Slashdot Mirror

Michael A. Lowry writes: "You may remember how Robert Cringely used a couple of directional antennas to get an 802.11b link up across a 10.5 km wide valley. The original Slashdot discussion is here. Well Cringely has done it again. This time, he has set up a passive repeater in an oak tree on a nearby mountaintop to bounce a 2 Mb/s signal around a hill that lies between his house and the acces point in Santa Rosa. Read about it here. Details about the homemade hardware he used can be found here. There's going to be a lot more of this in the near future."

Michael A. Lowry writes: "You may remember how Robert Cringely used a couple of directional antennas to get an 802.11b link up across a 10.5 km wide valley. The original Slashdot discussion is here. Well Cringely has done it again. This time, he has set up a passive repeater in an oak tree on a nearby mountaintop to bounce a 2 Mb/s signal around a hill that lies between his house and the acces point in Santa Rosa. Read about it here. Details about the homemade hardware he used can be found here. There's going to be a lot more of this in the near future."

Michael A. Lowry writes: "You may remember how Robert Cringely used a couple of directional antennas to get an 802.11b link up across a 10.5 km wide valley. The original Slashdot discussion is here. Well Cringely has done it again. This time, he has set up a passive repeater in an oak tree on a nearby mountaintop to bounce a 2 Mb/s signal around a hill that lies between his house and the acces point in Santa Rosa. Read about it here. Details about the homemade hardware he used can be found here. There's going to be a lot more of this in the near future."

jtappan writes: "Robert X Cringely has an article describing a new modulation technology that will allegedly allow cable modems to run 10 times as fast, and which will eventually allow existing cable networks to carry 500 HDTV channels."

tunabomber writes: "Those planning on tuning in to America's Patriotic Sports TV Event of the Year to catch the new commercials will no longer have to sit through all that football filler. PBS, of all networks, is airing a postgame show in which the subject of discussion is not the game, but the commercials. Super Commercials: A Mental Engineering Special is a beefed-up episode of the cultish Mental Engineering series where a panel of experts, including former Daily Show host Lizz Winstead and a Silicon Valley computer scientist, critique (read: eviscerate) Super Bowl commercials. There are also blurbs about this at The Kansas City Star and The St. Paul Star Tribune." One thing you'll be able to look forward to: fewer sock puppet commercials, more anti-terror commercials.

JScarpace writes: "Robert X. Cringely has a new article in which he talks about Ultra Wide Band (UWB), a new wireless communications technology which may allow wireless networking speeds up to a gigabit per second. Read the article."

JScarpace writes: "Robert X. Cringely has a new article in which he talks about Ultra Wide Band (UWB), a new wireless communications technology which may allow wireless networking speeds up to a gigabit per second. Read the article."

An anonymous reader submitted Cringley's 2002 predictions. Nothing totally unexpected: XML will explode (hasn't it already?) and Microsoft will keep their mits in every big deal in the tech industry. Other stuff too, like the return of VCs and IPO frenzies (yawn), and that Rich Media won't quite make it yet in 2002.

jimharris submitted a bunch of links about flying on Mars: "X-Plane's author Austin Meyer is working out the details of flying on Mars. Meyer has taken his system and adapted it for the conditions on Mars and has discovered a lot about what it would take to fly on Mars, where the atmospheric pressure is 1 percent of Earth, and gravity one third, but laws of flight remain the same. Flying becomes difficult, and landing almost impossible. Other people are working with NASA to create Entomopters engineered to meet Mars conditions. More ideas about the concept can be found at PBS's Scientific American Frontiers. A quick search at Google will reveal many people are thinking about flying on Mars." It's a beautiful challenge - how to fly in a situation where everything you "know" about flight is wrong.

gtaylor writes: "The Globe and Mail reports that the Three Gorges Zhang Fei Temple in China will be disassembled before the Three Gorges dam is completed (which will flood the area where the temple stands now), and reassembled somewhere drier. Meanwhile, the Canadian National Research Council has sent over some techs who have scanned the whole complex into super-accurate 3-D models as to be sure of rebuilding the temples precisely as they were."

gtaylor writes: "The Globe and Mail reports that the Three Gorges Zhang Fei Temple in China will be disassembled before the Three Gorges dam is completed (which will flood the area where the temple stands now), and reassembled somewhere drier. Meanwhile, the Canadian National Research Council has sent over some techs who have scanned the whole complex into super-accurate 3-D models as to be sure of rebuilding the temples precisely as they were."

Nate LaCourse writes: "Real good one from Cringely this month. It's on building his own supercomputer, but with some twists." You'll probably also want to check out the KLAT2 homepage to learn more about their Flat Neighborhood Network. And since KLAT2 has been around for nearly a year (check out the poster on this page!), perhaps a 3rd generation is in the works?

sandalwood writes: "Robert X Cringley has a new article about the proposed settlement in the Microsoft antitrust case. He includes information on where to write to make your views known (the 'proposed Final Judgement' accepts comments from the public for a period of 60 days after it's been published)."

cbull writes: "News.com reports that 9 states and the District of Columbia will be filing an alternate remedy proposal in the Microsoft case later today. This would close some of the loopholes, better define middleware, require Microsoft to continue Office development for Macintosh and to develop a version of Office for Linux, among other things." There's also a Cringely column about the case. Somehow the phrase "Microsoft Office for Linux" has gotten people all fired up. Do you really want a version of Office for Linux? Really?

cworley writes: "Slashdot recently reported on Gates' paternity claims over Open Source at a recent shareholders meeting. Although Gates' actual statement didn't make a great deal of sense, it looked as an attempt to revise history to portray himself as the creator of Open Source by initiating the PC's open architecture (or reverse engineering the BIOS to wrestle exclusive control of PC system sales from IBM). In Cringely's weekly article, he attempts to find the truth in Gates' statement. IBM's Jack Sams provides an historical perspective of Gates' role in the genesis of the PC's open architecture. "

Hector73 writes: "Cringely predicts that C# will blow away Java in the upcoming years. He raises some good points, but fails to differentiate between client-side Java vs server-side Java. I believe the bells have tolled for SWING, but server-side Java is holding strong."

Thornkin writes: "Broadband is dead. That is the proclamation of tech pundit Robert Cringely. With Excite@Home turning away new customers and going bankrupt along with most of the DSL companies, things are bleak and will get worse. The icing on the cake could be this bill which would remand the requirement for local phone providers to open their networks before competing in the long distance market." And at a different scale, apparently the DSL circuits in Blacksburg, VA (a place which liked to claim it was "the most wired town in America" not long ago) are now full, and turning away residential customers.

Logic Bomb writes: "Robert Cringley's latest is a striking set of instructions on how to create your own DSL service, or even your own "socialist Internet Service Provider". A cookie goes to whomever manages to implement this first! :-D" Cringley is on a roll.

Snibor Eoj writes: "In his latest column, Robert Cringely takes a look at Microsoft's motivation for disabling Netscape API plug-ins in IE. As always with Cringely, it's an interesting take on things. We'll see how this one turns out..." Among other things, this will disable Quicktime plugins.

Cringely can string some words together from time to time, and this week's installment is a pretty good one. He's been reading a little too much Gibson (raw sockets have nothing to do with the spread of MSTD ^[?] 's), but overall, he's probably right. When the time is ripe, I think we'll see a move exactly like this.

We had thought we were done with Code Red last week, but CERT is sending out warnings that the entire internet will cease to exist if the Code Red MSTD ^[?] isn't stopped in its tracks. Even Scientific American has a story about it. Cringely tells us that the true threat is servers with mis-set clocks.

ink and several others sent in the latest Cringely column where he discusses creating a long-range 802.11b network using high-tech tools like a telescope and bribery. Sean Clifford sent in guide to creating your own long-range antenna: "Have some old PrimeStar hardware laying around? Do something useful with it by turning it into an IEEE 802.11 wireless networking antenna. This electrical engineering professor uses an Airport, but any access point should work fine." If you're at all interested in this sort of stuff, get involved with one of the community wireless networks springing up.

Top-down cool. A huge glob of capital hovers on the 43rd floor of a skyscraper somewhere in America, telling you and me what we should think is hip this week. Welcome to the whole damn world. Fortunately or otherwise, our cool-chasing is built into our genes, and it can exist with or without money driving it. Maybe the grassroots can't destroy our money-driven musical culture, but I bet there's a way a natural culture can thrive alongside the one we're force-fed. (This is the last of three features on pop music; you may want to read part one and part two for background.)

The capital doesn't have any opinions, of course. It just perpetuates itself. It's potential energy; when it's spent on the mass media, it drags youth culture in its wake, and through some miracle perpetual motion machine, that energy is recaptured in the sale of T-shirts, CDs, movie tickets, Gap vests, makeup, and shoes.

There's an indefinable quality about this kind of "cool" I'm talking about. I can't really put my finger on what I mean, but the closest I can get is: looking up to someone because you perceive their opinions regarding dynamic cultural subjects you care about to have value.

If your peer group looks anything like mine, recognizing the importance of, say, RSS a couple of years ago would have set you apart as someone whose vision could be trusted by your peers. And local peer group is all that matters for cool.

On the other hand, if your local environment buys into the top-down idea of what cool is, bands-and-brands, you're kind of screwed if you invest your mental effort in evaluating networking hardware. Ninety percent of high school is realizing that catching up with the global cool is something you don't have the resources for, and instead finding a local cool that works for you. You heard it here first.

So how does someone become, in this narrow definition, cool? The key is that it involves dynamic culture. Trends come and go, and come back again. Being with the trend, or (better) just slightly ahead of it, scores big. I'm guessing the cool people who first wore flared pants a few years ago, two weeks before we suddenly all decided it was mainstream, are now watched by their peers to see what other trends they're going to predict.

On the other hand, in 1992, wearing bell bottoms (I'm sorry, it's the same damn thing) would have had the opposite effect on your social status. Fads rise and fall, and we need to buy low and sell high. I plead guilty to still liking Fatboy Slim, which I'm sure would have been very chic three years ago -- now it means I have no taste, apparently.

Corporations spend millions on getting in and out at the right times. They speculate on the meme market, buying a trend small and selling it back to us for real dollars when it's big. MTV is day-trading our culture.

Did you think you were the one who discovered (fill in the name of something you thought was cool)? Chances are, some executive paid for research three months prior, and upped the hip of some TV show or commercial by letting you see it. Sorry, but your discoveries have all filtered through money.

I'd really like to denigrate the cool-chasing impulse, and that's easy to do when it's a driving force in someone else's peer group or the characters on Daria (episode 505, "The Story of D"). But it's part of being human. We all like to play this game a little, some of us a little too much maybe.

It does affect us all our lives, starting when we're little kids "acting out" to draw focus and attention (few things are less cool than being ignored). It ends shortly after we arrange to have our ashes shot onto Mars, thereby becoming more cool after we're dead.

And it runs parallel to economic considerations. Money is a good way to motivate someone, and it has the advantage of working on complete strangers. But the peer-group drive was motivating human beings to spot trends tens of thousands of years before money was invented.

("People are saying the tribe over the hill is doing throwing spears this year. We should make some throwing spears too." Our vacuous impulse toward fashion and fitting-in is probably a spinoff from a survival instinct. I want to align with the one who can find roots and berries; that's pretty damn cool if my tribe is on the brink of starvation, and we'll all trust the root-finder a lot more when we're eating better. Berries, Spice Girls, same thing.)

The trust system works for music. I don't browse record stores anymore; they're 99% junk (to my ear) and I don't have time or energy to sift through it all. Instead I ask friends what they're into. Which friends? Cool friends.

How do I know they're cool? My brain keeps a ledger. One of the interesting ideas that sociobiology brings us, as it struggles to shed its ugly reputation from the 1970s, is that human beings are hardwired with the capability to keep track of about 150 other human beings. Perhaps that's the size of a typical village on the African savannah, 50,000 years ago.

The evidence is pretty anecdotal, but each person's internal map of pecking orders and trust networks seems to grow not much beyond that size. You and I can track coolness factors for about 150 of our closest friends, no more.

But a computer can track more.

What we need is a system that can store musical (and other cultural) recommendations for 150 million of our closest friends.

Napster doesn't address this at all; though some have found new music through it, I sure haven't. The few times I've tried to chat with people sending me something from an artist I already know I like, nothing's come of it. It's been great at finding junk I already knew about from hearing on the radio, though.

But: recommendation systems. Basically the idea is to accumulate preference vectors from a large number of contributors, and then provide a way to ask, "if I like A and B, and dislike C, what else might I like?"

There have been a handful of master's theses and dissertations written on the subject. There are academic projects like GroupLens, but, like GroupLens, they're all 3-4 years old and there's no source.

The best-known recommendation system was Firefly, which actually worked pretty well. My initial experience was telling it a few musical artists I liked, and seeing it start spitting back to me other artists I already knew I liked. "You enjoy Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos? Have you heard Kate Bush?" Firefly was swallowed by Microsoft and is now apparently part of Passport (which I don't use, so I don't know what it looks like now).

But what's needed to leverage cool-tracking into a free (speech and beer) culture is an open system that will integrate with existing communities on the internet.

I've gotten to recognize a number of Slashdot users' nicknames on sight, and it might be interesting to see what you-all are listening to. My latest example is an Apocalyptica CD I bought last week based on a reader's recommendation in a comment (it hasn't arrived yet, so I can't say if Barnes & Noble's 24kbps preview did it justice). I'd click through to user pages a lot more often if I knew you-all were sharing musical preferences.

Note that none of this is necessarily tied to music trading. It might be nice if my user page listing the fact that I like Sarge had the music itself, or a preview, a click away. But the important thing is the recommendation, not the trading, and to build a network uninfluenced by money, the distribution system has to be separable. If Barnes & Noble is the only supplier, and has any control over what recommendations I get, I won't be able to trust them.

So the software really should have a distributed database of people's recommendations, one that's not ownable by any one entity. Ideally, the users of Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and Ain't It Cool News should all be able to drop their cultural likes and dislikes into the same database (hierarchical namespace based on domain name?). Queries drawing on users with taste like yours should be able to come just from one community, or from the entire database, your choice.

And -- the important point, the key to it all -- the database needs to recognize who was on top of which cool when. If I drop in Jonatha Brooke in February, and then 10,000 other people discover her in June, I need credit for being on the rising curve of the trend.

I don't know if I need a little star by my name or anything (I'm far too modest for that, oh stop, no really) but my positive rating of that artist or album should count for more if I got in early. Time is crucial in measuring trends.

And following the directed graph in the other direction, if I tell the database that I like these six CDs, it needs to be able to tell me the top ten users who plugged in their recommendations for those same CDs first -- on the theory that, if they led the curve last year, their opinions for this year will be of interest to me (and 10,000 other people).

Corporate cool-chasers pay good money on research, every day, to find this stuff out. In a voluntary contributory system, everyone could have access to the same information, for free. It would undercut corporate cool the same way GPL'd software undercuts Microsoft: when it's free, nobody will pay for it.

Writing code that can be integrated into existing internet communities is key as well. Firefly failed because nobody went there. Everything from the database to the web interface was proprietary, and its information was only on one website. But allow Slashdot to tie into your system, and you instantly add hundreds of thousands of potential users.

There's no money to be made in this, or not much compared to the $150 billion that the big six make every year by selling us trends.

But if you're a programmer looking for a way to influence musical genre for years to come -- or rather, to remove the influence of the glob of capital and allow a natural culture to flourish on its own -- this is a great way to start.

Music distribution and economics have historically been the two major influences on the evolution of its style. The internet has reached a point where that doesn't need to be true. Culture can be abstracted from economics, style from money. There are 10,000 singers and musicians working day jobs right now who don't care if they ever make a million dollars. They just want to be heard, and while the internet lets them reach a billion people, there's no way for word to spread. They might as well not exist. They might as well go back to selling 3 CDs at a time at gigs.

If that can't change, it's a damn shame. The alternative is another century of small-time musicians giving up in disgust while a wad of cash stuffs our ears with the Abercrombie and Fitch song.

The entrenched money is here for good. We'll have the RIAA and its prepackaged bands until copyright law changes drastically. We'll have (quasi-)payola in major radio markets until the radio itself goes away. We'll never get rid of the top-down cool because there's just too much money in it.

But we can have a market of our own, not based on money. We can leverage the best part of the internet, its communities, to produce a grassroots cool.

Top-down cool. A huge glob of capital hovers on the 43rd floor of a skyscraper somewhere in America, telling you and me what we should think is hip this week. Welcome to the whole damn world. Fortunately or otherwise, our cool-chasing is built into our genes, and it can exist with or without money driving it. Maybe the grassroots can't destroy our money-driven musical culture, but I bet there's a way a natural culture can thrive alongside the one we're force-fed. (This is the last of three features on pop music; you may want to read part one and part two for background.)

The capital doesn't have any opinions, of course. It just perpetuates itself. It's potential energy; when it's spent on the mass media, it drags youth culture in its wake, and through some miracle perpetual motion machine, that energy is recaptured in the sale of T-shirts, CDs, movie tickets, Gap vests, makeup, and shoes.

There's an indefinable quality about this kind of "cool" I'm talking about. I can't really put my finger on what I mean, but the closest I can get is: looking up to someone because you perceive their opinions regarding dynamic cultural subjects you care about to have value.

If your peer group looks anything like mine, recognizing the importance of, say, RSS a couple of years ago would have set you apart as someone whose vision could be trusted by your peers. And local peer group is all that matters for cool.

On the other hand, if your local environment buys into the top-down idea of what cool is, bands-and-brands, you're kind of screwed if you invest your mental effort in evaluating networking hardware. Ninety percent of high school is realizing that catching up with the global cool is something you don't have the resources for, and instead finding a local cool that works for you. You heard it here first.

So how does someone become, in this narrow definition, cool? The key is that it involves dynamic culture. Trends come and go, and come back again. Being with the trend, or (better) just slightly ahead of it, scores big. I'm guessing the cool people who first wore flared pants a few years ago, two weeks before we suddenly all decided it was mainstream, are now watched by their peers to see what other trends they're going to predict.

On the other hand, in 1992, wearing bell bottoms (I'm sorry, it's the same damn thing) would have had the opposite effect on your social status. Fads rise and fall, and we need to buy low and sell high. I plead guilty to still liking Fatboy Slim, which I'm sure would have been very chic three years ago -- now it means I have no taste, apparently.

Corporations spend millions on getting in and out at the right times. They speculate on the meme market, buying a trend small and selling it back to us for real dollars when it's big. MTV is day-trading our culture.

Did you think you were the one who discovered (fill in the name of something you thought was cool)? Chances are, some executive paid for research three months prior, and upped the hip of some TV show or commercial by letting you see it. Sorry, but your discoveries have all filtered through money.

I'd really like to denigrate the cool-chasing impulse, and that's easy to do when it's a driving force in someone else's peer group or the characters on Daria (episode 505, "The Story of D"). But it's part of being human. We all like to play this game a little, some of us a little too much maybe.

It does affect us all our lives, starting when we're little kids "acting out" to draw focus and attention (few things are less cool than being ignored). It ends shortly after we arrange to have our ashes shot onto Mars, thereby becoming more cool after we're dead.

And it runs parallel to economic considerations. Money is a good way to motivate someone, and it has the advantage of working on complete strangers. But the peer-group drive was motivating human beings to spot trends tens of thousands of years before money was invented.

("People are saying the tribe over the hill is doing throwing spears this year. We should make some throwing spears too." Our vacuous impulse toward fashion and fitting-in is probably a spinoff from a survival instinct. I want to align with the one who can find roots and berries; that's pretty damn cool if my tribe is on the brink of starvation, and we'll all trust the root-finder a lot more when we're eating better. Berries, Spice Girls, same thing.)

The trust system works for music. I don't browse record stores anymore; they're 99% junk (to my ear) and I don't have time or energy to sift through it all. Instead I ask friends what they're into. Which friends? Cool friends.

How do I know they're cool? My brain keeps a ledger. One of the interesting ideas that sociobiology brings us, as it struggles to shed its ugly reputation from the 1970s, is that human beings are hardwired with the capability to keep track of about 150 other human beings. Perhaps that's the size of a typical village on the African savannah, 50,000 years ago.

The evidence is pretty anecdotal, but each person's internal map of pecking orders and trust networks seems to grow not much beyond that size. You and I can track coolness factors for about 150 of our closest friends, no more.

But a computer can track more.

What we need is a system that can store musical (and other cultural) recommendations for 150 million of our closest friends.

Napster doesn't address this at all; though some have found new music through it, I sure haven't. The few times I've tried to chat with people sending me something from an artist I already know I like, nothing's come of it. It's been great at finding junk I already knew about from hearing on the radio, though.

But: recommendation systems. Basically the idea is to accumulate preference vectors from a large number of contributors, and then provide a way to ask, "if I like A and B, and dislike C, what else might I like?"

There have been a handful of master's theses and dissertations written on the subject. There are academic projects like GroupLens, but, like GroupLens, they're all 3-4 years old and there's no source.

The best-known recommendation system was Firefly, which actually worked pretty well. My initial experience was telling it a few musical artists I liked, and seeing it start spitting back to me other artists I already knew I liked. "You enjoy Peter Gabriel and Tori Amos? Have you heard Kate Bush?" Firefly was swallowed by Microsoft and is now apparently part of Passport (which I don't use, so I don't know what it looks like now).

But what's needed to leverage cool-tracking into a free (speech and beer) culture is an open system that will integrate with existing communities on the internet.

I've gotten to recognize a number of Slashdot users' nicknames on sight, and it might be interesting to see what you-all are listening to. My latest example is an Apocalyptica CD I bought last week based on a reader's recommendation in a comment (it hasn't arrived yet, so I can't say if Barnes & Noble's 24kbps preview did it justice). I'd click through to user pages a lot more often if I knew you-all were sharing musical preferences.

Note that none of this is necessarily tied to music trading. It might be nice if my user page listing the fact that I like Sarge had the music itself, or a preview, a click away. But the important thing is the recommendation, not the trading, and to build a network uninfluenced by money, the distribution system has to be separable. If Barnes & Noble is the only supplier, and has any control over what recommendations I get, I won't be able to trust them.

So the software really should have a distributed database of people's recommendations, one that's not ownable by any one entity. Ideally, the users of Slashdot, Kuro5hin, and Ain't It Cool News should all be able to drop their cultural likes and dislikes into the same database (hierarchical namespace based on domain name?). Queries drawing on users with taste like yours should be able to come just from one community, or from the entire database, your choice.

And -- the important point, the key to it all -- the database needs to recognize who was on top of which cool when. If I drop in Jonatha Brooke in February, and then 10,000 other people discover her in June, I need credit for being on the rising curve of the trend.

I don't know if I need a little star by my name or anything (I'm far too modest for that, oh stop, no really) but my positive rating of that artist or album should count for more if I got in early. Time is crucial in measuring trends.

And following the directed graph in the other direction, if I tell the database that I like these six CDs, it needs to be able to tell me the top ten users who plugged in their recommendations for those same CDs first -- on the theory that, if they led the curve last year, their opinions for this year will be of interest to me (and 10,000 other people).

Corporate cool-chasers pay good money on research, every day, to find this stuff out. In a voluntary contributory system, everyone could have access to the same information, for free. It would undercut corporate cool the same way GPL'd software undercuts Microsoft: when it's free, nobody will pay for it.

Writing code that can be integrated into existing internet communities is key as well. Firefly failed because nobody went there. Everything from the database to the web interface was proprietary, and its information was only on one website. But allow Slashdot to tie into your system, and you instantly add hundreds of thousands of potential users.

There's no money to be made in this, or not much compared to the $150 billion that the big six make every year by selling us trends.

But if you're a programmer looking for a way to influence musical genre for years to come -- or rather, to remove the influence of the glob of capital and allow a natural culture to flourish on its own -- this is a great way to start.

Music distribution and economics have historically been the two major influences on the evolution of its style. The internet has reached a point where that doesn't need to be true. Culture can be abstracted from economics, style from money. There are 10,000 singers and musicians working day jobs right now who don't care if they ever make a million dollars. They just want to be heard, and while the internet lets them reach a billion people, there's no way for word to spread. They might as well not exist. They might as well go back to selling 3 CDs at a time at gigs.

If that can't change, it's a damn shame. The alternative is another century of small-time musicians giving up in disgust while a wad of cash stuffs our ears with the Abercrombie and Fitch song.

The entrenched money is here for good. We'll have the RIAA and its prepackaged bands until copyright law changes drastically. We'll have (quasi-)payola in major radio markets until the radio itself goes away. We'll never get rid of the top-down cool because there's just too much money in it.

But we can have a market of our own, not based on money. We can leverage the best part of the internet, its communities, to produce a grassroots cool.

captaincucumber writes: "Robert X. Cringley has an interesting article on his PBS Pulpit site about a new technology called SPIKE coming out of the gaming industry that will compete with Bluetooth here. As an interesting plus Cringley talks a little bit about proprietary vs. open standards."

Cringely's column this week covers the console industry - he predicts that Mario will rise from the dead to pummel both the hedgehog and the bandicoot.

Katascope writes "Salon is running an article about targeted advertising on Napster and Gnotella. The worrysome part is the co-opting of P2P search databases to build profiles and advertise using instant messaging" I've always believed that targetted marketing might actually make advertising useful again (Any 24 year old who occasionally watches MTV and doesn't need zit cream knows this). This one is scary because people are sending you IMs based on the tunes in your napster share. Course I don't have IM, and use napster super infrequently, so I guess thats one way to not be annoyed. But frankly if I got junk mail about obscure Who stuff, I'd be happy. Much better then credit cards, viagra, and stock tips. As long as its opt-in. (michael: A number of people have written in with Cringely's comparison of Napster and subways. Good read.)

eshefer writes " This week cringely talks about a company called rolltronics which he claims will make the current microprocessor fabrication on silicon wafers technology defunct in five years. The company uses roll-to-roll printing on plastic (somewhat like newspaper printing presses) making the process much cheaper to produce then current technologies. "

Pinball Wizard asks: "I ran into a nice Web site while doing some research on the life of Nikola Tesla. Turns out PBS is doing a special on him, beginning Dec. 12. In case you're not familiar with the man, he invented alternating current and radio, as well as the basic concepts behind all of our wireless control and communication. Besides alerting the Slashdot population to the documentary, I thought I'd pose a question to the EE's in the crowd. Tesla was a bit of a rebel, and many of his inventions never came to light because they conflicted with the interests of corporations or wealthy people with more influence. The most interesting of these to me is the transmission of electricity through the upper atmosphere. Obviously that would make electricity much harder to meter and control by monopolistic interests. Was his idea feasible? After reading about Tesla, I seriously wonder how much we screwed ourselves by following the interests of money, rather than listening to this scientific giant."

Pinball Wizard asks: "I ran into a nice Web site while doing some research on the life of Nikola Tesla. Turns out PBS is doing a special on him, beginning Dec. 12. In case you're not familiar with the man, he invented alternating current and radio, as well as the basic concepts behind all of our wireless control and communication. Besides alerting the Slashdot population to the documentary, I thought I'd pose a question to the EE's in the crowd. Tesla was a bit of a rebel, and many of his inventions never came to light because they conflicted with the interests of corporations or wealthy people with more influence. The most interesting of these to me is the transmission of electricity through the upper atmosphere. Obviously that would make electricity much harder to meter and control by monopolistic interests. Was his idea feasible? After reading about Tesla, I seriously wonder how much we screwed ourselves by following the interests of money, rather than listening to this scientific giant."

Pinball Wizard asks: "I ran into a nice Web site while doing some research on the life of Nikola Tesla. Turns out PBS is doing a special on him, beginning Dec. 12. In case you're not familiar with the man, he invented alternating current and radio, as well as the basic concepts behind all of our wireless control and communication. Besides alerting the Slashdot population to the documentary, I thought I'd pose a question to the EE's in the crowd. Tesla was a bit of a rebel, and many of his inventions never came to light because they conflicted with the interests of corporations or wealthy people with more influence. The most interesting of these to me is the transmission of electricity through the upper atmosphere. Obviously that would make electricity much harder to meter and control by monopolistic interests. Was his idea feasible? After reading about Tesla, I seriously wonder how much we screwed ourselves by following the interests of money, rather than listening to this scientific giant."

Yes, it's been a long, hot (and rainy) summer, but it's over now. Things are finally getting back to normal, including Slashdot Interviews, which return with answers to 10 chosen readers' questions from often-slashodotted PBS Pundit Robert X. Cringely.

How will software be sold?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by bfree

Greg:

In your discussions with the various entities of the computing industry, how do you expect to see software distributed in 5-10 years time? Should we expect to see a greater take-up of free speach || open source || free beer || restrictive licensing on the low and high level (drivers and word processors), low and high end (MS Paint and Adobe Photoshop) software? Do the current players believe that they should all be looking log-term into securing their positions through licensing agreements or that they should be selling a service? In particular have you heard any noises of hardware companies who are looking into OpenSourcing all their drivers (i.e. Windows) so as to achieve the maximum penetration of their products?

Cringely:

This question has changed so much over the years. At one time it was retail versus shareware. Then added to this argument was floppy versus CD and later downloading versus shrinkwrap. I think downloading is the long-term winner because everyone will soon be networked and the cost structure works well for buyer and seller alike.

Something else that has changed a lot is how software is written. OOP has paid off more than we even know, so there are a lot of chances to make businesses out of selling cogs that fit into other people's machines. Your driver question, for example, wouldn't have even made sense a decade ago.

But the real answer to your question is "yes." I'm not trying to be a smart-ass here, but there simply won't be a single winning method of selling (or being compensated for) software. Open source is nice, but it isn't a way to make a living unless you are getting a reward in some indirect path. That's why college professors write books (to get tenure) and open source programmers write code (to get laid). Just kidding. But look at the reward structure, because there has to be a reward or it won't work.

My gut tells me that system software will be mainly OEM'd and that applications will go the service route. But what's still missing is a payment structure for these services. That's the challenge still not being either faced or overcome. So I'd appreciate it if you would do something about it.

gender and technology
(Score:5, Interesting)
by techmuse

Robert, In a study that was announced a day or two ago, it was shown that the number of women who are pursuing degrees in computer science related fields is dropping substantially. I'm wondering what you think can be done to improve the appeal of careers in computer science to women, and how the domination of the field by males affects the cultures and product directions of the companies in the field.

Cringely:

What bothers me about this is that there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that men are inherently any better at this computer stuff than are women. But on the flipside, is there any compelling argument why there ought to be more women in the industry? Is it discrimination that is denying these women the chance to work 100 hour weeks?

There is some free will here, you know. Yes, I agree that we probably don't do enough to encourage women students, but I will bet that if we could somehow control for all those other outside variables that more men than women would still choose to walk the digital trail. This is, I believe, is because it is such a crappy lifestyle. Sure there is money (eventually) and success (sometimes) but at what cost? I don't blame the girls for choosing another path. But if we want to help encourage women to enter this field, I think we have to do it through the simple acceptance that coeducation is at fault. I remember years ago writing a story about Mills College in Oakland, an all-women institution. The thing that blew me away at the time was that the Mills computer installation was entirely home built. The women built their own PCs, they built and wired the network, they even built their own routers, mainly to save money. There is no doubt they can do it.

Men are pigs (I know I am) so the expedient answer is single-sex education for any women who want it.

Hrmmm
(Score:4, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward

According to this article:

The host of the three-hour documentary, "Triumph of the Nerds," is really Mark C. Stephens, one of several authors of a popular gossip column in InfoWorld magazine written under the Cringely pseudonym. Mr. Stephens, 43 years old, penned the column between 1987 and last December, when InfoWorld cut him loose. But in a case with enough twists to give anybody an identity crisis, the magazine and its parent, International Data Group Inc., sued Mr. Stephens in March for trademark infringement to block his continued use of the Cringely name.

So, Robert, are you still Mr. Stephens, or are you someone else now?

Cringely:

"Cut him loose?" That's an interesting way to put it. InfoWorld fired me. I was by far their top-rated columnist and had been for eight years. Why would a publication fire their top draw? It certainly makes no business sense. The best I can figure AND THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION is that I was fired to please the ego of Stewart Alsop. My column was always more popular than his -- a LOT more popular. Of course it had to be because of my placement on the back page, so Stewart (then editor-in-chief) had his column moved to the back page, too. But his survey numbers didn't change. At this time the price of newsprint was skyrocketing so InfoWorld several times changed its trim size -- the actual size of the page. As the page got smaller and smaller, Stewart's column remained the same size and mine dropped from over 1000 words to around 600 words over two years. Still, Stewart's survey numbers didn't change. Several times as many people were reading my column than his even though both were on the same page. Having to face the prospect that maybe mine was a better column than his, it was easier on Stewart's ego IN MY OPINION to fire me than to accept reality. So they fired me, sued me, lost, paid me off, and here we are today. What happened to Stewart? They cut him loose.

I think we are both better off this way, Stewart and I. I know my life is better post-InfoWorld and he is now a successful VC. I wish Stewart well.

Software and Computers
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Darkstorm

I'm a developer and I am curious as to how you think the software will change in the future.

I know from looking at many contracted software packages that quality is something usually forgotten in the windows world. Badly written hard to use and usually very buggy. Do you feel at some point that companies will finally stand up for themselves and demand good software?

As for hardware, with the standards being modified so quickly will we end up back at a proprietary level again? I ask because of the splitting between AMD and Intel on the type of interface on the motherboard for the processor (not to mention the memory style variations happening) Will programmers end up writing towards a proprietary box/cpu do you think?

Cringely:

I used to test software and the first thing I would do is bang on the keyboard with my fists. "Don't do that!" the developer would yell as the system crashed. "Why did you do that? No user would ever do that."

Ever had a three year-old user? They do that.

Windows software quality sucks for a lot of reasons, but then so does the quality of most software, including packages you think are great. That's because you are so good at working around the bugs you've forgotten they are there.

Part of this is because it is not in the interest of many companies to demand better software. That's because the very person who would be demanding can trace his/her power in the organization directly back to the bugginess of the software. IT managers want bigger budgets and more people and that comes from either using crappy software or pushing their company into using immature software.

This is not going to change.

Now to hardware. Remember how Gary Kildall came up with the ROM-BIOS? He got tired of porting CP/M to every new hardware platform so he wrote a middleware layer so the OS could be standardized. Then the hardware manufacturer could be made responsible for writing the drivers to that middleware -- the ROM BIOS. This was back when 10,000 computers was a big production run. So AMD and Intel are diverging a bit. Well now we are talking about production runs in the millions. Who cares if you have to write two versions? Picky, picky, picky.

Given prior history, who do you think will win
(Score:4, Interesting)
by WillAffleck

Given that we've had umpteen OS wars, like unto the crusades in both their bloodiness and the invective used, can you discern any patterns in what determines the survivors of such conflicts?

For example, is it really the games that determines the winner, the "killer app", the ease of use, the cost, the marketing, or is it the media attention. If it is one of these, what are the most important elements, IYO, in determining the winner.

And, given the /. bias, what would you change in how Linux and BSD is progressing to maximize its survivability. Or is this all 20th Century thinking, and is the OS truly becoming irrelevant?

Cringely:

To my Mom, the OS is already irrelevant, which says a lot about how we look at the market. To most of us, the OS is probably more relevant than it deserves to be. FreeBSD-versus-Linux feels exactly like Ford-versus-Chevy when I was in high school.

Who will win? That depends on your definition of "win." Microsoft defines winning as getting all the money, so over time they will bend their product offerings toward wherever the money seems to be. Linux doesn't work that way, since it doesn't really cost money. Apple is a software company that sells its products inside $1800 boxes, so its motivation is different again. I see market segmentation going like this: Enterprise backend -- small to medium servers -- business desktops -- professional desktops -- gamers -- home computers -- thin clients. Microsoft wants to dominate each of these and will fail in most. Linux targets only 2-3 of these niches and so can't hope to win overall. Same for Apple. But there is room for many winners here. Microsoft makes an average of $200 PROFIT from every Macintosh sold, so Apple's success is also Microsoft's. Linux may hurt Microsoft a bit, but not as much as it inspires Microsoft to be better. So Linix is good for Microsoft. Eventually, though, the market will zig when Microsoft zags and a new leader will emerge. Here's what I can tell you about that new leader: it hasn't yet been founded.

Dotcoms
(Score:5, Interesting)
by wrenling

Being in and around Silicon Valley, and also having seen so much change over the face of the computing industry in the last 20 years, what mistakes do you see that are causing so many dotcoms to fail? What steps could they take/could have taken to prevent this from happening? Conversely, what do you think separates the ones that have made it from the ones that are floating belly up?

Cringely:

In the early 1980s, following the amazing success of Seagate, more than a hundred hard disk companies were found AND FUNDED, each one saying in their business plan that two years out they would have 15 percent market share. Why didn't the VCs see that? Well VCs aren't very original and they also aren't very smart.

Now the same thing has happened with dot-coms and the VCs aren't any smarter than they used to be. But what you have to remember is that they EXPECT a 95% mortality rate and still make a 40% compounded return at that. And failed companies are the ore from which new companies are refined.

Now to the rules for success. I started out to do five of these and ended up with eight. They apply not just to Internet companies but to any high tech startup. They are simple: 1) Fill a need that actually exists, not one you wish existed; 2) Don't count on customers to tell you what that need is (they don't know what they need until you invent it and they see it); 3) Don't push the technological edge because you'll nearly always starve to death; 4) Be very quick to recognize the greatness of others and copy it (in other words, let someone else be responsible for rule 2, above) because the second entrant wins more often that does the originator; 5) Success comes from selling things, so hire a better head of sales and marketing than you think you can afford and hire him/her earlier than you think you should; 6) Every startup has a change of course, a moment when it becomes clear that the original idea just won't work, so be willing to change course when you have to; 7) Know when to call it a day -- most startups fail and nearly every successful startup is run and staffed by people who have already failed, and; 8) Hire a mix of old and young including some people near the top who have already tasted startup success.

Competitive Practices
(Score:5, Interesting)
by rockwall

Do you feel that the computer industry is less innovative today than when you started out? More specifically, do you feel anticompetitive practices by certain companies actively restrict new technologies, or are these current titans just one great idea away from becoming also-rans?

Cringely:

There is always a tendency to glamorize the Good Old Days. I have been in this computer industry for 23 years and four months and as far as I can tell THESE are the Good Old Days. When I started we were inventing an industry and serving a customer base of a few thousand hobbyists. Every application was a horizontal application because the market had no vertical component. Well today the market is enormous and is so vertical you can get a nose bleed, which means that if I have an idea for solid state accelerometers, there is a customer waiting for my product. That is good.

Microsoft is a bully, sure, but understand this: the step after ubiquity is invisibility. Microsoft is too big to economically enter any but the largest new markets, which means there is that much more opportunity for the rest of us. In fact, Microsoft NEEDS the rest of us to show it where to steal. I think we should stop complaining, enjoy the cheap hardware, and get rich.

Commercialization of the net
(Score:4, Interesting)
by Dan Hayes

What do you think that the increasing commercialisation of the net is going to lead to? In particular do you think that the work the various standards bodies do is becoming increasingly ignored when it comes to what actually gets used on the net?

Cringely:

Increasingly ignored? I think it has always been ignored, with the only exception being the IETF. Back in the 80's everyone anticipated the rise of the International Standards Organization. Everything then was TCP/IP and SNMP and SMTP and we knew it couldn't last. The Europeans and their committees were going to come through and kick our asses with X.25 and CMIP and CMOT (remember those acronyms?). But it didn't happen. So too with Token Ring and even Asynchronous Transfer Mode. What a load of crap is ATM! It guarantees Quality of Service by crushing packets that under gigabit Ethernet would have gone right through. Does that make sense? No, it doesn't, and that's the point.

The beauty of the Internet and the IETF lies in a simple idea -- that the only standards under consideration are those already in use on the Net. Ready, fire, aim! It looks sloppy and it is, but with this system change is accelerated, crap is revealed as crap that much quicker, and we end up with systems that actually have a hope of both operating and interoperating. Now I know your question had to do with commercialization, but commercialization is good and committees are bad. Windows, for all I complain about it, has put a computer on 200 million desks. There is no Windows committee. for that matter there really isn't a Linux committee, either. Thank God.

Missed Opportunities
(Score:5, Interesting)
by maggard

From your privilaged position what technologies do you think should-have-made-it but didn't? What technologies do you think were ahead-of-their time but might resurface? Finally, what companies that suprised you by not making a go of it when they seemed like sure-things?

Cringely:

This is a great question hampered by my aging brain. I have written about so many companies and technologies over so many years that I'm sure I'll miss the really important points, but here goes.

It's not so much about technologies and companies as it is about timing and markets. Why did bubble memory fail and flash memory succeed? It's the price, stupid. Same for the Lisa, a great computer five years (and $5000) ahead of its time.

What if Amiga had been bought by another company than Commodore? Now THERE was an opportunity lost.

Had Apple been better managed by Sculley would it today have market dominance?

Pen computing was an obvious non-starter, but everyone had watched the success of Windows and wanted, through hope alone, to make the next wave come that much quicker.

And here's the lesson we learn over and over again: we overestimate change in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. That's why the first entrant into a new category almost always loses. Bought any Altairs lately? Even Apple was probably the 30th little PC company to be started in Silicon Valley, giving it a shot at success.

The technology that keeps being reborn is Unix. The first PC Unix I used was Cromix -- Unix for Cromemco computers running 4 MHz Z-80A processors. Now we're all hot for Linux, but what is it but Cromix reborn and supported by a bunch of enthusiasts? And the secret to a particular platform's success always comes down to the killer application. For Linux I see as yet only Apache and Sendmail as killer apps, which means it won't penetrate the desktop much further no matter how much we want it to.

Want to help Linux? Write apps!

Tell us about the early days
(Score:5, Interesting)
by anticypher

The early days are shrouded in confusion, myth, lies, half-truths, and blazing egos. For years nothing was very clear about the origins of RXC.

We'd like to know about the early days when R.X. Cringeley was used as a pseudonym for a gaggle of writers. Were you involved with the 'nym from the beginning, or did you join later? Who else wrote parts of those articles? Where did the source material come from? Any fun anecdotes?

Could you tell us about the early days without putting the 'nym spin on the facts? I would love to hear a single side to this story once and for all, and I consider you to be the only one who can give us the truth.

Cringely:

Cringely came to be as a guy on the masthead who could be blamed for fuck-ups. The idea was he'd be fired from time to time then reinstated when the advertiser (it was always an advertiser) had cooled down. He could never come to the phone because he was the Field Editor -- always out in the field.

The Cringely column Notes From the Field came into existence when John Dvorak quit. Dvorak was the gossip columnist and then suddenly he wasn't. Editorial management suddenly realized that all the effort they thought they had put into promoting the column had gone out the door with Dvorak. So they decided to replace him with a generic gossip columnist under the Cringely name. That way the value would remain even if the writer left. At least that was the idea.

The biggest myth is that there was a "gaggle of writers." The first Cringely was Rory O'Connor, who wrote the column for about nine months starting in 1986. The second Cringely was Laurie Flynn, who wrote the column for about another nine months ending in August, 1987. I started writing the column in the first week of September, 1987, and wrote every column until the second week of December, 1995 when they fired me.

That was eight years and about 420 columns, which hardly makes it a gaggle of writers. To be clear, items for the column were submitted by reporters. Or, more correctly, items were dragged from the clutches of reporters. But no reporters "wrote" for the column and typically 75% of the material had to be generated by Cringely him (or her) self. Often weeks would go by without any outside material.

I can't say what's happened since. Maybe they do use a gaggle of writers. I don't read that column.

As for anecdotes, two come to mind. I once received a spreadsheet containing Apple's detailed product plans for the coming two years! I got a lot of mileage out of that. And I found out about the Apple/IBM partnerships (Taligent and Kaleida) within hours of their happening, but had to wait months before writing about it to protect a source. What was wonderfully satisfying about that is when I finally did write about it IBM went ballistic, beating up Apple for leaking the story. My source was from IBM.

Has not having a PhD affected your work?
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward

Back in 1998 you falsely claimed that you had a PhD and was a professor of journalism at Stanford. Of course the truth came out. How has the truth affected you and your work. Have you suffered any consequences by your lie? And why did you lie in the first place?

Cringely:

Of course this is a long story, but the compressed version is that I did every bit of my PhD including the paper and the defense. Coming out of the defense, my committee, chaired by Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, asked for some changes to the paper. All I had to do was make those changes and I'd be finished! Well it was a busy time in my life. I was writing my first book, soon to be followed by a job or two and, before I knew it, I had missed the five-year deadline. I was stupid, of course, not only for wasting all that time but especially for not asking for an official leave-of-absence, which would have frozen the clock. How the lie got started was that first book called me a PhD on the jacket. Of course we all expected the jacket to be correct given how little extra work was required. And that jacket copy followed me everywhere. So frankly it was a lot easier to just accept what Random House had decreed than to go to the trouble of explaining all this. Sure, I blew it, but let me make this point: I have all the qualifications to get a university teaching job TODAY. I turn down at least one offer per year. Like Popeye said, "I yam what I yam."

Snocone writes "Cringely's latest column asserts that PayPal is now sufficiently dominant that it is pretty well certain to achieve de facto standard for micropayments over the net. Goes into the history of PayPal and why their model works where no one else's has. Even if you don't agree with him, there's some good insights into digital currency infrastructure to be found here." I now use paypal to pay my girlfriend back when she picks up dinner and my roommate pays his share of the rent using PayPal. Its great... although with the $5 they pay in referrals, plus the $5 they pay to new users, ya gotta wonder ... (if anyone wants to use me as their referral, thats cool *grin*). its actually making the Tipping Jar concept practically feasible. I mean, can I tip artists a few bucks when I enjoy their MP3? Can I tip a few bucks when I enjoy reading someone's website? The potential to change a lot of things is within reach.

Nooooooo! Noooooooo! Not another Slashback! Especially not one dripping with the not-unexpected but unexpectedly-quick news which will let you use your spankin' new Rat Shack Scannin' Cat for other things. And with tons of pictures and a superb wrap-up of LWCE which puts mine to shame! Not to mention ... well, you will have to read more.

LWCE, from our "compulsive recording" files. marcmerlin writes: "I have just finished my full report on Linuxworld expo summer 2000 which features, just like my previous Linux Event reports and reports, hundreds of pictures and a virtual visit of the expo, with a full report of all the keynotes, conferences, tutorials and parties I attended
I'm sure you'll agree the wait was worth it :-)"

Thanks, Marc! Hey, he should charge an admission price for this one. This is perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of LWCE I've see yet, and if you're considering going this is a great way to whet your appetite for the next one.

Don't be alarmed, but we're going to have to give you a cat scan. MP3Car writes "The Dudes over at MP3Car have decoded the protocol used by the CueCat which you can get for free at Radio Shack. they have a Web page where you can scan in any barcode and it will tell you the number. Very neat and hightech space age hack. CueCat HACK"

A free package of Slashdot goodies to the first person who can make my Visor into a CueCat basestation so I can scan random items at the grocery. Note: As of 23:55 GMT, a search for "Radio Shack CueCat" at Google yields a grand total of zero (0) matches. Updated: 3:15 GMT 26th August by timothy: An unnamed correspondent writes:

"This comes straight from linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org:

'Hello all,

I picked up my free CueCat reader at RadioShack the other day, so I
wrote a small driver for it based on Andrew Stellman's perl script. It's
available at :

ftp://oss.lineo.com/drivers/cuecat- 0.0.1.tar.gz

Have fun :)'"

"First, there were the dinosaurs ... " If you enjoyed the visual map of Unix history that CmdrTaco posted the other day, here's your chance to spread a little joy in the world in return. As if Unix weren't enough to cover all by itself ;)

Auckerman writes "It seems someone wants to put all standards and platforms for the entire history of computing on one graph. Pretty ambitious, if you ask me. Though, it would be nice if someone began recording these relationships before they are permanently lost forever."

Heck, I'd like to see this even if it covered only a history of video games!

Q: Will you visit my apartment? A: Yes. Speaking of collaborative knowledge systems, GutterBunny writes: "This week's I Cringley talks about Chris McKinstry's latest project - the Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project. It's a pretty cool idea. Take about 900 million mindpixels (basic nuggets of truth about the human condition), throw them into a neural net, then let the neural net think out the next 100 million mindpixels. The article goes on to talk about how McKinstry's going to make money from it and some of the ideas behind it."

If the therapy was scuccessful, you may recall the fascinating interview that Chris gave to Slashdot a little while ago. Looks like some of the questions that people had then about Mindpixel(s) will be answered by reality.

Anonymous Coward writes: "Here is a nice article about how the IOC (International Olympic Committee) is banning the Internet from the Sydney Games. Here is the link: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/08/15/olympic.ban.idg/index.html". This story came from the Industry Standard, but since on their site it's an unfriendly multi-page format, we'll link to CNN. Are the Olympics nothing more than eyeballs to be sold to the highest bidder? Very thoughtful article. (A mostly-unrelated aside: Don't use the e-mail kiosks at the 2002 Olympics.)

Mr. Cringely is one of the computer industry pundits quoted most frequently here on Slashdot. His weekly column appears Fridays on the PBS Web site, and almost every week's edition is submitted to Slashdot multiple times. Cringely has been involved with personal computers almost as long as they've been around -- he was one of Apple's first employees -- so in this field he's certainly a "pundit's pundit" who comes by his opinions through knowledge. Please take a look at this bio page on his site, then post your questions below. We'll forward about 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him by e-mail over the weekend and post the answers as soon as we receive them.

Mr. Cringely is one of the computer industry pundits quoted most frequently here on Slashdot. His weekly column appears Fridays on the PBS Web site, and almost every week's edition is submitted to Slashdot multiple times. Cringely has been involved with personal computers almost as long as they've been around -- he was one of Apple's first employees -- so in this field he's certainly a "pundit's pundit" who comes by his opinions through knowledge. Please take a look at this bio page on his site, then post your questions below. We'll forward about 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him by e-mail over the weekend and post the answers as soon as we receive them.

Mr. Cringely is one of the computer industry pundits quoted most frequently here on Slashdot. His weekly column appears Fridays on the PBS Web site, and almost every week's edition is submitted to Slashdot multiple times. Cringely has been involved with personal computers almost as long as they've been around -- he was one of Apple's first employees -- so in this field he's certainly a "pundit's pundit" who comes by his opinions through knowledge. Please take a look at this bio page on his site, then post your questions below. We'll forward about 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him by e-mail over the weekend and post the answers as soon as we receive them.

interstar asks: "It's been noted before, but Cringely has an interesting article on Carnivore. The final, big thought is that it might give the U.S. security services the possibility to shut down the Internet. Now, as a UK resident, I'm concerned, but it raised another question in my mind. As of today - July 2000 - how dependent are we in the rest of the world on the U.S. Internet? If all nodes under U.S. jurisdiction shutdown tomorrow, could I still route mail to my girlfriend in Brazil, around the smoking crater? Could a company in Paris hire programmers in India and Russia? Do we still need the U.S. or is the global Internet now independent?"

A reader wrote in with story on C|Net that Earthlink has said that it will *not* install Carnivore, the FBI mail snoop program. Earthlink has said that it will cause disruptions to their customers, and thus refuses to install it. I'd say that's valid. Cringley has a story where he suggests that Carnivore is really about giving the government the power to shut down the Internet.

Vux writes "PBS is airing a show involving the Netscape team. Quoted off the PBS website sectio about the show: "The year is early 1998 and a small team of Netscape code writers frantically works to reconstruct the company's Internet browser. The fate of the entire company may well rest on their shoulders. Facing new competition, sales for Netscape's once world-changing browser have sunk to zero. If this gambit fails, their company, their community and their vision of the future might not survive. Welcome to the epicenter of the new American Dream. Welcome to Silicon Valley." I don't agree with some of the propaganda for the documentary, but it should be an interesting hour flick to watch. " The documentary, according to the PBS site, is airing this evening, through the US. Check local show times and such on the site.

joekool writes "Just saw the new Cringely article, and, well I can't remember ever hearing about this thing before, but the NUON sounds really cool--and it has to be the most multipurpose not-a-cpu type of chip I have ever heard of, as it seems to do everything from play console games to decode DVDs. "

sharv writes "Fans of Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" might be interested in tonight's (9 Nov) episode of Nova on PBS. The episode is entitled Decoding Nazi Secrets and will feature the Enigma, Dr. Turing, and "meticulous period reenactments shot inside the original buildings at Station X, including recreations of the world's first computing devices that aided codebreakers". Sounds like a popcorn event to me! " Of course, for those in the States, check your PBS listing for showtimes.

cjs writes "In Robert Cringley's latest Pulpit he talks about the news media's inability to deal well with technology stories, and in particular states that he feels the approach that Jane's took is `an interesting idea, but ultimately flawed'." Update from RM: Salon also had something to say about Jane's & Slashdot.

technotron writes " The latest from Bob Cringley is out on the Web. This time around, he talks about people who start start-ups with their money, and have reached the point of having so much money, they just keep starting more, but also mostly about the people in the tech industry, and the quality of life. "

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

"

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

"

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

"

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

"

mathowie writes "Here's my notes from the 30th Internet anniversary event that took place at UCLA on Thursday. This is a very long, very detailed piece, but worth your time to read if you're interested in learning where the Internet might be heading in the next 5 - 10 years. A Recap of the 30th Anniversary of the Internet Celebration at UCLA September 2, 1999 by Matthew Haughey

Thirty years ago today, the first communication between the Interface Message Processor (IMP) and a host computer took place in a Computer Science Lab at UCLA. The ARPAnet was born, with four nodes by the end of 1969. Today amid the current explosion of Internet growth, the pioneers gathered along with the forerunners of the internet revolution to commemorate that first event and talk about where we are today and where we go from here.

As I walked in, I caught Leonard Kleinrock in the lobby being mobbed by reporters doing interviews in front of the original IMP. As you can see in the photo, several local news and radio outlets covered the event. I had hoped to see some of the footage on the 11 o'clock news, but as I write this, it's just after 11:30, and I only saw a few seconds and quick mention on one of the network news shows.

After 20 minutes of mulling around past the original start time, The Chancellor started off the event with a quick welcome and general speech about how the internet has spread and enriched our lives. The Chair of the Engineering School at UCLA spoke next for about 15 minutes, discussing the impact of Leonard Kleinrock's achievements and Len's great rapport with his former students.

Len Kleinrock took the stage and recounted the 20th Anniversary event, which was a symposium held at UCLA, the 25th Anniversary event, which was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a recent gathering just a few days ago up in Stanford. Those events, he said, focused on the rich history of how the ARPAnet was built and how it eventually lead up what we call The Internet today. Rather than delve into the past, he went on, today's event was going to center around where the Internet will lead us into the future. I was a bit surprised at first, but relieved that I wasn't going to see a rehash of the history, but a refreshing dialogue between the brilliant set of panelists of what they felt was to come.

Dr. Kleinrock then laid down the ground rules for the day. There would be four panels, and he would act as chair of the event, introducing each moderator. He introduced the first panel, titled "Gorillas", which was supposed to represent the proverbial 900 lb. gorillas of the Internet industry. Joining the moderator, Kipling Hagopian of Brentwood Venture Capital were Christine Hemrick of Cisco, Daniel Rosen of Microsoft, George Vradenburg of AOL, and Ronald Whittier of Intel.

Everyone on the panel was in good spirits and took some gentle jabs from the moderator. When the moderator made a joke about the justice department's crackdown on Microsoft, the representatives of Microsoft and AOL both praised the low regulation of the industry thus far and accredited their rapid and extreme growth with the "hands off" policy of the U.S. government. They also stated their support for ICANN and the deregulation of the Internet's domain namespace.

In response to a question about the growth of Cisco, Christine Hemrick praised openness and non-ownership of industry standards like TCP/IP. Since no one owned TCP/IP, she said, anyone could start a company that based their communications on that protocol. The moderator asked several questions about bringing broadband into the home, and whether cable or DSL would be the key technology. Ms. Hemrick stressed that wireless technologies might surpass the capabilities and availability of cable and DSL very soon, which was a good thing to hear.

The panelists were a sharp group of people. Whenever a question about upcoming technology was posed, they acknowledged the fact that the industry moves so fast that no one knows what we will be using in 5 years for any specific technology. They pointed to the audience several times and said that someone among us could start a new company tomorrow with technology that could blow away anything their corporations had done before. When the panel was asked about the longevity of their large corporations, they agreed that scalability was important, to grow with the industry, but trying to stay as close as possible to customers and continuing to address their needs was also important.

All the panelists talked about how hard it was to stay ahead of everyone, to continue as industry leaders with so many competitors on their heels. When asked about the future, one panelist commented that soon the term "e-commerce" would be meaningless, due to a blurring between conventional commerce and commerce done over the Internet. Someday soon, they said, every business would have some aspect of it that would be Internet related. All in all, the four panelists were charismatic, well-spoken, and a hip bunch, making a few jokes about Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The second panel was for the people behind recent industry successes, titled "Netpreneurs." It was moderated by Willem Mesdag of Goldman Sachs and the panelists were David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, Eric Brewer, co-founder of Inktomi, Sky Dayton, founder of EarthLink, John Payne, CEO of Stamps.com, and Henry Sameueli, co-founder of Broadcom.

It was amazing that no company represented on the panel was created before 1991, with most of them formed in either 1995 or 1996, yet they all had market caps of at least a billion dollars each. Overall, the second panel wasn't as interesting as the first bunch of panelists, some of their answers sounded like a press release. This was especially true for Sky Dayton, who sounded like he was repeating his radio commercials in response to every question he was asked. When asked how they became successful, each panelist talked about how their company filled a void not covered by a larger company, and how they could move faster than a large corporation. Sky Dayton stressed this, the size of your company compared to your competitors was unimportant. What mattered most was the speed at which you could respond to changes in the industry, economy, and customer base. He said that if you were starting a new company, focus on one specific area of the market, and stick to it. Don't try to be monolithic agencies that can do everything like Microsoft tries to be, he said, just do one thing really well and you can emerge as a market leader. He also pitched his new company eCompanies.com for budding entrepreneurs, they are setting up a clearinghouse of new ideas, and intend to fund business plans that catch their eye. When asked about the potential for new companies Dayton said something interesting, he estimated that the development of the Internet as a "thing" was about 20% done at most. That even in 1999, we were just barely scratching the surface of what is possible, he said. Overall the session was enlightening and I came away with a new found enthusiasm to get my ideas out the door.

The third panel was perhaps the most interesting. It was titled "eConsumers" and was moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times, who was joined by John Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Jeffrey Cole, director of UCLA's Center for Communication Policy, Alan Kay, VP of Imagineering at Disney, and Dan Lynch, founder of Cybercash.

Although the panel was supposed to focus only on consumer issues, the topics discussed ran the gamut, from personal privacy issues to numerous "what if" scenarios of our future ultra-wired world, and the social implications of each. Patt Morrison moderated as a sort of devil's advocate, asking for the panel's reaction to several cynical questions like trusting e-commerce vendors, internet rumors becoming news, and how our lives may be hindered by the burden of technology. Surprisingly, the panel, which had varied opinions on most topics, all found something positive in each question and future scenario. An ebay deal gone bad meant a user could learn to be more careful of sellers, news could not be trusted and should be approached with skepticism, and our lives could be made much better by an increased use of technology by saving us time spent on mundane tasks like paying bills or waiting in lines while shopping.

Intellectual property and copyright issues were discussed, where John Barlow and Alan Kay agreed that intellectual property was dead, and that ideas should be given away freely. Mr. Barlow talked about how every article he's written is freely available online, which allows him to generate revenue from unwritten works. Publishers can see all his writing, he went on, and they pay for new pieces to be written. He said he didn't worry about copyright, because his most valuable ideas were the ones he hasn't had yet. John said it was the philosophy behind the Grateful Dead (whom he wrote songs for); they allowed their shows to be freely taped and exchanged, and they derived revenue from people wanting to see them perform live.

Alan and John also talked about how a lot of intellectual property is meaningless to much of the population, that a technical idea is so complex that few people understand it, regardless of whether or not it is in the public domain. Dr. Kay used Linux as an example of this, the kernel is so complex that one in a million people can understand it all and contribute programming expertise. But with the advent of the Internet, he added, finding that one in a million is easy, and 100 or more people can be brought together to work on it. He praised the development of the ARPAnet because it was open, allowing researchers from all over to contribute to a greater good, and said in today's climate a large corporation would probably try to make much of it proprietary and hinder its development.

When asked how Linux can generate revenue, Alan said that like the Grateful Dead example, giving away Linux meant that large fees could be found in consulting, helping companies use the technology to their advantage. He then mentioned something that dropped just about everyone's jaw: he said that the company with the biggest revenue in the computer industry was not Microsoft, but IBM's consulting business, which he said brings in double the revenue that Microsoft does selling software, just by showing companies how to use technology in their business (which Linux is a part of). Alan Kay stood out as an extremely articulate guy with numerous enlightened answers, and everyone on the panel had great things to say about what the future might be like.

The fourth and final panel, titled "Beyond Today's Internet" was moderated by Stephen Segaller of WNET, the PBS station behind the Triumph of the Nerds series. He was joined by the four pioneers of the original ARAPnet, Vinton Cerf, now with MCI, Robert Kahn, now with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Leonard Kleinrock, of the UCLA Computer Science Department, and Lawrence Roberts, now of Packetcom

Along with the theme of the day's event, the forefathers of today's Internet focused solely on the future. Since they all have networking backgrounds, the first question was whether or not the network could keep up with client demands. The four panelists unanimously agreed that the capacity of the network would continue to expand at a rate greater than our immediate needs. They acknowledged the limits of the current IP naming system, and that IPv6 would expand the limit of addresses to near 10^38. Len Kleinrock had a problem with these imposed limits and Vint Cerf joked that 10^38 IP addresses would mean enough for "a web page for every molecule on earth." Len clarified his protest and stated that we should instead design variable length solutions to the problem, solutions that offer unlimited means. When asked about limits of physical devices like routers handling packet switching, they agreed that packet switching would probably be replaced by an unknown technology, and that physical capacities of networks would increase with the increased use of fiber. Len said instead of digital packets traveling through copper wire, in the future, it would just be pulses of light traveling along fiber. They all spoke of the proposed growth of the Internet, to surpass one billion people online in the next decade, and they mentioned something that was discussed briefly on an earlier panel; that someday soon, anything you buy over a certain price, say $25, would offer connectivity to the internet for a specific reason. Not a toaster that checks email, but each appliance would use the Internet for communication purposes.

This was another reason Len used to support unlimited IP addressing, due to the fact that billions of devices would need to access the internet. Questions asked by the moderator were mostly big picture, and the panel discussed them at that level. They talked about distant futures, when billions of people would be interacting with billions of devices, we would see drastic changes in Human-Computer interaction. They even alluded to the similarities between an enormous interconnected network of people and machines approaching the complexity of organic beings. The panel agreed with earlier panels that what were are witnessing is bigger than the industrial revolution. The knowledge explosion, as many called it, was going to fundamentally change how we do everything in the future.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Among all the speakers and panelists, there were several messages that came across. The mood of everyone thinking about the future was one of optimism and opportunity. The interconnecting of everyone person on earth will trigger a knowledge revolution that will have deep, drastic changes on our lives and those around us. But if these future developments are met with some skepticism, and intelligence, it will undoubtedly be a good thing.

Matthew Haughey September 3, 1999

My photos from the event can be seen here

"