1. Break up company into separate companies (OS, Office, Internet). Separate companies have non conflict of interest and independant boards and management.
2. Disgourge majority of company profits realized over the monopoly period. Disgourged profits used to fund public education (not computer specific education, but math and science education via books and teachers)
3. Open all MS undocumented APIs (both recent and historic), and open all MS file formats. Let the spin off companies keep thier *coughccough* great source code.
4. Rule that all MS spin off companies can not finance any political campaigns or lobby groups. In fact, let's just eliminate soft money in the US altogether from any company!
Those four are starter points of what I think "is enough" for the bit bully of our day.
Why oh why, do we have an agency that is already under budget pressures, REQUIRING thier employees to use MS software for email and office applications, when they cost MUCH more in licensing fees to that budget squeezed agency? It is so disgusting I am almost to lazy to start the list, but here is my list of points:
1. If NASA says GNULinux administrations costs are too high, think again---surely all these Unix gurus can administer thier own systems little support needed.
2. If NASA says that MS Office Formats are required for standard file formatted documents accross the organization, think again----surely the entire organization switching to OpenOffice.org is a much better way to ENSURE future standardization without upgrade costs.
3. IF NASA says that MS OUTLOOK is needed to standardize email ---- sticking to open and standard protocols as opposed to proprietary and costly protocols is surely the best way to standardization.
4. IF NASA management says that they liked the MS PowerPointless presentation, they probably did, and they probably believed all the points that MS made to them during the presentation. Which explains why we have a GOVERNMENT organization still running PROPRIETARY software and forcing thier users to use MICROSOFT when they don't want to!
5. If NASA made it a REQUIREMENT that ALL of its vendors communicate using OPEN and NON-PROPRIETARY FILE FORMATS as a REQUIREMENT FOR DOING BUSINESS, THEY WOULD!
6. If you told your senator what you think, than you did the right thing. If you did not, than you can blame no one but yourself when GNULinux is OUTLAWED and a copy of PALADIUM is REQUIRED to VOTE.
Get the letters out to the senators folks.
Re:Who made you an expert? What is your category?
on
Decentralization
·
· Score: 2
You are correct, I did not read the article because it seemed like such froth that it would be a waste of time reading it. Total balogna marginalizing our intelligence (or lack thereof).
Who made you an expert? What is your category?
on
Decentralization
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
Hello Poster, you draw some very clear lines in a subject that is impossible to draw clear lines within. Of the 6,233,821,945 (July 2002 est.) people on this planet, you are saying all those involved with the development of technology are either geeks or capitalists exclusively. I would argue that most (if not all) geeks are in fact capitalists or living in capitalist societies by the capitalist ways, while many capitalists are not geeks but do try to grasp and utilize technology to thier advantage (either capitalist or personal).
There are also many many semi-geek capitalists, people like myself, whose primary function in society is capitalist by description, but whose primary personal interests lie in technology, science, and "geek" things. Yes, I love to play with tech and "create" things just for fun, not only for profit. If the opportunity arises to profit from one of those creations, of course I, being a human living in a capitalist society, would of course look to profit from said creation. Where do you categorize that?
I fail to see your point, or the validity of your points, and any historical societal evidence behind those points. Are you saying that geeks are ANTI-capitalist in nature? Or, are you saying that real capitalists cannot be geeks? The logic is interesting, but I arge that there is no real "distinction" in the classes you draw.
Searched for a powerbook G4 (gotta get one of those), and up comes up listings of 500mhz G4 for 3500 $US, HELLO GOOGLE FROOGLE TEAM ------- this is very very outdated.
You should go back and read the documentation again. There are rules you can tweak to make it work even better.
Also, make sure you have the newest ruleset (yes, it changes). As spammers are alway modifying content to try to get around anti-spam filters, using the latest ruleset will improve effetiveness of Spamassassin
Surely, the RIAA will argue that this is required as it "protects artists and ensures creativity for generations to come". And, they are right---surely every taxi driver in Finland will start recording thier own home grown tunes just so they can listen to music (thier own) in thier cabs! Many of them will then become famous, and not have to drive taxis anymore. The RIAA is just brilliant I tell you!!!
I configured SpamAssasin on our incoming mail servers earlier this year. Whew! Was I a happy man! Not enough is said about the great work the SpamAssasin team has done. It just works, filtering out >95% of the spam I receive (about 30 to 40 per day). And what about my hotmail account? I can't be bothered to look through that load of garbage anymore.
Grocery store business is dying, except for WMT
on
Step 2, Groceries
·
· Score: 2
Walmart is killing all the grocers. It is inevitable, that all but the specialized niche players will fall to the retailing king.
Walmart's super stores will put them all outta business, even the delivery guys because as soon as WMT enters that business (which they may be already doing in some markets --- anybody know?), it'll be another slaying with Walmart out as king.
As an expat who has lived in Asia for 11 years, roaming factories and companies both low and high tech all over the region, I must say that this little expose` on Dongguan was pretty damn accurate. The article and several posters did, however, miss a few points:
1. The savings these mfg companies realize compared with US or European based is not only labor and tax. Industrial environmental waste processing is next to nill in Southern China. The place makes Taiwan look like a park refuge, and I tell you, Taiwan is no place for a scenic vacation unless you are into touring large polluted industrial zones, most of them abandoned now. For most tech companies, waste processing is a large cost, sometimes MORE than labor in industrialized nations. That is why so many fabs get moved over.
2. Software piracy is an issue, but it is not SAP, Oracle, Sun and our favorite M$ that lose out the most. Most of these Taiwanese companies are using native Taiwanese ERP software. About 50% of it is pirated, and the other 50% is licensed legally from the Taiwan ERP co's with branch offices in China. Either way, Taiwanese ERP software is WAY cheaper than western solutions.
3. MS has taken a "soft stance" on piracy in China. If they took the same stance they did with companies and individuals alike in China as they have done in Taiwan, there would be an exodus from thier beloved desktop. Taiwan has cracked down hard over the past years, but because the general public can afford it, they still shell out for MS solutions. If China cracked down like that tomorrow, it would not fuel massive MS sales, but would fuel a massive move to GNU/linux and other solutions.
4. I have watched foreign buyer after foreign buyer be entertained daily over weeks of factory visits in China. As a marketing and sales department, try to imagine the budget a firm would need to do that with clients in New York, London, or even Nebraska for that matter. You just can't get your clients so happy for so little after a hard day's work anywhere in the world. And, thier wives are not around and yes there are plenty of things for the client to do at night. And, happy clients come back to buy more.
5. A LOT of Taiwanese money in China is the result of one or a combination of the following:
a. Taiwan firm borrows heavily, boss runs off to China with all the money, firm goes bust. Boss starts new factory in China with money he never has to pay back.
b. Taiwan firm gets money from Taiwan investors (or private lenders), runs off to China, gives shareholders minimum or no return (or defaults on private loans)
c. Taiwan firm has uncompetitive business but nice pension fund built up. Taiwan boss transfers pension fund to China, starts new factory. Taiwan employees left with nothing as Taiwan company goes bust.
d. Taiwan firm some how burns down in flames, literally!!!. Fortunately, boss had insurance, and decides that the insurance payout is better invested in China. Oh, and he had two policies so doubled his capital.
Of all four above, I have personally known of a firm in each case that has done it and got away with it. Cheap capital (as in extorted), is just another competitive advantage these guys have.
So, why does China let them get away with it? Because China is the next manufacturing superpower. That's right, in 5 years you will be lucky if you can find 10% of the goods on US shelves made in the USA. Even if they have the tag, those goods are probably assembled in the USA from components and sub assemblies made in China, Mexico, Indonesia, India, or wherever it is cheaper than the US. There are just too many arbitragers out there looking for a buck.
What kind of easter eggs can we expect in Palladium, and will there be an opportunity to submit suggestions? If so, I would really like to see at least one of the following easter eggs somewhere in there:
- a screen pic of grub boot screen on an Xbox when one types in "ctrl-alt-d-r-m-stupid"
- that silly Balmer monkey video when one types "ctrl-esc-D-C-M-A-microsoft-way"
- an apple "switch" video, any one will do, when one types in "f1-palladium-ctrl-sucks"
We played with a lot of different distros and versions in both Taiwan ( Big
5 Char Set) and China (GB Char Sets) over the years. What we found
is that Mandrake 8.x supports pretty well out of the box with a little tweaking.
Check out some screenshots: http://mandrake.hemeihr.com/
We installed some extra Chinese fonts (there is a serious lack of pretty
simplified and traditional Chinese fonts that are copylefted), and the
staff gets work done WITHOUT any MS junkola on the 20+ linux boxen in China.
Open Office supports both simplified and traditional char sets in version
1.0, very nice.
Turbolinux is alright, but we found the distro behind in general app versioning AND a bit unstable compared with
Mandrake.
Redflag is still not there either, but is improving slowly. Not really good for a good working environment yet.
We just recently installed RedHat 7.3 in Chinese on two boxes, it may be
our distro of choice if further tests are as smooth as our initial findings:)
It is fast, Chinese is attractive, and it seems pretty stable. The development guys have been preaching about it over the past two weeks.
Oh yeah, KDE3 in Chinese rocks. Gnome 2.0 in Chinese is OK.
1. Open Source community ports Linux to Xbox 2. Gartner reports that actually over 10% of Xboxen sold are used by individuals and companies who install and run linux on them. 3. Microsoft cries foul play, DMCA is brought down upon the porting team. 4. The "Anonymous Donor" of the prize money is rumoured to be some terrorist organization...... 5. Microsoft then touts the importance of "Paladium" to root out all evil in the world.....
Nader has his flaws, but so do I. Let's take a look at what he is doing right:
1. He is focusing on the issue of "tax dollars" going to waste / work. As we are all citizens and pay taxes, this is the first step of any citizen to get something done, ie: create notice of tax dollars being wasted.
2. He is pointing out fundamental flaws in government IT procurement, which are locking in the government to proprietary, closed source, and EXPENSIVE technologies, with no opt-out path in sight. Remember when all the reports came out about the military buying 1000 $US dollar hammers years ago? It lead to massive legislation on military and government procurement. Of course there is still general overall waste in the current process, but it has improved because of people speaking out against such practices.
Now, as a technically knowledgable community, each and every Slashdotter who resides or is citizen of the US should be sending a letter to her/his representatives in the House and Senate EVERY SINGLE MONTH on these issues. OK, send an email, but just ranting on/., which we all love to do, won't change anything.
Supporting Ralph Nader is another option, I'm sure he has some petitions we could all sign.
You know, that is GREAT that it will run under Code Weaver's CrossOver Plugin, and just goes to show how utterly stupid Apple's business model is. I mean, they are in a great position to launch a great media player for linux, which could actually help turn some linux users over to OS X.
But instead they are just plain Steve Jobs clones, fixed forever on their hardware / OS mix and still under the thumb of Microsoft Office and IE support promises. Get a life Steve, you are way too poor an actor to even be Bill's puppet, as we all see through it all.
Somehow, it does not surprise me that some distros and in particular this newfangled "United Linux" is looking at a per seat licensing arrangement. I mean, I love linux, but I really do feel sorry for the distro companies. Per seat licensing, at a much lower price, may actually increase their revenue.
Then again, the outrage from the linux community would probably make them stop in thier tracks, which seems to have already happened....
This is a sign of very good things to come
on
IBM Spins Down
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Basically, what IBM is saying is that the market for storage based on mechanical devices will be gone in the not so distant future. Expect IBM to be a major player in one if not all of these disruptive technologies:
1. Solid State non-volatile memory 2. Bio-electro non-volatile memory 3. Nano-MEMs based non-volatile memory
All this is good, and just a sign that the guys up top at Big Blue know when to get out of what should have been the first thing to be replaced in PC's.......a moving mechanism and primary point of failure in computers.
I just want to tell all you Mozilla developers THANK YOU! You have all turned a big pile of mush into a very great work of art, and very great code! I love you all. If you ever make it to Shanghai, beers are on me, as in FREE BEER!!!
That is why MS is very light on China. They only go after big guys. I tell everyone here all the time, "just wait until GDP is up to a certain level, and you will regret using unlicensed software". Most think it is OK, because there is no real punishment to the small guys here. That is MS way of keeping the market locked up. If they were to do here in China what they do in the US, they would lose 90% of business use to Linux. Most business have *maybe* one licensed copy floating about. The rest are all bootlegs. The thing that kills me is, most of the web sites here are all written to "IE perfection", meaning that using any other browser than IE accessing 50% of China sites, and you can expect either 1) the browser will crash 2) the page looks like gahgah, or you just can't view the page. No wonder everyone uses Windows here! No wonder it is so hard to get people to migrate to Linux here, I preach all day everyday, and it is a HARD package to sell mostly because of proprietary extensions and closed file format incompatibilities.
Attack of the Clones DVD came out the same day here in Asia as the movie hit the theaters in the US. Hollywood execs are idiots if they think that any move with US law will thwart piracy overseas. As long as there is a market, there will be ways around. IF they were actually to get this bill passed the following would happen:
The first business to pop up will be graymarket chips that break the encryption. The algorythoms used for encryption will be either reverse engineered overseas, or will be walked right out the back door of some hollywood firm or hardware manufacturer by a disgrunted employee or director.
The second thing is what is already happenening now, pirated flicks hit the streets overseas in DVD format well ahead of when the hit the stores in the US.
It just sends chills down my spine thinking if these laws get passed, because they won't stop any piracy, they will just kill open source. And that is NON CONSTITUTIONAL. Please, write your senators and congressman and President Bush.
The key is teaching people why closed formats (MS Office) and proprietary API's and finally closed source is not good for humanity in general. Once people really see why, they will be willing to migrate to open source solutions.
We have found in the office here, that new employees are a little shocked when they learn that they must use "linux" with "openoffice", because most of them have never touched anything besides microsoft windows. BUT, after a couple weeks with some help from other users, they get comfortable and very productive.
We share offices with one of our suppliers (this is in China), and they have about 8 Windows boxes. I just chuckled when the Kletz virus hit not long ago. Their entire network was infected and totally messed up. We were just whirring away working as normal, although we all had sore right hands from hitting the delete button for Kletz emails all day!
Everytime we set up a new box, I just smile when I think off all the money we are saving. I just don't understand why some of the largest companies in the world (including some of our customers) are willing to put thier most valuble information in proprietary format files (MS Office). Are the guys at the top REALLY that blind?
We have four developers now, and these are the guys that I am having the hardest time with converting over to linux. I am still trying to figure out why, and how to convert them........
Slashdot Mirror
1. Break up company into separate companies (OS, Office, Internet). Separate companies have non conflict of interest and independant boards and management.
2. Disgourge majority of company profits realized over the monopoly period. Disgourged profits used to fund public education (not computer specific education, but math and science education via books and teachers)
3. Open all MS undocumented APIs (both recent and historic), and open all MS file formats. Let the spin off companies keep thier *coughccough* great source code.
4. Rule that all MS spin off companies can not finance any political campaigns or lobby groups. In fact, let's just eliminate soft money in the US altogether from any company!
Those four are starter points of what I think "is enough" for the bit bully of our day.
1. If NASA says GNULinux administrations costs are too high, think again---surely all these Unix gurus can administer thier own systems little support needed.
2. If NASA says that MS Office Formats are required for standard file formatted documents accross the organization, think again----surely the entire organization switching to OpenOffice.org is a much better way to ENSURE future standardization without upgrade costs.
3. IF NASA says that MS OUTLOOK is needed to standardize email ---- sticking to open and standard protocols as opposed to proprietary and costly protocols is surely the best way to standardization.
4. IF NASA management says that they liked the MS PowerPointless presentation, they probably did, and they probably believed all the points that MS made to them during the presentation. Which explains why we have a GOVERNMENT organization still running PROPRIETARY software and forcing thier users to use MICROSOFT when they don't want to!
5. If NASA made it a REQUIREMENT that ALL of its vendors communicate using OPEN and NON-PROPRIETARY FILE FORMATS as a REQUIREMENT FOR DOING BUSINESS, THEY WOULD!
6. If you told your senator what you think, than you did the right thing. If you did not, than you can blame no one but yourself when GNULinux is OUTLAWED and a copy of PALADIUM is REQUIRED to VOTE.
Get the letters out to the senators folks.
You are correct, I did not read the article because it seemed like such froth that it would be a waste of time reading it. Total balogna marginalizing our intelligence (or lack thereof).
There are also many many semi-geek capitalists, people like myself, whose primary function in society is capitalist by description, but whose primary personal interests lie in technology, science, and "geek" things. Yes, I love to play with tech and "create" things just for fun, not only for profit. If the opportunity arises to profit from one of those creations, of course I, being a human living in a capitalist society, would of course look to profit from said creation. Where do you categorize that?
I fail to see your point, or the validity of your points, and any historical societal evidence behind those points. Are you saying that geeks are ANTI-capitalist in nature? Or, are you saying that real capitalists cannot be geeks? The logic is interesting, but I arge that there is no real "distinction" in the classes you draw.
Searched for a powerbook G4 (gotta get one of those), and up comes up listings of 500mhz G4 for 3500 $US, HELLO GOOGLE FROOGLE TEAM ------- this is very very outdated.
You should go back and read the documentation again. There are rules you can tweak to make it work even better.
Also, make sure you have the newest ruleset (yes, it changes). As spammers are alway modifying content to try to get around anti-spam filters, using the latest ruleset will improve effetiveness of Spamassassin
Surely, the RIAA will argue that this is required as it "protects artists and ensures creativity for generations to come". And, they are right---surely every taxi driver in Finland will start recording thier own home grown tunes just so they can listen to music (thier own) in thier cabs! Many of them will then become famous, and not have to drive taxis anymore. The RIAA is just brilliant I tell you!!!
I configured SpamAssasin on our incoming mail servers earlier this year. Whew! Was I a happy man! Not enough is said about the great work the SpamAssasin team has done. It just works, filtering out >95% of the spam I receive (about 30 to 40 per day). And what about my hotmail account? I can't be bothered to look through that load of garbage anymore.
Walmart is killing all the grocers. It is inevitable, that all but the specialized niche players will fall to the retailing king.
Walmart's super stores will put them all outta business, even the delivery guys because as soon as WMT enters that business (which they may be already doing in some markets --- anybody know?), it'll be another slaying with Walmart out as king.
As an expat who has lived in Asia for 11 years, roaming factories and companies both low and high tech all over the region, I must say that this little expose` on Dongguan was pretty damn accurate. The article and several posters did, however, miss a few points:
1. The savings these mfg companies realize compared with US or European based is not only labor and tax. Industrial environmental waste processing is next to nill in Southern China. The place makes Taiwan look like a park refuge, and I tell you, Taiwan is no place for a scenic vacation unless you are into touring large polluted industrial zones, most of them abandoned now. For most tech companies, waste processing is a large cost, sometimes MORE than labor in industrialized nations. That is why so many fabs get moved over.
2. Software piracy is an issue, but it is not SAP, Oracle, Sun and our favorite M$ that lose out the most. Most of these Taiwanese companies are using native Taiwanese ERP software. About 50% of it is pirated, and the other 50% is licensed legally from the Taiwan ERP co's with branch offices in China. Either way, Taiwanese ERP software is WAY cheaper than western solutions.
3. MS has taken a "soft stance" on piracy in China. If they took the same stance they did with companies and individuals alike in China as they have done in Taiwan, there would be an exodus from thier beloved desktop. Taiwan has cracked down hard over the past years, but because the general public can afford it, they still shell out for MS solutions. If China cracked down like that tomorrow, it would not fuel massive MS sales, but would fuel a massive move to GNU/linux and other solutions.
4. I have watched foreign buyer after foreign buyer be entertained daily over weeks of factory visits in China. As a marketing and sales department, try to imagine the budget a firm would need to do that with clients in New York, London, or even Nebraska for that matter. You just can't get your clients so happy for so little after a hard day's work anywhere in the world. And, thier wives are not around and yes there are plenty of things for the client to do at night. And, happy clients come back to buy more.
5. A LOT of Taiwanese money in China is the result of one or a combination of the following:
a. Taiwan firm borrows heavily, boss runs off to China with all the money, firm goes bust. Boss starts new factory in China with money he never has to pay back.
b. Taiwan firm gets money from Taiwan investors (or private lenders), runs off to China, gives shareholders minimum or no return (or defaults on private loans)
c. Taiwan firm has uncompetitive business but nice pension fund built up. Taiwan boss transfers pension fund to China, starts new factory. Taiwan employees left with nothing as Taiwan company goes bust.
d. Taiwan firm some how burns down in flames, literally!!!. Fortunately, boss had insurance, and decides that the insurance payout is better invested in China. Oh, and he had two policies so doubled his capital.
Of all four above, I have personally known of a firm in each case that has done it and got away with it. Cheap capital (as in extorted), is just another competitive advantage these guys have.
So, why does China let them get away with it? Because China is the next manufacturing superpower. That's right, in 5 years you will be lucky if you can find 10% of the goods on US shelves made in the USA. Even if they have the tag, those goods are probably assembled in the USA from components and sub assemblies made in China, Mexico, Indonesia, India, or wherever it is cheaper than the US. There are just too many arbitragers out there looking for a buck.
What kind of easter eggs can we expect in Palladium, and will there be an opportunity to submit suggestions? If so, I would really like to see at least one of the following easter eggs somewhere in there:
- a screen pic of grub boot screen on an Xbox when one types in "ctrl-alt-d-r-m-stupid"
- that silly Balmer monkey video when one types "ctrl-esc-D-C-M-A-microsoft-way"
- an apple "switch" video, any one will do, when one types in "f1-palladium-ctrl-sucks"
The Economist has a great article about IP rights and the poor world. Very interesting article.
FYI, the royalties for DVD proprietary standard are much more than all chipmakers' profits, or the end product makers' profits for that matter.
We played with a lot of different distros and versions in both Taiwan ( Big 5 Char Set) and China (GB Char Sets) over the years. What we found is that Mandrake 8.x supports pretty well out of the box with a little tweaking. Check out some screenshots: http://mandrake.hemeihr.com/ We installed some extra Chinese fonts (there is a serious lack of pretty simplified and traditional Chinese fonts that are copylefted), and the staff gets work done WITHOUT any MS junkola on the 20+ linux boxen in China.
:)
It is fast, Chinese is attractive, and it seems pretty stable. The development guys have been preaching about it over the past two weeks.
Open Office supports both simplified and traditional char sets in version 1.0, very nice.
Turbolinux is alright, but we found the distro behind in general app versioning AND a bit unstable compared with Mandrake.
Redflag is still not there either, but is improving slowly. Not really good for a good working environment yet.
We just recently installed RedHat 7.3 in Chinese on two boxes, it may be our distro of choice if further tests are as smooth as our initial findings
Oh yeah, KDE3 in Chinese rocks. Gnome 2.0 in Chinese is OK.
My 1.9 cents.
Perfect, I can see the headlines now:
1. Open Source community ports Linux to Xbox
2. Gartner reports that actually over 10% of Xboxen sold are used by individuals and companies who install and run linux on them.
3. Microsoft cries foul play, DMCA is brought down upon the porting team.
4. The "Anonymous Donor" of the prize money is rumoured to be some terrorist organization......
5. Microsoft then touts the importance of "Paladium" to root out all evil in the world.....
We are doomed.....
Nader has his flaws, but so do I. Let's take a look at what he is doing right:
/., which we all love to do, won't change anything.
1. He is focusing on the issue of "tax dollars" going to waste / work. As we are all citizens and pay taxes, this is the first step of any citizen to get something done, ie: create notice of tax dollars being wasted.
2. He is pointing out fundamental flaws in government IT procurement, which are locking in the government to proprietary, closed source, and EXPENSIVE technologies, with no opt-out path in sight. Remember when all the reports came out about the military buying 1000 $US dollar hammers years ago? It lead to massive legislation on military and government procurement. Of course there is still general overall waste in the current process, but it has improved because of people speaking out against such practices.
Now, as a technically knowledgable community, each and every Slashdotter who resides or is citizen of the US should be sending a letter to her/his representatives in the House and Senate EVERY SINGLE MONTH on these issues. OK, send an email, but just ranting on
Supporting Ralph Nader is another option, I'm sure he has some petitions we could all sign.
You know, that is GREAT that it will run under Code Weaver's CrossOver Plugin, and just goes to show how utterly stupid Apple's business model is. I mean, they are in a great position to launch a great media player for linux, which could actually help turn some linux users over to OS X.
But instead they are just plain Steve Jobs clones, fixed forever on their hardware / OS mix and still under the thumb of Microsoft Office and IE support promises. Get a life Steve, you are way too poor an actor to even be Bill's puppet, as we all see through it all.
Somehow, it does not surprise me that some distros and in particular this newfangled "United Linux" is looking at a per seat licensing arrangement. I mean, I love linux, but I really do feel sorry for the distro companies. Per seat licensing, at a much lower price, may actually increase their revenue.
Then again, the outrage from the linux community would probably make them stop in thier tracks, which seems to have already happened....
Basically, what IBM is saying is that the market for storage based on mechanical devices will be gone in the not so distant future. Expect IBM to be a major player in one if not all of these disruptive technologies:
1. Solid State non-volatile memory
2. Bio-electro non-volatile memory
3. Nano-MEMs based non-volatile memory
All this is good, and just a sign that the guys up top at Big Blue know when to get out of what should have been the first thing to be replaced in PC's.......a moving mechanism and primary point of failure in computers.
I just want to tell all you Mozilla developers THANK YOU! You have all turned a big pile of mush into a very great work of art, and very great code! I love you all. If you ever make it to Shanghai, beers are on me, as in FREE BEER!!!
That is why MS is very light on China. They only go after big guys. I tell everyone here all the time, "just wait until GDP is up to a certain level, and you will regret using unlicensed software". Most think it is OK, because there is no real punishment to the small guys here. That is MS way of keeping the market locked up. If they were to do here in China what they do in the US, they would lose 90% of business use to Linux. Most business have *maybe* one licensed copy floating about. The rest are all bootlegs. The thing that kills me is, most of the web sites here are all written to "IE perfection", meaning that using any other browser than IE accessing 50% of China sites, and you can expect either 1) the browser will crash 2) the page looks like gahgah, or you just can't view the page. No wonder everyone uses Windows here! No wonder it is so hard to get people to migrate to Linux here, I preach all day everyday, and it is a HARD package to sell mostly because of proprietary extensions and closed file format incompatibilities.
Attack of the Clones DVD came out the same day here in Asia as the movie hit the theaters in the US. Hollywood execs are idiots if they think that any move with US law will thwart piracy overseas. As long as there is a market, there will be ways around. IF they were actually to get this bill passed the following would happen:
The first business to pop up will be graymarket chips that break the encryption. The algorythoms used for encryption will be either reverse engineered overseas, or will be walked right out the back door of some hollywood firm or hardware manufacturer by a disgrunted employee or director.
The second thing is what is already happenening now, pirated flicks hit the streets overseas in DVD format well ahead of when the hit the stores in the US.
It just sends chills down my spine thinking if these laws get passed, because they won't stop any piracy, they will just kill open source. And that is NON CONSTITUTIONAL. Please, write your senators and congressman and President Bush.
The key is teaching people why closed formats (MS Office) and proprietary API's and finally closed source is not good for humanity in general. Once people really see why, they will be willing to migrate to open source solutions.
We have found in the office here, that new employees are a little shocked when they learn that they must use "linux" with "openoffice", because most of them have never touched anything besides microsoft windows. BUT, after a couple weeks with some help from other users, they get comfortable and very productive.
We share offices with one of our suppliers (this is in China), and they have about 8 Windows boxes. I just chuckled when the Kletz virus hit not long ago. Their entire network was infected and totally messed up. We were just whirring away working as normal, although we all had sore right hands from hitting the delete button for Kletz emails all day!
Everytime we set up a new box, I just smile when I think off all the money we are saving. I just don't understand why some of the largest companies in the world (including some of our customers) are willing to put thier most valuble information in proprietary format files (MS Office). Are the guys at the top REALLY that blind?
We have four developers now, and these are the guys that I am having the hardest time with converting over to linux. I am still trying to figure out why, and how to convert them........
I sure hope all the clones have chip implants like these , !
not only is OPENOFFICE free, it is included for free, and packaged as an RPM in the Mandrake 8.2 distribution disk 3 CONTRIBUTIONS.
what are "they" angry about again?