OK, my last two blogs pretty much discussed the “birth” of the computer generation and then dissected its current growing pains.

While it might be difficult for industry members to agree on what changes are currently underway, I don’t think you’ll find many who think that things are not changing dramatically.

Which begs the question, What Next?

What indeed.

While I don’t think the future of the IS/Internet industry is black and white — say, for example, Microsoft will rule all or be crushed beyond recognition — I do think the divide that exists today between beheomoths such as Microsoft and smaller sites like salon.com will continue to grow.

We are heading for a larger division between the haves and have nots. This will force more bankruptcies and more consolidation/amalgamation. As I mentioned in my last blog, this will leave us with fewer cool sites while at the same time giving us more — for example — real-time news channels.

There are other upsides and downsides of this increasingly large division, but that’s a good example.

So what else does this gulf mean?

• More and more sites will be brick-and-mortor based. For example, Kohl’s department store just now opened a Web site. They rode out the Web/not_to_Web storm sans site, possibly learned from other’s errors, and now they are on the Web. Purchases there can be returned to physical store.
  
• Leading from above, there will be more integration of the physical and virtual stores.
  
• This does not mean that pure Internet plays, such as Amazon, will not come up/surprise/endure/drive other Web endeavors.
  

  • There is always room for niche players, for one.
    
  • Second, there will be a lot of so-called pure Internet plays that are actually backed not by VCs but by brick-and-mortar companies. Example: Orbitz. Has high profile already (heavy TV ads), exists only on the Web…but is actually a product of the joined forces of several major airlines. (Designed to combat the other online reservation sites.)
    
  • Third, there is always room in the Internet space for another Amazon-type company: A company leveraging the Internet to do what the Internet does best (distributed; low human-interaction; always on; repetative and redundant). I see the potential for one of the many online storage sites to go enterprise and become a Fortune 500 backup solution. It will happen, and only a handful of companies can support this type of infrasturcture (IBM a player?).
    

• Big Winners: Established, well-entrenched companies. Look at it this way — one of the reasons for the Y2K scare was because of business’ COBOL programs. Who programs in COBOL now? No one. But businesses have a slew of legacy COBOL programs (accounting etc); still do. While COBOL — from the 1970s, I think — is NOT being used except for maintenaince now, it’s still here. Same for all other well-entrenched systems. Yes, Microsoft upped its licensing fees. You have a $2 million MS installation. You won’t toss that to avoid an extra few thousand in fees. No way. For the same reason, Linux will never really get to the desktop until programs that can read/write MS Office exist. You HAVE to have Word and Excel in business. Period. Need Windows or Mac to run it. So Microsoft will do well in the near future, as will Oracle, Sun, SAP, PeopleSoft and so on. Installed base is huge. Think of it this way: People are VERY reluctant to changing browsers. Think how much easier it is to change browsers than a database installation/apps written against it. Not going to happen quickly, at least.
  
• Big Losers: Those without installed bases. Small, cool applications or technologies. They will have some legs, and some may well survive and do a fair amount of business. But for the most part, things outside the mainstream — now that the Internet IS mainstream — will either wither and die or become, like reading webmonkey.com, inconsequential. This, unfortunately, means most open-source products/projects. Don’t believe me? Take open-source databases as an example. All tests and laundry lists of features demonstrate that PostgreSQL is far superior to mySQL. The latter has a wider installed base; I have yet to run across anyone (outside of on the Net) who uses this “better” database. Installed base. No one is going to change, even in this open-source environment. RedHat just picked up PostgreSQL as their bundled database solution (to battle Oracle for smaller companies); this may work, but they still push mySQL over PostgreSQL for average use. Go figger.
  

Let’s get a bit more specific:

Winners:

• Microsoft — Even if the company is broken up (I doubt it) and Linux takes over the desktop (yeah, that’ll happen…), they still have Office, which is the de facto standard of the computer world. And today, the computer world = the business world. May have lower profits, but will still have enormous profits. MS is also very Internet focused. Be afraid. Be very afraid. On the other hand, MS has done — legally or otherwise — a good job of driving standards (MS products..). That’s a Web thing. That’s good. Whether or not it is a good thing that MS is doing it is another thing, but isn’t it nice to send an Excel spreadsheet to whomever and not have to worry if they can view it? OF COURSE they can: MS (and it’s products) are de facto standards. Good. And scary…
  
• ASP (Microsoft) — Sites will become more and more dynamic in the near future. Requires both database and scripting tools to deliver this stored data. The scripting tools of choice will come down to two, I believe: Java-based tools (Broadvision, WebLogic) and MS ASP. That pretty much means a good hunk of the pie will go to Microsoft, and it makes sense. Java runs best on UNIX platforms; UNIX platforms are more expensive, Java is slow to deploy and “Java” (Sun) doesn’t make a database. Have to hit Oracle or IBM. With MS ASP, one platform for server and database. And guess what? It’s the same platform that the office uses for Word and Excel. Keeps network admin costs down. And ASP runs on cheap Intel boxes (as does Linux; another story but noted). Compelling. And while I am not sold on the whole ASP/COM/DCOM model, I don’t know enough about it to really make quality comments. Put it this way: It’s a very compelling solution to the non-tech business managers. No NT and UNIX admins; one set of licenses, one kind of boxes and so on. From a company they’ve heard of. (VERY compelling.) And ASP is fast — it’s all native, all the API hooks are there. The one caveat is security: ASP is really a Windows-only solution, and IIS is not a secure Web server. Yes, can put iPlanet on Windows, but that kills some of the native speed advantages and other things like that. Not compelling. MS had — deservedly so, I believe — for security issues with IIS lately; they had better shape up with this or quite a bit will be at risk for Microsoft personally.
  
• Oracle — Yes, they have been hurting. But that’s relative. They have just been doing LESS well than before. Still quite fine, thank you. The business world is going more and more Web oriented. Web sites are becoming more and more database dependent (static sites are a thing of the past, and will be anacronisms in the near future). Oracle is the top-end database for business. Do the math. Unless IBM gets really serious with DB2, Oracle will continue to rule. I don’t see much of a threat from Red Hat’s database (PostgreSQL): That’s more of a solution to a problem most of those businesses didn’t really realize they had.
  
• Perl — While no one except consultants and O’Reilly publishing makes money from Perl, it will still endure. Its role has changed, from the duct tape that holds the Internet together (Larry Wall) to the pipe that transforms legacy data to current containers (databases), but it is still ubiquitious, fast and unbelievably useful.
  
• Apache — This will survive because it has a large installed base and because IT IS FREE. One of the may neat things Netcraft has done is to give a better picture of the servers operating on the Net. Yes, Apache rules. Yet the biggest sites — the ones that you’ve heard of — run something other than Apache. Usually IIS or Netscape. They are more set up for the dynamic, e-commerce type of Web that we have today. I think Apache will survive — one can do a lot with it — but it will always be marginal in this regard. While it may power the
  
  “majority” of the Internet, that will mean my site and “ilikecrayons.com” — in terms of page views, I believe non-Apache sites already win or will shortly. Apache will NOT be the choice of CNN, Amazon etc. Universities will use it; so will personal users. Ask yourself this: With all the publicity — virtually none negative — and support Apache has, how come v2 still isn’t here? Been a LOOONNNGG time not coming…….
  
• Unknown publishing tool — While there will always be a need — increasingly significant — of people who actually know what they are doing on the Web, the introduction of good publishing tools will allow those who don’t know and probably don’t care about TCP/IP, sockets, CSS and so on to publish good material. Did editors/writers in the near past have the knowledge/desire to run printing presses? NO! So why should the same group have to learn “stupid browser tricks” to get the article about fish food on the Web? Vignette promises a solution; it’s not there yet. Allaire’s Spectra is a valient attempt; I don’t see it working. To date, there have been a lot of bad, high-profile Java solutions out there. ADG Dynamo’s is the best; still not there yet. This is hard shit, and is very business-dependent.
  
• Unknown killer app — The Web needs a killer app. Yes, had HTML (which defines the Web, not its killer app) and Flash (mainly evil [used improperly] ). XML is not a killer app, it’s an extension. Need that fresh blood. Could be a new publishing system that actually works.
  
• Java — Yes, check your prejudices at the door. I just read a report of some report (how official..) that said that in either 2002 or 2003 Java programmers will outnumber MS programmers. C# programmers are not even visible. Java is good; sure, it is flawed, but it can be fixed. And for enterprise projects, has no peer except ASP, which is powered by …. MS programmers ……
  
• Database-driven tools/technologies — Yes, XML is there. That’s a given. So is JSP, ASP, CF (to a very moderated degree), PHP (to an almost invisible degree) and so on. This is the hook for the publishing tool. Whichever KILLER publishing tool comes out, its database will both be part of its success and part of the future success of the database.
  

Losers:

• Consultants/consulting companies — Back in the WWW heyday — before March/April 2000 — consultants ruled. Why? Because businesses had desire to get on the Web and no clue as to how to do so (the COBOL or FoxPro pros in IT has no clue what HTML is…). Consultants did. Businesses had money, and — and this is key — consultants had the ability to quickly (relatively….) get a business online at a time when speed was on the essence. Many pluses to being first. Today that is not true at all. And DigitalWorks is almost dead, Xpedior is dead, Scient has merged with iXL (both companies hurting), Razorfish is bleeding…marchFirst/Whitman-Hart/Divine (hahahaha…). Consultants will survive, but in a greatly modified, highly targeted, lower pay way.
  
• Open-source technologies — Yes, that’s a bitter pill to swallow, but with few exceptions (Linux, Apache and Perl) this is the handwriting on the wall. One of the reasons MS has such a large number of developers is that they make such good tools (Visual Basic, Visual Studio etc.). Open source is, right now, focused on the technology, and there are, for the most part, no tools. PostgreSQL, a great, fast, stable database, has one tool — a Linux only (! who puts a REAL production database on a Linux box with a GUI installed???) piece of shit called PGACCESS. I never use it; I use command line. MS SQL server’s tools rock. I’m on v7 and there are gaps in the tools, but way way way way more functionality, more intuitive than PGACCESS. PGACCESS looks like something I wrote, and that’s not a good thing (very unstable, as well, another hallmark of geistlingerWare). Let’s examine:
  

  • PHP — Great language that combines the text-friendly tools (regular expressions) of Perl with the power of UNIX (*NIX, if you want to be a purist) and maintains a very nice balance between combining the scripting language capabilities of Cold Fusion with the N-tier approach of JSP/servlets et al (separate functionality and appearance). Very popular with adult sites and company sites (i.e. small businesses, such as “Hal’s House of Records”) — the latter programmed by a single person who is a geek. Reason for popularity: FREE. Who would pay for this or the Zend engine? No one. Reason for Death: Lack of tools; lack of support (yes, the geek programmed it and it sings. Guy goes to college…who can maintain it? Go with ASP or Cold Fusion).
    
  • PostgreSQL and mySQL — They will survive — mainly mySQL — to power smaller sites, but one of two fates face them: 1) They offer few tools and improvements in the near future, and they become marginalized. 2) They offer more/better tools and improvements in the near future, and they are forced to charge for them. And they become marginalized.
    
  • Napster/GNUtella/Bear Share et al — Good tools; they draw the attention of corporate lawyers. Yes, they are screwed. They will endure, but not triumph. They will be eclipsed by software commissioned by corporations. This is good and bad, but get used to it. It is also the future.
    
  • Remember — just because it’s open-source does NOT mean that it’s evil/excellent (depending on your politics). Cool/slick software is cool and/or slick, but that does not make it necessary, compelling and so on.
    

• Cold Fusion — Cold Fusion is the single best language to quickly get a dynamic (database-driven) site up and running with a very low learning curve. If you know HTML, learn some new tags and some SQL and you have a dynamic site. How cool is that? That’s the upside. Lots of downsides:
  • Since it is so easy to learn, the ranks of so-called Cold Fusion programmers is heavily littered with those who 1) Really don’t know programming, 2) Really don’t know SQL. Result? Inefficient pages; slower than it should etc.
  • Companies deploy it on stupid platforms (example: Access and Win98) BECAUSE THEY CAN. When at SOS, I think we had a great solution: CF on Linux (FAST!!!); MS SQL v7 database on NT. Yes, split platforms. Intentionally. Rocked.

  The bottom line is that CF will endure but will, like PHP but in a different way, be marginalized. Still a very good platform, however, and I’ve done both.
  

• Generalist Personal — Like me. Fossils. Will still be valuable to those that have (accidently) hired them; VERY few will be hired for their breadth (with lack of depth). Yes, I’m personally screwed. I have to live with that….
  

While this current State of the Internet/Web is not generous to me, it is realistic, I believe. Again, that’s not good for me, so that’s a somewhat compelling reason to believe me.

Regardless of what I’ve outlined above, things are changing. Whether or not they change the way I’ve outline or not is … well, history will judge (like History will every get its sorry ass over to this page!). This is what I firmly believe and probably have not set down clearly today; I’m certain that at least large chunks of what “I believe” in this entry will seem silly in the very near future.

That’s me.

Unmasked.

Let the future come. It’ll be interesting.

Two days ago, I wrote up a blog about the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC, which — to me — really kicked off the PC revolution.

You can disagree (fine…), but that was my thought.

One issue that I wanted to get to that day — but did not — was a different reflection, beyond what the release of the IBM PC meant to the computing world/world in general.

Basically, it was more of a look back at what has changed on a more recent timeline.

I touched on this a bit, when I mentioned that the same thing that happened to the PC is now happening to the Web (going more business — REAL business — oriented).

I guess I wanted to just capture what has been lost and what is in danger of being lost (for better or worse, mind you).

Because the world — and the World Wide Web — is constantly changing. Sometimes for the worst, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the … I just don’t know.

But it changes.

Here are some, I guess, reflections:

The bad/sad news:

• Remember when Webmonkey was required reading? Who goes there now? Same can be said for the hard-copy Wired magazine. And wired.com tumbled as soon as it was acquired by Lycos — at least to me.
  
• Remember when ZDNet was a great Web site for breaking news? Purchased by CNET, it still has good Ziff-Davis commentary, but dramatic cut in the number of sources for tech news — from two to one. Yes, Dan Gilmor at siliconvalley.com is still around, and there are others. But ZDNet and news.com were the big two to me. Now they are the same. Sad.
  
• Four words: suck.com word.com — The latter totally gone; the former virtually gone. Very sad.
  
• Salon.com will probably die — or become a pale shade of its current self — by year’s end. Are online subscriptions the answer? I don’t think so. (What is? Consolidation and syndication, I think. Not always good, but a sustainable business model.)
  
• Slate.com may well continue on forever, because it has Microsoft’s backing, and MS does not want to admit that it failed. Good writing — although uneven — and a perplexingly bad looking site, but it will survive unless MS pulls serious plugs. Not in the near future.
  
• Fuckedcompany.com: Required reading today; will not be shortly. There won’t be as many Webvans and Scients (just merged with iXL) and MarchFirsts soon. All will have died/morphed/endured. Then what? There will not be anything to read about.
  
• In the same company as fuckedcompany.com will be such sites as ipo.com (all about tech IPOs, of which there are few these days..) and webmergers.com. And other sites in the same vein. In Chicago, themayreport.com may survive — I still don’t know how Ron May makes money — but once this dot-com/dot-bomb churn settles down, he may be in trouble, as well.
  
• With the exception of job hunting, the online classified promise never materialized. Yes, marginally easier. Still not there. Why? Most of the efforts to turn off-line classifieds into online classifieds are driven by old-school publishers. This is not working. (See cars.com, where I worked.) More “thinking outside the box” is needed. This is part of the reason for monster.com’s success. It didn’t just organize and post classifieds, it offered tools and personalization.
  
• Portals: What can I say? They suck/they help somewhat. They are good for newbies. There is promise there, but right now — to me — it is promise unfulfilled.
  
• Jargonwatch: What industry has generated more buzzwords/phrases than the dot-com world? Yes, some of these were around prior to WWW, but here is a small sampling:
  

  • Think outside the box
    
  • Paradigm
    
  • Computer terms for non-computer use: “We’ll talk off-line [i.e. outside the meeting] about this”
    

• The death of small but interesting sites. Most are still there, but there is little incentive to go there: want to go to jodi.org and play for 15 minutes or got to cnn.com and read the news? Vast majority of the time, the latter.
  
• A lot of the “cool” of these small/experimental sites has disappeared. On the other hand, much of what they pioneered is embedded — more elegantly — in high-profile sites. The bad news is really not the death of the cool, but the death of experimentation. Because the big players won’t stick out their neck to see if “this” will work or not.
  
• Writing/editing skills are … uh … missing on most sites. This will boomerang, I predict, as the more tight-ass companies take over more and more of the Web and, thus, its content.
  

But all is not lost. Much good has come out of this, sometimes almost conflicting with the above.

The good:

• More news, all the time. cnn.com, msnbc.com, abc.com (cbsnews.com is a late-comer and, to me, inconsequential).
  
• monster.com — It did not do it all by itself, but hunting for a job has forever changed thanks to the Internet and sites like monster.com, which — to me — is a best of breed site.
  
• You can find damn near anything on the Web. It’s great. Who starred in that movie? What is the size of France? Where can I get a replacement driver for my old printer. Sometimes it takes some skilled digging, but it’s usually there.
  
• The Web has changed everything, just not to the degree that was hyped (i.e. promised). A few years ago, who would have really thought a job search could be done throught the Web ONLY (no stamps)? That the village of Smallsville would have a Web site with numbers and e-mails of all village officials? The future is here, and it’s on the Web.
  

The perplexing:

• Computers are still too damn hard to use. I’ve been saying this for years; Mitch Kapor (of Lotus 1-2-3) said the same during a celebration of the IBM PC’s 20th anniversary.
  
• The Web is still too hard to use. AOL and MSN have tried to address this through proprietary tools; I don’t know if this is the answer. But who the fuck cares what a POP3 server is? And why do I need to enter this in MS Outlook to make it work??? Valid questions.
  

For those who have not noted it yet, today is the 20th anniversary of the release of the IBM PC.

While this was in no way the first PC — even IBM does not claim this distinction (most give the nod to Altair, a kit-based machine designed by a medical doctor) — it validated the PC. If IBM (whose initials could stand for I‘m a Business Monster) thought the PC was worth building and selling, that meant that business sure as hell should consider the PC a worthwhile — correction — NECESSARY business purchase.

Yes, Altair and the Trash 80’s lead the pack, and the Apple II really set the tone for the personal computer.

But it was the backing of a monolithic company, one dedicated to computing for business, to make business sit up and take notice.

If a couple of long-hairs operating out of a garage somewhere in the near-desert of California (and factor in all the anti-California bias carried by many WASP CEOs) said they needed to get on a computer, how many CEOs would listen?

Few.

If IBM announces that it is the age of the PC — that it would help business be productive — well, hell, those same wingtip-footed managers would sit up and take notice.

And they did.

This is one crucial piece of the PC puzzle that many miss: Yes, the Apple II was first; it may have been better than the IBM PC.

But it was only marginally for business. It was for people who thought computer technology was cool.

Does the manager of an asphalt plant think computer technology is cool?

Nope.

He’s worried about business. But he might be a “techie,” and he might buy a computer for home use, just to mess around.

And he’d buy an Apple II — IF he could afford it.

It was not a computer that you had to have.

When IBM introduced its unit, it targeted to a larger degree businesses. IBM, after all, was a business-oriented company. IBM was business.

And the companies it sold mainframes (down to the puny — yet still highly effective AS/400) to had lots of money to spend.

IBM said PCs would help business.

Businesses listened.

Business bought.

And suddenly the guy at the asphalt plant who wasn’t a techie but may have/may not have been interested in computers came in one morning and found this spanking new machine on his desk.

Attached to it was a note from his boss telling him to learn/use the thing.

And this computer is not an Apple II like he may/may not have at home.

It’s an IBM PC.

Multiply this by thousands, toss in Apple’s consistent idiocy in licensing their OS, add PC clones — due to IBM’s lack of foresight — and you have a revolution that put the IBM-clone PC smack in the middle of all this craziness that we call the personal computer revolution.

That led to the success of the World Wide Web (think Mr. Asphalt and his ilk would be large enough in numbers to connect to the Internet via this protocol unless it was forced upon them)? Learn at work because you have to; use at home because you want to.

Nope.

And business became — slowly, then quickly — very computer centric.

And IBM clones — no longer the province of IBM, but more the spawn of Microsoft and Intel — were at the very center of that computer-centric world.

And they still are.

Bottom line:

• One used an Apple because one thought technology was cool and fun. One purchased an Apple for home use.
  
• One used an IBM clone because one had to: Work purchased it and you used it there as part of your job. If you purchased a PC for home, you purchased an IBM clone. Why? Because you already knew the software. Even if Apple’s were better/cooler/easier, why add to the learning curve?
  

People still don’t get it, but the same thing that happened with the PC is happening to the Web.

• Initially, cool thing to do (Apple flavored)
  
• Technically challenging; geeks needed (Apple flavored)
  
• New browsers/OSs introduced; bring it to the masses (Apple/IBM flavored)
  
• Web levels the playing field: IBM has a Web site; so does Mr. Asphalt. Both have a URL. (Apple flavored)
  
• March/April 2000. Dot-com bomb. “non-sustainable business model” is culprit (IBM flavored)
  
• 2001 Q1 & Q2: More dot-coms wither on the vine. “Free” services disappear. (IBM flavored)
  
• Web consultancies die/take hits as the number of Web sites dwindle. (IBM flavored)
  
• While layoffs from dot-coms continue to rise, IT spending/hiring is still strong. Why? Real businesses (not www.myfavoritecars.com) finally see the value of Web-enabling their services or using Web to connect company less-expensively than with legacy systems. (IBM flavored)
  
• FUTURE: Some small sites survive; some Internet pure-players (think Amazon) survive and florish; more business is shifted to the Web; much of this Web-based business is not available to average user. TCP/IP yes; available to all like in the old days, no (VERY IBM flavored).
  

Gross generalizations?

Sure!

Highly accurate still?

Sure!

And I could be wrong.

And I doubt it.

Well, things are not going well on the employment front, but at least I’m still learning things.

To wit:

• JSP Yeah, I did a bit (day or two) of this about a year ago when I was investigating Epicentric, but never followed up on it. I’m following up a bit now, still don’t “know” it, but am writing JSP pages and beans. Not well, but am. Step in the correct direction.
  
• Perl Again, going back to something I have not done for some time now. See the Quote-A-Tron stuff in an earlier entry (written in Cold Fusion…and then the same thing with a Perl backend. Same data.).
  
• Linux Rebuilt the box, have things going very well now, so well that I want to upgrade to v7.1, which I probably will do shortly. Need more memory and another hard drive, however. That might be tricky…..we will see. Hey, got an FTP server installed on the box, so I can now treat the Linux box (if I so choose) as a remote server, so I can do HTML/PHP (etc) development on my Windows box (with a MUCH better editor etc). Way cool. Took a bit to get it working (I had everything correct but for ONE missing package (which, in retrospect, I should have known….).
  
• Databases Just in general. Learning more PostgresSQL, more MS SQL Server, getting better at data design (need to learn ERWIN, however).
  
• Networking No, not perfect there, but have a lot of boxes available to lots of others. Getting the whole TCP/IP thing much better than I ever did before, because I am BUILDING a network and HAVE TO understand it to make it work. Neat.
  
• Hardware Don’t quite know how to characterize this, but I finally broke down and got a switch box. I now control three different machines (my old Pentium Pro, my new Pentium III and my Linux box) through this box so I have only one mouse/keyboard/monitor. Nice to run Linux off my big-ass monitor (21″); the video card — unfortunately — only handles up to 800×600 resolution, so that’s a little BIG, but with the FTP install, I really don’t have to go to the Linux box but for maintenance. So it works. Still need a printer, and networking that puppy will either be 1) Easy, if I an get an IP address for it, or 2) A bitch, and I have to run more cords through the switch box. Probably would make sense to spend a little more to get a network-ready computer, and then flex my networking muscles getting an IP for it.

I sense a disturbance in The Force.

Maybe it is just my current state of (un)employment, but there has been a definite shift in the way the Web is built and is used.

Yes, this is not news to me, but — still — it seems to have gotten worse and worse.

Observations, in no particular order or of equal significance:

• Personal: When I left my job last year — roughly a year ago (~15 months?), I had four firm offers (paper) and two other “please work for me offers” before three weeks were up. Now, five weeks after departure — and networking and sending out resumes blah blah…. — one interview in person, two on phone (one which led to the in-person interview). Bleh.
  
• Web creation: There seems to be a departure from seeking out individuals who divine the Internet, it’s protocols, who can actually hand-code in favor or people with experience with software packages (middlewhere [sic] that does the publishing). This goes way beyond the earlier times, where you could do things with Vignette or what have you. Now we are talking companies are looking for developers who have worked with Ariba, PeopleSoft, WebSphere or what have you. I guess — I know — that this is a natural progression, and it mirrors the devlepment of the Web — first was Unix underpinnings, Gopher, all-command line interface, and then a GUI (mainly NT) took over for a lot of folks, and drag-and-drop mode replaced “cp -rf /one_directory/ /newroot/second_directory” or whatever. Show me an NT-only person who knows what GREP is, much less what it stands for (global regular expression print), and that’ll be…unusual.
  
• Web creation, personal: Where does that leave me? Basically, one needs to acquire the skills with whatever application server de jour. That’s the only interest I’ve gotten from employers thus far, those that are using Cold Fusion (not a true application servers, but somewhat like middleware in the lightest possible sense). So what do I learn? Should I abandon PHP and Perl (self-taught) lessons — Java is planned, as is JSP — and just plug in a copy of something (I think I have WebSphere for Linux somewhere) and try to learn this stuff? Don’t know….
  
• Platforms: Obviously, the world is split between the NT and *nix crowds. Both have merits; both have shortcomings. I personally like UNIX better, even though I have less exposure to it. At the same time, I know that I would be able to work in an NT environment more easily than I could in a UNIX environment if I was to pretty much have to go it alone (small company or whatever), as NT makes it easier to “figure things out” (face it: which is easier — clicking the Find icon in NT or using find | grep in UNIX? What’s easier — zipping a directory or going “tar xvf tarball.tar /home/httpd/html”? Not necessarily better [I prefer tarballs], but from a ease of use to the uninitiated). Again, it’s going to expertise honed at a job where you worked on that platform — as I had to learn Linux/PHP for SOS — or experience gained through a degree program. The Internet is growing up.
  
• Hand coding: Getting to be a lost art, yet — at the same time — I can’t believe what I see advertised and what people tell me. NO. An application server is not creating style sheets that are compatible with both Netscrape and Internet Exploder. No. Not yet. Bitch enough to do it by hand now, no way this is automated yet. Or there is nothing I’ve seen to suggest this other than the lack of jobs that call for such skills, yet everyone is deploying style sheets. What gives?
  
• Flash overkill: Java applets were supposed to bring interactivity and life to the Web, making the statelesss HTTP protocol just the backdrop of a dynamic Web experience. Yeah, that didn’t happen. Now Flash has taken its place to a certain degree (some sites, notably financial sites with stock tickers, still use applets, but very judiciously). However, Flash is the new poster child for bad design, and for many good reasons:
  

  • Designers are using the technology for splash pages. Splash pages are evil, regardless of the technology used to produce them.
    
  • Much like when desktop publishing first hit newsletters and magazines — when you’d get a publication with ~3 zillion font combos in it — people are using all the bells and whistles in Flash because they CAN, not because they NEED them. Yes, this too will pass, but it’s fucking annoying right now.
    
  • One of the bad side effects of the previous bullet point is the bandwidth the “cool” shit takes. I don’t notice it — I’ve had a cable modem for some time now (bless it!) and, at work, it’s always been T-1 or better — but others certainly do. Stoppit dammitt!
    
  • A lot of Flash just sucks, much like many Web pages sucked a few years ago (not that there are not a lot of sucky Web sites out there still….), because HTML and Flash are both pretty easy. So anyone (i.e. dunderheads like me) can do it. And they do. And they shouldn’t be! Or — at least — they should not be HIRED to do this dreck. What you do on your own site is one thing but…..
    

• The incorporation of the Web: Yes, you’ve seen it happen. Or, perhaps more accurately, you are seeing it happen. Business has finally embraced the Web; it is no longer for academics, techies and geeks. The frontier days are close to over. This does not mean the “personal Web” will ever go away, necessarily: I think there will always be — percentage wise — a larger number of personal Web sites (“My name is Chuck and here are links to sites that I really like….”) than corporate sites. Makes sense, as there are more people than corporations, so it should stay that way, but what the hell do I know?
  
• The rise | fall | rise of the subscription model: Yes, the Wall Street Journal is the only one who has really made this work. Will others — such as Salon and newspapers requiring this or that for archive info — endure (the models, not necessarily the sites)? Good question. The bigger question — which will decide the previous question is: What is the purpose of the Web for business? Yes, there are many answers — one is to have a Web presence to give basic company info, that’s a necessity to me, but what are the others????? Will people pay for content beyond financial content? To me, it remains to be seen.
  
• Revolution vs. Evolution: To me, the biggest surprise about the Web/Internet is that it is NOT a revolution. Yes, it has changed things. Indeliably (sp?), and there is no going back (what? no e-mail?!?!?). How it has shook down is that it is just another deliver mechanism, albeit with “interactive” (i.e. feedback) mechanisms. Evolution: Changes everything (this does not). Revolution: Changes lots, but not all, and each revolution has it’s own degree of “change” (this fits the ‘net).
  
• Show me the money: Notice that this bullet point does not say “Show me the (Web)monkey!” — important differentiation. As another channel for delivery of whatever — e-mail, personal stuff, corporate stuff, secret stuff — the Web has done this all, but what will make it rich are those sites/technologies that make someone rich. While the frontier days are damn near over, the gold rush is still on. It’s going to be interesting.
  

One week with cats; each day they get better. That’s good.

Had first interview Thursday; interesting place. It was going back into time and going back to SOS. Same cast of characters, same story…..

Except I don’t give them a chance. Might be a good place to contract, however. They need some help, that’s for sure.

Got a switch so I can run all my boxes (three: New NT, old Win98, Linux) through one keyboard/mouse/monitor.

I’d still like to get a dedicated screen for the Linux box, however. I might just rebuild the old Win machine at some point, put a huge drive (20G, at least) and rebuild that as my Linux box. Then turn the other one into either a file server (Samba) or firewall. But all that is stuff I have to learn.

Unfortunately, I have lots of time in which to learn…..

Still raining. This has been the suckiest weather…..

I am discovering that Saturday is NOT a good day to Blog; probably when everyone else does it….

Cats are doing well, all things considered. That’s good. We’ve called one Koko, because she is black and brown…and then the other Taylor. Works as a girl’s name, and that makes the two Koko Taylor.

Let’s see who gets this.

Raining…then sunny…then rainy…hell of a holiday weekend.

Cleaning my office; getting a little organized. Am I bored or WHAT?

On our way to get some other cats shortly. We shall see.

Job search has had two nibbles over the past couple of days, but we shall see.

OK, quotations are on Littleghost as a Perl script.

Wow, does my Perl suck! Good to get back into it however. Not exactly like riding a bike (I think I fell down a few times), but easier this time.

And learning any language without help sucks. What do you you look up? (example)

— Special characters

— Characters (special)

— Search

— Replace

— Search and replace

— Reserved characters

— (ETC!)

But that is how I have learned all my languages.

And that is probably — in part — why I SUCK at them all.

Du-oh!

Ah, progress has been made, and quickly. Damn! Getting better!

Damn. The randomizer was way too easy. Weird.

(To post random quotation )