Jeff Dillon

I rode a Segway
Marcie and I went to the San Jose Tech museum today and they had a Segway out that people could try out and ride around. It was pretty interesting. It felt so strange that the thing wouldn't tip over. The first 5 seconds I stood on it, my mind didn't trust that it was stable. But, after only a few seconds, it was extremely easy to turn and move around, both forwards and backwards. A pretty amazing piece of engineering actually.

Back to School
I am in the process of signing up for a graduate level computer science course at Stanford for next quarter. The class is titled "Cryptography & Computer Security". I haven't decided if I am going to go for a CS Masters degree yet. If I take one class at a time (which seems reasonable with a full time job) then it will take me about 5 years. For now, I am just going to take classes that sound interesting and see how I do balancing school and a job. I can actually participate in the class remotely by video from my own Sun campus which is a very cool concept.

Server Side Apps Change Everything
I see more and more applications becoming web based browser solutions. Some people don't like this since a web browser does not provide nearly the flexibility of things like Swing, WinForms, or Cocoa. While we are still far from having a complicated application like an Office suite run within a web browser, more and more applications are becoming browser based. Software development shops like Google, Amazon, Ebay have it easy. Here's why:

• No piracy The server based solution makes it impossible to steal the application. You can not steal Google's Gmail or Amazon. Companies that develop video games, operating systems, or office applications have to deal with this somehow.
• No installation Anyone that has ever had to create an installer for an application knows the installation is complicated and painful for end users, testers, and developers. Installation stinks.
• No updates Traditional client applications need to be updated for bug fixes, security problems, and features. For server applications, this all happens without the end user doing anything. You never need to install the latest Amazon patch, it just happens when you visit the site. Traditional application software updating stinks.
• GPL, No Problem When the GPL was written, software distribution meant mailing around software on tapes. Since Google, Amazon, and Ebay are not distributing software in the traditional sense, they can do whatever they want with respect to GPL licensing.
• No distribution If you are not going to redistribute your software, you can do some interesting things. For example, I have known companies who actually modify pieces of the Java libraries for use on their own servers. Since, the modifications never leave their servers, they are in the clear.

These are big reasons for many people to work on server side applications instead of traditional window programs. Small companies don't have the financial resources to solve all of these problems. I think some people forget about these things. Installation problems alone have plagued software from the beginning.