Dr. Dobb's Journal October, 2004
ICANN, the Internet's technical coordination body, has begun adding IPv6 records to its root server systems, a move that vastly increases the number of available IP addresses. According to Vint Cerf, ICANN's chairman, two-thirds of the 4.3 billion Internet addresses available under IPv4 have already been allocated. The proliferation of networked devices and equipment is expected to result in surging demand for IP addresses; fortunately, IPv6 is capable of providing trillions of new addresses.
While ICANN recognizes the need to shift to IPv6, the organization is also proceeding with caution. The IPv6 system will run parallel to IPv4 for 20 years to ensure a smooth transition. The first IPv6 records added were for Japan and Korea: IPv6 AAAA records for the .jp, and .kr top-level domain nameservers are now visible in the root zone file. IPv6 records for France are scheduled to be added next.
ICANN's IPv6 update came in the midst of a contentious meeting in Kuala Lumpur, during which ICANN adopted a $15.8 million budget—nearly twice the size of last year's $8.3 million operating budget. Most of the money will be exacted from global top-level domain registrars, sparking protests from some elements of ICANN's membership. The embattled corporation is also fighting a lawsuit from VeriSign, which claims that ICANN has overstepped its mandate.
The final release of PHP 5.0 is now available (http://www.php.net/). Along with a new object model, the latest version of the open-source scripting language features new and updated extensions such as a SOAP extension for web services interoperability; a new MySQL extension supporting MySQL 4.1 and later; and a new SimpleXML extension, compatible with the DOM extension, for manipulating XML as PHP objects. XML support has been completely overhauled and is now based on the libxml2 library. Other new features are documented at http://www.zend.com/php5/whats-new.php.
Steve Jobs previewed the next version of Mac OS X—10.4, code-named "Tiger"—to an appreciative crowd at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. While Tiger won't be formally released until next year, Jobs is already crowing about beating Microsoft to the next generation of technologies such as file management and video manipulation. "We are years ahead of Longhorn," he said. "The other guys have been talking about it. We've been doing it."
Specifically, Jobs called a new search feature, Spotlight, "the most revolutionary feature of Tiger." Inspired by the iTunes interface, Spotlight (http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html) brings some contextual intelligence to its task: It knows enough to present users searching for "firewire" with the Airport control panel, or users searching for "wallpaper" with the Desktop preferences interface. It can sort through image files and return only the portrait-formatted ones. It can call up all of Pixar's movie clips, no matter what names they're saved under, by finding Pixar in the copyright metadata. In his demonstration, Jobs was able to find a map of Yosemite on his hard drive by searching for the words "half dome," which appeared as text in the PDF map.
Spotlight is powered by a metadata search engine, which is accessible to third-party programs as well. The engine continuously indexes metadata—including author, edit history, and formatting information—for all files, so that searches can be performed with near-instant speed. Full content search takes longer, but is also supported.
Apple may have an audience for its budding technologies, but some prefer fruit that's fallen farther from the tree. The Worldwide Newton Association (http://worldwide-newton.asso.eu.org/) claims that "the Newton remains the king of the PDAs, even though the production and marketing of this miniaturized computer ended over six years ago." Considered the forerunner of modern PDAs, the Newton MessagePad was introduced by Apple in 1993, but never became a commercial success. High prices and faulty handwriting recognition prevented the Newton from becoming popular with a wide audience, and the device was discontinued in 1998.
The Newton's small but loyal following, however, continues to drive development of the Newton OS. The Worldwide Newton Association aims to "link together various 'Newton User Groups' and...gather individuals and professionals via meetings, symposiums, conferences, international events, and project funding." Former Apple CEO John Sculley has been named Honorary President of the association, and lead Newton developers Larry Yaeger and Walter Smith are included in its membership.