Slashdot Mirror

bp33 writes "Wireless Newsfactor is running a story about how the wireless vendors are climbing over themselves to get Voice-Over-IP cell phones. You might ask "why bother? We already have wireless voice now." But with an open platform for wireless (Symbian, JavaPhone etc), your "voice" (er .. audio) just becomes bits that your programs can manipulate before sending."

prostoalex writes "Scientists at Gemini Observatory are using Internet2 to link telescopes worldwide and receive images that they say are sharper than those coming from Hubble."

blake213 writes "Newsfactor is reporting a story on how WiFi Metro and Green Packet are teaming up to do a 90-day field test of combined WiFi and cellular romaing technologies in the S.F. Bay Area. Supposedly a user can roam between two coverage areas with uninterrupted service."

blake213 writes "Newsfactor is reporting a story on how WiFi Metro and Green Packet are teaming up to do a 90-day field test of combined WiFi and cellular romaing technologies in the S.F. Bay Area. Supposedly a user can roam between two coverage areas with uninterrupted service."

blankmange writes "NewsFactor reports that Quark's QuarkXPress is not quite up-to-snuff under Mac OS X." Sources in the article claim Mac OS X still isn't quite there in regard to printing, or predictability. That is, I suppose, you don't mind crashes as long as you know when they are going to happen and what is going to cause them.

blankmange writes: "This headline caught my eye: 'The End of Computer Rebooting.' Seems that there has been some new developments in memory technology: The new thin-film technology that could give rebooting the boot is based on resistor logic rather than the traditional transistor logic used in most PCs and other memory-enabled devices. It also is considerably faster than current memory systems and holds the promise of reducing the time required to transfer and download multimedia content and other massive files. This is great news, but what am I going to do with the extra hour or so a day?"

Slashback with more on handheld everything-boxes, a softer review of the new Sharp Zaurus, raising money for open technologies, Gateway's singing cow, and getting around with alternative root servers -- all below. Enjoy. Update: 04/12 06:41 GMT by T : There's an update below in the part on alternate root servers, too. A double-barrel of Mossberg. Dave Aiello (author of our recent review of Handspring's Treo all-in-one handheld) writes with nice update for anyone thinking of shelling out for one: "Walter Mossberg did a comparative overview of the Handspring, Kyocera, Samsung, and RIM integrated PDAs and phones in the first edition of 'The Mossberg Solution' (a new column he is writing)."

Speak of the devil -- Arrgh writes: "PC Magazine has posted a more favourable review (4 out of 5 stars) of the Zaurus--they had none of the sync problems Walt Mossberg wrote about."

Give money to these guys, please. Jeff Gerhardt of the American Open Technology Consortium writes after the post about this "GeekPAC" on Slashdot.

"Although the last 24 hours was one hell of a pain in the ass, at 4:00 am we were through with that second draft and in large measure due to the constructive comments from the /. community. Yes I got a lot of nutty emails about how I should be working on more important issues like global warming and ending "greed" (can you believe that one??? how the hell can we do that.), but for the most part the comments were well thought out. As a whole I think that the whole /. community should be proud.

In particular I have pages of operational suggestions and contact names across the US. The suggestion that has tickled me the most is a suggestion for a fund raising methodology for the "PAC" organization. This came from a couple guys who were debating the idea between the two of them, until it really solidified into a plan. And, we are going to do it. The plan is simple and uses the thing we love so much, technology.

We will set up a series of paypal account links, having created a category for every House or Senate member that appeals to our overall goals and objectives. If then there is a news item about an issue and one of these "good guy" politicos does something to help the cause, the PAC will write a 2-3 sentence quote that will happen to have the paypal link included inside the quote. Media sites will then be able to include the link as a part of the quote, because afterall its news right (wink wink)!!!!

This would then facilitate the people _out there_ to throw a buck at the good guy as a impulse purchase to show gratitude. It need some refinement, but I think it provides portals an opportunity to provide a political opportunity to their communities, without looking too overtly political in the process."

No more Portable Monopoly. Dr.Jones writes "...well, not really. It seems Portable Monopoly is being forced to give up their web address 'Due to legal issues with Hasbro over the usage of the word "monopoly"'. Fortunately, they will have a new site up next week (Triton Labs), and they're still on target to ship the lighting kit next month. Seems like a bit of a stretch on Hasbro's part though."

Not as much of a stretch maybe as Parker Brothers claiming the word clue.com.;)

Do cows wake up and smell the Rosen? prostoalex writes: "Newsfactor has a story on Hillary Rosen expressing dissatisfaction with Gateway's ad campaign. Who would have thought?"

... and routing around it. With a nice detailed followup to a recent Ask Slashdot post, Dr. Zowie writes: "For those who want to use alternative DNS roots but are stuck behind port-80 proxies, a simple solution may exist, thanks to several folks who wrote in to suggest it. Section 5 of RFC 2068 gently deprecates using relative URI's in HTTP requests, and in fact most web clients generate absolute URI's even though relative URI's are allowed by the standard. My ISP's not-quite-transparent proxy directs outbound port 80 packets correctly if (and only if) there's a relative URI in the request. A little 10-line local proxy that munges absolute URI's into relative URI's before emitting them to the ISP seems to solve the problem for now: I can retrieve all the nice goodies that most of you can't at www.dev.null, , www.computer.geek, and paradox.null.

Oh, and if you live near the Colorado front range and aren't a purist about routing, Peak to Peak is a pretty good outfit for dialup and DSL service. Their tech support is extremely accessible and quite good (though our views differ on the correctness of payload-switched routing)."

Update: 04/12 06:41 GMT by T : Richard Sexton writes: "While it's great to see your continued coverage of Open Roots can I just put in a quick plug for ORSC? We're older and have way more tlds.

The coordination amongst Open Roots takes place at IRON; for lack of a better term, it's the Open IANA."

Kissing and making nice. panker writes "Sun had previously given JavaRanch a cease and desist order because of a trademark issue. Sun is now backing down and being friends. Slashdot covered the first half of this issue earlier."

reflexreaction writes "This article on NewsFactor does a decent job of covering some of the issues facing Open Source Software (OSS). It points to Linux's growth area, non-mission critical projects in mid-sized companies, and its main weakness, the desktop. It also briefly discusses Linux's potential growth into mission critical applications if scalability issues are addressed. Quick easy read. My favorite quote from the article "Linux on the desktop is toast.""

reflexreaction writes "This article on NewsFactor does a decent job of covering some of the issues facing Open Source Software (OSS). It points to Linux's growth area, non-mission critical projects in mid-sized companies, and its main weakness, the desktop. It also briefly discusses Linux's potential growth into mission critical applications if scalability issues are addressed. Quick easy read. My favorite quote from the article "Linux on the desktop is toast.""

techmaven writes "When Channel Islands National Park officials needed an estimated about 300 rats exterminated on the east side of environmentally sensitive Anacapa Island, Aspen Ag Helicopters got the call. The kill was necessary because the rodents, descendants of rats that reached the island by way of a shipwreck a century or more ago, were decimating the populations of two rare seabirds. And GPS helped the helicopter company do the job."

mpark6288 writes "Recently, the news has been rocked by a discovery: Self-Repairing plastics. As News Factor: Sci Tech reports: "Chemical engineers are pushing plastics to new heights with two new developments: A material called Automend can restore itself to 60 percent of its previous strength and an organic plastic with magnetic properties can be controlled by light." Of course, this has frightening ramifications, as Jay Leno puts it: Cher could live forever."

mpark6288 writes: "Alright, so we all remember elementary school, and the endless paper cuts that we got from trying to learn some origami. Some how my crane was always a boat. But, as News Factor: Sci Tech states: 'The theorem is, you can make any shape, and there is an algorithm for folding the piece of paper,' stated MIT Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering Erik Demaine said. Referencing applications of origami in robotic arm manipulation, bioinformatics, protein folding and molecular biology, Demaine said there is a multitude of possibilities from origami principles as simple as folding a square piece of paper in half and making one calculated cut. So who knows, those annoying little shuriken (throwing stars) that you made to throw at girls (eww cooties) could have been a major scientific breakthrough!"

techmaven writes: "Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new device that detects ultraviolet light and at the same time ignores visible light. The researchers said that the new detector could lead to a UV light detector approximately 10 times more sensitive than those now on the Hubble Space Telescope, allowing astronomers to observe important objects throughout the universe for the first time."

daeley writes "NewsFactor has published an article, Cult of the Mac - Why So Many Mac Fanatics? -- looking for answers to '...what is it about the Mac that commands such loyalty? An even better question might be, what is Apple doing right?'"

techmaven writes with a different angle on the coming Hubble upgrade: "The Hubble Space Telescope is scheduled to get a new camera when a servicing mission launches on February 28th, and astronomers say it will provide the best look yet at how planets are formed. Scientists also expect to have a much better chance of finding new things in outer space."

techmaven writes: "In an exclusive, two-part article, Special Report: Buzz Aldrin Blazing a Trail to Mars and Buzz Aldrin's Mars Vision: There and Back Again, the legendary astronaut, whose footprints still dot the windless surface of the moon, describes his vision of the next step in space exploration. Cruise ships to Mars, but not with shuffleboard or bad lounge entertainers ..."

techmaven writes: "In an exclusive, two-part article, Special Report: Buzz Aldrin Blazing a Trail to Mars and Buzz Aldrin's Mars Vision: There and Back Again, the legendary astronaut, whose footprints still dot the windless surface of the moon, describes his vision of the next step in space exploration. Cruise ships to Mars, but not with shuffleboard or bad lounge entertainers ..."

Under the plan described in this article submitted by reader RoscoHead, "Space Data would use un-tethered weather balloons launched daily by the National Weather Service to carry lightweight wireless communications equipment to an altitude of 100,000 feet. There, at the 'SkySite,' they would relay voice and data signals to remote areas at a fraction of the cost of installing cell towers or launching satellites, company officials say."

techmaven writes: "A recent article on the NewsFactor network, 'Scientists Bring 'Em Back Alive from Ocean Depths,' reports that scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara were able to capture and bring back alive from the bottom of the ocean, several deep-sea creatures rarely seen by humans, much less studied. The creatures may provide answers to how animals can survive in a cold, dark, gaseous environment."

A reader writes "This NewsFactor Network article says scientists have discovered a genetic "missing link" that helps to explain how primordial pond scum evolved into the land plants that now cover the Earth. Their conclusion: A type of green algae is the closest living relative of the first land plants."

shelflife writes: "ST5, according to NASA, will usher in a new era of small, smart spacecraft. Why send a human into space when you can send a computer? And why send something almost as heavy as a UNIVAC if a laptop will do? Compact nanosatellites will have everything you'd want in a full-size, luxury satellite. They will have the attitudinal and navigational capabilities needed to maintain proper orbits, and they will be capable of complex, high-bandwidth communications functions."

Okay, here's a nice "behind the curtains" peek into the way tech industry analysts (who are not the same as stock analysts) get and interpret their data, courtesy of IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky, in the form of answers to the insightful questions you asked him last week.

First, Dan Kusnetzky says,

I'm responsible for research on access-point device management software, operating environment software (embedded, client and server), clustering and high availability software, web-centric computing software, and some portions of storage software. You'll note that PCs, workstations, and servers were not listed anywhere. My team follows software, not hardware.

Other groups within IDC conduct extensive research into hardware (PCs, handheld devices, appliance servers, servers, storage systems, etc.). My team and I are part of IDC's software research group.

Now, on to the questions...

1) I just have to ask...
by Ded Bob

Might he have the stats on the BSD's. People from the BSD community are curious. :)

Kusnetzky:

BSD revenue or paid copies are tracked as part of IDC's research on Unix. In 1999, just over 8,000 paid copies of BSD server software were shipped. This would give BSD about 0.9% share of worldwide Unix server operating environment shipments.

The 2000 figures have not yet made it through IDC's publication process and so I will not pre-release them here. IDC has a policy that subscribers see research first.

2) Funding
by ritlane

In studies of market share (or studies in general), we often hear quotes about who funded them. This seems to somehow imply that those who funded the study had some influence in how the data was gathered/interpreted.

My question is: Do those who fund a study influence how the study turns out (i.e. Microsoft studies show higher MS market share). Or is it that these corporations only decide to fund groups who they know will most likely return results in their favor.

Kusnetzky:

Over 95% of the research which IDC produces has not been sponsored. Therefore, our research studies are completely independent. In the few cases where IDC performs specific research for a client, IDC has strict guidelines and review processes in place to ensure the objectivity of our research. IDC never does market share studies on a sponsored basis.

3) More breakdown needed
by BillyGoatThree

When People magazine does an issue devoted to "what's hot" in fashion, do they interview Jane Doe from Des Moines, Iowa? No.

So why are OS numbers reported with equal rating? Not all users are equally suited to *choose* an OS, therefore not all users *choices* are equally interesting. I'd really like to see a breakdown of OS by user-type (levels of education, field of degree if applicable, occupation, etc). Keep in mind this applies just as much to business. A technology company presumably put more informed thought into their choice of server than an art supply house or whatever.

Kusnetzky:

IDC conducts research which will help its subscribers make better business decisions. This often means surveying decision-makers who make the purchasing decision rather than the people who actually use the products. This also tends to mean that academically interesting, but not commercially viable, research may not be done at all.

The complete findings of IDC's research are supplied only to subscribers. So, the snippets of data that Slashdot community members may have seen in magazines only includes information IDC chose to make public. Quite often, IDC's intent is to interest companies in purchasing the entire study. 8^) Another point is that it is quite possible that the findings which are mentioned in the press were taken out of context or mentioned incorrectly.

4)Self-fulfilling analysis?
by dvk

Do you think that there exists a possibility (or can even provide examples of) self-fulfilling analysis, such as "analysis says X is losing market share=people get skeptical about X=X loses market share although it may not have done so otherwise"?

If it is possible or already happened, do analysts in general (and you in particular) find it a worrisom possibility, and if so, are there any attempts/ideas to deal with the issue?

Kusnetzky:

Having studied a great deal of physics in college, I understand the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. That theory indicates that it is impossible to observe a system without interacting with it in some way.

While I suspect that studies have been done to detail how analysts (and journalists for that matter) influence the creation of products and their success in the market, I have not read them and, thus, can not comment on what they may or may not say.

5)Data origins
by m2

Do you base your data mostly on marketing analysis or do you actually go a pay a consultor to scan machines on the net? If there are scans involved, how do you pick the IP blocks to be scanned and what's the uncertainty associated with such a method (and how is this uncertainty guessed)? If there are no scans involved, why not? If this is "maket analysis", can you defined that for me? Which factors are involved? And a different question: who's the target market for this kind of study? How much does such a thing cost?

Kusnetzky:

IDC conducts two types of research -- demand-side and supply-side. Demand-side (end-user) research is designed to shine light on who is buying and using information technology products, how these products are being used, and what plans decision-makers have for future purchases. A scan of the network is not involved in this process. Contacting people and working with them is the basis of IDC's demand-side research. Network scans, while interesting, are not part of IDC's current research methodology.

Another important point is that a network scan would only show systems which were up and available at the time of the scan. Any systems protected by a firewall wouldn't appear. This means that the study would not be able to shine light on what organizations were using inside of their firewalls.

The cost of demand-side studies is driven by how many respondents are needed, how many questions must be asked, and how many countries are included. A small study conducted in North America which asks a few questions can be conducted for tens of thousands of dollars. The data gathering phase of such studies might be completed in a few weeks. A large, multi-country study which must be segmented by company size, market type, etc. might cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars. The data gathering phase of this type of project might six or more months to complete.

Supply-side research shines light on revenues, shipments, technology trends, etc. IDC gathers information from the financial reports of public companies and from public statements made by executives of privately held companies. This data is then segmented into 102 different software markets, 9 different operating environment platforms, and 6 different geographical areas. The software markets, by the way, are defined by a software taxonomy which attempts to define a list of markets which is both exhaustive and mutually exclusive.

The company data segmented using this model is offered to representatives of each of the companies. After the company representatives have had a chance to review the models, an IDC analyst then contacts the representative to verify the segmentation.

Once IDC has completed this process, the company models are examined by internal and external reviewers. Any questions which arise during the review process are brought back to the company representatives and resolved to IDC's satisfaction.

IDC goes beyond determining the revenues to modeling revenue or paid shipments in some markets. In this case, the revenues produced by the first process are segmented using demand-side data which shows the average shipment value. The modeled shipment data is, as with revenue data, examined by both internal and external reviewers. As before, any questions are resolved before data is published.

IDC, by the way, is watching over 1,200 companies worldwide. Revenue data from these companies is collected on a quarterly basis, segmented into IDC's taxonomic software markets and then stored in the IDC software research group's software forecaster database for analysis.

6) *what* constitutes a Linux server?
by Anonymous Coward

At what point does a computer become a server? Many Linux desktops have ftp, telnet & http ports open, so do they count as severs too?

Kusnetzky:

IDC's software group is using a very simple definition. If it serves the needs of a single person, it is called a client. If it serves the needs of many people it is a server, regardless of the system configuration. IDC's enterprise server research team has detailed definitions of different server configurations, but I won't repeat them here.

Linux, as observed in a recent study (December 2000, N=1583 North American and Western European respondents), appears to have a different usage pattern now than seen in earlier studies. This recent survey showed that just over a third of Linux shipments were used as client operating environments, roughly a third of Linux shipments were used as server operating environments, and just under 30% of Linux shipments were used on a workstation which supported the workload of a single person and provided some service to a workgroup. We're calling that new category "Serverstations." For historical purposes, Serverstations are currently allocated across client and server operating environment shipment totals. IDC will be publishing data on each of these categories in the near future.

7) Polling questions
by cavemanf16

I have often wondered how biased polls are based on the questions asked, the demographics of the people polled, etc. When results about polls are made public, is it also possible to obtain information about how the poll was conducted in a simple, by request method? Now if the answer to that question is, no, how much can we rely on polls, since we have no way of verifying if the questions asked and the people interviewed were heavily biased to favor one outcome over another? (Such as in the recent large discrepancies of the 8% vs. 24% use of Linux as a server results that we've seen on Slashdot recently).

Kusnetzky:

I believe that I've already covered this area in previous answers. It is clear that IDC's server operating environments data is being compared to another research firm's server adoption data. This comparison really isn't valid for several reasons including the fact that supply-side research is being compared to demand-side research and the fact that software research is being compared to hardware research.

IDC's extensive hardware research shows that Linux only holds a small share of the market when one examines shipments of servers and then segments it by the operating system which was installed at the factory. IDC's software research is showing that Linux server software is being installed on both older and new systems and that the configurations being used as servers include PCs, workstations, appliance servers, and more traditional server configurations.

8) What about the so-called "third world"?
by Kareem Abdul-Lamarr

Do these analyses factor in the so-called third world? Most of these analyses are US-centric or some times do include the continent across the pond but what about Africa and Asia? Do these analyses *really* take inputs from these continents?

Kusnetzky:

At this point, IDC has offices in 43 countries. IDC's software research team is represented in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. IDC's operating environments research included revenue and shipment data from over 140 different Linux distributions, and we have collaborative input from analysts in geographic areas around the world. I think that this means that the answer is yes, IDC is examining operating environment revenue and shipment data worldwide.

9) Who Keeps track of the Predictions
by dmccarty

I have a question on the area of predictions in general. For example, fellow IDC analyst Jill House has been severaly negative on Palm over the years, with regard to the Win CE operating system and devices. A sample quote from her in Feb. 2000 read, "If I was Palm, I would be beside myself with panic."

The issue is, that over the last 3 - 4 years she's been predicting the demise of Palm and the rise of Win CE, a claim that has never materialized. Who verifies the reliability of these predictions and keeps the analysts accountable. With the frequent sound bytes and one-liners that they give to the press, these analysts have significant influence over public perception of the issues. But how is policing done when the analysts don't analyze very well?

Kusnetzky:

I really can't speak to this issue directly. Jill is not part of the software research group.

I know that a prominent part of the software research group's annual forecast and analysis reports for each software market is reviewing last year's forecast, how close it came to this year's findings. If the findings differ from last year's forecast, the analyst(s) attempt to determine what changed and why. I'm told by subscribers that this analysis is often is very helpful.

10) Re:Question(ADDNUM)
by HeUnique

I just remembered an Idea that a friend of mine suggested:

What if IDC could work with the Linux distributions (RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, TurboLinux, Debian) to add a small program which will run after the first internet connection has been succsessfull..

When this program runs - it will ask the user to "register" his copy of the distribution. If it has been purchased from one of the distributors then the user can add his serial number. Some other questions like will this distribution be used as a server, a workstation, or combination of the 2, or a development workstation. The survey SHOULD be anonymous (unless the user wants to give some details about himself)

By that way - the distributors can give the numbers back to IDC - and IDC can publish a report which will tell that the number of Linux installations - and that number is X. X is combined of Y free download version and Z purchased copies of Linux.

What do you think, Dan? (And what do Slashdot readers think about it?)

Kusnetzky:

I agree this would be interesting information. I don't believe that this would be a good business for IDC to be in. Our analysis is that many users of Linux don't want their organizations or their competitors knowing what they're running. They'd rather get kudos for a job well done than criticism for how they got the job done. Not only that, but some vendors that have added features to track activations have also faced a great deal of criticism. I doubt that Linux users would appreciate such tracking operations.