Published by Robert Pogson December 31st, 2010
in technology.
Emma Alvarado sued M$ in 2009 over the silly and costly XP “downgrades” for people buying PCs that came with Vista. The court disallowed class action and eventually ruled that M$ had not been shown to profit from the practice. Perhaps the dog ate the money but M$ and its partners never do anything without raking in huge amounts of cash.
She is tenacious and is suing again on more limited grounds, California law, which may better protect the consumer.
Going into business in any field is risky and opens one to legal suits but releasing beta software and charging money for it when customers really preferred previous products is a recipe for disaster.
I would have preferred Emma to organize a bunch of InstallFests, but each to his own… An InstallFest has the immediate reward of freeing people from enslavement to the monopoly and it is a lot of fun after the hard work of preparation is done. Legal suits tend to be draining of time and money for an uncertain result. In this case, I have no doubt that M$ is guilty of something be it poor business or gouging or anti-competition but justice delayed is justice denied and hardly worth the bother. Getting the world to use Free Software is a much more satisfactory result.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 31st, 2010
in technology.
2012 likely will be the year that M$ gives away use of its OS generally. In 2011, that other OS will lose major share in the ARMed world and ARM will invade the Wintel domain by the end of 2011 in desktops, notebooks, netbooks and servers. In 2012, M$ will have to give away licences to its OS in all these areas.
There will be a few niches remaining. The rich will still be glad to pay a lot for an expensive OS. Some businesses and professionals who make enough money in one day to pay for all their IT for a year even with M$ getting its tax will be glad they don’t have to exert any effort to change. But everyone else will have the choice, know they have the choice and make the choice for Free Software. That will derail the Wintel monopoly forever in 2012. Don’t worry about M$. They can diversify, cut margins and layoff staff just like other businesses. Don’t worry about Intel. They can diversify, cut margins and layoff staff just like other businesses but neither will be able to count on positive cash-flow just because they exist.
No amount of advertising, FUD, bribery or corruption will keep the Wintel monopoly strong after 2012. M$, Intel and their “partners” will have to earn a living the old-fashioned way, by working for a living.
see http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1934490/analyst-googles-chrome-bury-windows
see http://displaydaily.com/2010/12/14/google-sees-life-in-the-cloud-wo-windows/
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 30th, 2010
in technology.
Devices intended to sell at retail for less than $100 are in design stage and should be on the market in 3 to 6 months. The number of users of smart-phones should explode with this development and Android should complete its climb to domination of mobile computing and telephony.
see “2011 will be the year Android explodes“ by Seth Weintraub
I don’t see any way the domain of x86 can be protected from invasion of ARM in 2011 with these kinds of numbers. People will want the same OS/UI on their mobile thingies as their desktops, PCs, notebooks and netbooks. If retailers do not sell these gadgets, ISPs will.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 29th, 2010
in technology.
Thanks to a blogger we now know how much M$’s tax is. He chatted with Dell to insist on quotations for the same machine with and without that other OS. The bottom line?
“I have received a quotation for the Dell Vostro V13 and here are the numbers:
a) S$887.15 for the N-series
b) S$1045.79 for the same machine with ‘doze. Continue reading ‘The Tax’
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 29th, 2010
in technology.
Paul Allen has amended his complaint with more specificity…“The ’507 patent describes an invention that enables a user to efficiently review a large body of information by categorizing and correlating segments of information within the body of information and generating displays of segments that are related to the primary information being viewed by the user”… and so on.
There should be a law against trolling like this. I remember using software that does this kind of stuff in the 1970s before the web was around. Even a table of contents or an index could be said to infringe. This is so vague it should also be chucked. Perhaps they will tweak the court’s interest with a third amended complaint or add a few hundred other software patent claims.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 28th, 2010
in technology.
You can tell M$ is in a panic. They are telling lies:
- VDI is more costly than running thick clients with that other os
- “7″ is cheaper to run than XP
- The thin client model is more complicated and more things can go wrong.
Continue reading ‘Panic at M$’
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 28th, 2010
in Linux in Education and technology.
It just makes no sense to waste valuable resources only to spend a ton of money replacing those resources.
“Dysart Unified School District has switched about 3,000 of its computers from the Microsoft Windows operating system to Linux“
Same old story. Budget cuts. PCs growing old. GNU/Linux gives them new life and the school district saved $100K in a year. If that is mainstream, imagine the motivation a school like mine without any budget for IT has to switch…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 28th, 2010
in technology.
Bruce Byfield and I often don’t agree on much but he has it right when he predicts that LibreOffice will compete head-to-head with OpenOffice.org in 2011:
Although a release candidate of LibreOffice’s first release is currently available, it has few differences from OpenOffice.org. However, anyone who browses the mailing lists of both LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org can hardly help but notice that LibreOffice’s are the more lively. In the enthusiasm for the fork, everything seems up for reconsideration, and this attitude could lead to a 2011 release that is strongly different from OpenOffice.org.
I did download and install LibreOffice 3.3-rc2 this morning and it worked like a charm. It may not be radically different from OpenOffice.org 3.3 at this point but you can feel the momentum building. Oracle may not care about OpenOffice.org very much at all in their grand scheme but the folks at the Document Foundation are passionate and energized. The fork seems to have eviscerated the old team and attracted new people with new ideas. They are getting about a megabyte of gzipped messages on their lists each month. Check out the Feature List.
Download it here and give it a try.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 28th, 2010
in Linux in Education and technology.
“The days of “throwing money” at IT are clearly a thing of the past and CIOs will increasingly need a clear business case for any future investments they make”
So says IDC…
I’ve been saying the same thing for years. Continue reading ‘Clear Business Case’
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 28th, 2010
in technology.
Russians have been active with GNU/Linux for many years and their government has made progress in adopting GNU/Linux. Now, there is a five-year plan. Continue reading ‘Russia Advances into the 21st Century’
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 25th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
1,000 Posts on this BLOG
3,541 Comments
It has been a lot of work and a lot of fun. I enjoy reading and writing. I expect to do more in the coming years. With retirement I should be able to structure my time and do even more worthwhile projects like HowTos and videos. Starting in June I will have nothing much to do all day except finish (or, perhaps, enter the second phase of ) landscaping our yard and work on the BLOG. Next winter, I should be able to let the yard sleep and concentrate on IT. An on-line book or two could happen. I might start by publishing a HowTo building an entire FLOSS system for a school or office from scratch. A lot of schools treat IT as though they either have to buy it off-the-shelf or be computer-geeks. There is a middle ground where just about anyone can become a computer geek with a little help. Most people can follow a recipe. A Wiki has advantages for extensibility but it is not printable easily. A LyX document might be a better medium. Then PDF or HTML can be built from the same project. I will have to look into a version control system.
The beauty of this blog is that while I have done a bit of work many people contributed useful comments and links which greatly increases the value. That helps keep me sane in that I do not have to operate in a vacuum. I thank all who have commented and contributed. Many have made suggestions of things I could do that might be more valuable. I have adopted some, ignored some, and will do some of those in the future.
My priorities for the current school year are to complete documentation of the IT system in my school and to train a member of the staff to its operation. We both have other day-jobs so time is short. By working together on projects I hope to shorten the familiarization period. The gentleman has been using GNU/Linux on the desktop for a few months and has used a thin client so the system should make sense as more is revealed. The release of Debian Squeeze is imminent and he has been using it so there should be no big surprises. I can help over the web or by SSH if necessary after I retire. Documentation is the key. By using searchable documentation with a printed copy we should have a very efficient means of maintaining continuity. We do not have a lot of redundancy so trouble-shooting skills/resources are vital. The next 20 client machines have still not arrived. Perhaps they will come by truck over the winter roads. All shall be revealed eventually. Students and my trainee will gain experience commissioning the new machines. In the long run our growth in IT-capability seems to be out-stripping our needs by a large margin. We now have 14 machines suitable to be GNU/Linux terminal servers when we only had 2 last year. Just 2 of the newer machines would be capable of running the whole school. It should be about 5 years before the supply of XP-capable machines dries up so our main need is to update the terminal/file servers. Probably we should add LDAP and an internal e-mail system this semester. Some better network switches and repairs to cabling are on the wishlist.
In the larger world of IT, I see many things happening in 2011, almost all of them are huge positives. ARM will advance on all fronts as will GNU/Linux. I see thin clients moving along smartly. Many will use the expensive VDI systems but many will revel in the efficiency of an old-fashioned virtual terminal provided by the x-window system of GNU/Linux. If GNU/Linux evolves away from X, there surely will be some suitable networked display to permit the thinnest of thin clients to operate. There are moves to eliminate the VGA adaptor but I cannot see that being universal. There are just too many VGA monitors out there with years of life left. Changing the connector is one way to make thin clients obsolete but they are a quick-to-market product and can adapt. I see an end to up-selling. It delayed innovation but has not stopped it. Small cheap computers will soon be everywhere.
Change is inevitable and often the old generation tries to slow things down. I relish change as long as it frees us from monopoly and gives us efficient IT.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson December 25th, 2010
in technology.
see Is 2011 The Year of Open Source in the Public Sector?. It is. The whole world of IT is turning to FLOSS and the public sector/government is no exception. It makes no sense to pay more for IT simply so that some large corporations can make a killing issuing licences instead of working for a living like everyone else.
“Maude also said that government will no longer be a source of “easy margins” for the large IT suppliers. He outlined plans for greater transparency in all future dealings between government and suppliers, saying he expects the terms of all future IT procurement contracts to be made available online.”
Maude is a cabinet minister in the government of the United Kingdom.
“In December, the local government in the Canadian province of Quebec were the latest to announce a preference for open source. According to treasury board president Michelle Courchesne, free and open source software must satisfy three criteria: Does it meet our needs? Is it a quality product? Is the cost favourable?”
Amen! It’s about time the $billions going to M$ to print licensing stickers shrinks to reasonable amounts. It makes sense to keep costs as low as possible. $billions going to Redmond is a conspicuous sign of excessive costs. We taxpayers should insist on FLOSS everywhere.
- Robert Pogson
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