I think people who pay $200 for a computer have low expectations because there ain't much you can get for $200. When $200 will also buy you all the word-processing power you want, a 15" monitor, web browsing, the ability to run Quicken, and email (ie everything 96% of home PC users need) you're going to see real growth in this market segment. Two years ago $1000 wouldn't buy these capabilities, six months from now, $200 will.
My parents purchased a PII/350 for $1300 awhile back. They use it for email, web browsing, Quicken, and my dad writes sermons on it. Their next machine (a couple years from now)will almost certainly cost less than $300, and WebTV and WinCE won't be the OS.
While I wish Dvorak were right on this point, it is doubtful Linux will be the OS, either. I predict MS will do whatever is necessary to extend into this market share. Look at all the devel they did on IE (which I grudgingly admit is a good browser). They produced it for free, simply because they imagined a threat from Netscape. In my opinion, there never was a threat, the browser would not have taken over the desktop by now if they had not dumped money into IE, but look at MS's reaction.
There willbe $200 computers doing what $1000 computers do today. MS is going to do what it takes to be control the first logo you see when the OS is booted.
Dvorak seems to dismiss Linux/Apache as a server contender because he fees it cannot currently handle super high-load jobs, and is thus only well-suited for medium instensity servers. These 'in-between' servers, as he calls them, are the workhorse of the internet and represent most of the servers out there. I don't see how he can contend that filling this niche is not a victory for Linux. He doesn't attempt to address the dizzyingly fast evolution of this OS, or admit that it very well may be handling these high-end applications in the future. I am very happy to see Linux used for all but the most demanding server tasks, which are still relegated to Unix. This is a validation of free software, not an arguement against it.
He thinks Linux will own the desktop because MS will sooner abandon its market share than price Windows competitively for $200 machines. There is no way MS will give up this market. They will either price Windows down, or come out with a cheap version in between what are now Win98 and WinCE to be used in iToaster-type machines. Expect it to be Win98 with a few key dlls removed (much as NT workstation is NT server sans a few dlls). I expect they'd price it at $10-$20 OEM. It is absurd to argue that MS is going to roll over and give up Windows on the home desktop without more justification than Dvorak gives.
UnderNet may not run Linux, but my web hosting service (Hurricane Electric) does. They host a lot of relatively high-traffic stuff. I haven't noticed any down time in the two years I've been using them. They let me telnet in, run custom scripts on the server, have PhP and MySQL, and charge less than $10 a month. They're also really fast. I haven't seen anyone able to provide this price/service combination on an NT or Unix system.
Dvoraks columns seem to be hit or miss, sometimes he's dead-on insightful, but others I think he goes too far to deliver a viewpoint outside the mainstream. I fear this is more a case of the latter.
Why did 3Com license PalmOS to Handspring in the first place? This, of course, was a great thing for consumers, but seems like a bad idea for 3Com. So far, they've been able to artificially inflate the price of Palm devices by having exclusive rights to the OS and a following of devotees who love the interface and form factor of Palm devices. Now they have competition from other PalmOS devices (in addition to CE).
What were the terms of the licensing agreement? Perhaps 3Com planned on using Handspring to gain market share for PalmOS before yanking the rug out from under them by not renewing the licensing agreement. This would be very similar to how Apple treated clone makers after Jobs came back. This strategy would likely backfire, as I think the Visor's expansion port is going to become a standard with a lot of loyal users.
Mostly unrelated: Why do so many people want a Palm Linux port? I'm a Linux user and I love the OS, but porting it to Palm seems silly. PalmOS is small, tight and fast. As long as we can sync to a Linux box, why cram Linux in there? If it's things like telnet and emacs people want, port these apps, but I don't understand trying to put Linux on Palm. However, my attitude toward this might change if Iomega can get a clic in a Visor.
Judging by the rather amateurish website, I think this is a scam. This looks like the type of operation that will draw in a bunch of hoodwinked investors and then suddenly disappear.
I could be wrong (we'll see if they go public), but I'm not scheduling any vacation time in 2010 just yet, and my investments are staying with much safer tech startups (relatively speaking).
This article contains a good overview of the various BSD incarnations, but its harsh, and often unwarranted, attacks agains Linux (crackers' OS, etc.) will have Simson sending email to/dev/null for weeks.
Could someone post directions on how to change to a different name registrar for the domains I am already using? I know how to register new domains with the alternatives, but I want to switch my accounts over.
I wish Transmeta the best, and of course I would love a chip that can emulate x86 faster than an Athlon, but face it, this is pure speculation, and if history is any indicator, the speculation that is created to fill information voids about tech startups usually exceeds whatever is eventually marketed.
We saw this last week as details emerged about the Handspring Visor. For months I heard that the original Palm developers were coming out with a unit that (check all that apply): was twice as fast, had a larger, high-resolution color display, longer battery life, more memory and a smaller, ultra-futuristic case that belongs on the set of the next Star Trek movie. While the new Visor is impressive, and a significant progression over the current Palm line in price, performance and expandibility, it doesn't approach the hype.
A company that employs a godfather of Linux and which reveals nothing about itself is reported to be inventing a chip that is astonishingly faster than anything else out there, capable of emulating any of the other major platform, and cheaper than all other high-end processors. Unlikely.
A lot of folks are complaining that the 3Com drivers are labeled RedHat, and while I am a strong advocate of developing for Linux and not for a single distribution, I don't think 3Com is choosing to advocate one distribution. It would appear that the modules will work with multiple distributions, while the kernel patch will not. This is probably fine, as the modules should be much more widely used.
I suspect 3Com developed on Redhat and didn't have the resources to test on a bunch of distributions, so they chose not to make claims they cannot support.
Instead of indicating malevolence on 3Com's part, I think this is a harbinger of problems we will soon encounter, namely: can we really lobby for hardware vendors to not only support Linux, but also to ensure compatibly across distributions? Doing so in an honest manner requires testing on a number of distributions, which can increase the amount of effort to develop these drivers beyond what may be considered an acceptable threshold.
Instead of coming down on 3Com, we should be reminding the RedHat, Debian, etc. that they need to create distributions that are universally Linux compatible. This may be a concept antithetical to their business instincts, but it is necessary to maintain the support and loyalty of the Linux community.
The biggest complaint I had with my old PalmPilot Pro, and the Palm IIIs are the plastic cases which pop and shift at the seams when you grip the device. The Palm V has a sweet case, not just slim, but one that feels like the entire unit is stamped from a single piece of metal.
The Visor appears to have shucked the low-contrast displays in early palms, and I don't mind the fact that it only displays four greys (saves memory and power), but the designers appear to have regressed with this cheap-looking black plastic case. Hopefully I'm wrong and this thing is stronger than it looks.
Also, quick question: the base model doesn't come with a cradle, but I assume it still has a port that a hotsync cable can be plugged into?
Those cracks in the spines of the O'Reilly books on my shelf show that I use them and didn't just put them there for show, a practice I think some folks are guilty of, especially those who buy the hardbound books that are three times as thick as O'Reilly's (with half the content.)
I have forgotten who performed the study, but I came across an article about some researches who demonstrated that 10% of what we spend on just about anything goes to paying for litigation prevention, i.e. lawyers, liability insurance, more lawyers, court costs, and of course, a few more lawyers. It's absolutely mind-numbing.
Now, think about the combination of the explosion we are witnessing in information production and availability, and the terribly misguided notion that everything needs to be labeled. We're about to see a huge growth industry in people with job titles like "Senior Associate Reviewer of Labeling". There are going to be whole departments for this stuff, with people who take college level courses in everything from classifying media to developing labeling schemes, to updating labels on older media (think of the R-Rated movies of the 70s, they'd be PG today, but video stores won't rent them to kids under 17).
Think labeling is harmless? Add a label tax on top of the lawyer tax.
I really like to see large-scale Linux deployments, like Burlington is doing and GM is pondering. It strengthens the OS by moving it toward critical mass, but I fear it could hurt Linux, also. Companies may now start developing distros with programs added in that were developed in-house and which are not GPL. Ultimately, this could ultimately fragment Linux. Of course, there's no real alternative to advocating the adoption of Linux, it's a great platform and a terrific object lesson of the advantages to free, open-source software.
If more of these big deployments take place, I am in the minority of those who wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft comes out with its own Linux distribution, one that will gradually become incompatible with all the others. Corporate execs who used to believe 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM' now think the same of Microsoft, which is in a position to force proprietary standards (what an oxymoron) on the market. MS may make Linux its next assimilation target.
However, in spite of what we'd like to think, I don't think Linux is scaring the Redmond crowd yet, but that will change quickly if they starting losing chunks of business.
I keep thinking of a penguin waddling up to a sleeping, 800 pound gorilla and nudging it in the stomach. At that point, the gorilla wakes long enough to roll over and smother the bird before falling back asleep.
While I am a strong supporter of removing all government controls on encryption, your logic is seriously flawed. RSA 512-bit is not that strong relative to other algorithms out there. While we don't know what the NSA is capable of, we can be fairly confident that they aren't breaking the newer algorithms. The computing resources required to break them using today's (admittedly private) understanding of cryptography is truly mind-boggling. I recommend picking up a copy of "Applied Cryptography" if you wish to learn more.
Slashdot Mirror
I think people who pay $200 for a computer have low expectations because there ain't much you can get for $200. When $200 will also buy you all the word-processing power you want, a 15" monitor, web browsing, the ability to run Quicken, and email (ie everything 96% of home PC users need) you're going to see real growth in this market segment. Two years ago $1000 wouldn't buy these capabilities, six months from now, $200 will.
My parents purchased a PII/350 for $1300 awhile back. They use it for email, web browsing, Quicken, and my dad writes sermons on it. Their next machine (a couple years from now)will almost certainly cost less than $300, and WebTV and WinCE won't be the OS.
While I wish Dvorak were right on this point, it is doubtful Linux will be the OS, either. I predict MS will do whatever is necessary to extend into this market share. Look at all the devel they did on IE (which I grudgingly admit is a good browser). They produced it for free, simply because they imagined a threat from Netscape. In my opinion, there never was a threat, the browser would not have taken over the desktop by now if they had not dumped money into IE, but look at MS's reaction.
There willbe $200 computers doing what $1000 computers do today. MS is going to do what it takes to be control the first logo you see when the OS is booted.
- Dvorak seems to dismiss Linux/Apache as a server contender because he fees it cannot currently handle super high-load jobs, and is thus only well-suited for medium instensity servers. These 'in-between' servers, as he calls them, are the workhorse of the internet and represent most of the servers out there. I don't see how he can contend that filling this niche is not a victory for Linux. He doesn't attempt to address the dizzyingly fast evolution of this OS, or admit that it very well may be handling these high-end applications in the future. I am very happy to see Linux used for all but the most demanding server tasks, which are still relegated to Unix. This is a validation of free software, not an arguement against it.
- He thinks Linux will own the desktop because MS will sooner abandon its market share than price Windows competitively for $200 machines. There is no way MS will give up this market. They will either price Windows down, or come out with a cheap version in between what are now Win98 and WinCE to be used in iToaster-type machines. Expect it to be Win98 with a few key dlls removed (much as NT workstation is NT server sans a few dlls). I expect they'd price it at $10-$20 OEM. It is absurd to argue that MS is going to roll over and give up Windows on the home desktop without more justification than Dvorak gives.
- UnderNet may not run Linux, but my web hosting service (Hurricane Electric) does. They host a lot of relatively high-traffic stuff. I haven't noticed any down time in the two years I've been using them. They let me telnet in, run custom scripts on the server, have PhP and MySQL, and charge less than $10 a month. They're also really fast. I haven't seen anyone able to provide this price/service combination on an NT or Unix system.
Dvoraks columns seem to be hit or miss, sometimes he's dead-on insightful, but others I think he goes too far to deliver a viewpoint outside the mainstream. I fear this is more a case of the latter.Judging by the rather amateurish website, I think this is a scam. This looks like the type of operation that will draw in a bunch of hoodwinked investors and then suddenly disappear.
I could be wrong (we'll see if they go public), but I'm not scheduling any vacation time in 2010 just yet, and my investments are staying with much safer tech startups (relatively speaking).
This article contains a good overview of the various BSD incarnations, but its harsh, and often unwarranted, attacks agains Linux (crackers' OS, etc.) will have Simson sending email to /dev/null for weeks.
Could someone post directions on how to change to a different name registrar for the domains I am already using? I know how to register new domains with the alternatives, but I want to switch my accounts over.
Thanks.
I wish Transmeta the best, and of course I would love a chip that can emulate x86 faster than an Athlon, but face it, this is pure speculation, and if history is any indicator, the speculation that is created to fill information voids about tech startups usually exceeds whatever is eventually marketed.
We saw this last week as details emerged about the Handspring Visor. For months I heard that the original Palm developers were coming out with a unit that (check all that apply): was twice as fast, had a larger, high-resolution color display, longer battery life, more memory and a smaller, ultra-futuristic case that belongs on the set of the next Star Trek movie. While the new Visor is impressive, and a significant progression over the current Palm line in price, performance and expandibility, it doesn't approach the hype.
A company that employs a godfather of Linux and which reveals nothing about itself is reported to be inventing a chip that is astonishingly faster than anything else out there, capable of emulating any of the other major platform, and cheaper than all other high-end processors. Unlikely.
A lot of folks are complaining that the 3Com drivers are labeled RedHat, and while I am a strong advocate of developing for Linux and not for a single distribution, I don't think 3Com is choosing to advocate one distribution. It would appear that the modules will work with multiple distributions, while the kernel patch will not. This is probably fine, as the modules should be much more widely used.
I suspect 3Com developed on Redhat and didn't have the resources to test on a bunch of distributions, so they chose not to make claims they cannot support.
Instead of indicating malevolence on 3Com's part, I think this is a harbinger of problems we will soon encounter, namely: can we really lobby for hardware vendors to not only support Linux, but also to ensure compatibly across distributions? Doing so in an honest manner requires testing on a number of distributions, which can increase the amount of effort to develop these drivers beyond what may be considered an acceptable threshold.
Instead of coming down on 3Com, we should be reminding the RedHat, Debian, etc. that they need to create distributions that are universally Linux compatible. This may be a concept antithetical to their business instincts, but it is necessary to maintain the support and loyalty of the Linux community.
The biggest complaint I had with my old PalmPilot Pro, and the Palm IIIs are the plastic cases which pop and shift at the seams when you grip the device. The Palm V has a sweet case, not just slim, but one that feels like the entire unit is stamped from a single piece of metal.
The Visor appears to have shucked the low-contrast displays in early palms, and I don't mind the fact that it only displays four greys (saves memory and power), but the designers appear to have regressed with this cheap-looking black plastic case. Hopefully I'm wrong and this thing is stronger than it looks.
Also, quick question: the base model doesn't come with a cradle, but I assume it still has a port that a hotsync cable can be plugged into?
The real reason we geeks appear to lack social graces:
I like the cracking.
Those cracks in the spines of the O'Reilly books on my shelf show that I use them and didn't just put them there for show, a practice I think some folks are guilty of, especially those who buy the hardbound books that are three times as thick as O'Reilly's (with half the content.)
I have forgotten who performed the study, but I came across an article about some researches who demonstrated that 10% of what we spend on just about anything goes to paying for litigation prevention, i.e. lawyers, liability insurance, more lawyers, court costs, and of course, a few more lawyers. It's absolutely mind-numbing.
Now, think about the combination of the explosion we are witnessing in information production and availability, and the terribly misguided notion that everything needs to be labeled. We're about to see a huge growth industry in people with job titles like "Senior Associate Reviewer of Labeling". There are going to be whole departments for this stuff, with people who take college level courses in everything from classifying media to developing labeling schemes, to updating labels on older media (think of the R-Rated movies of the 70s, they'd be PG today, but video stores won't rent them to kids under 17).
Think labeling is harmless? Add a label tax on top of the lawyer tax.
I really like to see large-scale Linux deployments, like Burlington is doing and GM is pondering. It strengthens the OS by moving it toward critical mass, but I fear it could hurt Linux, also. Companies may now start developing distros with programs added in that were developed in-house and which are not GPL. Ultimately, this could ultimately fragment Linux. Of course, there's no real alternative to advocating the adoption of Linux, it's a great platform and a terrific object lesson of the advantages to free, open-source software.
If more of these big deployments take place, I am in the minority of those who wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft comes out with its own Linux distribution, one that will gradually become incompatible with all the others. Corporate execs who used to believe 'no one ever got fired for buying IBM' now think the same of Microsoft, which is in a position to force proprietary standards (what an oxymoron) on the market. MS may make Linux its next assimilation target.
However, in spite of what we'd like to think, I don't think Linux is scaring the Redmond crowd yet, but that will change quickly if they starting losing chunks of business.
I keep thinking of a penguin waddling up to a sleeping, 800 pound gorilla and nudging it in the stomach. At that point, the gorilla wakes long enough to roll over and smother the bird before falling back asleep.
mmmmmmmm, love that mad cow
While I am a strong supporter of removing all government controls on encryption, your logic is seriously flawed. RSA 512-bit is not that strong relative to other algorithms out there. While we don't know what the NSA is capable of, we can be fairly confident that they aren't breaking the newer algorithms. The computing resources required to break them using today's (admittedly private) understanding of cryptography is truly mind-boggling. I recommend picking up a copy of "Applied Cryptography" if you wish to learn more.