Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Morning links

1) The Arctic ice cap is thinning dramatically at the same time as it loses area cover as well. Not really news, but more data to back up what we already suspected.

2) Google announces a new linux-based OS to compete with Windows in the netbook sector. Linux is always only ever 18 months from beating Windows, so I'll believe this when I see it, but it's true that Google has both deep pockets and a well-established brand. The big key will remain whether Google can convince IT departments around the west to abandon MSFT.

3) Blu-ray continues to, um, suck. PS3 is third of three in the console market, and portable, reusable media are getting to the point where buying actual discs seems like a waste of money. Example: $150- or so will buy you a 1TB drive and a portable enclosure. SD Cards can already hold 32GB of storage, and the next generation could hold up to 2TB -- 40 Blu-ray discs on something the size of a thumbnail. And if this pans out, we'll have these records for a long time.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quibble:

The big key will remain whether Google can convince IT departments around the west to abandon MSFT.

As an MS IT guy (I mange over 1300 Workstations and 200 servers), this kind of thinking irks me. We're a MS Shop because 98% of the software we use (over 300 applications last count) to run our company is only available on MS OSs.

Its chicken and egg. Medium to Large companies won't go Linux until enough applications are available on it, and application vendors won't write for Linux until enough customers demand it.

And to be quite honest, MS doesn't suck as much as everyone thinks it does.

john said...

Catelli: While I'll stipulate your particular situation, I think it's nevertheless true that many, many businesses could get by with far less MS-dependency then they currently do.

As to the question of whether MS sucks as much as people thinks it does:

1) Seeing as I continue to use an MS PC to supplement my Ubuntu laptop, I agree that if you use it properly, WinXP is fine. The problem is that it's not resilient in the contemporary, heavily-networked environment.

2) If "everyone thinks it does" suck, doesn't it? A question for the philosophers in the crowd.

Anonymous said...

I think it's nevertheless true that many, many businesses could get by with far less MS-dependency then they currently do.

True for smaller companies. Though this could change.

One of the big impacts now is the compliance requirements for companies operating in the US. All of the compliance back-end software (and the requisite front-end client) run only on Windows. Workflow, Proces Managment, CRM, ERP, MRP, EAM (insert acronym here) and any other automation software also is primarily MS based.

The MS requirement requirement base is growing rapidly, not shrinking. Its mind-boggling the number of new apps we deploy on a year-to-year basis.