray Drainville tells you about Microsoft’s day(s) in court

Can Microsoft defend itself against duces the successful money-man- accusations of anticompetitive prac- agement software Quicken, on the tices? grounds that Microsoft would instantly gain a significant hold on the The software giant Microsoft has growing market of on-line banking, been under intense legal scrutiny by the US Department of Justice and by the European Union for the past several months for the way in which it distributes its free World-Wide Web browser, Internet Explorer. The legal proceedings centre on whether Microsoft is acting as a monopoly, driving out competition.

The issue may not seem important to those who browse the web at the University of York, since the Com- puting Service provides the rival To start the windowing shell, type Netscape Communicator software the UNIX command for use. However, the issues are of % wish very considerable importance for the The issue is users of Windows PCs, and the legal SpecTcl proceedings against Microsoft may coming to a head SpecTcl (pronounced “spec tickle”!) in fact decide how the company in- very soon with the is a Tcl/Tk application for the design troduces innovation in its software and testing of a graphical user inter- in 1998 and beyond. The issue also imminent release face. It can produce code for a may decide whether software maker of Windows 98 number of target systems, but in gen- Netscape will exist in a couple of eral you would choose Tcl/Tk. The years. and therefore dominate not only the code generated with SpecTcl should computing industry but eventually run on any Tcl/Tk platform (UNIX, Background the financial industry as well. PC and Macintosh). Microsoft has been under investigation before for anticompetitive, or The Internet onslaught SpecTcl is started using the unix com- ‘antitrust’, practices. In the early mand: 1990’s, the US Federal Trade Com- In 1994, a small company named mission and European Commission Netscape was formed to create com- % specTcl antitrust officials investigated the mercial software, now called Navi- gator, to graphically browse the Help and Documentation software maker for unfair practices in requiring PC makers to pre-install, World-Wide Web. Navigator is de- Comprehensive on-line help for the or ‘bundle’, its Windows operating voted to open standards-that is, the Tcl/Tk package is available in HTML system software with all new PCs. It software’s results were the same on format at: http://www.york.ac.uk/serv- must be recalled that there are a whatever computer platform upon ices/cserv/docs/tcltk/ number of alternative operating sys- which it ran. Netscape went public in the following year, and instantly The man pages are in /usr/local/ tems that also run on Intel processors—for example (but not exclu- became one of the highest-perform- man/ under man1,man3 and mann ing technological stocks the US stock subdirectories. sively) Sun Solaris, Linux, OS2, PC- DOS, and NeXTStep. While the US market had ever seen, in fact leading the charge of Internet public A comprehensive SpecTcl user guide and the EC were officially success- stock offerings. Netscape’s web is available for printing in /usr/ ful in forcing Microsoft to back away browser, Navigator, then enjoyed a local/doc/SpecTclGd.ps (122 from its position, the damage was near monopoly for web browsers. pages) done, and there are few credible al- ternatives to Microsoft Windows on During this period, Microsoft paid For those requiring more printed Intel PCs—certainly it is very diffi- little attention to the growth of the documentation, copies of the cult to find any PC with an operat- Internet. The company believed that (old)draft of John Ousterhout’s book ing system other than Microsoft the on-line future lay in proprietary are also available for printing on / Windows, whether the variant be 3.1, networks such as America On-Line usr/local/doc/TclTk; 95 or NT. Similarly, Microsoft was book.p1.ps book.p2.ps —Intro and blocked from purchasing the soft- scripting book.p3.ps; book.p4.ps — ware company Intuit, which pro- (continued) Tcl and Tk C API. 7 (continued from previous page)

and CompuServe, and therefore however. They also started bundling the software with revision 2 of Win- made a considerable investment into dows 95. This was very threatening to Netscape, as Microsoft’s operating the creation of the Microsoft Net- systems own virtually 90% of the desktop market. To have one’s free com- work, a rival to these systems. It only petitor automatically installed on every machine purchased is potentially fa- became apparent during 1995-96 tal. that the Internet, and not proprietary systems, would establish the future It has become clear that Microsoft has been working very hard indeed to have of digital communications. Internet Explorer used as widely as possible. The software giant produced agreements with many hardware distributors—such as Gateway 2000, Dell When the dominance of the Internet and Compaq—throughout 1996 and 1997 that formally installed Internet Ex- became apparent to Microsoft it be- plorer as the only web browser on the Windows 95 desktop. Netscape’s came clear that the software giant browser was nowhere to be found. In parallel, Microsoft vigourously pur- needed to produce its own World- sued ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to bundle Internet Explorer with their Wide Web browser—particularly software rather than rival Netscape’s. These agreements have been taking when it noted that Netscape was their toll on Netscape. Its share of the browser market is down to approxi- able to virtually dictate the future mately 60%, and it recently announced fiscal losses and made a sizeable pro- direction of the World-Wide Web. portion of its employees redundant. They produced Internet Explorer, a browser based upon the first graphical web browser, Mosaic—which was incidentally created by the Were all these successful agreements on founding members of Netscape Microsoft’s part the result of intelligent when they were postgraduates— and distributed the software free of and honest brokerage? This does not charge. This last fact is highly impor- appear to have been the case tant, as Netscape at this point charged for its browser. Microsoft effectively was undercutting the foundation of Netscape’s entire busi- ness.

Netscape had little to fear in the be- ginning. The performance of the first few iterations of Internet Explorer were lacklustre to say the least. They were buggy, they couldn’t download and view pages at the same time, and their handling of common HTML was idiosyncratic.

In fact it wasn’t until version 3.0 of Internet Explorer that Microsoft created a more winning formula. This version of the web browser was significantly enchanced from previous versions. It handled HTML very well, it disposed of its bugs and even beat Netscape to the punch in the introduction of new web technolo- Were all these successful agreements on Microsoft’s part the result of intelli- gies such as Cascading Style Sheets gent and honest brokerage? This does not appear to have been the case. The (see previous article in Keynotes for US Department of Justice started to look quietly into the manner by which a feature on CSS). And wither Microsoft made agreements with hardware vendors; likewise the EU began a Netscape at this time? It too had pro- quiet investigation into, among others, the agreements made with ISPs. In the duced the third version of its feature: microsoft course of these investigations, sources leaked corporate memoranda and some browser, which was filled with bugs hardware companies and ISPs (eventually) spoke out about the intimidatory and was significantly slower than tactics that Microsoft employed to ensure the widest market saturation possi- Internet Explorer in its rendering of ble for its software. And herein lies the question of whether Microsoft was web pages. In a world where the dig- leveraging its power as a monopoly—or indeed whether it is a monopoly at ital citizen usually has to pay by the all. minute for access, this is a cardinal sin. The smoking guns Backroom deals The leaked memoranda and the testimony of hardware vendors and ISPs paint a picture of Microsoft-far and away the most successful software com- Microsoft’s winning forumula for pany in the world-as extremely paranoid that it would forever lose its market Internet Explorer went beyond sig- position. nificant performance enhancements, (continued)

8 feature: microsoft feature: (continued from previous page) (a high-end operating system used and others—for being successful. It as a server and powerful also claims in its defence that it is not The memoranda were written by top workstation) use Internet Explorer in a true monopoly because it a.) can- Microsoft figures and talked about order to download server updates not control prices and b.) the com- the threat of Netscape. They indi- from the Internet. Microsoft claims puting industry is too uncontrolla- cated that the best way to neutralise that they simply wanted to ensure ble for Microsoft to be considered a Netscape was to crush it. And they that their user base was all using the monopoly. It has stated that it acts furthermore indicated that the best same software in order to weed out aggressively because the computing way to crush Netscape was to lever- problems more easily; but in the light world is so volatile that today’s mar- age their market position as the of the continuing investigations, the ket leader will become tomorrow’s dominant operating system vendor requirement came at a very sensitive has-been—and indeed, the company against Netscape. It seems to have time. can point to VisiCalc, Lotus, been their belief that Netscape’s open WordPerfect, Corel and Novell as standards could eventually lead the Finally, the issue is coming to a head companies that once enjoyed pow- way to negating the necessity of us- very soon with the imminent release erful positions but ultimately lost to ing Windows as the operating sys- of Windows 98, the upgrade to Win- Microsoft as they competed head-to- tem in the modern world. dows 95. Among other things Win- head. dows 98 completely integrates the Compaq eventually spoke out about Internet with the desktop. Internet Nevertheless, the current success of Microsoft’s tactics of leveraging their Explorer and Windows Explorer are the DoJ’s proceedings has embold- dominant position in the operating united—one browses the contents of ened the district attorneys for several system marketplace. Microsoft one’s hard drive with the same soft- states to conduct their own investi- threated that if Compaq did not place gations into the software giant, and Internet Explorer as the only web The current the issue is far from closed. browser on their computers, Microsoft would charge them signifi- success of the The company is doing a poor job of cantly higher rates for copies of Win- DoJ’s proceedings winning public approval. Recently dows 95. This is a disastrous turn for the Los Angeles Times broke the story hardware vendors who often oper- has emboldened that Microsoft was about to conduct ate on fairly slim profit margins per several states to a behind-the-scenes campaign to in- machine. Similarly, the EU has been fluence public opinion, and those investigating Microsoft for (among conduct their own local district attorneys, with letters other things) threatening small ISPs investigations to newspaper editors purporting to with bankruptcy if they do not bun- have been written by concerned citi- dle the browser with their own software that one browses the Internet. zens—when in fact they would be ware. Few ISPs have come forward It is certainly difficult to imagine that, written by Microsoft public relations yet, but this may be the case because when wishing to browse the Internet, figures. At first the software com- the US investigation is further ahead a user is going to switch from Ex- pany vigourously denied the charge- in its proceedings. plorer to another bit of software. and when further evidence came forth they admitted that they consid- Forcing the issue There have been indications that the DoJ will investigate Windows 98 is- ered the idea, but ultimately rejected Throughout these investigations it sues, but it seems very late to do any- it. Newer evidence has come forth, must be said that Microsoft has done thing effective against the company. however, that indicates they ap- little to help its position, either in proved the scheme and were plan- terms of calming people’s concerns Where do we go ning to implement it when it became of anticompetitive practices or in public. minimising the potential damage from here? It is still very early in the DoJ’s case wrought by the proceedings. Microsoft has been taking its lumps against Microsoft and it is unclear in the court of public opinion and it At first, a US judge ordered that where it will all lead in the end. One seems that it is starting to pull back Microsoft ‘un-bundle’ the browser thing is very clear, however— from the brink. It is no longer requir- from the operating system. Microsoft Microsoft will not allow itself to be ing European ISPs to bundle Internet countered that doing so would com- placed into the position of comply- Explorer with their software. It has pletely disable the operating system, ing with a court-order. This would also ‘un-bundled’ Internet Explorer because the system and the browser be tantamount to admitting guilt and from revision 2 of Windows 95. But share many vital resources. In an certainly further embolden its critics the issue is not over yet, and embarassing turn, the judge himself into pursuing them. Microsoft will Microsoft claims that the proceed- showed the software giant how to certainly come to some agreement ings of the Department of Justice is remove the executive program—and with the DoJ. It is merely a question severely hampering its ability to in- the executive program only—from of the degree to which they give in, novate in the marketplace. Why in- the desktop, and stated that the com- and the potential damage the agree- deed, they ask, should the DoJ be pany would be held in contempt of ment will have upon Microsoft’s concerned about Microsoft’s domi- court if they did not comply. The plans to integrate the desktop and nance of the World-Wide Web, when company complied. the Web. they were not as concerned with its kn At the same time, Microsoft has dominance of the desktop? Microsoft (C|Net’s investigative articles on made it a requirment that system ad- does have a point when they coun- New.Com [http://www.news.com] have ministrators who use Windows NT ter that they are being targeted by contributed to this article) their competitors—Netscape, Sun 9 YorkDataNet: bringing CD-ROM searching to your desktop Christine Ellwood tells you about the new CD-ROM system

YorkDataNet is a new service which supported PCs and on other ma- and will consider upgrading the provides access to locally held CD- chines. Although the menu looks simi- number of users for databases where ROM and other databases across the lar there are some important differ- there are an excessive number of oc- campus network. The service has ences with printing, downloading casions when the limit is reached. been planned and implemented as a and the databases available. This is Since these extra users can be expen- joint project between the Library and because we are actually running two sive, decisions will need to be made the Computing Service which has fa- separate NT servers. The CD-ROMs within the context of available re- cilitated its integration with the cam- are cached (copied) to hard disk on sources and priorities when com- pus network. The service will con- the first server which speeds up pared with purchase of new tinue to be managed jointly. searching considerably. On Windows databases. 95 supported connections software is This article provides an overview of installed which connects directly to We also encourage suggestions from YorkDataNet, but it is an evolving this CD-ROM server. It downloads you for new titles to be added to the service and every question cannot be the individual items of software re- service. There are a number of ways answered here. In addition, quired to access a particular database in which new databases can be YorkDataNet should not be seen in to your hard disk, runs them, and re- funded and you should contact your isolation; it complements other data- moves them afterwards to save space. Subject Librarian in the first instance base host services such as BIDS, Printing and saving work exactly as to discuss your needs. In addition to EDINA, MIDAS and ARC and the they would if the application was in- price, we have to consider the techni- databases which are available on stalled locally. cal features of a database before de- standalone PCs in the J.B. Morrell Li- ciding whether to network it or install brary. Look at the Databases at York As we cannot predict exactly how it on a standalone PC in the Library. web pages for more detailed access software is set up on other PCs, and The cheapest CD-ROMs are often the information, a full list of databases to allow access to non-PC machines, most difficult to make available! available through YorkDataNet and the second server runs Ntrigue which other host services, answers to fre- uses a version of Citrix thin client tech- There will be an official launch of quently asked questions and updates: nology (see Keynotes vol. 24, no. 2 for YorkDataNet in the J.B. Morrell Li- http://www.york.ac.uk/services/library/ more information on thin client tech- brary on Thursday 23 April which will datanet.yrk/ nology). Instead of running the CD- be followed over the next week by a ROM software on your hard disk it series of demonstrations and oppor- For several years CD-ROM searching runs on this separate server and the tunities for hands-on practice. For has been restricted to PCs in the Li- database search software appears in details of times see the posters in the brary and many of the databases had a window on your screen. Searching Library, or visit the Databases at York to be run using DOS-based software. works exactly as it would if the data- web page. We can also provide train- The new system allows access from base was running locally. However, ing for staff and students in a variety supported and unsupported Win- printing and saving (downloading) of ways. Please contact your Subject dows 3.1 and Windows 95 PCs, plus work in a slightly different way and a Librarian to discuss your needs. Apple Macintoshes and dial-in, with small number of CD-ROMs which UNIX access to be added later. Most run on outdated software are not Although we have tested of the databases now have a Windows available (see the Databases at York YorkDataNet and each database on a interface, although there are a few web pages for more information). It range of machines, it is impossible to which cling on to DOS. is the first server of this type which is predict what problems may occur on being used to provide a campus-wide individual machines. Some questions YorkDataNet is automatically avail- service at York and has given Com- are answered on the Databases at able on all supported PCs on the cam- puting Service valuable experience in York web pages which will be con- pus network. On Windows 95 sup- using the technology and in assessing tinually updated as we get asked ported PCs click on Start | Programs whether it might be appropriate for questions and (hopefully) find solu- | Information Resources | other services. tions to problems. We also welcome YorkDataNet. On Windows 3.1 sup- your feedback on the service (good ported level 2 PCs an icon is available There is normally a limit to the and bad) as this will help us to de- in the Information Resources group number of simultaneous users for velop it in the way that you want. You

library information on the desktop. In addition, a number each individual database. This limit can talk to your Subject Librarian or of departments have made it available applies whether you are connecting e-mail [email protected]. on departmental machines and there via a Windows 95 supported PC or are some dedicated PCs on the first via another machine. The library Editor’s Note: Christine Ellwood is Head floor of the J.B. Morrell Library (be- guide for each database gives the limit of Subject Services and Information hind the Enquiry Desk). You can also for simultaneous users. In addition, Systems. download the client software yourself there is a limit of 30 users at one time if you have an unsupported machine for access to YorkDataNet itself on or are connecting from home. machines other than Windows 95 supported PCs. We will be monitoring the kn You will see a number of differences usage of databases on both services between the service on Windows 95 10 contact information contact Computing Service Address

Computing Service Telephone: Switchboard (01904) 430000 University of York Direct dialling (01904) 43 followed by ext no. Heslington Fax: (01904) 433740 YORK YO10 5DD Email: [email protected]

Also, try the World-Wide Web: http://www.york.ac.uk/services/cserv

Information Desk

Telephone: ext 3838 Email: infodesk

The Information Desk is open from 9am to 5.15pm Monday to Friday (closed for training Wednesdays 2pm-3pm), for problem solving, advice and information, fault reporting, network connections, file conversion, sales, course book- ings, registration and documentation. Printed output can be collected from the lobby entrance which is open from 8am to midnight. Contacting Computing Service Staff:

Director: Mike Jinks 3801 kmj1 Deputy Director: Peter Roberts 3802 pdr1 Departmental Secretary: Lorraine Moor 3801 lsm1

Head of Technical Services: Dave Atkin 3804 dla1 Head of User Services: John Illingworth 3803 jji1 Head of Personal Systems: Doug Moncur 3815 dgm1 Operations Manager: Brian Souter 3814 bs1 Information Officer: Ray Drainville 3805 rad4

Su Ashton 3825 sma3 Peter Halls 3806 pjh1 Steve Bennett 3832 sgb8 Vivienne Hemingway 3818 vwh1 Sue Bolton 2102 sjb28 Jenny Jackson 2101 jj5 Paul Bowen 3821 pab7 Chris Joy 3807 cj8 Mike Brudenell 3811 pmb1 John Marsden 3832 jpm1 John Byrne 3812 jcb1 John Mason 3813 jrm13 Paul Conacher 4346 pac1 Colin Rea 3817 cr9 Robert Demaine 3808 rld1 John Robinson 3833 jsr1 Debra Fayter 3839 daf3 Kay Robinson 2101 kr7 Rob Fletcher 3816 rpf1 Andrew Smith 3809 abs4 Chris Gowland 3823 cg1 James Walker 4347 jaw1 Timothy Willson 2123 ftmw1

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