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The Economist's Open-Source Quintet 25

Posted by timothy from the bundles-of-satisfaction dept.
LarsWestergren writes "The latest issue of The Economist has an interesting group of articles on software, including The Beast of Complexity, Open Source, Sun, Microsoft and the Battle of the (next generation) Platforms, XML alphabet soup, and Software Integration. Not technical, in-depth or error free, but still a good overview, and a hint of what the suits of the world find interesting in computer culture." A good thing to point your boss to, if necessary. Economist articles often include some interesting graphs -- in this case, for instance, there's an interesting chart (though from aging data) on Linux developers by their email suffixes attached to the second of these articles.
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The Economist's Open-Source Quintet More

The Economist's Open-Source Quintet

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  • If by PC you mean the IBM-compatible x86 Personal Computer, yes. If you mean "personal computer" as a generic term, I think Apple deserves more credit in that department. Microsoft merely played the cards right to ensure their dominance. They made no contribution to the computer industry as a whole.
  • It seems to be okay in Mozilla, I didn't see any question marks.
  • All these articles are interesting, how come they generated so much slashdot crap? Are /. readers
    just mindless jerks? Maybe those sad enough to log in at the weekend (written at 6.26 Sunday morning, ouch!)

  • I found this article extremely interesting because it looks at the dwindling pc market from the consumer angle. If the machine runs all my games, and all of my recreational and leisure programs who needs to upgrade. Everyone knows the software sells the machine, not the machine itself. Also it brings up another point about the status of the hardware industry. We are still using essentially 20 year old x86 boxes. The model hasn't change only the throughput on such devices. Which brings me to the killer ap, the pc market should really take advice from the embedded market and redefine their ideal for the kill app. It's not windows xp, 2000 or the latest variant, it's the one piece of software that practically no one can live without(voice recognition, high powered games-Unreal2, gps software, office 2001-(perish the thought). windows ce, embedded linux and mach variants are redefining this by giving people options they never had before on a low cost scale in a pda. The killer app in this case becomes a necessity for the user not a nuisance. Just a scary thought, what if Microsoft thought they could do this by coming out with windows OS x with the linux microkernel at the core. (not frowning on MAc OS x, but the market needs innovation not regurgitation(bad spelling, I know). Ex Electrical Engineer

  • Linux is not a microkernel. It is a well designed monolithic kernel that manages to use microkernelish code when it's efficient to do so.

    Microsoft is very unlikely to build an OS around GPL code. They are adamant in their hatred of the GPL and their belief they have a god given right to make money off anything they release, even if it uses other peoples code. They would want to code support for their API into the kernel, and they wouldn't want to send you source for their forked kernel, bottom line.

    What they do instead is use BSD code to try and get NT to work.


    "That old saw about the early bird just goes to show that the worm should have stayed in bed."
  • Go Zooko et al!

    This is surely the way of the future...

    --

  • I feel exactly like this guy. I have been using our old Pentium Pro 200 with minor upgrades and it still rocks (plays Halflife without a glitch...because of the Voodoo2 card). I'm of course not a hardcore gamer and I don't mind the low FPS rates as long as it looks okay.

    I do an occasional Raytrace, but really...waiting 20 minutes longer is not an issue. For the rest all my processorpower is donated to Seti@Home.

    A long time ago, I was always willing to put down a lot of cash for the latest, newest, fastest and even professional hardware. The motto was, "if the stores have 8Meg RAM standard, I will need 16 or 32", oh, and not to forget the biggest harddisk (in SCSI of course) and the biggest and meanest CPU. But now look: under my desk stands a stock consumer PC, staight from a computer super store. I don't need more...in fact the screen was more expensive than the computer itself. There are two possibilities:

    1. We need a real killer-ap to kill off al PC's that are older than 3 years or
    2. I'm getting old, and the magic has disappeared for me.
    Whatever it is....if I need a new computer, it will be because of some stupid outage. (Yes, the PPro is dying: the alimentation is getting old, and just try to find an AT alimentation these days)
  • Being a British paper, they do a good job of getting the news across, neutrally. I never read American weeklies anymore: It's all the same propaganda dog food.

    One of the best articles about ecommerce and the internet in the Economist some three years ago or more were actually written by a very kind American gentleman, who felt much at home in Britain. :-)

    I wonder, if it's the same author again. Unfortunately I can't find a reference.

  • Aaaugh! Question marks instead of apostrophe's are all over this damned article! Isn't it about time someone developed a hack to fix this?

    -- juju
  • Arguing about hardware is moot. You got it right: Software drives everything.

    The next big app may not even run on our 60year old VonNeuman machines. Nobody knows. Nobody should care. It will happen no matter what anyone plans or anyone says.


    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
  • The economist is refusing my connection. I think it has been slashdotted, as of 1:20 PM EST. I guess I'll just have to go and buy it.
  • Just take a gander at Fucked company.com [slashdot.org]
    CoasterCount.com [coastercount.com]
  • "Uhm....what Microsoft has done to the PC? You mean, fuck it over completely and turn it into a horrid, unusable piece of unstable manure?"

    Yes, but because of Microsoft, more people are fustrated with Windows than with any other operating system. :)

    Seriously, no matter your opinion on this fact, it was Windows that really put the PC on the map and in the majority of the households in America.

    To butcer a certain Bruce Campbell movie, "Good, bad, I'm the guy with the OS."

  • Fascinating, but I want the next generation platform to evolve, not out of Sun, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Exodus, etc., but out of Mojo Nation [mojonation.net], E [erights.org], Chord [mit.edu], FreeNet [sourceforge.net], etc.

    Open source projects, with ambitious goals for self-healing, self-organizing networks, tolerant of diversity, resistant to any conceivable attack, and free from the manipulations that mega corps inevitably introduce in their unceasing quest to gain monopoly power.

  • he magazine explored their concerns and the reasons for their popularity amongst a certain portion of the public.

    As I recall, in the end they explained why the concerns were unfounded/mitigated. As a pro- free-trade/world-trade publication, they must write this story with this conclusion in mind.

    I agree that the economist is a very well writen magazine, but remeber no matter how good the writing you are still being sold thier company line.

    --locust

  • Being a British paper, they do a good job of getting the news across, neutrally

    The economist has its own biases. It is a capitalist publication. These views are evident in its editorial policy, the subject matter it persues (the stories that are not writen), and the recomendations of its columnist on given issues. This is not to say its a bad publication... Simply be aware, that just because a you are not being beaten over the head with propaganda your are being given an objective view of a situation.

    --locust

  • The Economist is actually a very intelligent and insightful weekly, and most of their column writers really know what they're talking about.

    Being a British paper, they do a good job of getting the news across, neutrally. I never read American weeklies anymore: It's all the same propaganda dog food.

    I'm glad that someone had the bright idea of pointing out their computer articles to /. If you dig back a couple of years, you can find a this great article where Bill Gates answers various allegations the Economist made against him. Suffice to say, bad little Bill uses the words 'freedom to innovate' in every other sentence throughout the whole piece.
  • "And then there is a raft of fast-growing newcomers, as yet known only to insiders, that are also hoping to get a big piece of the pie. BEA Systems, a Silicon Valley firm founded in 1995, is the most ambitious, with its plan to do for web services and e-commerce "what Microsoft has done for the PC", as chief executive Bill Coleman grandly puts it. "

    Uhm....what Microsoft has done to the PC? You mean, fuck it over completely and turn it into a horrid, unusable piece of unstable manure?

  • OK, the 70s'-80s have been basically moved the boundaries of computing-people relationship from 1-n to 1-1. This decade we are halfway through the shift from 1-1 to n-1 where we clients access multiple servers. This can be very broadly generalised as a shift away from single-user WIMP (Windows-Icon-Menu-Pointer) towards a multiuser LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-Php/Perl) where the traditional model-view-controller paradigm now has multiple views and multiple inputs. Wheras the X event-loop dispatched the user actions, we now have the server serialising access and using the database to maintain a consistent state (baring a power failure or 5) to generate multi-media data-pages on the fly. This is good in the sense that software is now extended through time (think bookmarks) and space (the internet). It is novel to the mainstream because the traditional moving pictures (aka square-eye god of TV) was non-interactive (turn on / tune-out). Hence they can (gasp) click to delve further or (surprise) customise the appearance. This offers intriguing possilbities as we are not limited to keypress/mouse actions as event inputs but higher level functions like complete forms (basically what the fight about XML-schemas is about). Pretty basic stuff for anyone familiar with the guts of X but never before pushed into mainstream. If you model the bandwidth differential between a LAN and the real-world (TM), you can probably predict the type of network applications x years ago that will become somewhat popular next year.

    Unfortunately what we are lacking is new courses/theory/tools on how to adapt applications for a n-1 computer-person relationship. Peer-2-peer is just an example of bad marketing of a really difficult concept. How do you get 2 or more machines into a consistent or synchronised state. This is the difference between having a dog on a lease and herding cats. Whatever solves this scalability issue is going to be create a whole new set of products/services (cough*.NET*cough). Why? Because traditionally data processing has been considered a pipeline process (following the manufacturing model) where it gets transformed from low-order to higher more structured order. Instead the network allows multiple pathways, multiple sourcing. This is illustrated by the fact that raw music (MP3s) might actually be more valuable (to someone like a DJ mixing/blending new tracks) than the finished packaged album (which is limited to only listen to). Allowing the consumer to gain access to the intermediate stages of production will be a long-term benefit but for now, it is anathema to vertically integrated businesses which is why they are being very careful with their EULA.

    It is going to be an interesting decade ahead.

    LL
  • I can talk about Freenet and that's about it. I read abou Mojo a while ago but I'm sure it has all changed since then. Freenet is all about static documents, and as good as that is, it will not help anyone write a web service. Add dynamic routing of packets in real time to freenet and you might get somewhere, but as it stands, freenet currently has one purpose: to protect censor attracting documents.
  • The Open Source article badly misquote SuSE's claim. This whole article is more like a high school report paper, stealing stuffs from here and there and add flashy graphics.
  • Of course it has its own perspective, but the Economist does a consistently excellent job of presenting the various points of view on a particular subject. For instance, when talking about the WTO protestors in Seattle, rather than casually dismissing them out of hand as 60's-era wannabes, the magazine explored their concerns and the reasons for their popularity amongst a certain portion of the public.

    Nothing written by human hands can ever be truly objective, so the best you can hope for is a magazine that honestly states its editorial standpoint, and gives thoughtful consideration to alternate viewpoints.

    And on top of that, there's usually a great deal of wit and humor in each issue. The Economist rocks.

  • The only thing that keeps computers working with the mediocre quality of software today is the fact that once you get a system working, it will probably stay working, more or less. But what happens when you're tied to multiple services that can install stuff on your machine, the OS isn't secure enough to keep them from interfering with each other, and none of the vendors warrant that the whole system will work?

    Maybe Microsoft is deliberately creating that situation so that only all-Microsoft systems will work.

  • Anyone who hasn't already should check out JBoss [jboss.org] -- my vote for the next-generation web services platform.

  • Sun versus Microsoft? Guess again. (Score:3)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Saturday April 14, 2001 @01:18PM (#291497) Homepage Journal
    The article on the migration of apps to the web portrays the whole thing as a battle between Sun and MS. The author has read too many press releases. Neither company has the vision to play more than an incidental role in the ongoing revolution.

    MS built its success on Windows, which benefited from the pervasiveness of cheap IBM compatibles. Sun built its success on SPARC workstations and servers, which were powerful enough to be cost effective network boxes, despite their proprietary technology. Neither platform has a central place in the net-centric future, and both companies know it. Hence various "next generation" initiatives. But no serious observer is impressed by any of these.

    .NET is an attempt to create a pervasive network platform, the way Windows is a pervasive desktop platform. MS's notion that they can repeat the success of Windows is an exercise in ego and self-delusion. Everybody outside of Redmond knows that the domination of DOS/Windows/Win32 has nothing to do with technology brilliance, and a lot to do with dumb luck and aggressive tactics that MS cannot get away with twice.

    Java has always been a solution in search of a problem [sun.com]. Not that Java hasn't had its successes, but it has a longer list of failures: web "applets" (except for a few Yahoo games), thin clients (I don't count terminals that run GUI server apps -- these are "clients" only in marketspeak), platform-independent Office suites, smart appliances... the list goes on and on. Java has been underrated by people who don't understand the strengths of bytecode VM technlogy, but also overrated by true believers. It will always have a role, but that role is limited.

    Somewhere a Finnish (no wait, we've been there) or Chinese or Nigerian computing geek is sitting down at his P90 box, cursing his flickering monitor and slow connection, and coding the killer app that he can't afford to buy. He'll upload a copy somewhere, millions of people will discover they can't live without it, and our geek is on his way to being on the cover of Time. That is that future of network computing.

    __

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