Oblomovka

2002-08-27»

Doc says that I'm being a bit hard on Apple and Microsoft, both of whom sell similar applications to the home server idea.

That's true - but they're not very heavily encouraged among home users. The very fact that I can't work out a way of explaining how to do this to Sunday Times readers is an indication of that. Running a PHP Webmail app, or a home iDisk, for instance, really isn't rocket science: it just doesn't fit either of these companies current business models.

One of the real albatrosses around the symmetrical net for now is that the principal big server apps for the computers on the edge of the Network is still file-sharing. Telcos feel they can legitimately complain about "bandwidth abuse" when it's conducted by suspected copyright criminals. As Doc says, they'd find it a little harder to moan if it was baby photo album sharing.

(I'm beginning to see the big hole in both Apple and Microsoft's thinking. Microsoft treats its customers as though they were businesses. Apple treats them as though they were consumers. What if we're neither?)

Recap: I've been looking for an all-in, no messing, Webmail app, file sharer, and Webserver that would run from my home machine - saving me from forking out on .NET, .mac, and .johncobblyandall services. Lots of people wrote in with partial suggestions. Nothing leapt out for me, although a couple of people wrote in to say that if I found what I was looking for, they'd buy a copy.

Barnaby James wrote to suggest Apache Tomcat with a fistful of java servlets. A nice, and integrated idea, but I'm not sure it's the point-and-click solution I was looking for.

Dave, as you'd suspect, suggested Radio Userland , which I'd certainly thought of - but it doesn't handle mail. Yet.

Doug Hacker suggested ACI's 4Dmail Mail app.

Azeem suggested a cheapo NetApp style standalong box, perhaps integrated with your router. Bit pricey currently, and I think it's the idea of linking directly to your desktop that makes this appealing. Still, it'd be nice if home routers let you set up at least a port 80 passthru to one machine on the home network.

Henry Minsky had a very profound suggestion, which he describes in detail on his Personal Virtual Server page. If I can horrifying cripple his thoughts by summary : your personal computer is boiled down to a portable state image, on which you can install different applications. You can move this image wherever you like. Keep it at home, or on a hosting service, or on your laptop or PDA. So you effectively run your PC and all its services wherever you go.

One thing I did thrash out over a few conversations was that you'd need at least one external Net service to get this working - DNS, probably with dyndns-like dynamic updating. Azeem also suggested an outgoing mail relay, but I'm not sure that's necessary. Direct SMTP connections are hard, true - but sendmail and its simpler cousins, once configured, is a commodity. And this is a very trivial sendmail setup.

Does the need for dynamic DNS spoil the principle push of this idea? I'm not sure. I did originally conceive of this home-based server as a way of shaking off the shackle of unnecessary Web service subscriptions. With dynanamic DNS, we're left with a single one-off sub. It's less ideologically pure, but I still think it's appealing. One of the things I dislike about all these other Web services is that while each of them is pretty cheap, it'd cost a huge amount to subscribe to all of them. And I hate the paying less for bundles when not everything in the bundle is the best in class. It's an unnecessary compromise.

Oh, and Lloyd pointed out another advantage to working your Web services from home. When you don't pay yours subs at a Webmail service, they suspend your access to your own e-mail.

I think there may be a market for a product here. That is, if Thomas C. Greene of the Register doesn't convince us to turn off our broadband connections in terror.

2002-08-26»

So I wrote a piece in this week's Sunday Times about running services from your broadband-connected home computer: mainly, services that you'd otherwise have to pay for, like Webmail, online file space, and calendaring. It got a huge response, with dozens of people writing in asking how they could do this.

For most of them, I admit I have no idea - I'm a Linux guy, so all of these server-ish features come pretty easily to me. I feel a bit dumb replying to people with "Use SSH! And Debian!", though. If anyone has any suggestions on how you could reasonably set up IMAP, Webmail, Web folders (WebDAV) and maybe even a calendar server on a home Windows install, I'd love to hear it.

The piece, incidentally, is currently here, but it's registration-protected up the wazoo. Brits can log in as cypherpunk/cypherpunk. Anyone else has to pay. Also the link will die soon, as NewsCorp shovel the piece into their exclusively-priced archive, so what's the point?

Hold on though: I do believe I own the copyright on this article. I'll stick it here, and then when I've time, I'll set up a proper archive. It's all about DIY, after all.

This virtual life: Danny O'Brien: Why I am not paying

All over the web, companies are switching from offering free services to charging a fee. The latest to cross the line is Apple, who recently changed its @mac.com webmail and iDisk online file-storage service from zero to a £65 annual subscription. That has prompted many to ask whether others such as Hotmail or Geocities will follow.

I am always sceptical of paying for web stuff. Most of it is, frankly, ripping off the gullible. People are tempted to pay for these subscriptions because they appreciate not having to search high and low for freebies. But as the net improves at delivering what we want, finding the cheapest price grows simpler. And online, the cheapest price is almost always "free".

And so it is with web e-mail and file space online. Checking e-mail on the move and dumping Word documents or photo albums where others can find them are, to me, indispensable. If Hotmail started charging a subscription, or Geocities refused to give away its precious web space, you would think I would be the first to pay up.

Think again. Because I have those services free - from my home computer. I have an always-on broadband connection, so I can check my mail from anywhere by logging in to my home computer from any net connection. And I do not need spare storage on someone else's server as I have enough spare disk space at home, thanks very much.

There are other advantages to being able to connect to my own computer. I can grab a webcam snapshot of what is going on in my flat; I can print out documents ready for me to pick up when I arrive home. I even run a little website off my home machine to pick up important documents.

It is not difficult to do any of this - in theory, at least. The software is readily available, but advice on how to set it up is remarkably scarce. Even though connecting to your home computer from anywhere is a great feature, broadband providers, if they mention this at all, generally couch it in protective terms. "We'll provide you with a firewall, so that nobody can get into your home PC," they promise. What if I want to get in?

Software companies such as Microsoft and Apple seem very reluctant to write the software that would make setting up your home computer as a server a snap. Of course, Microsoft owns Hotmail, and Apple charges for all those .Mac services. Maybe they do not appreciate competition. Especially from the likes of you.

2002-08-24»

Anyone who is interested in both the W3C and usability online might want to check out the proposed W3C User Interest Group, and the workshop they're having in Maryland in October. (I know this appears to be a bit random in my blog, but I appear to be one of the few people who know about this, and it looks like deserves wider coverage).

Dyson, the kitten double-agent who spies on my household to find the secret of human food preparation, has a congenital bug in her optics. It's called nystagmus and means her eyes constantly quiver. It's not very noticeable and doesn't, as far as we can see, affect her eyesight. But I would have conceded that combined with her mild strabismus, it does make her appear a bit thick.

But that's all changed for me now. Looking at her now, I've realised that she looks like she's accessing data on a tiny retinal display.

What is she up to?

Andre Torrez is the man behind my current all-consuming obsession, Filepile. Here he explains the subtle difference about writing a great idea you had in your blog, and just doing it

I built FilePile in a couple of hours at work. The original design had no user accounts. I had never heard of a "remix". I wasn't even familiar with Fark or all the sites mentioned in this Wired.com article. I just thought it'd be neat to see how much bandwidth I could waste. It was an exercise in excess. I didn't even think about it, I just did it.

And that's what's got me so bothered about people musing in their weblogs about projects they'd like to do. Stop talking about it an just build it. Don't make it too complicated. Don't spend so much time planning on events that will never happen. Programmers, good programmers, are known for over-engineering to save time later down the road. The problem is that you can over-engineer yourself out of wanting to do the site.

2002-08-21»

The Campaign for Digital Rights has released their first look at the British implementation of the European Copyright Directive, which I will insist on calling "The European DMCA" until I'm physically restrained from doing so. Close up, it has some important differences - but that doesn't make it any better. CD-R's step-by-step demolition of it is a corker.

The writing exercise today, then, was pretty clear cut. STAND now has a potted description of just some of the problems with the new statutes, and what you can do about it - and why this may be even harder than the Blunkett RIP provisions to fix.

Oh Christ, that's such an Anchordesk way to plug it, isn't it? I'm getting far too into this pro journalism business. Talking of which, I haven't cross-checked all of the STAND piece with CD-R yet, so there may be some errors of interpretation I've fallen into there. I did spend a week staring at the legislation so I'm pretty sure they're not too egregious. I'm waiting on sending out the message to the few thousand STANDees though; some things you can't undo.

2002-08-20»

Well, I must be doing something right. I just got a prominent cyberrights activist to accuse me of misrepresenting the facts. Yesss! I've sold out, and I haven't even bought in yet!

[ correction: said activist (who will not be named but it is Cory) pointed out that I misrepresent the facts by saying that he said that I misrepresent the facts. I have no defence here except my usual one: I was joking! Joking! Just a joke, m'lud! Ahaha. ha. damn. ]

Reuters beat me to it - their story ran at 9:45 EST. Curse you, Elinor Abreu. Wired News's piece was longer than I thought it'd be: it explained filters and their effects far more carefully, and covered the angle of publishers having their work blocked as spam, rather than going into the detail of how Habeas' scheme worked. Anti-spam filter's false positives do seem to be a big deal at the moment: Dan Gillmor covered that today too. (We occasionally get hit by this at NTK, but I don't try to re-edit for it. The only way for these dumb filters to learn is to have people lose the occasional mail. Much worse are all the prudish corporate filters, which constantly bounce NTK on the basis that it contains "sexual content", "unsuitable language", and on a couple of occasions "joke".)

The one story I don't think any of the proper media covered adequately was how the haiku infringement blackhole list will work, and just how controversial blackholes are in general. And that's where the blogs pick up the baton.