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PC Expo = Windows Heaven
This is not the biggest show out there (Comdex owns that title!) but it's an influential one where hordes of ordinary computers users come to get an idea of what's new and hot. And what's hot here is Windows, Windows, Windows, and Palm. If there's a single overused buzzword here, it's "wireless." I think I've spotted that word, along with the phrase, "mobile Internet," at least a thousand times.
To give you an example of this show's scale just in case, like me, you mostly stick to Linux and Open Source expos, the Windows "partners" pavilion here is bigger than the entire Linux World Expo that was held here last February. It is a humbling experience to be a Linux user here, somewhat like the feeling FreeBSD advocates must have at Linux shows.
Even the two (prototype) Crusoe-powered IBM laptops on display are running Windows. In the display next to the two-story tropical-themed Crusoe extravaganza, Intel had screen after screen of Windows, despite all their recent make-nice moves toward Linux.
IBM has more Linux showing than most. A sign says, "You talk, Linux types" above the display for their new ViaVoice for Linux. And if you look closely at some of the "start" buttons in the lower left screen corners on some of IBM's thin-client products, you see Penguins instead of flying flags. Yes, that is Linux, quietly there, unadvertised, doing its job without any fanfare.
But forget Linux for a moment. Palm is the only presence here that even touches that of Windows. While the Palm "partners" pavilion is less than half the size of Microsoft's equivalent, the Palm one is constantly packed, so crowded that you have to edge sideways to get into it. Microsoft's display for Pocket PC, their renamed and updated WinCE, is deserted by comparison. Palms and Visors seem to be the wireless favorites, and they are almost everywhere here that Windows isn't.
There is a Linux pavilion, but it is sadly tucked into a lower-right corner of the less-than-main exhibit hall, and not as big, all told, as Dell Computer's single display. It is not uninhabited; LinuxMall, the pavilion sponsor, is doing steady business in assorted Linux goodies, and Isaiah, a Red Hat tech rep, said they gave out 400 Red Hat 6.2 CDs yesterday "in a couple of minutes, all to CEOs who said they have IT managers working for them." That was a wowser to Isiaiah, who was amazed "...that the people asking about Linux here are suits, not techies."
But there are a few signs of non-Windows life here, tucked away in corners, not always easily identifiable. For instance, I spotted a nice little "network appliance" gadget called a FoxBox made by NetWolves Corporation. I asked what OS it ran, and the booth person said, "FreeBSD."
I said, "It doesn't say that anywhere on the literature I see here."
He said, "Really? I suppose we ought to change that. Not many people have asked what operating system we run, and most of the ones who asked were relieved to find out it wasn't NT."
More on PC Expo, including John "maddog" Hall's keynote speech, tomorrow afternoon.
Why post a comment about how one conference is all Windows... when you fail to make any postings about how other conferences are "all Linux."
It seems as though instead of promoting healthy competition.. most people are only promoting Linux. Isnt this exactly what we are against (in terms of only promoting Windows).
I just couldn't get used to the warped keyboards having used the regular ones for so long. I also don't type in 'proper' touch type technique. I sometimes cross over the middle where I am not supposed to. That is a real problem for getting used to with the 'natural' keyboards.
If you really like that shape keyboard, there are several companies (including Kensington and Keytronic I believe) that build similar keyboards. If I liked them, I'd buy one of those.
- PC vendors have zero innovation.
:)
PC vendors have basically zero innovation technically which is why they have to resort to cosmetic features to build product differentiation. Basically they all build the same boxes usually with prefab components as opposed to workstation and server vendors who build a lot larger percentage of their hardware specificaly for certain models. Most of the new ideas in the PC world are things that were pioneered by the workstations. That isn't surprising, as workstation and servers are high end, and have much larger R&D budgets than commodity markets such as desktop PCs.
- Workstation vendors stick to what works.
I should have been more clear about that. I meant that in terms of cosmetics. In general, workstation vendors (with the notable exception of SGI, which is known for wild color schemes and box shapes -- they did that before Apple, even) seem to turn out pretty industrial looking beige boxes or rackmount servers.
You should be in marketing.
Yikes. That is quite an uncalled for insult.
That was probably caused by people hitting the site at work, where they use a Windows box, but answering the question thinking about their home box, a Mac. Since you don't always get a choice about what OS to use at work, the poll answers probably accurately reflect what those people use at home. And what one chooses to use because one has a choice about it is, IMHO, a better reflection of mindshare than what one is forced to use.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
See, no, we're not.
We're competing in a market space.
Hence the "rhetoric" warnings in my post.... Any competition has to be played within the boundaries of commonly-agreed rules. The less and laxer the rules, the more "competitive" the situation gets... follow that to its logical extreme and you get competition with no rules including the prohibition on physical violence, ie war. Yes, reductum ad absurdio... but that's the what the 'rhetoric' tags are for.
It's only our binary-obsessed Western mythos
War is an affliction on all cultures and in all times.
It's not a war. It's a competition, in the capitalist sense -- everyone wins different sized slices of the pie, but anyone who has a slice at all is a winner.
No, that's not true. Well, okay, it is true... but not in the context of traditional capitilism. Capitalism is based on the assumption of limited resources and unlimited demand (driven by necessity or greed). A finite pie, and no slice big enough. In this scenario, the only way to increase your pie share is at the expense of your competitor(s). The theory is that this should lead to a balance of players, each struggling against each other and providing the consumers with the benefits of lower prices/better products (Smith).... the reality is that situation is easily made unstable and results in monopoly capitalism (Reality). Anyway, that's straight Marx and lord knows hewrote enough of it so my repetition isn't going to help....
You can say that Microsoft is treating this as a war, and so we need to react in kind, but I maintain that setting "beat Microsoft" as the goal of any alternative project is the death knell for quality
No, beating Microsoft is just a side effect. The real objective is to get onto the nation's desktop. If Linux gets there and people decide, after making a fair decision, that they would rather have Winders... well, so be it. The fact of the matter is that for a variety of reasons that have little to do with technical merit, MS has a strangle hold on those desktops. They will not invite their competition into this hearland, so "we" must go there without their blessing. Nobody fights a war for the sake of killing the the opposition. They fight a war to gain territory or resources or political autonomy. The fact that the oppposing army (well, the civilians mostly...) get killed is a byproduct.
I would like to state one last time, that war is a bad thing and were it not for the fact that we tend to glorify it in the eyes of young boys of the middle class and drill it into their skulls daily, I would probably never consider it an appropriate metaphor for anything.
2 1337 4 u!
If we tout linux as desktop-ready before it can actually compete we run the risk of further entrenching the notion that our beloved OS is a toy for propellerheads and nothing more.
I beg to differ. It _is_ Linux ready. I'm a Windowshead who recently saw the light, and today got SuSE 6.4 in the mail. Sure, installation took a hellish 3 hours of copying files, but it was quite painless in terms of intellect needed overall.
Some dicking around with sax for X config, and some more fiddling with YaST2 (fiddling = total 10 min), and I'm multitasking in X listening to my favorite mp3s while reading instructions on installing JBuilder Pro and porting my Win32 perlscripts.
All this for someone who's never touched an X terminal before, and screamed at the thought of killing processes with -9 using PID. IMHO, Linux has gotten to be extremely easy to use. I can't see how to make it easier!
As you stated the Linux pavilion was dismal. Believe it or not, last year since Linux was "risky" it was off downstairs --however, they had a big Corel stand (with free distro's) and RedHat of course was there. Far more interesting displays in the previous years.
For the fun of it, I'll mention what I thought of some vendors..
The AMD folk were all cool. A woman took the time to just show me the PGA athlons and mentioned how the duron would follow the same path, they even had a big burly guy working there that didnt fit the corporate "mold." The SGI people on the other hand were holding electrical probes to zap us if we went anywhere near their displays. Intel had a decent sized section but their presentation was even less informative than the previous year (though the people were better). The IBM people had the "sweaty car salesman look" as usual. Transmeta had a decent presentation on the crusoe obviously.. heh, and they gave away little pretend crusoe chips (after they ran out of "fans." (Fans were handed out with them saying "The only fan you'll ever need"). Overall, I'd say the PCExpo better start getting more cutting edge and less of the buzz word ambush like it has become.
Let me make this as clear as possible:
We (as in Slashdot, not you and I) have a regular troll (as in moderatly funny offtopic poster, not the mythical bridge-loving hairy kind) who seems to have made a running joke (as in from the Laugh-it-was funny-the-first-five-times-but-not-now Dept.) out of the act of pouring grits (as in a hot breakfast food enjoyed by ninja and those south of the Mason-Dixon Line, not what you find on sandpaper) down his or her pants. (as in the cloth covering you are hopefully wearing over your legs, not what a dog does in summer.)
He (the troll) is affectionatly known as "The Hot Grits Guy" (for obvious reasons, the most notable is that we don't rightly know his name). If you would like, you can scroll (use that bar on the right border of your browser) down to the end of the page (as in this article) and see some of his (as in, The Hot Grits Guy) work. (as in, his posts.) While you're down there, look for "The Saga of the Troll War", "Star (as in hot young actress) Wars, as well as Mr. Patrick Bateman's soulful "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!".
.sig: Now legally binding!
Slashdot headlines for next week...
Signal 11 makes worthless comment in worthless article, receives another +5 funny by worthless moderation.
NightHawk
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
For the last year the linux-centric media (here included) have been blaring that linux is "ready for the desktop", "set for primetime" and "friendly enough for my dad". If you get most of yer daily quotient of geek news from said media, you might actually get into a head space where you believe that linux's domination of Joe Q. Enduser's desktop is imminent. If anything, this article is a much-needed reminder that this is notthe case.
Start rhetoric: We are fighting a war. A war against a very large, very well-funded enemy. This enemy owns most of the land and major resources. We are iquana-eating geurillas living in the hills, hiding under bushes every time a helicoper flies over. In any geurilla war, there comes a time when the geurillas have to make a decision to stop playing hit-and-run and move into the arena of positional warfare. The biggest threat to success is making that decision too soon. A few victories can swell heads fast and lead to brash maneouvers later on.End rhetoric.
Here's the facts: linux owns a tiny percentage of the boxes out there and then even then only in narrow markets. The Fatherland of the desktop is still far, far behind the lines. If we tout linux as desktop-ready before it can actually compete we run the risk of further entrenching the notion that our beloved OS is a toy for propellerheads and nothing more.
It's good to be reminded that the recipie-catalogers and porn-surfers of the world are winders zombies. It helps prevent hubris. We may celebrate the fact that the media has dropped "upstart" as a mandatory adjective when they talk about linux, but remember that Apple lost "beleaguered" two years ago and they still can't put a serious dent in redmond. We're still in the hills, Winders is still down on the convention floor... we need to remeber that if we are to have a hope of winning.
For the record, I think war is absolutely the stupidist thing humans have ever thought up. I chose the analogy only to cover up my complete lack of understanding about sports :)
2 1337 4 u!
As far as I've heard they don't even actually design or build any of their own keyboards or mice. Rumor has it that all the design work is farmed out (or perhaps, as has been alleged against them in the case of their mice, stolen from another company), and the production work is done overseas by OEM manufacturers the same as most other commodity products in that market.
All that aside, that has nothing to do with the fact that I just plain don't like the design of their mice or keyboards. I never said they were poorly constructed, just that I didn't like them and why.
One beef that I have heard others in my office have with the Intellimouse is that they seem to occasionally freak out when the person switches their Belkin OmniPort switchbox and they have to switch back and forth again to get the mouse to come back to life. I've never had any problems like that with the Logitech MouseMan I am using.
I also think Microsoft's hardware products are rather overpriced. I don't think they'd be able to get the prices they do for what they are selling if it weren't for the blind devotion of the unwashed masses to their overadvertised brand name.
Sun customers aren't put off by the mere cosmetics of the outside, despite the fact that the grey-purple color you mention is kinda ugly.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Try to look at it from his perspective: He sees NT as a perhaps buggy but certainly reliable system; a familiar quantity which he is somewhat knowledgable about. He sees Linux as an unfamiliar, mildly rebellious system which appears to be responsible for all of the problems in his way. The people who use Linux are elitists who are openly hostile to criticisms of Linux or any suggestion of using systems he is familiar with.
Clearly you're not going to win your battle for Linux by calling him a dope and trying to undermine his credibility with your research. Instead of being a snob and contributing to the universally bad image of Linux users, listen to what he says. Ask him real, non-hostile questions about his decision to use NT until either you are convinced that he has a good idea or he has discovered the faults in his logic.
I was there on Tuesday, from the moment they let corporate passes in, and I'll have to ask at least one important question:
/. has taught me), it still is the most recognizable series of images that you'll find on a CRT/LCD.
Did Roblimo just look at the entryway and go home?
Followed by:
What brand of crack was he smoking?
As I walked in, of course I saw more wireless tech. Last year, it was Microsoft, Compaq and Bell Atlantic Mobile close to the front. This year, it was Microsoft, Gateway, and GoAmerica (at Verizon's booth, according to the handouts)
Once you bothered to look around, though, there was the oft-proclaimed Transmeta booth, with Mobile Linux-powered WebPads everywhere, and Linus (yes, *that* Linus) was even around, if only for the one day.
Redhat had a small booth again, which leads me to believe that they just don't want to shell out the bucks for the extra space. But the Linux presence was at least double to triple its level from last year.
Of course, why would Windows have to much space? Hrm... maybe it's just a result of them having more money to throw at buying floor space. Remember, you can say all you want against Microsoft products, but you cannot deny their status as a marketing juggernaut. All you had to do to escape MicrosoftLand was walk about 50 to 100 feet out. ISPs were there in force, and yes, there were a lot of hardware demonstrations, totally isolated from Windows, PalmOS, or any UNIX variant.
Maybe to someone who seems to attend Open Source/Linux trade shows, it might seem that it's all Windows, but that just proves the narrowmindedness that has pervaded the minds of the Open Source Community. Sorry to tell you guys, but we're not there yet. Windows still sells, and while the Windows GUI might be unintuitive, and the OS might be unstable (or so
It all goes back to what one of the Toshiba droids said yesterday at the Expo:
"We're not going to support this 'Crusoe' chip you're asking about, because it's not Intel, and people buy the name."
I may have slightly misquoted that, mind you, but it's the same deal. If your product doesn't rely on an Intel chip and run a Microsoft OS, Marketing will lead you to believe that it won't sell. If that fails, then you're not going to represent the product, they'll just send marketing. Mind you, that one Toshiba man (and many IBM people) had no idea what Transmeta was!
As for the wireless, you can't be surprised by that. The recent release of Bluetooth, and the prevalence of 802.11 is fueling that, and can you honestly say that you don't like the idea that you can disconnect that one extra cable when you want to? Do you really want that laptop that you were assigned to need a dongle, another network cable, and so on, when you can just plug it in once the batteries are low, and that's it? The idea is that we're trying to make portable technology more convenient. That is the future of computing, just like shrinking computers, boosting throughput, and the internet were all the proposed future at some point. Now that those goals have been realized, of course the industry is going to change their (admittedly narrow) focus onto something else.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Have you been watching the same IBM and AT&T commercials that I have? There is most certainly a major revolution going on. The crazy guy can buy stocks from the park using his voice, for gods sake.
Of course you're right, but people have always been fascinated by the new, fast, sexy stuff. That's not going to change.
<OT> What's starting to really piss me off are the genetics stories from the past 12 months. The headlines are like *big type* Gemone Project decodes entire genome, all disease and human suffering will end *little type* as soon as we annotate it and begin to understand what the hell is in there...maybe. It reminds me of *big type* You have just won ten million dollars *little type* assuming you have the winning numbers. I'm proposing a Slashdot ban on genetics milestone stories, is anyone with me? </OT>
-B
1. Is it an enterprise-class solution?
2. Can I get it from an application service provider?
3. Is it web-enabled?
4. What sort of wireless messaging capabilities does it provide?
-cwk.
Sometimes network switches fry, that happened a month ago to me, I could'nt ssh into the server ... so I had to go to the console ... whose monitor and keyboard was multiplexed to save space.
I saw an MSNBC piece on PC Expo yesterday morning. Standard useless fluff, but as the voiceover talked about how handhelds and wireless were the craze, yadda yadda, they had video clips of the products. The main one was of a palmtop (didn't catch the brand) obviously running WinCE. Just a couple seconds into the shot, after a few stylus taps on the screen, a window titled "FATAL APPLICATION ERROR" filled the screen, and the user spent the last several seconds of the clip pressing various places on the screen in an evident and futile attempt to close the error window. Priceless.
I can remember back when "Newsflash: Technology Trade Show Not Linux-Centric" wouldn't exactly have been a presses stopper.
Bam. Free Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer and Natural Keyboard Pro.
:-)
Yuck. They tried to give those items to me here at work, however, I rejected them in favor of a more normal (non-warped) keyboard and a true 3-button Logitech MouseMan which Iscavenged out of the parts bin.
I don't like the shape or feel of Microsoft's mice, let alone I want a true 3-button mouse not the goofy roller clicker thing in the middle. I would never be able to adapt to the warped keyboards, aside from the fact that they take up way too much desk space.
Besides that, I don't think I've ever visited Expedia...
Well, as someone who's actually served (I was a Sargeant in the Canadian Army), I'd say this is definitely not a war.
Except:
In a war, you win by imposing chaos on your enemy and allowing your units to function. Since we are organized chaos, it's hard for them to impose further chaos on us, and easy for us to impose chaos upon them.
Some simple things to keep in mind:
Don't let the enemy impose the rules. Impose your own rules, define your own battlefield, determine your own objectives. Maybe we don't want to do GUI stuff for p0rn users. Maybe we don't want to seemless integration in one box. Maybe we don't want to make security easy so we're easy to hack.
Don't worry about the bucks. Let the corporate greedheads worry about the bucks. You want to change the world. Money is just a method to measure how much control one has of resources. MSFT has lots of that. But if we undermine control and reestablish the valuation system, we devalue his currency. Just like the British Secret Service counterfeited money to win the Falklands War - don't fight conventionally when you can win a different way.
Ain't nothing wrong with fighting on the Server Front. Who cares if it doesn't have fancy graphics - what do we use those for, anyway? Slide show presentations? Now, if you can crank out MP3 files and PNG faster, that I might care about.
And, as the original poster said, remember that the pie is growing - and we keep getting larger fractions. This is good, and MSFT knows it. They may talk about selling 3 million W2K licenses, but how many of those had some guy install Linux on top of it? A heck of a lot, that's for sure.
Will in Seattle
oh yeah, and if you ever compliment a guy on his pants you are going to get some seriously weird looks.
some things are funny because they are repeated, try Robert Rankin.
bye bye karma :P
~ppppppppö
Did you see a message something like this?
Create a normal user and log in through that account. Do not IRC as root. Banned for your own protection.
:^)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
The funniest thing I found at the PC Expo was the gift that AMD was giving out. By definition, it is a 'note holder' of sorts, basically a little cube that has a wire and a gator clip on the end that you are supposed to put notes/cards/etc in and have it stand on your desk. However, the concept is almost unusable with this item, so I prefer to call it the Offical AMD Roach Clip. Besides, people think its a lot cooler when you present it that way to them.
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
That's not the point of the PCExpo. So what if MS or any other company is hugely over-represented ? The whole point of ANY expo or conference is free T-shirts and CD's. I shamelessly took their toys and "Thank you very much...love your product...blah, blah, blah... Do you have any keychains ?"
have you ever used the "goofy roller clicker thing?" I too thought it retarded when first I saw it, but once I used it I could never go back to a mouse without one. it is insanely handy whilst viewing html, and nice in any other app with scrollbars, etc.
logitech has a comfortable, minimally warped one; the mouseman+ I believe it is named. its the same one bought in bulk and branded by hewlitt packard
try it before you knock it
Yes, I'm an economcis professor, but you don't need to be one to see the utter misunderstanding of capitalism and the market system to see the nonsense here.
>Capitalism is based on the assumption of limited
>resources and unlimited demand (driven by
>necessity or greed).
No. But this is vaguely a description of the notion of scarcity. *All* economic systems attempt to deal with this, including marx. Furthermore, "limited resources" does not mean "fixed quantity of resources," and unlimited demand has nothing to do with market economics or capitalist thought. The problem is that the quantity available at a price of zero exceeds the quanity demanded at that price.
>In this scenario, the only way to increase your
>pie share is at the expense of your >competitor(s).
This is *not* market or capitalist thinking. Facscist, perhaps.
As a matter of fact, this contradicts the very *reason* that theses systems are argued superior: that they are the most efficient at increasing the size of the pie. You *can* gain at the same time as your competitor; market economics *can* be a positive sum game (though this is not guaranteed).
>The theory is that this should lead to a balance
>of players, each struggling against
>each other and providing the consumers with the
>benefits of lower prices/better products
>(Smith+).... the reality is that situation is
>easily made unstabland results in monopoly
>capitalism (Reality).
Reality? It is contradicted by virtually all of the data, at least in the United States. Over the past century, the portion of the economy dominated by monopolized and oligopolized industries has steadily dropped, while those dominated by competitive markets has steadily risen.
hawk, professor of economics
People buy whatever they use at work. All this talk of interfaces and metaphors is bull. I've had to teach DOS before some people understood windows for the first time.
As for asses in IRC channels, I've noticed most people can't even begin to explain their problems clearly. What I can't understand is where the emotional fits come from. They're both frustrating, confusing, and disturbing to someone trying to help.
Forget rtfm. Linux could use some better manuals. Being uptodate is a red herring since last I heard email is still email just as it was years ago. 2+2 still = 4.
The problem is people don't even read dialogs. I'm sorry but there's a point where people have to grow up. There's no such thing as infinite convenience.
Finally, let's face it. You're talking about 30 years of innovation all at once. you want to teach people 30 years worth of shit? C'mon. It's not enough to just embrace users. They need to learn to go after the things they want. Computers aren't toasters. They're vehicles at best.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Transmeta was there in a big way. Had a large booth with an audience section on one side, comfy office simulation on another and an aircraft area demoing Crusoe-powered pieces of hardware with scattered Linus sightings.
There was a small linux pavillion in which LinuxMall had a sizable booth. I came to the rescue of one of their salesguys who was mystified by the package on one of his own shelves labled "Yellow Dog Linux".
DVD was a big item this year with everything from jukeboxes to portable vid players being hyped. Another item in the funky neat area was the Pocket PC, whose main unit with the combo CD/floppy undocked was about the size of those old neon plastic nine-volt radios of the '70s. It's a mini Pentium running Windows but the booth exihibitors are pretty hot on Linux as apparantly they've made a licensing deal with Corel to get $300 ready-to run desktop kits.
No Mac action per se, but here and there the odd G4 with Cinema display for video demo and the scattering of imacs. The bulk of those network drives like Snap! have finally discovered the world beyond Windows. They've added support for both Linux and Appleshare/Appleshare over IP.
It was a relatively tonedowned show compared to PC/Expos of late but busy nonetheless.
I tried it, didn't find it terribly useful, although it was under Windows, and it made the text in the browser or other windows scroll either too slowly or with nauseating waves. In any case, I didn't like the fact that the wheel had a noisy and distinct clickiness in its action which made the scrolling jerky. Frankly, I think I would rather just use the 'Page up' and 'Page down' keys with my other hand.
Most of the scrolling gadgets in mice don't make any provision for scrolling sideways. I have seen one mouse that had a little Thinkpad-like 'Trackpoint' device on it for scrolling both up and down and left and right. That might be a little more useful than the wheel gadgets, especially since it would probably be smoother and quiet. I still want a real, reasonably sized middle button though.
Maybe it is because the PC vendors, dealing in a market with nearly zero innovation or product differentiation, think they have to resort to whizbang flashy gadgets while the workstation vendors can just stick to what works because they are dealing with a much more savvy customer.
Well I submitted a story to slashdot about a site with pics from the expo but I guess I was denied. If you want to take a look at the new Crusoe notebooks or the new web tablet zip on over to Tech Toys. http://www.icashex.com/techtoys/
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Ah! Let me know when you distill down the events
and figure out the starting date. Not only damn
funny, but a great waste of karma..
How about 'Best Troll Impersonation', where the
objective it to look exactly like one of the
established trolls. (Eg, an fake Fat-time & Lubie,
a new episode of 'Star Wars') Or perhaps "Most
Believable goatse.cx Link".
.sig: Now legally binding!
Is this the same PC Expo talked about in this article? Which one's true? In this article they claim "fealty to Microsoft is the exception" and that everyone was talking about Linux. Surely things can't be THAT polar!
Wish I was there..
wish
---
If Microsoft suddenly showed up at an Open Source convention and said "Here's Office 2001 with source code for *NIX", yeah, then I would be surprised. But as it stands Microsoft has the same monopoly share at the expos as it does with OS's in general: all of it.
Besides, I'm not a big detractor of MS at shows anyway. They give some pretty awesome prizes for 15 minutes of their time. I watched from afar while Sun was doing their Java presentation at one show, and the Microsoft presenter asked "OK, here's a quiz, where should you go for up-to-date travel information?" "Expedia," I answered. Bam. Free Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer and Natural Keyboard Pro.
Not bad for pandering to a major corporation for 30 seconds (and I can go right back to Linux and FreeBSD).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Obviously not enough if the Palm tent is full and the PocketPC area is nearly empty as the commentary implies.
Also that Linux seems to making a strong showing there, even if it is off in a corner. The idea that RedHat gave out 400 CD in one day, mostly to suites is very encouraging, IMHO.
Having a big marketing budget can always help a product, but if they don't deliver eventually no matter how big you marketing budget is it won't help.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
ROB ,will you PLEASE fix my account so I can start posting at 1 again instead of 2?! I want my goddamn PREVIEW feature back...
Facts:
;).)
1) E-commerce makes a lot of money. So does catalog sales (JCPenny, Sears, etc...). E-commerce is really just the simple progression of mail order sales onto digital media and communication channels.
2) Wireless data delivery, as in getting stocks and scores over you mobile phone, really isn't that big of a deal. Simple evolution of pager and mobile phone technologies, nothing more.
3) Handheld computing is just evoliving, nothing really amazing about it. Simple evolution of the calculator, in my opinion.
4) The marketing industry has simply blown it's top. Everything "E" is the current focus, and advertisers and media execs are singing all the way to the bank. They have taken simple product evolution in the consumer electronics industry, which can be related to the "revolution" of adding the freshness date to the bottom of beer cans, and made these "marvelous" to be much more larger than life than they really are.
Quite simply, the wizzards of oz are really putting on quite a show.
Maybe, one day, the media zombies of the world will start seeing through these inflated advances in technology and realize the actual, unrealized potential of technology and convince these buisnesses to bring _real_ revolution to the table. Or, at least bring the inflated costs of these products and services down.
(Note, this post was just an observation, no real point to it
As I was getting ready for my job as an ASP/VB (blech!) programmer, I had the TV on. "Today" was on and they were panning through the crowd of goobers with "We LOVE Alabama" signs. All of a sudden, a "Linux Rules" sign pops up! And there, in the crowd is a giant tux suit! Then the moron anchors started talking about the "Pokemon" in the crowd. Did anyone else notice this??? What is the deal?
I *have* been able to find good help with USENET; I've found people to be very friendly. You should also try searching deja.com first to see if someone has already answered your question. Hope that helps. Just remember that there are a lot of losers out there who get their kicks by being nasty.
My friend had to register at the actual computer terminal. It had a Windows frontend (what looked to be IE5 in 'Kiosk/Fullscreen' mode)
When he submitted the form, it blew up and I
noticed the little "Apache" tag at the bottom.
I asked the guy who was assisting people with registration if they ran Linux for their backend and he said he didn't know.
Fialar
In the 80's Digital Equipment had a small show called DECWorld. Held in Mass each year, and literally took up nearly every hotel for a hundred miles. Last one I remeber was at the World trade center and on the Queen Mary, to host all the exhibits and people. Needless to say, DECWorld is gone. I rmember lots of big shows who dominate and die, slowly. However the shows that grow seem to be equally focused on HW and applications, and have some level of appeal to the general perception, e.g. everyone knows what a PC is, and according to the appelate court, everyone recognizes that PC==Windows. The object lesson is still however about quality, not quantity, in symposiums. I'd love to have 20000 rabid buyers of linux products. I'd love 200,000 even more, but I'm willing to grow into them. I'm also willing to have 10 shows of 20,000 buyers, if the buyers are diferent in each venue. That appears to be a risk to Linux acceptance. How many shows do you go to that have the same faces, same speakers, same everything. In a former life managing Ada products, I could correctly pick over 50% of the attendees each time. I'm beginning to feel that way about Linux shows.
Open Source Ronin
Linux shows are niche shows. Glad to see that someone at Slashdot decided to walk out into the real world. When is the Linux community going to realize that they have a chance at the server community...but the desktop is beyond their grasp. Why? Largely because the end user likes something that is familiar from computer to computer...not a different GUI for every workstation.... Couple that with the elitist attitude that most Linux Hacks display and you've got your reason. Personally I think Linux could be the better operating system, but I still use Win98 & Win2000 on my home machines because every Linux IRC channel that I've asked a simple question in has been filled with some of the biggest asses I've ever met. Embrace your new users instead of trying to trump them and see the difference. PrimalChrome