Glen White

Those toiling on a skunkworks project called Phoenix had no idea in 1997 that it would be them putting the pressure on Microsoft instead of Netscape, which at the time had the browser market locked up. And much of that reason is because Firefox never looked at Microsoft as the target, what it wanted was to build a better browser. 20 great Firefox extensions|10 Firefox add-ons for better browsing Four year ago Blake Ross, one of the co-creators of Firefox, told Network World, "' Firefox is not a war on Microsoft; it is a war on complexity. Fast forward a dozen years and Phoenix, now Firefox, has turned 5, Netscape's mushroom cloud of implosion is long gone and even though Firefox has earned only a quarter of the browser market there is no doubt that leader Microsoft is looking over its shoulder. I never look at this as a 'browser war.'" As Microsoft let Internet Explorer rest on its laurels, Firefox sat down to innovate with features such as tabbed browsing, session restore and antiphishing capabilities that were once a Google supplied add-on.

You will see the values of Mozilla's public benefit mission reflected in our product choices in these areas to make users safer and help them understand what it means to share data with Web sites. "It's a prediction for a lofty position on the technology landscape considering Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9, 2004, and had earned a barely detectable slice of the browser market. Now the next level is the goal. "The browsers that are on the horizon aren't just incremental changes - they represent the pieces to build the next-generation Web - rich with standards-based graphics, new JavaScript libraries and full blown applications," wrote Christopher Blizzard, an open source evangelist with Mozilla, on Mozilla's Hacks blog.   "Over the next five years everyone can expect that the browser should take part in a few new areas - to act as the user agent it should be," Blizzard wrote. "Issues around data, privacy and identity loom large. The second version came in 2006, in 2008 Version 3 was released and this year Version 3.5 brought a host of under-the-cover features including a new JavaScript engine that juiced performance, support for new Cascading Stylesheet innovations, video and audio support as defined by HTML 5, and a fresh new logo. The future holds a mobile version, offline support and a multiprocess project called "Electrolysis" similar to features of Google's Chrome and Internet Explorer 8, according to the development team at Mozilla, which develops the browser. The 3.6 version is in its testing phase and is slated for release next month with its Gecko 1.9.2 rendering engine. And now, five years since its introduction, Microsoft looks to be nearing an end to its battle with the European Commission over bundling Windows and IE, On Friday, consumers, OEMs, developers and "other interested parties" will get a forum to speak about Microsoft's revised "browser ballot" in Windows that lets users pick the browser of their choice.

And dare anyone say it, a new round of browser wars. If the ballot technology passes muster, it likely will start the next chapter in the history of the browser. Follow John on Twitter: twitter.com/johnfontana

Intel Corp. will release a $120 solid-state disk (SSD) drive positioned as a server "boot drive" with only 40GB of capacity, but the drive could also be used in low-end laptops PCs and netbooks. Intel's current line of enterprise-class drives, the X25-E series , have capacities of 32GB and 64GB. The 120GB X25-V SSD, known internally as the Glen Brook drive, uses lower-cost multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash chips. Intel is also planning a new line of enterprise-class SSDs with 50GB, 100GB and 200GB capacities, which would more closely mimic the capacities of high-end hard disk drives used in servers today, an Intel representative said. The drive is currently being shipped in sample volumes among computer equipment makers and is expected to be generally available in January, said Jon Peracchi, a marketing manager at Intel.

For example, the new 50GB drive is expected to have an MSRP of $350. The new enterprise-class drives are expected to ship as samples to equipment manufacturers in April and are expected to be generally available in July, 2010. In other SSD news, STEC Corp. plans to begin shipping next week a new enterprise-class ZeusIOPS SSD with serial-attached SCSI interface. Peracchi, who was speaking at a SSD Seminar sponsored by Bell Microproducts Inc. in Westford, Mass. said the new enterprise-class SSDs, which are based on single-level cell NAND, would represent a 40% price cut or about $6.50 per gigabyte over its current X25-E SSD prices. The new drive would have a 6Gbit/sec SAS interface compared with the current 3Gbit/sec SAS SSD, according to an STEC representative. The company is also planning a new follow-on to its Mach8 SATA SSD, which will double the interface throughput to 3Gbit/sec and include support for native encryption. The new ZeusIOPS SAS SSD will support sequential read rates of up to 350MB/sec and write rates of 300MB/sec. The Mach16 SSD drives are expected out in the second quarter of 2010, and will support read rates of 250MB/sec and write rates of 225MB/sec.

NASA officials this morning said the agency is not retreating from human space flight . The agency was responding to critics who contended that President Barack Obama's proposed 2011 budget, released yesterday, would end all such programs and thus result in a serious decline in the United States space program. We're probably on a new course but human space flight is in our DNA. We are not abandoning human space flight by any stretch of the imagination. The space agency had announced yesterday that Obama's plan would scrap NASA's latest plan to return humans to the moon by 2020. The budget instead aims to turn NASA's immediate attention to developing new engines, in-space fuel depots and robots that can venture out into space - paving the way for future missions that would return humans to the lunar surface. "The future is unfolding before us now and its exciting," said NASA administrator Charles Bolden. "We're not abandoning anything. We have companies telling us they're excited to get humans off this planet and into orbit.

Bolden said he supports the new Obama administration budget plan, which calls for NASA to hire private companies to build space taxis that would shuttle astronauts to the International Space Station. I think we're going to get there and perhaps quicker than we would have done before." The Obama administration plan does call for cancelling the Constellation moon landing plan that was hatched in 2005 by the administration of former President George W. Bush. The old Constellation plan, which already has cost $9 billion, was behind schedule, and was projected to ultimately be over budget. "I am convinced this approach is the right approach for this time, these challenges and these opportunities," said Bolden during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. "It is not a retreat for human space flight but an investment in new ideas and new technologies. Debate has blossomed over whether the plan will speed NASA's progress in space exploration or if it will throw the agency permanently off course. We're excited to have new direction from president." NASA and the president's plan for it prompted significant online chatter in the 24 or so hours since the budget proposal was announced. Congressman Bill Posey (R-Fla.), issued a statement late yesterday contending that NASA's new mission ends America's leadership in human space exploration. "By failing to set a clear vision and provide sufficient resources, this represents a giant step backwards," wrote Posey on his Web site. "Many of us had hoped that a stronger budget commitment to space might have been included, but this budget simply falls far short of what is needed for a robust human space flight program.

What suffered was earth science, robotic space exploration , science. I am concerned that this budget represents a slow death to our nation's human space flight program." Bolden spent a good portion of his time before the National Press Club today refuting such claims. "You could say we've been bashed a little bit over the past few days," he noted. "Tough budget choices in the past have led to decades of under-development. And we would have cut short the life of the International Space Station at the height of its potential. Our goal is to revitalize NASA and lay a long-term foundation for the agency's continued excellence and success." Bolden also publicly thanked the people who worked for several years on the Constellation project. "They are not hobby shoppers as some in the media have called them. A fundamental re-base lining is needed.

They are dedicated people with dreams of bold exploration," he added. "To people who have worked on the Constellation program, this is like a death in the family. This is part of the life of being in NASA. Every time we manage to pull through it and we manage to recover and we go on to do great things." Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld . Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin , send e-mail to sgaudin@computerworld.com or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed . Read more about government in Computerworld's Government Knowledge Center. We need to give them time to grieve and then give them time to recover.

A longtime agreement in which the U.S. Department of Commerce has oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is due to expire Wednesday, but that may not be the end of the relationship. This new type of agreement would allow ICANN to become more independent, while addressing concerns from several other countries that the U.S. has too much control over ICANN, said Michael Palage, a former ICANN board member. While ICANN isn't talking, some observers expect a new type of agreement to be announced as soon as Wednesday, with the U.S. government sharing oversight of the nonprofit organization that controls the Internet's domain name system with other countries. The new agreement would create several oversight boards, with international representation, Palage said.

What it's also doing is ... it's putting in some accountability mechanisms." Palage hasn't heard all the details about the new agreement, including how people will be appointed to the new oversight panels. The Economist reported last week that a new agreement, called an affirmation of commitments, will replace the existing pact between the U.S. government and ICANN. The Department of Commerce and ICANN have operated under a series of agreements laying out expectations for the nonprofit since November 1998. The new agreement "will tell them what it should do, but it can't legally bind them," much like past agreements, said Palage, now a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. "It gives the appearance in the global community that the U.S. government has recognized that ICANN has done what is was supposed to do. He's also concerned about whether private entities will have the same representation as governments. Many critics of ICANN have complained in recent years that the organization has moved forward with plans to expand services without widespread agreement. While not perfect, the new agreement being talked about would be an improvement over the existing agreement, he said. "Now while the devil will be in the detail, the only concern I have is that the private sector be on equal footing with the public sector in being able to hold ICANN accountable," he said. "If ICANN is to remain a public-private partnership that is founded on the principles of openness, transparency, inclusiveness, accountability and bottom-up coordination, then both the private and public sectors should have equal confidence in the accountability mechanism available to them." Under the latest agreement between the Department of Commerce and ICANN, the nonprofit reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the security and stability of the domain name system, or DNS. ICANN also promised to stick to the principles of competition, bottom-up coordination and representation.

In particular, ICANN's board in June 2008 voted to allow an unlimited number of new generic top-level domains, such as .food or .basketball, but trademark owners have complained that new gTLDs would force them to register many new Web sites to protect their brands. Asked this week about what happens after the current agreement expires, an ICANN spokeswoman said the Department of Commerce has asked ICANN officials not to comment until Wednesday. Last week, several members of a U.S. Congress subcommittee urged ICANN to back off the gTLD plan until concerns could be resolved. A representative of Viviane Reding, the European commissioner in charge of the information society and the telecom industry, also declined to comment until "the situation in the U.S. has been officially confirmed." Reding has called for more international oversight of ICANN. But Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice, an e-commerce trade group, said he expects a "new formal review process looking at security, consumer trust, and the interests of global Internet users." DelBianco expects that government and private stakeholders will be represented in the new review process, he said. "Prodded by public comments and encouragement from Congress, I'd expect to see a new arrangement that delivers what the global Internet community has wanted: an independent ICANN that preserves private-sector leadership with increased accountability to its core mission," he said. "The tricky part is how to give governments a well-defined role while preserving ICANN's private-sector orientation." An important part of the oversight going forward will likely be on cybersecurity, added DelBianco, a critic of ICANN's gTLD plan. "I'd expect to see explicit accountability for ICANN to make sure the DNS stays up 24-7 and around the world, even as we see increased cyber attacks and a significant expansion of top-level domains," he said. Heather Greenfield, a spokeswoman for the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), said the trade group expects the U.S. government to stay involved in ICANN. CCIA has also heard that oversight panels, involving the international community, will provide ICANN oversight going forward, she said. "We expect ICANN will retain some type of long-term relationship with the United States, while expanding the involvement of other countries," she added. "Ahead of this agreement ending, ICANN has been making a real effort to respond to past criticism about not being transparent enough."