We saw a 35% bump in sales between last week and yesterday. Cyber Monday is very very real.
open the API, many sites suddenly become redundant
on
Google Base Launches
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
sites like vehix.com, orbitz.com, and finance.yahoo.com are essentially taking data from some goofy mainframe format (Reynolds & Reynolds, edgar, etc) and simply skinning it and making it searchable via the web. If those original database holders (data OEMs if you will) decide to plug in here, many of those sites just took a giant step toward redundancy.
I don't think such sites are kaput, because the retail experience holds something of value in and of itself (all the customer care bits). But Google gets a helluva lot more powerful, certainly.
The nine worst words in business are "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help." I'm sorry, but the last thing I want gumming up the Open Source model is some government yo-yo oversight organization. I don't want some dipstick bureaucrat deciding which projects get funded and which ones go hungry. All that would do is create a layer of suckups and lobbyists who's sole responsibility is to write proposals for funds. This is the same disease that has plagued NASA. If this organization hires engineers-- do you honestly think you're going to get the cream of the crop? I know Alan Cox would really resent working for the Feds. So would the Rasterman. I would hate it (and I'm not even an engineer).
DARPA offers prizes-- that's great. Ongoing funding or bureaucratic employment is the last thing OSS needs.
I was quoted in the eWeek article for this launch. We have been testing this for a few weeks now, and like what we see so far. There is no way in Hell I am letting MS Exchange in here.
The really cool part we see in Zimbra is the possibilities to program our own magic phrases, so everytime someone puts in an Order#, SKU, Invoice# or some other keyword, Zimbra will pick up on it, and link it directly into our ERP.
We went this route originally to save money-- OSS ecommerce stuff was free, albeit not very well done-- but then again, no one really was, so might as well save some cash.
Now we are to the point where we are going with the in-house development on OSS for the flexibility it provides. in a straight e-retail environment, the speed to market for new features and functionality is crucial, as is trying to squeeze every penny out of our inventory processes and vendor integration. Given our market segment, things are kinda non-standard, which means that some off-the-shelf ERP from IBM or SAP or MS would need to be highly customized, and now I am paying the same money to someone else, but without the flexibility, responsibility, and most importantly, without really knowing what they are doing in the code. Even if I bought a big something from some 'solutions provider', I would still need the same team of engineers to customize and tweek it to where we need to be.
Sure, there are some philosophical edges to it-- I and a couple others used to be Red Hat employees-- but I can honestly say that we are pursuing the most flexible environment at the best price.
We are on our way to another record year of growth, and our entire system is built on OSS, taken and customized by our in-house engineering team. We have a full customer support, order management, and warehouse-inventory-shipping process built out.
The servers run RHEL, and the ERP runs on various bits and peices of OSS. By this time next year, I hope to migrate the entire staff of 150+ over to OpenSuSE or Fedora for their desktops, but I have already given the order that all new desktops come in OS-free (no MS tax).
Eventually, the only proprietary software will be the 5-6 copies of PhotoShop on Macs used by the product photographers, and maybe some Financial stuff from the banks.
last Autumn, there were several earthquakes in the Chuetsu area on the back-side of Honshu. The largest of these earthquakes caused a crash for the bullet train, which rocked off its tracks and scraped along for 2 kilometers. No one was seriously injured, but that is really out of blind luck-- the train happened to be on a raised track, with cement walls on either side-- other places the track has only chain-link fence separating it from other trains or open fields.
In short, JR dodged a disaster. They don't want to press their luck. If a train could rapidly decelerate, then perhaps the risk of a crash could be reduced.
Then again, maybe someone watched Totoro once too many times.
boy, if the parent wasn't chock full of stereotypes (mostly wrong) and wild generalizations, I would think I was on Slashdot or something...
Japan will not go to space to 'get raw materials'. It is much easier for t hem to buy those materials on the open market.
Japanese "management techniques" were originally invented and perfected by an American named Demming. Now that the industrial scare from Japan has faded (think all the 1980 movie references), no one really buys into Japanese management techniques, including the Japanese-- they are trying to incorporate American styles...
"Loyalty to the greater good" is absolute bullshit. You have obviously never lived there. Japanese people are just like us-- but they tend to identify with the group more quickly. This just means that they are more insecure to speak out, not some sense of self sacrifice.
If you think Japan doesn't have a couple of nukes tucked away somewhere, you are a fool.
You are dead wrong about 'learning from Japanese culture more valuable than the technology' bit. The technology will always outstrip the culture, because in this setting, it is pure engineering-- the 'culture' is the same no matter where you go.
In general, I suggest you put down the manga and anime and actually try to comprehend the place, not just parrot what you read in the newspaper.
Boy, what a goofy post. 1. How can French technology be 100% "ingenious"? Does that mean that other countries have a certain percentage of "mediocre" or "dumb" technology? Or did you mean to say "indigenous"? In that case, how do you jibe that with your very next sentence about France participating in the Airbus consortium? What about all the other countries with 100% indigenous tech? US, Russia, UK, Japan...
2. Your reference to a 'commonly held view' about the US not wanting Japan to acquire know-how is patently false. The US poured technology transfer into Japan after the war. You obviously have not studied history nor post-war politics.
3. There is no 'fear' of a US 'monopoly' on aerospace. Again, there is Airbus, and a host of other companies doing very cool things.
In short, please keep the wild generalizations and blanket pop-science to yourself.
Red Hat has always had people wanting to give them money (as in investment, not just buying shares). From the beginning, Matthew Szulik was adamant about getting investors that brought something to the table besides their chequebook. Michael Dell certainly fits in that category, and i wouldn't be surprised if Red hat lobbied him hard for this investment.
If RH is going to get anywhere on the desktop (their "next move" for the last 18 months), then they will need Dell Computer, and MSD still has some sway there.
From Tokyo, I have the following opinion to offer: 1. Good news. The more the merrier. Debian, the distro of choice for hardcore users and developers, certainly needs a push and some TLC over here. The developer community is sorely sorely lacking in profile, heroes, and most of all corporate support.
2. Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux are known within the community, but are bit players in the market as a whole. Red Hat has majority shares in Japan, is very strong in Korea, and is the corporate default linux for China. Meanwhile, Novell is non-existant in Korea, and is making a big push in China (they are so-so in Japan). Just as in the US, Debian will be hard-pressed to go against these guys
3. The drive for this-- a purely community-driven distro-- is welcome to the ears of government buyers. The asian governments hate sending their tax yen/yuan/wan to Redmond, but they would hate it just as much to send to Raleigh or Boston. This is (was) the impetus behind Asianux. unfortunately, Asianux doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
4. Turbo seems to be making somewhat of a comeback. If Debian can make some headway, then we may have some more play over here, and that is good for everyone.
Shameless plug: you track these kinds of stories, events, and opinions at OpenAsia.org
While I wager most of the responses on this thread will be some variant on "so what, Solaris is dead", let me say that I met with a senior planner of a very large system integrator here in APAC, and he pretty much said the opposite: Solaris 10 will fill all their needs and that the whole Linux/penguin/RMS-sideshow was a distraction at this point.
Sun has spent years playing in the biggest game with the biggest boys. Their gross holdings dwarf that of Red Hat and Novell. Solaris 10 has all the core functionality that the major major banks and conservative institutions want. Sun has dedicated salespeople who know these clients for years now. Do not count them out, yet.
Sure, Solaris 10 seems like a Hail Mary, but think why the Hail Mary play is there: it works sometimes...
The real drive behind this is the usage for mobile phones. Here in Japan, mobile phones have become the dominant data handling device. Phones here have the full rolodex, appointment calendar, mp3 player, as well as Final Fantasy/Tetris/CowboyNeal game-of-choice. There are adapters coming online now that will let people browse MSWord and Excel files via their mobile.
But the drive here is a great social need: when groups go out to dinner, friends, co-workers, business partners, etc. there is always this 10-minute ritual where everyone has to call everyone else in the group, in order to capture their phone number and contact information. If NTT can issue phones where everyone trades this information by touching hands, then they have an edge over the others.
Japanese protect their privacy vehemently, but are also information hoarders much greater than their US or EU equivalents. Phone rolodexes are huge-- people have every contact they met in the last 4 years (which is in the thousands if you work in Tokyo).
What part of Fedora is not Free-as-in-beer? There are bit-torrents all over the place of FC3.
Fedora is a big fat beta-testing project. The latest and greatest from RH will always show up in Fedora first, get knocked around by a few thousand users, then get put into the next release of RHEL if it survives/stabilizes/works-well-with-others. Fedora is the big "give-back", or don't you get it?
It is a pattern: three releases of Fedora every 6 months or so, then a RHEL (which is basically an approved version of the last Fedora standing). Rinse. Repeat.
I have no doubt that they are boldly moving forward on this reactor, and I am also sure of the rise of China's status in the world-- soon to be among the largest economies.
However, you are sorely overlooking the fact that there are 1.3 BILLION people there-- anything they do is gonna be big. That doesn't make them efficient, powerful, or able to project power, it just makes them big.
Sure, the Shanghai waterfront is glitzy, but you walk 5 blocks in any direction and welcome to a third-world shithole with sewage in the streets and no televisions or automobiles.
The economic classes are so separated in China, that any wealth they produce immediately gets disappated away, or builds further stratifications. If anything, China will bifurcate into 3 countries within the next 50 years (Northern China, Southern China, and Western China).
What's more, the Chinese cannot project power, militarily nor economically. They have no navy of any guts, no air force, no stealth. Their communications grid is horrendously poor, and the state-controlled allocations ensure that things will always be behind.
Sure, state-centered economy is great for big projects like a single nuke reactor, but it sucks in bringing middle-class lifestyle to the masses.
I hate to say it, but this really is a minimal event for the overall market-- no one I know has used Ichitaro for years. MSWord is fully entrenched here, and will be for the forseeable future.
In regards to Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice, they are sorley lacking in Kanji conversion, dictionaries, and layout flexibility. I know that Turbo and Others put effort into this, but progress is slow...
My good friends who work in Robotics here in Japan all tell me the same thing: the Japanese robotics market is all about smooth motor skills and balance. Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have all the heavy-lifting industrial monsters they want, and they have the laser-precises lathes and machines for the exacting stuff. What is missing is the "human" element-- graceful walking and interfacing with humans. This is seen as the barrier to cross into the mass market-- your grandmother won't buy a robot until it can walk and talk like the pet pooch.
I wrote a short article about this market, and how Linux is dealing with it.
What pisses me off is the US's statement that they'll locally block the European system in places they don't want potential "enemies" (read, China), having accurate location tracking.
Why should that piss you off? As a citizen of the US, I absolutely DO NOT want a third party to be able to accurately aim a missile at the White House, the Capitol, or a nuclear power plant. These are military assets, not GPL code for the benefit of mankind (the universal GPS was a side benefit, not the purpose).
I wonder how the US would react if, say, China started blocking GPS from certain places to hold back it's enemies. Tibet for example.
Well, they would probably grumble a little, then get to work on a way to figure out a way around it, just as they have been doing for decades. Again-- please grow up and realize that there are hostiles in the world, and it is a constant struggle to stay ahead.
disclaimer 1: i used to work for Red Hat disclaimer 2: I have done contract work for Dell
Dell always will badger vendors to shave prices wherever/whenever/however possible. Every dollar they can save somewhere equals X% increase in marketshare or volume for them. Dell is a ruthless selling machine.
Up until recently, Dell really didn't care so much about Linux for the SMB market, only in the way that their customers wanted it (and it gave them an option). I would imagine that: 1. Dell has done the math, realized that SuSE isn't penetrating the way they had hoped 2. without serious competition (which was supposed to exert price pressure on RH) Dell has resorted to publicly whining about RH prices 3. This public whining is supposed to snowball and "force" RH into reducing prices.
The problem is that the SMB market is actually more resource-intense in terms of support. As such, Red Hat has never really liked it (compared to Enterprise), but Dell's volume volume volume absoultely depends on it.
If Dell agrees to shoulder more of the support burden, I would imagine they could get very good deals with RH.
Remember, folks, the technology and science of indigenous peoples isn't real until it has been properly rediscovered by Westerners. In fact, indigenous peoples don't actually exist until the West discovers them and writes coffee-table books about them.
While I realize your attempt is to grant some legitimacy to "non-western" sciences, your original sarcasm actually holds water to some degree (IMHO). Certainly non-european cultures had their sciences and indigenous architectures, but let's not grant them "superior" status just because they are different. The wooden box house is just as legitimate design as teepees, adobe, and straw huts-- it is a lot better in many ways-- but that isn't my point.
While it is politically correct to rag on the "West", let's face facts: the "West" has outstripped every other culture technologically for centuries. This has in turn led to cultural, financial, and philosophical dominance as well. This is not a bad thing-- it is just a thing. Someone has to be in charge, and the good news is that the dominant philosophy is liberal democracy.
Back on topic: Lunar Adobe moon houses will be cool, but I imagine NASA will be opting for the designs that allow the most space for the least energy and time-to-build. I don't think they will go for cool shaps just because they are shamanistic avatars of Kaguya-hime.
The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for.
Well, this certainly will be a problem! I was hoping it would only be the incurable infections for which we had a cure, but then those would be curable, and not qualify, so I guess I am back to square one. I am trying to end a sentence in a preposition, but I cannot figure out how.
Slashdot Mirror
We saw a 35% bump in sales between last week and yesterday. Cyber Monday is very very real.
sites like vehix.com, orbitz.com, and finance.yahoo.com are essentially taking data from some goofy mainframe format (Reynolds & Reynolds, edgar, etc) and simply skinning it and making it searchable via the web. If those original database holders (data OEMs if you will) decide to plug in here, many of those sites just took a giant step toward redundancy.
I don't think such sites are kaput, because the retail experience holds something of value in and of itself (all the customer care bits). But Google gets a helluva lot more powerful, certainly.
Buckaroo, givu me za formira...
The nine worst words in business are "I'm from the Government and I'm here to help." I'm sorry, but the last thing I want gumming up the Open Source model is some government yo-yo oversight organization. I don't want some dipstick bureaucrat deciding which projects get funded and which ones go hungry. All that would do is create a layer of suckups and lobbyists who's sole responsibility is to write proposals for funds. This is the same disease that has plagued NASA. If this organization hires engineers-- do you honestly think you're going to get the cream of the crop? I know Alan Cox would really resent working for the Feds. So would the Rasterman. I would hate it (and I'm not even an engineer).
DARPA offers prizes-- that's great. Ongoing funding or bureaucratic employment is the last thing OSS needs.
he extra volume will bring down the prices of the Athlon 64s we stick in our gaming boxen. Right?... Right?
Sure, as soon as you stop using that horrible term 'boxen'....
I was quoted in the eWeek article for this launch. We have been testing this for a few weeks now, and like what we see so far. There is no way in Hell I am letting MS Exchange in here.
The really cool part we see in Zimbra is the possibilities to program our own magic phrases, so everytime someone puts in an Order#, SKU, Invoice# or some other keyword, Zimbra will pick up on it, and link it directly into our ERP.
Zimbra shows a lot of promise--
We went this route originally to save money-- OSS ecommerce stuff was free, albeit not very well done-- but then again, no one really was, so might as well save some cash.
Now we are to the point where we are going with the in-house development on OSS for the flexibility it provides. in a straight e-retail environment, the speed to market for new features and functionality is crucial, as is trying to squeeze every penny out of our inventory processes and vendor integration. Given our market segment, things are kinda non-standard, which means that some off-the-shelf ERP from IBM or SAP or MS would need to be highly customized, and now I am paying the same money to someone else, but without the flexibility, responsibility, and most importantly, without really knowing what they are doing in the code. Even if I bought a big something from some 'solutions provider', I would still need the same team of engineers to customize and tweek it to where we need to be.
Sure, there are some philosophical edges to it-- I and a couple others used to be Red Hat employees-- but I can honestly say that we are pursuing the most flexible environment at the best price.
We are on our way to another record year of growth, and our entire system is built on OSS, taken and customized by our in-house engineering team. We have a full customer support, order management, and warehouse-inventory-shipping process built out.
The servers run RHEL, and the ERP runs on various bits and peices of OSS. By this time next year, I hope to migrate the entire staff of 150+ over to OpenSuSE or Fedora for their desktops, but I have already given the order that all new desktops come in OS-free (no MS tax).
Eventually, the only proprietary software will be the 5-6 copies of PhotoShop on Macs used by the product photographers, and maybe some Financial stuff from the banks.
last Autumn, there were several earthquakes in the Chuetsu area on the back-side of Honshu. The largest of these earthquakes caused a crash for the bullet train, which rocked off its tracks and scraped along for 2 kilometers. No one was seriously injured, but that is really out of blind luck-- the train happened to be on a raised track, with cement walls on either side-- other places the track has only chain-link fence separating it from other trains or open fields.
In short, JR dodged a disaster. They don't want to press their luck. If a train could rapidly decelerate, then perhaps the risk of a crash could be reduced.
Then again, maybe someone watched Totoro once too many times.
Japan will not go to space to 'get raw materials'. It is much easier for t hem to buy those materials on the open market.
Japanese "management techniques" were originally invented and perfected by an American named Demming. Now that the industrial scare from Japan has faded (think all the 1980 movie references), no one really buys into Japanese management techniques, including the Japanese-- they are trying to incorporate American styles...
"Loyalty to the greater good" is absolute bullshit. You have obviously never lived there. Japanese people are just like us-- but they tend to identify with the group more quickly. This just means that they are more insecure to speak out, not some sense of self sacrifice.
If you think Japan doesn't have a couple of nukes tucked away somewhere, you are a fool.
You are dead wrong about 'learning from Japanese culture more valuable than the technology' bit. The technology will always outstrip the culture, because in this setting, it is pure engineering-- the 'culture' is the same no matter where you go.
In general, I suggest you put down the manga and anime and actually try to comprehend the place, not just parrot what you read in the newspaper.
Boy, what a goofy post.
1. How can French technology be 100% "ingenious"? Does that mean that other countries have a certain percentage of "mediocre" or "dumb" technology? Or did you mean to say "indigenous"? In that case, how do you jibe that with your very next sentence about France participating in the Airbus consortium? What about all the other countries with 100% indigenous tech? US, Russia, UK, Japan...
2. Your reference to a 'commonly held view' about the US not wanting Japan to acquire know-how is patently false. The US poured technology transfer into Japan after the war. You obviously have not studied history nor post-war politics.
3. There is no 'fear' of a US 'monopoly' on aerospace. Again, there is Airbus, and a host of other companies doing very cool things.
In short, please keep the wild generalizations and blanket pop-science to yourself.
Red Hat has always had people wanting to give them money (as in investment, not just buying shares). From the beginning, Matthew Szulik was adamant about getting investors that brought something to the table besides their chequebook. Michael Dell certainly fits in that category, and i wouldn't be surprised if Red hat lobbied him hard for this investment.
If RH is going to get anywhere on the desktop (their "next move" for the last 18 months), then they will need Dell Computer, and MSD still has some sway there.
This isn't just money, it's money+channel.
From Tokyo, I have the following opinion to offer:
1. Good news. The more the merrier. Debian, the distro of choice for hardcore users and developers, certainly needs a push and some TLC over here. The developer community is sorely sorely lacking in profile, heroes, and most of all corporate support.
2. Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux are known within the community, but are bit players in the market as a whole. Red Hat has majority shares in Japan, is very strong in Korea, and is the corporate default linux for China. Meanwhile, Novell is non-existant in Korea, and is making a big push in China (they are so-so in Japan). Just as in the US, Debian will be hard-pressed to go against these guys
3. The drive for this-- a purely community-driven distro-- is welcome to the ears of government buyers. The asian governments hate sending their tax yen/yuan/wan to Redmond, but they would hate it just as much to send to Raleigh or Boston. This is (was) the impetus behind Asianux. unfortunately, Asianux doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
4. Turbo seems to be making somewhat of a comeback. If Debian can make some headway, then we may have some more play over here, and that is good for everyone.
Shameless plug: you track these kinds of stories, events, and opinions at OpenAsia.org
While I wager most of the responses on this thread will be some variant on "so what, Solaris is dead", let me say that I met with a senior planner of a very large system integrator here in APAC, and he pretty much said the opposite: Solaris 10 will fill all their needs and that the whole Linux/penguin/RMS-sideshow was a distraction at this point.
Sun has spent years playing in the biggest game with the biggest boys. Their gross holdings dwarf that of Red Hat and Novell. Solaris 10 has all the core functionality that the major major banks and conservative institutions want. Sun has dedicated salespeople who know these clients for years now. Do not count them out, yet.
Sure, Solaris 10 seems like a Hail Mary, but think why the Hail Mary play is there: it works sometimes...
The real drive behind this is the usage for mobile phones. Here in Japan, mobile phones have become the dominant data handling device. Phones here have the full rolodex, appointment calendar, mp3 player, as well as Final Fantasy/Tetris/CowboyNeal game-of-choice. There are adapters coming online now that will let people browse MSWord and Excel files via their mobile.
But the drive here is a great social need: when groups go out to dinner, friends, co-workers, business partners, etc. there is always this 10-minute ritual where everyone has to call everyone else in the group, in order to capture their phone number and contact information. If NTT can issue phones where everyone trades this information by touching hands, then they have an edge over the others.
Japanese protect their privacy vehemently, but are also information hoarders much greater than their US or EU equivalents. Phone rolodexes are huge-- people have every contact they met in the last 4 years (which is in the thousands if you work in Tokyo).
What part of Fedora is not Free-as-in-beer? There are bit-torrents all over the place of FC3.
Fedora is a big fat beta-testing project. The latest and greatest from RH will always show up in Fedora first, get knocked around by a few thousand users, then get put into the next release of RHEL if it survives/stabilizes/works-well-with-others. Fedora is the big "give-back", or don't you get it?
It is a pattern: three releases of Fedora every 6 months or so, then a RHEL (which is basically an approved version of the last Fedora standing). Rinse. Repeat.
Have you ever BEEN TO CHINA?!?!?
I have no doubt that they are boldly moving forward on this reactor, and I am also sure of the rise of China's status in the world-- soon to be among the largest economies.
However, you are sorely overlooking the fact that there are 1.3 BILLION people there-- anything they do is gonna be big. That doesn't make them efficient, powerful, or able to project power, it just makes them big.
Sure, the Shanghai waterfront is glitzy, but you walk 5 blocks in any direction and welcome to a third-world shithole with sewage in the streets and no televisions or automobiles.
The economic classes are so separated in China, that any wealth they produce immediately gets disappated away, or builds further stratifications. If anything, China will bifurcate into 3 countries within the next 50 years (Northern China, Southern China, and Western China).
What's more, the Chinese cannot project power, militarily nor economically. They have no navy of any guts, no air force, no stealth. Their communications grid is horrendously poor, and the state-controlled allocations ensure that things will always be behind.
Sure, state-centered economy is great for big projects like a single nuke reactor, but it sucks in bringing middle-class lifestyle to the masses.
I hate to say it, but this really is a minimal event for the overall market-- no one I know has used Ichitaro for years. MSWord is fully entrenched here, and will be for the forseeable future.
In regards to Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice, they are sorley lacking in Kanji conversion, dictionaries, and layout flexibility. I know that Turbo and Others put effort into this, but progress is slow...
And I for one welcome our new robot soldier overlords! /finally! That quote actually fits somewhere...
My good friends who work in Robotics here in Japan all tell me the same thing: the Japanese robotics market is all about smooth motor skills and balance. Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have all the heavy-lifting industrial monsters they want, and they have the laser-precises lathes and machines for the exacting stuff. What is missing is the "human" element-- graceful walking and interfacing with humans. This is seen as the barrier to cross into the mass market-- your grandmother won't buy a robot until it can walk and talk like the pet pooch.
I wrote a short article about this market, and how Linux is dealing with it.
from TFA:
"It includes PDA functionality and a 1 megapixel camera that took average looking phone pics."
Heh. Wake me up when you break the 2 megapixel layer, and have QVGA on the device (like I see every morning on the train here in Tokyo).
Sorry to sound smug, but it baffles me how slow the US is on cell phone/PDA gear.
What pisses me off is the US's statement that they'll locally block the European system in places they don't want potential "enemies" (read, China), having accurate location tracking.
Why should that piss you off? As a citizen of the US, I absolutely DO NOT want a third party to be able to accurately aim a missile at the White House, the Capitol, or a nuclear power plant. These are military assets, not GPL code for the benefit of mankind (the universal GPS was a side benefit, not the purpose).
I wonder how the US would react if, say, China started blocking GPS from certain places to hold back it's enemies. Tibet for example.
Well, they would probably grumble a little, then get to work on a way to figure out a way around it, just as they have been doing for decades. Again-- please grow up and realize that there are hostiles in the world, and it is a constant struggle to stay ahead.
disclaimer 1: i used to work for Red Hat
disclaimer 2: I have done contract work for Dell
Dell always will badger vendors to shave prices wherever/whenever/however possible. Every dollar they can save somewhere equals X% increase in marketshare or volume for them. Dell is a ruthless selling machine.
Up until recently, Dell really didn't care so much about Linux for the SMB market, only in the way that their customers wanted it (and it gave them an option). I would imagine that:
1. Dell has done the math, realized that SuSE isn't penetrating the way they had hoped
2. without serious competition (which was supposed to exert price pressure on RH) Dell has resorted to publicly whining about RH prices
3. This public whining is supposed to snowball and "force" RH into reducing prices.
The problem is that the SMB market is actually more resource-intense in terms of support. As such, Red Hat has never really liked it (compared to Enterprise), but Dell's volume volume volume absoultely depends on it.
If Dell agrees to shoulder more of the support burden, I would imagine they could get very good deals with RH.
Remember, folks, the technology and science of indigenous peoples isn't real until it has been properly rediscovered by Westerners. In fact, indigenous peoples don't actually exist until the West discovers them and writes coffee-table books about them.
While I realize your attempt is to grant some legitimacy to "non-western" sciences, your original sarcasm actually holds water to some degree (IMHO). Certainly non-european cultures had their sciences and indigenous architectures, but let's not grant them "superior" status just because they are different. The wooden box house is just as legitimate design as teepees, adobe, and straw huts-- it is a lot better in many ways-- but that isn't my point.
While it is politically correct to rag on the "West", let's face facts: the "West" has outstripped every other culture technologically for centuries. This has in turn led to cultural, financial, and philosophical dominance as well. This is not a bad thing-- it is just a thing. Someone has to be in charge, and the good news is that the dominant philosophy is liberal democracy.
Back on topic: Lunar Adobe moon houses will be cool, but I imagine NASA will be opting for the designs that allow the most space for the least energy and time-to-build. I don't think they will go for cool shaps just because they are shamanistic avatars of Kaguya-hime.
The threat may be incurable bacterial infections we have no cure for.
Well, this certainly will be a problem! I was hoping it would only be the incurable infections for which we had a cure, but then those would be curable, and not qualify, so I guess I am back to square one. I am trying to end a sentence in a preposition, but I cannot figure out how.