You can setup your own cloud and have all the advantages of a local PC with the flexibility of a cloud device. More importantly, a school or a corporation might consider this a welcome feature. The ability to flag content and control their data may be a valuable selling point.
I understand your reluctance to move everything into the "cloud". My parents have boxes of old photographs, LP's (that's kind of like a physical copy of an uncompressed MP3), and bank statements. Heck they still write stuff on paper and put it in that box on the front lawn with a little red flag.
The climate debate isn't about science anymore. It is political and regardless of which side of the debate you are on the odds are the incorrect action will be taken. Compromise, short term thinking and power (no pun intended) considerations will twist the debate. Instead of climate change, carbon footprints and cap & trade, redefine the debate as energy independence and job creation. This is a US centric policy, but it is where I'm at, so come up with your own. Set a goal of national energy independence, including drilling for domestic oil. The US has limited enough supplies that low consumption credits and alternative energy sources incentives will be required to prevent the importation of oil. Automation of manufacturing to bring jobs back to the United States. Since we shifted our manufacturing to less developed countries, we've also shifted our pollution. Instead of innovating to reduce local workforce expenses via automation, most companies took the short term gain of lower cost labor and limited regulation. By subsidizing the R&D of automation, many of the jobs may come back.
In the big scheme of things, the freedom of the client is insignificant to the freedom of the cloud. This client, while optimized for Google, will be just as capable of attaching to a private, fully controlled cloud. You could setup a home server with email, office suite, etc.... and remain totally free, or you can connect to services from Google and other providers and give up some of that freedom. The providers will be cheaper, but you will give up significant freedom and control of your own data. An interesting option is bringing up all the services you want on EC2 (Amazon) servers, and point your clients to that. Of course you can use any hosting company for similar results.
There is an advantage in cost savings for many companies if you can eliminate, or minimize desktop support. A $1K laptop costs over $6K+ in support over its lifetime. If that can be replaced by a $200 a year disposable appliance with a server back end, the PC replacement and upgrade cycle can be broken saving companies tons of money.
That would be an issue if Bing wasn't gaining share by displacing Yahoo. Google is maintaining its share.
May be an issue in the long run. For example, Linux got into the data center by displacing Unix, in particular Solaris. Now Linux is growing installs faster than Windows, slowly shifting the server market share (both are growing in deployments, Linux is just growing faster).
The ability to tax, while necessary, is not a revenue generating act. Taxes reduce revenue generated by the citizens of a political entity. Taxes are a burden and reduce the ability reinvest and gain more revenue. While, citizens using a government to provide basic services, by presenting a non-voluntary tithe, is legitimate, in no way should taxes be considered revenue. It was not earned, it was seized.
I understand the need for taxation. I just want government employees to realize they are taking my money against my will, and not earning my money with their good works. I don't pay for the police or fire department to show up at my door when I call, I don't pay for the roads and airports, health inspections, or supporting welfare moms. A percentage of my income is seized so my elected representatives can be good stewards and provide required services.
The article has a pie chart and the link to the "detailed report" only has a pie chart. I guess we just have to trust Cenzic the internet security application provider. Doesn't even break it down by version number of browser or severity of exploit.
Who would have taken the politicians and IT management out for steak dinners if they would have used open source? How about the pretty power point presentations for board meetings. Don't forget the political games that had to be played between parties and in the office.
Seriously, I've seen time and again when free or open source software has saved money and been a better technical solution. As a high paid consultant myself, I recommend free or open source solutions first, and only move proprietary when I have to. To make a government job work, you have to grease the wheels and pay a little politics (I meant to type play, but this seemed more apt). Any IT job is 80% politics and 20% work, that's why soft skills are so valued in the job market.
"Enterprise wins for GNU/Linux don't come much better than this."
Enterprise wins like this are happening all the time for Linux and other free software options. What makes this unique is MS touted LSE running their system as a huge win for their solution. The fact it gets ripped out a year latter for Linux is marketing gold if free software needed to market.
Most proprietary software companies spend little money on software development. The big players have margins close to 80% with a significant portion of their expenses in marketing and sales. Open Source companies are conduits of money and support to FOSS projects, making money off support and add on features. Generally low margins and small marketing and sales budgets (mostly word of mouth and try before you buy). Now, a massive movement to open source software will cause less total employment in the software industry, but the vast majority of those losses will be in non-technical fields. The economic issue is software is worth only ~25% of what people pay for it today. As performance gains from software purchases decline, the ROI is less compelling, and thus cost of software more critical. The critical shift now is convincing software consuming companies to shift from buying prepackaged software to contributing to the development of open source software. That could be co-ops of like minded software consumers, or some other innovative way.
I believe technology can be an excellent enhancement to the educational experience, but I suspect that this grand deployment of computers will fail because most of the teachers won't have any idea how to use them to enhance education. Sure, their very availability and some innovative teachers will make good use of them, but if you are going to do this on this scale, a district needs a plan. Especially one that makes more sense for netbooks. What is needed is an infrastructure of online resources, lesson plans, and full remote classes that take advantage of the new access created. Technology should free the teacher for more one on one time with students, helping slower kids catch up and entertaining advanced kids with more challenging experiences. I haven't read anything on this subject that they took into consideration having enough power in the schools, cooling (20-30 extra laptops in a room generate a surprising amount of heat), or any level of teacher training.
But it might be economically non-viable. In many ways the Linux desktop and free software stack is better than the version you can get from Microsoft or Apple. For 80% of the users it can do everything they need. For 90% of the users it can 90% of what they need, and for 100% of the users it can do 80% of what they want. While those are made up statistics, I believe that 80% of the market can switch to a Linux desktop tomorrow and be just as productive as it is today. The problem is convincing them to do it. What the Linux desktop really needs is a marketing budget.
I believe the Negroponte's goal is to get computers into the hands of students in developing countries. Not to promote open source software. Now, I know from experience that open source software is significantly less expensive on a per seat basis, builds local skills and support, and offers flexibility you just can't get from other options. The problem is the customer doesn't. I've seen too many school board members and district technology heads married to Microsoft and Apple and whoever else with a marketing budget that walks through the door. All Negroponte is doing is adjusting to his customers to get the hardware through the door. Now I'd prefer he use his bully pulpit to drive the cost savings and flexibility open source provides, but they've chosen not to. The technology is easy, the politics are hard.
Before nuclear weapons the world fought numerous low level conflicts between spurts of global war. Now prior to the 19th century global war was difficult because people didn't go long distances, so lets start with the Napoleonic Wars. After they concluded in 1815 we had a number of small conflicts. Indian Wars in the US, Zulu and Boer wars, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian war, Italian Revolution, numerous conflicts in India, Crimirian War, Boxer rebellion, Russo-Japanese war, Spanish American War, US vs Mexico (Poncho Villa ), etc.... Then the Great War (WWI), after that we stopped fighting to get ready for WWII, whoops, no we didn't. Spanish Revolution, Japanese in China, Japanese border issues with the Russians, US all over South and Central America, Italians in Ethiopia, Europeans in Russia (their were West European and US troops all over Russia in the early 20's, Russo-Finish war. Now between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI, peace was maintained by overwhelming British Sea Power which kept any of those conflicts from going global. Between WWI and WWII the political will wasn't there to fight for a generation. After WWII if major conflict was avoided by nuclear weapons, which is likely, then good, but don't think that fighting limited wars started in 1945.
Forcing people to pay for news will only increase the tendency for people to only read news they agree with. What will "save" the news industry is a shift away from creating the content to vetting content created by interested parties. While most newspapers (US) have had deteriorating quality since the Spanish-American war most in depth reporting has been done by interested parties. Groklaw is a good example of a single subject reporting. What good news aggregators should do is make it easy for people interested in SCO to find Groklaw, press releases by involved parties, and alternative views on the subject. Real "news" reform would force government, corporations and even non-profits to be more transparent in their dealings, making it easier for interested parties to research and create quality news. Tort reform to keep legal action from crushing individuals prior to judicial review (ie loser pays) would have significant impact too.
The very size of a typical RV is going to limit the roughing it. You won't be driving it cross country, you'll likely be on Interstates and staying in campgrounds. Many campgrounds already offer WiFi, as do most bookstores and restaurants. Map out where you are going on the internet, and identify chain stores that offer WiFi. Stop in their parking lot, walk around and get something to eat and get access. Picking campgrounds that offer WiFi isn't difficult either.
Legislatures all over the world pass laws that can't be enforced universally. They are trolling their constituents and trying to look busy to justify having a full time job. The problem is you get huge law books with thousands of obscure laws that have never been tested in court. The police, and by extension the state, can arrest anyone and find a law to justify it. While it might not stick in court yet, being arrested will generally cost you a great deal of money and embarrassment, many employers will fire you with no recourse, it can be used as justification for seizing assets in some cases, etc... Our only protections are the state's lack of interest in us as individuals, or aggressive protesting by the mob if we are visible enough.
The world has changed in the last fifty years. When is the last time you've seen a typewriter or for that matter a secretary. The current education system is setup for teaching people to be factory workers. Fifty years ago the the number of people going to college was less than a quarter what it is today. Technology, and in particular online education, is the only way to cost effectively offer differentiated education. The other option is using 1:1 teaching, which which we don't have the talent level or resources for. Maybe the change we are looking for is to migrate teachers into computer lab monitors.
Incorporate to protect your existing business and personal assets. Then just start the software company. It is unlikely anyone will sue until you have enough assets to make it worth the effort, and most likely you'll never get to that point. Another option is to open source the software and sell support and consulting contracts. If anyone sues, you can claim the software doesn't generate any revenue and thus no damages. Of course it won't keep you from getting dragged into court anyway. Plus, since I'm not a lawyer, if you follow my advice you are screwed anyway.
Nobody has ever gotten rich without taking some risks, and in my opinion, the risk of a patent troll taking interest in you is small enough to just do it.
I think most "journalist" are so busy and have such tight deadlines, that they over rely on people that are paid to speak to the press. Open source, by its nature is a low-cost, high quality grass-roots effort. Even the most successful FOSS companies are tiny and have tighter margins than the for profits. Free software is customer driven (requested not sold) and doesn't have the money or staff to generate press releases or provide a pretty marketing type to spoon feed a story.
I didn't focus my comment clearly. I wanted to target the lack of change in consumer products and telephone service. The innovations of Bell labs were turned into products when they got into the hands of others. Unix and C didn't thrive until they made a mistake and let it loose in the academic space. Up into the 70's most of the phone infrastructure was more mechanical than electronic. Not to belittle their contribution, but nothing deployed from Bell labs that would disrupt their phone monopoly, at best only changes that reduced their cost of delivering the same service would see the light of day. To expand the subject, Microsoft won't deploy any product that will compromise Windows or Office unless forced by competition. They only embraced the internet when Netscape became a threat and when Netscape was beaten, IE6 was never upgraded. Xerox had great research, but their only desire was protecting the copier monopoly.
The current cell phone oligopoly needs to be broken the same way the Bell system was busted. There was a time when you could only buy your land line phone from Bell, there was only one directory (Free -white pages, advertised - yellow pages), and they owned the system from handset to handset. Costs were high, service was slow, and innovation was non-existent. There was a time when having two phones in the same house was the province of the ultra-rich. Then it was broken, you no longer had to rent your phone from Bell, but could go to the local store and buy one. Plug into an rj-11 jack and go. Soon every house had a phone in every room, you could buy answering machines, plug in a modem.... heck it wasn't too long before phone companies started to innovate and provide other services like caller ID. Sorry for the history rant, but we need the major cell and network providers to stop owning us handset to handset again. Apple shouldn't have had to convince AT&T to carry its phone, there should be a generic standard like RJ-11 where we can plug our phones into their network, and they move the bits. If they want to innovate on top of the bit moving, great, but don't their ownership of the devices is the problem that is stifling the market.
You can just switch to a left handed mouse and it'll be like the US version. But, the real news is now we know the real cost of IE, since they have to remove it from the EU version.
Don't forget moving data to avoid taxation (someone political/evil) is going to get the bright idea of taxing transactions in a data center eventually),
prosecution (might have to move the people executing the transactions, I picture cruse ships in international waters for online porn and gambling eventually, which brings up the issue of pirates, but that's another topic), and
law suits (someone sues, infringing a patent, divorce - migrate your business to a friendly location).
Slashdot Mirror
You can setup your own cloud and have all the advantages of a local PC with the flexibility of a cloud device. More importantly, a school or a corporation might consider this a welcome feature. The ability to flag content and control their data may be a valuable selling point. I understand your reluctance to move everything into the "cloud". My parents have boxes of old photographs, LP's (that's kind of like a physical copy of an uncompressed MP3), and bank statements. Heck they still write stuff on paper and put it in that box on the front lawn with a little red flag.
The climate debate isn't about science anymore. It is political and regardless of which side of the debate you are on the odds are the incorrect action will be taken. Compromise, short term thinking and power (no pun intended) considerations will twist the debate. Instead of climate change, carbon footprints and cap & trade, redefine the debate as energy independence and job creation. This is a US centric policy, but it is where I'm at, so come up with your own. Set a goal of national energy independence, including drilling for domestic oil. The US has limited enough supplies that low consumption credits and alternative energy sources incentives will be required to prevent the importation of oil. Automation of manufacturing to bring jobs back to the United States. Since we shifted our manufacturing to less developed countries, we've also shifted our pollution. Instead of innovating to reduce local workforce expenses via automation, most companies took the short term gain of lower cost labor and limited regulation. By subsidizing the R&D of automation, many of the jobs may come back.
In the big scheme of things, the freedom of the client is insignificant to the freedom of the cloud. This client, while optimized for Google, will be just as capable of attaching to a private, fully controlled cloud. You could setup a home server with email, office suite, etc.... and remain totally free, or you can connect to services from Google and other providers and give up some of that freedom. The providers will be cheaper, but you will give up significant freedom and control of your own data. An interesting option is bringing up all the services you want on EC2 (Amazon) servers, and point your clients to that. Of course you can use any hosting company for similar results. There is an advantage in cost savings for many companies if you can eliminate, or minimize desktop support. A $1K laptop costs over $6K+ in support over its lifetime. If that can be replaced by a $200 a year disposable appliance with a server back end, the PC replacement and upgrade cycle can be broken saving companies tons of money.
That would be an issue if Bing wasn't gaining share by displacing Yahoo. Google is maintaining its share. May be an issue in the long run. For example, Linux got into the data center by displacing Unix, in particular Solaris. Now Linux is growing installs faster than Windows, slowly shifting the server market share (both are growing in deployments, Linux is just growing faster).
Less than free as in beer, less than free as in freedom?
The ability to tax, while necessary, is not a revenue generating act. Taxes reduce revenue generated by the citizens of a political entity. Taxes are a burden and reduce the ability reinvest and gain more revenue. While, citizens using a government to provide basic services, by presenting a non-voluntary tithe, is legitimate, in no way should taxes be considered revenue. It was not earned, it was seized. I understand the need for taxation. I just want government employees to realize they are taking my money against my will, and not earning my money with their good works. I don't pay for the police or fire department to show up at my door when I call, I don't pay for the roads and airports, health inspections, or supporting welfare moms. A percentage of my income is seized so my elected representatives can be good stewards and provide required services.
The article has a pie chart and the link to the "detailed report" only has a pie chart. I guess we just have to trust Cenzic the internet security application provider. Doesn't even break it down by version number of browser or severity of exploit.
Who would have taken the politicians and IT management out for steak dinners if they would have used open source? How about the pretty power point presentations for board meetings. Don't forget the political games that had to be played between parties and in the office. Seriously, I've seen time and again when free or open source software has saved money and been a better technical solution. As a high paid consultant myself, I recommend free or open source solutions first, and only move proprietary when I have to. To make a government job work, you have to grease the wheels and pay a little politics (I meant to type play, but this seemed more apt). Any IT job is 80% politics and 20% work, that's why soft skills are so valued in the job market.
"Enterprise wins for GNU/Linux don't come much better than this." Enterprise wins like this are happening all the time for Linux and other free software options. What makes this unique is MS touted LSE running their system as a huge win for their solution. The fact it gets ripped out a year latter for Linux is marketing gold if free software needed to market.
Most proprietary software companies spend little money on software development. The big players have margins close to 80% with a significant portion of their expenses in marketing and sales. Open Source companies are conduits of money and support to FOSS projects, making money off support and add on features. Generally low margins and small marketing and sales budgets (mostly word of mouth and try before you buy). Now, a massive movement to open source software will cause less total employment in the software industry, but the vast majority of those losses will be in non-technical fields. The economic issue is software is worth only ~25% of what people pay for it today. As performance gains from software purchases decline, the ROI is less compelling, and thus cost of software more critical. The critical shift now is convincing software consuming companies to shift from buying prepackaged software to contributing to the development of open source software. That could be co-ops of like minded software consumers, or some other innovative way.
I believe technology can be an excellent enhancement to the educational experience, but I suspect that this grand deployment of computers will fail because most of the teachers won't have any idea how to use them to enhance education. Sure, their very availability and some innovative teachers will make good use of them, but if you are going to do this on this scale, a district needs a plan. Especially one that makes more sense for netbooks. What is needed is an infrastructure of online resources, lesson plans, and full remote classes that take advantage of the new access created. Technology should free the teacher for more one on one time with students, helping slower kids catch up and entertaining advanced kids with more challenging experiences. I haven't read anything on this subject that they took into consideration having enough power in the schools, cooling (20-30 extra laptops in a room generate a surprising amount of heat), or any level of teacher training.
But it might be economically non-viable. In many ways the Linux desktop and free software stack is better than the version you can get from Microsoft or Apple. For 80% of the users it can do everything they need. For 90% of the users it can 90% of what they need, and for 100% of the users it can do 80% of what they want. While those are made up statistics, I believe that 80% of the market can switch to a Linux desktop tomorrow and be just as productive as it is today. The problem is convincing them to do it. What the Linux desktop really needs is a marketing budget.
I believe the Negroponte's goal is to get computers into the hands of students in developing countries. Not to promote open source software. Now, I know from experience that open source software is significantly less expensive on a per seat basis, builds local skills and support, and offers flexibility you just can't get from other options. The problem is the customer doesn't. I've seen too many school board members and district technology heads married to Microsoft and Apple and whoever else with a marketing budget that walks through the door. All Negroponte is doing is adjusting to his customers to get the hardware through the door. Now I'd prefer he use his bully pulpit to drive the cost savings and flexibility open source provides, but they've chosen not to. The technology is easy, the politics are hard.
Before nuclear weapons the world fought numerous low level conflicts between spurts of global war. Now prior to the 19th century global war was difficult because people didn't go long distances, so lets start with the Napoleonic Wars. After they concluded in 1815 we had a number of small conflicts. Indian Wars in the US, Zulu and Boer wars, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian war, Italian Revolution, numerous conflicts in India, Crimirian War, Boxer rebellion, Russo-Japanese war, Spanish American War, US vs Mexico (Poncho Villa ), etc.... Then the Great War (WWI), after that we stopped fighting to get ready for WWII, whoops, no we didn't. Spanish Revolution, Japanese in China, Japanese border issues with the Russians, US all over South and Central America, Italians in Ethiopia, Europeans in Russia (their were West European and US troops all over Russia in the early 20's, Russo-Finish war. Now between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI, peace was maintained by overwhelming British Sea Power which kept any of those conflicts from going global. Between WWI and WWII the political will wasn't there to fight for a generation. After WWII if major conflict was avoided by nuclear weapons, which is likely, then good, but don't think that fighting limited wars started in 1945.
Forcing people to pay for news will only increase the tendency for people to only read news they agree with. What will "save" the news industry is a shift away from creating the content to vetting content created by interested parties. While most newspapers (US) have had deteriorating quality since the Spanish-American war most in depth reporting has been done by interested parties. Groklaw is a good example of a single subject reporting. What good news aggregators should do is make it easy for people interested in SCO to find Groklaw, press releases by involved parties, and alternative views on the subject. Real "news" reform would force government, corporations and even non-profits to be more transparent in their dealings, making it easier for interested parties to research and create quality news. Tort reform to keep legal action from crushing individuals prior to judicial review (ie loser pays) would have significant impact too.
The very size of a typical RV is going to limit the roughing it. You won't be driving it cross country, you'll likely be on Interstates and staying in campgrounds. Many campgrounds already offer WiFi, as do most bookstores and restaurants. Map out where you are going on the internet, and identify chain stores that offer WiFi. Stop in their parking lot, walk around and get something to eat and get access. Picking campgrounds that offer WiFi isn't difficult either.
Legislatures all over the world pass laws that can't be enforced universally. They are trolling their constituents and trying to look busy to justify having a full time job. The problem is you get huge law books with thousands of obscure laws that have never been tested in court. The police, and by extension the state, can arrest anyone and find a law to justify it. While it might not stick in court yet, being arrested will generally cost you a great deal of money and embarrassment, many employers will fire you with no recourse, it can be used as justification for seizing assets in some cases, etc... Our only protections are the state's lack of interest in us as individuals, or aggressive protesting by the mob if we are visible enough.
The world has changed in the last fifty years. When is the last time you've seen a typewriter or for that matter a secretary. The current education system is setup for teaching people to be factory workers. Fifty years ago the the number of people going to college was less than a quarter what it is today. Technology, and in particular online education, is the only way to cost effectively offer differentiated education. The other option is using 1:1 teaching, which which we don't have the talent level or resources for. Maybe the change we are looking for is to migrate teachers into computer lab monitors.
Incorporate to protect your existing business and personal assets. Then just start the software company. It is unlikely anyone will sue until you have enough assets to make it worth the effort, and most likely you'll never get to that point. Another option is to open source the software and sell support and consulting contracts. If anyone sues, you can claim the software doesn't generate any revenue and thus no damages. Of course it won't keep you from getting dragged into court anyway. Plus, since I'm not a lawyer, if you follow my advice you are screwed anyway. Nobody has ever gotten rich without taking some risks, and in my opinion, the risk of a patent troll taking interest in you is small enough to just do it.
I think most "journalist" are so busy and have such tight deadlines, that they over rely on people that are paid to speak to the press. Open source, by its nature is a low-cost, high quality grass-roots effort. Even the most successful FOSS companies are tiny and have tighter margins than the for profits. Free software is customer driven (requested not sold) and doesn't have the money or staff to generate press releases or provide a pretty marketing type to spoon feed a story.
I didn't focus my comment clearly. I wanted to target the lack of change in consumer products and telephone service. The innovations of Bell labs were turned into products when they got into the hands of others. Unix and C didn't thrive until they made a mistake and let it loose in the academic space. Up into the 70's most of the phone infrastructure was more mechanical than electronic. Not to belittle their contribution, but nothing deployed from Bell labs that would disrupt their phone monopoly, at best only changes that reduced their cost of delivering the same service would see the light of day. To expand the subject, Microsoft won't deploy any product that will compromise Windows or Office unless forced by competition. They only embraced the internet when Netscape became a threat and when Netscape was beaten, IE6 was never upgraded. Xerox had great research, but their only desire was protecting the copier monopoly.
The current cell phone oligopoly needs to be broken the same way the Bell system was busted. There was a time when you could only buy your land line phone from Bell, there was only one directory (Free -white pages, advertised - yellow pages), and they owned the system from handset to handset. Costs were high, service was slow, and innovation was non-existent. There was a time when having two phones in the same house was the province of the ultra-rich. Then it was broken, you no longer had to rent your phone from Bell, but could go to the local store and buy one. Plug into an rj-11 jack and go. Soon every house had a phone in every room, you could buy answering machines, plug in a modem.... heck it wasn't too long before phone companies started to innovate and provide other services like caller ID. Sorry for the history rant, but we need the major cell and network providers to stop owning us handset to handset again. Apple shouldn't have had to convince AT&T to carry its phone, there should be a generic standard like RJ-11 where we can plug our phones into their network, and they move the bits. If they want to innovate on top of the bit moving, great, but don't their ownership of the devices is the problem that is stifling the market.
You can just switch to a left handed mouse and it'll be like the US version. But, the real news is now we know the real cost of IE, since they have to remove it from the EU version.
Don't forget moving data to avoid taxation (someone political/evil) is going to get the bright idea of taxing transactions in a data center eventually), prosecution (might have to move the people executing the transactions, I picture cruse ships in international waters for online porn and gambling eventually, which brings up the issue of pirates, but that's another topic), and law suits (someone sues, infringing a patent, divorce - migrate your business to a friendly location).
Iran probably just pointed its Linksys router to OpenDNS.