Not even Wednesday yet...

[altivo]

Long, cold day. The library revolt is almost a certain success now, just one or two more big meetings to get through. One of those is tomorrow. The boss gets cold feet and starts to hyperventilate and we have to reassure her that she's made a good decision (which she has, just six months too late, which is the cause of the fear now.)

Really cold here. Arctic chill. Woodstove going full tilt, and the woodpile is starting to look skimpy. Probably we'll order another cord of wood, and that will be the cue for the weather to warm up for good.

Looks like Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot good with Vista. Having read about its behavior by design, I can't imagine why anyone would saddle themselves with it. Microsoft seems to be getting cold feet now too. They started work on the first service pack even before releasing the OS. And they've extended the support period for XP significantly beyond the normal two years after the next version policy. I think they realize that a lot of people are not going to see any advantage in moving to Vista. It looks like a crucial error to me, and one that would be difficult to back out of as well.

Off to my spinning cuz I can do that near the stove. And then to bed, where it's warm; especially when two dogs and three cats pile on top of the blankets.

Comments

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

On the whole Vista thing, mostly I'm worried that the hardware vendors won't keep their systems open enough for them to work in the open source environments too... but I'd expect to see some crippled Linux drivers in the future, at least, or some other odd behavior.

I've been looking for a new laptop for a while now, I guess I could try Vista on that, but it'll be one or two years still before I'm willing to try that one on the main box. And I'm short on memory already, I don't need an additional burden on top of that.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This is a major concern, of course. But hardware vendors haven't exactly been cooperative with open source environments anyway, for the most part. I'm confident that it is a small part of Microsoft's overall strategy to perpetuate that situation. The hardware designer who is torn between following open standards and being compatible with Windows is almost certainly going to go along with Microsoft simply because Microsoft has a strangle hold on the market.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

Strictly Linux/Open Source-based hardware would be an interesting idea though, maybe we'll see something like that in the future too, now that Microsoft is leaning heavily into forcing manufacturers to the signed drivers and issuing other draconian demands on the driver codebase and policies over its openness.

I don't think the new DRM systems would increase the price significantly, but in bigger companies (with more computers) every dollar counts, I guess. Would be a nice opportunity for some reliable, low-cost hardware, to give more incentive for switching to Open Source software too.

We live in interesting times. =)