While doing my daily wander around the net, I came upon this site detailing some research into search results from several companies, (primarily MSN and Google, but Yahoo and Teoma as well.) The conclusions are by no means concrete at this stage, and work is continuing but Ivor Hewitt seems to have found something of potentially significant interest to web developers.

Basically he has been testing the returned results from both Google and MSN (and the others in some cases also.) for 1000 common search terms, (lifted mostly from Google Zeitgeist) and then checking what web server software the top results are using and storing the data from each search. The results thus far show that MSN consistently seems to choose more sites running IIS (Internet Information Services) Microsoft’s web server software compared to the other engines. The difference is up to 10% more IIS servers in the MSN search results. Now we know that both MSN and IIS are Microsoft products, and we know that Microsoft is a twice convicted monopolist and have tied their past products together in similar manners. So the question is: Would they do this, when to be caught out would mean the total loss of their search engines creditability? It is hard to say, and I’ll wait for the expanded 10,000 search term results as well as independent verification before I pronounce MSN bereft of integrity, but I’m certainly prepared to be suspicious based on Microsoft’s history.

The European Union is not happy with Microsoft’s efforts to stop being anti-competitive. After all the discussions, they are still unable to reach a consensus on what the detail of the remedies actually amount to. Serves the EU right for allowing Microsoft the leeway to follow what it thought the remedies meant instead of explicitly spelling it out. You can read more about it at InternetNews and Eweek.

In other news, a big security flaw was found in the Netscape web browser (versions 6 and 7) related to the displaying of Gif images, so if you use either of those, either update to the new beta Netscape, or un-install it and put the latest Firefox in it’s place.

Speaking of Firefox, they are about to hit the 50 million download mark and should have done so by Friday. Also a report by Janco Associates reveals that 10% of business professionals are already using Firefox and that this figure could more then double by the end of June this year. Not too shabby for an 8 month (roughly) old web browser. Onestat also reported that Firefox has now grabbed 8.69% of the worldwide browser market.

Microsoft is starting to release details of what people can expect from Internet Explorer 7. After losing serious market share to the Firefox web browser, Microsoft changed their mind about releasing another IE before the next Windows (Longhorn) is released. Up until recently they didn’t give us much in the way of details, but that is slowly changing. The latest word from the IE blog is that IE7 will be basically IE6 with it’s myriad CSS bugs fixed, proper PNG image support and perhaps some limited CSS2.1/3 support added into the mix. It will also have updated security compared to IE6 SP2, but it seems that it still won’t be available on anything but Windows XP SP2 or above. Oh and they are probably adding tabbed browsing as well.

This is great news, even though I am not a fan of IE, and won’t be using IE7, the fact that I don’t have to use IE CSS hacks to get pages to display properly in IE is very welcome news. My only question is: How will pages that include workarounds for problems like the IE box model hack render in IE7? will we have to update all these pages to keep the pages consistent appearance wise?

However good this news is, I’ll continue to insist my clients use Firefox wherever possible because the new IE will still have ActiveX (the main cause of IE’s abysmal security record), will still be built into the Operating System and does not have anything like Firefox’s extensions available. I’ve become addicted to about 15 of Firefox’s extensions and couldn’t imagine not having them. For web developers, the extras that the extensions provide quickly become indispensable. Mostly though, I’ll continue to insist that my clients use Firefox because since they all have been, I’ve not been called out to fix any Virus or Spyware problems on their PC’s. To me that is the ultimate proof of the best browser. As the saying goes: “Money talks bull$… walks”.

By Kaj Haulrich.

April 23 – 2005

It may be located at the perimeter of the European Union, but nevertheless the fairy-tale Kingdom of Denmark has become Bill Gates’ beachhead and stronghold in his ongoing trouble with the EU Commission. Last year The Italian commissioner responsible for competition, Signore Mario Monti, slapped Microsoft for it’s monopolistic conduct and fined the software behemoth a stunning 497m euros ($613m; £331m) for abusing its dominant market position and also insisted Microsoft must reveal secrets of its Windows software [to competing developers]. Furthermore, Microsoft was ordered to release a version of Windows without it’s Media Player. Harsh conditions, don’t you think ? – Well, read on :

Microsoft appealed, but the European Court of First Instance, presided by the Danish judge, Mr. Bo Vesterdorf, rejected the appeal. However, a final sentence isn’t expected until 2010, at best.

Meanwhile Microsoft has deposited the money in it’s own bank account and released a “reduced” Windows that nobody, of course, wants to license [due primarily to the fact that it costs the same as the normal version]. But it hasn’t revealed any useful code to make Windows more cooperative with other types of competing software [and what it has released is under license terms that are unacceptable to it’s biggest competitor]. And it probably never will.

So now, Microsoft has plenty of time to further strengthen its monopoly in Europe, and it doesn’t waste it. A few examples :

The EU Commission wants to enforce the patentability of software, US-style. This severely reduces European companies, which typically are small or medium-sized, in their ability to compete with large, multinational corporations, like Microsoft. Naturally, a lot of those companies as well as nation-states like Poland, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and – lastly – Denmark objected and demanded a complete re-write of the Software Directive to be sent back to the European Parliament for re-consideration.

Denmark objected ? – Well, not really. Although the Danish Parliament obliged it’s Secretary of Trade, Mr. Bendt Bendtsen, to reject the Directive in the
Council of Ministers, he only did so reluctantly, to put it mildly. (A transcript of his pathetic performance is here, and you can hear Mr. Bendtsen humiliate himself and his country here).

Normally, a minister who ignores his parliament would be fired immediately. Not so this time. The Directive on Software Patents stands and so does Mr. Bendtsen. The noble art of corruption is by no means strange to the EU, but so far Denmark has been – well, relatively – free of it. Let’s delve a little deeper to see if there’s something rotten in the state of Denmark :

In order to clean up the public IT-structure – a gargantuan mess of incompatible systems – the Danish government instigated a reform on standards.
The committee in charge recommended a widespread use of open standards to replace closed, proprietary ones. Some agencies, like the Department of Environment actually began to do so. But in January this year that Department suddenly declared that it had chosen to carry on with Microsoft’s Office Suite. In other words : if the citizens want to communicate flawlessly with the government they’ll have to license a copy of that suite from Microsoft. Pay or shut up. Other public administrations like the cities of Munich and Bergen can use open standards, but Denmark can’t….

Maybe that’s no coincidence. Just prior to the decision on software patents, Mr. Bill Gates paid a “friendly” visit to the Danish Prime Minister, Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen. According to the Danish financial newspaper “Borsen” Mr. Gates made it very clear to Mr. Rasmussen, that if Denmark rejected the Directive Microsoft would have to move its Navision branch to the US. That revelation started a public debate where the word “blackmail” wasn’t the least mentioned. Mr. Rasmussen – of course – denied. But you already know how it turned out, don’t you ?

Since then, the Government had other ideas. Although Denmark is haunted by innumerable commissions, committees, councils and “expert” boards, the Prime
Minister nevertheless came up with yet another one : a “super-commission” on the entire scientific, developmental and educational structure of Denmark.
Guess who will represent the IT-sector ? – You guessed it, right ? – Yes, Microsoft. The company that never – ever – invented anything but FUD.

As expected protests were ignored and the Government carries on : last week it donated 40.000 “free” but time-limited copies of Microsoft’s accounting suite C5 to start-ups within the private sector. Well, Denmark has many companies with competing products, but they charge for them. So now, the Government prefers the tax-payers to sustain Microsoft. Just like any other pusher’s product, Microsoft’s first “fix” is free…

If we elaborate a little further on this, it isn’t hard to imagine new, bright ideas : Under cover of fighting terrorism and paedophiles, the Danish Secretary of Justice, Mrs. Lene Espersen, recently authorized the police to “crack” the citizen’s privately owned computers without informing them. As all and everyone knows it isn’t especially hard to insert spyware, key loggers, viruses and Trojans into a Windows PC. If every 14-year old script-kiddie can do it, so can the police. In fact, it is very hard indeed to protect a Windows PC from such intrusion. On the other hand it’s next to impossible to do such nasties to a Linux PC or a Mac, even in its most basic configuration. So, if Danes begin to adopt other operating systems than Windows the government – and Microsoft – would be embarrassed. Not being able to spy on the citizens and control every aspect of their lives is about the worst scenario imaginable to any Danish politician.

The solution is straightforward : Just a small amendment to criminal law, and the use of non-Windows PCs will be a felony. – Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that….the Government might read this…better shut up now before I – typing this on a Linux PC – am considered an Enemy of the State.

References :
http://wiki.ffii.org/SwpatcninoEn
http://www.thankdenmark.info/
http://wiki.ffii.org/Dkparl050304En
http://wiki.ffii.org/Kofod050310En
http://wiki.ffii.org/Cons050307En
http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=27908
http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=27919
http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=27693
http://www.computerworld.dk/default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=27060
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050308084230867
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2005030721574383
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050307095336843
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050215071109231
http://www.cedi.dk/visNyhed.asp?artikelID=1115
http://www.computerworld.dk/Default.asp?Mode=2&ArticleID=26860

[Afterword: Kaj Haulrich is a resident of Denmark and kindly agreed to write this article for us after hearing about how many of us had mistaken Denmark’s involvement in the EU software patent directive. HTMLfixIT wishes to thank Kaj for his contribution.]

Forgent is one company that makes me wonder if my dislike of Microsoft’s business tactics could have been better directed at them. Forgent has been handed around 100 million dollars for the compression patent that they claim is used in the Jpeg image compression standard. Apparently that is not enough as they’ve just added Microsoft to their list of targets. This comes in the same month that they have started targeting DVR companies, no doubt expecting the same hand outs they’ve been getting from the likes of Sony and Adobe. Microsoft has asked that the court declare them non infringing and invalidate the patent in question.

If we needed another reason to swap from JPG format to the open and free PNG format, we now have it. The only upside in this sorry saga is that Forgent went after Microsoft, a company that owns a huge pile of software patents and who has enthusiastically encouraged the official adoption of software patents in the EU. Perhaps this will make them wonder if opening themselves to a whole new era of software patent lawsuits is such a good idea. They are after all, one of the biggest targets with the deepest pockets. They have paid out huge sums of money to settle many such claims in the past couple of years, but if they keep coming at this rate, it will eventually significantly hit Microsoft’s bottom line and that is something that their shareholders won’t be very happy about. Microsoft is still working hard to extract itself from the Eolas browser plug in patent lawsuit. How many more does it need to become embroiled in before it sees how software patents are doing more harm then good?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If the giants upon who’s shoulders the current Internet stands had been as patent hungry as the current proprietary software developers are now, we would not have the (mostly) standards compliant cross platform Internet we have now. (for example, consider one Internet for Macintosh users, one Internet for Windows users and one Internet for Unix/Linux/BSD users all incompatible with each other. Much like the Instant Messaging mess we have now.)

I’ve long been an advocate of Linux as an Operating system, I’ve been using it for many years now, starting first with Slackware, then moving on to Redhat 4.x – 6.x then onto Mandrake then Debian and finally to CentOS (a free clone of RedHat Enterprise Linux). It’s been a fun journey, but during that time, one thing that has always stopped me from fully adopting Linux on the desktop is that my favourite development tools were not available for Linux. Linux has lots of editors and tools, but editors are like old friends, once you learn the in’s and out’s of one, you don’t really want to change. And my favourite Editor is Textpad. My primary uses for an editor is for HTML/XHTML/CSS/JavaScript, Perl and PHP, and Textpad has served me pretty well on all counts. It’s replacement would have a hard act to follow. I believe I’ve now found one of it’s replacements. It is called Gphpedit and it’s almost exclusively a PHP editor. The best tool for a given task, is one that was designed specifically for that task. That is an age old UNIX adage that hasn’t changed over the years. If you don’t have to cater to 100 different programming languages, you can better handle the one language you are concentrating on. In this area, these two free tools really shine. I’ve been only just started playing with Gphpedit a few hours ago. I must say that I’m very impressed with what I’m seeing though. I’m not going to go into a summary of the benefits of Gphpedit, for that you need simply head to the site listed above yourself. Suffice it to say it does all the things you’d expect of a dedicated Integrated Development Environment.

So now I have one less reasons to boot to Windows in future. Unfortunately I’ll likely always have to have a Windows partition because I have to support it with my clients. In future however I hope to only have to boot to Windows for that purpose, (or to play Half Life2). If you don’t want to swap completely to Linux, but want to benefit from Gphpedit, then you can always dual boot with Windows, and make use of the best tools available from both Operating Systems. After all, it won’t cost you anything and Linux on the desktop has advanced to the point where it is no harder to use then Windows so you really have nothing to lose. If you want to get the easiest to use free Linux distribution, you could do worse then to try Mandrake/Mandriva. (see the link above.)

According to CipherTrust, one hundred and fifty seven thousand (157,000) new zombie computers are found every day. A zombie machine is one where the owner is not in control any more and instead a malicious outsider has taken remote control. The reasons are many, but primarily among them is the ability to use your machine to send SPAM (so you get caught and not them.) for attacking other computers, (same reason as SPAM) or to use as a general anonomizer system to make their activities much harder for law enforcement to follow. They can also be used in conjunction with other compromised computers so that the malicious party has thousands of machines at his immediate control. He/she can then take down popular sites and possibly extort money from sites like online casino’s or betting sites.

Did I mention that if you use said compromised machine for online banking, or e-commerce, it is likely that the malicious party also has your credit card details or other information they can use to steal from you or to impersonate you?

How did all those machines become zombies? I hear you ask. Well basically they didn’t keep their systems fully patched (Windows update for Windows machines), they didn’t have up to date anti-virus software, and they didn’t have a firewall of some sort in place. In other words most of them use Windows without understanding (or possibly without caring about) the security repercussions of doing so. I wrote a page to help Windows users take control of their computers and protect themselves, all using freely available software. The site is http://tips.littlehosting.com and if you are not sure you’re protected, you need to go there and spent about 30 minutes making sure you are. (If you have Linux or use an Apple Macintosh computer, you are already an order of magnitude less susceptible, to Viruses and Spyware, Congratulations.)