begin oe_protect.scr
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> Will China Be Linux's Best Friend In 2007?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| The sale of IBM's PC division to Chinese-owned Lenovo was only the tip of
>| the iceberg, it seems. Now, the latest news indicate that computers running
>| on Chinese-made processors and running Linux will be introduced before the
>| Chinese New Year. Good news indeed for those who would like to see Intel
>| and Microsoft's domination of the global PC market finally face some
>| genuine competition.
>|
>| [...]
>|
>| The things in favor of the Chinese PCs: a) through its sheer size,
>| China has considerable economic leverage on most countries in the
>| West (particularly Canada and the US) and may simply demand that
>| these new computers be given a serious opportunity in overseas
>| markets; b) successful adoption of the computers in its own country
>| could lead to greater likelihood of adoption in other countries;
>| and c) priced quite low, these computers may garner an initial
>| following as a novelty or a toy for hobbyists and/or Linux
>| afficionados, leading to further growth.
> `----
>
> http://www.performancepccanada.com/?defaultarticle=1066&defaultnode=516&layout=20&pagefunction=Load%20Layout&formfields[sect_title]=Editorial
> http://tinyurl.com/yosn7t
>
> They say that Japan started this way as well. Poor copycats of western
> technologies, which over time evolved to suprass them in terms of quality
> and beat them on price.
>
Certainly, post-war Japan built very much on this model, but pre-war,
their engineering capabilities had been very good indeed.
Their post-war technology hit the "disruptive technology" mark head-on,
in that they were 1/2 as good at better than 10% of the price. Take a
portable radio, you could buy a really top-notch Hacker or Roberts radio
(before Roberts were just a Philips label), or a B&O one, for around
£10. Or, you could buy a Japanese or Hong Kong radio for Â10. The
Hacker, Roberts or B&O would knock the spots off the Japanese or HK
radio in every aspect from audio quality, sensitivity, selectivity,
3rd-order intercept, mechanical build quality, likely lifetime, and so
on.
Well, I still have one of the last Hackers ever made, as well as a real
rarity, a Hacker record player/tuner (the valved versions were called
radiograms). The radio and record player will still outperform pretty
much every mass-market Japanese radio or record player made since they
were produced. But, the price was the issue...
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
-- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
|
|
