The State of Massachusetts is nowadays deciding on the issue of open standards and whether to accept or reject a vendor-specific format, namely OOXML. A new article discusses how a decision about choice of format can affect the ability of a business to free itself from the shackles of one single application and platform. From the article: “An impulsive and immediate migration to Linux can sometimes lead to disappointment. Ambitious businesses are sometimes led to believe that their data can merely be be dumped from one platform onto another, but the reality is a little more complex than this.”

ODAY I received some post. It was a familiar envelope with my handwriting. It turns out that it could not be delivered. The envelope said:

“Not available at this address, return to sender”

What was it? A cheque that I had sent in December 2004 to Matt Mullenweg. How on earth did it take 2.5 years for a letter to ‘bounce’? That was eerily funny/strange.

Just for your information. I mentioned this before.

Also be aware that Windows Vista spies on the users and collects forensic evidence all the time. When you install Windows, you lose control of your personal computer.

The press is abuzz. Intel has just joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) board.

As someone who has followed the developments on this topic and watched these stories extremely closely for over a year, I can assure you that Intel only does this because of guilt.

There is also the bad image it has earned itself and the ability to capitalise at AMD’s expense. Do not think for a second that they wanted to help the children. It’s Nick and the volunteers from Red Hat and outside Red Hat that truly have passion. To them, it is altruism. To Intel, it’s about keeping a monopoly strong.

Intel sabotaged, FUD-ed, and ridiculed OLPC. It did this in a very, very nasty way. Microsoft is a friend of Paul O. and it shows. When they failed to intercept OLPC, they started “dumping” a different type of laptops to hurt OLPC further. Suddenly they embraced the very same type of idea that they said was insane. This, along with documents, did the trick. OLPC lost momentum.

OLPC is not a healthy shape now, so the volunteers are willing to fall into the arms of a monopoly abuser.

It’s a sad story. It’s disgusting.

The following article of mine made Slashdot.

A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma.

HERE have been some heated talks recently about the market distribution in the online advertising sector. An observation worth making is the fact that most companies are in the business of making other companies runs out of business, whether deliberately or not.

With the rise of software as a service, many business rely not on acquisition costs and not on subscription for revenue, either. They use advertisiing instead. It appeals to newcomers and facilitates rapid expansion. But what happens when these businesses rely on a middleman for advertising? What happens when the advertiser itself in among those that compete against Web-based services that rely on it?

Sadly, many businesses rely on companies such as Yahoo and Google, which manage their advertising and connect them with the advertiser. Both ends are customers — the advertiser and the service. The middman gains the most. It is hard to compete with companies such as Yahoo and Google when they in fact make pure profit from advertising. It is almost as though any business that uses a middleman for advertising is sharing the revenue with a competitor. The margins simply cannot be compared.

To use an example, if a company uses Yahoo for advertising in its specialised CMS, then Yahoo gets a share of the profits. If Yahoo wanted to compete head-to-head, it would not be subjected to the same third-party ‘taxation’. Therefore, it would find it easier to compete.

With this little load of my mind, perhaps it’s worth adding that advertising will always remain a controversial thing. It is a form of brainwash. Marketing lies.

Named. And shamed.