This is the big one. First, let’s remember a few facts about 1966. Ronald Reagan was nobody, well nearly nobody. He was an out-of-work actor who had hosted a TV show, "Death Valley Days," and made one speech of importance. In that speech, he nominated a man for President who would get just 39% of […]
It’s the business model, stupid. The open source business model is better for the economy. Selling services and support, showing your source code and giving it away, works. You can make money that way. But you don’t make as much money. The economy grows but you, the maker of the software, don’t make as much […]
It’s official. Net neutrality is now a partisan issue. Someone tell Instapundit. And the Gun Owners. This is something I predicted a while ago, but it does not necessarily please me. It would be better to win. Democrats are the minority party. By turning this into a partisan issue, Democrats practically guarantee the defeat of […]
A lot lower. Even liberal pundits have been recently amazed at how low the President’s approval rating has gotten. One report had it as low as 29%. The very worst approval rating for Richard Nixon, they note, was 26%. And that was right before he resigned. But in fact the Bush approval rating can go […]
If being right were all that mattered in Washington, Jimmy Carter would have served two terms.
The leaders of the open source movement are those people and companies who give the most to it before they try to take anything out of it. This is a fact that has been dawning very slowly in the industry, where many "mixed source" offerings have gone nowhere, and lost their chance to catch on.
Precursor is a good candidate for this. It exited the independent research business in January, and said that it would instead provide "its high value research to a more limited number of clients."
Its name is letterboxing. And the fact it’s not being done more is the rip-off. Every year, at the Academy Awards, speakers go on-and-on about how "the movies are better in the theater." Why? Because of the aspect ratio. Movies seen at the movies are wide-screen. TVs are narrower. Of course, there is a solution, […]
The fall of Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI), which went Chapter 11 today, has many lessons, including a vital one for open source. SGI rose to prominence as the maker of a "graphics supercomputer," and led Hollywood’s digital revolution in the 1980s. It was a very important company, led by Jim Clark, who later founded Netscape. […]
Assuming network neutrality fails in the Congress, with Verizon and AT&T favoring specific Web sites (like Yahoo’s) over others, some of their chief rivals are ready: AOL has struck up a deal with Clearwire to co-brand its wireless broadband system (which uses licensed frequencies, as opposed to WiFi). Clearwire, which is slower than DSL and […]
