Microsoft Apologizes For Previous Anticompetitive Acts. [OSNews]
Archive | March, 2004
NYT: Economists rethink outsourcing
Questioning Free Trade Mathematics. Some economists have begun to rethink the costs of exporting jobs. By Jeff Madrick. [New York Times: Business]
IBM targets 40,000 Linux desktops by 2005
Infoworld reports that IBM targets 40,000 Linux desktops by 2005. IBM is deploying Linux to the desktop in-house.
InfoWorld: Job creation is a must, Powell says
InfoWorld: Outsourcing means job creation is a must, Powell says.
Wow, someone in the Bush administration who can do math!
Offshored programmers but not shepards?
From CNN/Money: Worse off than sheep?: If “offshoring” is just global laissez-faire, then what are shepherds doing in the English suburbs?
“I am suggesting that conventional wisdom — the unquestioned acceptance of laissez-faire in today’s global markets — is terribly naive.”
Jim Grey: How can Microsoft make money against Open Source?
Jim Grey is a brilliant computer scientist, but he’s not a businessman. On a software conference panel, he suggested that Open Source would destroy the American software industry. Nonsense. It might destroy Microsoft, unless they change their direction, but not the industry. The industry needs to stop selling proprietary products and start selling support for those products. Support is what people *think* they are buying, anyway. PHBs buy BigBlue because “there’s one neck to strangle.” (Newsflash: there is no neck.) Consumers buy Microsoft because they think they can get support from their friends. As their friends master Ximian and Safari and Mozilla and Evolution and Rekall and more, the tides will shift.
Most software companies don’t make money selling software. They make money by helping companies solve business problems through the use of computer technology and software. It is that knowledge – how to solve business problems – that is the value-add, not the ones and zeroes on disk. People will pay for solutions to their problems, for training on how to do it, for support on how to fix it when it isn’t working right. We don’t pay an electrician an annual licensing fee to have electricity flow through the office. We pay a supplier for the energy we consume, and an electrician for maintenance and repairs.
Microsoft exec: Open source model endangers software economy. SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A Microsoft official Monday questioned how the software industry could survive if users are getting software for free through open source. [InfoWorld: Top News]
RSS + BitTorrent: blob publishing without slashdotting
Wired: “A demo publishing system launched Friday by a popular programmer and blogger merges two of this season’s hottest tech fads — RSS news syndication and BitTorrent file sharing — to create a cheap publishing system for what its author calls ‘big media objects.'” [Scripting News]
European Commission draft: Microsoft abused its dominance in operating system software.
Europe Supports Antitrust Ruling Against Microsoft. The European Commission is expected to order Microsoft to make fundamental changes to the way it sells software in Europe. By Paul Meller. [New York Times: Business]
Tim Bray hired by Sun Microsystems
Sun snatches up XML guru. Tim Bray will help set technical direction for Sun’s software group [InfoWorld: Top News]
GNU Screen: a handy utility
Ed Leafe has posted a note recently on his ProLinux mailing list pointing to this article, and OSNews joins in today: GNU Screen: an Introduction and Beginner’s Tutorial. Screen lets you have multiple virtual terminal sessions and toggle between them all from one terminal. You can also detach from a session and reattach later. Ideal if you have a costly or infrequent dial-up connection and you want to log onto a remote machine, start some tasks and check back on their progress later.