Catch-22 was a work of fiction about a guy who could not win because there were rules against that.
Now the Swiss Supreme Court has ruled that the lower court erred by not allowing FLOSS providers to object to giving M$ a sweet deal but also found that the FLOSS providers had not provided any evidence that they could meet the requirements of the purchaser (the Swiss government). The Supremes did not accept that no proof could be provided because there were no specifications… Catch-22. You can’t win in that court. Obviously the judges have been living in a cave somewhere for 20 years. Perhaps they have never heard of Munich or Extramedura. I find it tragic that supposedly wise people could make such a silly ruling.
A comment on Groklaw alerted me to the fact that M$ raised prices in Australia when Australia’s currency was low but has not dropped prices now that the currency is on par with US$. The current price of “7″ Ultimate is Australian $469 (US$484) while in the USA is is US$320. Chuckle. I guess M$ assumes Australia is locked-in or M$ has given up on keeping share.
Australians! GNU/Linux costs the price of a download and a bit of your time. Save money and increase performance by using GNU/Linux.
The USA, in spite of wealth and ingenuity, is sadly lacking in technical excellence in IT. They have saddled themselves with the burden of supporting Wintel instead of innovating. Google and Kansas City have a joint project to change things. They are going to spawn gigabit/s Internet access. This is old hat in Japan and Sweden which have had gigabit/s for five years. I used gigabit/s at a German university about then. I have provided gigabit/s on every LAN I could in schools since then. It’s way cool.
For those who have not used gigabit, it’s like having a hard drive on a remote computer accessible as if it were local. 100+ MB/s transfer speeds change what you can do. Video is one example of how that speed can be used but software developers love to be able to shuffle whole virtual machines or repositories like they were e-mails. The possibilities expand. The ability to distribute processes to multiple sites where each process gets the hardware, personnel or data that is required is so much greater. This unleashes creativity. Instead of trying something tomorrow it can be done now.
“Now” is an important concept unfamiliar to users of that other OS. Having to “wait”, “please wait”, defrag, search or re-re-reboot just gets in the way of “now”. Gigabit Internet allows anyone on any small cheap computer to access information cached in the RAM of some server as if it were local. Please wear a helmet and goggles. The Internet is a different place with gigabit/s speed. You could fall off your chair or have your eyes dry up if you find no time to blink before a page flashes on the screen. Combined with fast browsers like Google’s Chrome, residents of Kansas CIty are in for a shock.
Google knows what’s out there. That knowledge is what they give away in order to collect revenue on ads. Part of their knowledge is the state of FLOSS and they shared that at a conference: “DiBona said that according to Google’s net crawlers, the web now contains over 31 million open source projects, spanning 2 billion lines of code. Forty-eight per cent of these projects are under the GPL, 23 per cent use the LGPL, 14 per cent use the BSD license, 6 per cent use Apache, and 5 per cent use the MIT license. All other licenses are used with under 5 per cent of the projects. Google’s preferred license, DiBona reiterated, is Apache, because “it has patent grants that are fair.” Unlike the GPL, Apache has no copyleft requirement, meaning those who use Apache code needn’t distribute their changes back to the community.”Continue reading ‘Google on the State of FLOSS’
Search engines are a necessary part of the web. They shift the burden from users of the web to scan IP address space for servers. M$ and many others laughed at Google for creating a business of providing search as a free-to-users/paid-by-advertising service. Google succeeded and has huge share globally. The major competitors are Bing (M$+Yahoo) in the USA and Baidu in China. Otherwise they are a near-perfect monopoly of search.
Ironically, M$ has complained to the EU Competition Bureau that Google is doing illegal things to prevent competition in the EU.
e.g.
preventing M$ from scraping YouTube,
preventing Phoney 7 from integrating with YouTube as Android does,
attempting to be the exclusive search engine for “orphaned” books, and
preventing competitors from using the data advertisers give Google…
Sigh. On the book thing, M$ may have a legitimate beef but Google is still in negotiation in the US after a judge ruled the deal was too tight. The rest is sour grapes that Google does not want to be a “partner” of M$, working for free. Nothing prevents M$, a fillthy-rich corporation from doing the same work that Google has done to build its business. M$ should not expect the Competition Bureau to force Google to work for M$. That’s not about competition but fair play. Where’s M$’s version of YouTube? Where’s M$’s information about it’s customers on the web?
The matter of books is already on the EU’s agenda. They seem to be all in favour of distributing books of all kinds on the web and setting the rules.
It seems to me that M$ is attempting to help M$ compete against Google without having to do the work while attaching its claims to one legitimate issue, the exclusive dealing over books. I expect the book thing to fizzle and the rest to be kicked out. Google does not have to be a “partner” of M$. If Google scans the books and creates the “YouTube” of books there is nothing wrong with an exclusive deal. The question arises with orphaned books where the owner of copyright cannot be found. That can be solved by having such works move into the public domain or some accounting/escrot in the case that an owner emerges later.
It looks as though M$ is shocked that Google does not want to be absorbed by the Borg, and wants Google re-educated by the EU Commission. Good luck on that.
I expect the EU will see through M$’s plan to extend its reach into search by seducing government in the EU just as they have done in the USA where M$ has been allowed to use software patents, astroturfing, exclusive dealing, file formats, protocols and FUD as weapons against competitors. The USPTO even allowed M$ to have a generic trademark for that other OS. The EU does better.
Just as IBM and Intel made x86 a standard of which that other OS became a part. Google and ARM appear to seek standardization of Android 3 + ARM. This could be a good thing as it will reduce time to market for new products and reduce the difficulty of porting apps to the different mini-platforms that exist today within the world of smart thingies. Continue reading ‘AndArm? GArm? How to Name the New Platform.’
2010 was tough for Acer. They slipped a bit in market share. The netbook stalled where they had been a leader. Now
">the CEO has quit or been fired or something. Acer Chairman, JT Wang said, “The personal computer remains the core of our business. We have built up a strong foundation and will continue to expand within, especially in the commercial PC segment. In addition, we are stepping into the new mobile device market, where we will invest cautiously and aim to become one of the leading players.”
Perhaps the old CEO did not accept the mobiles as small personal computers. The board does so I expect to see Acer within 2011 do something with smart thingies. From the history of the company, having lots of sales through ISPs and banks, I would expect that smart phones and tablets will come to the front. I expect that Acer will compete on price/performance as they always did. The trick will be whether they go with M$ or Google… I would bet on Google because the margin is larger or the price can be lower. When you are late to a market you have to lower prices.
They want a hair-drier on every desk. Ars Technica is an example. Their “budget box” comes to $700+ including accessories. They even manage to spend about as much on a video card as on the motherboard and CPU… Don’t even look at their “god” box.
It’s all too silly. For less than $500 one can buy or build a system adequate to 90% of needs. The rest is gold plating on the Cadillac, pretty but useless.
I like IT. I like powerful IT. Spending money on unused idling stuff is just a waste, like a V12 engine that never leaves the garage. With networking it makes absolutely no sense to waste such powerful systems on a single user when GNU/Linux is a multi-user/multi-tasking system that loves to share.
The rascals are migrating thousands of PCs to that other OS v “7″ in spite of promoting openness, and FLOSS, without a tender.
RedHat is ticked off as they should be. They do desktops too. The reason for the lack of tendering? “contractual time constraints”, meaning they made a deal with M$ to keep sucking at the teat of M$, EDGI, again, no doubt. I hope appeals of this reach the EU commission who value competition.
M$ that named its flagship product after holes in the wall has interceded at the USPTO claiming “app store” is generic and Apple should not be allowed to register the trademark. Of course this is the pot calling the kettle black because M$ did the same thing with rectangular regions on the screen allowing interactions with a process.
IDC predicts growth of smart phones will be about 50% in 2011
“Android is poised to take over as the leading smartphone operating system in 2011 after racing into the number 2 position in 2010,” said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. “For the vendors who made Android the cornerstone of their smartphone strategies, 2010 was the coming-out party. This year will see a coronation party as these same vendors broaden and deepen their portfolios to reach more customers, particularly first-time smartphone users.”
see IDC
IDC predicts 450million smart phones will ship in 2011. That’s a big number. About the same as “PC” shipments. Linux will be on a lot of them, about 39.5%. Portability (small size, long lived batteries, and low mass), power adequate to browse the web and play most audio-visual media and acceptable price make these gadgets killers for M$’s monopoly. M$ still claims the desktop, certainly, but hooked up to a keyboard and a monitor, these gadgets rock. I think the future of IT is people carrying such devices and docking them at home and at work. You cannot make phone calls or navigate with a USB drive…
2011 is a special number. It’s a prime number and it is the year that put M$ in its place, a supplier of IT, not the godfather of IT any longer. The desktop share should shrink dramatically in years to come as the tiny gadgets take over.
My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.
My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.
I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.
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