Le Chuck

vs
Barbossa

We all know the problem about proprietary software is lock-in danger. How can you ever be sure, that whenever you would like to move away from a certain type of software, you are able to do so. What guarantee is there that the data managed by these softwares is yours and not owned by that application.

A new initiative, called Certified Open, will allow companies to rate their products in terms of openness. Giving you some kind of confidence in that it at least complies with certain standards. It appears there are 3 different levels; bronze, silver and gold, though I could not find any reference to what it entails.

I found this great Linux site, called 'Linux Kernel Configuration Archive'. Nice reference site to quickly search for configuration options or to compare two kernel versions options.

Opera should now be fully Acid2 compliant. Too bad this doesn't really mean it's the best works-on-any-site solution, but then again, we'll probably never get there.

Sourceforge.net 2006 community choice awards, cast your vote today! There is something in each category for everybody you use or like.

Scott McNealy lets us know in an open letter he wants a 'converged HPUX/Solaris platform'.

HP is dropping PA-RISC support in favor of Itanium, so it would be a good idea to bring HPUX to Proliant servers according to McNealy. The only people interested in this are the ones where HP is not interested in. HP is quite happy to have their top of the line servers running on proprietary processors. HPUX and the servers it runs on are an excellent excuse to charge immensely large amounts of money on hardware, software and services. The hardware is not at all that hot (although it very well made and still contains nice features, but nothing much has changed for years), the software is crap, most to blame is HPUX itself, but almost all HP implemented software has this over-complex-bloated-bug-ridden status upon it (compared to Solaris or Linux, which most of time still follow the KISS principle).

No really, if HP would want to go to the Proliant platform, they'd do better to drop HPUX and go Linux. No reason why they wouldn't be able to make great Linux specific servers with quality support. Ofcourse, that would make them just another Linux vendor, but now they are just another Unix vendor with an outdated product in their hands.

Funny Microsoft bits today, the first is the usual hype surrounding a Windows release. 'Why Windows Vista Won't Suck', a piece at ExtremeTech, had me shaking my head because people are buying Microsoft's marketing hype once again. You can replace 'Vista' with any Windows release and it will still be true, except it never is in real life.

The second bit is about Microsoft thinking it Will beat Google in 6 months. Again, this isn't the first time we hear them say this, so far nothing has changed. MS Search still returns 'How to Remove Linux and Install Windows on Your Computer' when searching for 'linux' and it will return 'Programming with Circles, Triangles and Rectangles' for keyword 'xen' (the actual Xen site is not even listed on the first page of results). All the while Google returns sensible results.