NI-Limits Blog

When user-generated content can be moderated by public opinion and community driven interactivity, you feel a sense of warmth in the waves of Web 2.0 and its future generations of cutting edge technologies driving an evolution of applications.

The time for stereo-typing Microsoft as the dark side is no longer applicable.  The open-source community has made its mark – inspired by Google but determined to create the perfect platform, one that is controlled by no one other than the users themselves, a binary world in which ones and zeros are available for everyone to use and share-share-alike. Directories such as miniAjax and Scriptaculous spearhead the movement towards the next generation of the web, a generation that will be fuelled by Adobe but controlled by the web-developers of today!

Zimbra proves that free operating systems and open-source email management can knock the socks off Microsoft’s most advanced application (Exchange Server 2007) and was created in one hundredth of the time using technologies that antiquated web-developers had never even heard of until now…

Web 2.0 brought us into Douglas’ world – with Ruby on Rails as an AJAXIFIED environment that turn’s an eye - an eye that Adobe were ingenious enough to have picked-up on.  It almost seems too good to be true that they purchased Macromedia, and it also proved that from a board-room point of view, Microsoft were far too concerned about protecting their rights than helping others.

In recent news, Microsoft used technologies that were not theirs and tried to sell it as their own, claiming that source code was not tangible until it was converted into the end-user experience, something that the GPL junkies of Web 2.0 have been claiming from the start. Ironic…? Not sure, but damn contradictory it is when you boil it down and give it some thought - that’s for sure!

Still, irony aside, we sincerely believe that the next generation of the web will quite clearly be known as the Apollo Era, an epoch in computer technologies that allows the common code creator (AKA, the web developer) to create fully-functional desktop applications.

And yet there are concerns…

Okay, Creative Commons agreements help, but then, do they really work?

When you really break the entire web down to its final ones and zeros we have to find ourselves looking at iCANN and the fact that they have no control or true concern as to what happens with the ownership and rights of domain names.

There is no governing body controlling the very environment in which this new world of the future is being developed. Verisign have invested millions in bumping up security, but isn’t that already obvious enough?  A company name such as that and we truly need to be concerned by the fact that iCANN are too lazy to deal with the very thing that Verisign have every intention of monopolizing at the very moment they are able too…

When you sit and contemplate and realize how far the internet has come?

Simple hackers, hippies of the web created the Web 2.0, a fanciful semantic development of energy that spawned such movements as Music 2.0, a world in which a college kid creating Napster and artists getting truly pissed off with the greed of music executives is capable of leading to a revolution that brings the end to DRM and the need for agents and other corporations to control the creativity of the music…

We control the web, but as Michael Walsh clearly illustrated, the web controls us, we are the web, yet that is our very declaration of concern, especially as there is no law.

The web is immune to certain states of piracy, and although that is the very nature of humans and our inability to open our minds to the independence of thought, who will come to our aid…?

Who will help those that have been wronged…?

Would any community in the world survive without some form of police?

Unfortunately, no…

That’s the truth - we expect the web to be that perfect world…

Geeks got frustrated and turned to piracy…

Identity theft, fraud, sexual deviancy, and other similar cornerstones that prevent the human race from ever reaching (without extreme measures) a utopian society become more and more rampant…

Adobe empowers the truth with Apollo, a commercial whiz-bang that will allow the next generation of revolutions, one that will bring complete chaos to the economic state of the globe once we embrace the freedom of browser-stress.

Browser-Stress (the insanity of internet explorer versus the rest of the conscious world) will bring an end to web developers, but in the process, will transform those very web developers into fully fledged software application engineers.

Combing this with the greater-good of Matt Mullenweg’s plea (and a plea that has certainly not gone unheard, for as of the first quarter of 2007 Wordpress are controlling well over one million websites) for that perfect world, a world of GPL freedom; which will ultimately bring equilibrium back to the world.  However, if no one is here (or there) to help us with the scum of the internet, nasty entities such as RegisterFly and the empty promises of web-hosting companies and inexistent ethics and policies that are tucked away under a dusty stone in the basement of the iCANN headquarters, along with that viral disease we know as SPAM; who will support the foundations on which Microsoft, Adobe, Google, and more importantly - the next generation of digital Apollo engineers…?

Perhaps it’s time to admit defeat and allow the internet to be taken over by Verisign, for let’s face it – who else can (and is prepared to) do it…?

At this point, only the corporations can succeed.  Only those that can fund every aspect of their web-developed world are capable of controlling the very environment in which they explore.  But still, why should anyone be accountable for anything beyond their own decisions, the very essence that makes us human?

We have the right to rip others off, and we have the right to be perverted pirates if it’s what we feel comfortable doing.  The true nature of the world is based upon the actions of those that do not understand what they are doing or why they are doing it.  An uneducated world is a world that allows acceptance as it is our right to live, and yet; the more open we are to those that are different, the more open we find ourselves to attack.

Widgets inspire everything, but with Microsoft’s recent inclusion of its very own platform that controls this pre-built environment ready for those that lag behind and stick to widget-less XP environments, which will be aptly prepared for the Apollo Era and those in the know; some are concerned that they could lock others out.

If they did, stagnancy would eventually lead to revolt and the open-source community taking control, so either way, the choice will always prevail, and with Apollo breaking free from Browser-Stress, through to Flash’s cross-platform purity becoming more attainable as the internet speeds increase, things still look rosy…

However, for countries such as Malaysia, specifically still in the very epicenter of Asian technology here in Kuala Lumpur, a stone’s throw from the only city in the world with any hope of ever reaching a utopian state and becoming the first bubble city (Singapore), we are fighting an uphill struggle against the rest of the world and their ability to browse the internet at realistic speeds.  Let’s just hope that Singapore will be gracious enough to extend their (mandatory-internet-tax driven) free wireless coverage to our humble city?

But are we humble?

Kuala Lumpur has the potential to become a leading player in the world of internet technologies.  The artistic scene here is phenomenal, the creative potential just bursting to break-free from its lazy leaders and the tyranny of corruption.  There is a genuine buzz of love and acceptance in this city.  Yes, every race has individuals that do not respect other races, but here we have more than a dozen races, religions, and general ethical acceptances living in relative splendid harmony.

Is that not the most important facet for prosperity?

We have a city full of web obsessed teenagers with powerful information at their fingertips.  We have influential individuals admitting that they were wrong.  The freedom of speech has frightened those that look to the iron fist of China as a solution to our ways.  Malaysian Bloggers (not to mention Egyptian Bloggers) finally have the courage to speak out, and as soon as they do, their governments turn against them, denying them their freedom of thought - a freedom of thought that encourages interracial interaction amongst the social bounds of a society that genuinely wishes to achieve universal harmony here in Kuala Lumpur.

It would be too cynical of anyone to blame a government and that alone.

Who has our back when it comes to our future dreams of harmonizing the world through the benefits of the web?  Oh yeah, that’s right – it’s TM Net, what a joy…

We recently asked them about updating our internet connectivity from a small business (ADSL line) to a T1 corporate enterprise line and it only took three days and twenty six calls later to actually get somewhat of a straight-forward answer, an answer that boiled down to both lines having the same capability and cap of speed, but that the one that costs ten times the amount of the other one “actually-actually” guarantee (or at least give an honesty approximated guarantee) of 98.7 % (or something just as reassuring) uptime, where as the guarantee that comes with the other one that costs a little less but is still grossly over-paying for a non-existent service and a team of specialists that have a skill set that basically allows them to switch you from person to person in search for the truth, but other than that, knows little more is “actually” not as “actually-actually” guaranteed as what it guarantees.

That says a lot, especially when it can be related to the real world and the fact that a trip to Pizza Hut that guarantees a 15 minute delivery at lunch is only “actually” guaranteed when the restaurant is quiet enough to be able to get you everything in 15 minutes, and that’s only if you do not come when it is busy, for they are not allowed to guarantee the 15 minute delivery if they know that they cannot make it.

Is it just us, or are the blind leading the blind…?

When we have real world role models such as TM Net and Pizza Hut (to name, and sorry guys but you were the first two that came straight to mind; but a few) to promote such mindless acts of piracy, where do we stand when it comes to a world in which there is no law and no official force governing anything other than their own backs?

Again, another call to Singapore (safely tucked away in your bubble), “Please forgive us…?”  Let’s just hope the oil-crisis and east versus west conflicts - reminiscent in many ways to the Browser-Wars and that intolerable program otherwise known as Internet Explorer will not get trigger happy before that bubble is built!

Here’s to wishful thinking and peace to all…!

NI-Limits are here to help.

Our motto is that, “It’s our business to help your business,” and the strangest thing of all is that we are actually telling the truth!