Archive for May, 2008
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
What is real time Linux worth to you?
Justifying investments in a real time Linux platform is perhaps too easy given a new report from Tabb Group (URLs below). Purists may initially point out that the report is more focused on speed of execution which real time is not necessarily intended to provide. I’ll counter that argument right now by pointing out that most real time implementations do increase speed while still providing the benefit of determinism that real time is intended to offer. Besides, how can you ensure speedy execution across thousands of transactions if you don’t have a deterministic platform? Even the fastest drag race cars slow down eventually…
Add in real time Java and you have a fully deterministic stack.
16 percent of all U.S. institutional equity commissions are exposed to latency risk, totaling $2 billion, according to a new report from the TABB Group.
http://www.tabbgroup.com/PublicationDetail.aspx?PublicationID=346
http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/feed/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208400864&cid=RSSfeed_WST_All
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
Web 2.0 companies fail to deliver revenue - shocking!
I know, it’s a shocking headline, but apparently some critics are coming out of the investment community that has been funding these startups. I know many of you who have spoken to me personally have probably heard my views and written them off as “old school” or not as flashy/exciting. The truth is I do understand the value of “Web 2.0″ and I can see where it makes sense and where it doesn’t. I’ve posted here a few times before that the valuations and business fundamentals were way out of whack and I still to this day know that I’m right.
And now I can point to the Financial Times as another credible source in my favor. For very similar reasons, I think we’ll see many “open source” companies fall into the same pit. Some will make it (although facing challenges), but many will not. I hope Digium does b/c I love the Asterisk product and I’d like to see it gain wider adoption. But there are others that I can guarantee you will not survive more than 12 months.
Fundamental economics wins every time - don’t try to fight it.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c968990-2b4c-11dd-a7fc-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
Many members of the Web 2.0 generation of internet companies have so far produced little in the way of revenue, despite bringing about some significant changes in online behaviour, according to some of the entrepreneurs and financiers behind the movement.
The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. Together with the US economic downturn and a shortage of initial public offerings, the failure has damped the mood in internet start-up circles.
“There is going to be a shake-out here in the next year or two” as many Web 2.0 companies disappear, said Roger Lee, a partner at Battery Ventures.
Update: I just saw a new article in my RSS feed over at The Register. What can I say - great minds think alike.
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
OOXML: “Dead Format Walking”
Jason Brooks’ title sums it all up succinctly.
Since most Office users would be happy to continue using Microsoft’s old binary formats, and since those for whom open standards are important would probably prefer ODF or PDF formats anyhow, I won’t be surprised if OOXML quietly dies before that future Office iteration ever sees the light of day.
Monday, May 26th, 2008
A massive energy innovation bubble on the horizon?
I can sense it - energy innovation will be the biggest bubble for investment - and the greatest economic challenge over the next 5-10 yrs. We all know “things are happening” even today, but a couple datapoints this weekend confirmed for me this really is going to be huge. One thing I’ve noticed continually happens is that a major issue like energy will likely see over-investment which drives exuberated expectations and which will lead to the pendulum swinging too far with a market correction to follow. But the pendulum is swinging and that’s a good thing for the world economy. I only hope the changes are not too late.
If I get time this week, I’ll explain more, but I even just noticed James Governor is expanding the Greenmonk analyst team. Follow the money is always a good model for investing in growth :-)
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008
Hate to be the skeptic, but…
What does Microsoft gain from making these moves? If there’s anything about open source communities and technologies I’ve learned is that it’s imperative that you understand the motives, the context and the drivers of any vendors’ moves. I hate to be the skeptic, but I suspect Microsoft’s intentions are not pure. Warning phrases from Yoda come to mind… “Clear your mind must be, if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/ramji_microsoft_open_source_strategy/
Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
Warren Buffet’s advice on politics and stock picking are the same
“Buy into a business that’s doing so well an idiot can run it, because sooner or later, one will. The U.S. is sort of like that.”
And with that he’s backing Obama.
Warren Buffet is a very unique individual - I wish I could meet him someday.
“I like candy in general,” he said, picking up a packet. “I’m pretty favorably disposed toward candy.”
Friday, May 16th, 2008
More proof the US Congress (and downstream courts) have not kept up with a changing world
A smirk of “when will this nonsense end” crossed my face as I read another Ars article this time covering issues with copyright and the impact on average American citizens. I too had once been turned away for trying to have an old family portrait professionally retouched. The issue? We did not have written permission from the copyright holder so they wouldn’t do the work for me. I went home and did it myself with a scanner and Photoshop. Sue me.
The photographer was long gone, I knew it was taken before the CTEA and the 28 yr renewal requirement had been in effect. Let’s be realistic - who would know which of his decedents (if you could find them) had been bequeathed his rights in an old family portrait from many years ago? If no one had inherited the rights, then what? Take the entire family (if you can find them) to court to figure it out?
Personally, I think it’s ridiculous that non-commercial photographs are not excluded or carved out from the copyright law today. Yes, it may disrupt how some photographers charge today, but they can change their billing methods. Let’s be honest: how hard would it be for you to just scan in your picture and reprint a billion of them vs finding a photographer from 30 yrs ago? Think of Snapfish - do you have authorization to print pictures your friend (the copyright holder) posted on their account and shared with you? Snapfish will print and deliver them to you - has Snapfish violated their copyright? I haven’t read Snapfish’s terms or agreements, but you can see how ridiculous this can get.
If you can’t tell, these issues where we have refused to modernize our legislation and/our court precedent fire me up. While I understand that oil, energy, and Iraq are very important issues in the US, these arcane principles that we have not adjusted for the modern world really do prohibit our society from advancing and innovating. Instead of taking new technologies and riding their full potential, the innovators are constantly caught up in a complex web of vague/loose rights that make it impossible to move forward. This ties right into the software patent post from earlier today.
Let’s wake up - our founding fathers never imagined a system whereby people could instantly share photos over an internet at will. Heck, at the time of signing the Constitution, photography “as a usable process” hadn’t been invented yet - it’s time to update our systems!
Many lawyers and scholars will argue that we can accomodate new technologies with the existing system. Sure, they love the existing system. It’s vague, complex, and crazy enough that they can bill hours for a lifetime.
I disagree - the issue is not whether a particular ruling can be expanding to cover a new technology or advancement. Sure, we can keep expanding/contracting the scope of rulings for another thousand years. The real issue is what do we in today’s society truly consider to be intellectual property and who do we consider to be the owner of those rights? Finally, are the current laws around this intellectual property still granting the right (as in proper) permissions? For instance, have you considered that your family photograph is under copyright by the photographer for 70 years after his/her death! Yes, unless you signed an agreement otherwise, your wedding, family, and other photographer-taken pictures are owned by your photographer and his/her decedents.
The US used to require a renewal of copyright after 28 years in order to continue holding your exclusive rights. (ahem, then Disney came along and took over the copyright system) I think it’s time to update the entire system bringing all walks of copyright holders to the tables and systematically update our system to align with a modern world one piece of IP at a time. In my humble opinion ;-)
Friday, May 16th, 2008
Ars covers In Re Bilski
Interesting analysis of the Bilski case. I hadn’t paid much attention to this case, so it’s great to see a tech pub covering the issues with software patents, business methods and algorithms outside the legal pubs. These are major issue and I would love to see a court actually put forth a rule that makes sense versus the nonsensical parameters we have today.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/software-patent-problems-abound.ars
At one extreme was Bilski’s attorney, who advocated a vague and permissive standard for patent eligibility, suggesting only that a patent must involve a significant amount of “real-world activity” to be eligible for patent protection. Since there would be little point in patenting a process that didn’t involve some amount of “real-world activity,” this standard barely limits the scope of patentable subject matter at all.
In the opposite corner was the US Patent and Trademark Office, which has rejected Bilski’s patent and argued last Thursday that a process must involve a tangible article—not something intangible like a contractual obligation—in order to be patentable. When pressed on whether such a standard would amount to a reversal of State Street—which concerned a patent on a system for converting intangible data from one form to another—the USPTO’s attorney insisted that the computer system in State Street involved a physical computer, whereas Bilski’s patent application was for a purely mental process that involved no hardware at all.
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
NYSE and Euronext are all powered by Linux
Interesting news - Linux powers the world’s economy! If Linux is running the largest stock exchanges in teh world, can anyone still call it “second class” to UNIX?
The New York Stock Exchange and its European subsidiary exchanges are running their trading systems on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat announced Wednesday, as it unveiled a new marquee customer.Linux has been known to be in use at several New York financial services firms, but few have stepped up to the podium to testify on the value of their implementations. As a result of mergers and acquisitions, the New York Stock Exchange has migrated over the last few years from HP-UX to IBM AIX to Sun Solaris to Linux. NYSE Group CIO Steve Rubinow said the conversion to Linux followed the acquisition of the Euronext exchange in 2007. Unlike some trading companies that suggest Linux is running their secondary systems, Rubinow emphasized that Linux is running the NYSE’s mission-critical trading systems.
Friday, May 9th, 2008
An honest look at Xen and a future with KVM
I think we can finally admit that we, the Linux community, made a very big mistake with Xen. Xen should have never been included in a Linux distribution. There, I’ve said it. We’ve all been thinking it, have whispered it in closed rooms, and have done our bests to avoid it.
He makes a very valid point that the Xen kernel will never be upstream and therefore it will always be an extra layer. The difference between Xen or other packages around the kernel is that Xen is at the core its own kernel. This is what makes KVM so attractive - you don’t need that extra layer (which creates complexity no matter what).
Quite simply, Xen is not, and will never be, a part of Linux. Therefore, including it in a Linux distribution has only led to massive user confusion about the relationship between Linux and Xen.
Now one thing Anthony didn’t mention is that the ability to swap Xen as the virtualization technology with another, future, and better technology was something the kernel developers perceived long ago. Because of that foresight, most people are starting to use libvirt which abstracts the interface layer into managing virtualization hypervisors like Xen and KVM. What does this mean for enterprise and ordinary users alike? The migration from one technology like Xen to another like KVM can be done near seamlessly because the libvirt-based management tools can plug into either hypervisor, checkpoint start/stop, and bring the images up on another hypervisor.
Friday, May 9th, 2008
Toshiba will put Cell processors in select 2009 laptops
This is really cool - Toshiba is putting Cell processors into its 2009 laptops. It looks like they’re targeting video decoding similar to what they’re doing with the Cell processor in TVs, but I’m sure some crafty Linux developers will have a lot of fun using it to power 3D graphics. The Toshiba cell chip will only use 4 SPEs vs the 8 used in the PS3 but it should be quite powerful nonetheless. This could be a huge step forward for video editing and it looks like they’re already partnering with Corel (could we see VideoStudio accelerators?).
I’d like to see Toshiba sell a desktop card now…
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/09/toshiba_cell_strategy/
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
Yankees vs Indians Tomorrow @ Yankee Stadium
I’ll be in attendance - first game of the year and I’ll get to see Cliff Lee pitch for the first time live.
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Using ext4 and migrating from ext3
A noticed a very interesting developerWorks article today on the ext4 filesystem.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ext4/index.html?ca=drs-
There’s a great summary table of the new features. Remember though, ext4 is still labeled experimental.
Ext4 is the latest in a long line of Linux® file systems, and it’s likely to be as important and popular as its predecessors. As a Linux system administrator, you should be aware of the advantages, disadvantages, and basic steps for migrating to ext4. This article explains when to adopt ext4, how to adapt traditional file system maintenance tool usage to ext4, and how to get the most out of the file system.
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
Adobe’s opening up (a little)
Good direction for Adobe - I’d like to say there was more, but for now, this is a good direction.
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/
Just notice Cote covered the action: http://www.redmonk.com/cote/2008/05/01/adobes-open-screen-project-a-plan-lower-barriers-to-using-flash-checking-up-on-the-ria-wars/
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
UK standards body taken to court over OOXML approval process
There’s some interesting backlash over OOXML’s approval in the UK.
The British Standards Institution has been taken to court by a group of Unix users in an attempt to get the standards body to recant its approval of Microsoft’s Office Open XML document format.
I find it ironic that there is not a single instance where anyone has really shown a love for OOXML or some sort of even small inclination that it was a good thing to approve as an international standard. Instead it seems the vote was PawnsPaidByMSFT vs PeopleWhoThinkForThemselves. Well now it’s in the UK courts.
Subscribe to RSS/Atom Feed
