[Thu Jan 26 14:47:47 CST 2012]

Here is an interesting anecdote. I posted the following picture on my Facebook account earlier today:

Well, a coworker at SGI replied with the following:

From: Dennis Ritchie 
Subject: Re: Thanks for the UNIX
Date: October 10, 2003 4:33:27 PM PDT
To: username@cablespeed.com
 
I appreciate the thanks!  The whole enterprise
has (in all sorts of strange ways) held up well
over the years.
 
Dennis

It turned out my coworker had taken the time to thank Dennis Ritchie and he replied back. The same thing happened, by the way, with Ken Thompson. Here is that other email:

From: 
Subject: RE: Thanks for the UNIX
Date: October 20, 2003 2:51:30 PM PDT
To: 
 
thank you for the compliment.
it is always nice to be remembered.
ken

How cool is that? Two down-to-earth types, for sure! {link to this entry}

[Thu Jan 26 11:51:24 CST 2012]

One more reason for Microsoft to worry about its own future. I read on PhysOrg.com that Android grabs more tablet market share, according to a latest survey. Actually, what should truly be a matter of concern at Redmond is the fact that Apple has 58% of the tablet market, Android now has 39% of it (by the way, Android's share is growing, while Apple's is dwindling), while Microsoft only has a ridiculous 1.5%. As I've written before, the end of Microsoft may very well come from these new markets, and not from a loss of the desktop, like so many of us thought a few years ago. {link to this entry}

[Fri Jan 13 13:15:16 CST 2012]

Hmmm, my system started to slowdown all of a sudden, I checked what was going on and... well, too much memory being used and an overall load average of something like 4.96 on a single CPU laptop. Ouch! The culprit, as it tends to be the case, was the web browser. However, while troubleshooting the problem, I happened to see GNOME Do using up to 124 MB of virtual memory! A bit excessive, taking into account what the application does, if you ask me. On top of that, I only use it to launch one or two applications, and little else. Time to disable it. {link to this entry}

[Thu Jan 12 16:41:37 CST 2012]

ArsTechnica publishes a hands-on review of the new Ubuntu TV that has been presented at the Consume Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The product is not ready to be released yet, but it already shows plenty of attractive features, according to the reviewer:

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday, platform vendor Canonical unveiled a special version of Ubuntu that is designed for televisions. The platform has an integrated media library manager and will offer DVR capabilities. It includes a variant of the Unity shell that is intended to be operated with a television remote control.

The launch of Ubuntu TV fits with Canonical's efforts to bring its popular Linux distrituion to a variety of mobile and embedded form factors. These include an Ubuntu smartphone operating system due to arrive by 2014. The decision to launch a platform for televisions was unexpected, but seems like a natural step for Canonical's evolving consumer electronics strategy.

This way it looks as if Canonical is following on Mark Shuttleworth's strategy to apply Apple's idea to the Linux and open source worlds. If it works out, Canonical will the first vendor that manages to succeed in the average consumer market with Linux products. Yes, Red Hat and others already proved that it is possible to make money with Linux, but they work with a completely different crowd. They only sell to the enterprise market. Canonical, on the other hand, is trying to sell to the end-user, to the home consumer, without hiding Linux for fear of looking "too geeky". That's what makes it so special in the Linux world.

Incidentally, if anyone had any doubt about Canonical's controversial move to Unity on its default desktop, these news should clarify things. Here is how the reviewer describes the interface on Ubuntu TV:

Ubuntu TV has a similar look and feel to the desktop version of Ubuntu. The interface has been simplified and the individual elements have been stretched to look good on a high-definition television set. A navigation bar on the left-hand side of the screen provides access to the various top-level features. A search box is positioned prominently at the top of the screen. Volume and network stsatus are displayed as large indicators next to a clock in the top right-hand corner.

In other words, what stands out about the UI on this new product is precisely the fact that the interface looks exactly the same as the default looks of the Ubuntu desktop. That is precisely what Shuttleworth's announced objective has been for a while now. And, not only that but, as the author also clarifies, there is more under the hood:

The Unity shell, which became Ubuntu's standard desktop user interface last year in version 11.04, was designed to improve the usability of the Linux desktop. Unity is about much more than just the user experience, however. Under the hood, it is supported by a stack of modular frameworks that offer considerable flexibility. The front-end is largely decoupled from the underlying task management and application launching capabilities that it exposes to the user. Canonical was able to take advantage of those architectural characteristics to accelerate the development of its telelvision user interface.

I still deeply dislike Unity as an interface, and have definitely tried to stay away from it. As a matter of fact, I still have to find someone who likes the interface on a desktop or laptop computer. Yet, I can see how it makes perfect business and development sense and, as a matter of fact, it should feel just fine on a smartphone, tablet or DVR device. It is now obvious that Shuttleworth is aiming for those markets. We'll see if the e strategy works out in the end. There is plenty of competition. {link to this entry}

[Wed Jan 11 12:58:39 CST 2012]

If I wrote a few days ago about how the spread of smartphones is quickly eroding the dominance of Microsoft in the technology sector, I should have clarified that the giant from Redmond is far from being the only one whose status is under siege. For example, Intel and Qualcomm are also struggling to keep pace with things, desperately trying to get into the smartphones market. Neither vendor has a good share in a market currently dominated by ARM processors. Who would have said just a few years ago that both Microsoft and Intel, the invincible giants, might see their position threatened by new, disruptive products? {link to this entry}

[Sat Jan 7 18:30:50 CST]

According to Webmonkey, Nginx already surpasses Microsoft's IIS server:

Nginx currently powers some 12.8 percent of the web's active sites —including big names like Facebook and WordPress— which means Nginx has just barely squeaked ahead of Microsoft IIS which currently powers 12.14 percent of websites. While Apache is still far ahead of both with over 57 percent of the market, of the top three, only Nginx continues to grow in market share.

Who would have said a decade ago, when Microsoft and IIS seemed to pose a serious threat to Apache's dominance of the web. Which, of course, made me consider something else: it now seems as if, of all major technology markets, Microsoft only has a strong hold on the desktop, which is precisely the one that would seem to be slowly dying away. Let's see. Linux runs on most servers, iOS and Android run on tablets, as well as smartphones. What is truly left for Microsoft, other than the old desktop? As it happened so many times before, it now seems as if the final threat to Bill Gates' empire will come from outside the box (i.e., not from within the market segment that its operating systems already dominated, but from a completely new segment that becomes so popular that it ends up rendering the desktop almost obsolete). How ironic! {link to this entry}