The new looks of Slashdot?

LASHDOT will become standards-compliant XHTML/CSS rather soon as new code is currently being tested. If these changes were to be confirmed, one wonders how the vast audience would react. Perhaps the new layout would have slow penetration as it gets exposed to the community already. Looking at the Web Archive and making a comparsion with the new layout, long tradition definitely gets broken. I, for one, welcome the change reluctantly.

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

ECENTLY I came to discover more about the personaility of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, perhaps possessed by the measles. He has become yet another one of the ugly guys in the block, perhaps even topping the man above. He was caught yelling “I’m going to f—ing kill Google” and throwing a chair across his office. Anger management comes to mind.

Given the aggressive behaviour of Microsoft, it was not too surprising when Massachusetts prepared a proposal that will drop Office in favour of Open Source solutions. I wish them to best of luck in their future endeavours, which are sure to insire the remainder of the country over the long term.

Massachusetts is preparing to deliver another challenge to Microsoft’s core PC software business: a directive to force all 50,000 desktop computers used by state employees to be stripped of Microsoft’s Office, the suite of applications used on an estimated 95 per cent of PCs the world over. Instead, they would be required to run an open-source version, such as OpenOffice or StarOffice – software produced by volunteer programmers and distributed free of charge.

A comparison to evaluate running costs over a length of time

ECENTLY, a fair bit of discusion focused on costs of Windows in the enterprise versus Open Source solutions. There are still many arguments between those whose familiarity with Open Source-based systems does not coincide with that of the manager. Furthermore, heavy advertising campaigns which Microsoft launched make it difficult to avoid deceit. More than ever before, there are vicious attempts to convince the public that Open Source is more costly, less secure and even bound to vanish.

One of the more disturbing facts is that a large corporation, which at present feeds on billions from the public, is able to run a propaganda whose budget is merely infinite. Despite all, we now come to discover that IBM have run their own independent TCO study, in which they compare cost (taking effectiveness into account) of the different solutions available. The study concludes that:

Linux is 40% less expensive than a comparable x86-based Windows server and 54% less than a comparable Sparc-based Solaris server.

This provides a long-anticipated answer to many who required it. A typical system administrator, who is inclined to favour Linux, can now use the above as concrete backing. The manager who makes the final decisions will sooner or later digest these facts and figures.

Related items:

• Microsoft-funded Benchmarks
• Reasons to Use Linux

A humorous article, which was sarcastically called “Five Reasons NOT to Use Linux” in fact talks about why Linux is better than Windows.

In short, here are the arguments listed by the article’s author:

• The Windows Registry has deficiencies
• Windows is hard to install due to patching, AV, etc.
• Windows lacks built-in applications
• Windows is not secure
• Windows is more expensive

Is you are not convinced about any of the above, have a look at the essay. It provides compelling arguments and includes references to support them.

My screens at the time of writing – WordPress is on the right monitor

nly a couple of days ago I finished implementing the little tool (pet mini-project) which I have longed for. I finally made everything public this morning. In a nutshell, the tool serves 2 tasks at the moment:

• It grabs a screenshot of my display every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, and puts it on a public Webspace, which I can then access from anywhere
• Similarly, some simple scripts get usage statistics (memory and CPU) as well as running tasks and make these public via the Web

To me this is valuable as I can ‘eavesdrop’ on my computer while I am away. All of this is done without the need for remote login means such as Telnet or SSH; the disadvantage is that things are passive. Since screenshots are visual, there is no need to forward X11 (component responsible for display and user interaction in most UNIX systems) either. Feel free to take advantage of these scripts. You can see an example of these scripts in action by viewing the bottom of my introduction page. Although it jeopardises my privacy slightly, visitors can now see (roughly) what I work on. I personally use it to check when my experiments have reached completion.

cedemic institutes seek to provide a large number of workstations to their students. The more workstations, the more of computer-based education fits into the school’s curriculum. An observation can be made which says that schools buy the wrong computers. Licences for the software they run, despite the bulk discounts, can cost as much as the computer itself, if not exceed that cost. When accommodating a computer cluster and paying over $1000 per Windows-based machine, the number of available computers will inevitable drop. As Linspire.com shows, each student in Indiana will soon have his/her own Linux box at school. This is particularly important where kids do not have a computer at home. Will more schools follow suit? This certainly happens in Manchester as well, albeit rather slowly.

RedHat Linux

As hardware costs drop, it is gets harder to defend the purchasing of commercial software. The price of development does not not necessarily rise because of offshoring, but the availability of richer Open Source software goes up owing to the Internet, killing commercial equivalents in the process. This, in fact is one of the reasons for the success of Windows 95. Back in the days, plenty of software was bundled while getting new applications remained a time-consuming task in the absence of rapid access to the Net.

Computers to be driven purely off the iPod/Handheld device

magine yourself the following scenario: To start up your computer you connect an iPod (or any other large-storage mobile device) to your (x86-based) work computer, which then launches the operating system (currently Knoppix Linux) from the iPod. It uses the processor and memory of the local machine rather than the iPod’s, which is merely used as a hard-drive. Then, once work is finished, you take your iPod home and repeat that exact same procudure, plugging in the iPod to a different computer. Not only can you resume your work, but your hard-drive (which contains everything that is personalised) gives you an identical environment, i.e. you have all your recent files, browser cookies, desktop settings, etc.

That vision is now real as IBM exploit the iPod for this purpose. The device could, in principle, be a Palm LifeDrive, which makes the exception among modern PDA‘s since it exploits very high data capacity. The large-sized hard-drive and high bandwidth (USB/FireWire) make it possible to use your machine merely as a host (computation, display, and peripherals), while your data (operating system, files and applications) always remain in your pocket. From an article just published in CNET:

The virtual computer user environment setup is called SoulPad, and consumers install it from a x86-based home or office PC. SoulPad uses a USB (universal serial bus) or FireWire connection to access the network cards for connecting to the Internet, the computer’s display, the keyboard, the main processor and the memory, but not the hard disk.

Also worth mentioning is the prospect for running your favourite operating system and programs to access your data on any computer. You could even use a workstation at your local library cluster. Plug in your mobile device and use the computer as if it was yours. This considerable step can give a major boost to devices such as the iPod and the LifeDrive. Perhaps Jeff Hawkins, Palm co-founder and R&D chief, had substance in his vision of the “Life Manager”. Could this be what Palm had in mind when switching to Linux?

On a less enthusiastic note, the entire idea of protable high-volume storage is not brand new. For quite some time it has been possible to install hard-drive housing units in one computer and slide in different hard-drives that suit different users of the same computer. This essentially meant that computers came without a hard-drive; hard-drives were provided by the users. However, with a handhelds like the LifeDrive, several major advantages spring to mind:

• Size, which is a major pro
• The ability to view and edit data on the go, unlike just carrying a ‘black box’
• Internet connectivity
• Infra-red communication

Cited by: PalmAddict