Before there were computers in Estonians' homes

This article concentrates on the availability of writing equipment in people's homes in Estonia before Estonia's reindependence.

Until Estonia regained independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, after which computers gradually began taking a foothold, most people relied on pen and paper, even in organisations. Everyone (if not most people) didn't even have a typewriter.

During the Soviet era, Latin-lettered typewriters were harder to get than typewriters with Cyrillic characters, and students at universities had to submit their works in Russian (at least major works).

And all photocopiers (Xerox and like machines found only in organisations) had to be accounted for to avoid widespread dissemination of 'dangerous' information.

And then there was Samizdat (lit. 'self-publishing' or 'Self-publishing House'), wherein people would retype and carbon-copy banned literature.

One of my schoolteachers told our class, that when she studied at school/university in the 1970s, then ballpoint pens were very fancy; everyone wanted and had to have at least one, and there were even special ballpoint ink vending places, where people would queue up for refills.

Fountain pens and cheap ink pens were widespread, and these were mostly used in schools by students. Specialized simpler fountain pens were used at school to train penmanship.

Rotary-dial telephones were very widespread well into the 1990s.

Usage share of writing equipment in Soviet Estonia. This is a rough estimate with no numbers, and covers the time period of 1980s – early 1990s. (Estonia regained independence in 1991.) As it was, unauthorised copying of software was rampant.

1. Pencils. — Well, these were everywhere. KOH-I-NOOR from Hungary was the definitive trademark for a plain "HB" (aka No2) pencil. No Soviet-/Eastern Bloc-manufactured pencil ever had an eraser on it.
2. Fountain pens (primary school level);
3. Ballpoint pens;
4. Cyrillic typewriters (always cheaper);
5. Latin typewriters — because these were harder to get and more expensive. Possibly because they were mostly manufactured in East Germany (DDR). "Erika" comes to mind.
6. Electric typewriters. Organisations of certain importance and up. I remember at least two in a specialised cabinet of a children's hospital. Very few people had these at home.
7. Photocopiers. Organisations only. All had to be accounted for.
8. Home computers (often DYI, 8-bit). Not particularly cheap. Printers were not sold, AFAIK.
9. General-purpose and school computers. Only 8-bit, and only in selected (favoured) schools. Prohibitively expensive for home use. The Soviet Agat and Estonian-made Juku come to mind. ELORG (a Soviet export organisation) put a $10,000 price sticker for just one "Agat" in 1984. (Oh wait, stickers were not widespread.)
10. Even some higher institutions of education and research used 8-bit computers, such as Pravetz (Bulgaria) and Robotron (DDR), but not limited to just these. I remember typing in WordStar 3.2 on a Robotron computer at father's workplace. Dot matrix printers were certainly there.
11. Anything above 8-bit was certainly found in universities and large organisations of importance, such as ministries.

Brand recognition and advancements in technology

Everyone knows this picture, as it has become a meme of sorts.

Two major points:
* that "The iPhone introduced the smartphone to the world, and the iPad the tablet computer."

Well...

* And the opposite argument claiming that 'the HUD [headgear] technology predates Star Trek: Deeep Space Nine by decades in theory and by many years as science fact.'

So...

Even if Google Glass-like devices might have been in use well before Google came out with its own product, then in all actuality they might have been deployed in only sequestered (military, intelligence) and/or niche environments (specific businesses).

If you go to a library an read a 1980's book or major magazine about future computing devices and gadgets, then the headgear is there already. At least I remember on such book when I was younger.

Very often the point is, that some technologies are not acknowledged as being widely in existence until a reasonably affordable, well-branded, and easy-to-use product is successfully introduced into consumer space and gains major mindshare from the press and then the public at large.

The smartphone was there long before the iPhone (IBM, Nokia), ditto the tablet computer (Microsoft's thingy from 2000 was a rather half-hearted attempt, btw), and videoconferencing. There were video capabilities in instant messaging programs long before Skype.

Only that major brands recognized by most people are major only because of very effective promotion in one otherwise backwards (if you will) or underdeveloped, but rather powerful market compared to the rest of the world. That's iPhone in the U.S.

There are other reasons:
* One is that mainstream technology journalism has been dominated by U.S. outlets;
* The other is that they are usually rather partial to Apple. Almost all of them;
* And that the tech press of the U.S. — and by extension its public — were, IMO, in a very desperate need for a fancy product that was ostensibly innovated in United States, marketed by a major brand native to the U.S., and of which every person would want to have a piece of.
* Never mind that actual product was made in China, where industrialisation and labour conditions are historically comparable to those of 19th century Britain. (Yes, there have been some improvements.)

Possible causes for minor reductions in Firefox market share

This was first intended as a reply to the Firefox developer mailing list, but then I decided to post it here first.

Personally, there have so far been two gripes with Firefox that I've taken some issue with:
* One was the disabling of on-demand loading of pinned tabs after session restore (between versions 9–11);
* The other is the current brouhaha over Adobe's Flash crashing the plugin container process, which is really not the fault of Mozilla. (more below)

Sometimes it's not users leaving Firefox, but some of them starting to use Chrome as their very first browser. Well, Chrome coming around is a good thing, because this gives people more choice as to which browser they want to use, as Chrome and Firefox both possess unique and attractive features that meet their users' different needs.

HTML5 video
The current situation with Flash crashing the plugin container in Firefox is coincidentally a good cause for moving to HTML5 audio and HTML5 video, specifically Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, and WebM, which are free and especially license-free formats.

YouTube's work in converting most of its videos to WebM reduces the immediate requirement and sometimes unpleasant chore of installing Flash on Linux, thereby increasing adoption of Linux, as other sites will hopefully follow suit in adopting free formats.

If we exclude the Summer low and the current Flash issue, then the next reason behind a reduction in Firefox usage could be the choice of format in sites using HTML5 video — most users tend to choose the browser that plays back whatever their favoured media site offers, with variations (mobile/desktop) of Chrome being in a rather advantageous situation right now, as it has built-in support for Flash.

Yet the situation with HTML5 video seems to be split right now along the lines of which HTML5 codecs are supported by which groups of browsers: Safari and IE vs. Opera, Chrome, Firefox and its derivatives.

The choice of YouTube and DailyMotion to offer videos in license-free formats is highly commendable. Now, if YouTube could actually stream high-profile events using HTML5/WebM in addition to Flash...

Desktop to mobile/tablet
Yet another reason in reduction of Firefox market share could just as well be the transition of people's major computing devices from desktops (including notebooks) to hand-helds (smartphones, tablets), nearly all of which currently have WebKit as their main rendering engine (in the form of either Safari or Chrome). I do not know if there has been a separate browser market share comparison for just desktop computers, because I understand that general tallies have usually encompassed both desktop and mobile spaces, with mobile being the separate segment.

Ultimately, as Mozilla and then Firefox were introduced, it was hoped that the browser market would eventually take the shape that it of recent times has started to form (at least worldwide) — in that no one browser would completely rule the market to be in its singularity the one to hold back innovation, and the one to pose itself in unintended consequence a widespread vector for malicious attacks.

So, in conclusion, the situation in my humble and perhaps half-informed opinion, is quite a bit more mixed with regard to what may be the possible causes of Firefox browser market share reduction this Spring and Summer.

Windows Me, Netscape 4.x

This text was written as a series of replies I posted in the YouTube comments section of a promotional introduction video of Windows Me, which can be found in the said operating system.

Since the video was not uploaded from the official source, chances are that the video and the comments to it won't be available at some point of time. So I posted them here for future reference.

And since Blogspot does not have limits on the amount of text, then I have edited the replies a bit to add text.

Windows Me was really good on something like a 667 MHz CPU and 128Mb RAM at the time. If you want to run reasonably modern software without swapping much, then you need 256 Mb of RAM (factor in [modern] web browser, IM program, OpenOffice 2.4.3).

Windows Me can run on less, of course, as it was included in computers that only had 64Mb of RAM.

At one point, Windows xp ran fine with 128 Mb RAM, but nowadays it needs 512M RAM as a real-life minimum to keep the system secure & do something productive.

These specs were for a new PC from around 2000 that was first supplied with only 64 Mb RAM. I requested it have 128 Mb, since the lesser setup was slow with multimedia of the time (it had fast Internet, so I knew it was the amount of RAM). After the RAM upgrade, using the computer was a breeze.

I also took very good care of the hard drive and the OS, keeping it updated & secure, and since its users mostly used Netscape for business, then viruses and exploits never made it there.

At that time it [the popular version of Netscape] was Netscape Communciator 4.x. I think on that PC we stuck with 4.79 for a long time (the last of 4.x was 4.8, released in 2002 :-). The 4.x branch was the first to support CSS, but that was the only feature which caused crashes when turned on (especially in 4.0x), so I kept it off on all our Netscapes, which were fairly solid after that. Despite the clunky Navigator, the best part was the e-mail client, which introduced mail filters to fight spam (then seen as controversial).

We skipped Netscape 6, never considered 7.x, and in newer PC's moved instead to Mozilla, the open-source descendant of Netscape and which Netscape 6 and 7 were based on anyway.

As Mozilla Foundation started Firefox, it ceased Mozilla development, which was taken over by others, and Mozilla Application Suite became SeaMonkey.

The last version of SeaMonkey for Windows 98/Me is 1.1.19 ([from] 2010); its Gecko rendering engine is a wee bit newer than that of Firefox 2.0 (Gecko 1.8.1.20 vs 1.8.1.24).

ZX Spectrum oli masside arvuti

Kommentaar Delfi Forte artiklile
"Koduarvutite tootjad pole suutnud ZX Spectrumi soodsat hinda juba 30 aastat üle trumbata"

Tuleb lisada, et Suurbritannias oli keskmine kuupalk 1982. aastal £780,79, nii et kui arvestada maksud ka maha, siis näiteks £600 maksnud Commodore 64 hinnaks oli sisuliselt üks [keskmine] kuupalk; tol ajal Inglismaal vägagi populaarne BBC Micro umbes kolmandik sellest kuupalgast ja ZX Spectrum maksis vaid £125.

(Samal ajal valitses Inglismaal mitte just väike majanduslangus.)

ZX Spectrumi kõige odavama variandi selline hind tähendas seda, et selle võis suurema vaevata ära osta ja paljudes kodudes oli see ka esimene arvuti. Nii et Inglismaal tõeline masside arvuti, umbes nagu USA-s Commodore C64.

BBC Micro eeliseks oli selle arvestatav laiendatavus ja vastupidavus ning see läks paljudes koolides esimeseks kooliarvutiks ja seda ei peljatud ka kodudes ära.

Kaks aastat hiljem, 1984.a., lasti välja Amstrad CPC464 koos rohelise monokroommonitoriga, mis maksis £249. (Amstrad arvuteid müüdi vaid ekraaniga samal ajal, kui teised tulid "rasedate kalkulaatoritena", mida sai ühendada teleriga). Erinevalt teistest toetas Amstrad C/PM opsüsteemi, millele oli juba arvestatav tarkvarakataloog juba olemas. Seega Amstradi diil oli nii hea, et Lääne-Euroopas kasutati seda edukalt ka ärides.

Aja jooksul alandati paljude nende masinate hindu, nii et nende kättesaadavus isegi suurenes.

Hiljem turg küllastus, peale tulid juba IBM PC-ühilduvad masinad ja 8-bitised arvutid olid põhimõtteliselt oma aja ära elanud. ZX Spectrumi teeb huvitavaks muidugi see, et sellele arvutile tehakse siiamaani tarkvara; veel 2010. aastal tuli välja umbes 90 tiitlit.

Tänapäevastest uutest tehnikavidinatest võib tõmmata paralleele näiteks Android nutitelefonidega; odavaimad sellised maksavad (uuelt) umbes kuuendiku–kaheksandiku Eesti keskmisest palgast (kui see on 900€ bruto).

Eriotstarbeline vaba tarkvara

Kommentaar artiklile Delfis hakkas väikselt pihta ja siis kulus selle peale jälle mitu-mitu tundi, peale mida tundus kompositsioon juba nii kokkulitsutud, et vääris juba oma postitust (ilma lingita sealtsamusest). Alguses oli umbes 40-45 rida, alles jäi 34 rida ilusat teksti. Ennast meeldib ikka kiita :-).
Lõpuks tuli iga siinne lõik tõmmata kokku paariks lauseks, et kommentaar Delfis ei tunduks nii väljapeetud ja keerukas.

Umbes 10 (ja veidi rohkem) aastat tagasi samal teemal Delfis:
• Windows/Office on kallis, ei jõua osta, litsentsi hind maksab *kuue kuu palga!*
Nüüd:
• Windows/Office (karbi)litsents maksab ühe kuu palga!
^ Pange nüüd tähele, kuidas elatustase on vahepeal tõusnud :-)

Ühest kommentaarist jääb ehk liiga väheks, et kõiki teemasid põhjalikult puudutada.

Tehnilistel argumentidel põhinev võrdlus näitab Linuxi ja vaba tarkavara¹ kasuks olulist arengut, mispuhul isegi suured tootjad pakuvad Linuxiga eelinstalleeritud masinaid, küll kitsamas sortimendis, aga siiski. Samuti pole Windowsi ökosüsteem enam kõige-kõige olulisem, eriti mis puudutab laiatarbeprogramme, mõnesid mänge (põhjuseks Wine ja mängukonsoolid) ja internetiseadmeid (Android, MeeGo).

Iseasi on eriotstarbelise tarkvaraga, mis mujal ei jookse kui Windowsil/Macil ning kus spetsiifilised tööülesanded sõltuvadki ainult niisugustest programmidest. Et kõik kasutavad
suletud omanduslikke failiformaate, on monopoliseisus karanteeritud [sic] ja selliseid ökosüsteeme on raske murda. Säärane omanduslik eriotstarbeline tarkvara on kallis.

Kahjuks ei olda niskses olukorras vabatarkvaralistest alternatiividest väga teadlikud; ometi on niisugune teave kõigile ühest kohast kättesaadav, parimal juhul inglise keeles: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3AFree_computer-aided_design_software (näiteks)

Ehkki kahtlusteks palju ruumi pole, on kahju eeldada, kui koolitustasemel puudub omanduslikuga vähemalt samaväärse eriotstarbelise vaba tarkvara väljaõpe ja et vabade programmide juurutamise vajadust reaalelus justkui polekski. Võib väita, et õppematerjalid puuduvad või veel pole neid koos praktiliste näidetega süstematiseeritud, sest praegune omanduslikul tarkvaral põhinev olukord rahuldab. Seega nokk kinni, saba lahti ja vastupidi.

Või nähakse erialase tarkvara vabades alternatiivides vajakajäämisi, kus omanduslik variant on asendamatu. Sarnane oli olukord kontoritarkvaraga, mil edasiviiv vabatarkvaraline jõud alguses puudus ja peale tulemist oli mitu aastat kaasajooksiku rollis.

¹ Paluks vaba tarkvara mitte segi ajada vabavaraga, sest viimast terminit kasutatakse tihti tasuta ja omandusliku tarkvara kohta.

Why Iceweasel versions before 2.0 are not Debian-based

One nice day I found a screenshot of Iceweasel that looked like a version prior to Iceweasel 2.0 and added in its description that it was Debian Iceweasel, as browsers named Iceweasel with a lower-case w are usually Debian-based. (As opposed to GNU IceWeasel, which in 2007 was renamed to IceCat to avoid confusion.)

It then turned out for me, this particular screenshot, and other screenshots in the database that it was not so for the reasons that follow.

The uploader of the screenshot had the unintentionally good sense of including the taskbar of the operating environment, which happened to feature a program window with the title of package iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386. While this got me to get the version number right, the package name was just enough information to start looking further, results of which only pointed to Gnuzilla servers and mirrors. This put me into some doubt as to whether the browser in the screenshot was Debian Iceweasel, and looking even further, my doubts were confirmed.

Locations for iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386 available here:

From a selective search of most GNU mirrors, I found only one mirror still actually hosting some original files:

ftp://aeneas.mit.edu/pub/gnu/gnuzilla/
http://www.ftpdir.hu/aeneas.mit.edu/pub/gnu/gnuzilla/

The relevant binary files there were last modified on 06.09.2006 00:00.

From the Internet Archive I found another mirror which has hosted iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386:

web.archive.org/web/20070507153807/http://ftp.download-by.net/gnu/gnu/gnuzilla/
(also features a later capture)

The binaries were last modified on 05.09.2006 23:59, so a minute earlier than those at aeneas.mit.edu.

Note that researching this kind of history through the Internet Archive has three or so limits:
* I tested to see if only an HTTP mirror had an archive page. Although I did not try to see if the WayBack Machine archives FTP pages, too, I didn't find any necessity for it either; Assuming also that the WayBack Machine does not archive FTP folder listings in the first place;
* The Archive has its own exclusion list of servers that it won't crawl (limited in relation to the GNU mirror list);
* Many mirrors had blocked crawling through robots.txt, as mirrors anyway host large files, which can be taxing to the Internet Archive. It's still useful for the WayBack Machine to archive programs — especially device drivers and obscure program packages, because the Internet Archive can sometimes be the only place where these can be found.

Through my searching whether an HTTP mirror has an archive page, then in the process a substantial number of those ftp-as-http mirrors that allowed crawling had their /gnuzilla folders captured by the Internet Archive. This should serve useful at tracing browser history with a similar method in any possible future research.

No other mirror services in the list of GNU mirrors that I searched at contained the original packages of iceweasel-1.5.0.4-g1-i386.

Left out from the search:
- South America: Brazil /only country in the list;
- Africa: South Africa;
- Asia: Bangladesh, China, Japan, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan;
- Europe: Greece, Portugal, Spain.

(Funny, Israel was in Asia, too :-)

There were two reasons for leaving these countries out of my search: Either a non-sensical URL (which I couldn't recognize as something resembling legitimacy), or the country is not trustworthy enough to visit its websites, no matter how harmless on appearance. The amount of servers not checked was approximately 10-15%, based on guesswork.

A user-published package of 1.5.0.8pre2 available at safeweb.sitesled.com/iceweasel

Now, Debian started including Iceweasel as a rebranded replacement of Mozilla Firefox only since version 2.0, after which GNU slightly renamed their package to IceWeasel (note capitalisation of W), then a year later renamed their package to IceCat to finally avoid confusion with Debian's own package.

In conclusion, all Iceweasel versions prior to 2.0 are Gnuzilla-based.

I had to add to that screenshot file's notes that this was a screenshot of a Gnuzilla-based Iceweasel and not one of a Debian-based Iceweasel. The GNU IceCat Wikipedia page was also of great help in determining the right source.

Tablet history reflecting early personal computer history

The situation with tablets that I currently observe somehow resembles the personal computer history throughout 1980's and early 1990's, when there were many often mutually incompatible solutions, of which only a few really survived into the current era (I know the word 'survive' can be inaccurate and maybe even corny). Here what I had in mind were the IBM PC & compatibles, the Apple and Mac series, Power-based computers with OS/2, Amigas, Ataris, BeOS and a few others, even Next. Each tried with their own ecosystem and I see the same happening with iOS, Android, WinMo, WebOS, and MeeGo (other ecosystem names for tablets escape me right now).

The 1980's species that did not survive or only got a niche footing, were Amigas and Ataris, and OS/2 to some extent, as these computer ecosystems either failed to have enough popular application software to garner widespread appreciation and acceptance going forward or their development was stopped. NeXT was downright expensive, but it became the first-ever web server (working at CERN must have its perks :-).

I have been trying draw the same parallels with today's tablet platforms, whereby:

• From the developer standpoint, the iOS is a bit like OS/2, as software development APIs for OS/2 were not free of charge, if memory serves me right (this was SOP for some other manufacturers' developer kits, too. Most ironically, OS/2 outlived Windows 9x in terms of available free software), and so iOS also has restrictions on developing for it;
• Android, therefore, offers more latitude, like Windows did at the time, and is just as well plagued by viruses.
  Furthermore, Android, being half-open, sees itself right now in waters similar to BSDi.
• WebOS... The most similarities with an older system that strike me wrt WebOS are with Atari ST, because Atari released their ST series computers to much acclaim and then suddenly stopped developing them.