Commodity PC hardware - have to love it
About a month go, my trusty old Linux PC finally died. This was the computer that had not had a hardware upgrade in 4 years and except for security pathces, was running an old version of Linux - I used it to host KnowledgeBooks and some of my online demos.
So, for a month I have been running my web site and online demos on my Mac OS X development machine - a nuisance.
Carol and I drove down to Phoenix yesterday, on a religious pilgramage to Fry's Electronics. I drove home the owner of a $199 PC with Linux preinstalled - I opened up the box when I got home - I think that all chips and components are also manufactured in China. Anyway, it seems like a nice PC - fast enough and it runs really cool - I doubt that the entire thing is pulling more than 80 watts.
As my friends know, I really dislike the Cineese government, but I have good wishes the people who live there. I also think that non-US countries do themselves a huge favor by enthusiastically embracing the use and development on (and for) Linux. Linux runs really well on non-top of the line hardware, and you can't beat the price. While I am fairly much a total fan of Mac OS X, if I had to work all day on Linux running KDE, that would be OK.
Globalization issues
Buying a PC totally made in China got me thinking about globalization. I think that it is fairly obvious that most of the real power in the world now exists outside the formal structure of governments - mostly multinational corporations, to a lesser extent organized crime. In the U.S., large corporations basically control Congress and the Presidency - I imagine that it is more or less the same in other industrial nations.
Still, I really don't have too many complaints about the new business-centric world that we live in. I believe that there is still a place for governments as organizations that slightly offset the power of corporations.
One great thing abut the Bush administration is the honesty and transparency of their actions - certainly, no one would seriously argue against the view that the current administration almost totally bases its actions on what is good for their corporate (and wealthy individual) sponsors - certainly not on what is good for the rapidly shrinking US middle class. I find this honesty refreshing. President Clinton tried to act like he cared for the US middle class, but of course, he also acted in the best interests of his corporate (and wealthy individual) sponsors.
Free markets - let's rumble
So, the new world is not about morality, it is about free markets and competition between a few large multinational corporations who own all mainstream news media and can allow the public (the lazy ones - who don't dig for 'real news') to see and hear just what the corporate masters want the public to see and hear. Ths is reality - accept it. I think that this is basically OK, as long as there is still some transparency.
In the U.S. (and I imagine Europe), our huge middle class has an unjustified feeling of entitlement. It will be hard on the rapidly vanishing middle class in delveloped nations, but will also be healthy in a lot of ways: motivating students and workers, the wellfare states will basically go away (sad from a humanitarian point of view, but it will still happen), motivating businesses at all levels to cut cost, produce greatest benefit to consumers (I am not talking about monopolies like M$crosoft), etc.
8:53:44 AM 
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