Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Robert Weeks <robert AT designhammer.com>]

Hi Paula!

Good to hear from you. I hope all is well with you, Robert and the new
little programmer ;-)

Thanks for taking the time to respond, I was wondering if you had been
working with this.

Its Hailstorm and the ultimate plans for the future that worry me the most.
I'm glad you find cause for concern there also.

On another list I subscribe to there has been a discussion of the MS MSN /
hotmail / Passport users agreement that was sparked by this story:

All your data (and biz plans) are belong to Microsoft:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/18002.html

Here's an excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole story:

================
"By posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any
feedback or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication
with or through the Passport Web Site ... you are granting Microsoft and its
affiliated companies permission to:

1. Use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly
perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from,
transfer, or sell any such communication.

2. Sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the
foregoing rights granted with respect to the communication.

3. Publish your name in connection with any such communication."
================

Yikkees!! It doesn't seem to me like *that* has any potential for good.

If you told me a few years ago that my browser of choice would be IE and I'd
be using Entourage for email, I would have thought that was ridiculous. But
on my Mac that's what I use these days. The really scary thing about MS is
that a lot of what they have envisioned for the future in the past few years
has come true. They have the money to burn to get their way. IE and
Entourage are now great apps, a few years ago IE was laughable at best, but
they threw money and resources at the problem until they won.

I don't want to be one of those old crotchety "back in my day we walked 10
miles to school guys" but the thing that really excited me about the web
when I first became interested in it was that it was a big level playing
field. It seemed very democratic and open and free. Now as MS and AOLTW rush
for control of our web / tv / cell phone / desktop / refrigerator / calendar
/ wallet devices, it seems like not such an exciting place, but a place
where we need to be aware of what is going on with these huge powers who
would like to control as many aspects of our lives as they can.

The XML SOAP thing sounds like a great idea, but the way MS has envisioned
things I wonder what the cost will be to us, the workers and end users of
the web.

(ok. Off my SOAPbox)

It really is great to hear from you again, I'm glad you're happy with the
site, we'll have to get together again one of these days. If MS gets their
way I may need to talk to you about getting my MCSE ;-)

Take care,

Robert Weeks

Partner - Technology
DesignHammer Media Group, LLC
919-403-1519 - phone
919-539-2204 - mobile
http://www.designhammer.com

On 4/11/01 10:34 AM, "Paula Paul" <Paula AT PaulSoftware.com> wrote:

> Hi Robert!
> 
> We still get compliments on our web site, by the way (Robert designed
> our site).
> 
> My current project has had me developing in C# with the Microsoft .NET
> framework since January.  We're in a .NET development 'early adopter'
> program with Microsoft and have been pretty much able to separate what's
> real from the long off vision of the future....
> 
>> 
>> I read this article last night and being mainly a Mac and
>> Linux user found
>> it pretty disturbing. I've been hearing about Microsoft's
>> .Net strategy for
>> a while now and didn't bother before to look into exactly
>> what it is they
>> were aiming to do.
>> 
>> I'm curious what others think of this:
>> 
>> http://www.ecompanynow.com/articles/mag/0,1640,11261,00.html
>> 
>> 
> 
> The term ".NET" is used to mean a lot of different things these days - I
> think sometimes that Microsoft uses it to put 'FUD' (Fear, Uncertainty
> and Doubt) into the marketplace, so people who are about to standardize
> on EJB or other Java based frameworks hold off until they can understand
> if Microsoft has something better to offer in .NET.  Standard marketing
> warfare...
> 
> But, there is actually a great deal of .NET that is real - I think it is
> a great framework for building applications that can be invoked and used
> via the Internet.  Technically, I'm using two pieces of the whole .NET
> puzzle:
> - 'Microsoft .NET Framework' libraries (think Java class libraries)
> - 'Microsoft Visual Studio .NET' (this is not needed to develop apps
> though - any code/text editor will do)
> 
> There is another, related initiative called 'Hailstorm' that is what
> scares most people.  I'm attaching a summary that we wrote up a couple
> of weeks ago after attending a meeting about Hailstorm...
> 
> I give some credit to Microsoft for having the balls to take on this
> initiative - they have the size and the financial backing (and the
> existing user base in MSN) to go after it, but it is a gamble.  If they
> are successful, it *will* be a little scary.
> 
>> In the last month or so I've had the opportunity to work on a
>> project hosted
>> on a Win2000 box and I've got to admit its been really
>> stable. Is Microsoft
>> on to something here?
> 
> I have to say I've really enjoyed programming with the .NET framework -
> it is very tightly integrated with XML and SOAP, so I sit here in sunny
> North Carolina and develop class libraries, and expose my methods
> through both Microsoft COM *and* SOAP interfaces.
> 
> I then send an instant message to someone and tell them they can start
> using my methods at some IP address, deployed on my machine here in NC.
> The programmers who consume my methods are my coworkers in Boston and
> Ann Arbor Michigan.  Some of them write clients in Java and use the
> Apache SOAP toolkit to call my methods using SOAP over HTTP.
> 
> It's truly cool to write a program and then tell somebody in Boston to
> try calling method 'x' and see if they like the results.  We don't care
> what language is used or that I work on a Windows 2000 server and they
> work in Java (on whatever platform).
> 
> We've also been pretty close to what's going on with various SOAP
> implementations, and the .NET framework does make it pretty easy and
> clean to develop applications that can be called through SOAP over HTTP
> (the Apache SOAP toolkit has a couple of shortcomings in document style
> SOAP messaging that we've worked around).
> 
> I've been pretty happy working on Win2000 (it's light years ahead of NT
> in reliability), and I guess I do think Microsoft is on to something
> with the .NET framework libraries (you don't need to use Visual Studio
> .NET as your development environment if you don't want to - just your
> favorite code editor and make files).
> 
> As for Hailstorm and beyond (which will be based on .NET framework
> technology... who knows... but I'm going to keep an eye on it for
> sure...
> 
> ========================================================================
> === 
> So what is Hailstorm?
> 
> At the very center is the idea of "identity": you establish your
> identity on 
> the Internet through the MS identity service, which is Passport. They
> are 
> leveraging their 160M user base (growing at 10M/month) to become the
> central 
> identity server on the Internet. While establishing identity though
> Passport is rather simple today, this may change. Bob Muglia pointed out
> 
> that MS may work with government agencies in the future to guarantee a
> higher confidence of establishing identity. Also, MS made it clear that
> they 
> are going to be the only identity providers of Passport.
> 
> Hanging off Passport are a set of core services that leverage identity:
> * myWallet (of course--it's still alive!),
> * myCalendar
> * myInbox
> * myContacts
> * myLocations
> * myDocuments
> etc.
> 
> It is important to note that MS intends not just to define the SOAP
> based 
> XML protocols of these services, but that MS fully intends to
> (exclusively) 
> *host* these services as well. I.e MS will operate data centers in the
> sky 
> world wide. What does this mean? Everybody's calendar will be hosted by

> MS, 
> everybody's documents will be hosted by MS (quote: "we expect to be
> hosting 
> 1PB (!) data in 2 years"). myLocation will be fed by real time cell
> phone 
> data, allowing MS to know where you are at all times. etc etc.
> 
> 3rd party vendors will be able to hook into this framework and develop
> their 
> own services, which will be federated with the core MS services (say
> "myMovies"). But again: it is MS's intent to host (and control) the core
> 
> services on a global scale, including the identity service, which is the
> 
> prerequisite of all of this. You will need to license your service with
> MS. 
> Quote: "we will be closely watching 3rd party implementations"
> (presumably 
> to ensure that they don't bring the whole system down, among other more
> obvious reasons). Also: "we want close cooperation and uniformity".
> 
> As I said, the underlying protocol is SOAP, extended with additional
> headers 
> to ensure identity, authentication (Kerberos based), routing,
> intermediary 
> support, etc.
> 
> They have a notification service, tightly integrated with MS Messenger.
> In 
> other words: Push is back big time.
> 
> MS plans to operate this as a *business*. There will be subscription
> fees 
> both for individual users and service providers.
> 
> Some partners presented early offerings, including MyFamily.com, USPS,
> eBay, 
> Verizon, Expedia, Ariba, and Groove. While most demos were in the B2C
> sphere, MS made it clear that this is *not* a B2C only platform--they
> very 
> much see it as B2B as well (Identity can also be a group of people, an
> organization, an abstract entity, etc).
> 
> Availability: Beta in Q4; roll out of services starting FY2002.
> 
> Note that Hailstorm will integrate with Active Directory, but not in V1.
> 
> This seems a major mistake to me--maybe MS itself is not yet fully aware
> of 
> what they are really doing here, and I actually expect that AD
> integration 
> (i.e. migration of AD to Passport) will come sooner than they think.
> Note, 
> and that's interesting for application writers, there are various
> services 
> (such as myApplicationSettings, and myServices) that will register
> application data and application directories with the MS data centers in
> the 
> sky.