snowdeal.org

“New evidence suggesting people are turning off the Internet in droves may be due to
its increasing commercialization one academic suggested Tuesday.

Figures just released by research firm Cyberdialogue show that in 1999 30 million
people in the U.S. no longer used the Internet, describing themselves as “former
users”. This has led experts to question whether a backlash against the Web is
beginning. ”

“After Linux generated a certain level of buzz, big companies such as IBM and Hewlett Packard began to latch onto it. In recent months, some observers have questioned whether pure Linux companies such as Red Hat could succeed in the long term given the entry of such companies, with their firmly entrenched support services, into the market.

“The original idea of making money from a free operating system was dubious from the start,” said a former Red Hat executive who asked not to be identified. “To make it work, if it could work at all, would have required highly skilled management. But with the price of the stock going from 151 to about 6 today, it’s clear that the business model is impossible, or that Red Hat’s management isn’t up to the task, or both. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for Red Hat.””

Lou’s Views: Penguins vs the Dismal Science

“A key main reason there’s so much uncertainty in the industry right now is simply because we’re in between equilibrium states. The prior state saw the closed source software/bits for bucks model dominate, with free support, later moving almost entirely to paid support. In that state we had software-only companies of all sizes making a profit, from one-person shareware shops to outfits like our cousins up in Redmond. It was and largely still is an economically viable business model, and it fueled a lot of companies and some spectacular investment portfolios.

The next equilibrium point will be more oriented toward open source, and I suspect that in the long run this will all but eliminate the software-only companies. There will be a lot of consolidation as companies merge and acquire each other, and also evolution, as companies try to stay independent and convert themselves into service companies. I won’t guess how far this new equilibrium point will be from the old one, in terms of either time or degree of change from the last point; I don’t think anyone can tell for sure while we’re in the middle of the transition.

The really interesting thing is that the further we go along this path, the more software will be produced by either the stereotypical open source project, staffed by people scratching an itch and not getting paid for their work, or by large companies, like IBM, HP, Compaq, Intel, and others, that have a financial incentive to spend big money on software they can give away. Don’t think for a nanosecond that these companies want to spend horrendous amounts of money developing software they can give us because we’re nice or lovable; it’s simply in their best interest to do this to promote more pragmatic endeavors, like making money from hardware sales. Seen in this light, the only thing surprising about IBM’s stunning, wall-to-wall Linux commitment is that it’s not even bigger. IBM, thanks to the variety of hardware platforms it sells and supports, probably has more to gain from Linux’s long-term success and arrival as a unifying platform than any other single company.”

Making money on open source

“Another market with perhaps the biggest potential for Linux is embedded systems (see Resources for a link to another LinuxWorld.com article on embedded Linux). Linux isn’t the perfect embedded OS, but it’s fast, tight, and free. You can’t beat free, especially when the margins on devices can be low or even dip into negative numbers. (It is not unusual for companies to intentionally lose money on game consoles and other devices that use embedded operating systems, since they make money elsewhere.)

Pure software companies are in a much more difficult position than companies that add value through hardware in one way or another. It is getting increasingly difficult to sell people something they can get for free, and more and more software is free these days.”

“The problem isn’t to figure out how to sell it, but to mostly give up on the idea of selling software, and
look to add and sell value in other ways.”

Open Source vs. Commercial Software Development

“And what do we make? Software for those who grew up with computers. Software for people who hate wizards, and plug and play, and lack of control. Software for people who can see the beauty of a properly working system. We make software for people who love choice. We make software that works, even when hardware manufacturers won’t pony up the documentation, even when we have to reverse engineer things that should be publicly available, we make it happen.

These are the things that make open source great. This is why even after an 18-hour day, I still have the desire to settle down at my Linux box. This is why I work all week in commercial software and still look forward to a weekend of uninterrupted time to catch up with my own development projects. This is why I’m here, and why I’ll continue to be here. This is what open source is all about.”

“When users were asked whether they were likely to use a WAP phone within one year, a resounding 70% answered no. WAP is not ready for prime time yet, nor do users expect it to be usable any time soon. Remember, this finding comes after respondents had used WAP services for a week, so their conclusions are significantly more valid than answers from focus group participants who are simply asked to speculate about whether they would like WAP. We surveyed people who had suffered through the painful experience of using WAP, and they definitely didn’t like it.

The report details the many usability problems that caused users to come to this negative conclusion. Unless the usability of mobile Internet services and devices improves considerably, people will simply not use them and billions of dollars will be wasted.”

# This is a cron script in the gawk language to frequent the various
# charity sites affiliated with thehungersite.com. These sites have
# obtained corporate sponsorship to enable web users to donate food,
# health care, and other goods to the needy by clicking on a link. The
# sites generally count one click per IP address per day. While it’s
# hard for people to remember to return to each site each day to donate,
# it’s a perfect task for a cron job. This script uses lynx to download
# the page to a temp file, identify the proper link, “click” it (sending
# output to /dev/null), and then remove the temp file. By making this a
# daily cron job, you can cause thousands of dollars to be donated to
# charity each year.

“The strongly worded decision from Leon County circuit court judge N. Sanders Sauls was the most severe blow yet to the Gore campaign. He ruled there was “no credible statistical evidence” or other substantial evidence to show that further recounts had a “reasonable probability” of throwing the presidential election to Mr Gore. “

“The infamous ‘butterfly’ style ballot card used by Palm Beach County, Florida, in the recent US presidential election causes voting errors and raises doubt over the final result — not the conclusion of a democrat-led inquiry, but the finding of psychologists who have examined the controversial ballot paper
in new experimental trials.”

“Almost eight per cent of people using the butterfly ballot in the trial made mistakes — most inadvertently voting for Clark when they believed they were choosing Chretien. Many more said that the card was confusing.”

“The Groove transceiver ? the “space” in which a user works ? includes capabilities that lend themselves to natural and intuitive group interactivity. These include voice communications, instant messaging, text-based chat, and threaded discussion. There are also tools for sharing files, sharing pictures, sharing contacts, and for shared activities such as drawing and Web browsing. After Groove is launched, a user creates a secure shared space to which he can invite others to conduct business or personal affairs. Each Groove shared space is stored locally on the computers of each of the members of the shared space. A change to one member’s shared space is reflected on everyone’s machine, so their work remains completely synchronized with other members.”

“…Groove does not address trust metrics. For now it’s an infrastructure play that leaves aside how people collaborate.

These days it is a lot harder than in the early days of Notes to chooses likely collaborative partners when creating ad hoc groups as there is much more information media to choose from. Who’s smart, and who’s a clown? Working this out should be transparent, and the science is evolving pretty rapidly. Whether Groove intends to swallow such trust metric logic into the platform, or leave it for third parties, will be its next test.

And finally, and this is a question to which all P2P brainstormers should have a some kind of answer, is whether you’ll really be able trust the data you’re working with.”

“This is nuts. We ought to enjoy some basic guarantees — that our messages come from authenticated sources, are confidential, and haven’t been tampered with — as a matter of course. And Groove makes those guarantees. Crypto is always on, period. You can’t even turn it off if you want to. There’s nothing to configure, and this was a key design constraint. What Ozzie observed with Notes, over many years, is that security failures almost invariably boiled down to human error. There were too many choices, too many knobs. Groove does away with the knobs.”

“Overall, Groove is very promising. The fact that it is simple to use and that it is de-centralized are hugely empowering to peer groups that will use it. The sense of personal control and the simplicity of initiating collaboration are appealing. As en e-learning tool, we just have to wait and see if interesting and innovative applications are built that specifically target learning & KM issues. Most of my students described Groove as an interesting tool. Whether it will evolve beyond being just an interesting tool will largely depend on how learning solution providers react to Groove and what Groove Networks can offer to them in return.”

“As much hype as it’s gotten, it has a steep road ahead. It’s rather obviously missing the elusive “killer app” to get enough people to download it for it to be ubiquitous enough to get people to write apps to
get people to download it — and, even more importantly, use it.”

“Hotjabber.com is a free Instant Messaging service for anyone who need to communicate on the Internet. It resembles ICQ and AIM but is far more flexible. With a single client/account you can communicate with ICQ, AIM, Microsoft Messenger and YAHOO Messenger.”

“If you’ve used the infamous file-sharing program
Napster, you know that while it’s very cool, you still have to
wait for the song to download before you can listen to it. A
new Silicon Valley start-up called Friskit has come up with
something way cooler than file-sharing: stream-sharing. Go
to Friskit.com, type in the name of the artist, genre or song
that you want to hear, and a few seconds later your chosen
music starts playing. How? Friskit searches the Internet for
Web sites that stream music (in RealAudio, Windows
Media or MP3 formats), then serves them up to you one
after the other with very little wait (and no hard-drive
clutter, since there’s no downloading). Even better, the
interface is so simple and elegant that anyone can use
it—something the major record labels with their
billion-dollar revenues haven’t been able to manage.”