Archive for December, 2005
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
Google 2005 Zeitgeist Released
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist2005.html
Find out what people search for the most - it’s insightful.
Monday, December 19th, 2005
Finding your niche distro
Found a nice run through of the different distro’s and which cater to a particular users’ needs/personality. This link could help you answer that question from a friend “which distro is the best” as they’re starting off with Linux.
My favorite though is still this Newforge article about what your distro says about you.
If John Wayne had been a Linux user, he would have used Gentoo. Gentoo users are pioneers, people who like to live close to the metal, and don’t mind hurting themselves on sharp objects. Some feel that Gentoo users are simply lazy louts who always want to have a ready excuse for why they are not doing constructive things with their computer, other than compiling or recompiling the latest kernel, app, or hapless passerby. The official Gentoo motto is, “If it moves, compile it.”
Saturday, December 17th, 2005
Irving Wladawsky-Berger On The Internet and Linux
If you’ve ever heard IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger give a talk, you know how powerful and exciting it is to listen. Today I read a post on his blog about how IBM started the “Internet Division” (sounds funny today doesn’t it) and he goes further to explain how Linux was a natural evolution of that strategy. Take a look as it’s very insightful into identifying a customer/market driven trend and building a strategy around that movement.
Thursday, December 15th, 2005
50% of Customers Think HP Will Exit UNIX Market
I read everything Ashlee Vance at El Reg writes. I was just reading this just posted story on UNIX vendor preferences (or non-preferences), and noticed this line:
The GCG study notes that an astonishing 50 per cent of customers surveyed think HP will exit the Unix market in the coming years.
Wow… either we can expect a major shift from HP or they are not selling the Itanium story to customers well. This would probably give Linux a boost though - as Linux incorporates more and more mainframe and UNIX features a slimmer UNIX market is not unexpected. And yet somehow SCO keeps finding more funding… hmmm….
Thursday, December 15th, 2005
Project Portland - Bridging Gnome and KDE
We may have an end to one of the fiercest OSS rivalries - Project Portland, the result of developers meeting face to face and trying to resolve one trying issue that has held ISVs back from developing Linux Desktop apps: there are two APIs to write to…
Portland + Desktop LSB may be a winning ticket to pulling desktop Linux out of the snowbank. El Reg has an opinion of course and provides a glimpse into where the OSDL is headed.
Saturday, December 10th, 2005
How Funny - How to Jump Right Into Conversation
Sick of “Marque el dos para espanol”? Need to speak to a person and keep having to push a 4,6,2 to tell the support computer you cable modem power is on? Catherine points us to a great shortcut:
http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/
Friday, December 9th, 2005
Just Hit Me: MS’s “Patch Tuesday” - Kinda Odd?
Saw this over at eWeek: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1898270,00.asp
What suddenly hit me is how odd this is. Basically we can expect Microsoft will have important patches (mostly security related) every “Patch Tuesday”… The FOSS approach is to patch when a threat arises. Two approaches to solving the same problem, two different delivery methods.
I hate those work meetings you have on the same day/time every week “just because”. I also don’t like to leave my systems unprotected until the next regularly scheduled call.
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
Sam Palmisano on Why IBM Supports Open Computing
This is why IBM has been so successful leveraging open source and open standards for the benefit of customers and IBM’s bottom line. This is where the future is headed, some are throwing things out to create buzz (see Sun’s attempt to offer a free JES after being lost behind Gluecode and JBoss) - while others like IBM execute a truly sustainable open source story.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10296176/site/newsweek/
The Information Puzzle
Some observers are perplexed, and others infuriated, by what they think is IBM’s contradictory stand on innovation. So let me explain.
By Sam Palmisano
Newsweek
Updated: 11:32 a.m. ET Dec. 2, 2005
Issues 2006 - In IBM’s conversations with decision makers—from CEOs to university presidents to prime ministers and community leaders—we are hearing one question over and over: “How can I stimulate growth and economic development while also cutting costs?” Increasingly, the answer is one word: innovation. I agree entirely. The problem is that the nature of innovation is changing in important ways, driven by an increasingly open, networked and global economy. Knowing how to capture innovation’s benefits requires rethinking old assumptions about creation and ownership.
IBM has a unique perspective on this topic. We have earned the most U.S. patents in each of the past 12 years by a very wide margin, yet we’re also the leading business investor and innovator in the open movement. Some observers have been perplexed—and some partisans infuriated—by what looks to them like a contradictory position. But it’s contradictory only if you miss the underlying patterns shaping innovation. The key for business leaders and policymakers alike is not to adopt a black or white position, but to work toward a balanced approach.
Let me try to simplify the issues with two key distinctions: between open source and open standards, and between intellectual property and intellectual capital. Open source is a method of tapping a community of experts to develop useful things. It began in software, but applies broadly, and is anything but anti-capitalist. It can raise quality at reduced costs, and vastly expands opportunities for profit. In a sense, open source fuels innovation much the way science fuels technology. Science is created by communities of experts, whose fundamental discoveries are typically made available to all, including individuals and companies that are able to capitalize on the new knowledge in novel ways. For IBM, the open-source model is familiar territory, given our long track record in the sciences.
Open standards, in contrast, are not a meth-odology, but an underlying condition for economic or social progress because they make possible the free flow of capital, information and ideas. A currency system is an open standard. A highway system is an open standard. The Bill of Rights is an open standard of sorts. The Internet’s founding protocols—http, html, etc.—are important open standards. IBM has embracedopen standards over the past decade, and we’re working in myriad ways to foster their adoption.
Now, to intellectual property vs. intellectual capital. I recently made a presentation on innovation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Afterward, a discussion broke out. The top issue for these future technology leaders was how intellectual-property policy is impacting innovation in global economies. A couple of years ago, this was arcane stuff. Not anymore.
NEWSWEEK has described as “seismic” IBM’s 2005 donation of more than 500 software patents for use by the open community. That was a strategic commitment, one we recently extended by pledging open access to thousands of IBM patents to designated health-care and education industry-standards organizations. Why do this? Some leaders in business, academia and government find it counterintuitive.
Let me explain. More and more of the innovation that truly matters today functions not only as intellectual property (the brilliant work of individuals), but as intellectual capital (a deep well of knowledge created collaboratively). As with open standards, this is about enlarging the pie and fostering innovation on top of what is available to all. And it’s not about gizmos, but about new enterprise models—such as “networkless” telecoms, online auctions or real-time retail systems. Our intellectual-property laws, based on an earlier paradigm, will have to catch up.
In the end, the new, emerging model of collaborative innovation—balancing different aspects of openness and different kinds of ownership, and drawing on the historic and deeply productive relationship between science and technology—has the simplicity and clarity that we always find in big, game-changing shifts. Yes, it certainly is challenging many old assumptions. But that puts it, as a paradigm for future growth and progress, in pretty good company.
Palmisano is chairman and CEO of IBM.
Friday, December 2nd, 2005
Might we see a DMCA exception?
An interesting result of the Sony rootkit fiasco was published on Slashdot and I‘d like to point it out again. A group of researchers are asking the Copyright Office for an exemption to the DMCA in order to publish notice in the future of vulnerabilities and exploits such as what happened with the Sony rootkit. Spyware has suddenly become a justification for circumventing protection technologies - how ironic. What’s even better is the researchers have a corporate backer creating a legitimate justification - Sony!
They only request exemption for a single class § 1201(A)(1)(a) for sound recordings and audiovisual works distributed in compact disc format. So the exemption wouldn’t apply to all works in general, but hey, with the DMCA any crack is a start.
Thursday, December 1st, 2005
The Register calls a bomb a bomb
I love El Reg’s character and no BS style. Today there’s a very candid article that calls Sun out for its arrogance. Read all the way to end - it only gets better as you go.
Check out Gavin Clarke’s awesome article here.
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