port7 – co – uk

I see Microsoft are making a bid for Yahoo, they are obviously looking to respond to the growing power that is Google, and so Yahoo seems like a good buy.

What is just as interesting and not good news, is that Yahoo recently bought Zimbra, the most promising of the Exchange alternatives out there. So by acquiring Yahoo, Microsoft will also get Zimbra and promptly bury it, in favour of the 500-Pound Gorilla that is Exchange.

My request to the board of Yahoo, don’t do it, but if you do, ensure that Zimbra stay’s open!

Just setting off for a meeting at Microsoft HQ, should be interesting. As I am there on a professional basis I am going to avoid pointed questions about closed standards, document formats and anti-competetive practices.

Then again, maybe not…

So after unsubscribing from Linux Journal about a year ago and getting a subscription to Linux User and Developer I am thinking about going back.

It seems that LU&D have a bit of a distribution problem, I have not had a magazine for a few months now, and I also have not been paid for a couple of articles I wrote. With Linux Journal, the magazine always arrived on time and although there was a slight American bias to the magazine it was a good read with great articles.

I see a certain Mr Stephen Fry is pimping Firefox in his latest blog entry, nice one Steve!

Is anyone aware of any Debian derivatives that are targeted to the Retail market? Looking at the current market, it seem that Novell has it cornered. That can’t be a good thing!

Just came across a nice little app called GanttProject, as the name implies it lets you do Gantt Charts. It’s a basic project management tool, and it claims to be able to import-export MS-Project files, an important feature for me living in corporate UK.

I shall have a play over the next few days and see how it shapes up, first little go seems good though…

This is a ‘Dear Lazyweb’ call….

The other day I had a bit of a clear out of the loft, I made good progress and managed to shift quite a bit of kit. Whilst clearing out I managed to find various bit’s and pieces that I have not seen for some time. One of the this I found was my 1st computer, a Sinclair Spectrum 48k the rubber key’s version, finding it gave me some pause for thought.

That thing, a present from my Mum and Dad in my early teens really gave me a lot. As well as years of enjoyment, playing such classics as Jet Set Willy, and Sabre Wulf & The Hobbit, gave me a taste for computing that put me where I am now, in a good career that I enjoy and food on my table!

So in honor of that pivotal machine, I am looking to frame it. I am thinking a wooden case with a glass / perspex front, with the Spectrum sitting in some sort of recessed material like felt, velvet, foam etc. Anyone know where I would get such a thing? I guess it would have to be custom made, or is there an online market for such things?

So the shinyness and hype got to me, I was in the O2 store at 7pm an hour after it was released. I was all set for just having a play and walking out. So much for being a Free Software pimp and sticking it to the man!

It is very cool though, as you may have guessed I am typing this on it. The keyboard is not too shabby, even the wife is impressed!

Random musing mode here, so a challenge I am currently facing here is a dependence between a OS image on a estate of legacy hardware. We can’t upgrade the hardware because the OS will not support newer hardware, and we can’t upgrade the OS because the newer OS won’t support the older hardware, so we are at a sort of impasse.

When you virtualise a OS image, what it gets presented to it with some virtualisation technologies is a bunch of virtual hardware. So you can move that OS image onto another bit of hardware running the virtualisation software with no changes to the OS image regards drivers or anything. This potentially has fantastic benefits in reducing long-term TCO, and also greater freedom with hardware vendors.

If you virtualised the desktop, and just run one image per desktop, you don’t get the benefits of consolidation from the virtualisation but you do get independence from hardware vendors, which certainally to me in my current situation would be great.

Anyway, I may explore this concept further…..

Good news on the $100 laptop, they have finally seen sense and allowed us people in the developed world to purchase them. The deal is that you basically pay for 2 of them, one you get to keep the other goes to a child in the developing world.

People have been asking for this for ages, so it’s good to see it happening (well not yet, but at some point)

Anyway the story is on the BBC.

Also the link on the BBC is borked so to put your name in the hat to get one go to xogiving.org.