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THE STATUS OF COMPUTING
AT THE START OF 2005

Brian Grainger

brian@grainger1.freeserve.co.uk

It is customary at the end of a year to review what has happened in the previous 12 months. Equally, at the start of the year it is the time for looking forward to hypothesise what we might expect in the coming year. I have been a bit delayed with my first article of 2005, due to work commitments and taking time out to get to grips with Linux. I will therefore combine both features in this article. Starting with a review of the major events of 2004 I will discuss where I think things are going in 2005. I feel we are at a point where significant change may be round the corner.

As I look back at 2004 I see the following items as a summary of the computing news of the year.

• Microsoft have closed most of their legal problems by settling out of court with most of their protagonists.
• Apple have become a major player again, not with computers, but the iPod and the iTunes service
• There are serious mumblings of discontent with Microsoft products, for various reasons, but most significantly - security.
• Linux, while not appearing on the desktop in significant numbers, is now viewed as a serious contender to Windows in certain fields.
• Spam has continued its relentless rise.
• The script kiddie virus writers are being replaced by serious people who are capable of producing all manner of malware, as well as creating new techniques for stealing your money, data or identity.
• Starting off with the action of the Recording Industry of America actions against music downloading, digital rights management (DRM) has become a very important subject. The related topic of software rights, via software patents, has also become a significant issue, although it is not of the headline type news.
• In the home there has been the start of a trend away from the desktop towards mobile devices such as laptops and mobile phones.

I will look more closely at each of these items in turn and suggest how things might move in the future.

Beginning with Microsoft, they have had a good year in 2004 regarding profits made. Microsoft keep making more and more money. You wonder why when there have not been significant new products, but I guess on existing lines any sale is almost pure profit since development costs have now been paid. Windows and Microsoft Office are still the cash cows they have been in previous years. In the last reporting quarter it was stated that the consumer division and X-Box was breaking even. This is different from the beginning of 2004 when the X-Box was being sold at a loss.

It is some time now since Microsoft effectively won their antitrust case against them by the US Government. I know they lost certain aspects of the case, but the penalties were hardly onerous. However, some of the original states who were party to the anti-trust action continued to fight. In addition, Microsoft had lawsuits from Novell, Sun, some minor players and the EU to contend with. What was noticeable in 2004 was the frequency at which it was reported that Microsoft had settled with one company or another, always out of court and usually without the full details being made known. What was made known was that invariably it involved a large chunk of money passing from Microsoft to the other party.

Each of the states got their share of cash. Novell got $536m. I must admit I cannot remember what the argument with Novell was about - it has been going on for 10years!

The disagreement with Sun was about Java and Sun were winning this argument. They had forced Microsoft to stop shipping the Java Virtual Machine with Windows. All of a sudden Microsoft and Sun had kissed and made up. Why? Sun is certainly having a hard time of it because their primary source of income was from Sparc hardware and Solaris software that ran on it. With the rise of Windows and Linux in the network arena, less revenue was going to Sun. Sun is now a Linux supporter in a big way and may make lots of money from it if it can get the Sun Java Desktop into China. In the meantime it has been a bit cash strapped. The bung from Microsoft was no doubt helpful. They also agreed to co-operate on certain technologies and the Java dispute was over. Microsoft could use Java code again.

It was thought by some commentators that Microsoft were buying off the supporters of the EU case against Microsoft. Originally five companies were supporting the case but one by one they withdrew their claims as Microsoft settled with them. The only one outstanding is with Real Networks. However, this reason for settling the cases appeared to hold no water as Microsoft finally agreed to the EU wishes. Soon, Windows XP will be available in Europe WITHOUT Media Player built in, which is primarily the main argument with the EU. It may be a hollow victory as I have seen reports that the manufacturers have said they will not install it!

So, why has Microsoft been settling all these cases? Have the legal problems been causing distraction from the business of writing software? Is it the bad publicity it generates? My feeling is that the cost of the lawyers was probably getting to be noticeable and that it was cost effective to just settle. I also feel that Microsoft have a more important use for their lawyers in the future, one that will make them money rather than cost them money. I am talking here about DRM and software patents, but more of that later.

Without doubt the iPod was Apple's star performer of 2004. iTunes has certainly been popular but is probably not making much money yet. Perhaps the intention is not to make money out of iTunes, but use it to force people to get iPods, where the money is made. We are talking DRM again, but more of that later.

You must have noticed the rise in the incidences of viruses, worms and trojans, (malware), in 2004. Bill Gates made trustworthy computing his mantra for 2004 and we have seen monthly issues of software patches for various Microsoft products. Unfortunately the number of patches has not decreased with time. In fact, this month we have seen one of the biggest bundles ever. Patching software is a pain for you and me. Think what it must be like for a corporation to keep their desktops up to date. Far from trustworthy computing some people are seeing that the problem is that Microsoft products are not trustworthy. In particular, it is becoming recognised that Internet Explorer is a major problem. This year has seen the rise of an alternative which threatens to take market share away from IE. The alternative is the Mozilla integrated package, or the web browser component, Firefox. After one virus attack in 2004 one major source of advice suggested that a means of coping with it was to ditch Internet Explorer. Now that Firefox is available as a version 1 product, it is being touted by many people, including me. The Daily Telegraph, in their weekly computer column, now regularly advises the use of Firefox. Being 'Free Software' it costs the same as IE, nothing, and is being supported, unlike IE. The only support for IE now are the endless patches. Before this article was written Microsoft had said there will not be another release of IE until the next version of Windows and then it was not likely to be issued as a separate product. As I was writing this Microsoft announced that IE7 would appear. Whether that is because the next version of Windows is receding into the future or whether Microsoft are responding to the lack of security with IE6 and the subsequent success of Firefox is hard to say. 2005 looks likely to be the year for Mozilla and when the tide turns back from IE.

At the start of 2004 the Linux world had the shadow of SCO upon it. SCO claims that Linux uses some of its proprietary software, but will not tell anybody what. They have tried to claim licence fees from large organisations. The court cases are still ongoing, but there have been setbacks for SCO throughout the year. They did have one success towards the end of 2004. A judge upheld their request for IBM to provide certain development items regarding one of the IBM products that SCO claim was offered to the Linux community. Nevertheless, on balance, 2004 has been a year of retreat for SCO. Their share price has dropped back. They are finding it hard to make money and nobody seems quite so worried about the effect on Linux anymore.

2004 has, in fact, been a good year for Linux. Red Hat and Novell have consolidated their positions at the top of the heap for bringing Linux to the Enterprise business. Novell seems to be doing a great deal of development, recently announcing developing a replacement for Exchange servers. The third big player, Sun, has had an average year. They have been struggling in their core business of hardware and the Solaris operating system. The later has been open sourced this year. The injection from Microsoft, (see above), has no doubt provided a handy source of money, but it causes me to worry about the true intentions of Sun. At one time, Sun used to co-ordinate the TCL development language, only to dump it later on. Would they do the same for their support of Linux? The jewel in the crown of Sun, as far as the wide world is concerned, is Java and Sun has steadfastly refused to open this up to the open source community. Sun markets its Linux offering as the Sun Java Desktop, but it is no more concentrated on Java than any other Linux.. The primary differentiating factor is the use of the proprietary Star Office, whereas the other Linuxes tend to use the open source Open Office Org, upon which Star Office is built. I am not sure we are going to see much of Sun Java Desktop in the US/UK, but it has pulled off some deals with China so it may well be an important product in bringing Linux to the desktop.

2004 has provided much talk of Linux on the desktop. It still hasn't arrived in any great numbers. So far, it is limited to the high end of the hobbyist/geek market. I must admit that I expect it to develop within the enterprise first, probably via Novell, and then seep to the general hobbyist and consumers, if they still exist, in later years. This is completely the opposite to Windows, which developed in the hobbyist home market first, and then infiltrated the enterprise by stealth.

While the Desktop Linux is not likely to reach the consumer it does not mean that the consumer will not be using Linux! All manner of devices have in-built computer power - mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants, GPS devices, TV recorders and so on. These have in-built operating systems and, despite his attempts, Bill has not yet succeeded in making Windows variants ubiquitous in these devices. Linux is beginning to make inroads to this arena and I think it will continue to increase its presence.

The last thread in the Linux story is, I guess my personal hobby horse, the Live Linux CD. This has certainly come on strong in 2004. Numerous distros exist and the more popular keep appearing on the magazines cover disks. The one that started it all, Knoppix, has appeared on various magazines and this month made an appearance on one of the lower tier PC magazines. Starting life as a rescue disk, Knoppix and other live CDs are rapidly becoming a way to run Linux without too much hassle. Some of the Live CDs allow you to do a full installation to hard drive if you find you like it. The success of the Live CD has been such that most of the major Linux distributions now issue Live CDs, so that potential buyers can get a sampler. I, personally, believe that Live CDs have a roll to play for the less technical computer user. We will have to see how Live CDs progress in 2005.

Let's turn our attention now to the nastier side of computing. First of all, Spam. The amount of Spam continues to rise. At the beginning of 2004 it was estimated 50% of e-mails were Spam. That figure has now risen to 80%. Apart from the sheer inconvenience, it is a vast waste of bandwidth. Something will have to be done about it, but what? Microsoft have been touting the idea of sender verification. That is, the first time you send an e-mail to a user you will get a response asking you to verify yourself. Only then will the mail get delivered. This will obviously deter the spammers, but it might cause increased aggravation for real e-mailers as well. However, it might be more appealing than the other solution - to start charging for e-mail.

The other nasty we have to contend with is malware. 2004 did not see a significant rise in the number of virus infections. They were there, of course, but the number of virus techniques seem to have reached a plateau and viruses are getting contained. However, there has been a big rise in phishing, where you are tricked into releasing personal information enabling the tricksters to get access to your money. With all the publicity behind the insecurity of Internet Explorer there has also been a big rise in the incidence of trojans lurking on web pages, ready to download themselves to unsuspecting surfers. They then unleash all sorts of things. You may get bombarded with adverts. They may download diallers to your PC, which will change the telephone number you dial to a premium rate number. What is worse for the average user is that they are extremely difficult to get rid of. You need an expert to remove them. Virtually everyone I know has been attacked at least once. When it happens you wish it never had. Even if you know what to do it wastes so much time sorting it out. I have even seen reports from America of some people getting so fed up that they are cutting back on using the web. I cannot see the frequency of such attacks going down. It is a major problem. Microsoft and others seem to be attacking the problem by providing software protection which requires continual updates, in response to the different threats as they emerge. This is much like the anti-virus industry. I think this is a very poor solution and no solution at all for those not on broadband. We may be smug and say, well everyone in the UK and US is going to be on broadband eventually. What about the developing world? No, the real solution has got to be different. The continual updating software approach of the anti-virus industry and Microsoft are solutions which provide a continual source of subscription revenue. The problem needs to be looked at from a different angle. A solution needs to be defined that eradicates the problem once and for all. A one off cost to buy a product and that is it.

In 2004 it cannot have gone unnoticed that people have been hounded, and in some case prosecuted, for downloading illegal copies of music or films from the web. Napster disappeared, to be reborn as a service which charged a subscription for downloading music. The iTunes download service came from Apple. Microsoft is trying to licence its technology for protecting downloads to all and sundry. This is a big money spinner and it is not going to disappear. In fact it is only going to get more prevalent. I guess we all know that DVDs are regionally coded so that those bought in the USA, for example, will not play on European DVD players. This stops people buying DVDs from the USA, where they are cheaper. Would you buy a CD or DVD from the shop if you knew you had to buy a specific brand of player to hear it? Would you buy a CD or DVD if you knew it would stop playing if the company issuing it went out of business? Silly, isn't it, but that is what is happening in the on-line world. iTunes music is specifically coded to play only on the iPod. With the Napster subscription service if you stop paying the sub, or Napster folds, you will not be able to play the downloaded stuff. I have had to add extra wires to my DVD/TV/Hi-Fi set up at home because the copy protection on the DVD would not allow me to play it through the video recorder, which is connected to my TV and Hi-Fi. While I understand the companies wanting to stop people copying products, we have now got to the stage where the companies now tell us how to use the product after we have bought it. If we want to use it another way then, tough, you can't.

This concept of protecting everything is also behind the rise of software patents. We all know that if you come up with some amazing device, such as the cat's eye in the road, you can take out a patent and ensure other people cannot make the same device without rewarding you for the privilege. Patents expire after a certain number of years, but the Yorkshireman who invented the cat's eye became very rich and was justly rewarded for his idea. However, it did not stop other people trying to come up with a different and better idea.

Someone in America decided a similar principle should apply to software. Why people try to equate software and hardware is beyond me. Software has always been developed in an iterative way. One program comes out. Someone looks at it, uses it and tries to improve it. However, software patents threaten this idea. If Xerox had patented the ideas of the Windows, Icon, Mouse and Pointer technique then Apple would not have been able to develop the Macintosh software and Microsoft develop its Windows software, without paying Xerox. Similarly, if Microsoft started to patent some of the things that it has thought of - OK you may think that is limited - then no-one can develop a Microsoft alternative. They tried this with the FAT disk format - which is now used by numerous devices, including the USB Flash drives. Fortunately, they failed this time. However, Microsoft, IBM and others have been taking out numerous patents on all sorts of software ideas. So far they have not threatened anybody. It is thought that most companies are doing this to protect themselves. For example, if IBM suddenly find themselves subpoenaed by Microsoft because they have inadvertently used one of Microsoft's ideas then IBM will have some of their own to trade. The problem is, what happens if a sole trader finds themselves attacked by Microsoft? They do not have the money to fight and would instantly have to give in. That is hardly encouraging competition. The open source industry is also worried that it will be unable to work because there is no money generated to defend any actions that might be brought against it.

The USA have had these laws for a little while, but in 2004 attempts have been made to bring software patents into European law. So far they have been unsuccessful. An attempt was made very recently to have the law they had drafted passed, but it failed because Poland was brave enough to say it was ill thought out. The latest is that the European Parliament have advised that the law be thought out again and a new draft written. You would have thought that would be enough, but Europe is not run by the democratically elected Parliament. It can only advise what the unelected commissioners should do. Their verdict has yet to be given but may come soon.

Sales of PCs have picked up a little in 2004 compared to the previous year. However, there has been a shift in the market. More people are buying laptops these days. Certainly the price has come down this year and they are continuing to fall. Another trend in PCs is their ability to interact with other home entertainment devices, the TV, the hi-fi and so on. There is a big push now for the Media Centre PC. A new version of Windows has been produced specially for this application. Will people buy a PC to perform tasks such as record and playback TV, or will they buy dedicated equipment for such tasks? The latter usually just turn on and go. The PC has its problems with waiting to start up, being difficult to use in comparison and keeping free of malware from the internet.

It is likely that 2005 will see a significant upgrade of all areas of the PC. Processors may become dual processors, perhaps 64 bit. The next version of the Playstation is coming out with a brand new type of chip called the cell chip. This is like having a number of separate processors in the machine, with the tasks being split amongst them. Acting in parallel will mean things will happen faster. For some time now the good old IDE hard drive has been slowly moving to serial ATA drives. The floppy, serial and parallel ports are being removed to be replaced by USB as the general interface to the outside world. The monitor is being replaced by ever larger LCD screens. The PCI bus architecture and the AGP graphics bus will be replaced this year by PC Express. The Intel Centrino chipset has recently been upgraded to version 2 and this will start to make its way into new machines. You can see why PC prices are falling. The stocks are being cleared in readiness to stock the new stuff when it appears. Now is not a good time to buy a new PC, unless you specifically want the older technology that is on the way out.

There is my quick run through the current status of the PC market and thoughts on where it might go in 2005. It will be interesting to see how much turns into reality this time next year, how much fails and how much is pure hogwash. We live in interesting times!

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