A couple of unrelated thoughts have been rattling around my skull lately.

The first is the issue of competition fostering progress – or, at least, competition being a good thing. This is best summed up, in the tech world, as Microsoft is Evil.

Competition – the thinking goes – forces all players in a particular arena to keep improving (in some manner), and the ultimate outcome of this competition is that the end users benefit, as do the competitors (sometimes, and in different ways).

OK, but think about it. There are (at least) two basic ways a product/service can be considered improved.

• Product differentiation – something different about the latest offering: Faster, stronger …
• Lower cost – Cheaper to use/buy either upfront and/or in the long run

Obviously, these can – and often are – combined.

But note how the non-monetary way to progress is – for the most part – directly at odds with standards. While some product improvements may bring it more in line with overall product-type standards (browser that it CSS2 compliant), there is a good chance that this differentiation will, at least temporarily – move the product away from standards.

So this progress is both a good and bad thing.

Good – Forcing a change in a better direction

Bad: – Changing the status quo – which can lead to integration issues, lock-out tussles and so on

A good example of how a proprietary change affected standards is then-Netscape’s unilateral decision to introduce the FONT tag: It was not part of the HTML spec at the time, but it was quickly adopted (mainly because, at the time, there really was only one browser: Netscape Navigator. Mosaic was around, but it was an academic exercise [and the basis of Navigator] ).

While you can argue that the FONT tag was a good move or not (delayed CSS?), it did have the effect of getting other browsers (i.e. IE) to introduce their own tags/proprietary extensions. While, in themselves, this was not necessarily a good thing (ActiveX, BLINK tag), it did allow the browser to grow and showed the masses that this Web thing could be powerful – could move beyond Times text on a gray background with blue and purple links.

So, competition hurt standards, but raised the bar for when the competitors circled back and started to adhere to more refined standards (CSS 1 and 2, for example, or JavaScript).

So competition can hurt standards but promote progress – and (to a degree) offer end users a choice.

Standards, on the other hand, seems to stifle progress.

Perhaps the best example of standards stifling progress is Microsoft Outlook. The bane of most security-conscious folks’ existence, Outlook is still the de facto standard for e-mail. And – leaving the whole security and MS is the devil issues behind – it’s the standard because it does do so much and does it pretty well. It’s a killer app.

So, the OSS community has to come up with a way to match this killer app.

Right now, it’s Ximian’s Evolution e-mail and calendar application – which is, essentially, an Outlook clone.

In other words, it’s not really better (probably better for security; probably worse in terms of functionality); it’s just a different outfit’s product. It’s like comparing two 5-lb bags of sugar. Which to buy? The cheaper one. Sugar is sugar and so on.

So instead of making something different – taking a new approach – Ximian essentially cloned Outlook. While it’s a lot different under the hood, it’s the same to users.

Which is part of the point, but that’s not really progress.

Here, standards hurt progress; here, competition really doesn’t affect progress.

I guess the message that’s been rattling around my skull is that you can’t be too attached to standards or competition or too vociferously against monoliths such as Microsoft. Because there is a flaw to adhering to strictly to a very competitive environment or a very standards-compliant one.

And – at some fundamental level – standards are the antithesis of competition.

Standards are about interaction, integration, getting similar.

Competition is about differentiation, venturing down dissimilar paths.

OK, first of all, I’m not an idiot (or, a complete idiot…depends on your perspective).

I understand the underlying reason behind the lack of IM (instant messaging) – money. Whoever controls the IM tools (server & client) can control what it does. What it does, ultimately, is provide a revenue stream for AOL, MSN, Yahoo! and so on.

OK, I get that.

But I still don’t get why this ubiquitous, Internet-only tool is proprietary.

The Net is all about interoperability (yeah, Longhorn and zillions of other examples nonwithstanding).

I remember the first online providers, such as Prodigy. Prodigy was a tool that works much like today’s IM tools in that it was closed. Sure, it mimicked some Internet functionality, but – in the end – it was a closed loop. Sure, you could e-mail…but only to another Prodigy member. Your friend/mother/spouse on another system – such as CompuServe? Suck it up and get accounts on each, or forget about e-mailing them.

And if you did suck it up and get two accounts, that’s two dial-ins. And so on.

Sheer madness!

Today, such a notion would be laughed out of a business development meeting. You can only e-mail people who are also on Earthlink? Surely you jest, and stop calling me Shirley…

So why do we accept it for IM?

Mainly because we have no choice, and because IM is not (yet) an enterprise-necessary tool like e-mail, so the outcry and potential solutions come from the tattered masses, not from the Suits in the Boardroom.

But at some point, someone is going to say enough is enough – how it will be handled will be the killer app, but the decision will come down is that messaging is a key Internet tool, and how you add on to the protocol is your call, but everyone’s IM should be able to at least “text message” any other. (Yes, all sorts of buddy list questions and so on, but bear with me…).

In other words, someone/some company is going to figure out – or, if a government, say, mandate – how to get all these tools talking to each other, at some base level. Sure, the problems are huge, but – at the simplest level – the issues are not technological issues, they are business issues. Example questions/scenarios:

• How do you get an AOL (for example) to open their network and lose that ad revenue?
• Who gets to set the framework for how the Open IM works?
• Will this be a new standard, or will it be the same? If the former, backward compatible?
• What – if anything – does this mean for phone text messaging? Or other non-PC uses (car?)

And so on.

Basically, someone is going to get rich (or, at least moderately famous in some tech circles) figuring out how to leverage the ubuqitious nature of IM.

The same is really true of a lot of tools we use every day.

Doubt it?

OK, let’s take e-mail as an example of something that has had the potential of its ubiquity tapped. I.e. I have e-mails from numerous e-mail servers funneled into one e-mail client, not one for each.

So why do I:

• Have a separate favorites/bookmarks list for each browser? (Sure, you can import them, but why not have ONE file that serves all browsers
• Ditto for passwords and so on – yes, there are tools for this sort of thing, including those built into (EACH) browser – but this is for geeks only. So there goes the ubiqutious factor.
• The whole issue of RSS and aggregators and so on is due for a serious shake out. While you could argue that a RSS feed is just like a Web page, it’s something a user has requested in some fashion, then why do I (currently) have to use a different app? Some consolidation is needed to leverage this powerful tool.

There are more such examples; see if you can find some yourself.

It’s just interesting to me. I wish I had the solutions to these problems; I don’t. But that doesn’t keep me from wondering about them.

OK, it’s about that time of year – the time to make prognostications.

But before I go ahead with that, let’s review what I said last year, and how well I did. Here’ are my last year prognostications and how I think I did with them. I didn’t do badly, and I didn’t miss anything by a mile. Not bad more a casual observer.

My comments are at the end of each entry in italics.

Sun Microsystems: Boy, this is going to be a tough year for Sun. They are the Apple of Unices — make their own boxes, which contain their own chips, which run their own OS… (Yes, Motorola makes the PowerPC for Apple, I know…). While Sun boxes are still the heavy hitters — the best bang out there — they are not the best bang for your buck. IBM, with Linux, is really eroding the “need Sun for heavy lifting” mentality. And Compaq (oops…H/P [Hewlett Packard] ) is desperate for UNIX revenue, as well, and they are doing a Linux play, too. Nowadays MS isn’t even on Sun’s radar screen — Linux is. Sun has to do something, and I think that “something” is Java: This is the year that Sun will figure out (for better or worse) just what to do with Java. Essentially, how to make money off it. Because the server business is looking grim for them.

Score: Mainly wrong – While this was a tough year for Sun – and I believe they were the only major player to lose Unix share – they sure as hell didn’t do squat to really make me (or anyone else) believe they have figured out to do with Java.

Apple: Speaking of Apple, it seems like every year is a good time to trot out the “Apple will finally die this year” type of talk. And every year, this death is greatly exaggerated. I don’t know, I think this will be a relatively uneventful year for Apple (MacExpo opens tomorrow; I could be proved way wrong very quickly). I think they will keep goosing existing products, stabilizing and enhancing them. I don’t see any large inroads being made by the company. While they are capable of making a killer tablet PC, there is no real demand for these products beyond the whiz-bang effect. And the tablets that have thus far come out are more expensive than notebooks; Apple, with it’s tradition of more expensive than PCs for same type of product (ignore the quality factor), would be foolish to follow this lead. But what do I know?

Score: Mainly right – With the exception of the music store, it was a pretty quiet – yet stable – year for Apple. A good year, overall.

Microsoft: It will continue to take flack for continuing security lapses, Passport will somehow develop/display a serious issue that needs attention, it will delay Longhorn and Yukon again (actually, a good thing — release when ready, not to fit a schedule), it will continue to take fire for questionable business practices, it will actually listen to the customer and revamp some of its licensing agreements (actually listening to the bottom line), it will continue to make gobs of money…but at a slightly slackened pace. Also: By year’s end, the .Net Web services architecture will be still pretty much in the prototype stage. No common use (I could be wrong on this one).

Score: Mainly right – I nailed the whole .Net initiative (as late as late November, Microsoft was still struggling to explain just what .Net was. Longhorn was pushed back again – though I don’t know about Yukon. Flack for security and lawsuits have dogged them all year; that won’t change in 2004, either.

Privacy: While a couple of recent court rulings hold some hope for the notion of personal freedom and privacy, as long as John Ashcroft is Attorney General, things will be grim for the freedom types. Why no outcry over this continual trampling of civil rights, from ignoring the Freedom of Information Act when it’s convenient to detaining Americans (“…home of the free….”) without any due process? Two numbers: 9 & 11. Yeah. But he keeps pushing things, and I think there will be a backlash at some point. This year? I don’t think so, and the following year is an election year, so he’ll probably tread more softly then. * sigh *

Score: Mainly right – And I think this prognostication will hold for 2004, too.

Computers: As with the last couple of years, sales will remain soft, and there really won’t be much incentive to get a new computer. Sure, a tad faster, larger hard drive…but minor differences, really. For example, my 1Ghz machine has an 80G drive. Plenty fast enough, and I probably have about 50G free. Would I like a newer, faster computer? Sure! Do I need a newer, faster computer? Hell no. And I think a lot of folks are in this boat. And with the economy in the dumpster, why shell out still substantial bucks (for a decent system) for something that is not a need?

Score: Mainly right – While computer sales are finally up again, there is still not the demand that was seen late 90s. Again, no real NEED for them. When Longhorn hits, this will be a big difference. The heftier hardware will be necessary – but that’s not until 2006 (at least)

Speaking of the economy… How should I know? I had to guess, I would say that it won’t get worse, but if there is an uptick this year, it will be moderate. And that damn specter of war hangs over all like the Sword of Damocles(sp?).

Score: Mainly right – Obviously, the specter of war has yielded to the reality of war – and continued occupation and fatalities. The economy appears to be recovering, but just as I said, very moderate.

Wireless: By this I mean Wi-Fi, not cell phones/blackberries etc. This will be huge this year, and the introduction of the 802.11g standand will effectively end the short appearance of 802.11a (fast, but G is compatible with the slow but omnipresent 802.11b standard; same frequency, 2.4 Ghz). More and more business and — especially — homes will make this an almost de-facto standard for PCs and other such stuff. What of Bluetooth? Damn good question. I still can’t believe it hasn’t make inroads. Hell, I have a spaghetti bowl of wires around my computer table, as I’m sure we all do. Anyway… Wi-Fi will help tremendously with home and business networking, and the 54Mps speed means that even the boxes I have hard wired (both to save buying a Wi-Fi card and because the T-Base100 is faster than 11Mps from 802.11b) might eventually become unteathered. NOTE: Wi-Fi vendors are going to have to do something about security, the WEP is a joke (but better than nothing). This may be an issue in the coming year with wider deployments. Think the government will allow free use of more — better — bandlwidths in the coming year? This is a definite possibility, but may not be addressed (especially if there is more of this stupid war stuff).

Score: Mainly wrong. While wireless is becoming almost transparent, and average users are aware of it and expect it for home networking and so on, this year did NOT have the boom I expected. I think it was because the economy still sucked (generally), and companies and homes did not spend money on new IT stuff. If they got new stuff, it would be/include wireless. But they didn’t, overall.

This year’s prognostications to come…

I’ve updated the site with an experiment: Alternate style sheets – try it out:

Select from the list below to change the look and feel of the site – note that the page does NOT reload. Alternate style sheets and a JS call.

Note: This will set a cookie so you get the same UI next time; I’m storing – on your machine – a cookie with this info. Nothing else stored anywhere or whatever.

• Default – This is what a first-time user (post change) will see. I may well change this “default” seasonally/for special events, as Google does
• Autumn – Autumn-flavored. Yellows, oranges, images of leaves…a little more fall-festival oriented
• Black & White – Basic black and white
• Gray & White – Like the black & white version, but flips the rail column from left to right side. Again, SAME code, different style sheet.
• MT-ish – Picking up the look of many Moveable Type (MT) sites, base on MT’s basic stylesheet. Nothing wrong with this (a lot right with this), except that you hit a site that looks like this and you say…yeah, MT… Your call if this is good or bad.
• Classic – A pretty close approximation of how the site looked before this change.

Lot’s more to come, but this is an interesting (to me, probably exclusively) evolution of the site.

Let me know what you think (lee AT littleghost.com).

Just as a way of remembering – for me – here is the way to do a nice regex e-mail check in PHP:

// validate name

if (eregi("^([a-zA-Z0-9])+([.a-zA-Z0-9_-])+

   @([a-zA-Z0-9_-])+\.([a-zA-Z]{2,4})$", 

   $email)) {

  $message = "valid e-mail";

}

else {

  $message = "INVALID e-mail";

}

This is slightly different from the Perl version I’ve posted earlier; mainly, have to drop the backslash before the allowable dot (.) in the e-mail prefix (before the @ sign). And – duh! – it’s written in PHP lingo, not Perl. Concept pretty much exactly the same, however.

OK, SCO was allegedly felled by a DDoS attack early on Wed., Dec. 10.

Now, there were (and are) a lot of postings on /. and Groklaw saying this was probably just smoke and mirrors on SCO’s part.

Well, a CAIDA report seems to confirm that SCO did experience an attack, and Netcraft graphs appear to support this, as well. With a few days of reporting under its belt, the Netcraft graphs show the site going down on three of the four days at what appears to be precisely the same time – which would indicate an attack that is scheduled to go off at a certain time on compromised machines.

OK, I began writing about is alleged attack a few days ago and then just decided to let it drop – basically, the message was going to be divided into two sections: Attack is real; attack is a fraud.

Each of the two sections would have questions and comments associated with them.

Since the attack appears legit, one half of my doc is unnecessary.

But it still leaves the following questions and comments:

• The FTP server stayed up the entire time – and it is (by IP) on the same subnet (.12 is Web server, .13 is FTP). If the attack did consume the bandwidth, why was the FTP site fully accessible? Note: As I type this, SCO’s Web site is again down; the FTP site is still operational and zippy. And the IPs have not changed, so rule that out. So – again – this is not a bandwidth issue. Has SCO just pulled the Web box off the Internet?
• SCO Spokesman Blake Stowell says the attack knocked out there intranet, as well. Why? Sure, users inside SCO wouldn’t be able to get out if all bandwidth was consumed, but the intranet should be separated from the Internet with a DMZ, so the intranet should still work. Unless they are real amateurs, which – as an OS company – they shouldn’t be.
• This has happened before – why didn’t they harden their servers? (The whole SYN-cookies issue has been widely discussed). Again, this is an OS company, not a pet shop’s Web site.
• According to SCO, they got hit with a SYN attack. While they may (or may not) have had bandwidth sucked dry, a SYN attack is an old and basically uninteresting attack. Easily defended against. Why didn’t they do it?
• When the site came back, it appears to be different. Which led many to say the attack was actually an update gone bad. But if the attack is truth, why different content and HTML type (one Groklaw poster reports new XHTML code)? Either they didn’t have good backups (again, they look like amateurs), or they decided to take this opportunity – off-line server – to roll out changes. The latter doesn’t make a lot of sense to me – why roll out new code before you get the first job (getting the current site back) done? Again, this is amateur hour…or something else is going on. Just doesn’t look kosher.

Don’t get me wrong – if SCO was attacked, I don’t condone it. Virtually everyone feels that attacks are stupid, conter-productive and just plain wrong, regardless of the target.

But SCO should didn’t come out of this looking any better to the tech community; they looked like newbies who had been given root.

SCO has asked the count to force IBM to turn over all 40 million lines of AIX – while the judge has not ruled on this yet, let’s pretend they are granted this request.

Is it OK for IBM to fax over the code – in 8pt type – so it’s virtually impossible to even OCR? Hey, it might be the way IBM feels like providing it…

This lawsuit has been a joke from Day One, but it’s hurting Linux and OSS.

Statements like this one by SCO execs show the company’s true colors: They don’t care what happens to Linux and so on. It’s just “show me the money!”.

It also demonstrates that SCO has not cards up its sleeves: Unfortunately, the wheels of justice grind slowly. The court date is current set for April 2005.

That is not a typo. Over a year from now…

Potentially, another year+ of FUD and loathing from Lindon, Utah.

Apache.

Virtual hosts.

Need I say more? How slick is that?

I’ve been running Netscape (nee iPlanet…or is it SunOne now??) Server on my local Windows box for years, simply because I was working at a place that ran Netscape (on Solaris, however). Seemed to make sense to keep the same tools at work and home – I’m a big supporter of using the same tools.

Since I left that place, I still run Netscape just due to inertia. It works, does everything I need. No need to mess with anything else.

On my Linux boxes, of course, I run Apache (1.23, not v2.x). [UPDATE: Of course I mean 1.3.23….yeah, I’m number challenged….]

Every time I set up a virtual host on those boxes – and I only recently learned how to do this, simply because I never had a need for it – I’m amazed. So simple. So flexible. So sensible.

And for the all the IIS snobs out there (why would you be?), no, there are no icons to use to set up the virtual host. Just plain English words.

Me likes.

In a mix of both good and bad news, the sites jennicam.org and Blogshares have closed down (the latter) or will be shortly (the former; 12/31/2003). These are each pioneering sites in their own way.

The good news is that these two folks – basically, in each case, one person – brought something fairly new/fresh to the Net (or took a concept to the next level). It was embraced, widely copied, and ultimately brought down by its own success. The latter point, especially, points to the high penetration the Net is getting.

The bad new is similar, ironically: The high penetration of the Web is bringing down sites (the slashdot effect) and creating unrealistic transfer rates for the average dude with a concept. Back in 1996 when the Jennicam went up, it was a cool idea (I’ve no idea if hers was the first – doubt it) and it brought traffic. But not enough to crash her server or what have you.

So the real downside here is that it is looking harder for an individual with an idea – be it a guy in London with a blog or a woman with a webcam – to make something successful that will last.

As soon as it gets popular enough to, say, get enough traffic to pay the bills (either via PayPal contributions or ads), the traffic gets high enough to cost more and require more site maintenance.

So, are we seeing the end of the popular independent sites? I don’t know, but I hope not…

There’s been a lot of chatter on blogs recently about Microsoft’s next OS, Longhorn. I’ll spare you a list of pertinent links because that’s not what I’m really here to talk about.

I’m here to talk about two approaches to software dominance. Specifically, MS and Longhorn vs. Sun and Java.

I didn’t really make this connection – a tenuous one, at best – until last night, but it’s there.

And this is not a conspiracy theory entry, it’s just some ruminations.

Most readers should know enough about the Sun/Java saga to get the gist of what I say below, with Longhorn, this brief comment will suffice (and it’s a vast under- and overstatement): With Longhorn, MS is going to offer a richer user experience, one that will extend to a richer Web experience. However, this richer Web experience will only be available to users running Longhorn.

So, bottom line:

• Sun tried to make something that would run anywhere (write once, run everywhere mantra).
• MS is purporting to offer a richer experience, but only if you run Longhorn.

Diametric opposites. One is extend and embrace; the other is to ignore conventions and standards and build something “better” on this single foundation.

This is going to get interesting.

And – while I understand MS’s intentions(?) and all that, I still shudder when I read that quote: We – web designers/developers just recently emerged from the build-multiple-iterations-of-site morass with the now widely (to a degree…agreed) adopted Web standards (CSS and such).

I don’t want to build two versions of every site again….