In all the discussion of Apple's switch to Intel I haven't seen any mention of an interesting possibility: That the switch will enable Apple to sell Windows computers.
Why would Apple want to do that? Because Apple is a very vulnerable company. Right now the iPod gives them the illusion of stability and market security. But they need to keep innovating to sell iPods and Macs. They are currently on a several year winning streak. But what if things don't continue to go so well?
It isn't hard to imagine Apple strategists asking questions like, "How can we use Microsoft's market dominance to OUR advantage?" One answer might be to sell Windows computers. They would compete with Dell and offer Windows users computers that cost the same as Dell's, plus Apple styling and a Windows/OSX dual boot. Maybe better performance too. This would remove huge barriers to OSX
And it could give Apple the stable revenues they need to survive and to keep making the kinds of products their user base loves them for. Apple would continue to be Apple, but it would have a much more secure position in the market. What about it?
There is a lot of activity in the area of open source electronic medical record (EMR) software. As some of the posters have mentioned clinical information systems are highly complex, and this has led to many idiosyncratic open source projects that cannot be integrated easily. (The open source EMR world is still in an early stage of its development.) Current efforts are now focusing on larger, integrated approaches to open source healthcare computing.
There are two good web sites that are like clearinghouses for open source in healthcare:
2. Another good general site for open source in healthcare is LinuxMedNews, a Slashdot-like news and discussion site.
There are other large healthcare projects that are use some proprietary development tools, but which are developing open standards for healthcare computing. These include HL7 and GEHR (the Good Electronic Health Record project).
If you're interested in getting involved open source devolopment in healthcare, check out the Openhealth mailing list.
The book rise some important question such as: Technology, is it always good?"
That's an easier question to answer when it is about technology as we know it. But what about sentient robots and self-replicating nanotech? Autonomous silicon based intelligence stretches the limits of the word "technology," or shatters it completely. The questions raised by Bill Joy in his Wired article weren't really about technology as we know it, but about what might happen if technology evolves into something that is autonomous, intelligent, and self-replicating.
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Nothing's stopping them except their own desire to make sure that whatever they do is legally unsinkable. That is easier said than done, especially in the case of antitrust law, where there just aren't enough big cases like this to make it very clear just how the law should be applied. The worst thing the DOJ and Judge Jackson could do is to say, "Here's your punishment..." before making sure 100 times over that Microsoft couldn't appeal it and win.
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Do you consider the information overload of the Internet to be a usability / user interface issue? If so, do you think there are any reasonable solutions, like the use of meta data tags to stratify content, that can make the web easier to browse?
Thanks guys for this out-of-nowhere Bach thing, and thanks Tom for mentioning the cello suites. Pablo Casals said "Bach is the essence of music and the cello suites are the essence of Bach." I once owned about 15 recordings and traded most of them in. For Suite #2 Fournier is the best -- searing, not meerly depressing like some play it.
Good comments, especially the RMS-as-diplomat irony. But we don't need to worry about source code forking into other languages. India is a programming powerhouse, as you said, but all the Indian programmers are fluent in English. Everyone in India who graduates from high school speaks basic to decent English, and every college grad speaks good to excellent English. I spent half a year in India in '93 and the Indian Edition of PC Magazine (in English) was very popular. At that time DOS was starting to give way to Windows 3.1, and Unix was well established.
English is one of 2 national languages in India. There are about 32 "official Indian languages," spoken in the various states and regions of India. This makes it necessary for professionals in India to communicate and practice their professions in English. Otherwise they could not avoid the problems of communicating across linguistic regions. Also, using English connects Indian professionals to the world community in a way that Hindi (India's other national language) would not. That is why Indian medical journals are all written in English.
China doesn't have the history of English colonialism that India does, but English is the language of technology and it is the language that connects China to the world. China also has many regional languages. If anything, proficiency in English will increase in China, as it is everywhere else.
So there is little reason to think that Chinese and Indian coders will fork the code into local languages, since those languages isolate people from the other people that they need to be able to communicate with, like other programmers. The only solution is to use a regional language to talk with friends or family, and use English for the professions and technology.
Aside from these language issues, China and India have economic issues that make free software *much* more attractive for financial reasons than it is in the affluent west. As much as you might hate Microsoft, you probably don't suffer financially from the few hundred dollars a year it takes to stay current with MS products. In India and China it is a very different story -- one hundred dollars is a lot of money for an average citizen. Also, the cost of labor in these countries is much lower relative to the cost of technology (hardware and software) than it is in the west. This also supports the proliferation of open source software, because the software is free and you pay for service, which is less expensive due to low labor costs.
All in all, few people in the OS community appreciate the impact that OS software can have in these two countries. China is the most populous country in the world (1.25 billion), and India is number two (1.0 billion). As open source software explodes in these countries, the installed base of Linux will become huge. These countries have a lot of poverty, but are far more technologically sophisticated than you might expect. The average young people in these countries are reasonably well educated and hungry for technology.
So regardless of how much market share Microsoft can maintain in the US, Linux could easily dominate the market in India and China within five years. The open software genie is out of the bottle in every country, and it might behave differently in some countries than it does in the US. Do not underestimate the resentment that many people in developing counties feel towards the Microsoft Expensive-Western-Technology-Empire. It reminds them of colonialism. They are very proud of their countries and they want industrial and technological autonomy. OS software gives them that possibility.
For information on Linux in India, a good place to start is Linux-India.org.
Hospital information system vendors do not get sued when a patient has a bad outcome. The doctor gets sued and the hospital gets sued but not the IS vendor. This is not an issue.
Opera for Windows rocks. Definitely worth the $35 I paid them for it. I'm really looking forward to the Linux version so I can stop using Netscape. Yeah, I'm also glad Mozilla's coming, so there will be a free browser too.
Linux needs lots of good software, both free and proprietary. Every good product like Opera that becomes available for Linux makes it a more viable platform for business and home desktops.
If Sun buys SO and AOL wants non-MS software, does that mean AOL could somehow take advantage of Sun's new office suite? If it gets rewritten in pure Java, could AOL use this to integrate a non-MS office suite into AOL. I'm not sure if this would make sense, but it might help AOL move average users away from Microsoft dependence and toward AOL / Netscape / Sun dependence.
Based on this column, I think Bob Metcalf had a bad hair day regarding Linux. Based on other columns of his, I think he's been having a bad hair day about Linux for a while. Why?
I think there is something about OSS and Linux that rubs him the wrong way. It's not that he disagrees with it. It's more like it offends him because it represents the possibility of a new way of thinking, a world he just can't fit into.
Microsoft is the most powerful company in the world, and the world is addicted to its software. If Linux succeeds, it will be because it represents something more powerful than Microsoft. What could that be? Someone once said "There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." The time for an idea comes when the consciousness of the world changes in a way that supports that idea. If the consciousness of the educated computer-using public is really beginning to change, then Linux will succeed and nothing will be able to stop it. It the consciousness is "business-as-usual" except for a bunch of lunatic Commies, as Metcalf suggests, then Linux will fade out of view.
So this is the question: Is a change in consciousness emerging in the world of educated technology-users? I think there just might be, and I can see why Bob Metcalf is having an ongoing bad hair day about it.
You know, one thing the inaccuracies in the column demonstrate is how hard it is for people to grasp what Linux is and what OSS is about. They read some things, or hear some things, and they try to fit it into their model of the world. It doesn't fit, so they think it's crazy, or it's a guaranteed money loser, or whatever. But they don't grasp it. Jack's a good example of this.
It's easy to forget that Linux and OSS just don't fit into most people's view of how things work.
Slashdot Mirror
In all the discussion of Apple's switch to Intel I haven't seen any mention of an interesting possibility: That the switch will enable Apple to sell Windows computers.
Why would Apple want to do that? Because Apple is a very vulnerable company. Right now the iPod gives them the illusion of stability and market security. But they need to keep innovating to sell iPods and Macs. They are currently on a several year winning streak. But what if things don't continue to go so well?
It isn't hard to imagine Apple strategists asking questions like, "How can we use Microsoft's market dominance to OUR advantage?" One answer might be to sell Windows computers. They would compete with Dell and offer Windows users computers that cost the same as Dell's, plus Apple styling and a Windows/OSX dual boot. Maybe better performance too. This would remove huge barriers to OSX
And it could give Apple the stable revenues they need to survive and to keep making the kinds of products their user base loves them for. Apple would continue to be Apple, but it would have a much more secure position in the market. What about it?
There is a lot of activity in the area of open source electronic medical record (EMR) software. As some of the posters have mentioned clinical information systems are highly complex, and this has led to many idiosyncratic open source projects that cannot be integrated easily. (The open source EMR world is still in an early stage of its development.) Current efforts are now focusing on larger, integrated approaches to open source healthcare computing.
There are two good web sites that are like clearinghouses for open source in healthcare:
1. The Minoru Development site is loaded with resources for open source healthcare developers, including a list of open souce projects. Minoru-Development hosts an email list that is energetic and wide-ranging.
2. Another good general site for open source in healthcare is LinuxMedNews, a Slashdot-like news and discussion site.
There are other large healthcare projects that are use some proprietary development tools, but which are developing open standards for healthcare computing. These include HL7 and GEHR (the Good Electronic Health Record project).
If you're interested in getting involved open source devolopment in healthcare, check out the Openhealth mailing list.
That's an easier question to answer when it is about technology as we know it. But what about sentient robots and self-replicating nanotech? Autonomous silicon based intelligence stretches the limits of the word "technology," or shatters it completely. The questions raised by Bill Joy in his Wired article weren't really about technology as we know it, but about what might happen if technology evolves into something that is autonomous, intelligent, and self-replicating.
------------
Read any good essays lately? Submit them to the Pratmik essay page.
----------------
Seen any interesting essays recently? Submit them to the Pratmik essay page.
Do you consider the information overload of the Internet to be a usability / user interface issue? If so, do you think there are any reasonable solutions, like the use of meta data tags to stratify content, that can make the web easier to browse?
Katz posts a lot. Here's his user info: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?nick=jonkatz
Thanks guys for this out-of-nowhere Bach thing, and thanks Tom for mentioning the cello suites. Pablo Casals said "Bach is the essence of music and the cello suites are the essence of Bach." I once owned about 15 recordings and traded most of them in. For Suite #2 Fournier is the best -- searing, not meerly depressing like some play it.
I heard ESR speak one month ago. He told everyone that the reason to buy the book was so you can give it to your boss as a gift. That works for me.
Good comments, especially the RMS-as-diplomat irony. But we don't need to worry about source code forking into other languages. India is a programming powerhouse, as you said, but all the Indian programmers are fluent in English. Everyone in India who graduates from high school speaks basic to decent English, and every college grad speaks good to excellent English. I spent half a year in India in '93 and the Indian Edition of PC Magazine (in English) was very popular. At that time DOS was starting to give way to Windows 3.1, and Unix was well established.
English is one of 2 national languages in India. There are about 32 "official Indian languages," spoken in the various states and regions of India. This makes it necessary for professionals in India to communicate and practice their professions in English. Otherwise they could not avoid the problems of communicating across linguistic regions. Also, using English connects Indian professionals to the world community in a way that Hindi (India's other national language) would not. That is why Indian medical journals are all written in English.
China doesn't have the history of English colonialism that India does, but English is the language of technology and it is the language that connects China to the world. China also has many regional languages. If anything, proficiency in English will increase in China, as it is everywhere else.
So there is little reason to think that Chinese and Indian coders will fork the code into local languages, since those languages isolate people from the other people that they need to be able to communicate with, like other programmers. The only solution is to use a regional language to talk with friends or family, and use English for the professions and technology.
Aside from these language issues, China and India have economic issues that make free software *much* more attractive for financial reasons than it is in the affluent west. As much as you might hate Microsoft, you probably don't suffer financially from the few hundred dollars a year it takes to stay current with MS products. In India and China it is a very different story -- one hundred dollars is a lot of money for an average citizen. Also, the cost of labor in these countries is much lower relative to the cost of technology (hardware and software) than it is in the west. This also supports the proliferation of open source software, because the software is free and you pay for service, which is less expensive due to low labor costs.
All in all, few people in the OS community appreciate the impact that OS software can have in these two countries. China is the most populous country in the world (1.25 billion), and India is number two (1.0 billion). As open source software explodes in these countries, the installed base of Linux will become huge. These countries have a lot of poverty, but are far more technologically sophisticated than you might expect. The average young people in these countries are reasonably well educated and hungry for technology.
So regardless of how much market share Microsoft can maintain in the US, Linux could easily dominate the market in India and China within five years. The open software genie is out of the bottle in every country, and it might behave differently in some countries than it does in the US. Do not underestimate the resentment that many people in developing counties feel towards the Microsoft Expensive-Western-Technology-Empire. It reminds them of colonialism. They are very proud of their countries and they want industrial and technological autonomy. OS software gives them that possibility.
For information on Linux in India, a good place to start is Linux-India.org.
Hospital information system vendors do not get sued when a patient has a bad outcome. The doctor gets sued and the hospital gets sued but not the IS vendor. This is not an issue.
Opera for Windows rocks. Definitely worth the $35 I paid them for it. I'm really looking forward to the Linux version so I can stop using Netscape. Yeah, I'm also glad Mozilla's coming, so there will be a free browser too.
Linux needs lots of good software, both free and proprietary. Every good product like Opera that becomes available for Linux makes it a more viable platform for business and home desktops.
Dr. Strangelove was modeled after Henry Kissinger.
If Sun buys SO and AOL wants non-MS software, does that mean AOL could somehow take advantage of Sun's new office suite? If it gets rewritten in pure Java, could AOL use this to integrate a non-MS office suite into AOL. I'm not sure if this would make sense, but it might help AOL move average users away from Microsoft dependence and toward AOL / Netscape / Sun dependence.
Based on this column, I think Bob Metcalf had a bad hair day regarding Linux. Based on other columns of his, I think he's been having a bad hair day about Linux for a while. Why?
I think there is something about OSS and Linux that rubs him the wrong way. It's not that he disagrees with it. It's more like it offends him because it represents the possibility of a new way of thinking, a world he just can't fit into.
Microsoft is the most powerful company in the world, and the world is addicted to its software. If Linux succeeds, it will be because it represents something more powerful than Microsoft. What could that be? Someone once said "There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." The time for an idea comes when the consciousness of the world changes in a way that supports that idea. If the consciousness of the educated computer-using public is really beginning to change, then Linux will succeed and nothing will be able to stop it. It the consciousness is "business-as-usual" except for a bunch of lunatic Commies, as Metcalf suggests, then Linux will fade out of view.
So this is the question: Is a change in consciousness emerging in the world of educated technology-users? I think there just might be, and I can see why Bob Metcalf is having an ongoing bad hair day about it.
You know, one thing the inaccuracies in the column demonstrate is how hard it is for people to grasp what Linux is and what OSS is about. They read some things, or hear some things, and they try to fit it into their model of the world. It doesn't fit, so they think it's crazy, or it's a guaranteed money loser, or whatever. But they don't grasp it. Jack's a good example of this.
It's easy to forget that Linux and OSS just don't fit into most people's view of how things work.