2011 March 29 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for March 29th, 2011

Know-How

Published by Robert Pogson March 29th, 2011 in technology. 0 Comments

China is a fascinating place. The sheer number of citizens means much is happening there and with distance and language barriers it is difficult to assess how things are going. I know IT pretty well and the Chinese are deliberately trying to become self-sufficient in IT in a small number of years. They produce chips that perform about the same as COTS chips of 10-15 years ago and are even making super-computers with them. It is conceivable that in the next decade the technology gap will be closed by them.

Some clues are found in the huge numbers of students who get their basic training in China and study overseas to take advanced training and bring ideas and energy home with them. When I was a part of the university community there were Chinese students in every classroom, and they excelled because the minimum requirement to survive in academia over there is a fine case of survival of the fittest. If you start with millions of students who work their hardest, you end up with thousands who are top-notch.

Another clue is number of publications in scientific and technology literature. Within a short time the number of publications should match that of the USA. Whether they have equal stature in quality is another matter but China is working hard to close any gaps and they don’t intend to stop.

I can remember we used to laugh about Russian progress in the 1960s. We don’t laugh any more. The Chinese are much more motivated than the Russians were, they have pride and huge economic incentives. People there are moving from rice-paddies to complex technological systems in a generation or two. The government actually tries to match food production with technological advancement to try to raise all boats with the rising tide. So far it seems to be working. There are whole cities dedicated to one technology or another. It is like Silicon Valley, USA, replicated dozens of times. China is the major producer of many technologies ranging from computers to photo-voltaic cells to batteries and they aim to be state of the art in every one, not just the lowest price. It is hard to beat them on price/performance for anything.

In my pet area, personal computing, China still lags greatly domestically but they are growing much faster than the rest of the world. While we jockey to see who is the largest supplier of IT, they actually put a huge proportion of their PCs into Internet cafes. With the latest moves to small cheap computers, China could catch up even faster. Big business is moving production of almost everything to China not only to produce it faster and cheaper but also to sell a lot in China. At the rate things are going, China could be caught up in everything IT in less than a decade. Their industry hardly slowed down in the recent economic recession because the local market took up the slack. GNU/Linux is part of the story because it rides on the smart thingies and the home-grown computers.

In a little more than a month, I will send spies into China (JOKE!!!) to give first-hand reports in English about the retail market for PCs. My ladies love to shop, even if they don’t buy. They will spend several days and I have begged them to give retail IT some study. We may be blessed with some e-mail and pictures. I won’t be able to wait until the globe-trotting ends.

- Robert Pogson

Ticked Off? Vent!

Published by Robert Pogson March 29th, 2011 in technology. 3 Comments

I have to share. This guy is fed up with his XBox. It’s his fifth one and they all died. His has a flashing red light as the only sign of life. He is really ticked off and decides to make an example of the device:

I can separate the issues of hardware and software so I really feel the pain of that box but M$ really does tick people off sometimes. Usually it’s malware, re-re-boots, slowing down and the like and occasionally failing to boot but usually M$ allows the PC to live on to run GNU/Linux like a rocket. I don’t know what it is about XBoxes. Perhaps M$ just doesn’t get hardware.

My first YouTube video is in production. I have a hard time keeping my lines and typing straight so I am trying to get the video right and fix up the audio track as a narration. It is hard work but it will be worthwhile, a new form of expression for me. I don’t think there will be any abuse of M$ or their products in the videos, just techie joy.

P.S. I have definite safety-related issues with that video but it’s the thought that counts. Don’t do this at home, folks.

- Robert Pogson

Switzerland Owned by M$

Published by Robert Pogson March 29th, 2011 in technology. 2 Comments

A court has ruled that it is OK for the government to buy thousands of PCs with that other OS without public tenders preventing providers of GNU/Linux from competing. One judge disagreed but it was not enough to open the bidding process. This was a migration from XP to Vista/”7″ so it was a lot of work either way but the government did not use an open bidding process as is usual.

No doubt M$ wishes other countries did the same. Some do and some don’t. In many places the project must be opened for tenders if over a certain amount which this one probably would have triggered. There may be an appeal to a higher court and there could be a referendum if enough taxpayers revolt over the prospect of M$ making sweet secret deals with their government.

- Robert Pogson

Software Fit for Purpose

Published by Robert Pogson March 29th, 2011 in technology. 1 Comment

I came across a story of a municipal government that sued IBM for providing software not fit for the purpose. The judge decided in IBM’s favour because the government had not specified what it needed clearly and IBM had relied on the government to approve the choice. Now the government has to pay IBM’s costs as well as it’s own – good money after bad…
“This case refers to the acquisition of software back in 2006 which, in our view, was not fit for purpose. We’re disappointed with the judgement but we took this action because we believed we had been mis sold a product. Our duty is to have IT systems that work and that save the council and the council tax payer money.”

I switched to GNU/Linux in the PCs in my classroom years ago because that other OS would not keep running. It just would not. It was not fit for purpose. Since then that other OS has grown so bloated it will not run on the old PCs that many schools own, so it’s still not fit for purpose. In that same time GNU/Linux has increased so much in flexibility and performance that there is no doubt it is fit for the purpose of educating students and helping students and teachers create, find, modify and present information.

Here are several “killer” reasons why GNU/Linux is fit for the purposes of education:

students and teachers can take the software home under the licence shipped with the software at no cost,
a school can install the software on as many PCs as it wants without accounting licences,maintaining stickers, or typing “authentication codes”,
software does not need to “phone home” to work,
it’s fast, and
the repository and package manager permits instant access to thousands of packages for client or server.

Besides those conveniences, the software available to GNU/Linux is amazingly diverse. Anyone who has an itch to scratch can produce software and distribute it along with GNU/Linux. The result is bunches of software suitable for any age of student, any physical handicap, any course in the curriculum and any special-purpose labs or workstations. I particularly love the fact that the X window system used to connect display, keyboard and mouse to the PC is transparent to the network so the most suitable machine can run the software while the user can be anywhere on the network. That allows upgrading servers more regularly while keeping clients going until they die, a huge economy.

I hope Southwark gets its act together and does its duty, due diligence in acquiring IT.

In his ruling, the judge said, “The team was an intelligent one well versed in IT matters and they gave every impression that they fully understood what it was that Arcindex could and would provide,” the judge said. “I am led inexorably to the factual conclusion that the Southwark team in 2006 and at all times up to the arrival of [a consultant data integrity specialist who was instrumental in the decision to abandon the project] was wholly satisfied that Arcindex met its requirements and reflected exactly what it wanted.”

So, there is a bit more to this than “fit for purpose”. There was the addition of a consultant and perhaps a change of purpose as the system evolved. I know what that is like. I once installed a library management system when along came a consultant who persuaded my employer that if they wanted the consultant’s “free” services they would need to buy $thousands of stuff from a certain company…

In this case the council certainly had a clear idea of what it wanted. Something went wrong along the way.

Others have found Orchard Arcindex quite satisfactory for merging diverse databases.

- Robert Pogson