Jeff Sutherland's Object Technology Web Site

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WinGate is software designed to allow multiple users simultaneous access to the Internet with only one connection of nearly any type (modem, ISDN, leased line, etc.). WinGate runs on a single Windows 95 or NT computer which does not have to be "dedicated" to the task. WinGate 2.0 can share a single Internet connection with nearly any type of client computer running TCP/IP - and shares access with such popular applications as Netscape Navigator, MS Internet Explorer, Eudora, Netscape Mail, popular telnet and FTP programs, and many, many more.
Watch out! By default Wingate exposes your machine to the Internet. You must set it up in secure mode. Otherwise, spammers and hackers will be using your site to create mayhem on the net. And your cablemodem vendor will shut you down!
While you are waiting for your machines to reboot, take a look at the really cool books below.

Singh, Simon. Fermat's Enigma : The Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem. Walker & Co., 1997.

When Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced a solution of Fermat's last theorem in 1993 it electrified the world of mathematics. After a flaw was discovered in the proof, Wiles had to work for another year--he had already labored in solitude for seven years--to establish that he had solved the 350-year-old problem. Simon Singh's book is a lively, comprehensible explanation of Wiles's work and of the star-, trauma-, and wacko-studded history of Fermat's last theorem. Fermat's Enigma contains some problems that offer a taste for the math, but it also includes limericks to give a feeling for the goofy side of mathematicians.
This is certainly the greatest event of 1997 for us former Professors of Mathematics and wannabe mathematicians, particularly those of us over 40 who felt our potential must have peaked at 25, like most historical mathematical geniuses.

Peters, Tom. The Circle of Innovation : You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness. Knopf, 1997.

From one of America's most respected business thinkers comes a practical handbook for turning any organization into a perpetual innovation machine--the one thing that it must be if it is to compete in the permanently chaotic new world of global business.
Check out the online edition.

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a key technology for turning the Web into an object-oriented environment.
W3C has just put the XML standard out for vote and Microsoft is a strong supporter of XML along with many other vendors.
Check out the Microsoft documents on XML.

One of the most significant advances in Java 1.1 was the introduction of a new event model that is similar to the model that exists in advanced Smalltalk environments. This model has a major impact on speed of development and the ability to build plug and play components, i.e. JavaBeans.
A good place to start learning about the event model is Gary Cornell's work and one of the best books on JavaBeans:

Cornell, Gary. Learning the Java 1.1 Event Model. Web Coach, ZD Internet Magazine Megasite.
Horstmann, Cay S. and Cornell, Gary. Core Java 1.1 : Fundamentals. Sunsoft Press Java Series, 1997.
Englander, Robert. Developing Java Beans. Sunsoft Press Java Series, 1997.
BEA, ICL, IBM, Iona, Netscape, Oracle, Sun, Unisys, and Visigenic. CORBA Components: Joint Initial Submission. OMG orbos/97/11/24.

Another unhappy constituency is the Windows NT 4.0 Server population [12] -- these users are required to download Internet Explorer 4.01 before they are able to access upgraded Option Pack components. Coming as it did in the week of Microsoft's date with a judge on antitrust charges [15], this cross-product requirement placed on NT 4.0 users had to be a bit embarassing for the company. Asked about this unfortunate confluence, vice president Steve Ballmer said: "We just don't need any more drumbeating where people are wondering whether we are these Machiavellian über thinkers who can plan out this weirdness." Try to remain calm, Steve.

W3C Issues XML1.0 as a Proposed Recommendation
Turning the Web into a distributed object environment requires incorporation of several emerging Web technologies (see Frank Manola's paper in the news item below). The W3C standards organization has just upgraded the draft of the XML standard to "recommended" and will be driving it to a vote soon. It harmonizes the proposals from both Netscape and Microsoft.
Web Review has a number of good articles on XML including one with a Java applet that parses XML and presents an index into XML articles. Check it out, and don't forget to use Java Booster so your Java applet will be cached locally. It's a large one.
Tim Berners-Lee, director of the W3C, summarizes the wide range of applications for XML: "XML is intended primarily to meet the requirements of large-scale Web content providers for industry-specific markup, vendor-neutral data exchange, media-independent publishing, one-on-one marketing, work flow management in collaborative authoring environments, and the processing of Web documents by intelligent clients. It is also expected to find use in certain meta data applications."

This workshop has generated a significant number of interesting position papers on software component architectures and the Web.
Check out Frank Manola's paper, Towards a Web Object Model, Object Services and Consulting, Inc. Frank presented this paper at the OMG Internet SIG last week.

It is an excellent analysis of what it will take to turn the Web into a distributed object platform by the editor of the X3H7 Object Features Matrix, the most extensive comparative analysis of object models ever published.
It will take a combination of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and the Document Object Model (DOM) to allow a Web page to exist as a real object on the net.
A draft of the complete document prepared for DARPA is also online. Thanks, Frank.

We have been arguing about the taxonomy of Business Objects for years and are now coming to agreement. Everyone should read this.

Business Objects - Response from Open Engineering Inc. to OMG BODTF RFI-1, OMG Document BOM/97-10-07