Treo 650 owners like myself will at least sympathise with this: It’s obvious that Palm 5 is the “swan song” for this once mighty and ubiquitous handheld operating system. I confidently predict that there will never be another Palm OS 5 based smartphone from Palm, nor will any manufacturer including Palm build any hardware based on Palm 6 Operating System. The Palm OS ride is over, wasn’t it fun?
According to this CNET article, Palm (the company that invented the eponymous Palm Pilot personal organiser) is mulling over a switch to Windows as it’s primary handheld operating system. Justifying a switch to Microsoft’s platform, Palm’s CFO stated “CIOs don’t get fired for using Microsoft products”.
I remember about fifteen years ago people used to say exactly the same thing about buying IBM. Whenever you see technology companies justifying technical decisions on the basis of what is least likely to get an individual fired it’s a sure sign of impending doom.
Surely a technology company like Palm should be making it’s tech decisions based on what is likely to deliver the best value for customers, and therefore drive the greatest sales. If this requires Palm becoming yet another ‘Me Too’ Windows based handheld builder then so be it. I suspect that Palm can do better than this. Remember, Palm once made their name from selling technology products that were radical and unique at the time they were invented. The leaders are now followers.
On the other hand, what about Microsoft? They were once the company that displaced that lumbering giant IBM. They brilliantly took advantage of the market’s disaffection for it’s leader. IBM (for all their apparent benevolence) were the company who invented FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) as a negative marketing policy and are responsible for the monopolistic bankruptcy of many more rivals than Microsoft. IBM’s reputation for arrogance and screwing customers still is legendary.
Microsoft have reached the point that IBM did fifteen years ago. It’s the point when everybody believes that the leader is invincible that normally signals the beginning of the end. Perhaps CIOs don’t get fired for choosing Microsoft, but they don’t get promoted either.
This article from BusinessWeek’s new blog-format section is just great. Steve Hamm has attempted to pierce the veil of obfuscation and mis-information surrounding certain analysts reports. For example the Yankee Group published claimes that businesses are just not interested in Linux and Open-Source technology; furthermore they alleged that businesses are fleeing Linux and Open-Source products in order to embrace the wonders of proprietary software.
Reading between the lines, Steve has demonstrated that the headlines often show the exact opposite of what the survey found; a survey without any screening or randmised sampling; which actually shows a considerable level of satisfaction with Linux and Open-Source products.The only groups who seem to express a dislike for Linux are companies who have already invested a great deal in Windows 2003 Server. I think we can assume that they have taken the Microsoft Injection.
On the other hand, one might wonder why Steve Hamm is bothering to debunk Laura DiDio and the Yankee Group, whose reputation has been utterly trashed by Pamela Jones of Groklaw. Communications from the Yankee Group, are written in doublespeak so obfuse that it could have come from the Ministry of Truth.
The big irony is that without the trust of trade trade journalists like Steve, analysts like Laura are worthless. Once journalists start to question the statistics behind the spin, analysts like Laura will find themselves without anybody willing to trust them.
Recently I’ve been haunted by the cute, funky bleeps and clanks of 8-bit music. Especially pecan medley by an artist named yuppster, which includes a short but stirring tribute to the seminal eighties hit Take On Me, which is notable for its use of rotoscoping.
Feeling inspired, I tried to find out how to make music like this, but it seems that there is no easy way - you have to plug Game boy carts into your brain-stem or compile some somethings. I even tried installing the CPC6128 emulator on the Mac and loading up an old music program, figuring I could use… I don’t know, some Audio program… to record to MP3. but the interface was taking too long and my initial squirt of enthusiasm was soon smothered in the labyrinth of procedure.
It all got me to thinking about the lo-fi music I grew up hearing on my Amstrad CPC 464 and how evocative negative space can be, like the black backgrounds in those old games. Since Wipeout hit the Playstation about ten years ago, all the blank space in video games seems to have been taken up all kinds of stuff, adverts, flashing things, rendered landscapes etc. Sometimes this is how I feel walking through London - it’s like a hundred He-Man adverts a minute, all screaming for my attention. I defy you, He-Man! I am Skeletor!
I felt a profound sense of relief as the postal teller accepted the parcel containing the iRiver PMP-140, which I had only obtained four days earlier. For the reasons outlined in my previous article, this gadget completely failed to live up to my expectations, so I had to return it.
Fortuantely, iRiver are not the only company attempting to build a Linux based pocket PVR
I just recieved my “Linux Technical Resource Kit”, a 3 DVD compliation of pretty much everything Suse, Ximian and Novell have to offer on the Linux platform. It all looks like cool software however I doubt I will ever have time to use it. In any case, there is something strangely off-putting about the cover:
 |
Is this elation or is this insane fear? Is he delighted with his Linux infrastructure or has Darl McBride offered to stick that biro up his nose. |
I guess folks do things different in Utah…
Roll up, get your SCOX shares; If you believe what the shills say, it’s going to “too the moon!”, however the only way I can imagine this happening is if it first plummets from orbit, smashes into the Earth (leaving a 10 mile crater) and then ricochets onto the unfortunate planetoid. If this were to happen, lets hope that the crater is somewhere near Lindon, Utah.
Fantasy aside, thanks to handy investment calculator I can see how SCO group could be nurturing my investment; If I had been smart enough to invest $1000 on th 21st March 2003, just look at how much sweet wonga I could have made!
And on a lighter note, IBM has just filed for “Partial Summary Judgement” against the vast majority of SCOX’s claims in their increasingly absurd SCOXvsIBM case. It’s quite a heavy read for the unaquainted, however if it helps, you should picture IBM spreading it’s corporate butt-cheeks adjacent to SCO’s nose and issuing forth a trumpet of heavy brown lawyering gas. This will leave SCOX coughing and spluttering for days.
… for the sysadmin who would much rather be running Windows NT 4.
A month after we all agreed to standardise on Zope as our content management system, One of my clients (for some inexplicable reason), has decided to standardise on RHEL3 as the company-wide Linux platform. That would be just great were it not for the fact that no Red-Hat distribution ever (even Fedora) has ever supported any version of Zope, or endorses the use of the Python programming language for anything other than their own up2date rpm management utilities.
Just what is it about RHEL that companies value? If you ask the IT manager, they will normally say ’stability’ - but what exactly does that mean? I run Gentoo Linux on my servers which is (allegedly) the least stable linux distribution. On the whole, I would say the RHEL servers are no more reliable than the Gentoo servers (assuming that both are well-managed). What red-hat mean by stability is that they tend not to update packages for a particular distribution release, only apply internally developed patches as bugs are fixed.
After a few years of running RHEL, you could have a GNU/Linux operating system with most of it’s major packages in a non-standard configuration. If you had been running Gentoo, FreeBSD or Debian most of your packages would be as their authors originally intended. When yor distro is EOL’d, and you have to migrate to a new server, the chances are that your applications would be just as broken as if you had run a more advanced disribution.
I’m not so naive that I cannot see the value in a very stable (in the sense of lack of change) distribution; but those benefits are utterly voided by wanting to run a package like Zope, which by sheer force of it’s development community is a rapidly developing tool. In order to install Zope on RHEL you need custom compile a large number of packages, and if running Zope was the server’s primary function, you have now lost the benefit of your RHEL subscription for all but the basic components of the server’s operating system.
In my opinion, people who like RHEL would probably be much happier running Windows 2003 server. For everybody else, I suggest considering wether you value stability (lack of change) more than stability (reliability), and if not consider less sluggish distribtions.
Litigious Bastards, the SCO Group, recieved a summary slapping from Judge Chabot, in her Michigan court. All counts of SCO Group’s case against Daimler Chrystler Corporation have been dismissed except one; was it appropriate for DC to take more than 30 days to respond to a request to certify use of a product that DC had abandoned more than seven years ago; the request having been sent to the wrong person at a building that no longer exists. I wish the SCOX group the best of luck addressing that claim.
In their original complaint, SCOX complained that despite DC having informed them that the machine originally certified for System V UNIX was put out of use a long time ago, they still demanded a list of certified machines, and in any case they took too long to reveal this fact.
DC Responded by explaining that it is not possible nor even relevant to provide a list of machines, and that their certification was valid because they have correctly informed SCO Group of the status of any machines licensed to run the product. An empty list is still a list.
Could this be the frequently predicted (but often delayed) ultimate doom of the SCO group? Is this the beginning of the end? Of the five main court-cases involving the SCO group and Linux related matters one has been lost, two are suspended (Redhat, Autozone), and two appear to be turning sour for SCO (IBM, Novell).
Meanwhile, SCO remain chipper in the face of almost certain doom. In an almost complete reversal of his commengts from a week ago, Blake Stowell said: “‘We’re satisfied that DaimlerChrysler did finally certify their compliance with the software agreement, but we are still interested in gaining some information on why they didn’t certify within the allotted time. [The Case] is not completely over yet, because the judge still held out the possibility that we could pursue trying to find out information from DaimlerChrysler on why they took so long to certify.’”
In the world of Linux, there are few issues that arouse more passion than Gentoo (e.g. AdTI, SCO). Depending on who you ask Gentoo is either the best and most elegant, or the stupidest and most time-wasting Linux distribution on the planet. While there are no shortage of fans (I count myself as one), the anti-gentoo crowd also have some valid points.
* Gentoo is for Ricers: This site is dedicated to exposing the stupid writings of Gentoo zealots. The author compares the average teenage gentoo-user to the sort of boy-racer who annoys the hell out of everybody with his souped-up death mobile.
* Mandrake Expatriate Syndrome: The central thesis of this site is that Gentoo is rather pointless because it combines features from FreeBSD, Debian and Mandrake but provides the worst features of all.
Personally I kind of like Gentoo, but not for the reasons suggested by either of the sites; I dont optimize all that much, but I do like having access to packages that other distros would consider unstable. I also like the community spirit, where everybody seems to be more than willing to contribute eBuilds, fixes and generally help out. I also like the elitism of it - not everybody can get their heads around installing it. Most people who use it will be commited in some way to Open-Source software, plus be at least as technical as me.
On the whole I find working with the Gentoo boxes more satisfying than Mandrake or Redhat. In general, the box that gives me the most trouble in my daily work is a Mandrake 9.1 box, and is actually the machine responsible for serving this page to you.
This evening I re-encountered a problem I came across a while back. It all happened when I was trying to get some comprehensively-named choons by Liberation Jumpsuit from my Gentoo box onto my Powerbook via Netatalk.
Despite having 10 tracks in the folder on the Gentoo box, the finder in OSX displayed the folder as empty. This is because AFP versions below 3 support a maximum filename length of 32 characters, and Netatalk 1.6.4 on my Gentoo box implements one of these older versions. The implementation in OSX has no such problems, so an OSX to OSX AFP connection should have no problems.
I gather from various postings on the web that there is a hack option to enable long filename support which breaks the protocol but works fine with OSX. I’ve yet to find it though.