Robert Pogson

One man, closing all the windows.

Daily Archives / Thursday, November 1, 2012

  • Nov 01 / 2012
  • 1
technology

Sharing is Good, Even for Competitors

“In a rare moment of collaboration, wireless providers AT&T and T-Mobile have agreed to share networks in the challenging days following Superstorm Sandy, allowing customers to use whichever network gets coverage in their areas.”

see AT&T, T-Mobile share networks to help Sandy victims – CNN.com.

Users often find themselves in the dead zones of their ISP. What if they all shared all the time? It’s technically feasible. Maybe a storm will provoke a realization that together we are stronger and more capable than we are divided and competing. The same is true for software. Non-open standards anywhere in IT is stupid.

  • Nov 01 / 2012
  • 5
technology

Nginx Overtakes IIS on Netcraft’s “Active Sites” List

“Studying only active sites, the changes in market share are reversed: Apache grew by 0.23 to 55.66%, while Microsoft fell by 0.83 to 11.53%. Within the million busiest sites, nginx was the only major developer to increase its market share, which now stands at 12.22%.”

see November 2012 Web Server Survey | Netcraft.

This is another reminder that where price/performance matters, FLOSS wins. That other OS and its “partners” just are not competitive. There are now two FLOSS web servers ahead of IIS, Apache and Nginx. IIS is sinking into the weeds where it belongs. I expect that 2012 was the year when that began to happen for their desktop OS as well. 2013 will tell the tale.

  • Nov 01 / 2012
  • 1
technology

Apple Needs to Learn Humility

“Apple Inc. (AAPL) was criticized by U.K. judges in a patent lawsuit with Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) for posting a notice on its website that was “untrue” and “incorrect.”

The U.K. Court of Appeal in London ordered Apple to remove the statement within 24 hours and place a new notice acknowledging the inaccurate comments. The Cupertino, California-based company was told by the same court last month to post the initial notice as part of a ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets didn’t copy the design of Apple’s iPad.”

see GROKLAW.

What were they thinking? It’s obvious the editing of the apology would be unacceptable and criticising the court in the apology was not exactly what the court requested… so now they have a few hours to get it right or face more creative punishments by the court. I expect the court will not be nearly so lenient if Apple repeats this ill-advised adventure. The reality-distortion field around Apple is dangerous. It seems to have affected the operators of the weapon more than the targets. I expect someone could sit in jail next time.

Further, it is interesting to note that one of Apple’s lawyers argued they needed two weeks to tweak their website. Anyone with a FaceBook page knows that’s false. What were they thinking? How much bad PR does Apple want to get out of this legal tantrum?

  • Nov 01 / 2012
  • 7
technology

LibreOffice 3.6.3

“LibreOffice has quickly become the de facto standard for migrations to free office suites, thanks to the growing feature set and the improved interoperability with proprietary software. Instrumental for the overall progress is the growing developer base, which has just reached the number of 550 since the launch of the project, making LibreOffice one of the fastest growing free software projects of the decade.

After the City of Munich and the French Government, which are migrating from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice, it is now the turn of several provinces in Italy, including the largest one in term of inhabitants. In addition, there are many private companies switching to LO, like the largest furniture manufacturer and retailer in Romania, with 1,000 Windows and GNU/Linux desktops.”

see The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 3.6.3 – The Document Foundation Blog.

Wow! 550 developers! Anything is possible. OpenOffice.org used to struggle on with a few dozen…

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