Robert Pogson

The wonderful ithingy we here about has a major bug. If you hold it in a fairly natural way the 3G signal strength drops greatly. A poorly designed antenna is the problem. Holding the phone loosely seems not to show the problem but if you were stressed in an emergency or while parachuting, you might squeeze it a bit, I figure.

So, while those guys were running about with the prototypes in disguise and not squeezing them they missed a fine testing opportunity. Too bad they sent the cops after Gizmodo or they might have had real-world testing.

Openness works, even in tech.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes gets somethings right and a few things wrong in “They exist now only in the minds of fanbois …”

• There’s a War Between M$ and Apple – He says there’s not but M$ is at war with everyone, even its partners, by taking the lion’s share of profits in IT. M$ and Apple have sued each other and made things not work for users of the other OS. Remember the blue “e” on MacOS? Where’s Office 2010 for MacOS?Where’s the ribbon?
• The Year of the Linux Desktop is Coming – He says it’s not and he is right. It is already here becoming widely accepted in 2009 thanks to Vista, netbooks and ARM.
• Open Source = Secure Code – He says everyone has bugs and he’s right but open source means they get fixed faster and you can check that your bug is fixed before you use the code. That is security. He also neglects the fact that if your code is public, you will make a better effort to make it right. If your work is hidden in a binary, it is easier to shrug off lots of details because no one will know about it.

Not a bad effort as blogs go, but I had to clear up a few things.

One of the side-effects of waiting breathlessly for Bilski at SCOTUS is seeing other things that the supremes decide.

A recent opinion slaps down rulings made by lower courts over decades that US securities fraud laws applied globally. There is so much assumption in the culture of the USA that the world should do things the way they do them: film, politics, copyright, software patents…

Here’s hoping the decision on Bilski comes out Monday with similar clarity and kills the evil of software patents.

Intel is one half of Wintel but they are not stupid. Everyone can see the writing on the wall:

• small things work
• that other OS is getting serious competition from GNU/Linux

The result is that Intel is investing in GNU/Linux, porting Android 2.2 to x86. This will re-open the door to netbooks for GNU/Linux and Java, two of M$’s nemeses. This is also a good plan for Intel to keep Atom vigorous by making the same software available for the ARMed netbook available on Atomized netbooks.

It’s all good. There is choice.

Read the comments on the Reg.

M$ is down to pre-”7″ stock values. So much for “7″ saving the company or Ballmer.

“Dell estimated the percentage of commercial PC users who have updated to Microsoft’s Windows 7 as still in single digits.”

That says it all. The most successful version of that other OS ever, is not being adopted by business who have no need of feature bloat and eye-candy that consumers lap up having few choices in retail.

If Dell hangs its hopes on a revival of the Wintel monopoly soon amongst customers who have choices like GNU/Linux and MacOS, they need to develop Plan B immediately. Dell’s competitors will have a shot at the same growth, if it ever comes. Now, Dell needs something to differentiate itself from its competitors like promotion of GNU/Linux as the best and most efficient platform for IT in business. Business is about making money not providing money to M$ and Dell. Business is looking for more cost-effective IT and if Dell does not give it to them, someone else may, perhaps a competitor.

More than 50% of business still used XP and they will continue to use it as long as possible. That could be years yet and GNU/Linux is already being chosen by many. The longer business looks a the cost of replacing all their IT infrastructure to go to “7″, the less likely that will be to happen. They can get like-new performance from most older equipment by re-purposing it as thin clients and only upgrading the servers and network. For all but the smallest of businesses this is obviously the best approach. Do the maths:

• save $50 on each hard drive not bought,
• save $50 on gigabytes of RAM not needed,
• save $100 or more on licenses for software,
• save $hundreds on lower cost of maintenance,

and multiply by thousands of seats. Even if they go to “7″ on terminal servers, M$ still charges per-seat license fees, eating into all that saving. Dell will lose revenue in the long term by the migration to thin clients but in the short-term, the supplier who gives the customers lower costs will win. Dell needs a larger share of that lowered cost of IT to maintain profitability. They cannot get it by sticking with M$.

Speed is probably the most important thing in IT for me. I want what I want when I want it. Newer hardware helps. More efficient algorithms help. Google has made some developments that will help the speed of web browsing, a bit here and a bit there.

They have done some work on the TCP stack, HTTP headers, their browser, of course, and DNS. What has M$ done to help you get things done faster lately? Nothing, except to slow your PC so you rush out and buy another with newer hardware and a new licence fee for them.

Way to go, Google!