Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

T has been previouly mentioned that Windows Vista will give people many compelling reasons to switch to Linux. This was mentioned in the context of hardware requirements. Owing to plenty of trouble at Microsoft, as well as delays, the Investor’s Business Daily predicts that the very release of Windows Vista will give a boost to Linux.

The looming release of the next major upgrade to Microsoft’s flagship Windows operating system, Windows Vista, is encouraging an unlikely group of users — fans of rival software Linux.

The Eclipse Foundation, a tech consortium pushing open-source software to develop new software programs, is betting that the transition to Vista will boost the appeal of its so-called rich-client platform. The platform is designed to make it easier to write software that runs equally well on Windows, Linux and other operating systems.

I choose Firefox primarily because of its
extensions. Some site continue to snub it.

ROWSER discrimination, as it is frequently referred to, is always a bad idea. Sadly, many sites still use deprecated JavaScript code to distinguish between Netscape and Internet Explorer. In reality, most of today’s Web sites can be rendered almost ‘pixel perfect’ by Camino, Safari, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, Firefox, Internet Explorer and several more obscure Web browsers, even Konqueror.

Vis-a-vis Konqueror, functionality in Konqueror is being extended all the time and its renderer (KHTML) improves rather quickly too. It no longer plays catch-up, but the acceptance of new browser is hindered by vain user-agent sniffing, which in itself is a terrible practice. In the case where proxies are being used, the assumptions might be wrong. In other circumstances, this promotes agent forging/spoofing, which only adds noise to Web statistics, adds bloat the applications and makes an unhealthy industrial environment for all to compete in.

RedHat Linux

Among the latest:

Linux seller Red Hat on Tuesday reported net income for its most recent quarter rose 131 percent to $27.3 million, or 13 cents per share, edging a penny ahead of analyst expectations.

So indeed, Linux is the future. While Novell’s Windows income falls, its Linux (SuSE) income rises as well.

Many still refuse to discover the power of feeds

RGUMENTS that falsify the evolution often rely on the existence of a ‘missing link’, or inexistence thereof. Only a couple days ago, the CNN reported that a
missing link may have been found, which shatters those void arguments as regards the ‘bridge’ between monkey and man.

Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the skull of a small human ancestor that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man.

UITE recently, Xara Xtreme which is a popular (vector) drawing program, moved from being pricey proprietary software to the GPL. Xara may have been the victim or sufferer of bigger packages and vendors (e.g. CorelDraw, Photoshop). My guess is that, much like Netscape, they had the choice of either letting the code of that product accumulate mold or earn a large(er) audience — a large user base — to which they can then offer paid support and self-tailored extensions. Netscape achieved something similar by putting the code out there. Today we are seeing the impact of Firefox, which enjoys generous streams of revenue as well. Xara Xtreme will directly challenge Inkscape, a screenshot of which can be seen above.

In the near future, more and more companies will be facing a crossroad wherein they can either fall to oblivion or receive exposure by throwing themselves at the Open Source community. It would enough to have just a few ‘residual’ companies that fell victims to giants like Adobe, or Microsoft, or whoever. Sooner or later they can be ‘resurrected’ owing to the GPL, once they release the code and get absorbed by a crowd of Open Source advocates that contributes back. When the user base of Open Source platforms such GNU/Linux expands, this will become more financially viable and there will be an increasing incentive to go down that route.

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

ICROSOFT embracing aggressive and illegal practices?!?! You don’t say…! As unshocking as it may sound, Microsoft continue to use anti-competitive means to prevent a quicker penetration of GNU/Linux, or Open Source software in general.

One of their methods is to deter OEM‘s from supplying Linux, as recently confirmed in a Novell testimony. So what is involved exactly? The Redmond software maker is apparently allowed to penalise shops for offering a Windows alternative, for merely having it in stock. Put positively (negativity in disguise), Microsoft can always offer ‘benefits’ (a bonus) for supplying an all-Windows range. This can put free software in a position of disadvantage. This rebatement has virtually the same effect as a penalty, a fine. It illustrates the litigious subtleties which Microsoft rides on. When Compaq placed the Netscape icon for Web browsing on the Desktop, Microsoft threatened to break the contract, even though Explorer was right there among the menus (as it “cannot be uninstalled”, of course, as dangerous as it may be).

This leads to another discussion on the issue of bad practices. Back when Microsoft faced court to defend itself against Netscape, it argued that Internet Explorer could not be removed from the operating system. “It was too deeply rooted in the core”, they argued. As it finally turns out, owing to the many security issues, Microsoft have just decided to separate Internet Explorer from Windows Explorer, making it separate from the core. In other words, they lied in court and got away with it.

Lastly, let us consider the endless delays in release of Windows Vista. First, the release date was estimated at 2003, then 2005, then 2006 and now it is said to be February 2007. Similar tactics have been used in the (rather distant) past by IBM, as means to prevent the customer from defecting to competitors. Saying that you are “just there” when clearly you are not, is not just deceitful; it’s irresponsible, selfish and disrespectful.

On some older dirty tactics: Operating System Monoculture, Bill Gates crucified by a lawyer in 1998 (video)

This is a testimony which I could not help quoting. It speaks of the rotten state of Web design courses.

I asked the teacher to direct me to a real website in the real world that he has developed. He told me his job is to teach, not create a site. I then asked if he could accurately describe the use of the [a href] tag and how to make it open in a new window. Total silence. I then asked if he knew what “CSS” stood for and its place in web design. Once again, silence. I asked what PHP is. I asked about asp and its purpose in web design. Still silence. I was sure he hung up on me, but I was wrong.

After 10 seconds of stammering his way through the css question, he summarized his comments by telling me that CSS is a very specific programming language seldom seen in the real world. He admitted he was not familiar with asp and phc (that’s right, ph”c”). He feels that since it is seldom used, there is no reason to teach it to the students.