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Japan Considers Moving Away From Windows
dm24_99 writes "According to this article at Japan Today, the Japanese government is considering abandoning Microsft Windows in a plan to boost computer security within the government. The government is very interested in alternatives, especially Linux." Of course, like the bank reform being proposed, who knows when this will actually happen.
I'm just curious, is there something that attracts asian countries to Open Source rather than let's say, North Americans?
I hope they don't say this just to have Bill or Steve come and make a good deal. These days ...
...how to wrangle $$$ out of M$. Film at 11.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport will set up a panel of experts to study the alternatives and what systems other governments use in the next fiscal year beginning April 1, the newspaper said.
/. editors might be actually right in saying this won't happen for a long time...
For once,
Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
Worst case scenario it ends up m$ loosing profits, so that is still a win.
Sounds like Japan got wind of all the stuff Microsoft and Gates have been handing out to India and want a piece of the action.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Linux support for Unicode is/will be a major factor in any progress in the Asian market. Windows supports Unicode but it is (frankly) so painful to make work in applications that decent Linux support would be a major selling point.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Well I don't think it's fair to compare with bank reform, after all. The accumulation of loans and debts have been too deep to be exposed... and the reform will be too embarassing to the Japanese themselves. Dumping Microsoft, on the other hand, at least won't be embarassing. I think the Japanese had put many effort in localizing Linux themselves. Of course others are right that it could be yet another tactic to negotiate a better deal with MS...
More significant than any possible actual system change is the fact that Japan is actually considering dropping MS. As Linux and open source is taken more and more seriously, maybe people won't fall for the same closed source propaganda anymore. Microsoft may actually have to compete on quality, rather than reliability.
if they dont use windows, how will they see outside?!?
...First, they'll have to figure out the cost of changeover and supporting Linux, FreeBSD, etc. Software may be extremely cheap but supporting it could consume quite a lot of IT man-hours.
Besides, the Japanese are already heavily invested in commercial UNIX systems. I believe many Japanese government ministries are running minicomputers and mainframes built in Japan using UNIX.
Anyway, the Japanese should check with IBM Japan on this. After all, the biggest commercial supporter of Linux is IBM, and IBM definitely has the resources to do Linux installations from department servers all the way up to supercomputers.
I'm interested how much money will that cost MS. $100 millions for AIDS and $400 millions for fighting Linux like they did in India will certainly not be enough here. And may i add that I'm surprised how much an afternoon hobby of some of us cost that company.
MS reliability, lol. I'm an idiot.
Think of how much money Japan will waste on figuring out how to add unicode w/ proper translations on an alternative.
-]Phreak Out[-
Given Japan's rather poor economy nowadays I really have my doubts if they're willing to tackle the conversion in the near future--mostly because of the large number of IT man-hours needed to do the conversion and support the systems after the conversion.
including the c source code
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Well when Japan defaults on it's debts to the World Bank in a few years and puts another dent in the global economy Open Source is going to be looking pretty sweet to a lot of people.
Perhaps some form of Linux could become the core of a new OS designed for some of the cool hardware coming out of Japan, kind of like Apple OSX.
;-)
Imagine a Sony VAIO with its own optimised Linux-based OS? With the advantage that at least their CDs should play ok on it
--It's better to ride the rainbow than find the pot of gold.
Ya looks to me like they are just trying to pressure microsoft for some handouts.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at governments decreeing security by fiat (cough*CLipper*cough). Companies have recognised that risk management is key to avoiding many of the problems (e.g. middle office to vet orders/inventory/accounts) yet they consider hiring sysadmins who hold paper certificates as a panacea for electronic security? If you are vitally concerned with information security (e.g. trade secrets), then it is incumbant on cultivating the right culture and habits (logging off away from desk). It might be feasible to leave houses unlocked in small towns where everyone knows everyone else (social sanctions in shunning property violation offenses) but we have deadbolts, invisible IDs and security guards in cities. Similarly security is mainly a systematic process of educating users in using keys (PGP), selecting secureable devices (OpenBSD) or hiring suitable external expertise. Just expecting a single silver bullet of replacing an OS (no matter how good/badly secure it is perceived to be) seems to be on the order of Caute v the tide.
LL
I wonder....if this move is less about security ....and more about saving yen... :p
You people are taking something written by Japan Today seriously?
It's a faaarr left wing, marginal paper dominated by Western expats. The Japanese don't read it.
Wait until you hear it from Yomiuri or Asahi shimbun-- then bother to burn some brain cells.
I have always been amazed by how almost every country pays MS tax even if they have both the skills and the industry to make their own software. Migrating to something from your own country would indeed put the money back in your pocket instead of shipping it abroad. Localization isnt just the language, the culture has a significant part of how a computer should interact too. There are big advantages of having your own software industry. The distance from a company in the USA to EU, Japan etc. is big both in culture and in communication. Microsoft develops mainly for the american culture wich shines through the product.
Having the development in your country should atleast in theory give a much better adapted set of applications that if you buy a ironed out fit_all_suit-everything version like Microsofts products.
HTTP/1.1 400
I urge them to make sure they are ready for linux, by checking to see if they have the necessary kanji characters. One for 'Xwindows' and one for 'sucks'.
Why does Japan need Linux when they have all these wonderful operating systems that can plug directly into your brain and have cute holographic girls who pop up to inform you when there's a problem?
It must be true, I saw it on TV!
And you'd think they'd rebuild Tokyo Tower somewhere else. I mean, it's what, the fourth time this month it's been destroyed by giant monsters.
KDE supports Japanese very well, but HOW do you get a japanesee console, i havent seen this, does anyone know any more about this.
I wonder what Steve and Bill are going to do with all of those frequent flyer miles? They sure have been racking them up lately haven't they?
I heard that Walmart will give you a really neat Microtel PC for a quarter million miles.
Will I have to call it GNU/Japan?
That Japan has its own slashdot
Bear in mind that linux has a strong tradition of unveiling every security risk found no matter how small. Most holes found recently have been found by audits, not by intrusions in linux boxens. The more holes found and fixed the better. We have no idea of just how many holes there are in windows because we cant quip about it if we buy access to the code. An independant audit of windows is impossible. In linux whoever has the time and care can do an audit. Security should be discussed, bashed and nagged about constantly.
If you look at how many holes that have been found in the core of linux and GNU tools the numbers are in favour for linux by far. Its mostly addons and applications that have holes in them.
Dont forget that a serious admin can choose secure parts for his server and thus build an pretty much idiot proof server if he has the knowledge relatively easy. In windows thats impossible because "this is what you get, live with it".
The existence of theese linux boxens with different ftpd, httpd, sshd etc etc gives a diversified net, just like in nature. If you find a hole in an application there is less chance of someone else having the axact same config.
That said there are a lot to be done in linux security but i still think its a better choice for a server since you have the power yourself and you dont have to wait for someone else to do the job. If its important you can do it yourself and that is worth more than money if your data is sensitive.
HTTP/1.1 400
By not reading the article.
goatse.cx
(it's funny, laugh. sheesh.)
http://www.asahi.com/business/update/1116/005.html
I've already heard it from Asahi
Doesn't bother me either way. Think it through. If they are looking for the payola that means M$ will be paying every country on the planet in just another year or two. Who would want to be left off the gravy train if all you have to do is say "We might migrate" and millions of dollars flow out of Redmond And they can do it again in a year or two. Bribes only work when you are trying to prevent the appearance of a 'showcase' installation and they are a stopgap measure at best.
Eventually we will get a few governments converting simply because M$ has succeeded too well at getting the US Govt to lean on poor countries on the 'piracy' issue. Since they CAN'T pay they only really have two choices, get M$ to donate licenses or migrate.
Longterm M$ needs a better answer than paying their customers to use their product. These tactics are just to buy time to come up with a real strategy. That will be the time for fear. They are now clear of the Justice Dept and are free to act. Expect them to act as soon as Bill G and Monkey Boy come up with a plan they like.
Democrat delenda est
Economys from around the world, are swtiching to linux.
The biggest Economies outside the us are japan and germany, which are slowy switching. And with countries like India, China, Peru etc switching too, its blatently obvious that soon only america will use windows.
How do I purchase shares in Redhat Japan, assuming their on, is it the Nikkei Index?
In other news...
... Move along... nothing to see.
{insert country name} has decided to move away from Windows to [linux|bsd|QNX|opendos] due to [political|security|economic] reasons. The [OSS|GNU|Richard Stallman] is [very|GNU] happy.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The more people use Linux they realize how good it is. It is the one of the most secure, stable , flexible OS out there where every is contrubuting and total cost of owerner ship is low.
:)
I know for a fact it cost a lot of cooks to keep windows rebooting and keep it up and running.
windoze is coming down coming down.!!!
Except Japan, where Microsoft is already dead on servers:
see here
I take this announcement much more seriously than all the announcements from China lately. The Japanese are able and willing to abandon Windows completely - unlike the Chinese.
What? You didn't know Japan is capitalist?! *gasp*!
Is Linux being used by goverments and large clients as a "bargaining chip" to gain consessions
from M$?
> the Japanese government is considering abandoning Microsft Windows
I struggle with the idea of a whole country, or even a whole administration, changing OS at midnight one Saturday. Surely this sort of thing is going to happen one department at a time, and, probably, one office at a time in a lot of cases. Most government departments have a significant amount of bespoke software that would need tweaking, if not rewriting. Even if the decision was taken on a nationwide basis, I would expect the changeover to take at least the lifetime of the average corporate PC, ie 2-4 years.
While Linux might be wonderful for a lot of purposes, I can't see all the government graphic designers being thrilled with the current choice of Linux frame-based DTP packages, for example. So you are going to have Windows (and, probably) Mac ghettos for a long long time.
And I think we can assume that the security people at least would like to be able to run all the programs the people they are spying on can run...
Virtually serving coffee
There's 1945 kanji known as Joyu (sp?) that are the bare minimum needed for literacy - those are the ones you learn through high school and the ones that they pretty much stick to in newspapers and official documents. Plus in Manga, of course, where they have a larger percentage of 'semi-literate' and younger readers. Believe it or not, Japanese literature actually does get a bit deeper than this - they have books and magazines that use lots of difficult characters that must be supported in the fonts and character sets.
After the initial 1945, there's another 18,000 or so that, while less common, are certainly not 'falling into disuse' - some percentage are only used for names and such nowadays, buy that pretty much makes them a requirement. After all, how do you sell someone a computer incapable of displaying his name or the name of a polititian? Sure, you could spell it out in katakana, but that's just lame.
It gets trickier, because there are several encodings in common usage, such as JIS, Shift-JIS and EUC, all which must be supported in any viable operating system. As far as I know, Unicode is a latecomer and not really an important player yet in Japan. It does show promise, though. Until then, systems will have to transparently guess which encoding to use. One of the first words you learn in Japanese when dealing with DBCS information systems is Mojibake - garbage rendering of text.
The good news is that Linux does a great job of handling all of the encoding issues. I use it daily for this stuff and it certainly surpasses anything I've seen on Windows, though IMHO, Mac is a bit slicker. (No surprise there.)
As an aside, I was once venting frustration to a friend while studying kanji - "When are the Japanese going to give up this crap and just use roman letters like the rest of the world??"
"Never!" she replied, "Because once you've learned kanji, it's too fscking convenient!"
If you're really interested in this stuff, do a Google for 'Jim Breen', the professor from Monash who is possibly the leading expert in the field - he's also a hell of a nice guy.
-- My Weblog.
Let's start posting articles about governments/companies who are moving away from *NIX and going to Windows. Oh wait, there are too many...
http://www.apple.co.jp/switch/
God damn mother fucker, what the fuck you be fucking saying 'bout my fucking brother mofo, you speak some dank shit bitch, dank shit that I ain't got no mo'fucking clue 'bout.
Well, in Japan corporate culture, it is a bad thing to be put in a window seat in a company... Rimshot.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
For the last couple years I have been depressed about Japan's response to Linux, because I read somewhere that MS had 90% of their webservers . . . your link proves that whatever I read was either FUD, really OLD news, or a stupid misunderstanding. Today is a good day!!!
Sorry, but who cares what the U.S. thinks about Linux and Open Source. Next year I am moving to Japan for good this time and am never looking back!
btw, have you tried Mandrake 9.0!? I just installed it on my main system today and it is EXCELLENT (great Japanese suppor)!
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Sorry, it's bollocks.
It's not hard to find exploitable servers of any OS, be it Linux, BSD, Solaris or even Windows in Japan - the Far East's insecurity is legendary.
The point is, you can't expect any OS to be secure if you don't keep up with the latest security patches. They would be better off using the money to train their admins to some degree of competence.
The Super Happy Fun Luck Wish OS?
Now with 200% more Happy Flashing Seizure Robots! Yatta!
I read JapanToday has much as I read /.
/. what it loses in transmission of ideas it makes it up with posting from individuals and being entertaining... and we all know the Pop Vox pics of j-girl hotties beats /. anyday.
Sure it's liberal as hell just like western news outlets, and does cater to westerners in and out of Japan since it's in _English_. However like
You mean Cancer i hope.
christ. do you need a pair of pliers to get that hook out of your jaw?
Even if more company's inside the US are switching to Microsoft. Which still is only a small number, many overseas company's seem to be using alternatives. This is most likely because of the fact that Microsoft are a very large company inside the US and supporting it is just giving the US more.
Linux is perfect in this case because its free, or cheap and there is "Turbo Linux" in japan which keeps there economy quite well.
Other country's people, youth mainly are into Linux because of Moral and political reasons. And more are willing to switch. On top of this is the fact that Linux/Unix now going seriously into the Workstation Market, and perhaps will have it quite well in a few years, just like it has a fair grip on the server market now.
Only good things will happen for Linux, and there all good!
Right! Which means the poster of the grandparent did not RTFA and looks like an Asahi Hole. He should not be modded +5 "Informative". He should be modded -1 "Didn't RTFA and Probably Installs Artificial Lawns For Fun"
The Politicians have figured out how to make billions. If they announce that they are looking at switching to Linux, then MS throws billions at them. Here is CO USA, Owens is "friends" with billg. We pay 20 / install just for the OS. If you announce that you are upset with MS, then you get it free.
screw your "friends", keep your enemys close
Some people actually believe that Linux is more secure than Windows. How sad.
t ml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/28118.h
Asians are smart. Ne. The downside to using Linux when it comes to typing Japanese is it only works in X. But if you think X is OK (And I do), it only takes a well-written howto and 5 minutes to do so. The process is a little different for Red Hat, Debian etc.
Also, with easy to set up distros like Red Hat and, well, Mandrake (I didn't say easy to USE), more and more idiots can start using Linux... That way, we'll see a more consumer- and government-friendly OS in the years to come.
'tis great IMO.
You'd think that the guys who came up with the shortest poems in the world would have been all about a smaller character set.
no wonder this is comment has been moderated up.
Have you ever seen a Japanese keyboard? Most of them have a mixture of both English character as well as Kana, characters that the Japanese use to write phonetically. You didn't actually think they had a single button for every Kanji character, did you?
anyone who refers to Microsoft as M$ should automatically be modded up +5 funny. It is usually a sign that the post is a mature, well written piece.
1) dramatically increases security: thousands different virus threats so far insecure code (IIS, IE, Outlook, SQL, Word, Excell, PowerPoint, SharePoint, ...)
2) reduces TCO: less management, no reboots, no extra software purchases to remotely manage: PCduo, etc., less hardware: with MS if you marry one you get the whole trailer park, exchange needs active service directory, SMS needs ADS, PDCs and on and on and on. None of the server, or for that matter client side, offerings are complete products, you need to buy more and pay for it every year, so you never get out of this cycle. Only one user per Windows PC, even in the 22nd century, windows is: one machine = one user!
3) instantly saves on the thousands of various licenses that you need to manage (if you are a corporation). This is time, lawyers, etc.
4) may get a better deal: Microsoft software comes with little or no warranties: read the EULA.
Either way you look at it, it costs a lot for no value and a lot of headaches.
...and predict that Bill Gates will visit Japan soon and 'donate' few million dollars to 'enhance' Japanese IT by 'donating' 'free' Windows licenses to schools or somesuch.
If MS is dead on servers in Japan, that would probably make it a pretty mixed enviornment. From what I've seen Macs are far more popular in Japan then they are here.
Really
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/28128.html
The mysterious shroud surrounding Microsoft's revenues was dispelled yesterday, when the company revealed that it is losing shedloads of money on everything bar client Windows, server and Office software. In these, naturally, it's making even bigger shedloads, but it's abundantly clear who's paying the rent, and financing the assaults into new areas.
I know this is bad taste, but I wonder if they'll pronounce it "Rinux."
:)
Yes, yes. I'm the insensitive clod of this topic. No offense intended
Most people don't realize the strong technical reasons why an organization would want to consider other operating systems. Here is an article which gathers facts and links: Windows XP Shows the Direction Microsoft is Going.
This is Japan -- they can probably just get that 5-year old Suki girl from the commercials to write them a secure operating system.
Bill: Wait! Would one...hundred...billion...dollars change you mind.
Japan: Ehhhhhh-xcellent.
Taft
This is a beancounter's idea, obviously--someone who thinks Linux is "free" *chuckle*...
Like Microsoft has $100,000,000,000 in loose change just lying around. *chuckle* Ah, if only I had a nickel for all of the M$ fantasies floating around--I'd have more money than M$...!...;)
I've always suspected that free software would appeal to Japanese people. It seems to be "honte" which afaict is roughly equivalent to "the Right Thing to do". (Not that I know much, all the Japanese I know I learned from Anime and Go.) Over here in North America, and in China too, and much of the world, it seems like people often look no further than "the easiest, quickest way to do it". I get the impression that the Japanese like to think of themselves as more honorable than that, sometimes. Which might lead them to be more inclined to look at technically superior solutions even if it takes a little extra effort to evaluate and implement them.
anyone have any idea what the "other" web servers are? I changed the URL to check for a report on the "com" domain, rather than "jp", and noticed that there is a marked increase in 2002 for "other", and that corresponds with a decrease for both Apache and Microsoft.
Many others know more about this than I, but I didn't see anyone address this point yet so...
Once upon a time in Japan there were a dozen PC manufacturers, whose names you all know well, each with their own version of DOS which effectively kept their customers tied to their own hardware, accessories and software. In those days you'd easily spend twice in Japan what you'd need to pay in the U.S. for an equivalent setup. This strategy was regarded as essential by each manufacturer to protect their own share of their market, and the US competition, MS and Apple, were not seen as a factor. Apple always had a good Japanese language interface but were not a big factor in the market. MS took longer to develop a good J interface but have it now, and now they dominate the Japanese market. Now the various DOSs are mostly gone, and there is almost no difference between the U.S. and Japan in cost of hardware and software, and there are not a dozen versions of each software application to distribute. If you get to Tokyo, be sure to spend at least a half day in Akihabara to see what I mean, and because it is really a kick.
Just wondering if anyone else had the following pop into their heads while reading this headline:
(Must say in bad Japanese accent to be effective)
"Mothra coming.. Move away from windows!"
Honorable Japan IT bureau wish to consider switch to Rinux operating system.
After all, they have spent a lot on the project already and it is optimized for use in Japan.
The Japanese government is waiting for Bill or Steve to fly over and woo them. Unless Japan isn't as important as Australia?
Amusing how microsoft has over 50% market share in iceland, when their software doesnt even support the icelandic language.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Most of the "other" webservers are Roxen server which was open-sourced recently.
Internet exposed web servers make up perhaps 10% of the total server market.
I don't see how you can reasonably make any conclusions based on the statistics you just posted.
You can say whatever you wish. But, if Bill and Steve have to show up all the time to permit a lower sales price (special deal), Microsoft is in trouble. If Bill or Steve were worth their salaries, the price would go up when they visit not down.
Regardless of the reason, Microsoft is beginning to feel the price pressure. And, it will never let up. Just remember for Microsoft to discount 10% on price is about the same as losing a 10% share of the market. At least on day one it is.
If you combine a price decrease (or special concession) with a loss in market share the impact can be significant. Remember in most markets Microsoft can not increase sales by lowering the price. About all they can do is put off the loss in market share. But, that will not be forever.
Besides price is not the only disadvantage facing the monopolist. "Bad will" also plays a role. As does lack of trust. And, the more that the US Government and Microsoft get together in secret deals the faster all other companies will flee.
One of the stupidest things the DOJ has done is to insert itself into the excuses for Microsoft to refuse to turn over API information, etc. Every government elsewhere can read that and see that there is a secret deal between Microsoft the monopolist (who gets enormous political favors from the US) and the federal government (who should not be trusted by other governments anyway).
What happened to the "trust but verify" philosophy?
The DOJ simply should never be making secret deals with any company much less a convicted monopolist.
The DOJ is run by idiots.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
Smart people, these Japanese.
Try this with your shiny new Gentoo system:
emerge ispell; echo "plesure" |ispell
It might help you look less the unedumacated clod.
and Bill will fly in and give you half a billion dollars. I see every country on earth doing this just to see what Bill will do.
Besides the fact that there are HUNDREDS of homonyms.
Ever try to read anything written entirely in romaji? What a nightmare. Not to mention being ugly.
Without a doubt kanji are a pain in the butt, but they have a certain charm about them.
-
I use SuSE running Japanese with only a few problems. If the government were serious, it could be done.
And no, I am NOT talking out of my ASS.
henna yatsu. kusottare
Out of the box, it is supported. If you choose Japanese during the install, most everything will have Japanese. BUT I still refuse to use the japanese console because of all the artifacts left on the screen. Refuse is perhaps too strong, but for most things an english console is fine. If you want to use japanese vi on linux get ready to learn the refresh console command, because you will be using it often and even then sometimes it doesn't work.
SuSE 8.00 has a japanese console and I bet redhat does too.
Next!!!!!
bakayaroo
Most of our cars are made in the U.S. (well, parts of the Japanese ones are, sort of), our computers are made in the U.S. (uh, maybe some last-stage assembly), our plastic products are made in the U.S. (what, China isn't a state). Yeah, given the choice we always invest in our own country. Sigh...
Why doesn't Japan used homegrown technology: MSX.
I agree that the metric system is a good thing but you forget that the US does not use it for a lot of things. As an engineer I can say that wastes a lot of time & money & lives, but we certainly have acheived economic success.
MS's only way out w.r.t long term survival in a hostile environment towards their OS is truely a cutdown version of Windows 2000 that is supported for 10 years across various x86/whatever hardware platforms. Nothing fancy, very little maintainance. They've effectively paid off their development costs for Win2k when they make profit each quarter. I doubt they have any loans to repay.
Hardware vendors that write and develop their own drivers will keep hardware support for the OS up to par.
The cutdown win2k should be sold at half the cost of current prices. Something reasonably inexpensive. MS's future feature rich OSes need to compete, feature wise, with this cut down OS that is so inexpensive and secure that it is not seen as a hostile invader but rather a standardized 10 year platform.
This would cut into their short term profit margines, yes. It would, however, be the only way I can see MS could survive the global harsh critisism. I'm not implying that their lack of survival would mean their bancrupcy, but rather that they are being continually tarnished as a company and may never recover or remove that tarnish. Their ownly survival is good faith/fair practice by releasing a 10 year windows 2000/like os that is 'sold'.
Win2k @ $30-$50 per pc is alot more reasonable than what they're currently priced (er: winXP license with a downgrade to win2k).
-Tim
There's lots of sounds in other langauges that don't exist in English. Are you a complete moron? Jesus christ. It's stupid ignorant assholes like you who say garbage like "why can't the whole world just use english" Fsck off seriously. Any other country could say the same thing, and what would you say to that? Appreciate the beauty in other languages. If you think learning Kanji is too tough, then I guess that's too bad for you idiot.
http://www.asahi.com/business/update/1116/005.html
Gee, thanks
It's always helpful to remind myself just how pathetically few kanji I actually know. Way to make me feel like I've wasted the last 2 semesters trying to learn Japanese!
*grumble*
Maybe if I spent more time studying, and less time posting on slashdot...
0 1 - just my two bits
In America, everyone in cities locks their doors and lives in constant fear. I don't think that's necessarily so for the rest of the world.
Actually a lot of us don't. I live in College Station, Texas (a city of 150,000, about an hour north of Houston), and forget to lock the door at night fairly often. Even when I do lock the door, I usually sleep with the windows open. So much for all Americans living in fear...
I think that open source is a wise choice for any non-US country. Look at the number of spying tools were found on the Boeing jet that we sold to the Chinese.
I don't see how any country that is concerned with its internal security could use any closed source OS without worrying about such shenanigans.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Most of the "other" webservers are Roxen server which was open-sourced recently.
Recently? Roxen (and Caudium, which was forked from it a couple of years ago) has always been released under the GPL.
What the hell, is anyone going to give this points, or what?
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
The auditability of closed source software is nil.
Which goverment can say with a straight face that any close dource solution is safe, secure, etc.?
Not so with OSS where all is transparent. And democracy is all about transparency, accountability and auditability.
Goverments should not be using closed source software. They should demand to see the source.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The anecdote I related was almost 4 years ago when I was just beginning to learn to read Japanese - during a lesson that was pretty frustrating... I mentioned it because I found it to be true. You can pack a hell of a lot of meaning into a single kanji. (Ever wonder why browsing the web in Japanese on a cellphone can be a lot more tolerable than in english? It's because Kanji is about 5 times more efficient in conveying meaning.)
I've kept with the studying and I'm not bad at reading it now, to the point where I can extract a lot more meaning from a chunk of text with kanji than I could if the same text were written in romaji or kana, so, I may still be an asshole, but not for the reasons you mentioned...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
"The Japanese are able and willing to abandon Windows completely - unlike the Chinese."
Do not underestimate the Chinese. Piracy is still rampant in China, and you can still get any M$ product you want for $4 per CD. On the other hand, M$ is getting serious about "product activation", BSA love letters, and other anti-piracy initiatives. The Chinese may have been willing to tolerate the security and stability issues at $4/product, but full sticker price is another matter entirely.
What cost? Bribes are always made with the expectation of greater returns. In any case M$ would not have a thing to worry about making them if they spent their research dollars on QC instead of stupid schemes to own all the world's computers and the information on them. If they did that, perhaps their "products" could compete with your hobby. Such is life, that greedy people never do well in the long run. As it is, they have ruined their reputation and this is what will cost them.
Sianaura, Bill.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
from M$?
Sure they do, how else do you think the US DoJ put to gether such a stunning setlement? Just think of all the "consessions" Japan will be able to wring with this. They might get to run their software as they please, look at snapshots of M$ source code, modify that code and share their modifications, Errr, wait a minute!
Ever thought that people elsewhere in the world would just have noticed that M$ is unstable, insecure, the EULA says they can look at your data and upload any old program they chose, and costs load of money too? They might have also noticed this little thing called free software that works better. Hmmmm, even M$'s own survey showed that people around the world both know about and think well of free software.
The damb cracked two years ago, what you are seeing now are chunks of M$ junk washed away in the flood. M$ is not dying, they are dead and don't know it. The fools are still openly planning stupid junk like Paladium, DRM and in general proving everyone's most paranoid dream about their intentions to be a underestimate. Germany, Japan, the EU, India, Wall Street, Bankers, IBM all have something in common.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If you don't read Japanese, you can find a summary of interesting results in Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers! ; look for the text starting with "A Japanese survey found".
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Just a couple slots away from the article about dominoes falling. Sweet!
Has anyone else noticed something wonky with those numbers? The %change is opposite what it should be! Apache grew from 79.36% to 81.19%, but the change column notes a negitive increase of -1.83%!
Is this due to the fact that overall there are less webservers than there were last month? If so, it seems rather counterintuitive.
If you're really interested in this stuff, do a Google for 'Jim Breen', the professor from Monash who is possibly the leading expert in the field - he's also a hell of a nice guy.
Indeed, he is.
Here's Jim's Japanese page.
Ordinary people are still having major issues when trying to work in utf-8.
If everyone had the latest browsers, fonts, OS et al, or found it really easy to get these things, working with utf-8 would be much easier.
But in reality, a lot of people just get confused, frustrated or both when their environment doesn't display certain characters, or when they get screen garbage when trying to input some data in a submit field.
sigh...
Just ask any Japanese engineer worth his weight in rice and they will tell you that Unicode does not satisfy the needs of Japanese text processing.
And they'll be wrong, unless they mean every need, in which case nothing does.
Most of what you're hearing is uninformed urban legend, because most Japanese engineers are no better informed about Japanese text issues than most Western engineers are about Western text issues.
There are numerous issues with Unicode not providing fair ground for Japanese specific Kanji.
None of much importance compared to the issues in legacy Japanese encodings. Unicode is a dramatic improvement over any common Japanese alternative, which is why it has so much support from Japan's own national representatives on international standards committees.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Whoever said that windows was reliable. I NEVER
know from one day to the next whether my windows
system will drop off some piece of my hardware on
boot, or even boot at all. One of my machines I
have to watch, and as soon as the password screen
is seen type 'enter' right away; because if I do
not, the system will freeze and require a hard
reset. It will not boot windows any other way. I
run Linux on all my machines but one as a dual boot
machine. That way all the secret files that windows
keeps from me I can look into and shred, like
C:\windows\cookies\index.dat Oddly enough, Linux
always boots on these machines....and shuts down
too....and will run for days without complaining.
Try that on your windows machine. Let windows
run overnight and go into its sleep mode.....
bet ya a coke that it won't wake up....ever!
Windows reliability?! The only thing reliable
about it is its ability to take your money
and insult your wallet AND your intelligence
AND your freedom in its licensing clauses. Read
them...they don't even take credit for promising
their junk to even work!?
I also know that when applications crash, they
often take windows with it, and don't even TALK
about new software installations. I've even had
to re-install windows just for changing a stupid
joystick. Course most linux's don't know what a
joystick is, to be perfectly fair. If we really
wanted to hurt windows, just get some good game
developers to write for Linux and keep doing it.
By the time the snowball got rolling, M$ wouldnt
know which way to turn. Takes a game house with
real bucks and patience, not like Loki that was
forced out by insufficient capitalization.
I personally think that the main reason behind this is the intelligency of ownership of any technology behind Japanese mind that they would rather take something they can control.
Thanks
Neo Gigs
"Follow the white rabbit..."
2 whole semesters? I learned it for 6 semesters (ie. 3 years) and have been studying it on my own while living in Tokyo for the past 3 years, and only NOW am I able to carry on a meaningful conversation. And while my kanji is good enough for an office environment, it's still far, far below what is needed to read a magazine or newspaper.
This is a bit offtopic but: With the enormous throughput of programmers from India, isn't it scary that India has sold itself to MS??
Nonsense! Icelandic Runes are clearly represented with Wingdings! Sadly, lowercase letters are not yet supported... :-(
We can reasonably conclude that the Japanese are too smart to expose their soft-underbellied MS webservers to the big bad Internet.... 8-)
The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with sledgehammers.
With their devices thus permanently destroyed, consumers would then be free
to go out and buy new devices, rather than have to fritter away years of
their lives trying to have the old ones repaired at so-called "factory
service centers," which in fact consist of two men named Lester poking at
the insides of broken electronic devices with cheap cigars and going,
"Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
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