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What if Novell is a really good poker player?
Last October Novell changed from a reluctant open source supporter into and open source abuser, according to some of the most vocal supporters of the open movement.
The company cozied up with Microsoft and, even worse, promised to start paying the company for its patents.
Of course the deal had to be greased up, so Microsoft paid $240m to purchase 70,000 SuSE Linux coupons. Microsoft also will pay $108m up front in a cross-licensing deal, which will be offset by a $40m payment (minimum) by Novell for the Linux patent license. Total profit to Novell: $308m.
Then the Free Software Foundation responded by changing the terms of the upcoming GPLv3, which will block the deal.
Novell in last week's annual report warned that the GPLv3 could mean
the end of its Microsoft deal. It would mean a resounding victory
for the FSF, but you have to wonder if Novell didn't see this coming.
In fact, what if Novell planned things this way all along? What if a Novell lawyer found the loophole in GPLv2 that allowed for the Microsoft deal. They then courted Microsoft which was desperate to get on the good side of Linux while coercing license fees out of the open source community – desperate enough to cough up $308m.
Novell could have waited until GPLv3 had been finalized. It then would have been much harder for the FSF to plug the Microsoft loophole, which existed in the first two GPLv3 drafts as well as GPLv2.
Novell also could (and should) have expected that the religious part of the open source community would be outraged about the its patent deal, or any deal between Microsoft and Linux for that matter.
Now Novell essentially diagnosed a problem with the GPL and in the process coerced $300m out of Microsoft.
But if this actually was the case, I doubt that we will ever find out.
Getting touchy feely with Microsoft's coffee-table-PC (video)
Microsoft is having another go at the entertainment market with its new Surface tabletop display.
The display functions as a touch screen but is also able to recognize items. Put a glass on the display and the device will offer the user a selection of drinks and the ability to order.
Place your casino loyalty card on the display and you'll automatically be able to order services paid for with your frequent gambles points.
Microsoft might be the first to bring the concept to market, but the idea has been floating around for some years. Mitsubishi Electric in 2004 showed off a similar device.
Bill Gates also used Surface at his CES keynote last January, although at the time he never identified the device.
HP closes in on the self-ordering e-commerce fridge
HP today unveiled its Retail Store Assistant, a kiosk that will take customer loyalty cards to the next level.
The card offer consumers shopping lists and recipes of the week, but the most obvious benefit will be in the personalized special offers and rebates. Today valuable profit margin is wasted on consumers who collect coupons from multiple stores and purchase only items on sale. Those sales really are intended to reward loyal customers or to drive cross sales: a bottle of wine to go with that steak.
Personalized offers are the best way to keep out the cheap shopper while rewarding loyalty and driving cross sales.
In the process, a kiosk can offer instructional videos on how to prepare your meal or build a deck for your back yard, a shopping list for all the required items and a map that displays where they can be found.
And don't forget: HP needs solutions like this retail kiosk to drive sales of its servers, PCs and printers. Because integrated into a kiosk, the competitive picture changes significantly. You're no longer selling a PC and printer, but you're selling a complete system of which the PC and printer are mere building blocks.
Partial nudity ruins innocent slaughter experience
Microsoft is thinking of the children for once. The software company has decided to delay the retail launch of Halo 2 for Windows Vista, allowing retailers to add warning labels to the box that informing that the box contains "partial nudity".
The problem lies in an image of a bare-bottomed person that is included in an error message inside Halo 2's map editor – not the game itself. The error message is aptly named the ".ass error".
Boxes that have already shipped to retailers will be marked with warning labels that clearly identify the buying perverts at the check-out stands. Those consumer can repent by applying a 2Mb patch.
Pixelation included to protect your innocent minds.
Dell crawling out its black hole
Dell on Thursday started shipping its first Linux PCs, marking the first major PC manufacturer to do so.
A $409 investment buys you a 1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo machine with 1GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive running Ubuntu (no monitor included). An identical system running Windows Vista is $80 more expensive. Guess what the OEM price for Windows Vista could be?
Around the same time, Dell unveiled a retail partnership with Walmart that will see Dell computers showing up in the cramped aisles of the discount retailer's stores. The partnership is significant because it marks the end of Dell's exclusive direct model.
Dell had to change. The company first saw its profit margins slide as buyers flocked to inexpensive computers that make up a market segment that is crowded with low cost Asian providers. As the company tried to move up the food chain, it los the battle over features and design from HP. That ultimately resulted in a market share shift that saw HP overtaking Dell for the number one spot.
But given the history of Dell's declining market share, the Walmart deal should raise a few eyebrows. The retailer excels in low cost, low quality products for low wage consumers. Not exactly a place to boost your profit margins.
The Linux computers at least demonstrate a willingness to gamble, but desktop Linux is as of yet an unproven market.
Dell is trying really hard to ignore HP. That company has based its PC comeback on design and unique features that appeal to end users.
Dell claims it is innovating, but its innovations are hidden from plain view: they involve cooling technology and monitor connectors. Dell has yet to create a unique or innovative computer form factor (beyond a plain big ass notebook computers and monitors).
Currently HP has the moral high ground. It's up to Dell to proof their features and design strategy wrong.
SOA goodness in practice (video)
For all its fuzziness, service oriented architectures (SOAs) will excel in letting employees make changes and configure new applications without touching a single line of code.
The beauty of SOA lies in the fact that SOAs will hide all the complexity from the end user, even though the actual application crosses multiple physical servers and applications. The video below demonstrates how a business user can diagnose a problem and make changes in the company's workflow with a few clicks. Three years ago he would have been unable to diagnose the problem as fast as he does now, and changing the workflow probably would have been a manual process.
The road to SOA nirvana is riddled with pitfalls
IBM at its Connect 2007 conference today made a case for using services to prevent an "SOA mismatch". As it turns out, companies are investing in SOAs because it saves IT cost.
Speeding up application development allows companies to more quickly respond to new business trends, but try measuring that effect. Early SOA adopters take the time savings and apply it to their IT bottom line. Without an IT benefit, they fail to build a case for SOA.
Furthermore, you don't want to be caught with an SOA that is misaligned to your business. If your application take another road than your business processes, you'll have a hard time expanding your network, cautioned IBM software chief Steve Mills.
IBM's solution involves business services. No surprise there.
But there is another risk to SOAs: more than half of all the SOA projects fail because companies focus on reusing internal code only – even if that code is not that great. As it turns out, writing software services that can run in a componentized way is different from writing black box applications.
Besides, why build if you can buy from outsourcing? One analyst firm projects that service sales for SOAs will reach $17bn by 2013.
IBM's senior vice president of software Steve Mills
Sizing up the SOA market
For all the buzz that service oriented architectures are attracting, the market is remarkably small – and hard to track.
Worldwide there are currently less than 9,000 companies actively engaged with SOAs. Those projects however cost a combined $1bn. That make SOA an expensive hobby at more than $1m per 'engagement'.
The real shocker lies in IBM's market share. When you measure the number of application server, portal servers or SOA repositories that are actually applied to SOA, IBM comes out claiming 53 per cent of the overall market, according to data compiled by Wintergreen Research. Microsoft follows at 8 per cent. The remaining vendors get the crumbs with none of them exceeding 3 per cent market share.
SOA middleware is clearly in the early adopter stage. But even as the market evolves, it revenues will stay limited. The real money is in the services themselves.
Because those same early adopters are finding that there is limited value in reusing code internally. The true market, Wintergreen founder Susan Eustis projects, will be in providing a market place for services and certifying that services work together and bring the world to automation nirvana.
Because ultimately, individual users will be able to create "business processes" by clicking an icon, select the desired functionalities and building a brand new application. Developers get to what they are good at: developing code. But they will no longer be able to prescribe how users click through menus and applications.
Innovation Dell-style
Dell and product innovation don't go together very well, but the company is very hard trying to change that very image. Because despite having an image to the contrary, Dell does innovate.
At a company event in San Francisco, the company today showed off its Displayport connector cable (shipping later this year), as well as a mock-up of an ultra thin notebook display that the connector will enable (no news on if it will ever ship).
Dell created the early version of the standard five years ago, boasted Dell CTO Kevin Kettler to illustrate the innovative forces at play within the company.
The computer maker earlier this month was the first to ship notebook computers powered by SanDisk's new Flash memory based hard drive. And don't forget about the H2C cooling system that Dell designed for its high end PCs, allowing consumers to overclock their CPUs without burning down the house.
Dell is known for creating a supply chain that is able to produce really cheap PCs and laptops. But really, they also innovate.
one cable
A mock up of a flat panel HD display featuring integrated microphone and speakers. All connected through a single cable. The image on the monitor is actually a sheet of paper pasted on plexiglass, so don't get too excited.
From the side
Google redefines search
Whoever thought that online search was all about finding web pages is obviously wrong.
It just happens to be so that search engines have largely focused on search web pages. But that changed today, when Google unveiled its Universal Search.
The company from now on will start offering results from the web, books, news, images and videos. All of these are ranked based on relevancy. So a search for "steve jobs" first offers images and then a wikipedia entery.
"Nosferatu", a classic thriller movie, gets you the IMDB entry, followed by an embedded video from Google Video.
The introduction is especially important for online video. As Google co-founder Sergey Brin pointed out, video has just been promoted from entertainment to a research medium.
Google knows you better
Google in the near future will start offering results for the search query that it thought you wanted to perform, but didn't actually submit.
The company monitors searches that fail to get the user the required result, and realized that many users don't do a very good job at phrasing their queries. But instead of beating them up over their poor computer language, the company will start doing that job for them.
Think of it as spell check on steroids: instead of just pointing out that you misspelled Brittaney Spears, Google will simply search know that you were looking for Britney.
The user won't have to do anything. The "interpreted" results will simply start showing up between the literal results.
Soon talking to Google will be like talking to a person who better understands what you want to say than you do. It might be scary at first, but soon you'll want nothing else.
Google's VP of engineering Udi
Manber explains that there is nothing wrong with comparing apples to oranges
Windows Server 2008 partition swtiching
At the 2nd day of WinHEC keynotes, Microsoft showed off its next server OS. In the below video, server division chief Bill Laing gets a demonstration of server's ability to recover when a server partition goes down.
Microsoft explains its name games
Did you ever wonder which marketing genius came up with the name "Windows Server 2008"? We did, and would like to recommend that the person is made redundant for being overly creative.
But Redmond apparently is capable of originality, as the video below demonstrates.
Microsoft takes the headache out of networking
Microsoft wants to take the PhD out of setting up your home network. Windows Vista therefore will try to eliminate the need to enter WEP encryption keys. As the video below demonstrates, Windows Vista is starting to get there.
We just get a bit of an uncomfortable feeling whenever a vendor promises to configure third party devices. Because we've heard this all before. In 2004 the company unveiled a Smart Network Key technology that would work brilliantly, provided that your device supported the proprietary Microsoft standard.
One year later the company had to apologize and joined the WiMedia Alliance. Will things work out better this time?
Microsoft gazes in its crystal ball
Microsoft has been targeting both the elderly and emerging economies as the company seeks to expand its business.
At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles, chief researcher Craig Mundie (pictured left) showed off a design concept for an interactive table that both entertains the elderly and ensures that they take their medications.
In another futuristic demo, Mundie showed off mobile phone software that allows doctors in developing nations to diagnose patients through an easy to use interface.
Windows Home Server enables digital spanking
Microsoft's upcoming Windows Home Server doesn't just back up information from multiple computers and notebooks in a home, it also allows you to control the computers on your network.
In the video below, Microsoft's Stephen Leonard demonstrates how the software allows a parent to diagnose the security settings of all the computers on a network. Once Leonard finds out that one user has disabled the firewall, the swiftly disciplines the culprit by blocking access to music.
Don't click here – you know you want to
Spam and Trojan emails work because people will click on links and attachments. People are gullible. Call it plain stupid.
Didier Stevens decided to explore the limits o
f stupidity. He created a website on the drive-by-download.info domain and set up an account on Google Adwords, buying himself some advertising around the words "drive by download". The text of the ad stated: "Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here!"
Surely people wouldn't walk into a dark alley if it had a large sign hanging over the entrance warning that it is inhabited by man eating rats and bats? Neither would they click on a link that tells them that they will get hacked?
You guessed it. Over a period of 6 months, 409 people clicked on the ad.
Luckily, Didier Stevens never hosted any malware on the website. But there are plenty of known ways to do so. We can't rely on people to patch their computers, we can't rely on people to not click on email attachments. We can't even rely on them to stay away from items that listed as being dangerous. The time to require an internet driving license has clearly come.
(By the way, Google claims that all ads are scanned and verified to prevent this from happening. If this one can slip through the cracks, how many more go unnoticed?)
Via: Roger Thompson
AMD takes one more jab at Itanium
AMD launched the Opteron processor 4 years ago. While today Opteron's power consumption is all the rave, the most innovative feature in 2003 was the ability to run 64-bit and 32-bit instructions in a single chip.
The Opteron forced Intel to go on the defensive. It contributed to the Itanium's failure in conquering the enterprise IT market and forced the chipmaker to essentially copy its much smaller competitor. It took Intel 3 years before it could stabilize the market share shift that this set off.
Enough reason for AMD to boast a little in this video about "Megahertzagovnia".
Microsoft wants to be the open source tax collector
Microsoft fired another shot across the bow of open source developers and users. The software company has identified 235 patents that are infringed by various open source applications.
Microsoft's strategy is becoming clearer. The company will periodically send out subtle warnings about open source's lack of respect for its patent portfolio, making both vendors and users nervous.
The obvious goal would be to pressure vendors into signing a patent licensing deal, forcing them to pay for using Microsoft's software patents.
That has been the proven way to monetize a patent portfolio, but is ineffective with open source. The general public license won't allow vendors to pay intellectual property licensing fees that are exclusive to their users. Even if a vendor would want to pay Microsoft, it couldn't.
That leaves two options. Microsoft is out to kill open source, or Microsoft will collect license fees from individual users.
The first option is popular with conspiracy theorists, but won't get Microsoft very far. The SCO case has demonstrated that going after open source will result in a huge public relations back-lash. In SCO's case, the legal battle has undermined the firm's core business.
The second option will make both Microsoft and enterprise IT users happy. Microsoft gets to collect license fees and enterprises can rest assured about their legal future. SCO has actually traveled this road with its "Linux licenses".
SCO can be dismissed as a bully that is lacking any substance, but Microsoft has a much better chance at instating a Linux tax. The company has already succeeded at doing so through its partnership with Novell, through which Novell will pay for each copy of Linxu that it sells.
As customers are signing up for Novell's Suse Linux, they are setting a precedent for paying the Microsoft Linux tax. And just like with 'regular' taxes, the collector has to maintain a certain threat level to ensure that clients keep the payments coming.
Firefox rules the online video roost
Few people will be surprised that Firefox has an above average market share on technology websites. Technology workers after all are more open to installing new software, and they are also more likely to pay attention to details such Firefox' security enhancements.
Concretely, roughly 40 per cent of our overall visitors uses Firefox. Compare that to a global market share of about 20 per cent.
But things get even better for Firefox when it gets to online video. The vast majority of visitors watching videos posted on this blog uses Firefox. In the case of last week's Java FX video (which so far ranks as the most watched video for this month), 71 per cent of the viewers used Firefox (see below for a chart).
Other videos show a similar pattern. Friday's OLPC video for instance currently stands at 60 per cent Firefox and 23 per cent Internet Explorer.
One Laptop per Child demo (video)
The One Laptop per Child project is getting really close to shipping, so it was time to take another look at the software and the actual computer.
Last year we showed you a video of the first working prototype. It's great to see how far the project has come since then.
In the video below we'll take a close look at the Sugar user interface and demonstrate the new dual mode display that operates both in- and outdoors (try doing that with your current notebook computer).
Red Hat exchange: third party software with a Red Hat logo
Red Hat today launched its Red Hat Exchange, an online market place for open source enterprise applications such as MySQL, EnterpriseDB and SugarCRM.
Red Hat will bundle the software with its own middleware, guaranteeing that all components play nicely. Spikesource has tried this before, but the company never took off.
Red Hat is banking that it will succeed this time because of its brand appeal. Think along the lines of: if Red Hat thinks its good, it must be good for sure.
Below you can watch a video of Red Hat showing off the software.
Microsoft puts virtualization on the Redmond Diet
Microsoft has pulled some of the most attractive features from its Viridian virtualization technology to prevent any delays in the software's release.
Gone are live migration and the ability to "hot-add" resources. CPU support also has been limited to 16 cores now, where Microsoft previously was boasting that it would offer 64 core support.
The strategy of pulling components and is a tested Microsoft method. The company stripped many of Windows Vista's most compelling features as the software vendor struggled to meet its launch schedule. In the end, crippling Vista's grand security vision and eliminating the cutting edge WinFS file system allowed the software to stumble over the finish line.
Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop market that allowed it to get away with the Windows delays, but the company doesn't have the luxury with virtualization. VMWare in the last quarter sold $256m in virtualization products. Solaris, Red Hat and Novell today ship operating systems with virtualization support built in.
Viridian in its current shape will make VMWare very happy. Because any company looking for real virtualization on Windows Server will be paying license fees to the EMC subsidiary for years to come.
Hat tip to El Reg for coining "the Redmond Diet"
Talking Red Hat Desktop (video)
Red Hat on Wednesday unveiled its desktop strategy. In addition to a very tangible "Global Desktop" targeting developing nations, the company also talked about a strategy that is further-out. The last one will see the integration of online and offline applications and data.
In the video below you can view a video where Red Hat executives discuss both offerings.
Red Hat running circles around desktop Linux
Red Hat doesn't want to do a "me too" Linux desktop. The company is convinced that building another Linux clone is a sure path to oblivion.
"Trying to become the appendage on the existing incumbent would become a failing solution. The landscape is littered with people that tried to subscribe into becoming a component of that infrastructure and that infrastructure," Red Hat CEO Szulik said in his opening keynote at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.
Instead Red Hat wants to build the client of the future, one that blurs the lines between online and offline data and applications. Think what could happen if Apple's Dashboard or Google's Sidebar become your desktop. CTO Brian Stevens went so far as to declare the traditional desktop based on files and applications "dead".
Szulik and Stevens had a lot to say about the idea, but they were dumbstruck when it came to concrete products.
Red Hat today did unveil its Global Desktop, a Linux version that will be sold in developing nations, bundled with hardware and other open source software such as OpenOffice and Firefox. But that operating system is part of the dinosaur generation of desktop operating software: it uses dull files and local applications.
The online brilliance, said Stevens, will come in future updates.
Turns out that evolution isn't ready yet to kill the old desktop after all.
Matt Szullik spinning the desktop
Sun talks up real time Java
After having been under development for the last 8 years, Sun has finally delivered JSR-1, better known as real time Java.
Real time java allows the platform to run without any latency, which is really important when you are doing high volume calculations. What, you might ask, would amount to high volume? More than 100,000 stock transactions per second, might qualify. At least that's what the Nasdaq stock exchange plans to use real time Java for.
Below you can watch a video where the Nasdaq's CIO discusses the platform.
Meet Sun Microsystems' Steve Jobs
If you ever felt like Sun Microsystems is a gathering of old friends having fun while they are rudely interrupted by customers wanting to buy servers, you might just be right.
Just watch this video.
Glassfish explores communication server
Ericsson has donated the code for its SIP servlet to Sun's Glassfish application server. The donation will kick-start a project to expand the application server into realm of communication servers.
Ericsson isn't known as an eager open source player, but the company now claims to have seen the light. In the video below you can see how Ericsson's Martin Harriman, vice president of marketing and business development, explain the new technology.
Sun goes after Adobe Apollo, Ajax, Silverlight
The dust has hardly settled after Microsoft's unveiling of its Silverlight beta, or Sun Microsystems is making a plunge into the rich internet application market.
The server vendor on Tuesday will unveil its Java FX technology, providing a fourth way to develop online applications. Sun has a small edge over its competitors, because Java FX tied directly into Java and therefore comes with a army of about 6m developers worldwide.
Few people expect Microsoft, Adobe or Ajax to disappear just because of this announcement, but the market place certainly just got a bit more competitive.
Below you watch a video with a demonstration of the new technology with Java inventor James Gosling and Sun's software chief Rich Green.
Picture above left: code with accompanying image (click to enlarge)
Picture above right: Rich Green (click to enlarge)
Zimbra comes to a cable connection near you
Zimbra has signed an agreement with cable provider Comcast to power its unified messaging software platform. This can potentially bring the open source messaging client to millions of consumers.
Comcast is the largest cable provider in the US.
Zimbra is Outlook on steroids, combining a user friendly messaging client with the innovation of the open source world. Comcast users will soon be able to listen to voice mails, send emails and manage their address book from a single portal.
Below you view some images of what the service will look like
(click to enlarge)
Home page
Voice mail
Address book
Tech publisher under fire for alleged editorial favoritism
Colin Crawford, publisher for the PC World publication has come under fire after the publication's executive editor Harry McCracken (pictured right) quit earlier this week.
Word on the street is that Crawford was quietly pushing for the publication's editors to write more favorably about advertisers. That – of course – is one of the biggest no-no's in the publishing world.
McCracken remains tight-lipped, and Crawford is flat-out denying that he has been pushing for an editorial cheerleading agenda.
But the other members of PC World's editorial staff are eager to spill
the juicy details. Journalists after all are easily irritated. And
those who uncover secrets for a job typically do a horrible job at
keeping them under wraps. Some quoted Crawford as saying that in his previous job as publisher for Mac World he'd speak with Apple chief executive on a constant basis.
With PC World's reputation on the line, Crawford can do little but deny the entire episode. But the incident already ignited a major riot. If that doesn't quiet down quickly, Crawford will no doubt be next on the chopping block.
Boo brings back memories of dotcom waste
Boo is back as a travel website that attempts to cash in on the social media hype. The site serves as an aggregator of user reviews on attractions and hotels. But interestingly enough, it won't allow users to book trips or reserve accommodations.
The name should ring a bell with internet veterans, because Boo in May 2000 was the first big internet startup to fall over and become a textbook models of errors of the internet hype. The company was founded by a "nerd-fashion model" couple. The duo did a great job at spending the $108m that it received in venture funding, but failed to generate any revenues.
The new Boo doesn’t have the insane cost structure that brought down its predecessor, but you can't help but question its business model. User review sites might get decent traffic, but are notorious for their lack of revenues.
Boo say it will be adding a airline fair tool soon, which might to get the firm some referral fees. But then, Boo too had great visions for a future that never materialized.
Old (left) and new (right)
Frenchman crowned the king of Linux webcam drivers
Nobody will ever be able to complain about a lack of Linux device drivers for webcams, thanks to "near 60"-year-old Michel Xhaard (pictured right) from France.
Since 2003, he has developed Linux drivers for more than 253 USB webcams. Without any support from the manufacturers.
The story started as so many great open source stories did: with a frustrated developed. Linus Torvalds crafted the first version of his kernel because he was bored. Xhaard bought two webcams in 2003, but then noticed that they didn’t come with any Linux drivers. One thing lead to another, and today the project support hundreds of webcam chipsets.
Linux is still catching up with Windows when it comes to driver support. But people like Michel Xhaard show that you don't need billions of dollars to close that gap.
DRM crackdown brings out creative writers
"I am shocked, I say shocked!! How dare these people post numbers protected by copyright on websites," reads a comment on a vnunet.com story about the AACS' attempts to stop the spread of a software key that disables DRM on high definition DVDs. The name of the commenter: "09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0", a seemingly random sequence of numbers and letters that may or may not be used to disable DRM.
A DRM lobby by the name of AACS-LA over the past weeks has waged an aggressive legal campaign against websites, blogs and even Google for listing or linking to websites that list a software key that allows its DRM to be disabled.
But the campaign backfired in a big way earlier this week. Upon request of the AACS, copyright reform activist Corry Doctorow removed a reference to the key from a blog to which he contributes. The removal sparked numerous users to post the key on their blogs, and advertise the code on social websites such as Digg.com.
The technology page on Digg at one point listed dozens of items referring to the key. The site too was contacted by AACS' legal army and started banning key-related submissions. But using keywords to do proved highly ineffective. One posted said that he/she: "Just thought I would share my WPA key so you guys can use my WiFi." The WPA key just happened to be identical to the HD DVD key.
Digg later reversed it policy, effectively telling the AACS to go to hell.
Our big sister The Inquirer decided to put an end to the discussion once and for all. It's headline: "09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0 is the number they tried to ban". Big sisters rule!
Digg's technology page on Tuesday. Click to enlarge
School cheating should be allowed in a Web2.0 world
Schools are banning iPod players from their class rooms because students could use the m to cheat on tests. But is banning technology the right answer?
Web2.0 is all about sharing: sharing information, opening up data platform. Set it free and innovation will flourish. Just look at the success of blogs or Youtube.
The economy clearly values sharing. Google strives to be the world champion of sharing and is valued at nearly $150m. Red Hat is a company that doesn't own anything beyond its office real estate, but is valued at nearly $4bn. By comparison, Microsoft's stock price has hardly moved since the collapse of the internet hype in 2001 (chart above - click to enlarge).
A student who is able to create podcast that contains all the required information should be rewarded with a high grade, for figuring out a way to use technology to his/her advantage.
Current testing methods reward students for acquiring proprietary information and punish sharing of data. Are those really the values that we want to instil in future generations?
Dell gives desktop Linux its big break
Dell has settled on Ubuntu Linux for its promised Linux desktop and notebook computers.
It's the first time that a major computer maker will start developing Linux computers for the consumer market. Yes, Walmart has sold some low cost Linux systems, but those come from no-name brands and never grabbed any significant market share.
If Dell can't make Linux on the desktop work, nobody can. The company has the resources the create all the device drivers are needed to make a Linux desktop or laptop zoom. Most importantly, the firm will be able to force its suppliers to support Linux and thereby can single-handedly create a desktop Linux marketplace.
Dell furthermore has the power to end some of the silly standard wars within the Linux community (think Gnome vs. KDE), simply by throwing its weight behind one or the other.
And it doesn't have to stop with Dell. HP has been remarkably quiet throughout this entire episode, but you can bet that its engineers today are working on a line of Linux PCs that they will launch the minute Mark Hurd tells them to.
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