Slashdot points to this article in ComputerUser about Dell CIO Randy Mott's provocative statement that "UNIX is dead." Mott had other provoking observations:
"Industries that don't plan for obsolescence will get out of date and they will turn out to be different industries than what they could have been. said Mott. Look at the airlines, an industry with big possibilities. A lot of that was realized, but it got to a point and then it stopped. Look at the big failures: Eastern Airlines, Swissair, Pan Am. That industry's potential went unfulfilled because of dated processes and obsolescence."
Well, we all know that Dell (say what you will about their service) is a leader in the just-in-time-inventory revolution, which depends greatly on automated systems. According to a Dell spokesperson quoted in the article, Dell's amazing build-to-order system (including order management, customer transaction information, manufacturing flow etc.) all involve Sun-based UNIX systems. But that, according to Mott, is changing. And Linux is a central part of the change. The article reports:
Dell looked into switching to Linux. The company determined that such move would yield a configuration 89 percent faster and 41 less expensive.
"The importance of the Unix era vs. Linux era," says Mott, "is that Linux is based on open standards that will allow CIOs to build flexibility, affordability and performance into business computing platforms."
Well, I'm surprised. Not by the switch to Linux, though. It's becoming increasingly obvious, to the point that the mainstream press is almost starting to figure it out, that Linux is a ready-for-primetime player. Our lawfirm, which a year ago wouldn't have used Linux, now has a Linux server (born last week) that is going to be used to host our internal web site.
By using Linux we were able to build a server at basically zero cost (old Pentium 166 mhz computer, 64 Mgs of Ram, and 4 Gig harddrive with Apache that runs plenty fast for what we are using it for). As a result of that laboratory experiment we have now figured out that Linux lets us use old computers very productively without incurring ridiculous software costs. We've discovered an escape path from the treadmill upgrade cycle. Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?
We've become born again, and praise be to Linux. How did this happen?
Our problem up til now wasn't that we didn't want to use Linux (we did), but finding someone we could hire on a full-time basis who knew Linux. Our most recent hire didn't know Linux when we hired him, but he wanted to learn it, and naturally we encouraged him. When he leaves in the Fall to go to Law School, we are going to need another computer person. And they'll have to either know Linux, or be able to learn it quickly. I wonder if anyone in the top tier of management at Microsoft is picking this up? Probably not. Some things are just too painful to realize and so the corporate brain just routes them into the "denial folder."
Meanwhile, now when I look in our computer room at the heap of ramshackle computers that were slated for slaughter I no longer see death and destruction; I see potential. I see Linux servers. And our new computer guy is working on learning how to make Linux databases that will talk to the servers. And I feel like a proud parent ("Have I shown you pictures of our new Linux servers?").
Apparently, soon Dell's Randy Mott is going to be a proud parent too. Congratulations to him and to Dell!
XML can be used for many things, including describing written agreements, or mediating disputes that arise as a result of electronic agreements. Jerry Lawson of the net.law.blog has a great post entitled XML and Online Dispute Resolution Conference about the recent ODR-XML conference hosted by the University of Massachusetts Center for Information Technology & Dispute Resolution of which he was a panel member. Apparently, Bob Ambrogi was an organizer.
Keep up the good work guys. XML is important stuff, even if many lawyers haven't yet realized it. Eventually they will.
Cory Doctorow is doing a great job of blogging the Open Spectrum Conference. I was particularly intrigued by the discussion between, among others, Larry Lessig and Alex Kozinski, that focused on the question of property rights in the allocation of the spectrum. It's great to see great minds openly grapple with cutting edge socio-technical issues. And it's great to hear a respected federal judge like Kozinski, while talking about less regulation leading to more content, engaged in this exchange:
Demsetz: If you get the FCC out of the picture would there still be scarcity?
Kozinski: How about the Internet? Or cable? The less the FCC was involved, the more channels we got. I had channels coming out of the wazoo.
Now that's an image that you would never get from a mainstream legal publication. But, forget that, here's another worthwhile observation from Judge Kozinski (as reported by Cory):
Kozinski: If we'd been present at the net's birthing, we probably would have believed that in a decade, it would be clogged beyond use. But as far as I can tell, it's getting bigger faster! Sometimes capacity creates demand which creates capacity.
And this statement is interesting, and wonderfully devoid of legal pretense:
Kozinski: Aren't property rights really grabby? Property owners are litigious and intolerant of uses that don't really impact them or their use of their property.
And here (again, Cory's version) is an exchange between Kozinski and Thomas Hazlett, a Manhattan Institute fellow and economist who believes in the importance of property rights. The discussion focuses on 802.11 standards (aka "Wi-Fi"), which allow for easy wireless networking, which was present at Stanford (where the conference was taking place):
Kozinski: But Stanford has no property right in WiFi and yet here we have a perfectly good network, even without that right.
Hazlett: Yes, they do have a property right.
Kozinski: If you call that a property right, then you've joined the other side.
This is great stuff. I'm sorry I didn't get to go to the Open Spectrum conference, but through Cory's meticulous coverage of the discussions I have been able to get a strong sense of the discussions.
And one thing I sense in particular is that Judge Kozinski has a pretty good grasp of the key technology issues. I say that, not because I agree with his point of view, but because he appears to actually understand the practical issues created by the technology. And that is the key to getting to the right legal framework. Many judges (and lawyers) don't think that they need to understand the practical ramifications of their arguments. That's clearly not the case with Judge Kozinski. Obviously, he is one of those scary-bright people that give "intelligence" a good name.
It started with this pretty pathetic first post. It's kind of interesting for me to go back and look at how I stumbled into this whole weblog phenomenon. I'm still not sure what happened. Buzz showed me some software and I saw that I could try it for free for 30 days, so I did. Jenny enouraged me and showed me how to set up my weblog. Rick and Denise showed me that it was not frivolous for an attorney to keep a weblog. And they became my friends. A year later, I find that I have made a bunch of other new friends, people that I would never have had the opportunity to meet unless I had a weblog. That alone has made the project more than just "worthwhile."
And I'm looking forward, in the next year, to meeting even more of the people who share this space with me. Actually, I'm looking forward to meeting them in the next week, because I'm going with my wife to the SXSW conference in Austin. Geez, last year I didn't even know that SXSW was. It's funny how much things can change in just one year.
