I think there is general consensus that VOIP will kill the traditional switching network. But when and how? The telephony killer app is the wifi cellphone, with email and a small browser. If wifi is available it switches to the open network if it is detected. It has a small keyboard and screen and uses an open source based OS that is extendable. The killer phone has a hacked up mod pubsub to work with imap email - which allows for a push based email system. It has enough of a screen that you can easily look up phone numbers and addresses from websites. It has a small camera and has a flash memory slot. The batteries are standard AA rechargeable lithium. Finally, it has implemented an open standard sync api so that software can easily sync with it. Greg Egan forecasted such a device in several of his science fiction novels and dubed it "NotePad".
Egan's "NotePad" has some additional features, such as automatic backup, voice recognition and some basic articificial intelligence that I think will take quite a while to come. In particular, battery life seems to be one of the largest issues, as wifi and bluetooth suck a lot of juice.
I've prefered kde as my windowing environment of choice for the past few years but after trying ubuntu for the first time last week I started to rethink my preferences. With ubuntu gnome is as smooth as I remember OS/2 in its hey day. I love the threading in newer versions of nautilus. When an application stops responding it asks you if you would like to stop it. KDE 3.3 on the other hand seems to be more tweakable then ever before. Basically every effect that you would like it to have is available from kde-look.org. In aqua, Komposé, Super Karabama if you would like to copy the mac. The XPe theme if want to duplicate the look and feel of Windows XP.
Linux I think has a great future - have a look at this poll on kde-look.org. It looks like the average kde tweaker is about 22 and likes to use a C based language such as C++, C, C# or Java. Watch out Microsoft! Your average kde user has 60 more years to improve kde!
I was interested in seeing if Apple was contributing back to the projects it was using so I checked out the gcc changelog. Here is the contributions:
redhat 335
suse 128
ibm 84
apple 71
codesourcery.com 68
hp.com 40
mandrake 1
Despite the fact I'm not crazy about the Redhat agressive pricing - I must say that this made me want to buy redhat and run it on IBM hardware.
I have played around with ubuntu 4.1 - based on gnome 2.8 and have been very impressed. They have created a great linux distro for newbie linux users. Removing a lot of the complexity that linux typically has. Everything just works - usb, windows drive mapping, etc. And it is based on debian - which means that if you don't like it the escape is fairly easy.
The only flaws I could find is were
1) Wine support is missing by default. Personally I think that users have windows applications that they will want to run.
2) default colours are a bit drab
I'll have to download and compare it with the latest suse.... Linux is getting "good enough" for even home users. What's lagging is only OpenOffice. Hopefully abiword/kword will catch up.
udev provides a dynamic device directory in linux containing only the files for actually present devices. It creates or removes device node files usually located in the /dev/ directory, or it renames network interfaces.
As part of the hotplug subsystem, udev is executed if a kernel device is added or removed from the system. On device creation, udev reads the sysfs directory of the given device to collect device attributes like label, serial number or bus device number. udev maintains a database for devices present on the system. On device removal, udev queries its database for the name of the device file to be deleted.
More on udev http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/udev/
The Harvard Business Review reports that you increase
your chances of profitable success three to five times
if you're extremely new and different.You need to
dream of the huge-step change, not incremental ones.
What is the USP [unique selling point] for your venture?
I really enjoy Brad Delong's weblog on the economy - although recently I find it hard to find interesting artlcles between all his Bush bashing. Not that I particularly like bush - but it does get boring.
Anyway - I missed an excellent article where he disputes Seth Stevenson's analysis of what to do about low third world wages (in this case india). Anyway instead of summarizing the excellent article here it is:
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2004-2_archives/000262.html
I've been working on a himalayan jewelry website for fun. http://www.himalayanjewelry.com/. Which is the largest jeweler from Nepal. We setup a yahoo store - hoping it would drive some traffic - but it hasn't yet sent much. I contacted Yahoo - as they only support php and perl asking them about python support. They mentioned that if they get enough customer feedback they might support it. So send your emails to yahoo hosting!
First off several of the top countries have strong socialist polices and others do not. The US retoric that only low taxes and no social programs creates growth is obviously wrong.
Taiwan and Finland are intesting cases. Neither had an empire. Both are far from the markets they serve and are small open economies with limited natural resources. Its interesting to see that Singapore and Hong Kong - both consistantly ranked as the "most economicaly free" by right wing think tanks are not in the top 5 countries.
I met a fellow who fixes chip assembly lines on the way from Taipei to Manila. He travels extensively all over the world fixing chip assembly lines - US, Japan, China, Germany, Korea and Taiwan. He said that the biggest and most efficient lines he had ever seen were in Taiwan. "They are are twice as big as the biggest Japanese ones - and 50% more efficient". I'm going to return to this topic later as I mull over theories in my head....
| Country | 2004 rank | 2004 score | 2003 rank |
| Finland | 1 | 5.95 | 1 |
| U.S. | 2 | 5.82 | 2 |
| Sweden | 3 | 5.72 | 3 |
| Taiwan | 4 | 5.69 | 5 |
| Denmark | 5 | 5.66 | 4 |
| Norway | 6 | 5.56 | 9 |
| Country | 2004 rank | 2004 score | 2003 rank |
| Finland | 1 | 5.95 | 1 |
| U.S. | 2 | 5.82 | 2 |
| Sweden | 3 | 5.72 | 3 |
| Taiwan | 4 | 5.69 | 5 |
| Denmark | 5 | 5.66 | 4 |
| Norway | 6 | 5.56 | 9 |
| Singapore | 7 | 5.56 | 6 |
| Switzerland | 8 | 5.49 | 7 |
| Japan | 9 | 5.48 | 11 |
| Iceland | 10 | 5.44 | 8 |
| United Kingdom | 11 | 5.30 | 15 |
| Netherlands | 12 | 5.30 | 12 |
| Germany | 13 | 5.28 | 13 |
| Australia | 14 | 5.25 | 10 |
| Canada | 15 | 5.23 | 16 |
| United Arab Emirates | 16 | 5.21 | - |
| Austria | 17 | 5.20 | 17 |
| New Zealand | 18 | 5.18 | 14 |
| Israel | 19 | 5.09 | 20 |
| Estonia | 20 | 5.08 | 22 |
| Hong Kong SAR | 21 | 5.06 | 24 |
| Chile | 22 | 5.01 | 28 |
| Spain | 23 | 5.00 | 23 |
| Portugal | 24 | 4.96 | 25 |
| Belgium | 25 | 4.95 | 27 |
| Luxembourg | 26 | 4.95 | 21 |
| France | 27 | 4.92 | 26 |
| Bahrain | 28 | 4.91 | - |
| Korea | 29 | 4.90 | 18 |
| Ireland | 30 | 4.90 | 30 |
| Malaysia | 31 | 4.88 | 29 |
| Malta | 32 | 4.79 | 19 |
| Slovenia | 33 | 4.75 | 31 |
| Thailand | 34 | 4.58 | 32 |
| Jordan | 35 | 4.58 | 34 |
| Lithuania | 36 | 4.57 | 40 |
| Greece | 37 | 4.56 | 35 |
| Cyprus | 38 | 4.56 | - |
| Hungary | 39 | 4.56 | 33 |
| Czech Republic | 40 | 4.55 | 39 |
| South Africa | 41 | 4.53 | 42 |
| Tunisia | 42 | 4.51 | 38 |
| Slovak Republic | 43 | 4.43 | 43 |
| Latvia | 44 | 4.43 | 37 |
| Botswana | 45 | 4.30 | 36 |
| China | 46 | 4.29 | 44 |
| Italy | 47 | 4.27 | 41 |
| Mexico | 48 | 4.17 | 47 |
| Mauritius | 49 | 4.14 | 46 |
| Costa Rica | 50 | 4.12 | 51 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | 51 | 4.12 | 49 |
| Namibia | 52 | 4.11 | 52 |
| El Salvador | 53 | 4.10 | 48 |
| Uruguay | 54 | 4.08 | 50 |
| India | 55 | 4.07 | 56 |
| Morocco | 56 | 4.06 | 61 |
| Brazil | 57 | 4.05 | 54 |
| Panama | 58 | 4.01 | 59 |
| Bulgaria | 59 | 3.98 | 64 |
| Poland | 60 | 3.98 | 45 |
| Croatia | 61 | 3.94 | 53 |
| Egypt | 62 | 3.88 | 58 |
| Romania | 63 | 3.86 | 75 |
| Colombia | 64 | 3.84 | 63 |
| Jamaica | 65 | 3.82 | 67 |
| Turkey | 66 | 3.82 | 65 |
| Peru | 67 | 3.78 | 57 |
| Ghana | 68 | 3.78 | 71 |
| Indonesia | 69 | 3.72 | 72 |
| Russian Federation | 70 | 3.68 | 70 |
| Algeria | 71 | 3.67 | 74 |
| Dominican Republic | 72 | 3.63 | 62 |
| Sri Lanka | 73 | 3.57 | 68 |
| Argentina | 74 | 3.54 | 78 |
| Gambia | 75 | 3.52 | 55 |
| Philippines | 76 | 3.51 | 66 |
| Vietnam | 77 | 3.47 | 60 |
| Kenya | 78 | 3.45 | 83 |
| Uganda | 79 | 3.41 | 80 |
| Guatemala | 80 | 3.38 | 89 |
| Bosnia and Hercegovina | 81 | 3.38 | - |
| Tanzania | 82 | 3.38 | 69 |
| Zambia | 83 | 3.36 | 88 |
| Macedonia, FYR | 84 | 3.34 | 81 |
| Venezuela | 85 | 3.30 | 82 |
| Ukraine | 86 | 3.27 | 84 |
| Malawi | 87 | 3.24 | 76 |
| Mali | 88 | 3.24 | 99 |
| Serbia and Montenegro | 89 | 3.23 | 77 |
| Ecuador | 90 | 3.18 | 86 |
| Pakistan | 91 | 3.17 | 73 |
| Mozambique | 92 | 3.17 | 93 |
| Nigeria | 93 | 3.16 | 87 |
| Georgia | 94 | 3.14 | - |
| Nicaragua | 95 | 3.12 | 90 |
| Madagascar | 96 | 3.11 | 96 |
| Honduras | 97 | 3.10 | 94 |
| Bolivia | 98 | 3.09 | 85 |
| Zimbabwe | 99 | 3.03 | 97 |
| Paraguay | 100 | 2.99 | 95 |
| Ethiopia | 101 | 2.93 | 92 |
| Bangladesh | 102 | 2.84 | 98 |
| Angola | 103 | 2.72 | 100 |
| Chad | 104 | 2.50 | 101 |
Note: In the rankings for 2003, the three countries not covered this year (Cameroon, Haiti and Senegal) are not shown.
I like knoppix a lot however I wanted to test the latest and greatest tools such as kde 3.3 - where knoppix typically lags a bit, so I decided to try out the OneBaseGo distribution, which I had read about on distrowatch.com. My test machine was a Dell GX270 with 1 gig of RAM and a 2.2 Ghz Intel CPU.
I downloaded the iso - which is somewhat hidden on the ibiblio.org website. I searched google for "iso OneBase site:.ibiblio.org" and found the ftp site for all the onebase ISOs. I used "wget -t0" to download the iso (so was not to have any time outs) and burned OneBaseGo-2.2.iso to cd on a windows box at the office (x12). I would prefer to have used Bittorrent to share bandwidth but that wasn't available.
I had issues with knoppix on the same Dell and had upgraded the Bios to A04. Knoppix booted fine once I changed the BIOS Video Buffer from 1Mb to 8Mb.
It booted ok but the login screen refresh was unacceptable and seemed to hang.
I rebooted and used the cheatcodes, I'm not sure why I needed them under OneBase as in knoppix I didn't anymore. Perhaps this is due to them using X.org ?
“onebase fb1024x768 xmodule=vesa screen=1024x768 noddc xvrefresh=60” (I figured it would be onebase instead of knoppix.) Later I found it worked when I just used “onebase xmodule=vesa”
When I went to login - I was forced to log in as root with the password "one". Which is a bit odd - why not auto-loggin the user as in knoppix? If sshd was running anyone in the world could gain access to the box. Why log in the user as root?
Beautiful kde 3.3 started, so I launched and configured konqueror with a proxy and then tried to hit the internet. It gave an error "no host found for the proxy server", so I launched a console and typed "ifconfig -a". OneBase didn't seem to get an ip address for my eth0. Strange - knoppix always worked. I used their "ol-connect" command. It gave some options - none of which included settings for simple Ethernet connection. I tried "ol-connect -y" this also didn't work. Checked google again for the dhcp configuration command - typed "dhcpcd -n eth0" which seemed to start get an IP address and launch the network.
I was impressed with the kde setup OneBase developers have done. They have selected nice icons and background and given applications appropriate names and groupings. Now I could browse the web. They seem to have installed the flash plug-in but not the java plug-in, mplayer, or helix (knoppix only has java). Tested out Mozilla 1.8a (why do they include an alpha version of mozilla?). If it were me I would include firefox with the plastik theme to make it look more integrated with the kde desktop. A screenshot of OneBase (not current)
Overall the desktop felt very snappy - and generally I couldn't tell it was running from the cd. I verified the kernel with "uname -a" which gave "Linux Onebase 2.6.7 #1 SMP". Checked out the gcc version with "gcc -v" which indicated gcc version 3.4.1 with the thread model of posix.
I also played with SuperKaramba - the python based eye candy tool. They had only included a clock theme so I downloaded and played with some other ones. SuperKaramba can be used to run a MAC OSX style docking station - which looks sweet (I love eye candy even though I am a command line guy).
I checked out the icons that they include: "EPS", "to hard disk" etc. Basically they are shell scripts to install the application to a hard drive etc. My gut feeling is that they have reinvented the application install and management. What's wrong with apt-get? klik (http://klik.berlios.de/) offers a easier and nicer way of installing apps under knoppix clones.
Another issue is that they decided not to include OpenOffice.org. I think this is a mistake. kword has gotten much more stable but it is still very limited. You can't for example select two cells in a table and copy and paste them.
Other limitations are that no mplayer (to play the .mov files) was installed or realplayer ( or helix) or java (as mentioned). I found the default font they decided to use looks nice but is large. So when I browsing some websites look odd. gaim is only v0.81 whereas v1.x has been released. Also no wine was included. OneBaseGo did not automount my hard drive like knoppix does or add icons for them to the desktop. The kernel 2.6 currently has had some issues with ntfs - so this was not a major issue.
A plethora of desktops were included in OneBase: kde, gnome, icewm, fluxbox, xfce etc., which in my opinion, is overkill. I would have included kde, gnome and one light desktop. I tested out gnome - and they have not included the application icons like in kde. Obviously gnome support is an afterthought. Also why no link to mozilla in either kde or gnome?
It looks like kontact pim may be the killer application for kde. It includes imip support and most of the functionality most companies might need for a standards based email and calendaring client. One feature that I'd like to see is the ability to see what is contained in your "to do". This could be done in a non modal window or showing the first few lines in the window.
The bottom line? Everything in the linux desktop is rapidly getting better. Gnome has improved and now presents a consistent strong gui. Kde is improving its groupware set and feels snappier. OneBaseGo offers a nice way of sampling the newer kde applications and tools before they are released in the main distributions without much effort, but I think I will stick with knoppix(debian) or one of the main distros such as Redhat, Mandrake or Suse.
I couldn’t determine who OneBase is targeted to – but they’ve done a good job in integrating all the latest components into a knoppix style distro. If onebase is targeting the public with a Debian based desktop (like Ubuntu, PClinuxOS, Xandros, etc) then I would hide the dev tools, include OpenOffice with the kde integration, and firefox with kde integration/icons, have excellent wine integration, and get rid of all those desktops and create some troubleshooting wizards. If OneBase is for users to test out the latest and greatest then I would have include OpenOffice 2.0 and gnome 2.8 – two popular environments. If OneBase is meant for showcasing the latest kde technology – then I think they have hit their target.
From a company memo:
"However, it has come to my attention that some have installed non-approved software such as browsers without management approval. This practice is unacceptable and is to be discontinued immediately. For no reason should any software be installed on your desktop without written management approval. The image is being monitored and this policy will be strictly enforced.
Thank you for your compliance on this matter."
If you work for a company like this with some microsoft nazi people - use the zipped up version of mozilla/firefox and run it from your temp directory.
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.10.1/Firefox%201.0PR.zip
I have a feeling that if it is a cold winter we may see energy prices tip the US ( and perhaps the world) into another recession. Here is the hypothetical train of thought.
High Oil & Natural Gas Prices will not necessarily mean recession for the OECD (as they represent a small percent of household income). However for much of the developing world it will (eg Jamaica, ).
If China and Japan call back a lot of the the money they have in US Government TBills to deal with the raising domestic energy prices. The US government will have no other option than to raise interest rates to finance the debt. As interest rates increase the stock market has a major correction and housing prices fall. The US government is overly focused on the war in Iraq - and the domestic economy goes to recession. Natural Gas - which is running out in North America and represents 65% of heating in the US and 95% of new power plants triples in price.
Economics is very complex - particularly due to the "chaos theory effects". However, the 70s oil shocks could come again.
Update - I wrote this 3 weeks ago - and it looks more possible. Greenspan trying to tell the market everything is ok only will do so much and there was an article in the wsj talking about how heating costs will go up by about 28% for the north east. This will _definitely_ hurt walmart.
What will be people do if heating doubles in cost? Perhaps coal would be an option - But I checked around and there is only one furnace company still selling a coal furnace.
If google promoted firefox (on the search page) and created a proprietary extension to firefox for searching (which includes the local hard drive) how successful would they be?
My guess is you would immediately see a doubling of market share for firefox/mozilla/netscape (to the 12% range). Getting to the 30-50% would take a lot more work.
If Microsoft threatend the browser enough via its proprietary extensions then I could see yahoo and google perhaps even colaborating on a browser.
I really like kde as a work environment and have been waiting for the speed-up that should come with kde 3.2+ and the latest gcc using prelinked binaries. The parameter $KDE_IS_PRELINKED set to one turns off kdeinit. Yopper has prelinked their kde for the past couple of years.
What I would like even more is a kde and X.org that would never hang or would throw up a console screen if the machine is too busy after a while. I also hope that the OpenOffice kde integration that Suse 9.1 contains makes its way into the other distros.
Talking about OpenOffice brings up what I see as the current opportunity in linux right now. My biggest wish for linux right now is that firefox/mozilla development environment is cleaned up with better documentation on writing extensions and writing applications that detached from the server. They have created a great community - now they need to give the tools to the community to release an explosion of great tools.
Open Office ui needs a cleanup. Themes would be great - allowing distros to make their OOO. Something like the mozdev (update.mozilla.org/themes) for OpenOffice. Much of this will come with OpenOffice 2.0. More on themes with OOo http://www.pcc-services.com/ooo-theme.html
And the Press Release from OpenOffice.org regarding themes and icons
