Matt’s Blog of Truth

Most of you know, first hand, how dreadful things are becoming for, not only the United States, but for the entire World, regarding the economy. This is a cut and dry, grass roots explanation, as to why the economy is shrinking. More importantly, why we need not go crazy with fear.

First, let’s look at how it all started. The Industrial Age has been with us for over 200 years now. But, I will begin at a more rationale point.

It begins with the creation of The Internet.

The Internet was adopted from a military network and put into public domain by Bill Clinton. This was done to stimulate and grow the economy. In 1995 the Internet was all the craze on Wall Street. Dreams of billions to be made from this new ‘virtual online shopping store’, to sell everything and anything, traditionally done with Brink and Mortar buildings. Well, the investors on Wall Street were told this was going to be HUGE, so they invested BILLIONS of dollars into Internet Start Up companies.

The problem was that these Wall Street traders and Investors were putting all their money on a hunch. The assumption was that the Internet would balloon their stocks and make them all Billions. The ballooning began around 1999 and finally crashed (burst) at around 2001. People over estimated the initial value of the Internet. Yes, some did win like; Amazon, Yahoo!, Ebay, PayPal and many more. But, over 95% of all the initial Internet start ups, which these over zealous investors had put all their stocks and bonds into, crashed. Losing them Billions. In fact, the Internet Bubble, was the biggest stock bubble in history.

So, what does this have to do with the current economic ‘crisis’, of 2008 to present day?

It is known, that when one ’stock bubble’ bursts, another bubble is formed, somewhere else in the stock market. This time in the Housing Market. Namely, Home Mortgages (big loans).

Starting in 2001 through 2004, or so, everyone noticed that if you wanted to buy a house, you could get a record low interest rate. Rates as low as 4.5% was common place around 2003-2004. The reason for this, was that all those investors, that had their stakes in the Internet Bubble, which made some millionaires and others bankrupt, moved their attention to the housing market. Some stock traders moved to avoid the Internet crash before it happened and moved all their Overly Ballooned stocks over in the Housing Market. These Internet stocks were moved in a panic, as the Housing Market has always been known to be a strong and solid sector of the Stock Exchange.

So, as a result of all this heavy Investment into the Housing Market, that sector of the market flourished. There was literally Trillions invested into Housing and Real Estate, which lowered Interest Rates, which got people to buy more and more homes. The formation of yet another Stock Bubble was beginning to take shape.

All was good and great. The situation was healthy. People were able to afford their dream home, while Stock Investors were making bank on their investments. This is what is known as a growing and healthy economy.

But, something happened.

Something called GREED.

Things were going so well for the Housing Sector, that major lenders (banks) began looking into ways to make even MORE money. The idea was that, since the market was doing so good, they could then begin to lend money (mortgages) to people that were previously off limits, or considered high risk. In other words, the banks began to give Home Mortgages to lower income families, with the risk that the borrowers may not be able to pay back the loan.

This high risk lending is known as Sub-Prime Mortgages, as I am sure you have now all heard about. Sub-prime, meaning a chance the loan could go sour and force the home buyer to go into foreclosure, which costs all parties involved, grief and wasted money.

The major banks, all at once and at a high rate of speed, sold these sub-prime mortgages in the TRILLIONS on dollars.

So, the drama was to begin.

It was not until 2007 that their were problems found in two major banking institution, known as Lehman Bros and Bear Sterns. They had what is known as TOXIC ASSESTS. Meaning that all their investments were bad, known to be lent to people that were on their way to foreclosure. TRILLIONS of dollars in Toxic Sub-Prime Mortgages were never going to be paid back to the banks that lent them out.

The problem then becomes a viral effect, because not only are the banks that sold these toxic loans are now in trouble, but all the Stock Share Traders on Wall Street ALSO put money into Sub-Prime Mortgages. So, now the banks and stock traders were in deep, deep sh**.

Once news of this was put out to the public, Wall Street went into a panic and pull out all their investments they had in these major banks. And well… here we are today.

If the banking system itself is full of Toxic Assets, then the Core Financial System is corrupted. This created a paranoia effect, where other banks were suddenly afraid to lend any money, to anyone! Banks that were not directly impacted by the Sub-Prime Toxic Money, froze all lending, which crashed the economy.

If money does not move (liquid), nothing happens, so the Stock Market begins to crash/stop. It stops breathing and slowly begins to die. All due to a couple bad banking moves and forcing everyone else to freeze all their money and stop the economy from breathing. I like to think of this as someone going through a panic attack and not able to breathe, for fear itself, has engulfed them.

So, what has been done to stop the situation from becoming worse?

Enter the US Federal Government Reserve Bank.

Before, the markets were free with NO government regulation. That is what everyone wanted, including the US Government! People do not like Big Government telling the free markets what to do. But, there was no choice. Money HAD to be injected into the Banking System or a collapse was to ensue, very very quickly.

So, that is what they did. The US Government passed the TARP Bill which gave the failing banking system Billions and now to date TRILLIONS of Federal Reserve money to the banks and told the CEO’s of all the major US banks to STOP the credit freeze and use this Federal money to start lending again, to get the economy breathing again.

President Obama took the ‘federal reserve money injection’ a step further by, not just bailing out those that cause this mess in the first place, but to use this opportunity to invigorate ‘green technology’ and jobs, restructure health care and fix the US infrustructure like bridges and roads. Obama is taking a major gamble, and hoping that HIS investments will pay off, in the long run.

I believe they will. Obama is a smart man. He even understands computers and the Internet age. Just take a look at his website. He was the first President to put all his policies on the table for all to read. He put it all out there on the Internet.

Now, let us pray what he has done with the additional TRILLIONS borrowed (mostly from China) and see if it does anything for the greater good. I think it will.

Thanks for reading.

Chrome, Googles own Browser, has many new concepts in web applications to concider. Many wonder, why would Google even release a browser, when Firefox is so popular, including a multi-million dollar deal with Mozilla, the company behind Firefox. Many wonder if this will ‘cut in’ on Firefox, therefore the Open Source communities war between Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

But, I see Chrome as an ‘inside browser’ released to the public, to ‘do with as they may’ browser ‘product’, rather than Google’s attempt at trying to strangle hold Firefox’s growing popularity, and Mozilla’s Ad revenue deal with the Search giant.

Chrome is not being pushed as the Firefox killers. In fact, Google took Chrome out of beta recently, which is completely unorthedox for Google. Gmail has been in beta, as well a Google docs, for years now, as an example.

What Google presents to the web browsers, is a prototype for ‘how the web could be’. How the web could be, is exactly what Google wants, and is their primary goal. Because, the more prevalent the web is, the more people use it, the more Ad revenue Google ultimately will profit from.

Google could throw literally millions or even Billions into the gBrowser. But, why? Firefox is already doing great. However, Firefox is slowly becoming more bloated, has a slow render engine for javascript and Google has very close business relations with Firefox (mozilla).

Chrome is a prototype browser. It doesn’t have the expansive plug in system, like Firefox has. Therefore, will never become as popular as Firefox. Google could easily instruct their coders to implement such a plug in architecture, but that could mean the end (or at least the break down) of Mozilla’s Ad profits it gets from the Google search bar. So, Google takes Chrome out of beta, without a plug in system, but leaves the exciting and important aspects of what a browser SHOULD have in Chrome, for Firefox and the world to use and improve upon.

Here is what Google wants to see Firefox, Opera and Safari, excel in, or surpass.

1) Javascript execution engine that is fast, VERY fast.
2) Web App Desktop Short cuts, to promote Web Apps like Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Google Docs and the like.
3) A browser that has advanced Tab capabilities. Just drag a tab off Chrome and a completely new process is made. This guards against crashes, by isolating web pages (tab) from another, and gives the user more options.
4) Make the browser load fast, run fast and feel more responsive.
5) Continue to be standards compliant. Chrome is yet another browser that joins the pack along with Firefox, Safari and Opera against the non-standards complaint Browser known as, Internet Explorer.
6) Chrome comes stock with Google Gears. Maybe the other browsers will do the same, which is just ‘offline mode’ for Web Apps.

These are a few of the things, the wizards at Google, want to see in Firefox, Safari, and Opera, particularly, Firefox. Firefox is an awesome browser, but you have to admit, it is slowly becoming bloated, loads slower, and the Javascript execution could be sped up.

Well, Chrome not only sparked a (whose javascript can execute the fastest) ‘race’, but it also will make the developers of Firefox think about how it can make Firefox load as fast as Chrome and maybe even implement Chromes powerful ‘Tabs’ and Web Application Desktop shortcut innovations.

In all, Google’s Web Browser, Chrome, kick the ass’s of all the other browsers, and ultimately made them rethink about how the browser SHOULD work. Again, this only makes Web Applications more popular, and benefits Google Docs, Gmail and all of the Internet’s ‘up and coming’ Software as a Service, Computing Cloud concepts.

Thanks Google. You did NOT decide to kill Firefox, but instead provide a browser ‘to look up to’ and get ideas from, only to become better.

In the era of social networks, twitter (the micro blogger), Word Press (blogging), blogger.com, Facebook, MySpace, Google Docs, RSS News Feeds, Flash based games, Buying and Selling online (endless e commerce going on), Wikipedia, Google.com and geez so much more.

The Web Browser, is by far, the most used software program of all time. The Killer App.

It is also the new dawning of Web Apps. With the maturing of JavaScript and tool kits like Dojo, JQuery, GWT, YUI and countless others, you can program your Web Browser to act like an application you installed locally on your computer. Yet, all of this is running inside, the once humble (Hyper Links, Images and Text), that the Web Browser once delivered. Web Apps still use traditional technology, but a simple addition to JavaScript, called AJAX, has transformed the Web Page from a static and non-interactive experience, into a lively and Dynamic experience.

This simple idea, of allowing a portion of the Web Page to update, without having to refresh the ENTIRE Web page, has spawned the Web App. It is always, the simplest concepts that make the HUGEST impacts. Ajax is a perfect example of this.

The Internet has exploded, people trust it for online shopping, via credit cards and merchants, like PayPal, Alertpay, 2checkout and more. Regardless, of a huge rise in credit fraud, mostly due to Spam and phishing for personal data, causing online fraud. But, the problems get fixed, the public gets informed to be more careful, and consumers keep on shopping.

TV media is now constantly mentioning Internet sites, and TV media is HUGE folks. I’ve heard the term, ‘just Google it’, on so many TV shows and in Block Buster films, along with, ‘I just updated my MySpace page.’.

In other words, the Internet has become tightly integrated in most aspects of life.

Gamers, that install their games locally on their machines, still refer to Internet gaming forums, to talk about their experiences. MMORPG’s, like Second Life, Ever Quest and EVE Online, all use the Internet to connect players, to interact as a single Gaming Universe.

OK, so what?

This is old news, right?

Well, the new big thing, taking advantage of this now, mobile reality, connected to the Internet, is a device called a Netbook.

A Netbook is a Laptop that is minified. It’s screen is usually, no bigger than 7-9 inches and about 2/3rds the size of a regular Laptop. Netbooks, run the Intel Atom CPU, which only used 2.5 watts of power. 2.5 compare that to a common laptops 25 watts.

• Desktop CPU - 65 watts
• Laptop CPU - 25 watts
• Netbook CPU - 2.5 watts!!!

What this means, is longer battery life, than a Laptop. I have heard reports, of the battery lasting an entire day of on and off use, without a recharge!

Netbooks also require less RAM, 500 megs average, with 1 gig tops. Compare that with typical Laptops, which universally come with 2 Gigs. The more RAM the more energy drain, on the battery.

A 16 gig hard drive, usually and SSD, or Solid State Disk, with NO MOVING PARTS. This means you can drop it on the floor, and the hard drive at least, will keep on ticking. We all known of the bumps and bruises, that our Laptops, on the go, receive on a daily bases. So, this is another huge selling point, for the Netbook. I have heard reports of people, typing away on their Netbook, while walking, because they do not fear the hard drive will crash, due to the installed Solid State Drive.

By the way, SSD drives are still very expensive, compared to traditional spinning platter drives (ATA, SATA, IDE, SCSI), but hopefully the Netbook will help bring down this cost.

Everything is just smaller, a bit more bump resistant, and less power (watts) hungry, on a Netbook.

Now, what does this all mean for Software makers, like Microsoft and Apple?

First Microsoft. Vista is so bloated, in every sense of the word. It simply can not run (very well), on a Netbooks minified hardware. Although, Microsoft will not be losing their tight lock on the whole Desktop Industry, anytime soon, it does allow Linux and Apple a chance to hop over Microsoft’s barbed wire, electrified fence, called a monopoly, and are installing alternative Operating Systems, on the Netbooks!

The release of Vista, could not have come at a WORSE time, than now.

Microsoft was betting on hardware just getting bigger and cheaper. Well, now that there are so many concerns about power consumption, a crashing global economy and a drain on earthly resources, industry is inventing new devices like Netbooks, to cope with the changing global outlook.

Netbooks, use less energy, less raw materials and are way cheaper than a modern laptop.

Netbooks, are now priced at $299 (down from $499) over at Dell and offered at Amazon.com. $299 for a laptop! That is less money than a Desktop! I would never have guessed, that laptops would become cheaper than a Desktop, literally out of the blue, with the arrival of the Netbook.

Netbooks were made popular by the arrival of the ASUS eeePC. Their default choice of Operating System, was Xandros. Xandros is a Linux Distribution. It is based on Corel Linux, a Debian-based distribution.

Seeing how well the eeePC was selling, in the millions, over night, sparked every other business to join in.

Now, Ubuntu’s Canonical has a Netbook, sold through Dell. Apple is announcing their own version. Microsoft has brought back XP, after announcing it’s retirement in July 2008, because Vista is simply too bloated to fit on the Netbook.

People, Business and individuals addicted to the Internet, are on the rise. You can add myself to the list of addicts. My whole life revolves around the Internet. I run a home based business, using Linux and the Internet. I read a lot of blogs and follow a lot of National and Global news. Ironically, I get my local news from my Wife’s dad (grandpa), that still reads the Newspaper! (OMG, he still reads the newspaper, I know!)

Anyways, I still prefer a regular sized Laptop. It is always plugged into the wall and generates ENORMOUS amounts of heat. A Netbook may be OK for using it to JUST browse the Web, which is a huge percentage of time spent, but for Development work, as a programmer, the Netbook might be a little TOO compact. It’s keyboard is very small, and takes time to get used it. It took me a while to get used to my HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop’s keyboard.

But, the reality is, the hardware, is finally giving Microsoft some competition, since it is introducing other Operating Systems, like Linux Xandros and Linux Ubuntu, into the Market, once dominated (and still is, and will be for a long time) by Windows only and the Microsoft World.

As, most of us know, competition is good, as it drives prices down, forces better quality products, fixes software bugs and benefits the End Users. Competition MUST exist, or the Market becomes corrupted.

Bottom Line — Netbooks are allowing alternative Operating System the ability to enter the Desktop Market.

UPDATE [Nov/6/2008]: An interesting article out of Australia. goes indepth on the netbook threat it plays to Microsoft. It is a two page article. On the second page, the last remark made was this…

Equipping Linux on a computer costs about $US5, compared with $US40 to $US50 for XP and about $US100 for Vista, according to estimates by Jenny Lai, a Taipei-based analyst at CLSA.

To cut costs, computer makers such as Acer and Asustek opted for slower processors and less memory. On these systems, Linux can boot up twice as fast as XP, according to Acer’s website.

‘’The engineers designing computers understand that if they want to cut costs, the only way to do so is to get rid of Microsoft,'’ IDC’s Chang said.

Many argue that the reason Linux and F/OSS fails — fails in terms of what? — is that the community is too fragmented.

This could not be further from the truth, at the same time, is absolutely true.

On one front, they argue fragmentation leads to confusion and non cohesiveness. In other words, the big corporate computer companies like Microsoft, Sun, Apple and IBM, to name a few, are successful, because they operate under a single banner. Their own corporate banner. The ‘boss’, or Board of Directors, tells their employees what to do, and they do it. This leads to cohesive products that sell and get consumed — hopefully — by millions of people.

On the other front, this fragmentation is exactly the reason F/OSS is being adopted by millions of Internet Businesses and not just the Open Source enthusiasts. This fragmentation is F/OSS’s greatest strength and greatest weakness. Wrong. Anyone that claims this to be true, is mostly talking about MONEY and not much else. They are talking about Market Share, which translates into more money. Yes, when there are 500+ Linux Distributions to choose from, can become a bit bewildering.

But, that is all changing.

Ubuntu is making Linux Desktop ‘come together’ and Red hat has long offered a certified, Enterprise Level, Linux Server. The industry is only growing, month after month. If you read this recent article about Ubuntu’s continued success on the Desktop and Server fronts, you will see there is cohesion, thanks to Canonical. Canonical being the for profit company behind Ubuntu.

Now, F/OSS is strong on both fronts. Not only is it so fragmented, that it has so many contributors, that no ‘for profit’ corporation could match. The closest example of any corporation even coming close is Microsoft. But, now Linux and Open Source is developing, completely naturally with no pressure to do so, based on businesses backing the software. Examples include; Red hat, Novell/SUSE, Xandros and Canonical/Ubuntu.

This is not to mention smaller Linux backers like the company Everex, that produced the gOS. Linspire, which was acquired by Xandros. Let’s not forget Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrake Linux, a French Linux backer.

There are so many companies and individuals contributing to Free and Open Source, that it is nothing short of something special. Something unique and not seen before in humanity. All of humanity, connected through the Internet, breaks down the geographical and language barriers. American, Chinese, Japanese, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Spain and well, the entire world, contribute to GNU/Linux.

What this means, is that all this fragmentation benefits every Linux backer.

For instance, if someone contributes to the code base of the Linux Kernel, benefits every — all 500+ Linux distributions — that utilize the Kernel. If, someone contributes to any of the thousands of Open Source Projects, results in every Linux Distribution being able to update their software.

Now, you tell me, if fragmentation is a curse? It clearly is a blessing.

YouTube, acquired by Google, is the well known and popular web site for viewing videos, as well as being able to upload them.

It is the single largest collection of online, freely accessible Internet Video, bar none. YouTube, has also become a place to aquire knowledge, just as Web Sites around the world provide, using Google and other search engines, to get you there. YouTube is unique, in that, not only does it host all the material, but has grown so huge, that it’s Search capabilities have now surpassed that of the former #2 Search Engine, called Yahoo!.

Now, Google can lay claim that it owns the two most popular Search Engines, on the Internet.

Does anyone here smell a Monopoly?

Now, some would argue that YouTube is not a true search engine. All the material that is searchable is contained within the same site you are searching, YouTube. Most people that are searching on Yahoo! and Google do plan to move off of the search site and goto the site that has the most accurate search result. Therefore, YouTube is not, technically, a search engine.

But, I argue that YouTube, with it’s vastness, is like a universe, comes very close to being a search engine. That is not to say that all sites that have a search bar, that locates data just on that one site, is included with the same category that YouTube is. YouTube is clearly in a category of it’s own.

Read the slashdot submitted article, for further details.

I love Linux and the Open Source Community. Smart, funny and best of breed.

Getting lost in the technical aspects, is how everything gets invented. All answers, lay in the details, of which, there are mountains of details, that can sum up a product, point or condition.

Terms like Web 2.0. First, there was confusion over this term and what it really meant. Fact of the matter, Web 2.0 is still a tough concept or notion to crack.

But, the latest term, to hit the streets, Cloud Computing.

The technical brain would say, “Cloud Computing is a term based mostly on hype, because if you have an email address, use the Internet or upload any personal data, you are using the Computing Cloud.”.

This is completely true, from a technical stand point. But, the term was coined by a Business Thinker, rather than a CTO or programmer. Cloud Computing, is directly related to Google. Google Docs to be exact, and with Microsoft’s Office software.

There is huge debate, over whether it is better to run your Office locally, by running Open Office or MS Office, on each computer. Or, use an Internet Application, such as, Google Docs to do the same work.

Hence, Cloud Computing is born.

I guarantee you, that a technical person did not, and never would, come up with a term like, “Cloud Computing”. Just the thought of it alone is vague and, yes, Cloudy. But, it is a perfect term to sum up what Google Docs, could mean, from a non-technical point of view. The term will, of course, expand to other Web Businesses, that sell similar products and services.

In fact, Dell, tried to win the patent on Cloud Computing, which they did not receive. Too obvious a patent, for one party to have the rights to. Also, Microsoft’s next Operating System is rumored to being known as, get this, Cloud OS.

In fact, wasn’t Cloud Computing once called SaaS? Or, Software as a Service?

Maybe I am wrong and “Cloud Computing” is hype. But, it does sound more hip than SaaS or Software as a Service.

You decide.

Let me tell you a story.

Of a boy named, Matt. He came from a poor family, single mother of 3. Now, fast forward to his 26th birthday…

Hi, I’m Matt. I write this blog, and here is my Linux success story.

I primarily operate off an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop, and primarily in bed. See, I run a HBB or HoSo, in other words, I work from home. I am my own boss. I can honestly say that Linux and GNU software has enabled a — than 26 year old aspiring programmer — to start my own business on the Web.

Linux and all of it’s wonderful software packages are so flexible, there are endless possibilities.

I duel boot, as I have Vista installed on my laptop as well. But, I probably boot into Vista, at most once a month, or less. The last reason was to try Google’s new browser, Chrome. Other than that, Ubuntu is my choice of Linux. I have tried others, like PCLinuxOS, Mandriva and a few others. I use Ubuntu, not because I’m a fanboi, but because I am really a Debian fanboi, and proud to admit that. However, I like to listen to mp3’s, watch DVD’s and Ubuntu Linux makes the ability to do this, as hassle free as possible. Yes, I know other Distro’s have similar methods for making the Linux Desktop as easy to use as possible.

You see, I run my Web business on Debian. I can not do without my apt-get and .deb package system. I have respect for Red hat and their RPM packages, in fact, Red hat spear headed the whole idea of a package system. So, what it comes down to, is that, I like to keep my Desktop as easy to use, as possible. But, I like my server’s, which run my business, as flexible as possible, which tends to mean more complexity, without all the GUI Desktop stuff.

I did not always use Linux. I originally, was a Windows user. I did not even know Linux existed, when I started my web businesses. It were my partners, that introduced me to Linux. I started out as a C++ Direct X game programmer. Very amature and programming games, to me, was a fun way to learn how to code. In fact, right before I met my business partners, I had just finished a one year contract as a beta tester for Windows 2000 as a beta tester, at Microsoft.

I operated, in 2001, on Windows 2000. I needed to find more work, so I decided to see if I could do some free lance Web Programming. Thus, began my journey off the Desktop and into the Cloud, so to speak. I looked at ASP, this was before there was .NET, but PHP seemed to be what everyone was using.

Picking up and using PHP is very easy to do, especially when you come from a C/C++ world where there is no garbage collectors, memory mangement, easy string handling and less concern about data typing. PHP also adopted the general constructs that C uses. I started using PHP a year after version 4 was released. PHP 4, really exploded PHP’s popularity, even more, because they combined all these different modules, scattered over the net and collected them to form what PHP 4 became. Stuff like PHP Sessions and MySQL modules are essential for a Data driven, dynamic web page.

At the same time, learning CSS and Javascript was needed, if I was to become a free lance Web programmer. But, like most programmers at that time, I admitely was a cut n paste JavaScript programmer. In 2001, there were no JavaScript libraries like; Prototype, JQuery, MooTools and Dojo Toolkit. My favorite place to go for my JavaScript needs was at Dynamic Drive. I think many Web programmers, unfortunately, referred to this site and similar sites, to complete their JavaScript needs for their clients. However, after reading JavaScript: The Definitive Guide - Edition 5. This book, is so well written and accurate, that any JavaScript Programmer that does not read it, will be left in the dark as to what is really going on in the Web Browsers, and how JavaScript became some what fragmented, due to Internet Explorer’s lack of standard compliance.

One, fatefull day, while checking my email looking for interest in hiring me, I got the email that would change my life. I was from my partner — we no longer work together — around may 2001, from a guy from Australia. He said he needed a programmer to create his ideas and these ideas would make us rich, and it would be a 50/50 partnership. Well, Phil, was his name and he did in fact have a load of ideas. He opened up a whole new world to me, called Internet Marketing.

Phil was a battle hardened old man of 62 years of age. He also was a counceller and Train the Trainer, so he claims. He is also a master at sale copy. He really understood why people spend money and how to connect with them. He also believed in selling things that are of value.

So, that is how I got my first taste of Linux. Phil had a few Dedicated Linux Servers, and a friend that was the Admin of the Linux Servers. Phil, was in the process of reinventing himself or potentially going to jail. This shift he was under going, when he contacted me, was due to his past as an ex-spammer. He was learning to invent software systems that was spam free. Which, in fact, hundreds of others would mimic and copy. In fact, unknown to me, I would become part of this innovation of advertising using Email, but using legal methods like Double Opt in and adhering to strict guidelines, so people could easily Add and Remove themselves from the Programs.

So, the safe list host was born.

Not just a single safe list, but an entire system to allow the operator to create Multiple List owners, which in turn each List owner could create Multiple Lists. This was never before done. The reason for the shift, was because yahoo groups and tropicana, a popular email list service organized by topics, had kicked out the Net Marketers, because they did not like the material that was flowing through the lists. Material like Affiliate based Marketing, eBook sells.

This is what Safe Lists allow. They allow affiliates a conduit for this activity, in a spam free and purely come and go as you please method of dealing with memberships.

Linux, is so flexible, only it makes small businesses able to happen, because the ideas of people require software that can be configured anyway they like. In proprietary Operating systems, this is simply not possible. There is not enough flexibility in the Operating System to allow business ideas to flourish, simply because proprietary systems do not bend in directions that need to be bendable.

It was this flexibility that got me into Linux. If, you just need a machine to surf the net and check email, play a game or two, listen to CDs and watch DVDs, proprietary Operating Systems are fine. But, if you plan on starting a business, especially a Web business, Linux really is the only choice, including Unix BSD’s. Microsoft Small Business, simply does not have the deepth of choice in software and each software being completely customized to meet the needs of the Small Business Owner.

Why For Profit Corporations can’t achieve Technological Flexibility

I don’t think that any For Profit business could create such technology. Because, how could a for profit business know how to build a server that was able to know which way to flex and in what areas. It simply can’t. The reason, why I love Linux and Open Source method of software development is because, if you have an Idea, you can make it happen. There are no worries about Licenses or copyrights and even more important, you are able to do the customization because the source code is open.

My Linux success story is but one. There are, in my belief, tens of thousands of small businesses, that owe Linux, as a platform of flexibility, to allow their creators to be creative, and not restricted in any way. This really is a massive break through. It means that you do not need to go corporate, to satisfy a niche market or more.

What is making Linux even more appealing, is the fact, that Billion Dollar companies like Google, MySpace, FaceBook, Amazon and so many more, all run on Linux. All of these businesses, started out from college kids, having an idea and using Linux, as their platform, simply because it allowed them to be creative and make it happen. Imagine, entire industries born, because of a Free and Open Operating system, that no one has to pay for or worry about breaking a corporations licensing policy. All of these wonderful sites, would never have been conceived.

So, that is why I use Linux exclusively. It allows me to be as creative as I want to be. I think that is what it is all about, which ever way you want to look at it.

Web 2.0 Browser Desktop Toolkit…

Wow, now that is a mouthful.

First off, Web 2.0 is such a clique term, but really it can signify a greater movement of businesses that completely operate on the Internet, through a Web Browser. There are so many examples of this, I could fill a whole page. Here are a few, to jog your memory; Google, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr.

Next, did I say, a Browser Desktop? Or, did I mean to say, Desktop Browser? No, you heard me right. A Browser Desktop. Yes, a Desktop, sort of, that runs inside your browser. To call this a Desktop is a little over kill, but a great way to get readers attention. What it really boils down to is a Platform within a Web Browser.

Dojo, takes it a step further, by giving you a complete framework, for creating your own custom widgets, which you can easily modify beginning from the Built in ones, or start one from scratch. And, to add these dijits (Dojo widgets) to your web page, you simply type a dojoType=”your.dijit.here” attribute, to say a div tag, and Dojo will magically, via it’s powerful parser engine, turn that div tag, into a Rich Text Editor or maybe just a simple dialog box.

There are arguments over at WaSP, about Dojo seemingly, making up their own HTML attributes, like dojoType. You are free to read the interesting arguments, on the WaSP site, which Alex Russell, tactfully handles well to their Web Standards Concerns. Note: The page is actually focusing on the IBM sponsorship of Dojo, but in the comments area, you can read the leaders of WaSP and Alex, respectfully, duke it out about HTML semantics.

Now, you might be thinking, that this is great and all, but the size of the .js files, and time it must takes to render and process all this JavaScript, must make the experience slow and rendered useless. But, this is not the case. Remember, this is a JavaScript Toolkit. For included in Dojo, are facilities to create custom builds of your Dojo creation. This includes; compressing, excluding everything, but what your Dojo Web Application needs and bundling it all up for the Web Browsers consumption. The build system, is based on Rhino, and contains an army of option tweaks and preferences, in how you want to build your Dojo Application. It is almost as if we are building or compiling a C and C++ application. But, JavaScript is still an interpretable language. Dojo’s build system simply tries to package it all up and make it as small and easy to download and deploy as possible.

Finally, Dojo Toolkit, contains a complete test harness, allowing you to stress test your product.

Dojo is a JavaScript Toolkit, in every sense of the word, ‘Toolkit’.

Now, the Dojo Project is a bit spoiled. It is backed by a Commercial company, Sitepen, a not for profit foundation. What more could an Open Source Project ask for? Not, to mention, one of the founders of Dojo, Alex Russell, a very well spoken dude. You can Google his name, and find loads of Pod and Screen Casts of him ranting on, presenting Dojo.

One of the ‘cooler’ things, I just found, is the Site Pen sponsored, Adobe AIR application, that includes the Dojo API, Resource Collection of Links and a point and click Dojo Build Suite. If you are on Linux, you need to install Adobe AIR, than go get this must have, Dojo Toolbox.

Eclipse has become the most complex IDE ever created. It is programmed in the Java Language, which makes it able to run on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Best of all, it is Open Source, which means it is Free of Charge to own and use! Just download it, install some plug ins, and off you go.

Today, in this article, I will show you how to install Eclipse, and a fully capable Web 2.0 IDE with remote editing through SSH. I will be using the Aptana plug ins, which currently support HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP and Ajax Toolkits. Complete with code completion, code folding and of course syntax highlighting.

It used to be Zend’s PHP Studio IDE, that was top dawg. But, Eclipse and the arrival of Aptana, has changed all that.

From the snapshot above you will see my (poorly) drawn arrows pointing to the Code outline and the 4 languages, PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS all coexisting in a single editor page. Aptana Editor is smart enough to know when you are typing either of the four languages and supply code assist and completion! I do not known of another IDE that does all four in at once. Best of all, the code assist is FAST, so there is virtually no delay in it figuring out what to code assist you with.

Code folding is great too. You can auto fold functions or just classes on page load or not. All of this is in the editors preferences. Eclipse + Aptana + RSE truly is something to applaud.

Downloading the Correct Eclipse Package

You have a few choices in how you want to download and use Aptana.

• Aptana - Standalone Studio
• Aptana - Eclipse Community Plug in
• Aptana - Eclipse Commercial Plug in

Personally, I always go for the community edition, as this is Free and Open Source, right? However, Aptana’s commercial (Pay or Pro) Edition does have some addition features that the community edit does not. But, not many. Such as the sftp support, which we can get SSH by using the Free Open Source Eclipse RSE plug in. But, there are a few Aptana Commercial options, enough to give you some reason, to pay up for an enhanced edition. Also, you will be supporting the project, which so far, is giving Zend Studio a run for their money!

Also note, that the Aptana Standalone Studio version is just a rebuild of the Eclipse version. They just made the Tabs boxy instead of smooth and rounded, along with some other things. I do not know much more than that as I always use the Community Edition.

Here is a list of the differences from the Commercial (Pro) and Community Editions.

You will need the Classic or SDK version of Eclipse. Currently, at version 3.4 and called Ganymede.

Follow the instructions from Aptana’s Web Site, as they outline everything, complete with graphics. I suggest downloading the Eclipse using wget from the command line, if you on Linux or the Mac, with the resume option. wget is very aggressive, and will try on connection hick-ups and auto resume partial downloads.

wget -c http://eclipse.mirror…

Note: The Eclipse download link on Aptana’s site is for the Macintosh. If you are on Windows or Linux you will need to get your platforms compressed Eclipse package. Just a heads up, as Aptana does not bother to mention that!

After you have followed all the steps on Aptana’s instruction list, you will have Eclipse SDK installed along with the Aptana Perspective plug in.

Goto the Aptana Perspective and you will see a start page. Aptana has nicely outlined everything they offer for a developer to download, right from this Start Page.

You want to click on the PHP download, now. Check the box for installing Aptana PHP and click next, while in Eclipse. Choose Install All and restart Eclipse.

Now, you have the most powerful Web 2.0 (PHP, JavaScript, CSS and HTML) IDE, arguable, in existence!

Remote File editing using SSH in Eclipse

The great thing about setting up remote editing is that you can develop directly on your Production machine, while at the same time saving a local copy of all your files to your local machine. No need to fiddle around with FTP or uploading files, you edit them directly.

Although it is not recommend by most people, and if you in a corporate development environment, they may not allow this. But, I personally, code, operate and own all my sites and projects, so I make all the rules. I like to apply my file edits to the live site. This note only eliminates downtime, but I get to see my changes right away. It also forces you to code cautiously.

To set up SSH remote editing, in Eclipse you need the RSE plug in. RSE stands for Remote System Explorer. You can set up RSE to use FTP, SSH or whatever protocol you want. Since, developer should be using SSH to move files across the network, that is what we will set up.

Installing the Eclipse RSE plug in from Updater

Install RSE using Eclipse Software Update Manager, by going to help, software updates, available software(tab), Add site(button) and enter: http://download.eclipse.org/dsdp/tm/updates/ and Hit OK.

Choose RSE core and the SSH options. You can choose to install it all, if you like. We will be focusing on creating an SSH connection, only, as it will be a secure one, so on one can eaves drop on our code, while loading it to our remote site.

After accepting the Licensing Agreement and restarting Eclipse, we now have the RSE perspective available to us.

Creating an SSH connection account for Remote Editing and Browsing

Choose Remote System Explorer from the Perspectives list. On the left side of Eclipse you will see section called, Remote Systems.

Right click within this section and Create a New Connection. Choose Linux. Enter in the Host or IP address of the remote site along with a label for the connection. You can click Finish to complete the action or use the Next button to view details about how it is setting up the SSH Protocol connection.

Either way, after finishing you will see your new connection in the Remote Systems tab!

From here you click on the arrows under Sftp and follow the directory paths you want to explorer and locating files you want to load into Eclipse. At the point it needs authentication, enter in your SSH username and password, as if you were logging in under an SSH account.

Once you locate a file you can right click it and choose Open with Aptana PHP. The great thing about our Aptana setup is that for the first time, all HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and PHP are all highlighted and code completion enabled for all four languages, all in a single file!

Aptana is smart enough to know when you are in PHP code verse HTML or the others! It truly is powerful code editing.

When I make a title of an Article, I try to grab your interest. When I refer to, ‘The Unknown’, I am referring to the future of Vista, Linux, Apple, Windows 7 (aka Vista 2) and even API’s like Direct X and OpenGL and The Web.

The situation has become very interesting, to say the least, regarding 3 giants, in the Computer Industry.

• Microsoft
• Linux
• Apple

All of them are fighting on all battle fronts. The battle fronts include;

• Desktops
• Servers
• Mobile Devices
• Laptops / Netbooks
• HPC - High Performance Computing
• Data centers and Cloud Computing
• Web Browsers
• Internet Standards and Protocols
• Developer Mind share
• Media Formats
• Social Networks
• Search Engines (Ad Networks)

and on and on and on…

To sanely attempt to grasp all of this, I will describe each of the 3 giant tech companies, in relation to the listed areas of computer, above. This is going to be quite a load of information draw, so grab a cup ‘o joe.

Apple

Apple has a very strong platform. It has a stable Desktop and even Servers based off a striped down Desktop. Macintosh was reinvented when Steve Jobs decided to go drastic and switch from RISC chips to Intel based CISC chips. But, more balls to the wall, was his accomplishment of taking an existing Operating system called BSD, a direct descendant of AT and T’s Unix Operating system, and slapping a GUI shell on top, calling it Darwin.

Needless to say, this was a brillant move, because now Apple is aligned with Linux, an up and coming Desktop, leveraging software already designed, stable and secure. OS X is a master piece mixture of beautiful Desktop integration, that just works, using a proven solid as a rock core, called Unix.

However, Apple does not seem to have let this get to it’s head, because Steve Job’s is clearly thinking in other areas of consumer electronics that no one else was, and apparently still is.

First came the iMac. Perfectly, in time to save Apple Computer from going bankrupt, by leveraging the Internet and delivering a Computer that was easy to use as 1 - 2 - 3, literally. Plugin the power, Plug in the Internet cable and turn the damn iMac on. How brain dead, yet brillantly simple is that? Sheer genius, which has always been a trademark of Steve Job’s thought process. Add in a splash of colors, bright as a happy go lucky gay rainbow and you have yourself a product posed to sell in the millions, which it did. You dont, see the iMac much any more, because of the G’s serious of Computers, which is just a serious player in the Video and Audio Media markets.

Get yourself a G5 running Pro tools for digital music multi track editing and Final Cut Pro for full blown professional video editing. Not to mention iLife for all out multimedia publishing on a professional level, unmatched by Microsoft or Linux. All major movie and music studios use Apple as their only choice for this type of Multimedia Publishing, hands down.

Next, Steve Jobs, comes up with the iPod, that catches the hair on fire of every teenager in America and the world. Multicolors and essentially just a cool, hip mp3 player at first, then evolving into playing small videos, downloaded from Youtube. To add firepower to the iPod, Apple opened a fully Web Based Internet Music Download store called iTunes. For .99 cents a song, you could have it, without having to buy the entire album. This little wonder from Apple again, kept Apple in the mainstream, regardless of a convicted Monopolist, which happen to be stealing every Desktop feature Apple came up with.

At this point Apple Computer, changed to just Apple. Sure, Apple had a kick ass Desktop running Unix under the hood, but it was far more successful selling iPods, iMacs, Pro Software for serious Movie and Music Industries and the best was yet to come.

Enter, the iPhone. Before, everyone was running around on a Blackberry, which was a very cool hand held PC, essentially, Internet ready. But, the iPhone, in Apple’s own style, did away with any buttons on the device, about the size of a Blackberry and made it appear HIP, by making everything touch screen enabled.

It is no surprise why Apple, years before, released their very own Web Browser, called Safari. Safari would than be installed on the up and coming iPhone. Safari, is essentially, took the same approach as OS X, there by, using KHTML — an Open Source HTML Render Engine — which they retooled and called WebKit. Apple then took WebKit and wrapped a decent GUI around it and Apple’s first Web Browser was born. Seemingly, out of the blue.

With the success of the iPhone, Apple opened the iStore to sell applications that would run on the iPhone. It is a huge success.

Apple is also working on something called Apple TV, which I do not know much about, but is sure to be just as a hit as everything else ‘i’Steve ‘i’Jobs has thought up. Not, one of his ideas has flopped. yet, each one a major risk in heavy investment, which if at anytime failed, would put the already treading deep water, that Apple was in. Yet, Apple management to execute each one, in rapid succession, with utter success to phone home about.

Simply amazing, the turn around that Apple has achieved, since the return of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1999.

Apples Achilles heel.

Steve Jobs is Apple. Apple is Steve Jobs. Therefore, if something were to happen to Steve Jobs, you can assume Apple, as a company, would be in serious trouble. All the gadgets and toys Apple has come up with was a direct result of one man’s main driving force, Steve Jobs. In fact, Steve did leave Apple for a long time, only to return in 1999 to save the company. It is rumored, that Steve Jobs knows how important he is to Apple, that many view him as a major a**hole. This is not good, if you think about it.

Linux

Linux is something you can look at in awe and sheer wonder, mostly as to, how in the hell could something like Linux even happen? Linux is truely a weird evolutionary human experiment, that seems to defy all preconceived notions of Traditional Business, Models of Software Development and managing to find itself creeping into every little nook and cranny imaginable.

Linux is really a symbol of many larger ideas. Ideas like Free Software, Open Source, Copy Left, Open Collaboration, unrestricted and almost hippy like in it’s Revolutionary way of working with Computers. It is almost impossible to know where to begin with this monster called The Linux Free and Open Source Movement. When I say movement and revolutionary, I really do mean what those words deeply mean.

Software, everywhere was closed, private and proprietary. The only way to get any market share was to have a business plan built to support it. Yet, the creation of Linux the Kernel and Operating Systems renaming themselves as a Distribution is the beginnings of me attempting to describe something unique, unexpected, yet obvious all at the same time.

A quick note about 2 men that seeded the Revolution. Keep in mind, these two men are really just symbols of a movement that actually includes millions of other people, almost cult like as followers.

Richard M. Stallman, or RMS as he liked to be called is a long haired, bearded hippy, obviously still recoving from Woodstock and all that happened in the 60’s. (Well, not exactly, but this is what I am reminded of, when I see him speak.) He is essentially, a programmer that became fed up with how Software, in particular Operating Systems were being locked down by a company called A T and T. He decided, to start his own software company, but in his own way. Instead of going down to your town hall and applying for Copy Rights and Business Licenses, RMS, decides to do everything backwards and opposite to what you would normally expect a Business man to do.

• In 1985, RMS founded the Free Software Foundation.
• Wrote the first draft, of the General Public License or GPLv1.
• Invented a new copyright methodology, called copyleft.

He then set out to gain followers of his movement be called GNU. Which stands for Gnu is Not Unix. His mission was to completely rewrite Unix from scratch, including the compiler, editors, linker, kernel and all the software programs necessary to built an Operating system. The GNU Operating system, would be free as in Free to use and modify it’s source code, as outlined by its copyleft License called the GPL.

The GPL would ensure that anyone entering into the GNU project, gave up all rights to any code contributed to the project and that it would all be software not for profit. Building Software for Software’s sake. Mind you, all of this was before Microsoft took over the world with Windows.

Richard M. Stallman, is a brilliant software programmer. He write the GCC or Gnu C Compiler, which is the standard compiler that Linux Kernel and all of it’s software is built with. He wrote his own text editing software, called Emacs, which gained a cult like following of programmers to use to write the software and libraries needed to construct the GNU Operating System.

Things where going well, with a major snag to over come. Stallman’s Software Foundation could not come up with some of the final pieces to the GNU Operating System, called a Kernel. They also needed drivers for the floppy and hard disks and networking.

Linus Torvalds in 1991 sent an email to the Minix Kernel Usenet Group that he was working on a Unix like Operating system. He already had the beginnings of a kernel and drivers for the disk drives. Linus decided to adopt the FSF’s GPL and GNU Tool chain and was able to get a shell terminal up and running called bash.

Linus uploaded his software, all as free software so that others could look at the code and he could than get user feedback on what they wanted to see added or made better. Originally, Linus called his Operating System Freax, but was later renamed by the FTP Admin, calling it Linux instead.

After the integration of Stallman’s software and GPL, Uploading of the source code with instructions on how to get it working for would be users and finally posted the Email of where people could get the code, Linux as a project, simply exploded with interest from all around the world.

Kernel developers began to submit patches while Linus Torvalds managed the process, while attending his Helsinki College Education in Computer Science. His college allowed him to work there as an assistant in the computer lab, at the same time manage his new pet project, called Linux.

By, 1993 Linux was making headlines in the Computer Industry. Just as the Internet was also taking off. The timing could not have been perfect. The pieces just seemed to all fall into place. Linux and GNU are the two foundations of what would eventually become Linux Distributions like Slackware, Debian, Red hat, Caldara, SUSE and many more.

With each new Linux Distribution, came improvements which all the other existing Distributions could implement. The reason, was because the GPL requires all derived works that originate under the GPL, inherited those same Licensing rules. The GPL is simple. Keep the Source Code Open, make it available for download by anyone and allow anyone interested the rights to modify to than submit patches to Linus for inclusion into Linux.

Linus became the maintainer of Linux and is still so today. Just as there were maintainers for the GCC compiler, and all the other drivers and programs that were actively being developed.

What set Linux apart from all previous Unix or Unix like operatinh systems before than, was that there was always some License that got in the way of further development. AT and T are classic examples of trying to soly own the rights to the code, which only caused programmers grief when trying to submit patches to improve the damn thing. Linux adopted the FSF’s GPL from the get go so, this prevented anyone from trying to take the project and dictate what to do with it.

Linus Torvalds is the perfect man for the job as Maintainer of the Linux Kernel. The way he dealt with issues both technically and socially was used as a base for how all the other GPL’ed software projects should conduct themselves. If you had good code to contribute, most likely it would get excepted into the project’s, of which there were many.

Keep in mind that thousands of Free Software Projects Licensed under this Revolutionary way of writing software among thousands of programmers, where all happening at once. In one area, a group was tackling the issue of Linux Drivers, in another a sendmail system, still in another Networking code and so on. The number of projects was enormous.

To facilitate a way to centrally host and manage all the thousands of Free Software Projects, SourceForge, Inc. (NASDAQ: LNUX), formerly VA Software Corporation, VA Linux Systems, and VA Research, is the provider of the SourceForge Development Intelligence application.

SourceForge, Inc. owns several well-known websites, including ThinkGeek and Slashdot.

VA Software is notable because of its IPO on December 9, 1999. The shares for the IPO were offered at $30, but the traders held back the opening trade until the offers hit $299. LNUX later popped up to $320, and closed their first day of trading at $239.25, a 698% return. However, this high-flying success was short-lived, and within a year the stock was selling at well below the initial offer price. As of 2005, this is still the most “successful” IPO of all time. The stock price reached an intra-day nadir of 54 cents on July 24, 2002. It then soared more than 1000% to an intra-day high of $6.38 on September 11, 2003. As of November 26, 2006, the stock closed at $4.64.

As, we get deeper and deeper into this incredible story of how a group of programmers could build their own Platform, under their own terms, in such a way as to never stiffle software innovation in favor of profit and greed. The whole movements intentions were created by geeks for geeks to be able to control their own destiny, to never repeat the A T and T disaster that happened to the original Unix.

Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are considered the inventors of Unix. Stallman and Torvalds just created a Unix like system they called GNU/Linux.

Today, the FSF — Free Software Foundation — was over run, so to speak, by a new term for the Movement they dubbed, Open Source. To Eric S. Raymond, the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Free Software had the word Free in there that can confused the Business World, wanting to leverage Free Software. Was it Free as in Free Beer? Or Free as in Freedom’s and rights to do with the code what once wished, as long as it adhered to the GPL, now at version 2. — GPLv2 —

So, a new foundation was formed in 1999, spear headed by Eric S. Raymond, called the OSI or Open Source Initiative. Or simply, Open Source Software. This created many disagreements between the FSF.org and OSI, so many call the movement Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) or Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS).

Yet another argument is whether to call the Open Source Operating System, Linux or GNU/Linux. Since, GNU represents the compiler and core server software tools created by the GNU Foundation under the FSF, Stallman insists Linux include this rather tacky add on to what can be simply called Linux.

Either way, is correct and in the end, does not matter a terrible amount. But, to RMS is does.

So, what has happened now that it is September 2008, to this Revolutionary Software Movement? Well an absolute crap load, which I have written many an article about. You are free to read those which I will list as references at the end of this article.

But, essentially, Linux now has a dominate Distribution called Ubuntu, based on Debian Distribution, that aims to be a Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X, competitor. Linux has grown up a lot ever since a man by the name of Mark Shuttleworth decided to fork Debian Linux, to allow a 6 month release and update cycle, called Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, is what I am running right now to write this article. Ubuntu is marketed as Linux for Human Beings. It has fixed a lot of interoperability problems that plagued the Free and Open Source Software model for years. The challenge is this.

How do we get all the little pieces of Open Source Software to communicate, in order to work together to create a unified, stable and user friendly Linux Desktop?

The challenge has taken 4 years to get to it’s current release, dubbed, Ubuntu Hardy Heroin version 8.04. And I have to say that it is a beautiful piece of software engineering. It truly is stable, immune from all known Internet Viruses and as point and click ably easy to use as Microsoft Windows XP or Apple OS X.

Linux, however, started as a headless server, meaning no GUI anything. This meant everything was done using shell commands. Linux has a stack called the LAMP stack, standing for, Linux Apache, MySQL and PHP, which has become the #1 solution for Web Servers, Mail, File and Print Servers. Linux has been ported to more hardware architectures there any other Operating System.

Linux runs the NYSE - New York Stock Exchange –, commands the Mars Rovers and can also be found in microwaves and refrigerators. It is also entering into the mobile space of cell phones, PDAs and an iPhone clone called Android.

Linux powers French parliment using Ubuntu as it’s Desktop of choice. Did I mention Linux was used to build 97% of all the currently top rated Super Computers, known as HPC or High Performance Computing?

The list goes on and on. Linux also includes programming languages like Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl and more, as I better stop before my head explodes.

To top all this off, the user applications number in the ten’s of thousands. Ranging from Audio, Video, Image editors, to Games Free and Commercial. Endless server utilities and a powerful shell scripting language called bash. Linux also leads the way in super innovative Desktop Effects like the 3D Cubed Desktop and compositing FX to make your Windows wobble and contort, for the art of it all.

Linux, also commands the choice of up to over 500 different Distribution choices. All of them can be reviewed and downloaded from the well organized site called DistroWatch. The sheer amount of choices is mind boggling, but there is a top 10 list to keep you sane, until you get brave enough to try the others.

Linus is so viral in the way it spreads into every area of computing that most of the software that runs on Linux will also run on Windows and the Mac. And if that were not enough, it is possible to install and execute native Windows binary programs, like Adobe Photoshop to run on Linux using the amazing Wine project.

Let’s not forget that Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Flickr, Twitter and so many more endless web sites run Linux Servers and Services like Apache and Postfix for Mail. My god can I go on?

Yes, IBM sponsored and released Eclipse, which is an IDE framework to build any type of IDE by using its revolutionary plug in system. All build using the now Open Sourced Java Virtual Machine, which allows Eclipse to run on the Mac and Windows as well. Making Eclipse, fast becoming the programmers IDE of choice for every programming language Eclipse has a plug in for, of which, just about no language is left out!

Linux and Open Sources Achilles heel.

There is none. If Linus were to get hit by a Bus, there are plenty of programmers waiting in line to take his place. Even, if multiple Linus replacements were to step forward, natural selection would find the right one. This is the nature of all Open Free Software Projects. If Open Free Software runs out of money, well, is irrelevant. Open Source is not funded by any one. There are corporations that leverage Open Source to turn a profit from, but this does not mean money or any business sustains Open Source. The community sustains Open Source and Linux. The only way for Open Free Software to die, is if the entire community loses interest. Therefore, I think the biggest threat to Open Source Software is something like Global Warming, a killer Comet or Asteroid or a major natural or unnatural disaster, such as a nuclear war, resulting in the death of most the human race. Even then, I think geeks would find some way to keep coding and their passion alive, even in a nuclear fallout.

Microsoft

Now, I save the best (or worse, in some people’s view) for last.

Microsoft, I like to think of as a Mix between Apple and Linux. On the Apple side MS just seems to take every idea, innovation, GUI tweak, OS feature and anything else they thought looked cool from Apple OS X and changed it a little to look like the MS way. Let’s just say Apple hates MS with a passion, and for good reason.

The same thing goes for MS steal (sorry, borrowing) innovations and ideas from Linux and the Open Source world, including Unix. In fact, every OS has taken something, usually asbolutely fundementally core about how a computer works. Unfortunately, MS decided to not borrow key security features of Unix, which Apple and Linux did, which has now rendered MS powerless to stop the floods of viruses coming from all directions via Email and Web Sites.

Now, that is not a very good way to start off with MS. We do have to give credit for a lot of MS innovations. But, most of those innovations were taken from Apple or Linux and extended to work a little better. This is how I view MS as a whole. MS is a company that watches the Industry, like a hawk, appearing to seem more interested in other companies ideas, at the same time finding ways to integrate them into their own MS way to end up with something that is just one step ahead of the companies they, borrowed from. This method of innovation is certainly not illegal, and is common, but MS takes the idea to a whole new level.

Here is a short list of innovations MS did contribute that really are key:

• Ajax was a MS technology first used in 1999, called HTTPXMLRequest.

Sorry, that is really all I have! Just about everything else, from GUI Windows that over lap, instead of tile, mouse and GUIs to click and manipulate a menu system, and core fundamentals how how a Kernel and shell works, are all taken from either Apple or Linux / Unix.

What MS is truely credited with was pulling through the mess that was computer hardware compatibility, or lack there of, and still making MS-DOS and Windows 1.0-3.1 able to run on these IBM-PC Compatibles. They were smart enough to build their platform on commoditized hardware, which allowed OEMs to build similar enough computers to run MS software. This in comparison to Apple strictly sticking to their own custom hardware, which locked out OEMs from partnering and distributing Apple computers. Sun Microsoft systems did the same thing with their SPARC hardware.

Microsoft exploded as the primary OS, was directly attributed to using hardware that was becoming more and more compatible and distributable on a mass scale. But, all is not rosy. Microsoft, in this process of making these OEM deals did do illegal things. like force all OEM’s to only preinstall Windows and no other OS, else MS would cut the OEM’s contract to distribute MS Operating Systems.

After MS secure the ports, so to speak, effectively blocking any other software company from using IBM-PC hardware as a platform, that was literally run by MS based on extortionist tactics. All MS has to do now, was sit back, observe what Apple and Linux / Unix were doing, and simply coping those same ideas, adding MS marketing logos and twists, to be easily digestable by the mass market.

MS had it make, and to this day, still has contracts with all the major OEM’s (Dell, HP and Acer to name a few) based on the scare tactics MS uses to ensure only Windows ever gets majority distribution percentages. Why the government has yet to step up and put an end to this illegal Monopolist way? Is anyone’s guess.

My guess, is that these contracts as under strict company confidentiality and therefore the bigger governments, like the Supreme Court, does not have juristition to obtain anytype of warrant for investigations to obtain and review MS / OEM contract agreements. But, I will stop there, before I get into too deep of water.

OK, the nasty mean stuff aside, lets begin to look at what MS is doing, on the battle fronts of the computer industry.

Internet Explorer, which Microsoft built as a direct result of Netscape. Now this is another long and nasty story, in itself. Here is what happened.

• netscape released the first commrecial Web Browser, to take 90+% marketshare.
• Netscape partnered with Sun to include Java built into Netscape.
• Netscape was building a Web Platform, independant of Mac, Linux or MS.
• MS released Internet Explorer, cloning Netscape, feature for feature.
• After a few rounds, IE version 4, MS decides to Integrate IE into Windows.
• Netscape goes bankrupt within months of IE and MS inegration.
• MS is sues by the U.S. Government for using it’s monopoly to undermine Netscape.
• MS is ordered to break the company into 2 parts, one for Applications the other for Windows.
• Bill Gates and lawyers appealed and the split was over turned, MS was saved, but fined millions.

That is the story of the first browser war, in a nut shell. But, in 1999 Mozilla, company befind Netscape, decides to do something revolutionary. They Open Source Netscape, ultimately re branding and rewriting the code base and calling it Firefox 1.0. Since, this is about MS technology, I will leave this final note. Now in 2008, Firefox 3.1 has 45+% market share and Internet Explorer 8.0 only 50+% and losing ground month after month. Also, with the entrance of Google’s Chromium Browser, IE’s days are numbered.

Zune, is Microsoft’s clone of the iPod. To make this one short and easy. Zune is a complete failure, commanding little to no market interest. The iPod is simply too hip to compete with.

Xbox gaming console. Now, I was surprised when MS decided to enter the Gaming Console Industry. After all, Sony, Nintendo and a few others had this market under control. But, the XBox inspired gamers, particularly with one of Microsoft’s biggest success stories, Halo. Halo is a first person shooter, but taking the genre to a whole new level. Halo is action packed, uses realistic physicals and actually has a deep and engaging story line. Microsoft did well with Halo, releasing the final installment of Halo 3, which was better than the previous two, In turn, Halo 2 was better than Halo 1 and the original Halo was amazing in itself, to begin with.

Halo cemented the XBox as a console to easily be valued by gamers and many were sold.

Xbox 360, on the other hand, has mixed results. Xbox 360 is Xbox v2. Yes, the 360 was awesome, in terms of more graphics and better sound and more CPU power. But, it had one major flaw, it over heated, to the point you could smell the burning solder as it melted from the heat the console generated. Xbox 360’s red ring of death was a set of circular led lights that gave status indications about the health of the console. Millions of units had to be shipped back to Microsoft for repair. MS did a great job at accommodating the customers, but it cost MS all the revenue’s the Xbox generated, in order to fix all the recalled over heated 360’s.

The reason this happened, was because MS decided to built the entire Xbox, from the hardware chassis, motherboard, power supply and controllers and games, at Microsoft’s campus. MS is a software company, not an experienced hardware company, and they had to learn this the hard way. As of now, you can attach an external fan to the 360, along with the repairs MS did, and his fixed the over heating problem. But, like I said, at a huge cost to MS. Not, to mention the unit is very loud and easily generates enough heat to warm a master bedroom, on it’s own.

Mobile Windows CE, has been around for a long time. But, it has never really taken off, not because of MS, but because of how fragmented the cell phone industry is. I don’t know many details about Windows Mobile CE, so you will have to Google this on your own. But, I do know, the iPhone, Blackberries and up and coming Google Android are clearly winning the battle on the mobile front.

Now I want to get into MS Servers. This battle front can be divided into two parts. One which is the Small Business Server and the other are Server’s used by Corporations to centrally manage ten’s of thousands of Workstations, within a companies Corporate Intranet.

Small Business Server from Microsoft for use on the Internet, was created to compete with Linux’s overwhelming encroachment of Servers built for Web, Mail, File and Database facilities. However, SBS is reported to be very limited in terms of customization, scalability and price point. Linux has what is known as their LAMP stack, which is highly stable, configurable to do Web, Mail, File, Print and Database Serving on the Internet. And Linux has no License fee, unlimited user seats and no restrictions on how many Linux LAMP servers you want to have on your Network. MS SBS on the other hand is restrictive in every way possible. This is because MS wants to sell their full blown Windows Server 2003 / 2008 Servers, costing into the ten’s of thousands of dollars.

Windows Server 2000-2008 are designed as the best of what MS has to offer, to compete with Linux LAMP and friends server lines. Windows 2008, boasts a few interesting changes. MS traditioanlly, tried to keep out of the command line as much as possible, instead opting to use GUI tools to do all the server configurations. This is highly inefficent, because you have to have a good way to compress the graphics to be responsive enough for remote adminitration. GUI controls add a lot of over head, in terms of, CPU, RAM and Disk usage.

The headless version of Windows 2008, in which everything is configured via the command line, just like Linux has always done. They did this due to customer demands. It is ironic that MS do a backward two step, back into the command line and away from the GUI. Windows 2008 also boasts a powerful shell called PowerShell.

PowerShell is essentially .NET all wrapped up and accessible via PowerShell. It has been reviewed as being very powerful. However, the move to a headless server, only solidifies the fact that Linux / Unix had it right all along. So, if I am now going to be working in the Command line shell anyways, companies might as well choice Linux servers, which has no limited on anything. Linux also boasts more tools and options and Server applications.

Databases available to a Linux Server. Postgre, MySQL, SQLite, Berkeley Database, LDAP and more. Microsoft, boasts MS SQL 2000-2008, which is not nearly as configurable, scalable and faster as the Linux choices.

Mail Servers, that Linux offers include; Sendmail, Postfix, Exim, Qmail and many more. The choice of IMAP and POP mail management software are numerous. What MS has going for it’s Server is MS Exchange, which is a full blown Enterprise level application using Active Directory to centrally manage user accounts, their mail and policies for each user.

Alternative Linux options that try to integrate with MS Exchange Server, are still not 100% compatible. MS Exchange and Active Directory is a very strong selling point. Also, 90% of Corporations, already have MS Exchange installed, which means MS Exchange is deeply entrenched in that aspect of Corporate Business. Migrating away means downtime, cost to ensure the migration goes smoothly and retraining staff to use the Linux Alternative. I believe, in the long run, it will be worth it.

Windows Desktop and Workstations are Microsoft’s number one cash cow. With 90+% market share in both the corporate and home markets, Microsoft definitely has a massive advantage. Owning the platform, also means being able to dictate what can run on that Platform and dictate which communication Protocols and API’s Independent Software Vendors to use, like messaging between Exchange and Domain Controllers. file system network sharing, printer sharing and authentication and encryption protocols like IPsec.

Proprietary protocols, usually overly complex and in binary format, makes it very hard to reverse engineer, and enables MS Windows Platform to easily lock out competitors. An example of Protocol Lock out/in, is if another company wants to offer an alternative to MS Exchange Server, Microsoft can simply prohibit the use of Exchange’s Proprietary Protocol and if they do decide to make an agreement, would enable MS complete control over Licensing fees or any other fine print. In many cases, MS makes the fee is so huge, that the company trying to arrange an agreement simply backs out and made a laughing stock.

In recent news, the European Commission has ordered Microsoft to share the specifications of key MS proprietary protocols, but only a very small group is allowed to review. This was ordered, as a result, of many anti-trust law suit convictions. In the past MS was punished by having to pay Millions or even Billions in fines, which MS simply considered pocket change.

Search Engines called Live Search is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Google, Yahoo, Ask and all other Search Engines. A Search Engine is very expensive to set up and maintain. They require enourmous data centers comprising of thousands of servers, raid arrays and network switches. All this computer power is required to do the following;

• Visit as many Web Sites as possible.
• Index all Web site data and store it in a Database.
• Have some kind of page rank system to make search results relavant as possible.
• Create a way to track user behavior using browser cookies.

A search engine is a bit deceptive, in that, in order to support the enormous data centers required to crawl the Internet, store the Peta bytes or more of data and servers with massive processing power to process the collected data, sort it all and make presentable for human consumption. Finally, if the Search Engine is popular, it will need to query the Indexed Search data and serve it up using Web servers.

In order to pay the bills for all this hardware and rack space + bandwidth required to run a successful Search engine needs to come from somewhere. The way Google does it, is by providing a responsive and effective Ad Network, called Ad Sense and Ad Words. Microsoft Live follows this same Business model as well as Yahoo! Search.

Let’s just say that Microsoft’s Search Engine market share is dismally small compared to Google and Yahoo!. Yet, Microsoft can easily afford to maintain the data centers necessary to make it all run. Microsoft, got into the Search Game too late in the game.

Social Networks, Windows Live Spaces (formerly known as MSN Spaces). Microsoft does not appear in any top 10 Social Network Lists. While other Top 100 Social Network Sites, rank MS Live Spaces as number 3. So, you may need to do some specific reason on this yourself.

Social Networks are much like Search Engines, in that they are created as a place to than make money by Advertising to the users of the Social Network. Unlike Search Engines, a Social Network requires much much less data center server power.

Media Codecs that are under MS patent control include; WMV3, WMVA and WVC1. The good news, is that there are all alternatives to these formats which are Open Source.

Microsoft developers are very well equipped. Since MS is a Closed Source Platform, MS API’s are very important, and MS has done an excellent job at providing them, as well as, Documenting them. It is a well known fact, that if not for Microsoft’s extensive support promotion of it’s API’s would render MS a useless Platform. Without an API, it would be impossible to create software on a Closed Source Platform. But, this also includes an Open Source Platform like Linux.

A complete list of Active and depreciate MS APIs.

.NET Framework. Microsoft, may not have invented the idea of a cross platform language. Java is famous for that. But, that does not stop MS from cloning the idea and calling it something different. Microsoft’s .NET Framework really is cool. It is a framework, in that, it allows any .NET language or API the ability to allow the Programmer to easily integrate code from one type of .NET language and including it. In other words, it is possible to base your Application on C#, than easily link to a VB Library to access those function available in the VB library. This includes any .NET language, of which there are many.

The idea of a cross platform language is not new. Sun Microsystems, invented Java and it’s Virtual Runtime Machine to allow the programmer to write a Java program on Windows that will also execute on a Mac or Linux, with no code modifications required. MS took this concept a step further by making the runtime, Cross Language as well as cross platform.

Microsoft’s Achilles Heel.

Money and reputation. Microsoft needs capitol and loads of it. MS is being sued left and right. MS is in court, currently fighting multiple court battles. And the law suits do not appear to be slowing down, but instead, picking up steam. If you can believe that. MS has more than 70,000+ employees to feed and a massive campus to sustain. Clearly, money is Microsoft’s, bottom line. Reputation is just as important and tied directly with profits. Vista, for instance, was deemed a failure. People are losing faith in MS and it’s products. As a result, alternative methods of computing are being sought after, not only by other businesses, but also by entire governments. Microsoft, I would say has a lot at stake, therefore, a lot to loss. But, unlike Apple, Bill Gates is not a major influence anymore. MS has a massive talent pool of employees it can tap into. MS is also very deverse and able to adapt and play hardball if they have to. Microsoft may have seen it’s glory years and will decrease in size, unless they figure out a way to fix the Vista OS mess. But, MS has seemingly unbreakable sales teams will to do anything to keep Microsoft the #1 software company in the world, for decades to come.