Archive for August, 2008
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
We had a recession, great. Can we get over it now?
I swear the media talked us into a recession last year. Now the GDP figures are looking positive. One reason is that it’s become comparatively “cheaper” for foreigners to buy US exports, which then stimulates demand. The IT sector majors haven’t even hit a bump except for possibly Sun Microsystems. Can we stop talking about doom and gloom economics now? Just fix the banking situation and we should be done here. The housing market will always correct itself. Speaking of which, I’m buying a house – I’m contributing to the housing comeback.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26436824/
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product, or GDP, increased at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter. The revised reading was much better than the government’s initial estimate of a 1.9 percent pace and exceeded economists’ expectations for a 2.7 percent growth rate.
The rebound comes after two dismal quarters. The economy actually shrank in the final three months of 2007 and limped into the first quarter at a feeble 0.9 percent pace. The 3.3 percent growth in the spring was the best performance since the third quarter of last year, when the economy was chugging along at a brisk 4.8 percent pace.
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Psystar, speculation, press and absolutely no legal precendent to stand on
It amazes me how much coverage Psystar gets in the press and how much people want to speculate about its future. Yes, I’d love to run OS X on any hardware I choose, but that doesn’t matter one bit here. What matters here is intellectual property, copyrights, patents, trademarks and licensing. It’s hard to think of an area of IP law Psystar is not violating doing what it does with Mac OS X. Sure, I’d love to see them win so I can run OS X on my PC tomorrow, but I fear for what impact such a nonsensical precedent would create. In fact, I would not want to see Psystar win because of the irreversibly bad precedent it could create.
Counterclaim for antitrust?? First, this case will be nothing comparable to the Microsoft tying case. Just remove that fantasy from your mental casework right now. Second, where does this go to next? Should auto makers stop tying the onboard OS and drivers for your car to function from the hardware? Should your TV come with a separate fee and license for the OS and drivers? Finally, does Psystar realize this flies in the face of the entire industry practice (e.g. try buying an HP laptop – what OS options are tied to it?). How is HP any different than Apple?
This is pure nonsense and I can’t believe Psystar is still around let alone with enough funding to hire lawyers. It was a stupid idea from the start and I hope this case (and the rampant media speculation) will catch up with reality fast.
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
I’m highly impressed by Nikon’s new D90: SLR+HD Video
Nikon finally married an SLR and HD video camera. I really like where this is going. Finally a reason to upgrade (if Canon puts this into an EOS SLR). The big challenge here is the switching costs can be very high due to lens investments.
The D90 is the first S.L.R. in the world that can record video.
High-definition video, at that. Stunning, vivid, 720p, widescreen, 1024-by-720, 24-frames-per-second video, with the color and clarity that only an S.L.R. can provide.
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Canon EF-S 18-200mm IS News
Oh the agony of having Canon release a lens that overlaps two that I already own. This could be a great consolidation lens but the $700 price tag is steep… eBay… Why Canon did not choose USM puzzles me, but I’ll be interested to see the image quality on the production version.
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Navigating Linux virtualization options
Via the LF VAC mailing list I stumbled across this wiki site for people interested in understanding all the available virtualization options for Linux. I actually learned a few things reading through the content.
Check it out here: http://virt.kernelnewbies.org/
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Firefox gets a major Javascript performance boost
I always like to see innovation in open source software development because it flies in the face of many critics. Ars is reporting the Mozilla team has identified methods to improve Javascript interpretation performance by up to 40% in some case. Their goal is to make the interpreter faster so that many of the glitzy “web 2.0″ apps that we’re getting used to perform well enough for users. Obviously there seem to be no downsides here, but it also appears the new tracing optimization technique also opens the potential for future gains as well.
ars benchmark graph
Monday, August 18th, 2008
Savio Rodrigues: “Are vendors afraid of open source?”
Savio posted a blog entry a little while ago that I missed until now (yes, I’m way behind on my RSS feeds). Anyway, after reading my blog post here on Microsoft’s annual report statements regarding risk from open source, Savio went and looked up what other software vendors state in their annual reports regarding potential business risk from open source software. The results are indeed interesting. Check out Savio’s analysis here:
http://saviorodrigues.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/are-vendors-afraid-of-open-source/
Monday, August 18th, 2008
BusinessWeek “Open Source: An Open Question for Red Hat and Others”
Wow, some great quotes are included in this BusinessWeek article on Red Hat and open source software. It’s great to see Jim taking control at the helm. Certainly I agree with much of his views, however, I also see Red Hat in a business that needs to continue contributing to community efforts. While I know he’s guiding that as well, it does not really come out in these comments.
I definitely agree with Aaron about the bleak future for those open source companies who “don’t get it”. I talk about the blunders I see all the time, but I suspect over the next couple years we’ll finally see them go under. I was less inclined to buy into Aaron’s comments inferring that having a free version hurts the market opportunity for selling. That “free version” running on a server the customer deamed not necessary to support is exactly why Red Hat is in the position it is today.
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc20080815_938079.htm
Meantime, life has been rough for many of the companies that have bet their business more specifically on open source.
“Open source is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” says Marten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL and now a senior vice-president at Sun. “You have to have patience.” He adds that the company was 13 years old when it sold.
Many investors won’t wait that long. Venture capitalists invested $196 million in U.S. open-source software companies last year, after pouring in $265 million in 2006, according to market researcher Dow Jones VentureSource.
…
Whitehurst, [..] is shifting engineers and marketers away from nice-to-have projects toward areas where Red Hat gets paid. He’s pulling resources out of consumer desktop Linux, and he shuttered an online store that sold other companies’ open-source programs. “I took a look at that and said, ‘We’re not eBay,’” he says. “Red Hat is open source, but that doesn’t mean we do everything in open source.”
…
“A pure service business is not particularly defensible,” says Whitehurst. “Some open-source companies have not truly figured that out.” If the open-source movement, now in its second decade, is to realize its promise for vendors and investors, more of its purveyors will need to get the message soon.
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
How to participate in the Linux kernel development process/community
There’s a great book published over at the Linux Foundation that helps developers who are interested in participating in Linux kernel development and the process for contributing. This is a great resource and is probably one of the most difficult “cultural” and procedural issues for new, aspiring kernel hackers. I think it’s absolutely fantastic the kernel community itself has published a guide on how to participate. This will help significantly as the developer community has scaled already to a very large number of participants.
The LF should publish a PDF version… I’ll send them a suggestion. One other suggestion would be about how a developer should work with their internal legal team to get permission for submitting code. Perhaps we’ll see that in version 2.0.
Oh, and of course it’s free (as in beer) – until O’Reilly buys the rights ;-)
http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/book/how-participate-linux-community
Thursday, August 7th, 2008
Virtualized Linux on Power Boom
Internally within IBM we get to see a number of great adoption statistics for technologies and IBM products. One that has been increasing over time is the usage of Linux virtualized on Power Systems (e.g. POWER6 processor based servers). These systems were always considered “UNIX servers” and that was true in the old days. Today, with virtualization, how do you count a system that has 30% of its capacity dedicated to Linux partitions and 70% to AIX? How about 90% Linux, 10% AIX? The same trend for adoption of Linux on scalable systems is true for Mainframes as well. These systems offer customers a significant amount of flexibility to match workloads and applications to the best hardware without disrupting the OS, tools, etc.
Every now and then IBMers know we’ve clearly done something the competition is unlikely to ever catch up to even if we let them know it’s working. The numbers below speak for themselves. It takes commitment to drive change. To use a poker reference, if you know the odds are in your favor, go all in pre-flop or someone without the odds will potentially take you out on the river card. If Sun had a real Linux strategy, this could be Linux on UltraSPARC Tx. If HP had a real processor strategy, this could be Linux on Superdome.
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2223362/virtualisation-booming-ibm
The company is reporting a threefold increase in the number of virtualised Power Systems servers sold. Sixty four per cent of Big Blue’s customers opted for a virtualised Linux setup on the new servers, compared to just 21 per cent a year ago.
“Even I was stunned by the uptake,” admitted Scott Handy, IBM’s vice president of Power Systems.
Monday, August 4th, 2008
Airport friendly laptop bags on the way
About time somebody figured out a way around the laptop removal requirements:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/05road.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
Monday, August 4th, 2008
WordPress Spam on the Rise?
Are others seeing a sudden drastic rise in WordPress spam comments and users in recent days? Luckily Akismet is catching most of the comments, but SABRE is not so effective at reducing spam user registrations.
Monday, August 4th, 2008
Proof Microsoft still does not “get open source”
You need look no further than the most recent Microsoft annual report to understand that Microsoft still does not “get open source”.
Let’s start with page 12, “Item 1A: Risk Factors”, first risk section:
Challenges to our business model may reduce our revenues and operating margins. Our business model has been based upon customers paying a fee to license software that we develop and distribute. Under this license-based software model, software developers bear the costs of converting original ideas into software products through investments in research and development, offsetting these costs with the revenue received from the distribution of their products. Certain “open source” software business models challenge our license-based software model. Open source commonly refers to software whose source code is subject to a license allowing it to be modified, combined with other software and redistributed, subject to restrictions set forth in the license. A number of commercial firms compete with us using an open source business model by modifying and then distributing open source software to end users at nominal cost and earning revenue on complementary services and products. These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives. To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, our sales, revenue and operating margins may decline.
No where in this section covering “open source” software does Microsoft hint at or acknowledge the possibility that Microsoft could leverage this model to strengthen its developer community, offer attractive licensing into emerging markets, leverage community based development to lead in web server standards, etc.
This is more interesting, because the entire section lacks anything that Microsoft may do to counter, compete with, or embrace the risk it identified: open source software.
Now take a look at the other paragraphs in this section 1A Risk Factors of the annual report. ALL of the other items called out as significant risks have something at the end of their paragaphs – what Microsoft will do about them. For instance:
Advertising Subscription Business Models: “We are devoting significant resources toward developing our own competing software plus services strategies. It is uncertain whether these strategies will be successful.”
Platform based ecosystems (vertically integrated model): “We also offer vertically-integrated hardware and software products;…”
Piracy: “Throughout the world, we actively educate consumers about the benefits of licensing genuine products and obtaining indemnification benefits for intellectual property risks, and we educate lawmakers about the advantages of a business climate where intellectual property rights are protected.”
And it goes on and on… but where is this wonderfully open painting of Microsoft collaborating with the open source community? Will Microsoft ever embrace it enough to have a chance of extending it?
To be continued…
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