[Wed Dec 27 17:04:24 CET 2006]

Slashdot published a few days ago that Google has become the second most visited website, therefore passing Yahoo! and just behind the most visited site: Microsoft. I'm sorry but after reading this I couldn't help but feeling a deep sorrow for the overall state of computer literacy more than ten years after the Internet became popular. No, I'm not criticizing Microsoft for the sake of it. What truly shocks me is the fact that Microsoft's website is the most visited one just because its browsers are configured that way by default. In other words, the vast majority of surfers out there don't know enough to even change their homepage! There's a scary thought for you! It certainly helps us understand why spam and viruses are so widespread.

And, since we are talking about computer literacy, what to say of another story recently posted on Slashdot stating that college freshmen are still struggling with tech literacy? I find it worrisome that even young people are not very used to modern technology. Sure, they know how to check their email and browse the Web, but tha's about it sometimes. When it comes to real computer literacy... well, little, very little. I'm convinced the fact that our schools (both in the US and here in Spain) only teach people how to use applications instead of the inner functioning of things is to blame in this case. It wasn't so long ago (back in the 1980s) that my teacher's approach in high school was quite different: he taught us about the different parts of the computer, how it works, commands to do certain things at the shell and even some programming in BASIC. These days, almost everybody seems to believe that users are morons who are totally unable to do anything else but click here and there. It's a Windows thing, I'm afraid. {link to this story}

[Wed Dec 27 16:57:12 CET 2006]

Here is an interesting piece of news that shows where the open source development model shines:

The development of vital computer systems to be used and maintained for decades in aerospace and automobile construction is preconditioned on development tools the specifications of which elude most classical software products. Therefore a consortium of companies centered on the aircraft manufacturer Airbus has decided to make sure —by launching a project dubbed TOPCASED (Toolkit in OPen source for Critical Applications & Systems Development)— that it gets its hands on such tools.

{link to this story}

[Wed Dec 27 16:01:29 CET 2006]

Just came across a short piece titled The Open Source Desktop Myth that contains a few interesting suggestions. Mind you, it's nothing out of the ordinary. We've all heard these things before. Still, for whatever reason, we tend to forget about them too often. It's just too easy to get entangled in the day to day OS wars and forget about the long run.

I carry a laptop around with me because it lets me have the same computing environment wherever I am. I don't have to worry about whether the software I want is installed or whether someone else has set up unusual shortcuts.

When I get to work, however, I plug in an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Effectively, I'm just bringing a hard drive, CPU, and RAM with me. If the files were stored on a fileserver, I wouldn't need the disk, and a CPU and RAM are easy to come by.

What is it that I'm really carrying around? The answer is state. I am carrying around an operating environment's state wrapped up in a lump of metsal and plastic. What do I really need for that?

Sun has one potential solution in the form of their Sun Ray systems. The only thing you carry around with you is a smartcard, which identifies you. When you insert it into a card reader, it connects to a server that sends your desktop to the machine.

IBM has a potentially more interesting suggestion: they put a Xen virtual machine on a USB flash drive, which contained an entire OS install and applications. At login, it would mount a remote fileserver and unmount it whenever the VM was suspended. This could just be plugged into a machine running Xen and immediately display the user's desktop, even without a network connection.

With live migration of VMs, it would be possible to keep an environment running on a mobile phone and then migrate it to a desk PC at work, an entertainment center at home, and so on.

(...)

Microsoft is trying desperately hard to find a business model that fits with the post-desktop PC era. Their entire strategy depends on the idea that software is something that you buy and install on one machine.

Microsoft's forays into the mobile arena so far have been uninspiring. They have pushed Windows CE, which makes the same UI mistakes as desktop Windows (and a few new ones), into a smaller device. The additional license restrictions in Vista make it clear that they still haven't woken up to the idea that a static desktop operating environment has only a very limited shelf life.

If the Free Software community continues to fight the last war and build a desktop environment, they might wake up in time and produce something for the post-desktop PC world. (Singularity looks promising in this regard, if they can find some workable licensing terms). Microsoft has adapted to new environments before. They started selling a BASIC interpreter; then moved on to operating systems, GUIs, and even office suites.

I know, I know. As I said, nothing new under the sun. We already knew about this: the future belings to ubiquitous small and mobile devices capable of providing the users with the same interface and applications regardless of where they are using it from. We all know that, right? Yet, we tend to forget about it, especially when we enter into the ages old fray that is the OS wars. As it tends to be the case, the winner will end up being somebody who can think outside the box. {link to this story}