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Bill Gates Keynote Yesterday at PDC 2003! - NOTES

A post from Longhorn blogs with Notes on Bill Gates' address @ the Microsoft PDS, touching upon the great Security makeover that MSFT is trying, the usual stuff about Web services and LongHorn

A worthwhile point to ponder about :

Broadband penetration going up and up every year. Personal computer in three years will be a pretty phenomenal device. Hardware won't be the constraint. It is not the microprocessor or the network - it is software. Software that is managing itself and reducing the complexity

For the first time I'm actually seeing someone look at Software as a potential choke point as Computing technologies evolve. Point rightly made is that we need Software that reduces complexity - There is enough of complexity all around us anyways !

Bill Gates Keynote Yesterday at PDC 2003! - NOTES

Linux desktop from Novell

First Novell acquires Ximian and then here we go ... announcement of their plans to launch a Linux desktop (rather close of the heals of Sun's announcement of their Linux distro)

If at all there is any evidence that Linux is ready for prime time ... it is this ... it is this !

The Economic Times

Posting to TypePad from FeedDemon

Posting to TypePad from FeedDemon

First Nick Bradbury gives us this wonderful RSS reader called FeedDemon and then http://glenn.typepad.com/ enriches it further by giving us a way to post directly to TypePad usijng FeedDemon !

Thanks Glenn !

Linux on the Desktop

Linux _IS_ usable on the desktop ... but only just ! (I can state that having been using Linux on my desktop @ work for the past year and a half)

It still needs a helluva lotta enthu to get hooked to it and I _DONT_ think the average Joe user has that

For Linux to make it big as a Desktop OS, we need to get the kids used to it & grow up with it ... things one grows up with will always seem easier (& what does BillG do here ? ... Give away Windows FREE to Schools so that entire generation of kids grow yp to be Microsoft suckers !)

If there is one thing that would truly drive Linux usage, it would be a crack down on piracy of Windows OS. In a country like India, nobody even considers the option of paying for software ... the friendly neighbourhood PC assembler almost always bungs in good 'ol Windows 98 along with the PC !

PCWorld.com
E M E R G I C . o r g

Software piracy - an alternative theory

Here's a rather interesting theory on why Software piracy is rampant, especially in the third world markets.

Left to themselves, if the big software vendors were to crackdown on piracy then they would stand next to no chance in establishing their products amongst their consumer base. Better to let users get used to & hooked to the software they are selling & then tighten the crackdown on piracy when the users have littile other options

This probably is a better way to ensure future revenues rather than lose out to Open source alternatives !!!

A bit like a street-side drug pusher giving away Free dope to kids with the ulterior motive of getting them hooked on for a long long time to come !

The Oracle guy (predictably, he was in business development) is not alone in thinking in terms of a zero-cost seeding operation for markets where brand-building could consume enormous investments over long cycles before bearing fruit. So, let the friendly neighbour%u2018hood%u2019 pirate make copies and sell them on the sly to get businesses hooked on to their platform. Let me clarify that there may not be any actual collusion to work with this unorganised band of robbers, but looking the other way does amount to tacit approval

The Financial Express

Kudos to Yuvraj & Agarkar

The Indian innings against Australia was by most means very satisfying. No praise is sufficient for Yuvraj singh and Ajit Agarkar who played wonderful and aggressive knocks which actually helped Indian get the total of 284 / 4 in their 50 overs

If the way Sehwag started was disappointing, even more so was the selfish manner in which Sachin Tendulkar was playing. His hundred means nothing to India in this innings, if anyone else had stayed on for that long, they probably would have got some more than that and would probably would have gone on to accelerate in the end

Score card - Sify.com

Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 Preview

Despite my overall aversion to most things Microsoft, MS Office is one application that I have always been in awe of. If there is one application for which the world needs to be thankful to Microsoft, it is this ... it is this !

My work involes frantic note taking in the many meetings that I end up in as well as notes on things to do, designs and plans ... I usually use a Notebook (of the paper kind) to do this !

My various experiements with Digital Post-its / Sticky notes, Task manager in Evolution etc etc have not really suceeded

However, going through this review of MS OneNote 2003 gives me the impression that this is the kind of product I was looking for to manage information on the go

However, since I use Mandrake Linux @ work, I dont think I'll get to use this in the near future (unless there is something of this sort cooking up @ sourceforge or openoffice.org)

Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows

Tata Tele slashes ILD tariff

With Tata Tele following close on the heels of similar cuts in International Long Distance tariffs by BSNL and Bharti's Touchtel, one wonders :
a. Have they switched to IP for carrying voice traffic ?
b. How sustainable would these rates be (given that the markets might settle to these rates sooner or later) ?
c. How will this impact ISPs providing VoIP services ?

Business Standard

Blame game in the US for the Iraqi muddle

What a mighty mess the self-proclaimed protectors of the world have found themselves in ...

Republicans Vs Democrats, CIA chief Vs the Vice president, Dept of Defence Vs the CIA Vs State dept etc etc etc

How many fingers does one man need to point the blame for a screw-up away ???

Mr Tenet, a Bill Clinton appointee, has found himself at the centre of an increasingly fierce firestorm whipped up by Republicans and Democrats desperate to assign blame ahead of next year's elections for the handling of intelligence in the run-up to the war.

Senior Republicans believe that George W Bush needs to make Mr Tenet the scapegoat if he is to fend off Democrat attacks during the forthcoming election campaign. Democrats are rallying round the agency, arguing that the true culprits lie within the White House and the Pentagon.

The CIA has come under fire from Republicans for failing to provide warning of the September 11 attacks and for allegedly supplying inaccurate analysis of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes

Telegraph - News

Microsoft to open Longhorn OS

Microsoft is giving away a beta of its next generation Longhorn OS to testers ... here's a posting from longhornblogs.com, a blog maintained by a microsoft emplyoee :

Why is it different this time around? Because when it ships, we want it to be a product that's impossible to hate.

We're a long way from that, believe me. Next week I'll be joining you and posting things I hate about Longhorn (I have a long list myself). We want you to be brutal. Tough. Critical. Negative. Harsh.

Don't worry, we can take it. We want to have an operating system that's beyond reproach when it ships.

This is a big chance Microsoft is taking. We're bringing customers directly into our design process. We're giving our community members extreme power. We're giving the press an unparralleled look at how an operating system is designed and developed. Many of our executives are now reading RSS newsfeeds of blogs. I'll point at the best of the "I hate Longhorn" blogs and I'm sending the feedback I see directly to the product teams (plus, you won't believe who's reading the blogs lately).

It's the equivilent of if General Motors invited all of its customers into its design shop as it was developing its next Corvette and saying “hate it“ and then, when someone says “I hate the way that fender looks“ the design team changed the fender design.

Imagine what that is going to do for Longhorn

Now I'd say that is indeed a biog big jump in approach for a company like Microsoft ! Hope to see something postive come out of this !

PS : I'm a despo Linux fan and an avid Microsoft basher ... but this posting has got even the cynic in me interested in Microsoft's moves