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1996-03-22
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NEXTSTEP NEWSLETTER March 23, 96
1.SUN PRIORITIZES INTERNET TOOLS OVER OPENSTEP
2.WEB NEWS
3.MICROSOFT EMBRACES NEXT
4.NEXT, SUN, NETSCAPE ALLIANCE WEAKENED
5.MICROSOFT CONQUERS WORLD MARKETS
6.MICROSOFT DECLARES WAR ON NETSCAPE AND SUN
7.NETSCAPE PUSHES ON VERY FAST
8.JAVA LOOKS HOT
9.BASIC INTERNET PUBLISHING
10.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS AVAILABLE
11. SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO
12.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS NEEDED
12a. NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS URGENTLY NEEDED
12b. VACATION SPECIAL $90 K
12c. INTRODUCTORY NEXTSTEP POSITIONS
12d. FOREIGN NEXT DEVELOPERS
12e. GERMAN SPEAKER NEEDED $80K
12f.CHICAGO FINANCIAL FIRMS
12g.FLORIDA POSITION
12h.NORTHERN VIRGINIA POSITION
13ERRATTA
14.MULTIHOMED NEXTSTEP SERVERS
15BPG NEWS
16HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
1.SUN PRIORITIZES INTERNET TOOLS OVER OPENSTEP
Sun Microsystems has decided to focus their marketting and technical resources
on their internet related products acknowledging that they are no longer being
driven by a strong demand for OPENSTEP. You may recall my Feb 1st article
entitled SUN WILL SOON SHIP OPENSTEP. I called it wrong big time. My
apologies. Although OPENSTEP is still part of their official strategy, they
are just not focussed on it. Internally they are debating pricing and bundling
strategies. It sounds like Sun does not have a c
lear plan. I can think of some very large companies that invested heavily in
Sun Microsystems on the promise of OPENSTEP. I know some vendors who stuck
with NeXT on the promise of Sun Solaris OPENSTEP. They will all have to wait
until this internet thing cools down, and objects become hot again.
Officially Sun says that OPENSTEP will ship in the middle of this year. I
don't know about that. At least they haven't laid off any of their OPENSTEP
developers. Can anyone !
help me out in understanding what
is going on at SUN?
2.WEB NEWS
Starting with this issue, there is a section on Web News, covering the new and
enhanced Web Sites of interest to the NEXTSTEP community. I hope you like it.
NeXT user Group International shuts its doors. See: <http://xent.w3.
org/%7Ekhare/NugiDirge.htmld/index.html>
GS corp announces an upgraded website. See:
,http://www.gscorp.com>
Tip Top ships a new release of Web objects PERL, Objective-TCL, and
Objective-Browser. This stuff is Cool Object Technology. They leverage the
Objective-C
run-time system very elegantly. Check them out at:
<http://www.tiptop.com>
NeXT releases 3Dkit and the Indexing kit to be included in misckit. See:
http://www.misckit.com/press_kits.html (HTML copy of the press release)
http://www.misckit.com/faq/NXKits.html (FAQ giving more info)
3.MICROSOFT EMBRACES NEXT
Steve Jobs was the keynote speaker at the Microsoft Developers Conference. I
have never seen so many developers in one room. Half of Moscone Center's Large
Hall was filled to the brim. And they all listened to Steven Jobs demo Web
Objects for 20 glorious minutes. Although Microsoft is endorsing many internet
products, only Steven Jobs made it up to the podium. Even more amazing, most
of the audience cut dinner short to come back in the evening to hear the
details. The market looks white hot for NeXT.
Do you want to see how strong the demand is? Watch the counter of total
WebObjects downloads at http://wofapps1.next.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Betatron
It was at about 1250 when Steven Jobs did the presentation.
4.NEXT, SUN, NETSCAPE ALLIANCE WEAKENED.
If this was published two weeks ago, I would have run the lead story that NeXT,
Sun and Netscape were in a strategic alliance to break Microsoft's control of
the desktop architecture. They planned to push a portable client browser
with a language that Microsoft did not control: JAVA. They wanted to get
control
of the server development environment with JAVAScript for the server. NeXT
was key, because they would bring this technology onto NT, with Microsoft
willing or not. Microsoft saw this as a loosi
ng battle, and decided to officially embrace the technology, while really
pushing for Visual Basic to be the language of choice. So Microsoft invited
NeXT
in, offering them an endorsement. On its part NeXT will be giving priority
to their visual basic interface. NeXT will also be giving priority to the
Microsoft Internet Server API (ISAPI) for Web Objects. But NeXT will
continue to develop the Netscape Navigator API to Web Objects. And they will
expand
their Java Offe!
ring. Did I mention that the Comm
on GateWay (CGI) interface to Web Objects is being deemphasized? Who needs
open standards anymore, Microsoft and Netscape rule. Fortuneately, Next is able
to cooperate with both Netscape and with Microsoft. NeXT even demoed their
application on NETSCAPE browser in the evening at the Microsoft Conference. The
NeXT demo included a Java applet, so they had to use Netscape.
5.MICROSOFT CONQUERS WORLD MARKETS
While the other companies are battling for the US market, Microsoft is quietly
conquering the rest of the world. Bill Gates is meeting with heads of state
from around the world, gathering tremendous local publicity for free, and
ensuring them that if they use Windows 95, they will be technically up to par
with
the whole US. Microsoft paid for foreign editors to come to the Microsoft
Developers Conference. Great Cheap publicity. However, Bill is doing some
good.
He is encouraging the leaders of these co
untries to provide less expensive internet access as a top priority.
6.MICROSOFT DECLARES WAR ON NETSCAPE AND SUN
Microsoft came late to the internet, and they lost significant opportunity to
NETSCAPE, but now Microsoft is in full swing planning on reestablishing
control. They have closed down their interactive TV group, and are
focussing on the internet. The Microsoft Internet Browser now integrates the
local
desktop with the remote internet. Looks very nice. They want to make sure
that they achieve market dominance. They want to make sure that Visual Basic
becomes the scripting language of choice. They belie
ve that they can leverage Windows control into Internet control. Of course
they still have NETSCAPE to contend with.
7.NETSCAPE PUSHES ON VERY FAST.
The Netscape Nasvigator 2.0 Java enabled browser is now shipping. They shipped
it early, and the first users found a few security holes and some bugs. I
presume that they are now patched. Netscape is now starting to work on Web
for home television sets. Macintosh released Pippin, a scaled down Macintosh
that displays to a home TV and runs NETSCAPE browser. It is being pushed
heavily in Japan, and the Palo Alto Cable Coop is testing it. While
Microsoft
is trying to regain control of the desktop co
mputer environment, Netscape is trying to win control of the much larger
Television market. Meanwhile Sun has released chips that run Java natively.
This
should help the low-cost television market. Furthermore Sun and Netscape
are working on JOE, a combination of Java and NEO which will allow Netscape
clients to talk to CORBA servers. This will allow for mainstream three-tier
client-sever architectures. Watch for the Sun announcements at the upcoming
Interop conferen!
ce.
8.JAVA LOOKS HOT.
Java is an interpreted language designed to provide secure downloadable applets.
It looks very intelligently designed. See <http://www.pinpub.com> They
have a publication "OLE, JAVA or BOTH" with a good synopsis of the language
and its history. Java looks very promising. It has Sun and Netscape
marketting behind it. It has the internet developers freely sharing and
growing the code base. It is a shared platform for everyone that dislikes
Microsoft. The developers love it, and optimized incrementa
l compilers are being created for it. At the Microsoft Developers Conference
there was a late addition press release, that Microsoft had licensed Java
from Sun. I wonder when Microsoft will be shipping Java in their browser???
9.BASIC INTERNET PUBLISHING
The majority of the internet publishing market is static publishing. It has
become increasingly clear that the platform of choice for static Web Publishing
is Page Mill on the Macintosh by Adobe for $100 street-price. It is a real
WYSIWYG HTML editor with excellent reviews, and the other macintosh publishing
products to work with it. Do not believe the hackers who say that
hand-coded HTML is still the best way to go. We just do not have enough time to
hand-code all the HTML the world needs.
Page Mill even toggles between editing and browsing mode. Of course when you
get to the point that you need dynamic pages then NeXT Web Objects looks like a
good additive. In the meantime, I believe that it is possible to dual boot
your black hardware as a macintosh using a product called daydream. Has anyone
done this?
10.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS AVAILABLE
Here is a quick survey of the NEXTSTEP developers who have asked me to find
them positions.
2 Neophytes
19 With 6 Months experience
13 With One year Experience
11 With Two Years Experience
9 With Three Years Experience
5 With Four Years Experience
1 With Five Years Experience
1 With Six Years Experience
1 With Seven Years experience.
For more info on any of these people send email to jobs@bpg.com.
11. SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO
One of my readers inside NeXT recently unsubscribed saying: "I find that in
the midst of the useful information in the newsletter, there tends to be one or
two glaring inaccuracies or wild rumors. Sometimes the falsehoods are so
flagrant that they seem to have been put there just to generate a hubbub,
possibly in the hope that real information surfaces." His insight is
remarkable. Of course he gets the accurate information, because he has the
advantage
of working within NeXT, which the rest of us do n
ot. I apologize for this, but you have to understand that it is the nature of
the newsletter. For me to pass through the important information and not
filter it too tightly, it is inevitable that I also publish incorrect
information. Someone invariably corrects me, the correction is published the
next
month,and we all benefit. Sometime I go with my hunch at what is happening.
The SUN PRIORITIZES INTERNET TOOLS OVER OPENSTEP story is such an example.
Certainly it is !
not based on a Sun announcement.
Rather it is based on bits of information which have flowed to me. With that
story, the pieces fit. Whatever the truth, the story is not that far from
accurate. Even if I get it a little wrong, the correct news surfaces. What
amazes me is how often my articles are correct, how often I call it right,
given the scarcity of information in this NEXT market. Anyhow, I am taking
steps to improve the quality of the information content. Thanks for the
feedback.
12.NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS NEEDED
The job listings part of this newsletter is growing very fast. There are
companies all over the United States, even in Europe asking me to help them find
people. In addition to the jobs listed, companies in Boston, Holland, and
the San Francisco Bay Area are accepting additional resumes, but are not
actively
recruiting. Additional jobs arrive on my desktop all the time. I have one
or two companies a week asking me to help them find someone. I maintain a list
of job seekers, and I post announcements to
that list as the jobs become available. If you are thinking of switching jobs,
let me know. I probably have just the job for you. I can give you advice
on your best job strategy, and I can tell you a lot about the companies that
you are considering. If you are interested in any of the following positions,
please give me a call at (510) 795-6086, or send email to lozinski@bpg.com
with your resume. NeXTMAIL RTF preferred.
12a. NEXTSTEP DEVELOPERS URGENTLY NEEDED.
This San Francisco area company needs NEXTSTEP developers urgently. They are
interviewing, and flying people in like crazy. 22 days paid vacations. 10
days holidays. 6 Sick Days. Almost as much vacation as in Europe. Project
Bonuses. $1500- $5,000. Stock Options. Excellent benefits. They pay all the
health premiums for the employees and their dependents. The project is large
enough to have a variety of positions, so they should have something just
right for you. They are looking for a number of
people, and are particularly interested in someone with extensive GUI
experience.
12b. VACATION SPECIAL $85 K
Warm Sunny Climate. Help a resort develop their business applications, and
enjoy the resort while you are at it. Cheap Housing, World Class
Entertainment,
International City, strong education systems. You need experience developing
hotel or resort reservation applications. You also need1 Year NEXTSTEP, 2
Years Objective-C, 4 Years Unix , 2 Years RDBMS. The company would prefer if
you had experience with HP Unix , Informix, and EOF. US Citizens Only. Just
don't tell the company that I called it a va
cation special.
12c. INTRODUCTORY NEXTSTEP POSITIONS
I am now able to find positions for developers with not much experience. I
have companies in Los Angeles, Michigan, the San Francisco Bay Area, Germany,
and Virginia looking for beginning NEXTSTEP developers. I probably know
companies in the city of your choice looking for beginning NEXTSTEP developers.
This generally means people with up to six months NEXTSTEP development
experience, although sometimes I can place people who are active in their user
group,
but have not developed professionally on NEX
TSTEP.
12d. FOREIGN NEXT DEVELOPERS
I am now able to find positions for foreign developers with NEXTSTEP experience.
I have at least one US consulting company interested and willing to hire
foreign developers for projects opening up around the US. They will process
your H1 visa. I also have one german company looking for NEXTSTEP developers.
EEC Citizenship preferred.
12e. GERMAN SPEAKER NEEDED $80K
The company needs a german speaking NEXTSTEP developer. They are willing to
pay $80,000 = Deutsche Marks 118,400 per Year. This is considered a desirable
location, close to the Alps and skiing. 28 days vacation and 11 days
holiday per year.
12f.CHICAGO FINANCIAL FIRMS.
Continue to need NeXT developers. They filled the last openings. One company
seeks two more strong NeXT developers with experience in relational databases
and EOF. The other company seeks one experienced, and one beginner NEXTSTEP
developer. Financial Industry experience is a strong positive. Full Benefits,
top pay, bonuses, tuition assistance.
12g.FLORIDA POSITION
This is an interesting and large project. They are running multiple databases
and the Tuxedo Encina transaction Processor ported to NEXTSTEP. The
applications are being hosted on the Web. Great place to live. You have
the choice of working for the company directly as an employee, or, if you have
enough experience, working through a consulting company.
12h.NORTHERN VIRGINIA POSITION
Beautiful place to live one hour to mountains. 1 Hour to Chesapeake Bay. 2
Hours to the Atlantic. 1-5 acre plots average homes. Affluent, Educated
neighborhood. It is the best time of year. Almost Spring. You have a
choice of two consulting companies to work for. Each one reports to the same
end
client. 6 Month extensible contracts. Your ability to sell yourself to the
client is very important. Oracle Database. EOF. Multi-Company Distributed
Databases. 4 Years of work Experience needed.
1 Year of NEXTSTEP Experience preferred.
13ERRATTA
Linux is being expanded to include multithreading and multiprocessors.
Two more Internet Server Development products I missed in the previous list.
Tango, a mac product: <http://www.everyware.com/Tango_Info/>
and Cold Fusion, an NT/95 thingy:
<http://www.allaire.com/cgi-shl/dbml.exe?template=/allaire/products/cf15/overvie
w.dbm>
14.MULTIHOMED NEXTSTEP SERVERS
My error, it turns out that it is possible to support multiple home pages and
IP addresses on NEXTSTEP. It relies on the PPP kernel module.
Izumi Ohzawa <izumi@pinoko.berkeley.edu> writes:
There are two parts to the PPP distribution packagefor NS. One is a
module loaded into kernel at boot time via /etc/rc.local,
and the other is the actual PPP daemon "pppd".
Multiple virtual IP address stuff uses only the former.
Pppd hooks modems to the net via the loaded kernel module, but the
kernel module part is more general and is not necessarily tied to any
specific interface such as modems. Therefore, it can be used to
implement multiple virtual IP addresses on the Ethernet. In this
use, pppd part is never used.
Manuel Alberto Ricart <alberto@smartsoft.com> ,http://www.SmartSoft.COM>
adds: You will need to get the source and the NeXT specific changes for the ppp
software. Once you ftp them and merge them together, grep for '#define
NUM_PPP' and change the number there to the number of interfaces you need. On
the
version I pulled, this #define was located in pppd/pppd.h but this may
change on a future release (the other UNIX sources pull this #define from the
Makefile, and for some unknown reason, the porters o
f the NEXTSTEP version moved it). After this, all you need to do is recompile.
Welcome to Multi-homing heaven.
The only remaining issue is that you cannot surf websites you multi-host on the
multi-homed machine. If anyone knows how to resolve this, it would be a great
step towards doing a few things (yeah, I know we are not supposed to use
the server - tell that to my SysAdm).
15BPG NEWS
My apologies that this newsletter is being published a week late. I have been
flooded with companies looking for developers, and developers looking for
positions. Everyone gets the attention that they need to achieve their
objectives. If the newsletter had gone out last friday, I would not have been
able
to help each person fully. I am trying to make the necessary process changes
here to stick to the schedule. Realistically the next issue should go out
April 7th. Taxes are due April 15th, so I the f
ollowing issue will be May 1st.
16HOW TO SUBSCRIBE
This newsletter is published twice a month, about the 1st and 15th of each
month. Subscriptions are provided free. If you would like to subscribe,
please
send email to newsletter@bpg.com. To make my job easier, please left justify
your name and email address, one line each as follows:
Christopher Lozinski
lozinski@bpg.com
BPG
35032 Maidstone Court
Newark, CA 94560
I am also very interested in posting this newsletter to email distribution
lists. Feel free to subscribe a friend. Please specify whether you prefer
NeXTMAIL or ASCII mail. Please tell me a little about how you are using
NEXTSTEP.
=END=