According to an article that I recently read, the Internet could one day be broken down into separate networks that are isolated and selectively dispersed around the world. This means that the global nature of the Web, as well as the wealth of information, would cease to exist. Moreover, this heralds that final goodbye to a state where little or no censorship barriers can prevail. This changes one’s perspective entirely.

This worrisome move is entirely different from the issue of Net neutrality, which in itself separates the Web into multiple tiers. It is also reminiscent of rumours about ‘Googlenet’, where one submits a site to a dark privatised Web that gets indexed and closely monitored (obviating the need to crawl remote servers and use pings for distant notification).

In the long term, whether this is totally disastrous or not remains to be seen. Consider, for instance, the peculiar extension of resources that are made publicly available. Let’s look a look at the way that the Web has evolved in recent years. Only a tiny crosssection of the ‘visible’ Web involves content spammers (or scrapers), where visibility is grossly defined by search engines (internal sites and intranets aside). However, in reality, the content that exists on the Web–that which is deliverable and which is spam–can actually be a majority (spammers spawn colossal colonies of junk and dummy content). This leads to (or involves) blogalanches, ‘poisoning’ of the index/cache, and it’s subverting search results in the process. All this leads to chaos as search engines diverge from the correct search results and deliver something less meaningful. In the process of struggling for good spots (or visibility) in search engines, spam rises and leads to attacks of various sort. Temptation leads to vandalism, which leads to further maintenance. The Web no longer seems like an appealing place to be. But can division of the Web help? I very much doubt it. It’s all about authorities controlling information. Brainwash is the means for making others think alike, comply, and even be submissive.

OMPUTER skills and competence with them is a subjective thing. It very much depends on the area of expertise which is judged, as well as the way it is judged (e.g. average level of skill versus number of gurus). Regardless, I have found the following study rather interesting.

In some areas, such as security and Windows desktop administration, the United States remained dominant, the study showed; in others, such as LAN/WAN communications, we’re facing stiff competition from newcomers Romania and Ukraine. India continued to dominate database development and most programming-language categories — except C#. Latin American countries didn’t crack the top 10 but showed strong growth in new certifications, with Cuba up 125 percent, Chile up 163 percent, and Mexico up 73 percent…

In a survey conducted last year, Holland was shown to be the most tech-savvy country in the world. Whether that holds under the conditions imposed above, who knows…?

HE KDE project celebrated its 10^th anniversary last night. The wonderful work done by its contributers and volunteers has greatly enriched my life in the past few years, so I would really like to thank them.

Productivity-wise, KDE appears to be best bar none. As one example of its cutting-edge features, KDE offers tabbed shells and file managers. It has incorporated this functionality for several years. These increase productivity and should become popular for the same reason that Midnight Commander became popular many years ago (and continues to be used by a visible minority of users).

At times I was pondering a move from SUSE to the more brittle Kubuntu. SUSE is becoming more GNOME-inclined while package management over at the Canonical/Ubuntu camp seems tempting. In any event, my experience with GNOME was a satisfactory one, but long-time dependence on advanced KDE features could not be ignored. KDE has that special touch and it is trivial to use once familiarity is gained.

There has been a great deal of talk about browser statistics recently. Market share has become a measure of diversity, which ensures that Web developers tailor their site according to standards rather than for one particular application. Security remains at the heart of this debate, but it’s clear that the complexity of this problem is high.

All Web browsers are insecure to some degree, because they all must work with flawed code in the operating systems. There are some indications of progress, such as frequent patches from Microsoft and Mozilla to close security holes. Still, these actions may be too little too late if a zero-day exploit is the attack weapon.

It all comes down to patching speed, then number of flaws, as well as their severity (e.g. privilege escalation can be catastrophic).

Related article from the same day (and same Web site):

    Will Security Worries Dull Ajax’s Cutting Edge?

CNET presented the following perspective just 5 years ago.

It’s not hard to understand why open-source software, such as the Linux operating system and the Apache HTTP server, is growing in popularity among corporate IT departments. When source code is open, any developer is free to read, redistribute and modify it. This leads to faster bug fixes, improved software and lower development costs.

This appears to be gradually becoming a reality. The ideas and principles are more openly accepted as valid.

VER the weekend I expored the possiblity of adding an X-header to my outgoing messages. This particular one, known as X-Face, is a 48×48 pixel binary representation of one’s face. Here is mine:

.dYWu:H1\3ib`=T*Zoi9{>C].hHmdJ#z~":dJ5pFYAC`jJ6I~pf</F~#Sp(\[J6OgtEBO"[
@'u^%Ia#bVQhL%Cw#^nUFCIAEjS=M(B6B'>OUrp)Y"ZY}Z\Y~`g#I,JSw?7"3&Fctfk^)\]8{j[7)M
Nj%-#0a}S+*8oFlP^l,>&Y^1yhEYGz7>sv*'OuW}a9Oq}:<Ra*`;',OG@O=wj0mp'{Q|hbDm&yS-#r
m;DM)4S$!IX22Ou)-Y^lh[pu6VX8Dh0dG&Fv[54aJZeX*LAV]2w9wSR15

To view this short sequence as an actual image, use this Web-based tool. You may also create your own X-Face, which can be bound to your E-mail as a succinct header. I wonder if a fetch key can be created for X-Faces in the same way that PGP keys can be replaced by a shorter identifier. I suppose a URL can be specified in the header instead.

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

OR the past few years I have been advocating Open Source technologies, which I confidently argue will pummel proprietary equivalents. Packages mature in a layered fashion (thanks, GPL!), which makes them too hard to beat over time. They strengthen at a high pace owing to parallel development while the costs of code are minimal or non-existent. Their complexity is high and level of functionality breathtaking.

Take PHP-Nuke for example. Sure, I have this (software) package installed in a couple of places, but it doesn’t make me a prick (pardon the subtle pun). It makes me efficient and it makes any projects economically viable. So, why is it that such projects mature so nicely? I guess one can always harness some PHP skills by looking at that transparent (non-binary) code and rely on ‘heredity’ from prior project. When a project contains some of people’s ‘DNA ‘footprint’, there is individuality, creativity and self-expression involved. This leads to greater dedication, a sense of responsibility, and ownership. And money can by all means be made in this process of self-expressions. Take for instance the Linux patchmaster/janitor, Andrew Morton, who left to join Google while working on the kernel, still.

Open Source software is bound to be the sole winner. Give Open Source a few more years and find out for yourself. Check it out, mate. Checkmate!