April 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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In 2011, you may not “see” Linux, but it’s everywhere. Do you use Google, Facebook or Twitter? If so, you’re using Linux. That Android phone in your pocket? Linux. DVRs? Your network attached storage (NAS) device? Your stock-exchange? Linux, Linux, Linux.
And, to think it all started with an e-mail from a smart graduate student, Linus Torvalds, to the comp.os.minix Usenet newsgroup:
April 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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I’ve been using the Internet since the late 1970s. So I already knew it well in 1991, when ZDNet was getting its start on CompuServe and it looked nothing like the Internet you know, love, and use every day.
Many of you know that the Web will turn 20 this year. I certainly do since, back in the day, I was the first person to write about this new thing called the WEB that would change everything about the Internet.
Of course, I had no clue about how much it would change everything. Indeed, I thought at the time that Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), one of the first public Internet search services would be more important than the Web itself. Looking back, I see I was already thinking about how important search would be to the Internet. I may have been more on to something. Today, we talk about “Googling” for everything from the latest news from Libya to our date tonight.
The pre-Web Internet was an almost entirely text-based world. There were ASCII-based end-user programs such as gopher, which let you use a menu to search through organized collections of files. You might think of this as a predecessor to Yahoo!, and you wouldn’t be far wrong.
Much more typical though were command line driven programs such as Archie, which we used to try to find particular files. If this makes the pre-Web sound like a place that was only welcoming to techies in those days, you’re right, it was.
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April 18, 2011
by sjvn01
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It was 1991, and only academics, researchers, and the military were on the Internet. For most people, going online meant connecting with a v.32 modem, at the blazing speed of 9,600-BPS (bits per second) to a Bulletin Board System (BBS) or an online service. The most popular of these services was CompuServe and so it was that Ziff Davis, them the publishing company parent of ZDNet, decided to start its own mini-online service, ZiffNet, on CompuServe, and I was there.
Under the CompuServe/ZiffNet ID, 72441,464 and then, as now, one of ZDNet’s most prolific writers, I was writing on the online discussion forums, helping to manage them as a “sysop,” and doing some trouble-shooting. You, if you’ve come to the online world since the Web arose a few years later, would barely recognize 1991’s ZiffNet.
For starters, everything was text-based. Oh, someone might post a message with ASCII-art from time to time, but that was it. That isn’t to say though that you could read stories on CompuServe/ZiffNet. At first, you couldn’t. All you could do is “talk” with each other and Ziff writers and editors on the various publication forums, such as Computer Shopper, PC Week (later eWEEK), and PC Magazine. These publications live on but no longer have any direct connection with ZDNet.
We also boasted an online forum for executives, Executives Online, or in CompuServe terms: ZNT: EXEC. There, Esther Schindler, noted writer, editor and sysop supreme, would host technology industry movers and shakers as they would ‘talk’ to forum members.
April 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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Well, that was fast. The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) has just released the last block of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addresses in its available pool. We knew this was coming when the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA http://www.iana.org/) announced in February that the last of the world’s remaining IPv4 blocks had been assigned to the Regional Internet Registries (RIR). What we didn’t know was that APNIC would run out quickly. I, and most other people, thought that its supply of IPv4 addresses would last until at least early summer. We were wrong.
In a statement, ASPNIC announced that, “This event is a key turning point in IPv4 exhaustion for the Asia Pacific, as the remaining IPv4 space will be ‘rationed’ to network operators to be used as essential connectivity with next-generation IPv6 addresses (PDF Link). All new and existing APNIC Members who meet the current allocation criteria will be entitled to a maximum delegation of a /22 (1,024 addresses) of IPv4 space. ”
So what happened? APNIC Director General Paul Wilson explained the Asia Pacific region is the first to reach the point of being unable to meet IPv4 demand. This is due to the unprecedented fixed and mobile network growth the region is experiencing.
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April 14, 2011
by sjvn01
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SCO, the anti-Linux lawsuit monster is dead. There are still twitches left in the corpse in the bankruptcy court morgue, but when even Groklaw retires from the field, you know SCO’s as dead as a doornail. But, SCO’s Unix operating systems, OpenServer and UnixWare, will live on under the aegis of a new company, UnXis.
This has some people, including Pamela Jones, editor and founder of Groklaw worried that UnXis might follow in SCO’s lawsuit crazy tracks. “Targeting end users? Uh oh. That has a creepy sound, considering the heritage of SCO, if you know what I mean.”
I didn’t think anyone with a lick of sense would try to re-tread SCO’s hopeless lawsuits, but then I’d thought from the very start that SCO taking on IBM, et. al. in the courts was a suicidal move. So, I asked the UnXis’ CEO, Richard A. Bolandz, what his plans were.
Bolandz replied, “UnXis has no intention to pursue any litigation related to the SCO Group assets acquired by the company. We are all about world leadership in technology not litigation.
April 13, 2011
by sjvn01
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The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, started the celebration of Linux’s 20th anniversary at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, but when is Linux’s real birthday? Is it August 25th, when Linus announced the project? October 5th 1991, when 0.02, the first public release was made? I decided to go straight to the source and asked Linux’s creator, Linus Torvalds.
SJVN: “What’s Linux real birthday?” You’re the proud papa, when do you think it was? When you sent out the newsgroup post to the Minix newsgroup? When you sent out the 0.01 release to a few friends?
LT: I think both of them are valid birthdays.