Caught In |
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by Al Massey |
Fresh from the Browser front. That smell is either napalm or Java; in the Navy it was hard to distinguish between the two. This battle between Netscape and Microsoft is proving to be better than anything Six Flags could dream up.
On the one hand we have the Netscapians busily strutting their armor and plug-in artillery, hell-bent on ruling the Web as we know it, and on the other hand, there's the Microsoftians saying "not to worry, we've got this Web thingy all figured out and it belongs to us." The first shot in this battle was fired ten or twelve WebCades ago (WebCade = three months in human time) when the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) decided that the language of the Web, HTML, needed to meet certain standards. After all, we couldn't have folks going out and doing just anything on the Web now, could we?
Trouble began when someone would propose a new standard, such as "wouldn't it be great if we added sound," and submitted it to the W3C who would then "study" it for a few months, trying to decide what to do with it. Netscape came along and became bored with all this study so they developed proprietary extensions to enable Web authors to add multimedia and interactivity to their pages. GADZOOKS, these extensions took off like the proverbial spotted ape and before you could say "Bob" these Netscape extensions became the defacto standard. Not content to let matters rest there, the Netscapians teamed up with Sun Microsystems to brush the dust off Sun's object-oriented, platform-independent language called Java that would take interactivity to new heights. Look beneath the surface here and you will find that "platform-independent" originally meant your microwave would talk to your VCR and together they could decide when to pop the corn so it would be ready in time for the next commercial.
The boys and girls in Mountain View (Netscape's home) went on a rampage and every time they saw something neato like RealAudio or CUSEEME they just got together with the developer and developed a "plug-in," so that you could use it from within Netscape without so much as burping.
Enter the gentle giant from Redmond. The Microsoftians, still giddy from developing Windows 95, discovered the Web and instead of developing extensions and plug-ins decided to gobble up everything in their path, hook it to the Windows 95 platform and make it part of the operating system.
There you have it, Websurfers, you can get plugged with Netscape, or hooked with Microsoft. Computer journalists everywhere are saying the real winners in this war are the consumers but I am not so sure about that. Whether you get "plugged," or "hooked," I'm afraid what you might end up getting is "screwed."
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Well, a federal tri-judge panel in Philly just put the kibosh on that silly Communications Decency Act, saying it just wouldn't pass the smell test. Think I will celebrate by sending Sen. Exon the complete works of Henry Miller. I don't know about you, but I surely am glad there are folks out there working hard so I don't see the wrong thing in print. Now if they could just cut down on all those obscene images from Washington, DC I see on the evening news.
"There are so many ways of being a fool that it's hard to avoid them all."
True genius always shows through. Ziff Davis recently poised the question "who will win the browser wars: Microsoft or Netscape?" on the ZD Net Web Site. Seems that for the first day or two the votes were about even, but by the third afternoon Netscape ZOOMED to the lead. They went ahead by about a GAZILLION points until the ZD Websters noticed that three IP addresses belonging to Netscape had accounted for over 950 votes. "I haven't seen such blatant ballot stuffing since Mayor Daley's reign (Chicago)," quipped a ward heeler, just back from the Windy City for COMDEX. "Those Netscape scapegraces deserve a big box of cookies for their efforts."
"Hyperpolysyllabicomania is a fondness for big words."
Uh-oh, the cat's out of the bag. It's been discovered that there are some sixty or seventy million computerless homes in this country so Sun Microsystems, Oracle Corp., Microsoft, Compaq and about two dozen others are scurrying around like Stanley Kubrick on speed (who can forget HAL in 2001 Space Odyssey - HAL's my all-time favorite movie star) with the single-minded purpose of hot-wiring the great unwashed to this thing called the World Wide Web. From all accounts it's been decided that the quickest and cheapest way to accomplish this task is to take the Nintendo approach and develop a 'Net Device that sits between your TV set and the Internet and sells for under $500. Needless to say the hype surrounding this faux computer is making me ga-ga with anticipation. We are now being flummoxed with the words "thin Net Devices," and "paradigm shifts," in describing this technology. Lord, I love this industry. When the big cheese of the moment is at a loss of "real" words to describe something, he can always find new ones. Let me see if I get this straight: a little box sits on top of your monitor and lets you choose which TV program to watch or helps you select a movie or sports event while letting you get e-mail and browse the WWW. It's surely a wonderment. Everybody will want one, millions will buy one, kids will love 'em, nobody will be able to use 'em, and then everybody will have to buy a real computer. The rains will come, God will smile and Bill Gates will burp.
"Every time you learn something new it pushes something old out of your brain." Homer Simpson
A couple of Seattle-based moguls, Tim Choate and John Ballantine, are teaming up to create Online Interactive, Inc. to deliver software on-line. The company handles software from Microsoft Corp., as well as programs and applets from a host of small software companies. And it is finding success with small programs, such as add-ons to Adobe PhotoShop or Microsoft Excel, screensavers and productivity enhancers - items that aren't distributed through traditional retail channels because they don't carry a high enough price tag to warrant the shelf space.
When questioned about the viability of this venture Ballantine and Choate readily acknowledge that the market for downloading software electronically as a primary method of purchase is four to five years away; they point to Netscape Communications as an example of where the industry is headed.
Al Massey is a HAL-PC member.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.
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