SCOUG OS/2 For You - August 1998

The Internet is one of the best ways to show the vitality of the OS/2 system. In the August Internet SIG meeting we demonstrated the latest tools and techniques for using the many capabilities of the internet. One of the most interesting, and possibly most important, is the upgrade of the ineffective 40-bit encryption available in international versions of Netscape, including NS/2 version 2.02 unless you found a copy of the domestic version. Fortify (www.fortify.net) edits the Netscape executable to activate the 128-bit encryption required by many banks and supported by most online vendors. This clever hack come to you thanks to some Australian wizards who figured out the encryption processes from the recently released Netscape source code, and your government, for setting up this peculiar situation in the first place. Find out more at the ISIG web site (link from www.scoug.com).

We also looked at a new pure Java product for IRC chat, with a neat wrinkle of letting you run a demo as an applet from your browser. Java is still a little slower than compiled apps, and takes lots of memory, but it's growing up fast. Check out J-Chat at http://www.ceri-net.com/jjcomp/products/jchat to see the benefits of Java, indicating how we'll test and buy software in the future.

Next meeting is August 17th. See you there! If you want more information, I can be reached at dave@scoug.com

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