Justin's Blog

October 31, 2004

Predictions

Around this time of year, the analysts give their predictions for the next year about Linux, the industry and pretty much everything else.

For no apparent reason, I have decided to write down my predictions for the Linux industry, whether right or wrong to see if anything I say comes true.

Firstly, is this going to be the year of Linux in the Enterprise or the desktop?
Well, 2004 was heralded by some as the year of the desktop and it definitely did not pan out like that. I know Novell is releasing its desktop environment, and I truly think they will win some large and important accounts with this, but you never get success in this industry with a one pony race. 2005 will be the year of innovation on the Linux desktop, bringing technology to the desktop that is sorely missed at the moment.

We have GNOME and KDE at a point where the base of the desktop, the API and the general look and feel is standardised, we can now build upon this and take it a step further with innovative designs and inventions that do not put the desktop in a position to beat Microsoft (seriously, that will never happen), but put it in a position to be a contender in the desktop space, which at the moment we do not have. The Linux desktop in its current incarnation can replace some functions some of the time, se need it to be able to replace some functions all of the time.

The standard example if replacing the receptionists PC is great, but until OO can fully replace all of the functionality in the current MS Office suite, it is not a safe bet to replace an organisation’s 100+ receptionists with something that will work 80% of the time. The 20% where it will not work will equate to a 20% drop in efficiency which any CIO will see a detrimental to the organisation.

The Enterprise ?
2.6.x was supposed to bring Enterprise level functionality to Linux, and I truly think this is the case, but 2004 was not 2.6’s year. The Enterprise is really dictated by the likes of Oracle, IBM and SAP. Where is the support for the 2.6 distros ?

This is a huge stumbling block for Enterprise and 2.6.x. 2005 will be the year of Linux in the Enterprise when support comes around. It will put Linux in the same vein as Solaris, and I think Sun needs to wake up to this and either stay on the Linux bandwagon or compete against it. Sun customers do not trust Sun when it comes to Linux because they change their strategy so often. Linux will steal a large part of Sun’s market this year for sure.

I think in Q4 if 2005 grid will come into its own. We have heard about utility computing, and IBM’s on Demand strategy will finaly kick in will dynamic provisioning of resources with the POWER architecture and the rest of the server line. HP will also start pushing Linux harder in the Enterprise space which will make for some interesting wins.

Oracle will also be able to push 10g as it has been production release for long enough. Even though 10g has been out for a while, customers are still nervous about using it over 9i, which is a proven architecture. This will also help sell the grid idea to the rest of the industry as we finally have a commercial implementation of what most people still consider a pie in the sky idea that has no use to companies. I hope this will change.

Well, that is part one, more ramblings to come by the end of the year.

October 28, 2004

Really annoyed

Those in the UK would have probably heard about the court case today where a couple took out a loan of just inder £6000 in 1989 and decided not to pay it because they could not afford the monthly payments. They ended up owing just under £400,000 because of late payments, and over 30% APR.

The judge decided to wipe the slate for them stating that the loan agreement was too extreme. I am sorry, but if you are stupid enough to take out a loan with such a high APR, and you signed the contract, whether you read it or not, you are bound by that contract.

What has happened to the world that the stupidity of well, dumb people is protected by the courts. If you don't read a contract correctly and sign it, you deserve all you get! There are relatively intelligent people out there who have taken out loans (for example, I have one for £8000 for my car) who understand that they are bound by those rules.

Contract law is there so that both sides understand what they are responsible for, and they both have to uphold that, if they don't then take it to court. The judge was stupid to wipe the slate clean, the people should have lost their house, everyone else would have done and they have set a very dangerous precedent that we should not have to pay for. Grrrr!

October 27, 2004

Weird

My wife (still seems weird to say that) came up with an interesting question.

We all know that a cat will always land on its feet.

We all know that a buttered piece of bread/toast lands buttered side down.

If you buttered the back of a cat, would it float in a matrix stylee when dropped from a height?

Running 9.2

Well I now have 9.2 on my thinkpad. Did this via the upgrade option and it did not go smoothly as I had ULB gnome installed. Had to remove all elements of GNOME and then re-install from the media. Now all is fine.

A few things I am annoyed at:

only Gnome 2.6 (i know it is not easy to push through 2.8 through the beta process, but it would be nice)
Mysql 4.0 (wanted 4.1!)
My bloody thinkpad modem does not work anymore. This is a pretty big pain in the arse as I have to replicate my Lotus Notes and cannot dial up anymore.

Apart from that, it all looks OK. The updates to Novell graphics looks quite slick, but the Gnome stuff still sucks. Changing to some included icon themes means that some icons are not there in control-center etc. which is just silly.

Ah well.

ebay ebay ebay

Well for some lucky people out there you can have a few bargains on ebay as I am dumping a lot of my computer books up there for a very good deal. As we are moving I am getting rid of books that I no longer need. There are some obscure ones (programming the 6502) and some great ones (CCNA study guide).

Check out my listings here.

There is also a Palm Tungsten going for £30 too. You lucky lucky people!

October 19, 2004

Photos from Turnberry

After the Leaders for Linux IBM event, we went off for some activites, here are some photos...

The Harris Hawk we worked with

Shooting poor clay pigeons

PHPing to death

After coming up with some extra curricula activities to make me a millionaire, I have had to get a little bit better at PHP. After using phpBB for talkaboutlondon.com, I now have to code the restaurant list code from scratch. I have implemented the SQL code and also the search by string/postcode code.

The code desparately needs cleaning up and "functioning" as at the moment it is full of if...then's which I don't like doing.

I may even (god forbid) look into creating objects for these things, but I have never been a fan of OO programming. Time to bite the bullet maybe.

October 18, 2004

There's a rat in ma kitchen

Well sweet jesus it always happens to me doesn't it! Working from home, sitting in my living room, I look over and there is a dirty great rat walking around about 2 meters away from me. Frozen to the spot I just sat there staring at it until it went out of view. It then occured to me that if I cannot see it, I don't know where it is!!!

I have called rentokil who thought it was quite funny that I described it as: "A bloody huge rat the size of a horse..."

Unfortunately I still have not seen the funny side of this yet, but probably will when there is a pellet in the back of the little bastard's head.

WHY ME!!!!!

House is well on its way

Our mortgage application with Northern Rock came through while I was in Scotland. After seeing that NR had spelt Aimee's name wrong anf that they told us we needed work doing on a dormer window (which the property does not have!) I had to email the mortgage advisor to sort it out. Muppets!!!!

Our solicitor says he has received the deeds, so he is now doing the searches. Hopefully we should be moved by mid November, which is great news, albeit a little bit longer than we had hoped.

Scotland

IBM hosted the LEaders for Linux roundtable at Turnberry in Scotland on Thursday and Friday last week. It was weird sitting there and talking with SCC's competitors about how to make the programme better for us collectively, but we did get a lot done and hopefully the North Region's incentives will work better for us.

After the meeting, we all split up and did some "activities" or golf. Seeing as I am not a golfer I went clay pigeon shooting (11 out of 12), falconry, quad biking and range shooting.

My flight from Prestwick (apparently the only place in the UK Elvis set foot) was late on Friday, so I stayed in the bar and listened to an old guy with bag pipes and also finished off the restaurant code for www.talkaboutlondon.com (my new business venture)