I’m back on one of my pet hates today. Yes, it’s Facebook as you might have gathered from the title. The most successful useless piece of crap ever invented. Wish I’d thought of it.
They make it very easy to sign up to Facebook. In fact they make it compulsory even if all you want to do is be polite and look at a photo one of your friends has sent you a link to.
But it’s not so easy to get back off it again. They say it is, but it’s not.
It’s bad enough that companies like Facebook think they have the right to track your internet movements when you are a signed up member. But Facebook has recently admitted that it tracks non-users as well.
Facebook has apparently been secretly installing tracking cookies on users’ computers, even when they had deleted their account and asked not to be followed. I think this is a breach of privacy rights and plain bad manners too.
Facebook admitted that such cookies may have been placed in what they called ‘a few instances’. It didn’t quantify how many ‘a few instances’ is, but considering the number of people who have used Facebook we could be looking at a big number.
They have tried “Setting the record straight”, and are blaming a ‘bug’ the way you do when you are caught out. But their track record is not good!
By the way, hope you ‘like’ this post on Facebook or we’ll track you down and find out why 🙂
Those of you who are old enough may recognize the logo.
Twenty years ago (1994) when I was surfing the internet – and I was – the browser I was using was Netscape Navigator.
In fact it wasn’t only me using it because in those days this flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp was the dominant web browser.
Netscape Navigator was based on the Mosaic web browser, and its co-author Marc Andreessen, along with another guy called Jim Clark, founded the Mosaic Communications Corporation and set up shop in Mountain View, California. After discontented noises about the use of the ‘Mosaic’ name from the University of Illinois where Andressen had developed the software, the company changed its name to ‘Netscape Communications’ and their browser’s name to ‘Netscape Navigator’.
It was 1994 and Netscape Navigator was launched. But not without a few hiccups. First it was free for all non commercial users. Then it wasn’t, the free version was restricted to academic and non-profit organizational use. And then it was free again online, with boxed versions available on floppy disks (and later CDs) in stores along with a period of phone support.
It had its teething problems too in the beginning, with a few security issues and so forth but eventually these were smoothed out and they could launch big time, which they did.
In fact the timing couldn’t have been better. The Netscape Navigator browser was ideally positioned to take advantage of the consumer Internet revolution of the mid-to-late 1990s and it soon became the de facto standard, particularly on the Windows platform.
At the time it was technically innovative too, introducing on-the-fly display of web pages, where text and graphics appeared on the screen as the web page downloaded. Earlier web browsers would not display a page until all graphics on it had been loaded over the network connection which often meant that a user had to stare at a blank page for as long as several minutes.
This was very significant at the time. Don’t forget that we were all struggling with modems and dial-up connections in those days. Broadband high speed internet was just a dream.
It had other new features too, many of which have since become industry standards, including cookies, frames, proxy auto-config, and JavaScript.
Netscape Navigator was available for a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and OS/2 and it quickly became the market leader with more than 50% usage share. Many people say that it was due in part to the ease of using Netscape Navigator that more people were using the Internet on a regular basis.
Everything was going great for Netscape. And then Microsoft decided to enter the web browser software market. Like Netscape before them, Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass, Inc. (which in turn licensed code from University of Illinois) and, using this basic code, created Internet Explorer.
At first Microsoft’s browser efforts were way short of the mark (some would say they still are!), and was a much inferior product to Netscape Navigator. However they threw money at the project and by versions 3.0 onwards Internet Explorer became a real competitor to Netscape. As web page content increased the Netscape browser became slower compared to IE, with the result that the latter started to gain significant market share.
From there it was all down hill for Netscape.
In March 1998, Netscape released most of the development code base under an open source license, but the open source community decided to scrap the Netscape Navigator codebase entirely and build a new web browser around the Gecko layout engine which Netscape had been developing but which it had not yet incorporated. Whether deliberate or not I’m not sure, but to add insult to injury the open source community-developed project was named ‘Mozilla’, Netscape Navigator’s original code name. Products like Firefox and Thunderbird have resulted from this.
Then America Online (AOL) bought Netscape. They produced a new version with a new graphic user interface and released it as Netscape 6, but it was not successful in winning back users, who continued to move over to Internet Explorer.
On 28 December 2007, the Netscape developers announced that AOL had canceled development of Netscape Navigator, leaving it unsupported as of 1 March 2008.
And that was that. I think you can still download archived and unsupported versions of the browser for anyone is curious to have a look. But it does not now compare with modern browsers like Google Chrome which in later years did to Internet Explorer what it had done to Netscape Navigator.
Another twenty random questions, with the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below.
But please, NO cheating!
Good luck and enjoy.
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Q. 1: Which epic Hollywood film was the most expensive movie made during the 1960s?
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Q. 2: Polynesia means ‘many islands’. What does Melanesia mean?
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Q. 3: Which Beatles song title is mentioned in Don McLean’s hit song ‘American Pie’?
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Q. 4: Which female tennis player won a record 62 Grand Slam titles?
a) Billie Jean King
b) Steffi Graf
c) Martina Navratilova
d) Margaret Smith Court
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Q. 5: What was unusual about the Roman Senator Incitatus?
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Q. 6: What two countries signed the so called ‘Pact of Steel’ on May 22, 1939?
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Q. 7: Who travels from Spain to the Netherlands by steamboat in late November?
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Q. 8: In what prison drama movie, based on a Steven King book, does Morgan Freeman play a starring role?
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Q. 9: The scientific name for which animal is ‘Ursus arctos horribilis’?
a) Grizzly bear
b) Great White shark
c) Grey wolf
d) Killer whale
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Q. 10: What was the name of the German engineer who invented the first rotary engine?
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Q. 11: Formerly called ‘Tsaritsyn’ and then ‘Stalingrad’, what is it called today?
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Q. 12: Lutz, Axel and Camel are terms associated with what sport?
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Q. 13: What is the name for a treat with currants squashed between two thin, oblong biscuits/cookies?
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Q. 14: Name the French cartoon skunk that is madly in love with a reluctant cat?
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Q. 15: What is an ice hockey puck made from?
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Q. 16: On the Voyager 1 spacecraft there is a golden record with greetings in different languages and a collection of various Earth sounds. There is also a 90 minute recording of music from many cultures. Which two composers appear the most on this record?
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Q. 17: The name of which popular US band from the 1970s is an aboriginal expression used to describe an extremely cold evening?
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Q. 18: Which four of the following seven Grand Slam winners were leftys?
a) Rod Laver
b) Jimmy Connors
c) Bjorn Borg
d) John McEnroe
e) Martina Navratilova
f) Boris Becker
g) Pancho Gonzales
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Q. 19: What is the name for a Google search query consisting of exactly two words (actual words found in a dictionary) without quotation marks, that returns exactly one hit?
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Q. 20: Which catchy hit song beginning with the words “Once upon a time there was a tavern” is an English version of a melancholic Russian gypsy song?
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ANSWERS
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Q. 1: Which epic Hollywood film was the most expensive movie made during the 1960s?
A. 1: Cleopatra
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Q. 2: Polynesia means ‘many islands’. What does Melanesia mean?
A. 2: Black islands
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Q. 3: Which Beatles song title is mentioned in Don McLean’s hit song ‘American Pie’?
A. 3: Helter Skelter (“Helter Skelter in the summer swelter”)
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Q. 4: Which female tennis player won a record 62 Grand Slam titles?
a) Billie Jean King
b) Steffi Graf
c) Martina Navratilova
d) Margaret Smith Court
A. 4: d) Margaret Smith Court
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Q. 5: What was unusual about the Roman Senator Incitatus?
A. 5: Incitatus was a horse.
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Q. 6: What two countries signed the so called ‘Pact of Steel’ on May 22, 1939?
A. 6: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
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Q. 7: Who travels from Spain to the Netherlands by steamboat in late November?
A. 7: Sinterklaas / Santa Claus / St. Nicholas
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Q. 8: In what prison drama movie, based on a Steven King book, does Morgan Freeman play a starring role?
A. 8: The Shawshank Redemption
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Q. 9: The scientific name for which animal is ‘Ursus arctos horribilis’?
a) Grizzly bear
b) Great White shark
c) Grey wolf
d) Killer whale
A. 9: a) Grizzly bear
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Q. 10: What was the name of the German engineer who invented the first rotary engine?
A. 10: Wankel (the Wankel Rotary engine)
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Q. 11: Formerly called Tsaritsyn and then Stalingrad, what is it called today?
A. 11: Volgograd
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Q. 12: Lutz, Axel and Camel are terms associated with what sport?
A. 12: Figure skating
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Q. 13: What is the name for a treat with currants squashed between two thin, oblong biscuits/cookies?
A. 13: Garibaldi
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Q. 14: Name the French cartoon skunk that is madly in love with a reluctant cat?
A. 14: Pepe le Pew
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Q. 15: What is an ice hockey puck made from?
A. 15: Rubber
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Q. 16: On the Voyager 1 spacecraft there is a golden record with greetings in different languages and a collection of various Earth sounds. There is also a 90 minute recording of music from many cultures. Which two composers appear the most on this record?
A. 16: Bach and Beethoven
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Q. 17: The name of which popular US band from the 1970s is an aboriginal expression used to describe an extremely cold evening?
A. 17: Three Dog Night.
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Q. 18: Which four of the following seven Grand Slam winners were leftys?
a) Rod Laver
b) Jimmy Connors
c) Bjorn Borg
d) John McEnroe
e) Martina Navratilova
f) Boris Becker
g) Pancho Gonzales
A. 18: a) Rod Laver
b) Jimmy Connors
d) John McEnroe
e) Martina Navratilova
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Q. 19: What is the name for a Google search query consisting of exactly two words (actual words found in a dictionary) without quotation marks, that returns exactly one hit?
A. 19: A ‘Googlewhack’. Published googlewhacks are short-lived, since when published to a web site, the new number of hits will become at least two, one to the original hit found, and one to the publishing site.
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Q. 20: Which catchy hit song beginning with the words “Once upon a time there was a tavern” is an English version of a melancholic Russian gypsy song?
I guess that a lot of you are asking who the heck is Sam J Porcello and why should we be raising a glass of milk in his honor?
Well Sam is perhaps a lot better known as ‘Mr.Oreo’ the scientist who in a career at Nabisco that spanned 34 years, invented that creamy sticky stuff in the middle of Oreos. He died recently at the age of 76.
You can’t just take one
Sam J Porcello was one of the world’s foremost experts on cocoa, the raw material of chocolate, and the go-to guy for all Oreo related matters at Nabisco. He also created the chocolate-covered and the white chocolate-covered Oreo, and held five patents relating to Oreos.
Almost half a trillion Oreos have been sold worldwide since they hit the market in 1912, one hundred years ago this year, so I think you could say that they have been pretty successful.
oreo cartoon
And that just leaves the big question.
So how do you eat yours?
Are you a dry biter and cruncher?
Or a dunker?
Or a twist and licker?
However you do it, the next time you do it, save a thought for people like Sam J Porcello.
Oreos classic
FACTOID ALERT!
Oreos are sold in Argentina (with banana filling and with caramel filling in the same package; in Canada (where they are manufactured and sold under the Christie brand); in China (where they were introduced only in 1996 but have now become the best-selling cookie in the People’s Republic of China, after altering its recipe to have a lower sugar content to suit local tastes); in Croatia (since February 2011); in India (introduced in March 2011 under Cadbury brand); in Norway (since 2004); in Poland (from February 2011); and in the United Kingdom from May 2008). They are also to be found in shops and supermarkets in many other countries.
fasab 