The head honchos at the British Library must feel like they've been ship wrecked on love beach.
About three years ago, the British Library and Microsoft partnered up and announced plans to digitize 100,000 old out of copyright books. Wasn't Microsoft a wonderful corporate citizen?
The British Library acted as a so-called "independent" ally of Microsoft in their heavy-handed bid to get ISO (International Standards Organization) approval for their brand spanking new 6,000 page "Office Open XML" file formats.
(An even more broken version of this broken file format is used in Microsoft Office 2007).
Microsoft's committee stacking and general political interference in the ISO process worked and they got their broken file formats approved in February, helping them to perpetuate their Microsoft Office monopoly for a few more years.
The ISO's credibility in the tech community is now very close to zero.
Move the calendar forward to this month.
Microsoft has just announced that they are abandoning their digitization project at the British Library.
Microsoft just wants to be friends.
See:
Goodbye, British Library
Microsoft "Live Search" Blog
Alex Brown, the British Library and OOXML
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The "virtual" union leader
The Globe & Mail had another interesting story today... this time by mining reporter Andy Hoffman.
Napoleon Gomez Urrutta, General Secretary of Mexico's National Miner's and Metalworker's Union lead a strike of 20,000 Mexican workers yesterday...from exile in Vancouver, British Columbia!
With our increasingly globalized economy, workers and unions need to find ways to make use of new communications technologies to defend their rights.
This is an excellent example.
Napoleon Gomez Urrutta, General Secretary of Mexico's National Miner's and Metalworker's Union lead a strike of 20,000 Mexican workers yesterday...from exile in Vancouver, British Columbia!
Napoleon Gomez Urrutia has been leading the National Miners' and Metalworkers' Union of Mexico while in exile on Canada's west coast for more than two years now, with help from modern technology.See "Mexico's striking miners heed the call from B.C."
"I keep running the union from here through video conferences, e-mails, phone calls and frequent visits from my colleagues," Mr. Gomez said in an interview yesterday.
The 62-year-old hasn't been able to return to Mexico because he is likely to face arrest on government charges of corruption and embezzlement, allegations he denies.
Across Mexico yesterday, union workers from steel mills to gold mines halted work.
The workers are protesting the government's failure to recognize the re-election earlier this month of Mr. Gomez as the union's general secretary.
The strike slowed or ceased production at several mining and steel-making operations, according to wire reports from Mexico.
With our increasingly globalized economy, workers and unions need to find ways to make use of new communications technologies to defend their rights.
This is an excellent example.
A nation of retail clerks?
Globe & Mail Economics reporter Heather Scoffield reports today that with the decline in the manufacturing sector, Canada is rapidly becoming a nation of retail clerks.
Along with this shift from making things to selling things, Canadian workers are taking a serious hit in the wallet.
And much like factory workers, North American workers on this new retail assembly line have to stand all day for half the pay!
Along with this shift from making things to selling things, Canadian workers are taking a serious hit in the wallet.
"On average, hourly wages for a typical manufacturing worker were $21.66, according to Statistics Canada. That's 46 per cent higher than the average hourly wage in the retail sector, where workers are typically paid $14.87 an hour. And retail employees are often part-timers, and work far fewer hours in any given week than factory workers. So the contrast in weekly wages in the two sectors is even starker.
In February, 2008, the average weekly earnings, including overtime, for factory workers was $950.84 a week, almost double the average weekly pay of $488.58 for retail employees."
And much like factory workers, North American workers on this new retail assembly line have to stand all day for half the pay!
Friday, May 16, 2008
The Giant Sucking Sound
Every year the business magazine “Fortune” ranks the top 500 corporations in the US by revenue (and in a later issue the top 500 non-U.S. corporations). You might think that looking at a bunch of numbers would only be of interest to accountants, but I find it interesting too. It reminds you of a few things.
On top of the list this year again...is the retail giant Walmart.
Walmart is of course famous for busting unions, treating workers like crap, charges of predatory pricing, squeezing suppliers, and extracting all kinds of planning and tax concessions from municipal governments so they can build big box stores on the outskirts of town while putting everyone on "Main Street" out of business.
On revenues of $378 billion, they earned $12.7 billion in profits.
Exxon Mobile (they named an oil spill after them!) came in second with just under $373 billion in revenue, but a whopping $40.6 billion in profits.
Number three spot went to another oil company...Chevron (the company that briefly named an oil tanker named after the current U.S. Secretary of State). They had revenues of over $210 billion and made $18.7 billion in profits.
Poor old fourth place General Motors lost $38.7 billion on revenues of $182 billion.
Way down the list at number 44 is a once little known company based in Redmond, Washington. They had revenues of "only" $51.1 billion. But, they made nearly $14.1 billion in profits! I'm talking about the company that Bill Gates built..Microsoft.
Aside from Exxon Mobile and Chevron, only General Electric ($22.2 billion), JP Morgan-Chase ($15.4 billion) and the Bank of America ($15 billion) made more dough than the boys from Redmond last year.
I'm not a mathematician and thankfully not an economist either. But I do know how to use a calculator. So I had a little fun with figures.
For every single dollar you spent on a Microsoft product, they cleared 28 cents in pure gravy!
On the other hand, "Union Buster's 'R Us" Walmart made a little over three cents on every dollar you spent there. (They didn't make it on me. I NEVER shop there).
Oil spillin' catastophe lovin' Exxon Mobile, made about eleven cents on every dollar you spent "putting a tiger in your tank". (Okay...I'm dating myself).
Chevron made about nine cents on the dollar and Conoco-Phillips made about seven cents profit on the dollar. Even that "into everything" company...General Electric made only thirteen cents on the dollar.
What's the secret recipe for being a global vaccuum cleaner that sucks up masses of cash instead of dust bunnies?
Go down to your nearest big box store and try to buy a PC without Microsoft's resource hogging Windows Vista operating system on it. Go ahead and try!
The license to use Microsoft's Windows operating system adds anywhere from $50-100 to the cost of your PC. It's a defacto "private tax" whenever you buy a PC.
If you poke around on line, you might be able to find some large computer manufacturers still selling machines with Microsoft's older Windows XP operating system on them. If you really really look hard, you'll find a few brave manufacturers selling machines with a free software GNU/Linux operating system pre-installed. But you'll need to be a real web sleuth to find them. (Here and here).
Recently, GNU/Linux operating systems have gained a bit of a toehold in a new class of portable computers. The micro notebook "UMPC" or "ULPC" class machines...like the One Laptop Per Child Project's "XO" computer.
Some of the "Intel Classmate" machines also run a GNU/Linux operating system.
The "Asus EeePC" (see my previous blogpost) has taken the world by storm. HP and others will soon be offering GNU/Linux based UMPC/ULPC class machines.
Even though this is only a tiny toehold for the community built operating system, Microsoft has decided to crush this movement before it gets out of hand.
Just this past week they've announced that they'll be making their almost obsolete "Windows XP Home" operating system available to manufacturers of UMPC/ULPC machines for about $30 a pop. The plan was to shelve this operating system next month, but for this class of machines they've put it back on life support.
They're even trying to dictate to hardware manufacturers what kind of machines they are "allowed" to put this discounted Windows XP Home on.
The OLPC project used to be really cool. The plan was to sell tens of thousands of these neat little GNU/Linux powered "XO" machines to education ministries in the developing world. The aim was to try to get the price down to around $100 per unit. So far they've managed to get it down to about $180.
But this week, Microsoft announced that it's officially got its paws into the XO project.
So the XO project will no longer be introducing techno-savvy kids in the developing world to software that they have the freedom to change and adapt to their needs. Instead they'll be stuck with an operating system that is "licensed and not sold"...that they are not free to change.
And so these bright geeky kids will never have the chance to develop software that's appropriate to local conditions. They'll grow up addicted to the Microsoft drug. It's electronic colonialism.
A few months back, Mandrivasoft, a small French company that distributes its own GNU/Linux operating system made a deal with the Nigerian education ministry to supply some Intel Classmate machines with Mandriva Linux pre-installed. Mandriva was going to supply the tech support for the machines.
But Microsoft went in through the back door and tried to derail the deal.
Microsoft will stop at nothing to preserve it's tax on computing.
Then there's Microsoft's second cash cow..."Microsoft Office". Microsoft has convinced hundreds of millions of computer users that they "need" this software.
They've even gone so far as to bully the International Standards Organization (ISO) into accepting it's broken file formats as "a standard" for the exchange of electronic documents. Two years previously the ISO had accepted without controversy the totally open and vendor neutral "Open Document Format" (ODF) as "the" standard for electronic documents.
Rather than deal with the technical merits of Microsoft's file formats (what they're supposed to do), they simply caved in to heavy-handed lobbying.
I feel totally confident in saying that 90% of computer users do not need Microsoft Office. If you say you "need it", you'll need to have a very good argument to convince me.
Instead you should be using the free as in freedom, free as in free beer "Openoffice.org" office suite. It's available for the Windows, MacOSX, GNU/Linux and Solaris operating systems.
Download it today and start using it. Kiss Microsoft Office goodbye forever and get off the treadmill of spending money on upgrades every time Microsoft introduces a new file format.
And if anyone sends you a ".docx" file, send it back!
If we can't turn off this cash sucking vaccuum cleaner, maybe we can at least put it on a lower setting.
On top of the list this year again...is the retail giant Walmart.
Walmart is of course famous for busting unions, treating workers like crap, charges of predatory pricing, squeezing suppliers, and extracting all kinds of planning and tax concessions from municipal governments so they can build big box stores on the outskirts of town while putting everyone on "Main Street" out of business.
On revenues of $378 billion, they earned $12.7 billion in profits.
Exxon Mobile (they named an oil spill after them!) came in second with just under $373 billion in revenue, but a whopping $40.6 billion in profits.
Number three spot went to another oil company...Chevron (the company that briefly named an oil tanker named after the current U.S. Secretary of State). They had revenues of over $210 billion and made $18.7 billion in profits.
Poor old fourth place General Motors lost $38.7 billion on revenues of $182 billion.
Way down the list at number 44 is a once little known company based in Redmond, Washington. They had revenues of "only" $51.1 billion. But, they made nearly $14.1 billion in profits! I'm talking about the company that Bill Gates built..Microsoft.
Aside from Exxon Mobile and Chevron, only General Electric ($22.2 billion), JP Morgan-Chase ($15.4 billion) and the Bank of America ($15 billion) made more dough than the boys from Redmond last year.
I'm not a mathematician and thankfully not an economist either. But I do know how to use a calculator. So I had a little fun with figures.
For every single dollar you spent on a Microsoft product, they cleared 28 cents in pure gravy!
On the other hand, "Union Buster's 'R Us" Walmart made a little over three cents on every dollar you spent there. (They didn't make it on me. I NEVER shop there).
Oil spillin' catastophe lovin' Exxon Mobile, made about eleven cents on every dollar you spent "putting a tiger in your tank". (Okay...I'm dating myself).
Chevron made about nine cents on the dollar and Conoco-Phillips made about seven cents profit on the dollar. Even that "into everything" company...General Electric made only thirteen cents on the dollar.
What's the secret recipe for being a global vaccuum cleaner that sucks up masses of cash instead of dust bunnies?
Go down to your nearest big box store and try to buy a PC without Microsoft's resource hogging Windows Vista operating system on it. Go ahead and try!
The license to use Microsoft's Windows operating system adds anywhere from $50-100 to the cost of your PC. It's a defacto "private tax" whenever you buy a PC.
If you poke around on line, you might be able to find some large computer manufacturers still selling machines with Microsoft's older Windows XP operating system on them. If you really really look hard, you'll find a few brave manufacturers selling machines with a free software GNU/Linux operating system pre-installed. But you'll need to be a real web sleuth to find them. (Here and here).
Recently, GNU/Linux operating systems have gained a bit of a toehold in a new class of portable computers. The micro notebook "UMPC" or "ULPC" class machines...like the One Laptop Per Child Project's "XO" computer.
Some of the "Intel Classmate" machines also run a GNU/Linux operating system.
The "Asus EeePC" (see my previous blogpost) has taken the world by storm. HP and others will soon be offering GNU/Linux based UMPC/ULPC class machines.
Even though this is only a tiny toehold for the community built operating system, Microsoft has decided to crush this movement before it gets out of hand.
Just this past week they've announced that they'll be making their almost obsolete "Windows XP Home" operating system available to manufacturers of UMPC/ULPC machines for about $30 a pop. The plan was to shelve this operating system next month, but for this class of machines they've put it back on life support.
They're even trying to dictate to hardware manufacturers what kind of machines they are "allowed" to put this discounted Windows XP Home on.
The OLPC project used to be really cool. The plan was to sell tens of thousands of these neat little GNU/Linux powered "XO" machines to education ministries in the developing world. The aim was to try to get the price down to around $100 per unit. So far they've managed to get it down to about $180.
But this week, Microsoft announced that it's officially got its paws into the XO project.
So the XO project will no longer be introducing techno-savvy kids in the developing world to software that they have the freedom to change and adapt to their needs. Instead they'll be stuck with an operating system that is "licensed and not sold"...that they are not free to change.
And so these bright geeky kids will never have the chance to develop software that's appropriate to local conditions. They'll grow up addicted to the Microsoft drug. It's electronic colonialism.
A few months back, Mandrivasoft, a small French company that distributes its own GNU/Linux operating system made a deal with the Nigerian education ministry to supply some Intel Classmate machines with Mandriva Linux pre-installed. Mandriva was going to supply the tech support for the machines.
But Microsoft went in through the back door and tried to derail the deal.
Microsoft will stop at nothing to preserve it's tax on computing.
Then there's Microsoft's second cash cow..."Microsoft Office". Microsoft has convinced hundreds of millions of computer users that they "need" this software.
They've even gone so far as to bully the International Standards Organization (ISO) into accepting it's broken file formats as "a standard" for the exchange of electronic documents. Two years previously the ISO had accepted without controversy the totally open and vendor neutral "Open Document Format" (ODF) as "the" standard for electronic documents.
Rather than deal with the technical merits of Microsoft's file formats (what they're supposed to do), they simply caved in to heavy-handed lobbying.
I feel totally confident in saying that 90% of computer users do not need Microsoft Office. If you say you "need it", you'll need to have a very good argument to convince me.
Instead you should be using the free as in freedom, free as in free beer "Openoffice.org" office suite. It's available for the Windows, MacOSX, GNU/Linux and Solaris operating systems.
Download it today and start using it. Kiss Microsoft Office goodbye forever and get off the treadmill of spending money on upgrades every time Microsoft introduces a new file format.
And if anyone sends you a ".docx" file, send it back!
If we can't turn off this cash sucking vaccuum cleaner, maybe we can at least put it on a lower setting.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The EeePC ...a tool for labour and social activists!
A few months ago, I joined the "UMPC" (Ultramobile Portable Computer) revolution.
What's a UMPC? It's an ultra small portable notebook computer.
In the case of the "Asus EeePC" UMPC it weighs just under a kilo which means you can easily carry it anywhere. It fits very easily into a small handbag.
That opens up some incredible opportunities for labour and social activists. Labourstart's Eric Lee posted an article entitled "Ultra-portable laptops and the unions: A revolution in the making".
The Asus EeePC comes with three USB ports, an SD/MMC port (for camera cards), audio in and audio out jacks, a VGA out port for connecting the machine to a computer projector or external monitor, ethernet port (for wired network connections) and a built-in Wi-fi card for wireless networking.
The "onboard" storage is not that much (a four gigabyte flash drive), but honestly you don't really need any more then that for mobile use. If you do, CDN$10 buys you a one gigabyte USB thumb drive.
The model I have cost me CDN$350. But for an extra $50 there is a model that comes with a built-in web cam.
You will not find Microsoft's bloated "Windows" computer operating system on the Asus EeePC. Instead, you'll find a customized version of the "free as in freedom" GNU/Linux operating system.
GNU/Linux combined with the use of a flash drive, makes the Asus EeePC the fastest booting notebook computer I have ever seen in my life!
As for user software, you'll find just about everything you'll need for mobile computing, most of it free software as well.
Need to do write a quick report, do a spreadsheet or a presentation? You'll find "Open Office" pre-installed on the machine. An office suite is something that you typically don't find pre-installed on most Microsoft Windows machines. That costs extra.
If you're wanting to surf the net, the world's best web browser is already there...Mozilla Firefox.
For e-mail, you'll find Mozilla Thunderbird...which also by the way handles RSS feeds. If you use webmail services like Gmail and Yahoo mail, you'll find shortcuts to get you there very quickly!
Are you a user of instant messaging services? You'll find "Pidgin" at your disposal. The difference is that Pidgin handles about half a dozen instant messaging services in a single software programme! It's not necessary to have a different instant messaging programme for each service that you use.
For viewing photographs you'll find "Gwenview", for listening to music and streaming audio you'll find "AmaroK"...which blows "iTunes" out of the water! If you need to do a quick interview, just plug in a cheap computer microphone and use the onboard audio recording software.
Configuring wired or wireless networking connections is a couple of mouse clicks away with the built-in software.
While most of the installed user software comes from the "free software" world, a few programmes don't. "Skype", the best known "voice over IP" software comes pre-installed. So where ever you are, you can always keep in touch as long as you've got an internet connection.
We unfortunately also live in a world where most of the streaming audio and video formats used on the web are proprietary. Support for these formats is pre-installed on the Asus EeePC. You'll also find support for proprietary plug-ins like "flash" and "java".
Other computer manufacturer's like HP are in the process of releasing similar types of UMPC's.
How does this help labour and social activists?
Let's say you're at a union rally and you want to send some photos off to other activists. You just pop the memory card out of your digital camera, insert it into your Asus EeePC's card slot, and providing you've got some kind of internet connection you can attach the photo to an e-mail message and send it on it's merry way anywhere in the world!
The beauty of it is that you can send full-sized photos...not the little wee photos you typically see on "camera phones".
Our struggles are increasingly global in nature. Imagine being at a rally and being able to view photos from a similar event in another city within minutes!
Voice-over-IP services like Skype can also handle video conferencing. Someone from another part of the world can speak to your event from another continent!
Unions that have enough money to equip their staff with notebook computers often "ration" them. For the price of a "standard" Windows-powered notebook, a union can equip several staff with EeePC's. And that does not include the cost of user software like Microsoft Office, security software or IT staff to maintain the machines.
Instead of having IT staff constantly "fixing" things that are broken, they can be more creative and do things that help strengthen the union's technological capabilities.
The EeePC has attracted so much attention that a global online community has developed around it. Just go to eeeuser.com
The GNU/Linux computer operating system (which makes UMPC's possible) along with the many community built user programmes are a product of the social activism of free software pioneer Richard Stallman. In 1991 Stallman authored the "GNU General Public License" which created the environment where free software could flourish.
While Stallman's original concern back in the 1980's was about creating social solidarity amongst computer users, most of us are concerned about building solidarity between workers and the community at large over a wide range of issues.
So Stallman's "free software activism" can help fuel everyone else's activism. And we've now got the little machines to help us do it!
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