Rob Pregoraro at the Washington Post asks the question, “How can an operating system with those virtues, the open-source Linux, remain confined to a tiny minority of desktop and laptop computers at home? “. He’s missed the mark. GNU/Linux is not confined to a tiny minority of computers at home. It may be in the USA but globally, GNU/Linux is on about 10% of PCs. We know that because Ballmer told us and that was a while ago. 30% of netbooks run GNU/Linux and almost all ARMed devices do not run that other OS.You can buy “no OS” and GNU/Linux PCs from most OEMs and some retail outfits.
The issues he implies are holding back GNU/Linux have nothing to do with many homes where DVDs are not watched. Who ever thought of using a PC to watch DVDs rather than using a DVD player and a television? I have XP machines in this building that have DVD players but do not play DVD movies. Ask the teachers who bought CDs for them. DVD sales fell 9% in 2009. They are not pivotal in the acquisition of a PC used for games, word-processing, browsing, or e-mailing. YouTube distributed more video than Hollywood. YouTube does not distribute DVDs.
No, video is not the holdup. Go into most big box retail stores and you are unlikely to see even one PC with GNU/Linux, not because people will not buy them or use them, but because a seller makes more money selling a more expensive PC, period. It has nothing to do with performance or user-friendliness. It has everything to do with exclusive dealing by M$, OEMs and retailers. Here, I have people walk up to me and ask me to install GNU/Linux on their computers because they have seen how well it works. The world has seen GNU/Linux run rings around that other OS on netbooks and on the web. The world wants GNU/Linux and will get it when they demand it. That is happening now.
Today, I paved over (with Debian GNU/Linux) six brand new PCs sold by OEMs with that other OS because they work much better with GNU/Linux. That is all the reason anyone needs to use GNU/Linux. The rest of the features of GNU/Linux are a bonus. Of a shipment of 12 PCs probably 10 will run GNU/Linux because that is what the end-users asked. A couple are leaving and they do not care what OS is on their PC. Only two asked for that other OS for their own reasons, one of which was for DVDs to play video. The fact that we can create and edit our own video with these PCs running GNU/Linux just as some of the big studios do is all the proof I need to insist video is not a problem for GNU/Linux. If suppliers of DVDs want to ignore GNU/Linux as a market, they may do so at their own peril. GNU/Linux is growing in popularity much faster than that other OS. The new WebM file format and included encoding pretty well guarantee that GNU/Linux will not have this problem much longer. Distributors of video who want to distribute to those using GNU/Linux would be well advised to use WebM.
In this school we have a number of HP CP1215 printers. They are not wonderful but we have a bunch. A teacher in one room is running that other OS. It took two tries to download and install a driver from HP, about an hour of time was wasted. XP could not find it on its own. In GNU/Linux, I plugged in the printer, clicked “find printer” on CUPS (http://localhost:631) and installed the thing in seconds. I have encountered many printers that that other OS offered no help in installing. Same thing with our wireless devices. The installation on XP is the pits. The device is instantly recognized in GNU/Linux. It took two hours to set up a new XP machine to run on our LAN and use our printers for the lady who wanted DVDs to play. Another teacher out of the blue asked me whether an educational CD he had would work with GNU/Linux. I installed Wine and it did. Now we have a GNU/Linux box that can also run malware…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 31st, 2010
in Uncategorized.
65 years after the close of WW2 and 93 years after the “Balfour Declaration“, Israel and its neighbours are still squabbling. This time, Israel boarded a ship delivering aid to Gaza and 10 people were killed. 500 were aboard, apparently, unlike routine aid-missions. The group organizing the mission apparently sought confrontation and Israel gave them what they wanted. According to the Law of the Sea, Israel was probably justified in boarding the vessel in order to regulate immigration but that is questionable since Gaza is blockaded but not nominally Israeli territory.
It is high time the Middle East sorted out its problems. They have to live with each other indefinitely and although they do not have to like each other they should end this stupid waste of life, energy and resources over territory and power. If they cannot settle matters by negotiation, peace should be imposed. Neither Israel nor the other countries of the Middle East are powerful enough to defy intervention. Aid, bulldozers and enough military power to make use of force futile should be dispatched ASAP. Humanity needs to police itself sometimes in order that the whole world can share peace and prosperity.
- Robert Pogson
I remember playing “Hangman” on the chalkboard of a one-room school-house in the 1950s. It was great sport on rainy/cold/winter days when outdoor recess was difficult. One constructs a hangman’s scaffold with every miss at a guess of a letter in an unknown word. Being “hung” builds vocabulary as one is motivated not to be hung again. It worked for me. Even with my poor memory, I can spell most words I use even without the spell-checker.
The game, KHangman, comes with many distros of GNU/Linux, and offers most of the features of the chalkboard plus you have a clue as to the category of the word and its length. Still, for young children it is challenging. As losing is no fun at all and exploring the dictionary is educational I decided to create an accessory for cheating at KHangman. Here is the code:
#!/bin/bash
echo cheat, copyright 2010 Robert Pogson. You are free to examine, modify, use and distribute this code under GNU GPL v3 or later
echo ln -s anywordlist wordlist in your HOME directory permits changing the wordlist used.
echo
echo Supply a pattern of known and unknown characters marked by a “.”, e.g. .i.n could be lion
echo Type q to quit, PgUp,PgDn,arrows,spacebar to scroll in the list of words
read
while [ "q" != $REPLY ];do grep ^$REPLY\$ $HOME/wordlist|less;echo Supply another pattern or “q” to exit cheat;read;done
I put this in /usr/local/bin/cheat so it will be in users’ PATH and I create a link on the XFCE4 panel using their “devilish” emoticon to be opened in terminal. This programme basically uses grep to match the pattern of known and unknown letters in the word against a wordlist. I used the Canadian large wordlist which I place a link in each user’s HOME directory (ln -s /usr/share/dict/canadian-english-large /home/someuser/wordlist). That way, users can replace the link for their own purposes. For example, teachers of early years may use a Dolch wordlist or one they make up to meet their educational objectives.
Here’s what it looks like in action. I showed two windows to show the before and after shots of cheat.
The sneaky thing about this programme is that it encourages them to read the dictionary without it being a tedious task, just part of a game in which they are motivated by the base instinct to survive.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 30th, 2010
in technology.
I was surprised to find my blog was in the top million sites. I wondered how other sites mostly about GNU/Linux fared:
- www.Linuxtoday.com – 1203 Wow!
- DesktopLinux.com – 374497
- www.Linux.com – 2889 Yes!
- kernel.org – 19990 Way to Go!
- www.debian.org – 1860 WhooHoo!
- www.ubuntu.com – 679 Wow!
- www.linuxquestions.org – 1004 Yay!
- www.linuxfoundation.org – unknown
- distrowatch.com – 756 Second Place?
- www.redhat.com – 1865 Wow!
- www.novell.com – 1363 Wow!
- www.redflag-linux.com – 559204
- mrpogson.com – 580528
Thank you, Netcraft.com, for these interesting facts to ponder. It does look as though GNU/Linux interests a lot of people.
For comparison, some sites unrelated to GNU/Linux by content do quite well, too:
- mail.google.com – 12
- www.microsoft.com – 41
- login.live.com – 15
- www.bing.com – 21
- www.google.com – 1
I would say the prospects for GNU/Linux are great. There is lots of interest and plenty of room to move up in the world.
Update: Alexa gives us a rating of 249929 in Great Britain but 4 million + overall… Maybe these numbers are a matter of opinion. Oops! I forgot. There are tons of Pogsons in UK. That’s where my ancestors left ca 1860. That popularity may be due to Pogsons checking their name in search engines…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2010
in technology.
No one likes tax men because they take our money but they are just doing their jobs. The tax man in Czechoslovakia is doing a bit more. Perhaps to increase tax revenue he is supporting the idea that computers bought without software should not give a tax deduction. How cute. He signed a release by the BSA equating using free software as “piracy”. He’s gone too far.
Watch that your tax man does not go for the same idea. Businesses invest in IT to provide/improve productivity. They should choose the best performance/price and if that is FLOSS on generic hardware it is none of the tax man’s business. Someone should give the Czech government a good kick. Hey! They are having an election! Now is a good time to demand FLOSS be respected by government. Oops! Too late. Social Democrats are winning but have a minority. There could be a right-wing coalition. It could be bad news for FLOSS in Czechoslovakia.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2010
in technology.
Phoronix must have had a slow news day:
The Huge Disaster Within The Linux 2.6.35 Kernel
The comments are about a kernel in development before a release-candidate and in rapid development, as usual for Linux. For one thing, they do not actually specify what kernel they are excited about. At http://www.phoromatic.com/kernel-tracker.php they talk about “This is a test schedule that runs daily after the test system(s) automatically install the latest mainline Linux kernel.“. The current mainline is 2.6.34.
The Linux folks are doing major surgery on BTRFS, the pet filesystem of Phoronix testing.
The testing Phoronix does may have some use but it is not a reflection on Linux in general just the filesystems and hardware that Phoronix uses that are quite narrow. The code in question is just a tiny percentage of Linux.
Pathetic twits…
“We are also more than happy to work with the Linux kernel community or any other software project in establishing more robust test procedures and greater test coverage. We will work with other vendors too, via our commercial entity.
Stay tuned to see how this bewildering performance problem is resolved and whether such a severe performance regression makes it again into the mainline code-base.”
Yeah. I bet. Who would want to work with such twits? They have never heard of debugging or alpha code or whatever. Linus and his crew know there are bugs. That’s why it is not a release-candidate yet.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2010
in technology.
At the end of the day, chickens like to gather in the shelter of the coop where they feel safe. Novell is having its chickens come home to roost. A couple of years ago they had a pop in business by making a deal with M$. M$ paid them up front and distributed certificates for Suse. Now those relationships are coming up for renewal and Novell is forced to make steep discounts. Customers paying full price might be interested to note that those who obtained the certificates from M$ are getting an 85% discount.
This means Novell is having a bit of a downturn although their other GNU/Linux business is up 46%. Other good news of course is that they have kicked SCO’s butt.
This also indicates that those who tried GNU/Linux are happy enough to keep using it and they do not value the need for support from Novell highly and more continue to ask for GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux is simple, modular and reliable.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2010
in technology.
Some comments have derided GNU/Linux showing in the server markets. Here are some facts for 1Q10:
- Revenue for all x86 servers = $6.8 billion (33.6% year on year growth)
- Revenue for all servers = $10.4 billion (4.7% year on year growth)
- Revenue for servers with that other OS = $5.1 billion (28.3% year on year growth)
- Units shipped for that other OS increased 28.3% year over year
- Units shipped for x86 = 1.8 million
- Revenue for servers with GNU/Linux = $1.7 billion (20.4% year on year growth)
AH HA! I can hear the fans of that other OS exclaiming that M$ is eating GNU/Linux for lunch. Not so. x86 servers shipped 1.8 million units in 1Q10. $3.6 billion shipped with neither GNU/Linux or that other OS (largely non x86). That’s about a million other servers. How many do you think had GNU/Linux installed in the shop? It’s not likely that any of them had that other OS since it only runs on x86 (or in a virtual machine).
I think the IDC numbers are suspect because all x86 = GNU/Linux + that other OS. You can buy barebones servers.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2010
in technology.
There are more sources indicating a trivial share of GNU/Linux in the browsing market. Check this out:
“92% of web sites serve a predominantly United States market (this is an area we would looking to add more diversity in the upcoming months)
32% of web sites we classify as e-commerce sites
29% of web sites we classify as corporate sites
20% of web sites we classify as content delivery (blogs, news sites, etc.)
19% of web sites we classify as “other”"
Well, at least they are honest and do not try to represent that their statistics represent the universe of browsing environments. That is how they can with a straight face tell us MacOS has an 11% share and GNU/Linux less than 1%. Come to think of it, how do they get the breakdown of GNU/Linux OS from server logs? My Iceweasel announces Debian but my Google-Chrome browser does not and GNU/Linux is all I use.
These are just more trash statistics telling the world or at least anyone who wants to listen that GNU/Linux is not relevant. Real statistics with pedigree showed that GNU/Linux surpassed MacOS share back in 2003 and has not looked back.
Would IDC produce a 44-page study of GNU/Linux share and charge $4500 for it if the share were 0.5%? I doubt it.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 29th, 2010
in technology.
M$ has announced a technical computing initiative to help scientists etc. develop software for cloud/cluster computing. They are a little late to the party... The thought that the maker of the world’s worst OS with the most vulnerabilities and the most restrictive EULA has anything to give the world with respect to high performance computing is ludicrous. M$ has ignored everything computer scientists have been telling them for 25 years. One would be very foolish to do anything in computing their way which involves lock-in and bloat both anathema to high performance computing.
89% of the top 500 high performance clusters run GNU/Linux and 1% run that other OS. That will not change any time soon. High performance computing is not about maintaining M$ in the manner to which it has become accustomed.
Scientist: Here we are today in the final moments of our solution to the problem of cancer… Oh, no, not phoning home, NOW! 535000 nodes phoning M$ because the EULA says they can… AAAGGGGHHHH!
IT Guy: I told you so. With gigabit/s connectivity, it will still take 1 hour 35 minutes. Go have a coffee, and a nap.
Later …
Scientist: Well, M$ did donate the software provided we gave them a hearty endorsement. I guess a few minor inconveniences are worth it.
IT Guy: Now the nodes are insisting on a critical update and re-re-reboot. With ripple-on effects this could take all day.
Scientist: How long would it take to convert to GNU/Linux?
IT Guy: 20 minutes to convert the nodes and 45 days to re-write the programme. The stuff M$ gave you does not work on anything but their OS.
Scientist: Sob! I should have listened to you…
This episode of As the Stomach Turns was brought to you buy the letter “e”, the logo for the world’s worst browser/OS integration as determined by the Internation Brotherhood of Malware Artists, and the number 67, the average number of re-re-reboots a node running that other OS needs every year just to stay warm.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
There is a decent article at eWeek: “10 Things Microsoft Can Do To Redefine Itself”
Mostly, I agree with them:
- Security
- Innovate
- Search
- FLOSS
- Games and Video
- Go Social Networking
- Ignore Apple
- Hardware, Hardware, Hardware
- Out with Ballmer
- More eye candy
Yes, a company with the money and manpower of M$ could do all of these things and be flying in about three years but it will not happen. They are too busy being spiteful and trying to deny success to others. Most of the things on that list are about sharing and M$ does not do that well. Perhaps changes at the top could change the whole spirit of the company to make this all possible but there are forces set up to make change impossible. Even Gates still has a seat at the table. He made his billions but still will not let it go. It will probably take ten years and a few heart-attacks to bring this kind of change. Ballmer says he is all in favour of some of these but there is no movement at all.
M$ has done a few things well to diversify: server software and games but they are nowhere to be seen in search and social networking. Hotmail and MSN are sad things. There are millions who believe the web starts with the blue “e” and those but they often find out they are being throttled. A company who likes WGdisA and UAC and “wait, please wait” just cannot do social. They have all the resources to do everything well but because they cannot let go of monopoly and take a chance on competing on price and performance they are doomed to the tar pits.
Security is a joke with that other OS. You cannot entangle infinite features linking everything to everything, including backwards-compatibility of defects and have security. They have too many customers comfortable with bloat and insecurity to be able to change without a major effort, apologies, re-education and a complete rewrite.
No. M$ is not about to change. They may be motivated in a few years when the market share has sagged to 50% but not before. They can keep paying people to support their monopoly until about that point. Then it will be futile. In the meantime the world continues to advance and leave them behind.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in technology.
The onslaught of ARMed devices will continue indefinitely. Check out the smartphone/tablet Dell has announced. We still do not know the price of it but all they have to do to get some action is be in the neighborhood of the iPad which has fewer features: no Flash and no phone.
OEMs have been busy for six months or so gearing up for the battle in the market. Consumers will have lots of choice matching up price/performance/features. OEMs are jockying for position to have the right feature-set, price and performance while avoiding mistakes. No one seems to want to be first but everyone wants to join the charge. Dell is using Android on ARM/Snapdragon. It looks good to me. Success for Dell depends on price and advertising. They really need to improve their site but I expect this gizmo will be on the front page for a while.
- Robert Pogson
I just turned on parallel booting in Debian GNU/Linux. Teachers will be pleased:
Of course the BIOS dances around a bit and the boot menu has a default 3s delay for testing but I will set that to 0 before rolling this out to more teachers. I did tests with dual SATA 500 gB drives in RAID 1 to see that, indeed, two files at once may be read (two heads are better than one). I even throttled the drives down to 160 gB so they would not have so far to seek. Compare this with the minutes they have to wait for XP on our old hardware. Teachers are going to love GNU/Linux. It might reduce coffee consumption, however. Login takes 3s to get to a usable desktop.
To enable parallel booting, all I had to do was include this line,
CONCURRENCY=makefile
in /etc/default/rcS . Cool. I still have a bit of room to improve DHCP. That takes up to 3s on my DLINK box. I could issue static IP addresses and save a couple more seconds.
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.159 — renewal in 295203 seconds.
real 0m1.622s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.012s
I could also install a faster DHCP server.
Here’s the result with fixed IP address and CONCURRENCY=makefile:
I measured the following times with a clock on the wall:
- Power on until boot menu appears: 13s
- boot menu to login screen: 17s
- login screen to usable desktop: 4s
That is a big improvment over the minutes we spend waiting/please waiting on XP on our old hardware.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
I stumbled upon an article giving solutions to problems that mostly were made by M$. A better solution the writer missed is to use GNU/Linux and be done with most of those things. No pesky EULA. No malware. No slowing down and few re-re-reboots.
Some folks like the Media Centre version of that other OS. Check out MythTV or XBMC and a bunch of others. There is choice. I saw XBMC running this year and it is great. You can get a single remote to run the TV, the PC and the software.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in technology.
Google’s VP8 FLOSS video code and WebM file format are brewing a bit of a turf war and the old guard is circling the wagons around H264. There is an idea to add VP8 and WebM to HTML5. That would ensure that everyone with any browser or OS could use HTML5 properly but the old guard wants to make money from HTML5 by holding patents and charging licence fees to use a video codec.
Thus, the battle lines are drawn. The FLOSS side is in a bit of disarray with the OSI and Google squabbling about who is more open… but I expect that will be settled shortly when they finally talk with each other directly rather than through the media. Google’s Chrome Browser already allows most of us to use the codec so practical matters are not the issue, just politics. The dark cloud on the horizon is whether the MPEG-LA jackasses will “go after” Google or just the browsers like FireFox and Opera. Google will fight. Will the smaller organizations have the strength? I don’t know but I expect there will be a fight and that FLOSS will win. Bilski could settle that issue more or less next week…
So far, it looks like Apple is the only organization on the planet that thinks Google can be stopped in this initiative. HEHEHE. The other Steve is in for a rude awakening.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 28th, 2010
in technology.
I am a cheapskate. I look for the best price performance ratio. For a long time that was Opteron on the server. When AMD pushed 64bits ahead of Intel they commanded a premium price per CPU but when Intel caught up, AMD cut prices making 64bit the way to go. I drooled over SUN’s ads for low-end servers that were not out of reach of our minimal school budgets. I was even tempted to apply for some of their freebies to get SUN into schools.
That was then. Now Oracle which bought SUN is looking to cut AMD from their server lines.
“In January, Charles Phillips, Oracle’s co-president, said the company is not interested in being in the commodity x64 server racket. ”
…
The biggest news for Ideas at the event was Mr Sigler’s announcement that Oracle intends to go forward with just a single x86 processor architecture. The company will bring to market new Sun x86 server using the Intel processor architecture, and has no plans to develop any new servers with the AMD processors, including Magny-Cours. In fact, Mr. Sigler said that the company is in the process of EOL’ing the current family of AMD x86 servers.”
Ouch! That’s it then. Oracle will concentrate on Intel Xeons at the low-end. For the price Oracle charges per processor for their database, their favourite customers will gladly plunk down a premium for Intel chips. What about MySQL then, the commodity database? What is the point of continuing that to run on premium hardware?
I think Oracle may be making a mistake. Business may be willing to give up competition in software but not in hardware.
see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/27/oracle_spikes_opterons/
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 27th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
The CEO of Acer has a Christmas present for M$, a tablet PC running Android GNU/Linux. TFA does not give much technical information but this is the kind of product that Acer has been selling to banks, ISPs, cellular networks and so on as bonus or inducements for customers.
- 2007 – netbooks
- 2008 – smartphones
- 2009 – recession
- 2010 – tablets + ARM
M$ has had a lot of coal in its stockings the last few years. They must feel unloved.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 27th, 2010
in technology.
I was poking around Netcraft.com and was surprised to discover mrpogson.com is in the million busiest sites list especially when there are 206 million sites out there. I guess there are a lot of slow sites…
I have been pleased with growth in readership.
Blog stats for three weeks of May 2010
Thanks to all of you.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 27th, 2010
in technology.
The NY Times has an interesting picture of the stock-market value of M$ and Apple over time. Prominent features are obvious exponential growth of the capitalization of M$ under Gates up to ca 2000 and a level under Ballmer since. Apple is showing exponential growth still and has surpassed the market cap of M$.
One must wonder how M$ magically switched from exponential growth to level when they have a monopoly on x86 PCs which continued to have exponential growth in units shipped. The best answers I can see are:
- GNU/Linux began to be viable on the desktop around 2000 and was vastly more reliable at that time. GNU/Linux must be enjoying exponential growth for this to be so.
- Apple is taking share from M$, particularly in USA/Europe where folks have tons of money to spend and will pay a higher price to get more reliable results
- Ballmer may be a great cheerleader for salesmen but he lacks the expertise to drive a technology company
That oversimplifies things because M$ does give substantial return on investment in dividends. I would expect the market cap of M$ would decline if those dividends were not given.
The question remains, “Where does all that cash go?”. M$ claims $8 billion annually in “research” but it probably amounts to market research and some flailing of ideas in the back rooms. A lot of cash must be going to OEMs and retailers to promote/sustain the monopoly. They are buying off so many with so much that there is not enough left for investors to be excited. The latest 10Q shows $4 billion in income but only 13cents per share of dividend. The earnings per share was 46 cents. This shows how weak the monopoly is. If the cost of issuing licences is that high, the end is near.
Why Apple continues to grow with the products they sell is beyond my understanding. I shop based on price/performance and I do not see Apple’s products as superior in any way to a PC running GNU/Linux or a cell-phone running GNU/Linux. Apple does use ARM on some gadgets which is a technological plus but the rest of their empire is anal-retentive nonsense. Vertical integration may be efficient for Apple but it is not in the best interest of consumers/other businesses. I think a lot of Apple’s success is due to the technological failure that that other OS is. Consumers are being convinced that Apple has the answer. They are not seeing other possibilities.
This is the Year of Arm IMHO so the near-monopoly that Apple enjoys in Armed gadgets will be weakened. Similarly GNU/Linux is being seen as valid by many millions so I predict this will be the last year that Apple has exponential growth or at least growth at this level. Good products in gadgets and PCs can be produced for less with GNU/Linux and ARM. Both M$ and Apple will cling to their markets by slowly reducing prices. They can be in a holding pattern for years at this stage but there is light on the horizon for open solutions.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 26th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
The search has been unsuccessful. Since this latest effort was based on pings received by a submarine last summer, we expected success. The largest pieces of wreckage found floating, the tail fin and a cabinet, are of a size sonar would have detected on a flat bottom. I expect there are larger pieces on the bottom, wings, engines, spars, etc. so either the terrain is very rough and everything found a fox-hole in which to hide or there is some systematic error between the coordinate systems of the submarine and searchers. I expect those details to be worked out and a subsequent search will be successful. I cannot see France, Air France, AirBus or the BEA dropping this when they must be very close. There is some possibility that the recorders have no useful information but the fact that AirBus seems to have a problem, so far unidentified, and the closure wanted by the victims, airlines and humanity should be sufficient reasons to continue after some reflection on what might have gone wrong with the search.
Beside the possibility of a systematic error in coordinates, it may be that the pinger died too soon after detection to narrow the location sufficiently. In that case, a wider search in the vicinity would be required. There is not sufficient public data to know. One strategy may be to open the data to the view of the world and use the best ideas that result. Another may be to offer a reward and issue copies of the data to entrepreneurs. Movie rights alone, on this search, should be sufficient incentive to gather the right people to do the job. However the search goes forward, it will eventually succeed to bring closure. The wreckage may be sufficiently informative even if the recorders tell nothing.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 25th, 2010
in technology.
I have not been shopping for mobile PCs lately but unit sales are still increasing. Gartner has numbers that show ACER and ASUS had the largest growth rate and
Coincidence? I don’t think so. HP and the others are not big on “No OS”. I think “No OS” may be working for folks who hate that other OS and want to pick their own OS, such as GNU/Linux. I think about 10% of PC users are able/willing to install an OS so a large part of the growth of ASUS and Acer could be due to this plus the fact that they push low-end mobile PCs.
In the “good, old days” of the monopoly, M$ could veto “No OS” but no longer. OEMs are beginning to see a light at the end of the monopolistic tunnel. They can make money defying the monopoly. “No OS” will likely remain a small part of things but it is another slice of the market that M$ cannot touch. It also helps those who use GNU/Linux but prefer a distro not offered by OEMs. I expect continued growth of GNU/Linux in the mobile space as a result.
If this growth continues, Acer could displace HP in mobile and ASUS could overtake Dell. When that happens, HP and Dell will respond with more stuff at the low end and, probably more GNU/Linux stuff. It may take a year or two for this to come to pass but every unit sold with no OS or getting installed with GNU/Linux is a licence fee lost to the monopoly, weakening it. This is good.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 25th, 2010
in technology.
The idiots at Apple and their loyal customers are foolishly using a browser that allows a website to save to the local hard drive any number of potentially malicious files without user intervention. Does that make sense? Denial of bandwidth and filling the hard drive come to mind immediately.
Apple has not done anything about this vulnerability for two years. It shows where Steve’s priorities lie. It’s not a vulnerability. It’s a convenience for users and malware artists. It may not be so convenient for users if malware artists bomb them with 9384 files with random names. How long would it take users to sort out the list and fix the mess? Order by date/cut, I suppose.
Yet another reason to use GNU/Linux, an OS designed by geeks for performance. Carpet bombing self is not performance, Steve.
- Robert Pogson
LSE claims it will save millions of dollars annually by using Millenium Exchange on GNU/Linux instead of TradeElect on that other OS. This is another case where buying a company producing a product was cheaper than paying the costs of licensing some non-free stuff. We don’t know the details of their cost structure but if they are saving money like that even while using the costly Oracle DB, the cost of TradElect must have been huge. LSE is writing off millions in depreciation on the money invested in TradeElect. Switchover is expected to come in September.
I think everyone should look at stories like this one and realize there are less costly ways of doing IT based on FLOSS on desktop or server. The same benefits of speed, low licensing costs, freedom to examine and modify the code, and fast development times apply to the desktop as well as the server.
Don’t let businesses have all the fun, run Debian GNU/Linux today. The staff here are in agreement to distribute a dozen new PCs to teachers. These are fairly hot machines with all the goodness needed to run that other OS (meaning they will fly with GNU/Linux). I will set mine up with VirtualBox to provide documentation/video of the installation process and operation and maintenance. Some of the result may be posted here and YouTube. The staff expressed a desire to have IT that works, works faster and is maintainable. They asked for some training which we will start this week. We can do that much more easily with GNU/Linux than with that other OS. We have in the building 80 PCs now with only part-time IT support. It was impossible to keep the other OS running. Teachers are having constant problems struggling with the slowing down of that other OS and dealing with malware. With GNU/Linux, most problems are fixable in seconds by remote administration.
Some tests on the new machines this weekend are very interesting. I was able to boot in 10s with a basic configuration. With a full XFCE4 desktop setup, it takes a bit longer, 15s. Folks were used to taking minutes to boot XP on the old machines. Is anyone going to object that it’s not running that other OS when it’s this fast? I haven’t even configured the RAID yet…
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 24th, 2010
in technology.
There is no news of Bilski on SCOTUSBLOG.
No news is good news. Next shot is likely June 1.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 24th, 2010
in technology.
They make no bones about it. These trolls are “going after” users of technology. They are pirates. Let us hope SCOTUS pops their balloon today.
If SCOTUS does not fix the problem of software patents soon, I expect GOOGLE will get involved in a united front against these trolls and the outcome will, no doubt, get to the US Supreme Court sooner or later. Whichever side loses early rounds will be determined to take the matter to a higher level. This issue is not something that cross-licensing is likely to fix. GOOGLE needs the web to be free and the opposition needs the web to be locked-in. There is no middle ground.
- Robert Pogson
BECTA is to be closed this year in a cost-cutting expedition of the government of the UK. Having mixed results from similar organizations in Canada, I have mixed feelings about BECTA. It, at one time, advised schools to delay licensing from M$ because it was not cost-effective to do so and it studied the use of thin clients and GNU/Linux in schools.
Centralized organizations like BECTA help schools who cannot afford the time, manpower and money to study the use of technology in schools but they can also be irrelevant as particular schools may have particular problems glossed over by the remote academics. In my school, such organizations have provided anti-malware software and licences that is a pain to use but they also supply us with PCs, parts, and access to the Internet. If only they would supply us a budget and let us do our own shopping…. The relationship reminds me of my father’s tales of his days in the army where it was every man’s duty to find ways to get around higher-ups dictates which often seemed irrelevant to the existence of the troops. He was particularly annoyed by orders not to fire at the enemy when the opportunity arose (must not reveal our position…) or spending weeks studying techniques that were never deployed. He was once scolded for using a few litres of gasoline to run a salvaged German motorcycle while it was SOP to wash trucks with gasoline…
I do not know what the result of BECTA’s demise will be. It would be good if schools formed their own umbrella organization and used FLOSS and the FLOSS community for similar benefits to what BECTA does.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 24th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
In an interview with Fortune Magazine, Steve Ballmer stated “There’s nothing free about Android.” Wrong, Steve. Android is Free:
- anyone can run the software,
- anyone can examine the source code,
- anyone can modify the source code, and
- anyone can distribute the code unmodified or modified under the same licence that comes with the code.
Of course, Steve claims M$ owns some/all of the technology on which Android is based. They have not made public what that technology is. They will not make public what that technology is because it’s vapourware (software patents). The mists under which they hide could be dissipated today, within a couple of hours, thanks to SCOTUS.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 23rd, 2010
in technology.
“Tomorrow never comes.”, I was told as a youth.
I expect tomorrow, 2010-5-24, will come as usual but with a good chance at an opinion from Scotus on Bilski. Of course there is no news yet, but idle speculation is always good on slow news days.
Others who are speculating hold that Bilski will not get his business methods patent but that software patents may live on. I don’t see it that way, because a business method defined by a list on paper or on a computer screen are indistinguishable in this day and age. One of the supremes asked a question about software patents being a back door for business methods patents. Further, software is covered by copyright so why have protection of “intellectual property” two ways for the same thing, one very long and the other too long, 20 years? Software patents just do not make any sense. Software is a permutation of a finite number of programming language statements or operation codes, nothing more. Giving a listing of the source code to an expert in the language/machine makes it obvious, too. If a machine can “understand” the software well enough to execute it, a human can certainly find it obvious.
Tomorrow is a national holiday in Canada but the supremes will be at work. I hope they file their opinions. That will make a great day, clarifying muddy water. If, somehow, they dodge the issue of software patents, business methods patents will return to bite them as software patents. If they put the nails in the coffin of software patents, the whole world can rejoice in sanity returning to the job of making IT work for us and not the patent trolls. It will be interesting to see what write-downs occur in financial statements as a result. Some very big outfits have billions invested in software patents, hoping to extort many more billions from the world. Free Software may indeed be free tomorrow and a lot more valuable.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 21st, 2010
in technology.
First ASUS unleashes netbooks with GNU/Linux. Then they push that other OS. Now they are selling good netbooks with no OS but Expressgate. What’s with that?
Surely M$ does not approve. Is this another sign that M$ is losing its grip on OEMs? You can find “No OS” products from ASUS all over the world. Finally, an OEM is recognizing that there is a market for computer geeks who are willing to do a bit of work for $50 off the price. The solidarity of partners is now in question. If the partners can make as much money by not sharing with M$, why should they? The result is more choice for consumers. Amen. Is ASUS responding to the market or behaving like a lost sheep needing rescue? Will M$ “rescue” ASUS by giving them still better a deal? Will the market decide what to buy based on price and performance? Stay tuned.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson May 20th, 2010
in Uncategorized.
Wow! Google is serious about pushing its new video codec, VP8. They wish to standardize a new file format, .webm, that will be powered by a single codec for audio and a single codec for video so if your system can handle .webm, the media will play. Great! How frustrating it has been to have to search for dozens of codecs for the same file format. This will start on Youtube for 720p and above immediately. That cuts out most of the video I watch on Youtube but I am not .webm ready anyway. This is a demonstration and I expect most distros will support this standard soon. It will be interesting to see what M$ does. They push H264. Will they help out millions of users of Youtube or will Google have to take care of M$’s customers for them? 
I wonder whether Hollywood will see it is in their best interests to use an open format for video? If not, Youtube may pass them by. Youtube is already the largest source of video on the planet. Who needs Hollywood if they do not want to be open with us? According to Wikipedia, “It is estimated that 24 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the United States.”
- Robert Pogson
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