English is not a prerequisite for using the Internet. Are we going to teach a Billion Chinese the English language before we sell them Internet technology ?
While it is important that Indian programmers learn English and become computer literate (most Indian programmers are, by the way), it is not at all essential for all Linux users in India to be English literate.
When Linux is embedded in kiosks and handhelds with handwriting input, the user is not really "using Linux" or "computing" - they are just communicating. While the language used to print assembly docs for the Boeing 737 are in English, a large proportion of the people flying Indian Airlines' 737's are neither airplane mechanics nor aeronautical engineers.
Yes, the Information Economy is where it's at - however it is not necessary for the whole population to be "computer literate" to be "computer users" and gain the benefits of the Information Economy.
The last farmer in India will be "computer literate" about the same time that the last homeless person on the streets of San Francisco becomes computer literate. In other words there will be (for a long time) people at the other end of the Information continuum that will not get immediate benefits.
It is a common mistake in reasoning (often seen on Slashdot and other forums) to assume all Linux users are or need to be programmers. An ATM user uses computers and is part of the Information Economy without necessarily being a computer programmer or even what we call a "computer user"
In fact the future success of Linux and of computing lies in making it ubiquitous so that people everywhere use it and it works and they don't want or need to know what lies underneath.
Only a small fraction of the population needs to understand English, computer programming and Linux before Linux is everywhere. So let's focus on achievable goals closer to reality than to keep putting out the absurd requirement that 900+ million people in India need to learn English first before they are able to get the benefits of Linux.
I would be quite impressed if the 200+ million people in the US all learned English and computer programming and yet a good proportion of them are beneficiaries of the Information Economy.
Nitin Borwankar, CEO and President, Borwankar Research Inc.
It's not so surprising that the Solaris and NT versions are going to be opened up, too -- it's likely that all of the versions have a common codebase with a thin layer of platform-specific code on top.
Having worked at some database companies, I can safely state that the layer is not so thin. Platform specific code in database engines of this complexity often includes interprocess communication (shared memory,...) interfaces, disk driver interfaces (these can include raw device drivers), and the usual keyboard and terminal interfaces amongst others. There is also a database-thread scheduler subsystem and depending on an OS's support (or not) for threads this may not be "thin" for certain platforms. So there will be platform dependent code that is probably not what would commonly be called thin. Transaction management and lock management, logging and recovery management, I/O buffer management, query parsing optimization and caching, SQL interpreter,... would probably have platform independent implementation. (This is not exhaustive) In addition to the usual relational database susbsystems, Interbase (last I looked) had a very rich versioning system for data. This is also likely to be mostly platform independent (he says, sticking his neck out pontificating on the versioning system he knows very little about).
Bill, there was a time when you talked about "information at your fingertips"(tm). The Internet has delivered this promise and yet for years Microsoft ignored the potential of the Internet. Was the desire to own the worldwide computing infrasructure blinding Microsoft to the possibility of realizing this vision through open interoperable protocols ?
Isn't Microsoft doing the same by keeping it's Office and Win2000 products tightly controlled ? Will "information at your fingertips" be realized (in the new millenium) by Linux, Java and the open Internet rather than Microsoft's Win2000, DCOM and tightly controlled application architecture ?
Overall, have open architectures delivered on Microsoft's "information at your fingertips" vision far better than Microsoft ever could ?
Note:- the phrase "information at your fingertips" is trademarked by Microsoft. -----------------------------------------
Oh Yeah? You are going to do this for every single e-mail you receive? And duplicate the folder system that the (proprietary system) has? And what about all the old e-mail ?
Isn't this what software is supposed to do ? If designed right ? ?????
Some other people are even more amazing... Don't need to tell ya:-)
You can do a lot of hacking in software if that's what you like doing. If you need to get work done and can't spare the time get an Omniview Pro 8 port or 16 port ( or 4 port ) whatever you need. It is available out of the usual catalog places - Microwarehouse is one (www.warehouse.com).
I got an 8 port for ~400$, each set of cables costs about 12$. I am controlling a mixture of NT and Linux boxes, 6 of them under my desk, all from an onscreen control console. You can use the switch on the Omniview box to switch keyboard, mouse,monitor between machines. An LED display shows where you are in the sequence. In the onscreen display you can edit the defaults and enter your host names. You can daisy chain these to control some large multiple of 16 - 128 boxes or some such.
To reboot just switch to the machine and give a three-finger salute, works like a charm. I haven't really found I need it all the time. Only to reboot. But it is *extremely* useful when you have to reboot. At other times I find am just using telnet and pseudo terminals.
Today I attended a tutorial on XML at JavaOne by the self-same JP Morgenthal. The coverage of XML was so superficial and pathetic that I left after lunch and requested a refund. This is the first time I have ever requested a refund at a tutorial.
If his knowledge of Linux is anywhere like his knowledge of XML, his opinion isn't worth too much.
Did you think that DELL etc's Windows business vanished because they pre-installed Linux ?
Perhaps you forget that the same vendors (DELL,...) are also MS customers for Windows. DELL refuses to put IE5 on Linux pre-installs, MS squeezes their Windows contract. Replace DELL with another vendor name. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Just because DELL etc install Linux doesn't overnight make them free of MS leverage. ALL Intel box vendors ( except Linux-only vendors ) are subject to MS monopoly arm-twisting.
This seems to me to be a way to get back control of the straying PC makers. Now MS can demand that they install IE5 on Linux whenever the PC makers pre-install Linux. This is the thin edge of the wedgie, folks.
IMHO, the fundamental difference between "voice-mail" and a gaming property is that voice-mail minutes and space cannot be traded between users of the system. Nor can they be sold for cash on eBay. The big deal here is not that a virtual entity exists that can be paid for, but that these virtual entities can now be bought, sold and traded in a market. Your voice-mail and cellular minutes analogy falls down very badly on this count. Perhaps there are other counter examples, but cell phone minutes and voice-mail service is *not* a good one. Remember it should be able to be 1) traded between arbitrary individuals 2) re-sold for real $$ cash
Considering they claim that they configured the OS's equally, which they didn't RedHat and the Apache group should sue MINDCRAFT and as a part of the process demand to see all the documents defining what Microsoft asked MINDCRAFT to do. These should be made public.
Rather than prove NT is faster than Linux, it proves MINDCRAFT's engineers have zero skills. This should cast severe doubts on MINDCRAFT's ability to do any benchmarks. Objective trade press should take note of this for the future. How much is your credibility worth MINDCRAFT ? Was it worth what MS paid you to do the "study" ?
While we rail against patents especially software patents, we are (usually) expressing distaste for the way patents have been used by LARGE corporations to coerce small individual inventors. We should remember that patents provide protection to the small inventor from the LARGE corporation and without this LARGE corporations would be able to steal ideas form small inventors - far more than they do.
It often happens that a software developer wants to license their technology to a large company. When they show the software or the idea during the licensing talks, the LARGE corporation says - that's neat but we can do that in a month. And sure enough, the next month they have a product - without licensing the software. Software patents *properly used* could reduce this phenomenon significantly, IMHO. Properly used, software patents allow individual inventors to make a living writing software with protection. All software developers may not be interetsed in making money via services - some do and that's great. But eliminating software patent protection makes it that much harder for an individual developer who wants to make a living by invention. You can argue against the way patents have been granted - and that's a viable argument but that is a problem with funding in the Patent Office and not a problem with the patent system. Let patents fufill their protective role and stop focusing only on the coercive role they have played when owned by LARGE corporations.
MS Office ported to Linux ? Yeah, sure. Just like they ported Internet Explorer to Solaris and other Unix platforms. Who cares - people still use Netscape on Solaris. By the way do you know they even had SoftwareAG of Germany port COM and DCOM to Unix, even Linux ? This was a year or so ago, or more. Who cares, on Unix people use CORBA and/or Java Beans for component models.
This is just FUD, to scare venture capitalists into not investing in any Office products on Linux. Too bad - MS might want to try something a little more achievable - like making NT 4.0 Y2K compliant or even (gasp) shipping Win2000 before the year 3000.
If MS ports Office to Linux - it will kill NT in the enterprise.
The Linux users will finally toss out the last Win98 and NT box they have been forced to use because of Office. And the Win98/NT users will finally have a stable platform so they'll switch to Linux. AT least MIS directors will so that they don't have to pay massive license fees for the 5000 or so PC's in their corporation. The question is does MS want to dominate the Linux app space so bad that they will give up their foundational cash cow - windows98 and NT ? You be the judge.
I think it's naive to assume that nothing can corrupt us and that that is the only problem. Take the case of the current flurry of investments in RedHat. What if (let's asssume for a minute) RedHat becomes the only distribution of note out there - just because all the business people use it because all the business poeple they trust ( IBM, Compaq, Netscape,... ) are investing in it. If RedHat becomes the single dominant distribution, the practical (not philosophical) effects of that on Open Source are likely to be significant -
* no (or small non-zero) competition hence less motivation to improve
* the ability of a single commercial entity to decide what software goes on the RedHat CD - ie scarcity of distribution. Yes you can put it on an FTP site but that's not the same to the buyer of the RedHat CD or the guy who buys it pre-installed on a DELL machine.
... and it's cascading ripple-effects
In my opinion the OSD movement is declaring victory when the real battles have not even started. Instead of discussing what is really OSD and what is not we might want to discuss how to create a sustainable financial foundation for our ideals so that it does not end up splitting us apart. It is naive to think all we need to do is "stay the course". Remember the last time we heard that phrase ?
Slashdot Mirror
English is not a prerequisite for using the Internet.
Are we going to teach a Billion Chinese the English language before we sell them Internet technology ?
This is a common mistake.
Hindu is a religion.
The language is Hindi.
10 tera bytes
While it is important that Indian programmers learn English and become computer literate (most Indian programmers are, by the way), it is not at all essential for all Linux users in India to be English literate.
When Linux is embedded in kiosks and handhelds with handwriting input, the user is not really "using Linux" or "computing" - they are just communicating. While the language used to print assembly docs for the Boeing 737 are in English, a large proportion of the people flying Indian Airlines' 737's are neither airplane mechanics nor
aeronautical engineers.
Yes, the Information Economy is where it's at - however it is not necessary for the whole population to be "computer literate" to be "computer users" and gain the benefits of the Information Economy.
The last farmer in India will be "computer literate" about the same time that the last homeless person on the streets of San Francisco becomes computer literate. In other words there will be (for a long time) people at the other end of the Information continuum that will not get immediate benefits.
It is a common mistake in reasoning (often seen on Slashdot and other forums) to assume all Linux users are or need to be programmers. An ATM user uses computers and is part of the Information Economy without necessarily being a computer programmer or even what we call a "computer user"
In fact the future success of Linux and of computing lies in making it ubiquitous so that people everywhere use it and it works and they don't want or need to know what lies underneath.
Only a small fraction of the population needs to understand English, computer programming and Linux before Linux is everywhere. So let's focus on achievable goals closer to reality than to keep putting out the absurd requirement that 900+ million people in India need to learn English first before they are able to get the benefits of Linux.
I would be quite impressed if the 200+ million people in the US all learned English and computer programming and yet a good proportion of them are beneficiaries of the Information Economy.
Nitin Borwankar,
CEO and President,
Borwankar Research Inc.
It's not so surprising that the Solaris and NT versions are going to be opened up, too -- it's likely that all of the versions have a common codebase with a thin layer of platform-specific code on top.
... would probably have platform independent implementation. (This is not exhaustive) In addition to the usual relational database susbsystems, Interbase (last I looked) had a very rich versioning system for data. This is also likely to be mostly platform independent (he says, sticking his neck out pontificating on the versioning system he knows very little about).
Having worked at some database companies, I can safely state that the layer is not so thin. Platform specific code in database engines of this complexity often includes interprocess communication (shared memory,...) interfaces, disk driver interfaces (these can include raw device drivers), and the usual keyboard and terminal interfaces amongst others. There is also a database-thread scheduler subsystem and depending on an OS's support (or not) for threads this may not be "thin" for certain platforms. So there will be platform dependent code that is probably not what would commonly be called thin. Transaction management and lock management, logging and recovery management, I/O buffer management, query parsing optimization and caching, SQL interpreter,
Nitin Borwankar.
========================
Bill, there was a time when you talked about "information at your fingertips"(tm).
:- the phrase "information at your fingertips" is trademarked by Microsoft.
The Internet has delivered this promise and yet for years Microsoft ignored the potential
of the Internet. Was the desire to own the worldwide computing infrasructure blinding Microsoft to the possibility of realizing this vision through open interoperable protocols ?
Isn't Microsoft doing the same by keeping it's Office and Win2000 products tightly controlled ?
Will "information at your fingertips" be realized (in the new millenium) by Linux, Java and the open Internet rather than Microsoft's Win2000, DCOM and tightly controlled application architecture ?
Overall, have open architectures delivered on Microsoft's "information at
your fingertips" vision far better than
Microsoft ever could ?
Note
-----------------------------------------
Oh Yeah?
:-)
You are going to do this for every single e-mail you receive? And duplicate the folder system that the (proprietary system) has?
And what about all the old e-mail ?
Isn't this what software is supposed to do ?
If designed right ?
?????
Some other people are even more amazing...
Don't need to tell ya
Nitin
-------
Yes,
= ========================================== =========
You can do a lot of hacking in software if that's what you like doing. If you need to get work done and can't spare the time get an Omniview Pro 8 port or 16 port ( or 4 port ) whatever you need.
It is available out of the usual catalog places - Microwarehouse is one (www.warehouse.com).
I got an 8 port for ~400$, each set of cables costs about 12$. I am controlling a mixture of NT and Linux boxes, 6 of them under my desk, all from an onscreen control console. You can use the switch on the Omniview box to switch keyboard, mouse,monitor between machines. An LED display shows where you are in the sequence. In the onscreen display you can edit the defaults and enter your host names.
You can daisy chain these to control some large multiple of 16 - 128 boxes or some such.
To reboot just switch to the machine and give a three-finger salute, works like a charm. I haven't really found I need it all the time. Only to reboot. But it is *extremely* useful when you have to reboot. At other times I find am just using telnet and pseudo terminals.
Good Luck.
Nitin Borwankar
===============================================
Today I attended a tutorial on XML at JavaOne by the self-same JP Morgenthal.
The coverage of XML was so superficial and pathetic that I left after lunch and requested a refund.
This is the first time I have ever requested a refund at a tutorial.
If his knowledge of Linux is anywhere like his knowledge of XML, his opinion isn't worth too much.
Nitin Borwankar
HUH?? to you to dude!
Did you think that DELL etc's Windows business vanished because they pre-installed Linux ?
Perhaps you forget that the same vendors (DELL,...) are also MS customers for Windows.
DELL refuses to put IE5 on Linux pre-installs,
MS squeezes their Windows contract.
Replace DELL with another vendor name.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Just because DELL etc install Linux doesn't overnight make them free of MS leverage. ALL Intel box vendors ( except Linux-only vendors )
are subject to MS monopoly arm-twisting.
Nitin Borwankar
This seems to me to be a way to get back control of the straying PC makers.
Now MS can demand that they install IE5 on Linux whenever the PC makers pre-install Linux.
This is the thin edge of the wedgie, folks.
Nitin
IMHO, the fundamental difference between
"voice-mail" and a gaming property is that
voice-mail minutes and space cannot be traded
between users of the system. Nor can they be
sold for cash on eBay.
The big deal here is not that a virtual entity
exists that can be paid for, but that these
virtual entities can now be bought, sold and
traded in a market.
Your voice-mail and cellular minutes analogy falls
down very badly on this count. Perhaps there
are other counter examples, but cell phone
minutes and voice-mail service is *not* a good one.
Remember it should be able to be
1) traded between arbitrary individuals
2) re-sold for real $$ cash
Nitin
No, more like DEC (Cutler's alma mater) got
bought by Compaq. So it looks like the sponsorship
is from Compaq but probably from the DEC part.
Nitin
Considering they claim that they configured the
OS's equally, which they didn't RedHat and the Apache group should sue MINDCRAFT and as a
part of the process demand to see all the
documents defining what Microsoft asked MINDCRAFT
to do. These should be made public.
Nitin Borwankar
------------------
Rather than prove NT is faster than Linux,
it proves MINDCRAFT's engineers have zero
skills.
This should cast severe doubts on MINDCRAFT's
ability to do any benchmarks.
Objective trade press should take note of this
for the future. How much is your credibility
worth MINDCRAFT ? Was it worth what MS paid you
to do the "study" ?
Nitin Borwankar
--------
While we rail against patents especially software
patents, we are (usually) expressing distaste for the way patents have been used by LARGE corporations to coerce small individual inventors.
We should remember that patents provide protection to the small inventor from the LARGE corporation and without this LARGE corporations would be able to steal ideas form small inventors - far more than they do.
It often happens that a software developer wants to license their technology to a large company.
When they show the software or the idea during the licensing talks, the LARGE corporation says - that's neat but we can do that in a month.
And sure enough, the next month they have a product - without licensing the software.
Software patents *properly used* could reduce this
phenomenon significantly, IMHO.
Properly used, software patents allow individual inventors to make a living writing software with protection. All software developers may not be interetsed in making money via services - some do and that's great. But eliminating software patent protection makes it that much harder for an individual developer who wants to make a living
by invention.
You can argue against the way patents have been granted - and that's a viable argument but that is a problem with funding in the Patent Office and not a problem with the patent system.
Let patents fufill their protective role and stop focusing only on the coercive role they have played when owned by LARGE corporations.
Nitin
------
If I remember right, the protocol doesn't protect
against a Postscript virus.
Nitin
-----
I know XOOM uses Linux - definitely a million(s)-hit-per-day site.
Nitin
---------------------
MS Office ported to Linux ?
Yeah, sure.
Just like they ported Internet
Explorer to Solaris and other Unix platforms.
Who cares - people still use Netscape on Solaris.
By the way do you know they even had SoftwareAG
of Germany port COM and DCOM to Unix, even Linux ?
This was a year or so ago, or more.
Who cares, on Unix people use CORBA and/or Java
Beans for component models.
This is just FUD, to scare venture capitalists
into not investing in any Office products on Linux. Too bad - MS might want to try something
a little more achievable - like making NT 4.0
Y2K compliant or even (gasp) shipping Win2000
before the year 3000.
If MS ports Office to Linux - it will
kill NT in the enterprise.
The Linux users will finally toss out the last Win98 and NT box they have been forced to use because of Office.
And the Win98/NT users will finally have a
stable platform so they'll switch to Linux.
AT least MIS directors will so that they don't have to pay massive license fees for the 5000 or
so PC's in their corporation.
The question is does MS want to dominate the Linux app space so bad that they will give up their foundational cash cow - windows98 and NT ?
You be the judge.
I think it's naive to assume that nothing can ... ) are investing in it.
corrupt us and that that is the only problem.
Take the case of the current flurry of investments in RedHat. What if (let's asssume for a minute) RedHat becomes the only distribution of note out there - just because all the business people use it because all the business poeple they trust ( IBM, Compaq, Netscape,
If RedHat becomes the single dominant distribution, the practical (not philosophical) effects of that on Open Source are likely to be significant -
* no (or small non-zero) competition hence less
motivation to improve
* the ability of a single commercial entity to
decide what software goes
on the RedHat CD - ie scarcity of distribution.
Yes you can put it on an FTP site but that's not the same to the buyer of the RedHat CD or the
guy who buys it pre-installed on a DELL machine.
... and it's cascading ripple-effects
In my opinion the OSD movement is declaring
victory when the real battles have not even
started.
Instead of discussing what is really OSD and what is not we might want to discuss how to create a
sustainable financial foundation for our ideals
so that it does not end up splitting us apart.
It is naive to think all we need to do is "stay the course". Remember the last time we heard that phrase ?
Nitin
======================
[...]
* Jewish
* Buddist
* Hindi -
[...]
You mean Hindu.
Hindi is a language, Hinduism is a religion.
[...]