The people have a right to petition government to do the right thing. There is a petition calling for the end of software patents at Whitehouse.gov. Give it a try. Their goal was 5000 signatures and they are up to 12000.
Archive for September 28th, 2011
The Kindle Fire Tablet was announced today. It runs Android/Linux and costs $199. With Amazon’s marketing resources it should sell well. This will take a big bite out of iPad’s lead. There is one downside to it. This tablet is 7 inches… Let’s hope they put out a larger model soon.
UPDATE
The Kindle Fire is not just a product but the tip of an iceberg in the Kindle series. There are 7 machines from a fairly simple e-book reader all the way up to the Kindle Fire which does most of the same things as the less expensive models but adds a custom web-browser. It’s all about making Amazon’s products easy to obtain and to use.
- Kindle – $79
- Kindle Touch – $99
- Kindle Touch 3G – $149
- Kindle Keyboard – $99
- Kindle Keyboard 3G – $139
- Kindle Fire – $199
It’s not about selling Kindles, although that is profitable. Amazon wants to sell 18 million movies and video on demand. It’s like the customer’s mailbox but a lot faster and the customer can reload sooner.
US only…
Jeff Hoogland tries to make the point that M$’s “secure boot” protocol is only a problem if OEMs do not give Linux the key…
He’s drunk the Koolaid. How are OEMs to give Linux the key without giving it to every Tom, Dick and Harry malware writer??? Linux is open source software. Kernel.org does not distribute signed binaries but source code. If the key is in the source code somehow, the world can see it and so can the malware artists.
The bottom line is that the OEMs will not give GNU/Linux the key. They might give some distros the key but that would violate the GPL if the distros use it. You cannot give someone a licence to run the code and then deny them to run the code.
Further, M$ can well twist OEMs’ arms to change the key for M$’s next release, or they can have keys revoked.
Twit.
I cannot get my head around how anyone can run a business with tens of thousands of employees. Schools start to be difficult to run even at 500 students. However, as businesses go, M$, internally, is looking sick these days.
From the unofficial blog:
It’s interesting that while Apple is on the radar of the author, the steam-roller overtaking Apple, Android/Linux on diverse smart thingies, is not. Picture, in your mind, a pedestrian on the sidewalk trying to dodge an out-of-control fuel tanker. The front bumper is the least of his worries even if it is the immediate threat. Thus, it seems to me that M$ is in crisis, with rats trying to escape just before it sinks.
The blog does describe some upside like diverse segments with $billions in revenue. M$ can work like any other business. It is the core Wintel monopoly that is rotting. Eventually the OS segment will have to operate as a business rather than as a monopoly. Otherwise the low morale of the day will be just the beginning of a huge slide wherein everyone in the company will be negatively affected by the delirium of the sick old man running things. There is no right way to diversify a business if one unit is more blessed than all the others. No one likes to be a second-class citizen and no one likes the guy who gets paid for doing nothing.
Tablets Running Android/Linux Are On Track To Surpass iPad In 2012
Published by September 28th, 2011 in technology. 0 CommentsRecent numbers support the idea that Android/Linux tablets will overtake iPad shortly, according to Digitimes. Growth is huge with the world shipping 50%+ more Android/Linux tablets in August than in the whole of the second quarter. For all of 2011, Digitimes estimates Android/Linux tablets will ship 33-40% of the number of iPads shipped. If the growth continues and repeats what happened with smart phones, in 2012, Android/Linux will leave iOS in the dust while Phoney “7″ is still at the starting line.
In the TDF blog: ” we have 136 members who have been nominated for their contributions to the project; we have some 270 developers and 270 localizers (although we always want to attract more), many of whom are also members; we have over 100 mailing lists, with over 15,000 subscribers, half of whom receive all our announcements; and there have been thousands of articles in the media worldwide”
They estimate there are 15 million users running GNU/Linux and 10 million running that other OS and MacOS. The 15million numbers come from IDC’s estimate of new and updated installations of GNU/Linux with many distros using LibreOffice so the growth in users should be many millions per year for several years to come.
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