The New Sun Ad Campaign

September 14, 2005 Leave a comment

Just in case you haven't seen the new Sun ad campaign, here are the ones that got rejected (there's a tab on that page to see the ones that will actually get run). This comes shortly after they flew a banner over the Dell HQ. This isn't the first time Sun did something like this. You may remember that they tried to hire a fleet of exterminators to attend the Windows 2000 launch to remind people how many bugs it had (the plan was canceled by the owner, who feared that Bill Gates would buy the company just to close it…which should give you an idea how the average person viewed Microsoft at the time). Now, marketing 101 says that if you are a market leader you never mention a competitor, and if you are not a market leader you mention them, so that people put you in the same category. That's clearly what Sun is doing here. I'm not sure I'd want to be in the same category as Dell on this one though. They make cheap servers that are known for being just that – cheap. Sun has traditionally been an innovator, which is something Dell does little of in the server market. I guess times have changed though and you can see why Sun would want to try and change their focus. At any rate, they are getting some major press out of the deal, so mission accomplished. IBM did a non-traditional marketing blitz when they started to support Linux, and look how well it worked for them. Sun is clearly in a different spot than IBM was, and the campaign has a much different slant…but generating that buzz was the same end goal.
–jeremy
, , ,

Filed under Main Page

Google Blog Search Goes Beta

September 14, 2005 Leave a comment

Google just took the wraps off yet another BETA service. They have been on fire lately. This time, it's a Blog Search which most people had to see coming. With all the recent complaints I've seen about Technorati, this may be a opportune time for Google to jump into this market. Hopefully they can alleviate some of the splog problems that most engines have been having. While it probably won't happen, I'd like to see a concerted collaborative effort on this (ie. get Google, Yahoo!, Technorati, IceRocket and whoever else is interested to get together and pool efforts to reduce duplication of effort). I'll have to start comparing the major engines at this point and decide which one I'm going to use long term. I was surprised (but happily surprised) to see that a search for jeremy as of right now returns me as #1! Nice job Google ;)
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Main Page

Vista is a Hardware Beast II

September 13, 2005 1 Comment

A follow up to this post. It appears that the hardware requirements are not as lofty as was originally reported. As explained here, Nigel was evidentially detailing the optimal hardware setup and somehow things got misconstrued. Amazing how fast things can tear through the blogosphere, isn't it? You have to feel bad for Nigel. I'm sure that by the time he realized what happened and had a chance to clear things up, the damage was done and the story was making its way into the annals of technorati. It seems that in the end, Vista will actually run on a tablet, which certainly aren't know for having beefy hardware.
–jeremy
,

Filed under Linux, Main Page

eBay to buy Skype in $2.6bn Deal

September 12, 2005 Leave a comment

Looks like some of that dotcom madness is back. $2,600,000,000 – and half of that is in cash. The BBC seems to speculate that this may have to do with eBay letting its buyers and sellers talk to each other via their computers. I don't think so. Who wants to sit around and answer questions real time for something like this? Email seems like a far better solution here. It seems to me that eBay is trying to move itself from being an auction company to a business solutions company. They may even try to tie PayPal and Skype together, allowing you to charge for an incoming Skype call by the minute (think as a competitor to 900 numbers). They could also use it as an inexpensive way to offer incoming 800 numbers. That is an interesting idea and does have some potential IMHO. But, Skype has some odd peculiarities and is not based a SIP. While this historically didn't matter, as SIP takes off it will. And with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Gizmo all jumping into the fray recently this isn't a market I'd want to be getting into right now. $2.6bn just seems like a lot of money to be dishing out for this. Is it a snap reaction to all the GooglePay rumors or does eBay really have a plan that most people are just missing?
–jeremy
, , ,

Filed under Main Page

Vista is a Hardware Beast

September 10, 2005 1 Comment

I had to chuckle a bit when I saw the hardware requirements for Windows Vista. The only req that seems reasonable to me is the 1GB of RAM for 32bit machines (it's 2GB for 64bit). Let's take a quick look at the others. While 256M of RAM in a video card is not outrageous these days (some already have 1G, although they aren't cheap) it seems like an awfully high bar for a minimum. This is due to the change from using the CPU to display bitmaps on the screen to using the GPU to render vectors. This alone will make a whole lot of computers fall short. They'd also like to see a PCI-Express video card, not the much more common AGP. Next is the RAM – they'd like to see DDR3. I don't even think this is shipping yet, and the roadmap looks like 2007 is the target date for mass adoption. Nice! The next one is SATA2. While SATA2 is nice (it supports Native Command Queueing), but certainly not the standard in machines today. So, we've already eliminated almost everyones machine so far, right? Now for the kicker. No current TFT monitor out there is going to support high definition playback in Vista. That's right – NONE. To play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content you'll need a HDCP compatible monitor. The bottom line? If you'd like to upgrade to Vista, you'll probably need a whole new machine – including monitor. It almost seems like Microsoft is forcing you into buying a new computer. Is this their payback to the Dell's of the world for all the abuse they've been given? Seems coincidental, that's for sure. This has to be good news for Linux, which will not have any of these lofty prereq's, I'm quite sure. Hopefully Linux vendors will take advantage of this.
–jeremy
, ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page

We're Going to London

September 9, 2005 Leave a comment

Just a quick note to let everyone know that LQ will be exhibiting at LWE UK in London. So far it looks like in addition to myself, we'll have at least acid_kewpie, david_ross and XavierP. Last years trip to London was an excellent time and I'm looking forward to getting out there again. See you at Olympia.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

MySQL – Say It Ain't SCO

September 5, 2005 Leave a comment

I have to admit I was quite surprised to hear that MySQL signed a deal (any deal) with SCO. Surely it wasn't true. …and if it was true, it was probably along the lines of SCO buying a support contract and then touting it as a partnership to get PR (which would seem like an odd thing to do, until you consider some of SCO's PR moves). Then a saw the press release on the MySQL site. They must not be proud of that release, because it's not even listed on the press release index page, even though it's dated “3 September 2005”. Now, I understand that MySQL AB is a business that wants (ne, needs) to make money. But I can't imagine that the negative will generated by this deal will not far outweigh any short term monetary gain. While SCO does indeed have some entrenched install niches, it's a dying product. A quick look at SCO's number easily confirm this. As a company that depends on Open Source to survive, partnering with a company that declared the GPL unconstitutional seems like an odd move. Here's a comment from an MySQL AB employee (who made it clear that this was his and not MySQL AB's opinion: “First our users are our users no matter what platform they are on. This isn't about SCO, this is about the users of that platform who deserve to be able to get support. There are still a lot of SCO servers sitting out there and the users deserve to be treated like any other users. They didn't pick SCO's battle and many of them have legacy applications that can not be easily ported or easily rewritten. The choice of a vendor is not always an option.”
While I'm glad to see that they try to have their customers needs in mind, I don't think partnering with SCO is in anybodies best interest (an argument could indeed be made for MySQL simply resuming shipping for the SCO platform I guess). We'll have to see how this one plays out, but I can't imagine it will be good for MySQL AB. If anyone sees any official comments, let me know.
–jeremy
, , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page

LQ Radio Interview #4 – Doc Searls

August 26, 2005 1 Comment

Just interviewed Doc Searls for LQ Radio. Fairly informal, which is one thing I like about LQ radio and overall I think it's an interesting interview. We coved a variety of topics including recent OSCON and LinuxWorld trips, Cluetrain, Google, splogs, RSS, Linux Trademarks and more. More than a couple times the discussion lead into a direction that I had written down in my outline. Total running time is 1:27. Take a listen and let me know what you think.
–jeremy
, , , , ,

Filed under Linux, Main Page, podcast

Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle

August 25, 2005 2 Comments

Can this possibly be correct? Hollywood may be starting to get it…and the NYTimes is then printing it? Something seems wrong here. This exact topic was discussed recently on LQ Radio. After blaming file sharing, piracy and a whole host of other things that were obviously incorrect it seems reality may have slapped them squarely in the face. Kudos. From the article:
Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.
..you think it's possible that the RIAA will wake up too? I didn't think so, but it's nice to dream ;)
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

Search Engine Spam?

August 24, 2005 Leave a comment

Just a note to Tim on this. From the linked article: …and a couple of other areas, though affiliate sites such as and linuxquestions.org, which are O'Reilly branded but which we do not own, have less restrictive policies, which is why you will see ads for…. We (LinuxQuestions.org) have far more restrictive policies than the rest of the O'Reilly sites from what I can tell. To weigh in on the actual question at hand, I don't have any problem at all with relevant text links as long as they are non deceptive and done right. The way that most of them are done at O'Reilly make sense to me. As an example, many of the visitors in question are the type that go to conferences and would therefore need hotels. That seems 110% legit to me. I can't see why such a fuss was made by the original poster, especially considering that those links have been there as long as I can remember.
–jeremy

Filed under Main Page

← Older posts

Newer posts →