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….

I’m a big fan of using keystrokes – as opposed to mouse clicks – even in programs that are set up for GUI use. Just faster and more intelligent.

It makes me nuts when I see someone, for example, typing in a text program (Word, HomeSite, whatever) and then taking their hand off the keyboard, reaching for the mouse, and running the cursor up to the application menu and clicking the “Save” icon.

What’s the matter with Cntr-S? (Or Command-S on Macs)

I actually caught myself doing this the other day (bad!), and it made we think about that Save icon.

Does this icon – which appears (in some form) in most applications, regardless of OS – even make sense today? It’s a floppy disk. For users of iMacs, for example, this will be really weird: There is no floppy disk. And Dell is starting to drop them as a standard feature on their desktops; most/many notebooks have dropped them to some degree. For example, my three-year-old ThinkPad has a floppy drive, but it’s an external drive (and I virtually never use it).

My guess is that we are stuck with this icon for some time, as it means Save – most users get that.

But it’s kind of weird….in not too many years, newbies will be able to find this icon to save things, but they probably won’t know why the icon looks like that.

It will be another one of those oddball icons that you recognize because you’ve been – explicitly or by discovering it – exposed to it as such.

No, no Web site is ever finished in any true sense. Stabilized, perhaps, but always undergoing tweaking and enhancements, visible or behind the scenes.

This blog is a Web site.

Ergo, it ain’t done.

Actually, I’m in the process of a major redesign of the site, which I hope to launch in the next week or so.

Why change?

• With this redesign, I’m divorcing my blog from my Littleghost.com site. While my blog is hosted there, it has little to do with the rest of the site. It stands alone content wise; the same should be true of the content.
• I wanted to experiment with the use of themes/alternative style sheets. The blog redesign was an excellent excuse to do so. (Pretty cool, actually).
• I keep thinking that – at some point – I will jettison Blogger and either move to Moveable Type or (very likely) roll my own solution. The first two bullet points are additional steps in this direction.

Bulletins as events warrant…