Sys-Con Taking Some Heat

May 9, 2005 Leave a comment

…and deservedly so. Seems they may even lose a couple of writers, which says a lot since writers for that mag aren't paid. Why? It's over Maureen O'Gara, who has recently posted an article about Pamela Jones of Groklaw containing home address, phone numbers and a variety of other info. The article also contains some disparaging remarks. Evidentially, for this kind of material, sys-con will pay. Once again it's sad to see that things are written seemingly just to make a story. I'm glad to see that Pamela seems unphased by this. A little while ago I was asked to contribute to LinuxWorld Magazine. I turned the offer down due to time restraints, but had in the back of my mind that I'd submit an article at some point. I'm with the two other authors on this one though, and certainly never will if my article would appear next to content like that.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

Michael Dell, $100M and Red Hat

May 9, 2005 Leave a comment

Looks like Michael Dell has pumped $100 Million into Red Hat. The investment was made by MSD Capital LP in the form of $99.5 million worth of debentures that were converted into 3.89 million shares of RHAT. Those shares are valued at roughly $43 million (it's not necessarily an immediate loss as the debentures could have been purchased using a strategy called “convertible arbitrage”). This could be taken a couple of different ways really. I don't think there is an acquisition in the works here as him investing personal money in a company and then having Dell Inc. acquire it would surly draw SEC attention (at a minimum). That SEC attention makes me wonder if Dell Inc. has any plans to change their Linux strategy or relationship with Red Hat. It may just be Michael Dell making an investment, hedging his other investments, etc. It may even just have been something he did in response to a recommendation from his investment company. Either way, I think it shows some confidence – not only in RHAT, but in the viability of the Linux market. That is a good thing. We'll have to watch this one closely.
–jeremy

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Microsoft Funded Benchmark – Again

May 8, 2005 2 Comments

I don't know why these benchmarks keep getting publicity. Yes, that claims Windows 2003 is easier to admin that RHEL 3 (which is now a full release old). Yes, it was sponsored by Microsoft. Yes, it's the same company that did the much criticized Samba benchmark. I didn't have time to read the whole thing (it's 62 pages), but almost every page I read contained at least one skewed or outright ridiculous claim. A couple examples:
– The “skilled/prescreened” Linux admins admitted they didn't like writing scripts (these are not real admins then)
– The tape drive selected came with 2003 drivers, but not Linux drivers
– The Linux admins seemed to have no OpenLDAP experience, but it was a required task. The report then goes on the point out that OpenLDAP is confusing and lacks integrated management tools. Indeed it does, which is why Red Hat bought Netscape Directory Server and will be dropping OpenLDAP
You get the idea. The fact that the measured action item here was how long it took a couple of admins to complete a couple of task is almost ludicrous anyway. That is so dependent on individual talent that it doesn't even give you a cursory indication of anything, except how long it took those couple of admins to complete the indicated tasks. Not too useful is it. At this point, I have to think that these funded reports are doing at least as much damage as they are doing good to Microsoft. The education level of consumers is growing at an astounding rate and most are quite sensitive to feeling duped.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

The Problem with Corporate Blogging

May 7, 2005 Leave a comment

Looks like HP is currently taking it on the chin. They got caught removing negative customer comments from their corporate blogs. From the linked blog post:
Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it.
While I'm glad they reversed their decision, I don't think that's necessarily enough. Evidentially, they have been caught removing negative comments before. What's to say it won't happen again? Unfortunately for HP this incident made Slashdot, ironically after they had already reinstated the comment.
This brings up my larger problem with so called corporate blogs though. You don't know how much of the positive comments are astroturfed and you don't know how many negative comments have been pulled. There are times when I read them and wonder if the CxO that is alleged to have written the post even did. Obviously, some corporate blogger have gained a huge amount of trust and respect. Jeremy Zawodny and Robert Scoble come to mind, but there are many others. If you notice though, both those blogs are not done in an “official” corporate capacity – neither are even under a domain that their employer owns. I don't think that is a coincidence. Yet both gain their respective companies a huge amount of positive PR and exposure. Both Jeremy and Robert get it and both have been critical of the company they work for (of course they have both also said positive things also). By letting them be honest, it shows that at least their bosses within the company get it too. The fact that corporate blogs are being installed just as another PR outlet is a shame, since it dilutes the blogosphere IMHO.
For my part, I never remove negative comments from this blog or even from LQ itself. Honesty and openness in a community like LQ is paramount. The only things we remove are spam, extremely offensive material and things of that nature – and all that is in the TOS. I'm glad to see some of these cases drawing public attention. The negative PR will likely offset any of the fake positive PR that was drummed up. NOTE: This shouldn't be taken to mean that I think all corporate blogs are bad – they aren't. In fact, some are quite good. It just means that you should take what you ready on them with a healthy dose of skepticism (but that's probably true about most of what you read on the Internet).
–jeremy

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Tiger OSX Compatibility Issues

May 7, 2005 Leave a comment

To me, this article about upgrade problems with Tiger seem a bit played up. Of course there will be some application incompatibility issues. This will be the case with any major operating system upgrade, be it Linux, Windows, Mac OSX or whatever. No enterprise should be upgrading to a .0 release of an OS one week after it came out anyway. If they do, the sys admins either don't know what they are doing, don't like their jobs much or deserve what they get. It should stand to reason that if you are changing OS internals, apps that depend on those internals might act in a unexpected way until the application provider has had a chance to come out with an upgrade that takes the changes into account. To me, that means you should not even be looking at a new OS version until every app you depend on is known to work. After that you still have to verify OS stability and you should really consider waiting until .1 if it hasn't already been released by the time your apps have all reached compliance. Seems like common sense to me – ounce of prevention and all that…
–jeremy

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OpenOffice.org Reviewed by The Associated Press

May 6, 2005 Leave a comment

It's good to see OOo getting some good press. It's even better that the press is coming from an outlet like The Associated Press, which means that it'll get widespread exposure. OOo 2 looks to be a breakthrough release, with the suite now being something you can safely install on your parents machine, even if you haven't switched them to Linux yet. It's programs like OOo and Firefox that will be many peoples first introduction to Open Source software. This makes them extremely important as once a person realizes this gratis Open Source stuff is worth more than they paid, they are likely to try more. Eventually, they just might get it.
–jeremy

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Gates Vs. Google

May 5, 2005 Leave a comment

Although it has a slightly over exaggerated title, Gates Vs. Google, this Fortune article has some interesting info. It's clear that Google has now really gotten under the skin of Gates (and Microsoft in general)… and for good reason. Google has hired a huge amount of Microsoft employees, including some very big names, and has even opened up an office in Redmond. They continue to be first to market on many non-search apps and not only are they first, but often better. The article contains much more info and is a suggested read. One thing is clear – we're in for quite a battle here. This is definitely not going to be Netscape all over again. As one ex-Microsoft employee put it, Microsoft has to play Google's game to compete with Google. That's not something they are used to. Between Google on one end and Linux/Open Source on the other end, Microsoft has not seen competition this fierce in a long long time. Should be interesting to watch and see how they react.
–jeremy

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OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications Approved

May 4, 2005 1 Comment

OASIS has announced that the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification has been approved. The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. I've covered the importance of Open Document formats before. The new standard will be the default in OpenOffice.org 2 and support is already in the latest Koffice beta. No word when/if Microsoft will support the standard, but they are an OASIS sponsor. Now that the spec is a standard, let's hope that we get some quick adoption, especially in Government. Using an Open Document standard has many advantages, most importantly allowing you guaranteed access to your data and avoiding vendor lockin.
–jeremy

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Running kernel.org

May 3, 2005 Leave a comment

KernelTrap has an in-depth look at what it takes to run kernel.org. It's always interesting to get a behind the scenes look at what really goes into running a large site. H. Peter Anvin, Nathan Laredo, Kees Cook and team do a fantastic job. Kudos to them and ISC, who donates two Gig-E Internet links. As Linus says, “I have been very happily relying on others to do all the work with kernel.org.” He went on to say, “I've literally never needed to lift a finger for kernel.org maintenance, which is wonderful”. Wonderful indeed.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page

Interview with Mandriva (ex Mandrake) Linux Founder Gael Duval

May 2, 2005 Leave a comment

Just posted an interview with Gael Duval over at LQ. Some interesting topics covered IMHO. Thanks again to Gael – he had the responses to the questions to me in about 24 hours, which is insane as I know he's quite busy.
–jeremy

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