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1995-12-03
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Item 5080928 95/12/03 17:34
From: LOZINSKI@BPG.COM@INET# Internet Gateway
To: ERIC@CDROM.COM@INET# Internet Gateway
Subject: NEXTSTEP NEWSLETTER
1. STEVE JOBS IS A BILLIONAIRE
2. EDITORIAL BIAS CORRECTED
3. CONGRATULATIONS TO NEXT FOR RESPONSIVENESS
4. YOU CANT DO THIS IN SMALLTALK
5. WINDOWS INTEROPERABILITY
6. NEXTSTEP AND THE WEB
7. OPENSTEP FOR WINDOWS NT
8. ISDN, CABLE TV, AND THE WEB
9. INSIGNIA GOES PUBLIC
10. SMALLTALK ENTERS WEB MARKET
11. WHO IS YOUR COMPANIES HIRING MANAGER?
12. HOUSTON JOB OPENINGS
13. SANTA CRUZ JOB OPENINGS
14. BOSTON JOB OPENING
15. BPG NEWS
16. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
STEVEN JOBS IS A BILLIONAIRE
Pixar Animation Studios Inc has made Steven Jobs into a paper
Billionaire. He bought it for $10 million, invested $50 million, and
the day it went public it reached $39/share making his shares worth
1.2 billion. Congratulations Steve. Will you be investing any of
this in NeXT? How about a venture capital fund for NeXTSTEP based
companies?
EDITORIAL BIAS CORRECTED
I would like to apologize for my editorial bias, which was clearly
pointed out after my last newsletter. I think that NeXTSTEP is an
excellent technology, and I am very supportive of entrepreneurial
companies. I do not think that NeXTStep is perfect, but it is
superior to the alternative technologies. It does have a number of
holes, but its most important limitation is the business problems.
Since there are not yet alternative suppliers of OPENSTEP, the
customer is locked into NeXT as a supplier which allows NeXT to exert
arbitrary power over its customer base. In the past, this has
frequently hurt the small developer, who I am very supportive of.
The lesson is that I need to look at NeXT as a profit making company
in a capitalist market, rather than let my pro-small-entrepreneur
bias shine through. My apologies. Thanks for the feedback.
CONGRATULATIONS TO NEXT FOR RESPONSIVENESS
The truth is that the large companies do exert significant influence
on NeXT. Thanks to their efforts, the 3.3 patches to Named and
LookupD are now available on the NeXT Web site. Several large
Corporate users of NeXTSTEP beat up on NeXT's support organization to
make this happen. We should all applaud the customer's efforts, and
NeXT's responsiveness to them.
YOU CAN'T DO THIS IN SMALLTALK
As you can well imagine, I process huge quantities of email here. I
needed to modify the email application, so that as I select a mail
message, the correct record comes up in my database application.
Under NeXTSTEP 3.3, it is possible to create a mail bundle that
extends the functionality of NeXTMAIL, and does what is needed.
Extensible applications are a major advantage of NeXTSTEP, and are
not available elsewhere.
WINDOWS INTEROPERABILITY
NeXT is dead serious about Windows interoperability, and will be
shipping PDO on NT with OLE extensions, called D'OLE this december.
As I predicted the Windows 95 release will take longer.
NEXTSTEP AND THE WEB
I missed the mark considerably with my last story. Let there be no
doubt that NeXT is focussed on the Web, is investing resources there,
and will be shipping product soon. But they are as confused about Web
licensing as the next company. So their first reaction was to prohibit
internet applications, and license on an individual basis. Basically they are
charging a negotiable $25,000 site license for using PDO and EOF in a Web
server. Of course this made it very difficult for ITS to ship their
WebRex product at the $1,000 price point, hence the conflict between
the two companies. In terms of maximizing their profit from the
large companies, NeXT is pursuing a wise strategy. But I think that
they are undervaluing the importance of the entrepreneur in this
market. NeXTSTEP based Web Servers are the first place where
entrepreneurs have a real opportunity to role out mass-market
NeXTSTEP applications. NeXT should charge for Web applications on a
simultaneous client license. Charge based on the number of clients
simultaneously logged into a Web Server. Other vendors do this.
This would enable the entrepreneurs, and potentially create a huge
industry of NeXTSTEP Web Servers.
OPENSTEP FOR WINDOWS NT
Well now I am completely confused. At least one company already has
the Windows NT alpha release. But in last month's newsletter I
mentioned the problems with the GNU debugger, and no one challenged
me, leading me to believe that there are still problems with the
debugger. Nor will anyone who has the alpha release answer my
questions about the debugger, under fear of violating their
non-disclosure agreement. So the following picture emerges. NeXT is
investing in OPENSTEP on NT, but just not very fast. They are taking
their time with the port, eventually it will work. Some people are
trying very hard to accelerate it, but without management investing
the resources, it will not happen quickly. Meanwhile NeXT is in a
quandary. If they fix the debugger for NT, it will be redistributed
with the GNU general distribution. If they do not fix it, then that
delays their deployment, and even development. Please help me out
if you have additional information about this matter.
ISDN, AND CABLE TV AND THE WEB
By now you should know that the Web is hot. You should also know
that accessing it from home across a 28.4Kbit/Sec modem is slow.
That may change soon. Big companies are posed to provide high band
width access. The cable companies want to provide Web access across
the cable lines at 10Megabits/Sec, and the phone companies want to
provide it across the ISDN lines at 128Kbits/Sec. ISDN is available
now in parts of the world. Where I live, in California it costs $150
installation, $30/month to Pacific Bell, and $25 fees to the
Internet Service Provider. Evening Use is free, daytime use costs
1cent/minute. Cable access is in now in trials in Pennsilvania and
soon in Sunnyvale California. If it works, there is potentially a
massive expolsion in the number of computers connected to the
internet.
INSIGNIA GOES PUBLIC.
Insignia Solutions Plc, developer of SoftPC went public.
SMALLTALK ENTERS WEB MARKET
At EMail World and Internet Expo in Boston last Tuesday
ParcPlace-Digitalk unveiled Smalltalk based products for building
Web Servers. Take a close look at this product as a competitor to
WebObjects.
WHO IS THE HIRING MANAGER IN YOUR COMPANY?
Could you please put me in touch with them? They may be interested
in this newsletter as a way of finding NeXTSTEP developers. The
newsletter reaches 2200 individuals, primarily NeXTSTEP developers,
so it is a wonderful resource for finding the people that your
company needs. Even if your company is not currently looking to
hire, I would be interested in subscribing your hiring manager to the
newsletter, so that she may become familiar with this resource. If
that person does not have email, I can offer them a fax subscription.
Placements help pay for this newsletter, so by putting me in touch
with the hiring manager you will be helping to increase the quality
and frequency of this newsletter.
HOUSTON JOB OPENING 12 NEXTSTEP developers needed, 6 immediately.
This is a refined oil transport management system. The software
manages the trading, shipment, refinery allocations, accounting, and
finacial risk management for oil-based products. They need six
experienced NeXTSTEP developers who can get started right away
without hand-holding. The following six developers can be less
experienced. Sybase is a plus, Capity data feed is a a plus,
commercial product delivery is a plus, industry experience is not
required. For this many positions, they will consider a wide variety
of skill levels, up to senior project managers. The company will do
whatever it takes to get the people it needs. They prefer permanent
employees, however they will consider consultants at rates up to
$70/hr.
SANTA CRUZ CALIFORNIA JOB OPENING There are openings for a NeXT/UNIX System
Administrator, a Beginning NeXTSTEP Developer, and an Advanced NeXTSTEP
Developer. They are building a challenging Wide-Area Distributed application,
with a central corporate database, and 30 regional databases. The company is
using EOF, Foundation Kit, PDO, Sybase, and will be connecting to Informix.
The company is getting beta versions of OpenStep for NT, D'OLE, and WebObjects.
NT experience is a plus. Santa Cruz is in California, south of San
Jose, and close to the Ocean. Monterey Bay is nearby and is a great
destination for Scuba Divers. The company is about an hour and a
half drive from the monthly Bay Area NeXT Users Group meetings.
BOSTON AREA JOB OPENING NeXTSTEP project manager. This is a great
opportunity for an experienced project manager to develop a NeXTSTEP
track record. Manage a group of 6-8 developers building a
state-of-the-art customer support application. This project has
everything including a legacy mainframe, an Oracle database, EOF, DO,
a world-wide wan, workgroup software, and event notification using
publish and subscribe. The company is willing to provide NeXTSTEP
technology training to an experienced project manager. There is a
possibility of travel around the world during the deployment phase.
Salary range 60-70K plus benefits.
If you are interested in any of these job opportunities, please give
me a call at (510) 795-6086, or better yet, email me your resume to
jobs@bpg.com.
BPG NEWS
You may have noticed that this newsletter is longer than previous
issues. There has been a policy change. Rather than limiting the
news to seven easily digestible items, I am including all the news,
and letting the reader choose what is of interest.
I will be spending the holidays in Australia and New Zealand, so
there will be no newsletter January 1st. We will be visiting Sydney,
Lizard Island, Cairns, Melbourne, and New Zealand's north island.
Anyone know of any good places to stay?
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
This newsletter is published monthly. Subscriptions are provided
free. If you would like to subscribe, please send email to
newsletter@bpg.com. Please specify whether you prefer NeXTMAIL or
ASCII mail. Feel free to tell me a little about how you are using
NEXTSTEP.
=END=