I'm actually a huge fan of CorelDraw and can't wait for it to hit the Linux market.
Gimp is shaping up to be a really nice paint program (a-la Photoshop or Corel's PhotoPaint), but for a lot of things a drawing program is better.
Paint programs deal with individual pixels. Drawing programs deal with shapes. With CorelDraw you can create a complex drawing, drag around and re-size the component objects, and render the result at any resolution.
I use Gimp to touch up photographs and to design small graphics for web pages. CorelDraw I use for diagrams, maps, logos - basicially anything complex that I draw myself from scratch.
It sounds like they're going into the same space with their little boxes as Sony is with the PlayStation. The difference is that Sony has a massive presence in the consumer electronics industry and MS has none.
Given Microsoft's past failures to expand their franchise, I don't think we have much to fear. In fact, it'll be interesting to see what happens if MS commits a few billion dollars to this effort and then sees their PC margins shrink in the face of competition from Apple and Linux. Massive spending + declining revenues = serious cash crunch.
I've been waiting for the right time to buy 'puts' on Microsoft stock. I think it's finally here.
This is a nice article, but I thought this stuff was pretty self-evident. I personally wish them the best of luck. They'll never be the next Microsoft, but maybe they can carve out a nice chunk of the market. I'd happily live in a world where I could choose between an MS desktop, a Linux desktop, or a Sun thin client and not give up basic functionality (like a decent speadsheet) no matter what I choose.
I do believe that Sun is seriously reducing their chances by not backing Linux, however. Home users will never buy the Sun solution (or at least it will be a LONG time). If they could get a significant percentage of home users hooked on StarOffice they would stand a much better chance of getting StarPortal into the workplace. Linux is their best hope of getting StarOffice into the home.
Instead, low-end home users will end up using Gnome Office apps or KOffice. Higher-end home users will buy WordPerfect Suite. The StarOffice user base will dry up and they'll have an uphill battle convincing companies to adopt StarPortal.
Palm has a ton of potential and a good chance of raising serious amounts of capital in an IPO. As an independant company, Palm has the best chance of getting the funding needed to battle MS-Wince.
Within 3COM, Palm is a nice, profitable unit, but not big enough to carry the company. 3COM would have to choose between financing Palm and putting more resources into the battle with Cisco.
By selling Palm off 3COM gets a good chunk of cash plus gives Palm the resources it needs to succeed.
In developed countries there is very high reliance on computers to fly the plane. The flight plan is generated by a computer, the air-traffic control is managed by computer. The pilot doesn't really make a lot of decisions.
In addition, newer aircraft are "fly-by-wire" - there is no direct connection between the pilot controls and the control surfaces. If the plane's electronics go you fall out of the sky.
Contrast this with the small airport I landed at in rural India. The smallish jet actually did a VISUAL landing. The airport didn't have an instrument landing system even though it was actually quite busy.
I was in rural India in March. Scheduled rotating blackouts were normal (due to power shortages). We heated water with a little wood stove. The motor-rickshaws are not computerized. The planes are the old-fashioned kind flown by people, not computers. Exactly how is the Y2K bug going to hurt you there?
The reality is that people in remote areas are used to living without a high-tech infrastructure. If the rest of the world self-destructs they'll be the ones left to pick up the pieces.
A (roughly) once a year release cycle is good for minor releases. There's less temptation to back-port stuff from devel into the stable kernel and therefore less chance of bugs showing up in the stable tree.
The kind of hoopla that happened with 2.2 is good, but it should be reserved for major releases every few years.
What I'm not clear on is how earth-shattering features that justify a bump in major version number and lots of hoopla will ever make it into the devel kernel. Linus is opposed to parrallel development trees (probably with good reason), but I'm not sure how else you introduce big changes withough jeapardizing the quick release cycle.
I think Linus should annoint somebody to start a "3.0 experimental" tree with major new features like clustering. Linus and the regular gang could continue work on 2.5/2.6 for another year, and then synch up with the experimental kernel for 2.7/3.0.
Of course, I'm just a lurker on Linux Kernel, so I don't really have any right to give advice. It's just my idea.
The ideas of capitalism and communism are rooted in the problem of how to best divvy up scarce resources. There's only so much food, land, oil, etc. to go around. If I have a barrel of oil and I give it away, I've lost something (the use of the oil). Therefore there has to be some system for determining who gets what.
Software works in the opposite way. If I give away a piece of software I write and other people use it, I haven't lost anything (I can still use the software myself). In fact, the software I have actually becomes more valuable if more people use it: 1/I'll be able to exchange files with other people (this is why MS Office is so 'valuable'), 2/I'll get bug fixes and improvements from other people.
In other words, giving away my software is the greedy thing to do. Schemes intended to facilitate distribution of other kinds of wealth just aren't needed.
A decade of Microsoft domination has convinced people that there can only be one serious player in the desktop market. Microsoft has used this "natural monopoly" arguement in the anti-trust trial. The truth is that this is a massive market with room for lots of successful competitors.
Java is not dead, it just hasn't taken over the world. A lot of people and companies use and like it. Linux, *BSD, Unix, and OS/390 are alive and well with no signs of going away any time soon. Just because none of them dwarfs the competition doesn't mean they aren't successful.
Oddly enough, the only company that really NEEDs a dominant position in order to stay alive is Microsoft. NT doesn't really measure up technically and most people know it. It's "good enough" for a lot of companies, but I don't know anybody who thinks it's great. People use it because of the perception that everybody else uses it. If Windows became a niche OS (which is quite likely), who would form the core of supporters? SGI has high-end media, Apple has publishers, OS/390 has dinasaur handlers. But who will champion Windows?
I wonder what AMDs strategy is for dealing with Merced once it finally ships. It'll take them a while to clone it and they risk losing the momentum they've finally gained.
It would be kind of neat if AMD and Alpha Processor merged. They could share development costs and AMD would gain a 64-bit alternative to Merced. They might even be able to build hardware x86 emulation into the Alpha (although I'm not really sure that would be useful - maybe for Wine).
If they knew they would produce something in two months they would be shifting their publicity machine into overdrive.
The fact that they're not saying anything indicates that they're not sure what's going to happen and want to keep their mouths shut until they have something coherent to say.
It could be Gateway is shutting them down or forcing a change in direction. Or maybe they're looking for capital. Or maybe they're being sued for dropping QNX. It could be lots of things, but it's bound to be bad.
1. Compaq is probably not selling enough Tru64 or Linux systems to justify continued Alpha production. If Compaq was making lots of money, they might make some sort of daring move to push Unix/Linux on their systems. But since they're trying to cut costs they'll have to drop the Alpha.
2. Microsoft could easily continue Alpha development. Windows on Alpha is of strategic importance when dealing with Intel, so MS is shooting themselves in the foot by letting it die.
3. Microsoft isn't stupid. They're quite aware of points 1 & 2.
Conclusion: Compaq must have done something to really piss off Microsoft. Maybe those NT engineers Compaq layed off were really important to Microsoft for some reason. Perhaps Compaq is about to make some sort of big Linux announcement. Maybe Compaq pulled out of a product tying deal. Who knows. Whatever it was, Microsoft now feels that it must retaliate against Compaq even though it will hurt Microsoft on another front.
Economists use some very simplistic measures of productivity. For them nothing has value unless it can be measured, and the only measure of value is the selling price.
If I look at productivity of toilet paper production over the years (I haven't done this, so this might not be a good example) I might find that toilet paper prices (taking inflation into account) have been pretty stable and it takes just as many inputs to produce a roll of toilet paper now as in 1920. An economist might conclude that toilet paper technology has been stagnant and there has been no improvement in productivity.
If I go into an actual toilet paper factory I'd probably find that the workers have better conditions and are generally healthier today (due to less exposure to toxic chemicals). If I use the toilet paper I might find that it's much softer and stronger than it was in 1920. None if this is captured in the economic analysis.
The fact is that productivity has increased incredibly, but in this competitive marketplace we keep trying to improve the product instead of making it cheaper or giving ourselves the benefit of a more relaxed lifestyle. This is one of the problems with our competitive economy. It certainly leads to rapid and exciting advancement, but it doesn't let us enjoy the benefits.
Granted MCI has screwed up badly - whoever does their change control should be fired over this - but the Chicago Board of Trade deserves the brunt of their customers anger.
You don't run a critical network without backup. Their slow links should have ISDN backups, their fast links should have dedicated reduntant connections. That's just common sense.
This will be interesting...
on
SCO does Linux
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· Score: 3
SCO is the one company that will definitely be put out of business by Linux if they don't change their business model. It's good that they recognize this while they're still profitable.
The fact is that Red Hat alone has far greater market capitalization than SCO right now. That means Red Hat by itself has enough investment capital to dwarf anything SCO can put into research and development. Add to that all the other parties that are investing time and money into Linux, and SCO doesn't stand a chance.
Unfortunatly, SCO only has 40 people in their consulting group (not really surprising, since I've never heard of them before). They're going to have to work really hard to convince people that they're credible at anything other than SCO software.
If they end up going into bankruptcy somebody will get those sattelites for a song. It might be possible for some company to offer the service at a reasonable price if they don't have that huge debt to pay off.
I can't imagine what kind of technology this could produce. Exceed already connects to Linux boxes (it's just X-Windows, after all). I always figured Linux would make products like Exceed redundant, since I can load Linux on my PC and get an X-Server for free.
I'm guessing this is just some sort of marketting alliance. Maybe Caldera will start distributing Exceed or something like that.
The fact that Wince, Win98, and WinNT all have entirely different source code and are administered differently is IMHO a big liability.
If I outgrow my Linux box I can upgrade to a big SGI (or Sun or IBM) Unix box and it still works more-or-less the same way. Sure the GUI admin tools look different, but their not so radically different that I can't adapt in a day or two.
On the other hand, if my company wants to change all it's Win98 desktops for WinNT, I have to learn a different operating system entirely. Unlike Unix, the similarities are cosmetic and the differences are fundamental.
Changing technologies like this is a big deal for companies that have large existing staff that either need to be replaced (in a very competitive market) or retrained.
Building a top notch support organization is not trivial. The distribution becomes more of a calling card than anything else ("we must know what we're doing, we built the thing").
I know lots of companies that have all the pieces that RedHat has (a good product, expert staff) but still suck at support. If they can integrate their pieces into a solid support organization and capitalize on their brand equity, they'll do well.
1. The advantage of the storage subsystem is that you can attach it to multiple hosts with high-speed connections. And I don't mean wimpy SCSI speeds. So you attach your backup server directly to the storage system via fibre channel and back it up to 10 Gig tape cartridges in a tape library (basically a huge jukebox).
2. Those 11 Terabytes are probably a huge database that supports incremental backups. Basically, you NEVER do a full backup. A modern backup manager will reclaim and consolidate pools of incremental backup so you don't have to worry about restoring all the incrementals in some kind of sequence.
By the time you get 1Tb on your desktop tape technology will be available to back it up. It might still take three or four tapes for a full backup, but that's reasonable.
I'm not suggesting that SGI will be able to get out of the OS development business. If they want XFS, ccNUMA, and friends in Linux they're going to have to do the port and keep putting work (read "money") in to maintain it. There aren't a lot of hackers out there who can play with this class of hardware. But they're paying to maintain this stuff in Irix today, so it's not like that's a loss.
Where they really gain something is in all the other stuff that goes into a kernel that they don't have to worry about anymore and all the applications that are becoming available for Linux.
You can make the case that Sun has a lot of brand equity in Solaris and should continue it. IBM can afford to sink money into AIX. But SGI's strength really is it's hardware.
I'm not saying they should drop Irix tomorrow, but a gradual shift makes sense. They can position themselves as the natural upgrade path for ISPs and others who outgrow their Intel/Linux boxes.
They've already released their filesystem. All they need to do is gradually transfer other stuff over to Linux and in a few years there won't be any reason to continue new development on Irix.
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I'm actually a huge fan of CorelDraw and can't wait for it to hit the Linux market.
Gimp is shaping up to be a really nice paint program (a-la Photoshop or Corel's PhotoPaint), but for a lot of things a drawing program is better.
Paint programs deal with individual pixels. Drawing programs deal with shapes. With CorelDraw you can create a complex drawing, drag around and re-size the component objects, and render the result at any resolution.
I use Gimp to touch up photographs and to design small graphics for web pages. CorelDraw I use for diagrams, maps, logos - basicially anything complex that I draw myself from scratch.
It sounds like they're going into the same space with their little boxes as Sony is with the PlayStation. The difference is that Sony has a massive presence in the consumer electronics industry and MS has none.
Given Microsoft's past failures to expand their franchise, I don't think we have much to fear. In fact, it'll be interesting to see what happens if MS commits a few billion dollars to this effort and then sees their PC margins shrink in the face of competition from Apple and Linux. Massive spending + declining revenues = serious cash crunch.
I've been waiting for the right time to buy 'puts' on Microsoft stock. I think it's finally here.
This is a nice article, but I thought this stuff was pretty self-evident. I personally wish them the best of luck. They'll never be the next Microsoft, but maybe they can carve out a nice chunk of the market. I'd happily live in a world where I could choose between an MS desktop, a Linux desktop, or a Sun thin client and not give up basic functionality (like a decent speadsheet) no matter what I choose.
I do believe that Sun is seriously reducing their chances by not backing Linux, however. Home users will never buy the Sun solution (or at least it will be a LONG time). If they could get a significant percentage of home users hooked on StarOffice they would stand a much better chance of getting StarPortal into the workplace. Linux is their best hope of getting StarOffice into the home.
Instead, low-end home users will end up using Gnome Office apps or KOffice. Higher-end home users will buy WordPerfect Suite. The StarOffice user base will dry up and they'll have an uphill battle convincing companies to adopt StarPortal.
Palm has a ton of potential and a good chance of raising serious amounts of capital in an IPO. As an independant company, Palm has the best chance of getting the funding needed to battle MS-Wince.
Within 3COM, Palm is a nice, profitable unit, but not big enough to carry the company. 3COM would have to choose between financing Palm and putting more resources into the battle with Cisco.
By selling Palm off 3COM gets a good chunk of cash plus gives Palm the resources it needs to succeed.
In developed countries there is very high reliance on computers to fly the plane. The flight plan is generated by a computer, the air-traffic control is managed by computer. The pilot doesn't really make a lot of decisions.
In addition, newer aircraft are "fly-by-wire" - there is no direct connection between the pilot controls and the control surfaces. If the plane's electronics go you fall out of the sky.
Contrast this with the small airport I landed at in rural India. The smallish jet actually did a VISUAL landing. The airport didn't have an instrument landing system even though it was actually quite busy.
I was in rural India in March. Scheduled rotating blackouts were normal (due to power shortages). We heated water with a little wood stove. The motor-rickshaws are not computerized. The planes are the old-fashioned kind flown by people, not computers. Exactly how is the Y2K bug going to hurt you there?
The reality is that people in remote areas are used to living without a high-tech infrastructure. If the rest of the world self-destructs they'll be the ones left to pick up the pieces.
A (roughly) once a year release cycle is good for minor releases. There's less temptation to back-port stuff from devel into the stable kernel and therefore less chance of bugs showing up in the stable tree.
The kind of hoopla that happened with 2.2 is good, but it should be reserved for major releases every few years.
What I'm not clear on is how earth-shattering features that justify a bump in major version number and lots of hoopla will ever make it into the devel kernel. Linus is opposed to parrallel development trees (probably with good reason), but I'm not sure how else you introduce big changes withough jeapardizing the quick release cycle.
I think Linus should annoint somebody to start a "3.0 experimental" tree with major new features like clustering. Linus and the regular gang could continue work on 2.5/2.6 for another year, and then synch up with the experimental kernel for 2.7/3.0.
Of course, I'm just a lurker on Linux Kernel, so I don't really have any right to give advice. It's just my idea.
The ideas of capitalism and communism are rooted in the problem of how to best divvy up scarce resources. There's only so much food, land, oil, etc. to go around. If I have a barrel of oil and I give it away, I've lost something (the use of the oil). Therefore there has to be some system for determining who gets what.
Software works in the opposite way. If I give away a piece of software I write and other people use it, I haven't lost anything (I can still use the software myself). In fact, the software I have actually becomes more valuable if more people use it: 1/I'll be able to exchange files with other people (this is why MS Office is so 'valuable'), 2/I'll get bug fixes and improvements from other people.
In other words, giving away my software is the greedy thing to do. Schemes intended to facilitate distribution of other kinds of wealth just aren't needed.
A decade of Microsoft domination has convinced people that there can only be one serious player in the desktop market. Microsoft has used this "natural monopoly" arguement in the anti-trust trial. The truth is that this is a massive market with room for lots of successful competitors.
Java is not dead, it just hasn't taken over the world. A lot of people and companies use and like it. Linux, *BSD, Unix, and OS/390 are alive and well with no signs of going away any time soon. Just because none of them dwarfs the competition doesn't mean they aren't successful.
Oddly enough, the only company that really NEEDs a dominant position in order to stay alive is Microsoft. NT doesn't really measure up technically and most people know it. It's "good enough" for a lot of companies, but I don't know anybody who thinks it's great. People use it because of the perception that everybody else uses it. If Windows became a niche OS (which is quite likely), who would form the core of supporters? SGI has high-end media, Apple has publishers, OS/390 has dinasaur handlers. But who will champion Windows?
I wonder what AMDs strategy is for dealing with Merced once it finally ships. It'll take them a while to clone it and they risk losing the momentum they've finally gained.
It would be kind of neat if AMD and Alpha Processor merged. They could share development costs and AMD would gain a 64-bit alternative to Merced. They might even be able to build hardware x86 emulation into the Alpha (although I'm not really sure that would be useful - maybe for Wine).
If they knew they would produce something in two months they would be shifting their publicity machine into overdrive.
The fact that they're not saying anything indicates that they're not sure what's going to happen and want to keep their mouths shut until they have something coherent to say.
It could be Gateway is shutting them down or forcing a change in direction. Or maybe they're looking for capital. Or maybe they're being sued for dropping QNX. It could be lots of things, but it's bound to be bad.
1. Compaq is probably not selling enough Tru64 or Linux systems to justify continued Alpha production. If Compaq was making lots of money, they might make some sort of daring move to push Unix/Linux on their systems. But since they're trying to cut costs they'll have to drop the Alpha.
2. Microsoft could easily continue Alpha development. Windows on Alpha is of strategic importance when dealing with Intel, so MS is shooting themselves in the foot by letting it die.
3. Microsoft isn't stupid. They're quite aware of points 1 & 2.
Conclusion: Compaq must have done something to really piss off Microsoft. Maybe those NT engineers Compaq layed off were really important to Microsoft for some reason. Perhaps Compaq is about to make some sort of big Linux announcement. Maybe Compaq pulled out of a product tying deal. Who knows. Whatever it was, Microsoft now feels that it must retaliate against Compaq even though it will hurt Microsoft on another front.
Economists use some very simplistic measures of productivity. For them nothing has value unless it can be measured, and the only measure of value is the selling price.
If I look at productivity of toilet paper production over the years (I haven't done this, so this might not be a good example) I might find that toilet paper prices (taking inflation into account) have been pretty stable and it takes just as many inputs to produce a roll of toilet paper now as in 1920. An economist might conclude that toilet paper technology has been stagnant and there has been no improvement in productivity.
If I go into an actual toilet paper factory I'd probably find that the workers have better conditions and are generally healthier today (due to less exposure to toxic chemicals). If I use the toilet paper I might find that it's much softer and stronger than it was in 1920. None if this is captured in the economic analysis.
The fact is that productivity has increased incredibly, but in this competitive marketplace we keep trying to improve the product instead of making it cheaper or giving ourselves the benefit of a more relaxed lifestyle. This is one of the problems with our competitive economy. It certainly leads to rapid and exciting advancement, but it doesn't let us enjoy the benefits.
Granted MCI has screwed up badly - whoever does their change control should be fired over this - but the Chicago Board of Trade deserves the brunt of their customers anger.
You don't run a critical network without backup. Their slow links should have ISDN backups, their fast links should have dedicated reduntant connections. That's just common sense.
SCO is the one company that will definitely be put out of business by Linux if they don't change their business model. It's good that they recognize this while they're still profitable.
The fact is that Red Hat alone has far greater market capitalization than SCO right now. That means Red Hat by itself has enough investment capital to dwarf anything SCO can put into research and development. Add to that all the other parties that are investing time and money into Linux, and SCO doesn't stand a chance.
Unfortunatly, SCO only has 40 people in their consulting group (not really surprising, since I've never heard of them before). They're going to have to work really hard to convince people that they're credible at anything other than SCO software.
If they end up going into bankruptcy somebody will get those sattelites for a song. It might be possible for some company to offer the service at a reasonable price if they don't have that huge debt to pay off.
I can't imagine what kind of technology this could produce. Exceed already connects to Linux boxes (it's just X-Windows, after all). I always figured Linux would make products like Exceed redundant, since I can load Linux on my PC and get an X-Server for free.
I'm guessing this is just some sort of marketting alliance. Maybe Caldera will start distributing Exceed or something like that.
As of 11:30 GMT I don't see anything on the list to indicate file system corruption. Do you have a reference for this?
The fact that Wince, Win98, and WinNT all have entirely different source code and are administered differently is IMHO a big liability.
If I outgrow my Linux box I can upgrade to a big SGI (or Sun or IBM) Unix box and it still works more-or-less the same way. Sure the GUI admin tools look different, but their not so radically different that I can't adapt in a day or two.
On the other hand, if my company wants to change all it's Win98 desktops for WinNT, I have to learn a different operating system entirely. Unlike Unix, the similarities are cosmetic and the differences are fundamental.
Changing technologies like this is a big deal for companies that have large existing staff that either need to be replaced (in a very competitive market) or retrained.
2.2 took so long to stabilize because Linux allowed things in after the freeze and it takes time to stabilize two years worth of changes.
If Linus freezes 2.3 in (say) early October and sticks to it, I think 2.4 should be out by the end of the year.
Building a top notch support organization is not trivial. The distribution becomes more of a calling card than anything else ("we must know what we're doing, we built the thing").
I know lots of companies that have all the pieces that RedHat has (a good product, expert staff) but still suck at support. If they can integrate their pieces into a solid support organization and capitalize on their brand equity, they'll do well.
I can't find any pictures with the story. Is there anything on SGI's site about this?
Two things:
1. The advantage of the storage subsystem is that you can attach it to multiple hosts with high-speed connections. And I don't mean wimpy SCSI speeds. So you attach your backup server directly to the storage system via fibre channel and back it up to 10 Gig tape cartridges in a tape library (basically a huge jukebox).
2. Those 11 Terabytes are probably a huge database that supports incremental backups. Basically, you NEVER do a full backup. A modern backup manager will reclaim and consolidate pools of incremental backup so you don't have to worry about restoring all the incrementals in some kind of sequence.
By the time you get 1Tb on your desktop tape technology will be available to back it up. It might still take three or four tapes for a full backup, but that's reasonable.
I'm not suggesting that SGI will be able to get out of the OS development business. If they want XFS, ccNUMA, and friends in Linux they're going to have to do the port and keep putting work (read "money") in to maintain it. There aren't a lot of hackers out there who can play with this class of hardware. But they're paying to maintain this stuff in Irix today, so it's not like that's a loss.
Where they really gain something is in all the other stuff that goes into a kernel that they don't have to worry about anymore and all the applications that are becoming available for Linux.
You can make the case that Sun has a lot of brand equity in Solaris and should continue it. IBM can afford to sink money into AIX. But SGI's strength really is it's hardware.
I'm not saying they should drop Irix tomorrow, but a gradual shift makes sense. They can position themselves as the natural upgrade path for ISPs and others who outgrow their Intel/Linux boxes.
They've already released their filesystem. All they need to do is gradually transfer other stuff over to Linux and in a few years there won't be any reason to continue new development on Irix.