What is the roadmap for convergence of Gnome and KDE? It is good to have choice, but sad to see a fragmentation at the application level. Apart from the different programming languages used in the two, is there any fundamental reason why a common API cannot be defined or added?
Right now it seems that the only solution for applications that want to be totally portable is to bypass KDE and Gnome entirely and use their own libraries (Mozilla, OOorg) and/or X.
Even being able to run Gnome and KDE side-by-side in the same sessions would be a good thing.
This is just a wonderful way of packaging certain types of application. To those who say "I don't want to reboot every time I want to play XYZ", consider this: virtual environments that can boot off a CD in a window inside your current Windows or Linux setup.
Perhaps not the future of software distribution, but a significant part of it, nonetheless.
- The universe's largest collection of AOL CDs, approximately a terragoogle of them circling Saturn in the form of one of its rings. Results of failed marketing campaign circa 2501ad.
- A twenty-billion tonne meteor shaped exactly like the Hand of God, heading straight for Ur^h^h the planet Earth.
- Life on Mars, complete with funky trance tunes and dayglo noserings.
- A bong the size of NYC, containing twenty billion tonnes of a material that under examination appears to be chemically identical to Tunisian purple haze. Said bong is orbiting the Sun quite close to Mars and already the petition to send a manned mission to Mars has collected five hundred and thirty million signatures. Most of them say, "send me, send me!" Others just say, "Dude, that's too much!"
- A radio beacon embedded in the heart of a small black rock circling one of Pluto's moon. After the rock is detected and retrieved in 2032 at incredible expense, and cracked open following ten years of drilling, it is found to contain a copy of MAD Magazine from circa 1972 and a small piece of paper with the words "regular delivery to this address, please" on it.
- The discovery, in a deep crater on Mars, of an underground passage leading to a huge room filled with silent, brooding machines. After long study and careful analysis of the patterns and markings, we activate one of the machines. Immediately the whole room comes to life and a small black hole appears in its center. The Martian surface starts to slide into the black hole, then the entire planet, and finally the whole Solar System. A team of two plutonaughts watch the scene from the far boundaries of the Plutonian orbit, and as the last specks are absorbed into the now huge and pulsating black hole, they read, in huge flashing letters, the text "ZIPPING COMPLETE. NOW REFORMATTING MEDIA... 1% COMPLETE, PLEASE WAIT."
Are very interesting. Not just for software, articles, books, but also for music and art.
Basically this is the extension of the GPL into other domains, based much on the same premise: I license you my work to use if you agree to license your derived works on the same basis.
It's a wonderful thing, and I believe it's workable, even in commercialized fields like music and publishing. The number of artists who are unable to get their (good) work published is extraordinary. Using a CC license they can publish it, and while making no less money than if it was not published, create many more opportunities for fame and fortune.
The established media businesses are as much a barrier to sucess for new artists as they are a source of income to established ones. The CC licenses provide the basis for a change.
It remains to be see whether we will see a creative explosion in other fields as we have seen in software. Finally, Free Music, Free Art, and Free Words.
It's not about favouritism but about choosing standards. This happens a lot in computing, as in other fields. In early days, lots of inventions, many excellent. As time goes on, problems that were once considered "complex" become banal. Products that commanded a premium start to become commodities. The products that move along this curve the fastest - which become commoditized the fastest - succeed and drive out the others.
Each field is different but the winners of such races generally respect certain rules. First, they don't play favourites. A monopoly, even a well-protected one, can only sustain itself so long before it kills its own market. Look at state monopolies on post and telecoms. Secondly, winning products need to be accessible so that they build up a critical mass of popularity and knowledge. Lastly, winning products have to have a flexibility that lets them capture new markets faster than other products.
To take the example of an earlier comment, the internal combustion engine, though less fuel-efficient than some alternatives, was easy to 'hack', robust on poor road conditions, and open to all to build. Other designs were patented, broke down on rough terrain, or needed more expertise to maintain.
Linux has the critical mass and frankly is much, much more accessible than - for instance - BSD. Pop in your LindowsOS or Xandros CD and 15 minutes later, you have a running Linux. Pop in a Knoppix and it only takes 2 minutes.
Like all standards, it does not matter which one is chosen, rather that there is a standard.
We will, within only a few years, look back at the OS wars and wonder, WTF, why all the fuss?? Like I said before, think of TCP/IP... would you prefer token ring on your PC today?
IIRC they have suspended further development of MSIE and will only release security patches.
This is a far cry from the days when hundreds of developers worked on making MSIE one of the fastest and smartest browsers out there.
You really have to wonder whether it was worthwhile for Microsoft. What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser? Fewer people using Windows? Hardly. A less powerful browser platform? Not really: the browser never could be the operating system.
Personally I thought the whole browser war was part of the same hype that caused Oracle to invest so much in web terminals, or whatever they called them.
The browser is just one more applet, fundamentally. Comes in all shapes and sizes, and so long as it respects the rules, no-one cares what logo it shows in the top corner. I come here for Slashdot, not for the browser.
So, since development on Mozilla and its cousins continues unabated, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft start to play catch-up. Will they, I wonder? What can they gain?
It has been clear since the late 1990's that Linux in its many variations represents the future of the operating system as a technology.
There is of course a huge vested interest in trying to delay and/or stop this process, but it is - obviously, to me - already unstoppable. We are watching the elimination of all incompatible operating systems one by one, much as we watched TCP/IP eliminate a slew of different network protocols in the 1980's and 90's.
Linux is portable and can quickly operate any new system out there. Any vendor using Linux thus has access to a pool of applications that is already large, and growing.
Linux is stable so that applications built 10 years ago still run easily. If I can run Apache on my PDA it's not because someone sweated blood and tears to strip the code down. It's because the OS has done its job.
Linux is open, meaning that no single group can divert it into suboptimal directions. We all know how commercial interests often conflict with basic operational efficiency. Free of these conflicts, Linux is already incredibly plastic, and becoming more so. Beowulf. Knoppix. Technologies made by one or two people, able to change the basic rules of computing. Impossible with a commercial OS but natural with Linux.
Linux has, in essence, demonstrated that the "operating system" as a problem has been solved, and well solved. People will still pay for their OS software for a long time to come, but now it is down to attrition. Windows will conquer no new platforms, not a single one. Linux will take them all, one way or another.
So, Linux for hand-helds (and BTW, I deeply covet those Psion Netbooks) makes perfect sense, but not because of anything to do with the handheld format. Linux makes sense for the hand-held for the same reason that TCP/IP makes sense for the hand-held. How else are you going to do business in the 21st century?
The only way this is going to work is if Bush can demonstrate that Al Quaeda is building an Islamic rocket that will take the word of the Prophet to Mars. The space race of the 60's was about nationalistic pride, but these days, who are we trying to beat? The French? The Indians? The Martians?
The current enthusiasm for space is nice, and gratifying to us geeks, but it's based on not a lot more than thin air. One serious budget crisis, one change of president, and it'll be cancelled.
It was supposed to be about the upcoming Snorx/3.2 window manager! You can't trust any sources any more.
Seriously, this has been coming for a long time and there is plenty of material about the impact of a totally digital, totally manipulable reality in the SciFi archives.
It's a cycle anyhow. Eventually paper and touch will become valuable again because they mean something. Anyone want to buy a signed printout of this comment? Only $0.02!
The grandfather of 'business with a baseball bat' was NCR. IBM was the best practitioner of this until Microsoft took over the crown in the 1990's.
IIRC Thomas Watson learnt his art at NCR, where the ability to smash a rival's machines was one of the job requirements for an ambitious cash register salesman. These days, I'd guess that translates into being able to produce VR TCO studies proving that Windows is cheaper.
Features definitely do not equal value despite the propaganda that tries to convince people otherwise.
The essence of good design is simplicity and value comes from the elimination of unnecessary features, not their addition.
You would consider a door with fifteen handles and ten ways of opening to be "worth more" than a door that has one handle which works exactly as you expect? Hardly.
As for OpenOffice.org, it is easily, easily sufficient for 80-90% of all computer users. You can argue with this but the real reason MS Office is popular in academea may have more to do with cheap licenses than anything else.
Finally, people will switch to OOorg for several reasons. Firstly when the weight of yearly licenses starts to hurt. Secondly, to avoid yet one more cycle of upgrades that break large numbers of existing configurations for little obvious gain. Thirdly, when they are running old versions and do not want to pay once more for new ones. Lastly, and I believe significantly, many people use MS Office with no license at all. OOorg provides them a way to become "legitimate".
Now, the discussion is not about "why switch", it's about cost.
In a global market, any business that pays more than it needs to for a service (including software) is at a competitive disadvantage, and will eventually be beaten by leaner competitors.
Microsoft's offerings costs more, and for the majority of its users, this extra cost simply does not translate into extra value. You cannot debate this observation away. If you work for Microsoft, you would do better to consider how such an unbalanced business model can actually survive. Eventually your customers will be unable to pay for your products, however much they like them. What will you do then?
Product L is free, widely available from a variety of sources who compete purely on technical quality, and designed principally by its own users to be portable, reliable, and as efficient as possible.
Product W (its primary competitor) is sold at quite a high price, by a single vendor who relies on marketing, market position, and features to sell the product. The product's users have little to say about the evolution of the product and nothing at all to say about its internal design.
The vendor of product W releases studies which it pays for proving that W is cheaper to own than L. Later, a large field trial proves that product L is, actually cheaper than product W.... duh.
Who is kidding who here? There is a very good reason that small businesses with any technical savvy at all jump onto the Linux/OSS bandwagon as soon as they possibly can. It saves money.
Small note to evangelists: convert people to OpenOffice.org on Windows first.
Except that Nokia have built Bluetooth support only into a limited number of phones, mainly those aimed at the "business market". For instance, my 6800 has almost every conceivable option but no Bluetooth.
I can't guess their reasons for not including Bluetooth with all their more expensive models, since it can't cost more than one Euro or so, but at least it means that of all the phones out there, relatively few are exploitable.
The full paragraph from the internal Verisign report reads:
"Studies in Outer Mongolia showed that our Site Finder service was not controversial with users of the Trans-Himalaya Yak Courier Service. Everyone else on the planet, including Arawoyo Pnu (34) from Upper Amazonia, found the service both useless and obnoxious. We therefore recommend renaming the Site Finder service to 'Yak Finder' in order to better exploit the Outer Mongolian market."
Last year, it was already obvious that Nokia (who controlled the Symbian UI) would become the primary vendor for Symbian itself.
Motorola tried Microsoft, decided they did not like it, and started to build Linux phones.
This is going to be a three way fight between Symbian, Linux, and Microsoft. My guess is that Symbian will win because it is a superb platform and Nokia have timed this move perfectly.
Linux will beat Microsoft because anyone who is unwilling to pay the Nokia license fees for Symbian is unlikely to want to pay Microsoft either.
But this does not really change things for firms like Samsung - they will probably be happy to ue a standardized UI and OS while also developing their Linux platform on the side.
The big loser here is Microsoft, who might have fragmented a Symbian owned by several people, but are unlikely to score a good hit now.
This is not a question for the Indian techies but rather a comment about the many angry and distressed comments about outsourcing.
First, outsourcing is not new. Every great industry has been built on the ruins of another, somewhere else. Textiles, agriculture, automobiles, shipbuilding, steel,... we've always seen jobs move to where they cost less.
Secondly, although this always hurts those losing their jobs, it almost always brings much greater benefits back than those jobs would keep. Example: without the cheap Asian ships and cheap third-world sailors who man them, everything you buy would cost much more.
Thirdly, there is nothing quite as stimulating as the collapse of one industry to create new ones. Do you really wish you worked in a coal mine? Much of software production has become so routine and monotonous that it's the modern equivalent of industrial labour. There is a reason why these jobs can be done more cheaply, and it's only partly because the Indian workforce is cheap. It's also because the very jobs have become banal.
Consider China, the factory of the world, sending its goods to every country and region of the world. China, which is today the world's second largest importer of goods and services. Instead of trying to compete with a Chinese DVD player at $15, consider that Rolex sells more real solid gold $15,000 watches in China than in any other country.
The rise of the Indian technical support industry should be seen as a sign of hope: thousands, millions of new customers for the leading-edge products that you should be capable of designing and delivering.
Trade is not a pie that you slice and share. It's a reaction that needs constant movement to keep active and grow. Every new Indian job means new opportunities and jobs here in the US as well. It just takes imagination and drive to make it happen.
Well, I do have one question for our Indian colleagues: how do you feel about the bitching that most Westerners show when asked about Indian IT? I mean, presumably you studied hard and feel that you're allowed to compete fairly on an open market?
Cut it into small pieces, 5" square, auction them on ebay. It will raise money and give millions of people a piece of history. I wish someone'd done this with the Berlin Wall, with Sadam's statue, and with the wreckage of the WTC. Come to think of it, it'd be a cool way of disposing of other problems too. Care to buy a small piece of Daryl?
exactly, that's my point. it's just too blatant. i mean, come on, 'destroy your data' is just an easy message for citizen joe, who is supposed to hate these guys and thank any lawmaker who punishes them. the real damage viruses do is not so b&w. these dudes were either set-up, or incredibly arrogant, or they're stooges. but i guess since it was in print, you believe it. me, i ask "who wanted me to read this story, and why?"
And Disney is turning to Microsoft. I almost feel sorry for them, no-one (and I mean no-one) has ever done a deal with Microsoft and not regretted it later.
Slashdot Mirror
What is the roadmap for convergence of Gnome and KDE? It is good to have choice, but sad to see a fragmentation at the application level. Apart from the different programming languages used in the two, is there any fundamental reason why a common API cannot be defined or added?
Right now it seems that the only solution for applications that want to be totally portable is to bypass KDE and Gnome entirely and use their own libraries (Mozilla, OOorg) and/or X.
Even being able to run Gnome and KDE side-by-side in the same sessions would be a good thing.
Live Knoppix CDs are about delivering applications with a 100% predictable and tested OS platform, not about specialization of Linux.
It is Knoppix plus layers, which remains Debian plus layers, which remains Linux plus layers.
This is just a wonderful way of packaging certain types of application. To those who say "I don't want to reboot every time I want to play XYZ", consider this: virtual environments that can boot off a CD in a window inside your current Windows or Linux setup.
Perhaps not the future of software distribution, but a significant part of it, nonetheless.
Many perl haikus
Many Slashdot visitors
No response, it's down.
Heironymous' Prime Law of Journalism:
Opions are valued in inverse relation to the amount of money paid to produce them.
In this case, the opinion that transparency is bad for security is of so little value that it's difficult to answer it with a serious tone.
After all, Windows is remarkable for its security wrt to something like, OpenBSD, known for its secretive and opaque practices.
lol.
- The universe's largest collection of AOL CDs, approximately a terragoogle of them circling Saturn in the form of one of its rings. Results of failed marketing campaign circa 2501ad.
- A twenty-billion tonne meteor shaped exactly like the Hand of God, heading straight for Ur^h^h the planet Earth.
- Life on Mars, complete with funky trance tunes and dayglo noserings.
- A bong the size of NYC, containing twenty billion tonnes of a material that under examination appears to be chemically identical to Tunisian purple haze. Said bong is orbiting the Sun quite close to Mars and already the petition to send a manned mission to Mars has collected five hundred and thirty million signatures. Most of them say, "send me, send me!" Others just say, "Dude, that's too much!"
- A radio beacon embedded in the heart of a small black rock circling one of Pluto's moon. After the rock is detected and retrieved in 2032 at incredible expense, and cracked open following ten years of drilling, it is found to contain a copy of MAD Magazine from circa 1972 and a small piece of paper with the words "regular delivery to this address, please" on it.
- The discovery, in a deep crater on Mars, of an underground passage leading to a huge room filled with silent, brooding machines. After long study and careful analysis of the patterns and markings, we activate one of the machines. Immediately the whole room comes to life and a small black hole appears in its center. The Martian surface starts to slide into the black hole, then the entire planet, and finally the whole Solar System. A team of two plutonaughts watch the scene from the far boundaries of the Plutonian orbit, and as the last specks are absorbed into the now huge and pulsating black hole, they read, in huge flashing letters, the text "ZIPPING COMPLETE. NOW REFORMATTING MEDIA... 1% COMPLETE, PLEASE WAIT."
No. For entertainment, give me a cube PC and a projector. Just as portable, ten times the fun and cheaper.
Are very interesting. Not just for software, articles, books, but also for music and art.
Basically this is the extension of the GPL into other domains, based much on the same premise: I license you my work to use if you agree to license your derived works on the same basis.
It's a wonderful thing, and I believe it's workable, even in commercialized fields like music and publishing. The number of artists who are unable to get their (good) work published is extraordinary. Using a CC license they can publish it, and while making no less money than if it was not published, create many more opportunities for fame and fortune.
The established media businesses are as much a barrier to sucess for new artists as they are a source of income to established ones. The CC licenses provide the basis for a change.
It remains to be see whether we will see a creative explosion in other fields as we have seen in software. Finally, Free Music, Free Art, and Free Words.
Why the favourtism towards Linux?
It's not about favouritism but about choosing standards. This happens a lot in computing, as in other fields. In early days, lots of inventions, many excellent. As time goes on, problems that were once considered "complex" become banal. Products that commanded a premium start to become commodities. The products that move along this curve the fastest - which become commoditized the fastest - succeed and drive out the others.
Each field is different but the winners of such races generally respect certain rules. First, they don't play favourites. A monopoly, even a well-protected one, can only sustain itself so long before it kills its own market. Look at state monopolies on post and telecoms. Secondly, winning products need to be accessible so that they build up a critical mass of popularity and knowledge.
Lastly, winning products have to have a flexibility that lets them capture new markets faster than other products.
To take the example of an earlier comment, the internal combustion engine, though less fuel-efficient than some alternatives, was easy to 'hack', robust on poor road conditions, and open to all to build. Other designs were patented, broke down on rough terrain, or needed more expertise to maintain.
Linux has the critical mass and frankly is much, much more accessible than - for instance - BSD. Pop in your LindowsOS or Xandros CD and 15 minutes later, you have a running Linux. Pop in a Knoppix and it only takes 2 minutes.
Like all standards, it does not matter which one is chosen, rather that there is a standard.
We will, within only a few years, look back at the OS wars and wonder, WTF, why all the fuss?? Like I said before, think of TCP/IP... would you prefer token ring on your PC today?
IIRC they have suspended further development of MSIE and will only release security patches.
This is a far cry from the days when hundreds of developers worked on making MSIE one of the fastest and smartest browsers out there.
You really have to wonder whether it was worthwhile for Microsoft. What would have changed if Netscape had continued to sell their browser? Fewer people using Windows? Hardly. A less powerful browser platform? Not really: the browser never could be the operating system.
Personally I thought the whole browser war was part of the same hype that caused Oracle to invest so much in web terminals, or whatever they called them.
The browser is just one more applet, fundamentally. Comes in all shapes and sizes, and so long as it respects the rules, no-one cares what logo it shows in the top corner. I come here for Slashdot, not for the browser.
So, since development on Mozilla and its cousins continues unabated, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft start to play catch-up. Will they, I wonder? What can they gain?
It has been clear since the late 1990's that Linux in its many variations represents the future of the operating system as a technology.
There is of course a huge vested interest in trying to delay and/or stop this process, but it is - obviously, to me - already unstoppable. We are watching the elimination of all incompatible operating systems one by one, much as we watched TCP/IP eliminate a slew of different network protocols in the 1980's and 90's.
Linux is portable and can quickly operate any new system out there. Any vendor using Linux thus has access to a pool of applications that is already large, and growing.
Linux is stable so that applications built 10 years ago still run easily. If I can run Apache on my PDA it's not because someone sweated blood and tears to strip the code down. It's because the OS has done its job.
Linux is open, meaning that no single group can divert it into suboptimal directions. We all know how commercial interests often conflict with basic operational efficiency. Free of these conflicts, Linux is already incredibly plastic, and becoming more so. Beowulf. Knoppix. Technologies made by one or two people, able to change the basic rules of computing. Impossible with a commercial OS but natural with Linux.
Linux has, in essence, demonstrated that the "operating system" as a problem has been solved, and well solved. People will still pay for their OS software for a long time to come, but now it is down to attrition. Windows will conquer no new platforms, not a single one. Linux will take them all, one way or another.
So, Linux for hand-helds (and BTW, I deeply covet those Psion Netbooks) makes perfect sense, but not because of anything to do with the handheld format. Linux makes sense for the hand-held for the same reason that TCP/IP makes sense for the hand-held. How else are you going to do business in the 21st century?
The only way this is going to work is if Bush can demonstrate that Al Quaeda is building an Islamic rocket that will take the word of the Prophet to Mars. The space race of the 60's was about nationalistic pride, but these days, who are we trying to beat? The French? The Indians? The Martians?
The current enthusiasm for space is nice, and gratifying to us geeks, but it's based on not a lot more than thin air. One serious budget crisis, one change of president, and it'll be cancelled.
Just my 2c.
No, I don't trust it. All those bits... how am I to know which ones are the right ones?
It was supposed to be about the upcoming Snorx/3.2 window manager! You can't trust any sources any more.
Seriously, this has been coming for a long time and there is plenty of material about the impact of a totally digital, totally manipulable reality in the SciFi archives.
It's a cycle anyhow. Eventually paper and touch will become valuable again because they mean something. Anyone want to buy a signed printout of this comment? Only $0.02!
The grandfather of 'business with a baseball bat' was NCR. IBM was the best practitioner of this until Microsoft took over the crown in the 1990's.
IIRC Thomas Watson learnt his art at NCR, where the ability to smash a rival's machines was one of the job requirements for an ambitious cash register salesman. These days, I'd guess that translates into being able to produce VR TCO studies proving that Windows is cheaper.
Slice it up into 5" square pieces and sell it to raise money for... uh... it's in space. Damn
Features definitely do not equal value despite the propaganda that tries to convince people otherwise.
The essence of good design is simplicity and value comes from the elimination of unnecessary features, not their addition.
You would consider a door with fifteen handles and ten ways of opening to be "worth more" than a door that has one handle which works exactly as you expect? Hardly.
As for OpenOffice.org, it is easily, easily sufficient for 80-90% of all computer users. You can argue with this but the real reason MS Office is popular in academea may have more to do with cheap licenses than anything else.
Finally, people will switch to OOorg for several reasons. Firstly when the weight of yearly licenses starts to hurt. Secondly, to avoid yet one more cycle of upgrades that break large numbers of existing configurations for little obvious gain. Thirdly, when they are running old versions and do not want to pay once more for new ones. Lastly, and I believe significantly, many people use MS Office with no license at all. OOorg provides them a way to become "legitimate".
Now, the discussion is not about "why switch", it's about cost.
In a global market, any business that pays more than it needs to for a service (including software) is at a competitive disadvantage, and will eventually be beaten by leaner competitors.
Microsoft's offerings costs more, and for the majority of its users, this extra cost simply does not translate into extra value. You cannot debate this observation away. If you work for Microsoft, you would do better to consider how such an unbalanced business model can actually survive. Eventually your customers will be unable to pay for your products, however much they like them. What will you do then?
Product L is free, widely available from a variety of sources who compete purely on technical quality, and designed principally by its own users to be portable, reliable, and as efficient as possible.
... duh.
Product W (its primary competitor) is sold at quite a high price, by a single vendor who relies on marketing, market position, and features to sell the product. The product's users have little to say about the evolution of the product and nothing at all to say about its internal design.
The vendor of product W releases studies which it pays for proving that W is cheaper to own than L. Later, a large field trial proves that product L is, actually cheaper than product W.
Who is kidding who here? There is a very good reason that small businesses with any technical savvy at all jump onto the Linux/OSS bandwagon as soon as they possibly can. It saves money.
Small note to evangelists: convert people to OpenOffice.org on Windows first.
Except that Nokia have built Bluetooth support only into a limited number of phones, mainly those aimed at the "business market". For instance, my 6800 has almost every conceivable option but no Bluetooth.
I can't guess their reasons for not including Bluetooth with all their more expensive models, since it can't cost more than one Euro or so, but at least it means that of all the phones out there, relatively few are exploitable.
The full paragraph from the internal Verisign report reads:
"Studies in Outer Mongolia showed that our Site Finder service was not controversial with users of the Trans-Himalaya Yak Courier Service. Everyone else on the planet, including Arawoyo Pnu (34) from Upper Amazonia, found the service both useless and obnoxious. We therefore recommend renaming the Site Finder service to 'Yak Finder' in order to better exploit the Outer Mongolian market."
Last year, it was already obvious that Nokia (who controlled the Symbian UI) would become the primary vendor for Symbian itself.
Motorola tried Microsoft, decided they did not like it, and started to build Linux phones.
This is going to be a three way fight between Symbian, Linux, and Microsoft. My guess is that Symbian will win because it is a superb platform and Nokia have timed this move perfectly.
Linux will beat Microsoft because anyone who is unwilling to pay the Nokia license fees for Symbian is unlikely to want to pay Microsoft either.
But this does not really change things for firms like Samsung - they will probably be happy to ue a standardized UI and OS while also developing their Linux platform on the side.
The big loser here is Microsoft, who might have fragmented a Symbian owned by several people, but are unlikely to score a good hit now.
This is not a question for the Indian techies but rather a comment about the many angry and distressed comments about outsourcing.
First, outsourcing is not new. Every great industry has been built on the ruins of another, somewhere else. Textiles, agriculture, automobiles, shipbuilding, steel,... we've always seen jobs move to where they cost less.
Secondly, although this always hurts those losing their jobs, it almost always brings much greater benefits back than those jobs would keep. Example: without the cheap Asian ships and cheap third-world sailors who man them, everything you buy would cost much more.
Thirdly, there is nothing quite as stimulating as the collapse of one industry to create new ones. Do you really wish you worked in a coal mine? Much of software production has become so routine and monotonous that it's the modern equivalent of industrial labour. There is a reason why these jobs can be done more cheaply, and it's only partly because the Indian workforce is cheap. It's also because the very jobs have become banal.
Consider China, the factory of the world, sending its goods to every country and region of the world. China, which is today the world's second largest importer of goods and services. Instead of trying to compete with a Chinese DVD player at $15, consider that Rolex sells more real solid gold $15,000 watches in China than in any other country.
The rise of the Indian technical support industry should be seen as a sign of hope: thousands, millions of new customers for the leading-edge products that you should be capable of designing and delivering.
Trade is not a pie that you slice and share. It's a reaction that needs constant movement to keep active and grow. Every new Indian job means new opportunities and jobs here in the US as well. It just takes imagination and drive to make it happen.
Well, I do have one question for our Indian colleagues: how do you feel about the bitching that most Westerners show when asked about Indian IT? I mean, presumably you studied hard and feel that you're allowed to compete fairly on an open market?
Cut it into small pieces, 5" square, auction them on ebay. It will raise money and give millions of people a piece of history. I wish someone'd done this with the Berlin Wall, with Sadam's statue, and with the wreckage of the WTC. Come to think of it, it'd be a cool way of disposing of other problems too. Care to buy a small piece of Daryl?
exactly, that's my point. it's just too blatant. i mean, come on, 'destroy your data' is just an easy message for citizen joe, who is supposed to hate these guys and thank any lawmaker who punishes them. the real damage viruses do is not so b&w. these dudes were either set-up, or incredibly arrogant, or they're stooges. but i guess since it was in print, you believe it. me, i ask "who wanted me to read this story, and why?"
Or rather, Eisner vs. Jobs.
They hate each other.
Jobs is determined to become the next Disney.
And Disney is turning to Microsoft. I almost feel sorry for them, no-one (and I mean no-one) has ever done a deal with Microsoft and not regretted it later.