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Table of Contents
Curious technology -- Help Read, AltaVista Discovery, FaceWorks
New electronic texts -- from the Gutenberg Project (added 8/6/98)
Modular distributed Web sites -- a kludge for personal and small business Web sites that offers richness and variet at no cost (added 8/28/98)
Book Review -- Welcome to the revolution (Cybercorp by James Martin) (addred 8/29/98)
Do-it-yourself Web hosting -- some say it can't be done; others are doing it already (added 8/6/98)
Free software available at this site converts text to voice, for English and Hawaiian (it's provided by the Hawaii Education Literacy Project). While other text-to-voice converters are designed for the blind, this one seems designed to help people learn to read. I tried it for that purpose with my son, Tim, who just finished the second grade. I thought that having classic books downloaded from Gutenberg read to him by the computer, with the text highlighted along the way, might help him handling on his own far more difficult texts than he would otherwise have tried. I started with Treasure Island, since he is a fan of the movie The Muppets Treasure Island. And I also gave him a copy of the actual paper book, with illustrations. After a few moments of fascination with the technology, he soon shifted to the paper book, which he is now happily reading on his own, with no fancy aids.
Not surprisingly, the voice is monotonous and mechanical sounding. That's one very important reason why this probably won't be a big hit for teaching reading to kids -- they would soon tire of it. You also would not want to use this to tape record books for playback while you are driving -- you would fall asleep fast. Then again, this might be a great cure for insomnia :-) And it would probably be useful for someone trying to learn English as a second language -- if that person were extremely motivated. (I'd love to have this for other languages, like Spanish and Chinese.)
The best use I've found for it in its present form is for exercise. I need to lose weight, and pounding away at the exercise equipment is a bore; and there are lots of good old classic books that I have in electronic text form and that I'd love to read. So I set up my laptop next to my exercise equipment, bring up a book in HELP Read, and start chugging away.
At the AltaVista home page, click on "downloads" to get a free copy of AltaVista Discovery. This is the latest and greatest version of what used to be named the "Personal Extension." It provides a search bar that can (if you wish) be visible and accessible in whatever application you are using (such as Word), making it very easy to find your own files, or to quickly grab a nugget of information from anywhere on the Internet, and then to continue with you are doing.
Download the studio and demos and play around with talking heads. In the demos, Lincoln delivers some of the Gettysburg Address, and a human face, a gorilla, and a stone head speak their lines. This is one I want to play with for a while. It appears that this software will allow you to take an ordinary 2D digital photo of a head, and turn it into a 3D image that you can make turn from side to side. Then you can record a few sentences and make the head "speak" them, naturally. It's fun to experiment with, and it challenges the imagination to find interesting things that you could do at your Web site or for demos at trade shows.
from the Gutenberg Project ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/gutenberg/etext98/http://promo.net/pg/
(Adding dozens of new ones every month, Gutenberg has already made over 1000 etexts available for free over the Internet. These include classic works of literature and history, as well as out-of-print and little-known works by great authors. If you can, connect by ftp, rather than the Web, to get the most recent ones. Here's a list of those recently added, alphabetized by author. The file name is useful for fetching the text from the ftp site. Many of these are also available on diskette from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK for those who cannot get them themselves. For the current catalog, check http://www.samizdat.com/catalog.html or send your email request to seltzer@samizdat.com)
Honore de Balzac --
Joseph Conrad -- Chance (chanc10.txt)
Charles Dickens --
T.S. Eliot -- Prufrock and Other Observations (prfrk10.txt)
John Fiske -- The Unseen World and Other Essays (nswoe10.txt)
Gissing -- The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (ppohr10.txt)
Maxim Gorky -- Creatures That Once Were Men (crmen10.txt)
R.B. Cunninghame Graham -- A Vanished Arcadia (vajip10.txt)
O. Henry -- The Voice of the City (vccty10.txt)
Thomas Hughes -- Tom Brown's School Days (tbssd10.txt)
Ibanez -- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (4hrsm10.txt)
Keene -- Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan (tfmeh10.txt)
Jack London -- The Valley of the Moon (vlymn10.txt)
Macaulay -- History of England, James II Vol. 1 (1hoej10.txt)
Katherine Mansfield -- In a German Pension (inagp10.txt)
H.H. Munro ("Saki") -- The Toys of Peace (toypc10.txt)
Carrie Nation -- The Use and Need of the Life of Carrie A. Nation (crntn10.txt)
E. Phillips Oppenheim --
Eleanor H. Porter -- Pollyanna (plyna10.txt)
Rafael Sabatini -- Mistress Wilding (wldng10.txt)
Olive Schreiner --
Donald Ogden Stewart --
Francis Thompson --
J.S. Zerbe -- Aeroplanes (aeroz10.txt)
The number of Web-hosting sites that offer free space to anyone and everyone is growing rapidly. The three largest -- Tripod http://www.tripod.com, Xoom http://www.xoom.com, and Geocities http://www.geocities.com -- each already have about 2 million members or more (and they're still growing fast).
Unintentionally, these services open a new and intriguing opportunity. There is no reason for you to limit your activity to a single such free site. Rather you should explore the possibility of putting together a "distributed" site -- using free space wherever it is available (preferably for specific, clearly identified pieces of your overall effort), and linking them together with hyperlinks and a common look-and-feel. You could run a regularly scheduled chat program at Xoom, moderate a forum at Delphi, and have your heavy graphics at Tripod, etc. In other words, at no cost or on a shoestring you could run a rich and varied modular Web site
When I started my personal Web site, with a local ISP (tiac.net), my 10 Mbytes of free space seemed enormous. I was mainly interested in posting text, rather than pictures, and for plain text, that was the equivalent of about 6000 book pages. But once I started getting feedback from visitors, my imagination got clicking, and I had far too many little projects that I wanted to do than that space would allow. And as soon as traffic started to build, I find myself banging up against obscure limitations that I hadn't even considered when I started -- how much material (in megabytes) visitors accessed at my site per month. If I went over the limit, I would quickly go from zero cost to very substantial charges. I couldn't control the activities of visitors and really didn't want to make it difficult for people to get to my pages. (The whole point of the site was to build an audience and learn from them.) Fortunately, another local ISP (acunet.net) offered me substantially more space, at no cost, because they considered what I was doing valuable. All they asked was that I provide an acknowledgement on my pages, with a link to their site. If that opportunity had not come along when it did, I would have systematically created my own "distributed" Web site, putting discrete chunks of content at different Web-hosting sites.
As it is, much of my Web activity already is "distributed." Each week I conduct a chat session about Business on the World Wide Web at web-net.org, the site of a non-profit organization of Internet entrepreneurs and designers. The live chat takes place using their custom software, running on their system. And I save and edit the transcripts, posting them at my site (http://www.samizdat.com/#chat) -- with links going both ways. In addition, whenever an article of mine appears in an on-line publication, I provide a link from my site to the publication's site, and seek a link from there to mine (or at least inclusion of my email address).
For a couple of my chat sessions, I had visitors connect to two different sites at the same time. One of these was for a demo of new and very promising software that combines the best of both chat and forum (AltaVista Forum). The other was for a demo of a MOOs (another kind of software that is particularly good for regular interactions with a fixed set of people, like a class). In both cases, the experimental software we were checking out was on someone else's system, but while looking at it and using it in a second window, we could also chat about it with developers and experts in a normal chat room. And, of course, afterwards, I captured the entire dialogue in the edited transcripts which I posted at my site.
Chat and forum are two very important "community" activities that you might very well want to add to your site. Fortunately, Web-hosting companies today are expanding in the direction of not only providing space for static Web pages, but also providing chat rooms and forum bulletin-boards to all comers at no cost or very little cost.
What else might you want to use additional free space for? First consider graphics, since those tend to eat up lots of space. You could put your most graphics-intensive pages on a separate free site. Or if you have lots and lots of pictures, organize them and put different kinds of pictures at different sites -- always maintaining the same overall look-and-feel for the design of your pages, and always providing hyperlinks to all the other parts of your site from each and every page.
As an alternative, you could put the text for all your pages at your home site, and link from there to your distributed sites for all the photos, graphics, etc. That approach not only expands your total disk space, but also distributes the traffic. For instance, say you included a public domain photo of a planet from a NASA site on your home page. You might store a copy of that picture at a distributed site of yours, so whenever someone accessed your home page the only traffic that would show up in the logs of your home site would be the text, with the photo showing up as traffic at your remote site.
Second, you if you can get free space in a different country or, preferably, on a different continent), you might consider mirroring your own pages -- creating a complete copy of your home site at a remote location to make it easier for distant visitors to get to your pages and also to distribute your traffic (for faster access during busy times and also to avoid traffic charges).
You also could use distributed Web space for experimentation -- trying out new kinds of content and new kinds of activities and learning without disrupting your home site. If the new stuff works well, you might later bring it in and tie it more closely with your main content.
As ISPs and Web-hosting companies continue to expand their free and low-cost offerings, this approach is likely to become very popular. In all probability, you should soon be able to have an on-line store hosted at one site, and audio and video files hosted at another, and link to visitors/customers through an Internet telephony application at still another.
When I speak about the Internet, people often ask me for advice in setting up Web sites for towns and public service organizations. They have heard of towns spending millions of dollars a year on their Web sites. They are tempted by the potential benefits, but simply don't have that kind of money. I suggest that they sign up with Tripod or Geocities or Xoom, and that they put most of their effort into text rather than space-consuming graphics. If they need more space than what any single Web-hosting site offers for free, then I suggest that they line up volunteers -- split the town up
into areas of interest like schools, churches, town government services, etc. The bigger the town, the more areas and the more volunteers it will need. Each volunteer signs up for a free Web space account. They all agree on a common look and feel. They all hyperlink to one another. And the town gets a substantial modular distributed Web site for free. (Keep in mind that the technology is the easy part here. The tough part is working with volunteers -- keeping everyone motivated and focused.)
Whether the distributed site is your own or one your are building for a town or non-profit organization, always remember to "Add Page" or "ADD URL" at AltaVista and other search sites for each and every page you create. And provide clear descriptions of the overall context and handy navigation links and use a common look-and-feel on all your pages, so your multi-location Web site holds together.
(Review of Cybercorp by James Martin, American Management Association, New York, 1996)
This book ages well. Published two years ago (an eon in Internet time), it is still current and compelling. Martin deals with broad business trends which he presents clearly and convincingly rather than technological details which change rapidly. (And there are lots of useful nuggets along the way -- examples and ideas that could help you look at your own business in new ways).
He is right on target about the revolutionary impact of the Internet on all aspects of business, and also about the importance of people to business success (what matters is not the technology, but rather how people use it -- "The human part of the human-technology partnership is what creates true winners.") But he misses the point that the Internet is primarily a mechanism for linking people to people -- which leads to important implications which he ignores. One small example: when talking about the importance of continuous learning, he presents the alternatives of classroom education/training vs. pre-packaged courses (e.g., on CD-ROM); and he ignores the possibility of Internet-based distance education, where the power comes from using the medium for interaction between teacher and students and among students. Likewise, he presumes that an effective Web site needs to have heavy graphics and audio content, as if it were a passive medium; when in fact lots of good interaction can take place in plain text, using forums, chats, and email, providing far greater value at far less cost (especially is the goal of your site is customer retention and loyalty).
The strengths far, far out-weigh the weaknesses. This would be a good book to give to a boss who still doesn't understand the importance of the Internet to his or her business.
My article on "From Web-hosting back to do-it-yourself -- the likely impact of cable modems" (http://www.samizdat.com/news22.html#cable) generated lots of energetic response: everything from "it's absolutely impossible" to "I'm doing it now and it's great."
I love constructive controversy like this -- you begin by speculating about what the future will look like and wind up learning a lot about the creative things that people are already doing today.
The main points in the initial article were:
Q -- Cable companies today use dynamic IP addressing, which makes home-based Web hosting impossible. For that, you need static addresses.
A -- As one of the respondents, Manny Wise, pointed out the necessity of fixed IP addressing for Web hosting "is a thing of the past. He uses a service from http://www.dynip.com. "I have my personal Web site and commercial site pointed to the same server for a very low price... with a client-server software the DNS server gets updated and a home web hosting is really easy to accomplish."
Q -- Cable modems have a much faster downstream than upstream capability. Most cable modem systems, and all of the large ones, throttle the upstream speed of the end user. Cable infrastructure will have to change dramatically before more upstream capacity could be made available. This has caused the opposite effect than what the writer describes. Web space outsourcing and co-location services are booming and have an even brighter future.
A -- The large-pipe-in/small-pipe-out design is a choice that some, but not all cable companies have made. Those with foresight do allow large bandwidth out. I suspect that they will do very well. In areas where that is not the case, alternative technologies (DSL, fiber optic cable, wireless, etc.) are likely to win.
Q -- Cable companies today are deliberately putting up barriers to home-based Web-hosting. Many outright prohibit it.
A -- Yes, today, many cable companies' current policies get in the way. But demand is likely to favor those that support Web hosting from the home; and some are doing so already.
Q -- Very few people have machines powerful enough to be able to serve large amounts of data to a large audience.
A -- We are talking about home-based users. Yes, they may have lots of multi-media content to serve up. But their audiences are likely to be very small. (Cf. today's home webcam sites, the best of whom typically have just a few simultaneous users. And the more such sites there are, the more the audience is diluted.)
Q -- Cable modems are only available to a very small percentage of the Internet population.
A -- Yes, but the numbers are growing very rapidly, and alternative high-speed access (such as DSL) is also growing very rapidly. We're talking about where the world is headed, not where it is today.
Q -- Today Microsoft operating systems are weak when it comes to combining background processing (server work) with interactive use (desktop work).
A -- This is where Unix-like operating systems shine. This could be an opportunity for user-friendly Unix systems, most likely based on GNU/Linux. In fact, several people wrote to say that are using Linux for this application right now, and are delighted with the results. (Could this be an Achilles heel for Microsoft?)
Q -- ISPs want traffic to their sites to see their own advertising and the ads they sell. If a trend toward home Web sites gets going, ISPs will counter by increasing the free Web space they offer their customers.
A -- That would be great. The more the merrier. But for serious multi-media activities, it will be hard to compete with the gigabytes of space that ordinary users will have available on their home PCs.
Q -- In my area cable internet connection costs around $50 a month on top of your regular cable bill or $70 a month if you don't subscribe to regular cable. You can get service from an ISP in this area for $12.50 to $15 a month with 10-20 megs. of space. How many people are going to pay the difference so they can put videos of Grandma, the dog, and the kids on the web?
A -- Regarding cost -- 1) you can expect that competition will drive down the rates, and 2) remember that with a cable modem you don't need a second phone line or you don't need to tie up your phone; in my case, doing away with a second phone line would more than pay for the cost of the cable Internet service -- I would end up paying less a month for much faster access.
Q -- With cable, everybody in a neighborhood is on the same line so that if they all get online at once it slows down the system significantly. If that is true then what happens if one or more of these users has a very popular web site that is drawing lots of traffic? What does this do to cable speed in the neighborhood?
A -- Yes, with cable you share the bandwidth with your neighbors who happen to be on at the same time. So the real speed, the real quality of service will depend very much on your particular service provider, and how they set things up (how many households share.) Remember too, that DSL (fast access over ordinary phone lines) and high-speed wireless service are also coming. One way or the other, I suspect that many people will end up hosting their own Web pages out of their homes.
Q -- Consider the pitiful state of consumer-quality Internet video camera and digital cameras, and I don't think the host-terabytes-at-home revolution is coming anytime soon.
A -- Image quality is improving all the time. And remember that the kind of video camera that you hook up to your PC isn't your only source of video. You can patch your VCR and/or your regular video camera into the video card in your PC. Then your resolution depends on the speed and power of that video card. Basically, on the Internet, where there is demand, solutions appear very quickly and drop in price very quickly as well. Keep the faith.
Q -- Why would I increase the risk of opening my machine to hackers and crackers? Besides, I want someone else to support the web server -- I don't want to worry about load testing, log archiving, fail-over, and a slew of other server issues. I want to focus on the content -- I have enough trouble worrying about how my sites are viewed with variety of browsers.
A -- With increasing demand, you could expect the appearance of solutions for the problems you list -- both in the form of software (e.g., for security for your home server) and remote services (companies that will, for a fee, regularly provide you with fail-over, etc.) It could be a very interesting marketplace.
Q -- What about the third world? Yes, people in the US are getting cable modem, but for much of the world, that is out of the question.
A -- Cable is not the only technology that can provide fast Internet access. In fact, some third world countries are investing heavily in fiber optic cable and satellite-based wireless connections. While a handful of people are doing this home-based Web hosting today, for the vast majority of people we're talking two-three years in the future. It could take that long for the demand to build, the providers to shift their policies, and the software and service providers to offer simple solutions that ordinary people could use. By then, alternatives to cable may well be more generally available in those third world countries. Yes, indeed, the goal should be to get the whole world connected at high speed; and it looks like there's a lot of economic momentum heading in the direction.
(See more reactions in Letters to the Editor below)
You article does not apply to Road Runner from Time Warner here in Tampa, FL. They have other ideas..
Road Runner Usage Policy, Residential Services
I. General Conduct
6. Customers are strictly prohibited from running server-based applications on Residential Road Runner accounts. This would include, without limitation to the running of HTTP Web servers, FTP servers, Gaming servers, SMTP and POP Mail servers, Domain Name Servers, Chat servers, etc.
V. Home Pages and Web Services
1. The running of Web servers of any kind is prohibited on Residential Road Runner Accounts. This includes and is not limited to any HTTP based servers.
Reply from Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
Sounds like Time Warner just doesn't "get it." Others do and will.
Reply to Reply, from "Manny A. Wise" <mawise@tampabay.rr.com>
The necessary fixed IP address for web hosting is a thing of the past, I use a service from http://www.dynip.com Real cheap, were I have my personal web site and commercial site pointed to the same server for a very low price (99.00 a year), with a client-server software the DNS server gets updated and a home web hosting is really easy accomplish..
I host my site on a Linux PC at home using a cable modem. My cable company supplies a fixed domain name and a dynamic IP address. I have also set up a home network behind a firewall, using the same cable modem. The instructions and help are all online (use AltaVista to find!) It is possible to redirect a new domain name (CNAME and dynamic IP servers) to the home web server. However, my cable company currently does not support business users and prefers to host web sites on a central server at the moment.
The system is working remarkably well (except for some power outages that exceed my UPS limits). I am amazed that only some 40,000 people have this service in my area of millions of residents, and probably only a handful have realized the beauty of full interactivity available when one has a web server and a cable modem. It truly can change your life and is a great challenge to television watching--which the cable company would like to extend to the Internet, if it could, instead of supplying the tools for interactivity and sharing.
"Eric" Eric Eldred, Eldritch Press, EricEldred@usa.net http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/
I just read your article "From Web-hosting back to do-it-yourself". It sounds exciting. I certainly hope you're right, but I see at least a couple of flies in the ointment. First, in my area cable internet connection costs around $50 a month on top of your regular cable bill or $70 a month if you don't subscribe to regular cable. You can get service from an ISP in this area for $12.50 to $15 a month with 10-20 megs. of space. How many people are going to pay the difference so they can put videos of Grandma, the dog, and the kids on the web?
Second, I don't have any personal experience yet with this service but from what I've read, everybody in a neighborhood is on the same line so that if they all get online at once it slows down the system significantly. If that is true then what happens if one or more of these users has a very popular web site that is drawing lots of traffic? What does this do to cable speed in the neigborhood?
I always enjoy your articles and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
Jerry Green
Reply from Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
Regarding cost -- 1) you can expect that competition will drive down the rates 2) remember that with a cable modem you don't need a second phone line or you don't need to tie up your phone; in my case, doing away with a second phone line would more than pay for the cost of the cable Internet service -- I would end up paying less a month for much faster access.
Regarding speed -- Yes, with cable you share the bandwidth with your neighbors who happen to be on at the same time. So the real speed, the real quality of service will depend very much on your particular service provider, and how they set things up (how many households share.)
Remember too, that DSL (fast access over ordinary phone lines) and high-speed wireless service are also coming.
One way or the other, I suspect that many people will end up hosting their own Web pages out of their homes.
I hope you don't consider this to be persnickety, but it is definitely not cable modems which pose an eminent threat to conventional web hosting services in the way that you propose. It is DSL. We are in the DSL business and we know our competition.
Cable companies are basically grafting upstream data channels onto a network that was designed for high-speed downstream transmission of data, and to keep this economical they are not creating great bandwidths in the upstream direction. Which is fine for web surfing and most other home uses of the internet. But not for web hosting, which sends large chunks of information in the other direction. Since hundreds of customers share the bandwidth of an upstream channel, if a few people ran web servers it would bog down the net for everyone else. So cable companies do what they can to stop people from running web servers, including banning it in your service agreement (they can cut off your TV too if you don't cooperate) and changing your IP address periodically to help make sure it is impractical.
DSL modems are often asymetrical, with upstream speeds not as high as downstream, but not always and not as much as cable modems. Your provider will object to web hosting only if he is trying to tier his service on account of the extra technical support and such he may be getting into. Our customers are doing exactly what you suggest, even web hosting from home. Total control over your server is even more important than costs, especially when you're running databases and custom CGI's. Although for maximum availability the ability to handle flurries of activity, small-scale economy and technical help, you still probably can't beat having it done by a professional service, so these services (we do that too) won't suddenly up and die.
Perry
Reply from Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
My main point is that with higher bandwidth and the ability to stay connected 24 hours a day without tying up a phone line, ordinary folks will want to host Web sites from their own PCs.
The first instance of that kind of capability that we're seeing in the Boston area is with cable modems. ADSL, wireless, fiber optic lines, etc. will also bring this kind of capability to the home. Then the need for competitive advantage will force providers to eliminate technical and policy barriers that may happen to be in place today.
Whatever the technology, it seems natural that today's surge in demand for Web hosting for individuals will soon pass, as more and more folks have the capability to do it themselves from their own PCs at home.
PS -- What's the difference between "DSL" and "ADSL"?
Reply to reply from perrys@flashcom.com (Perry Schager)
DSL, also referred to as xDSL, is a catch-all for a family of related services including ADSL, HDSL, SDSL, IDSL, and others. The common thread in Digital Subscriber Line is that they all work over the mountains of existing copper twisted pair telephone wire that is already installed for the "last mile", or two (or three or four) from the central office. Fiber optic trunks are used for the arteries. The basic idea is to avoid the killer cost of digging everywhere.
If you're still curious it's written up at http://www.flashcom.com/services.html
> The first instance of that kind of capability that we're seeing in the Boston area is with cable modems.
As it happens, we're planning to roll out in the Boston area in a few weeks. But I'm just the tech guy, so don't ask me more than that.
> Whatever the technology, it seems natural that today's surge in demand for Web hosting for individuals will soon pass, as more and more folks have the capability to do it themselves from their own PCs at home.
I think that both will continue to surge, as the costs on both alternatives will drop. It's nice to be able to not worry about keeping your home computer up for the odd web page you offer the world for reference. Oh, the comparison of home answering machines versus the telephone companies' voicemail offerings comes to mind, but I don't think it's a good one. Of course, for the 18 gigabytes of family videos, economics will probably favor the do-it-yourselfer as you pointed out.
It may be tough to make money web hosting, but we're not expecting it to fade.
There'll probably be a hundred thousand mom-and-pop shops that get their own DSL modem and host the next millenium's answer to flyers and other small print jobs, and things we don't now bother to publish, for the people all down the street. Some of it they'll upload to the big servers. Everyone will have a niche.
A lot will have to do with whether tomorrow's mass storage technologies come with heavy economies of scale or not, and we'll just have to wait 'till tomorrow to see, I'm afraid. The lack of such economies of scale we've been seeing might be a historical anomaly featuring the advantages of mass production outweighing other economies of scale with a huge dispersed demand; the introduction of fat pipes to the end user might help tilt the balance to reinvigorate big disks or more exotic stuff like 3D laser memories. (But maybe I'm looking too far ahead for you on this point).
In any case, the era of personal computers is out and the era of social computers is upon us.
Regards,
Perry
Bang on. That is exactly what is happening...
I'm taking 3 old 486's, sticking Linux on them, and putting up my promo video on them via my cable modem. (Route there via http://www.jimcarroll.com/jc_main.htm; there's an item on my main page that links to my video page and linux page...
I've got about 1 1/2 gigs of old hard disk space...slow stuff that I don't want to use on the Pentiums here, that is perfect for this purpose. So far, I've got but a RealVideo file up, but I'm working on several versions of my Quicktime version, and will put up some downloadable AVI's as well....
Cheap, inexpensive, low cost Web storage. I've simply moved some of what I need into my basement....
jc
PS -- I'm actually off tomorrow to buy two old 486-66 motherboards to add to more machines to the mix. I just generated a 1 gig Quicktime video last night that I can stream through the service; I understand my cable provider is about to remove the cap on the service, bumping throughput from 500kpbs to 3mbs .... which is sort of like having a T1 into my home...
Your article ignores at least a few realities about cable modem connections--not the least of which that they are for the most part, totally unsuitable for serious web hosting. Most connections are asymmetric, with the outbound connection being considerably slower than the inbound. And, once this technology actually catches on, do you really think that the cable company will upgrade their backbone and NAP connections to support a constant stream of outbound traffic? Not just overly optimistic, but rather extremely unlikely. Though I'd like to see such a world, it's not realistic. Add to that the extremely pitiful state of consumer quality digital cameras (hmm, how many jpeg's at 640x480 would I need to fill a ten gig hard disk?) and I don't think the host-terabytes-at-home revolution is coming anytime soon.
Just some thoughts...
gabriel
Reply from Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
The large-pipe-in/small-pipe-out design is a choice that some, but not all cable companies have made. Those with foresight do allow large bandwidth out. I suspect that they will do very well. In areas where that is not the case, alternative technologies (ADSL, fiber optic cable, wireless, etc.) are likely to win.
As for video quality, that is improving all the time. And remember that the kind of video camera that you hook up to your PC isn't your only source of video. You can patch your VCR and/or your regular video camera into the video card in your PC. Then your resolution depends on the speed and power of that video card.
Basically, on the Internet, where there is demand, solutions appear very quickly and drop in price very quickly as well.
Keep the faith.
Reply to reply from Gabriel Ioan <gioan@att.net>
Perhaps my pessimism is brought on by my experiences with my local cable company (Time Warner/formerly Paragon Cable of Manhattan). Three years ago, before recommending a couple of Internet T1's for my company at the time, I called the folks at the cable company to see what they had planned with regards to cable modem service. Not only could they not tell me whether it was available, but most didn't even know what I was talking about. Sigh...
Many cable modem users have decided to setup servers[1], sometimes violating their contracts with the cable Internet provider. The providers have listened to many requests to allow web servers in the home. So, I agree that there is shift in providing web content proximally rather than distally. When will we see appliance servers in the home?
I have a cable modem, though I have no interest in serving web content. Why would I increase the risk of opening my machine to hackers and crackers? Besides, I want someone else to support the web server -- I don't want to worry about load testing, log archiving, failover, and a slew of other server issues. I want to focus on the content -- I have enough trouble worrying about how my sites are viewed with variety of browsers.
What's nice about having *my* cable modem? I can send content to my host at over 300kbps.
Thanks.
-Chris Cavallucci, MSIS, http://www.netcraft.com/
Reply from Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
I believe that cable modem users will lead the way toward do-it-yourself Web hosting. Then with clear evidence of the demand and wide variety of alternatives will appear.
With increasing demand, you could expect the appearance of solutions for the problems you list -- both in the form of software (e.g., for security for your home server) and remote services (companies that will, for a fee, regularly provide you with failover, etc.) It could be a very interesting marketplace.
I read your article with interest.
You surely can look beyond the fact that value-added-services will lose their value, and that the content will/is become/ing more relevant that the presentation.
The market will open up not for web-servers, which will become integral functions to operating systems, if they aren't already (see NT). It will open up for quality multimedia tools that are as easy to use as a word processor.
The days when people spend time in front of a web page just because it looks cool are passing fast.
Cheers,
Radu, HW Engineer, PixStream Incorporated
about #23:
1. Your AltaVista search for links to amazon.com probably turned up mine--but I don't belong to the affiliates program--I list it only as a service, along with barnesandnoble.com and a lot of other booksellers online, at http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/search.html I don't belong to their affiliate program because I have no reason to want to make money from it. Conclusion: it's possible to make compatible the new business orientation of some web sites with the older, more communal, sharing net style you and I prefer. (Hey, AltaVista has ads, last time I looked.)
3. You might be interested in the Russian lit stuff at my site--Bucknell for example has praised my new edition of "A Hero of Our Time."
4. I am interested in your idea to print books for free on the net and then charge money for added services such as personal appearances, lectures, consulting, etc. I think this is a great example of the "open source" model at work in book publishing, and I for one would avidly like to follow your experiences with it.
Thanks and enjoy!
"Eric" Eric Eldred, Eldritch Press, EricEldred@usa.net http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/
Thank you very much for the search tips. I will read more and now plan to employ this very useful feature I didn't know about until you told me.
Meanwhile, in response to your original pointer about automatic translation, you might be interested in:
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980131/feedback.html#schoolkids
This column should not be taken too seriously. Which makes it my favorite weekly reading!
cheers....
"Eric" Eric Eldred mailto:eldred@mediaone.net http://www.tiac.net/users/eldred/ "Eldritch Press"
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