Tag Archives: software

Arca Noae’s support of open source projects: Firefox

Did you know that Arca Noae provides ongoing funding for continued Firefox development and maintenance on the OS/2 platform? Firefox development by our strategic partner, bww bitwise works, GmbH, enables building Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, too, as well as many ancillary components which are used by other programs, so like the space program, there are other technologies which grow out of this work and allow OS/2 users to get more out of their investment.

Sponsoring this important work helps to ensure that new releases of Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey are available to all. The Mozilla for OS/2 Project aims to keep relatively close to the official Extended Support Release (ESR) cycle for Firefox as outlined by Mozilla, with additional components released as they are ported and/or developed along the way.

Blue Lion in the news

It’s happened again… We’ve been slashdotted…

It all started when James Sanders wrote this piece in Tech Republic, which among other bits of Blue Lion news, correctly reported the official product name of Blue Lion as ArcaOS 5.0.

As was to be expected, this news took on a life of its own, and pretty soon, we were slashdotted.

Try a quick web search for “ArcaOS 5.0” and you’ll see what we mean…

Some of the comments which follow these articles can be quite humorous. Many people have fond memories of OS/2 (2.0? 3?), but have never had an opportunity to run it on modern hardware or even on a gigabit LAN, nor have they had the experience of running modern software on the platform, such as Firefox 38.8.0 ESR or Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2. (Both of these current applications have been ported and made possible on the OS/2 platform by our good friends and strategic partners, bww bitwise works, GmbH. You may find more great stuff from bitwise in our store.) For those of you who do take the time to post and respond in these venues, our heartfelt thanks for updating some of the users who seem a little out of step.

Of course, there are some great comments by well-respected people in the tech arena, like Brian Proffit and Brian J Dooley (thanks, guys).

Whatever your preferred language, enjoy the read, and be sure to add your own comments, including your more recent experience with OS/2 and the difference modern drivers and software make.

Who’s speaking at Warpstock Europe?

There will be plenty of information on hand at this year’s Warpstock Europe event. Here’s a sampling of what to expect from Arca Noae:

Saturday, David Azarewicz will be presenting on device driver progress and plans for the future (Blue Lion will be a milestone, but not the end of the road, by any means).

Also on Saturday, Lewis Rosenthal will be discussing what to expect in the Blue Lion package. While all of the details have not been set, we have a pretty good idea of what will be included.

Later in the afternoon, Steven Levine will pick up on Arca Noae SNAP. Learn what is coming next for this accelerated video driver.

We will return on Sunday with an update on YUM and RPM and how these technologies play an important role in Blue Lion by Lewis Rosenthal, as well as future plans for the well-received Arca Noae Package Manager.

Arca Noae’s last presentation on Sunday will be from Alex Taylor via Skype, discussing printing and fonts.

Between Arca Noae staff and the other presenters, there should be something for everyone. Arca Noae is the exclusive source for Warpstock Europe tickets. If you haven’t yet purchased your tickets, please visit our store today.

Arca Noae at Warpstock Europe 2016

Arca Noae principals David Azarewicz and Lewis Rosenthal will be on hand at this year’s Warpstock Europe event to discuss some of the great offerings from Arca Noae, including latest driver development and the upcoming Blue Lion release.

Expect more details in the coming days, and be sure to visit the event page for general information and the Arca Noae store to register and purchase your tickets.

Effect of Colorado’s Sales & Use Tax on purchases from Arca Noae

If you are a resident of Colorado, or your business is located in Colorado, a recent Tenth Circuit decision concerning the requirement for out-of-state retailers to notify you of your responsibility to report and remit use tax to the State may have caught your eye. The Court has held that this requirement is constitutional and remanded further proceedings to a lower court. (See more, here.)

While it is not Arca Noae’s position to provide any kind of tax advice, we can provide links to various Colorado Department of Revenue documents to help clarify the nature of transactions between Arca Noae and you.

FYI Sales 89 defines standardized computer software as:

Computer software, including prewritten upgrades that is not designated or developed to the specifications of a specific purchaser.
Computer software designed and developed to the specifications of a specific purchaser but then sold to another purchaser.
Software that is modified or enhanced even if such modification or enhancement is designed and developed to the specification of a purchaser.

This would generally describe software offerings provided by Arca Noae as available from our online store. Further, the above FYI states:

SALES TAX ON COMPUTER SOFTWARE ON OR AFTER JULY 1, 2012
Computer software will be subject to sales or use tax if it meets all of the following criteria:
The software is pre-packaged for repeated sale or license;
The use of the software is governed by a tear-open non-negotiable license agreement;
The software is delivered to the customer in a tangible medium. Software is not delivered to the customer in a tangible medium if it is provided through an application service provider, delivered by electronic software delivery, or transferred by load and leave software delivery.
Mandatory maintenance agreements. Charges for maintenance agreements that the retailer requires buyers to purchase as part of their purchase of taxable computer software are subject to sales tax, regardless of whether the charge for the maintenance agreement is separately stated on the customer’s invoice or maintenance contract.
Optional maintenance agreements. Charges for maintenance agreements that the buyer has the option to purchase as part of a purchase of taxable computer software are not subject to tax if the maintenance charges are separately stated on the customer’s invoice. […]

Currently, all Arca Noae software and subscription content licensing sold through our online store is delivered by electronic software delivery, only, and not on tangible media. As of this writing, Arca Noae does not ship physical goods anywhere in the world.

Further concerns should be directed toward either the Colorado Department of Revenue or your tax professional.

Stubborn renewals…made easier!

In case you renewed your subscription outside the 30-day grace period and previously experienced difficulty accessing your downloads, we are happy to report that the problem has been resolved. If for some reason you are still having difficulty, then by all means, please contact customer service.

In addition, we’ve improved the order details page for renewal orders and added a link to the original subscription, to make it easier to access your downloads.

Edit 2020-06-07: This link is identified as Access associated downloads here and appears directly below the name of the subscription (Support & Maintenance, Drivers & Software, etc.).

Thanks again for everyone’s patience and understanding while we worked to resolve these issues. We appreciate your business, your continued support of Arca Noae and our shared computing platform of choice, and we look forward to seeing many of you at an OS/2-focused event sometime this year.

Stubborn renewals

In case you have renewed your subscription outside the 30-day grace period and are experiencing difficulty accessing your downloads, please contact customer service. We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. We appreciate your patience.

Another area of some confusion is the lack of download links on the order details page for the renewal item itself. Once you have successfully renewed your subscription, simply visit your original subscription order details page (where you have been accessing these links all along), and all of your downloads should work as expected. If not, just drop us a note. We’re working to improve the flow and presentation of the content.

Edit 2020-06-07: Since this post was originally written, we’ve improved the order details page for renewal orders and added a link to the original subscription, to make it easier to access your downloads.

This link is identified as Access associated downloads here and appears directly below the name of the subscription (Support & Maintenance, Drivers & Software, etc.).

Checked your disk lately?

Mysterious boot problems can be caused by a variety of things from failing hardware to software misconfiguration. Besides regular file backups, saving your disk partitioning can be a big help during recovery (or reconstruction onto a new drive). Fixing an odd problem, such as the once-in-a-lifetime file with an impossible character in the name which just won’t delete, is also possible with a good disk tool. Moving to a new disk to gain more space? You’ll need something to carve that room into something useful and transfer your data.

Luckily, we have just the thing: DFSee, the Swiss Army knife of disk utilities. DFSee runs on a variety of platforms, so if you need to boot from “something else” to fix your OS/2 system, you may. (Likewise, you may boot from OS/2 or eCS to fix your other OS.)

DFSee, now at version 13, now has full support for GPT partitioning schemes, compatible with current systems on the market today. It has an amazing array of features, including:

View, analyze, edit and fix partition tables
Support for GPT partitioning schemes (as mentioned above), including move, copy, and resize
Browse, analyze and fix various filesystems
Undelete files
Replacement for FDISK and LVM (Logical Volume Manager) tools
Clone, backup and restore partitions or filesystems
Split large images in smaller pieces suitable for burning to CD or DVD
Hex editor
Scriptable recovery

and, of course, that world-famous support from the developer, Jan van Wijk and Fsys Software.

DFSee is installable to a local partition or may be run from a bootable CD or USB stick, which makes it especially handy for real rescue operations.

If you’ve never licensed a copy of DFSee, now is the time to do so. If you have an older version (even a very old version), an upgrade is only a few clicks away, and if you have a license for version 12, we have an even better deal on an upgrade.

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Review the full feature list at DFSee.com, and stop into our store to license your copy today.

Upgrade entitlement for some third-party software in our store

If you are already a registered licensee of Keith Merrington’s SearchPlus, SigmaMD5, or EasySync, there is no need to purchase any of those packages again from us in order to obtain the latest version(s).

Interested upgraders should go to Hobbes and search for the program name(s) and download them there. As of this writing, your existing registration entitles you to free updates. Just download and install.

While you are visiting Hobbes, we encourage you to donate. The Hobbes OS/2 Archive is an all-volunteer effort, and not a university-sponsored project. Thus, Hobbes exists solely from the appreciation of the OS/2 community. Arca Noae fondly acknowledges this longstanding and valuable resource.

Arca Noae at Warpstock Europe 2015

Our own David Azarewicz and Lewis Rosenthal will be presenting at this year’s Warpstock Europe, in Munch, Germany, June 6-7. This will be a rare opportunity to hear from two of the Company’s principals about what Arca Noae is presently doing, and what is planned for the future.

You may find out more about their discussion topics on the Warpstock Europe 2015 Presentations page.

In addition, Steven Levine will be presenting via Skype. You may find out more about Steven’s planned discussion on the above Presentation page, as well.