Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 31 Jan 2013 06:03

Thorsten seems to be lead from behind type but he could definitely do some slick presentation to keep audience engaged and excited.

Vivek Bharadwaj did a wonderful job demonstrating and selling BB10 and so did Marty Mallick from alliance perspective. May be I missed but wished to see or hear much more on the manageability and enterprise solutions perspective that could have conveyed the value differently.

Reminds me of Palm that has/had quite a few desis in the rank and file. Hope it could carve out a different future.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 31 Jan 2013 06:15

Oh BTW: it would have been awesome if they announced about their plan to engage OEMs to manufacture hardware including BB10 tablets.

It will be nice if mahdis here can comment on such a prospect and repurcussions.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Jan 2013 07:29

Raja Bose wrote:Actually even you as a single 1-man company mango abdul can go to Shenzhen and tell mama-san in one of the little shops - "this is my wish list. let's talk price" (no, not the Lalmullah wishlist, you kaffirs! ). You will get your "custom" phone in a week along with printed packaging and even fake branding if you so desire. Making phones in Shenzhen is like assembling a desktop PC in Nehru Place.

There must be some very accomplished engineers at the back end to be so agile and efficient in pulling together various things to make this whole thing happen. Probably the shenzhen types pay more than legit ones like lenovo, zte , ningbo ...

I read some a1 russian hackers work for crime syndicates due to the better pay, work from home, flexible hours and lavish bonus schemes vs the legit sector..they can probably also get to steal the personal details of any babe they fancy.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Jan 2013 07:40

Nope its all MediaTek kit and they are designed to be very modular so you don't even need college educated engineers to do the assembly - same way you don't need a college educated engineer to assemble a desktop PC (I brought my 1st PC in 1995 from Azadpur Sabzi Mandi in Dilli, go figure

). Shenzhen cottage industry types are mostly small businesses hence pay for employees (if they have any employees per se) is hardly lucrative. The quality is shit but the possible combination of options available is mind-boggling. Where else can you get a phone which looks like a Ferrari car (fake logo more authentic than the original logo), the hood opens up as a flip phone (with a vroom-vroom sound), runs Android ICS, has TV function and costs $15.- to buy in qty of 1?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Jan 2013 08:38

android has been the great enabler in terms both giving a functional and stable OS for free, plus lakhs of useful apps from online.
these cheen cos would not have had the same impact in india without being able to match samsung and lg by using the same base SW.
their older sw were quite poor.
also the quality screens have become commoditized now and everyone seems to get good quality 4" and 5" IPS lcd screens....there too the branded players have lost the edge.

I suspect things like heat , EM radiation measurements to meet safety stds, long term shock tests are not done at all .... every once in a while someone gets killed by a exploding phone or gets silently fried by EM..

that way its been the linux of cellphones, giving each student with a PC the chance to play with a world class set of tools and sw.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 31 Jan 2013 08:49

for the sake of safety and enmity, I say create fake phone blast stories here and there, and create a ruckus among people's minds. that way, they stay clear of cheap-stake chippanda devices.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 31 Jan 2013 09:07

Raja Bose wrote:Nope its all MediaTek kit and they are designed to be very modular so you don't even need college educated engineers to do the assembly - same way you don't need a college educated engineer to assemble a desktop PC (I brought my 1st PC in 1995 from Azadpur Sabzi Mandi in Dilli, go figure ). Shenzhen cottage industry types are mostly small businesses hence pay for employees (if they have any employees per se) is hardly lucrative. The quality is shit but the possible combination of options available is mind-boggling. Where else can you get a phone which looks like a Ferrari car (fake logo more authentic than the original logo), the hood opens up as a flip phone (with a vroom-vroom sound), runs Android ICS, has TV function and costs $15.- to buy in qty of 1?

Bunnie blogged about it a while back:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284
Pic of the Ferrari phone is in the article along with some other interesting models.

BTW Bunnie recently posted 4 articles about the process of setting up a manufacturing line in China. I think I will post those links over in the Chinese econ thread. It is very interesting reading.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 31 Jan 2013 09:26

^^^
Actually I thought about it more and decided I will post the links here instead:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2776 Goes into how to properly prepare a Bill of Materials and what to watch out for. What was very interesting is that most of the electronic components in his list are from non-Chinese companies (though some components may be made in China in factories owned by Japan, Korea, US etc.). Most of the other components (e.g. the PCB, plastic enclosure, packaging box, instruction manual, screws etc.) are sourced from local Chinese manufacturers. Good perspective of the value add that the Chinese bring to the table.
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2784 How to design for mass manufacturing and improving the yield
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2790 Covering industrial design matters (e.g. how to make that sexy looking case for cheap)
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2794 Picking and working with a Chinese company. Interestingly, he also claims that for < 1k printed circuit boards or so, it might be cheaper to make them in the US and you don't see clear advantages in cost until you order 5 or 10K pieces. Also mentions that prices in Shenzhen are going up.

In links 2 and 3 above, he also posts links to pictures, since he and another gent are teaching a group from MIT about the whole China manufacturing process. The first two days pictures are from this link:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2816
Interestingly, his go-to manufacturing services and problem solving company (AQS) is based in the Bay area. These guys work to figure out prototyping, supply chain logistics, scaling up for manufacturing, design, testing etc.

The articles are a very interesting read.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Jan 2013 09:46

ArmenT wrote: Bunnie blogged about it a while back:
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=284
Pic of the Ferrari phone is in the article along with some other interesting models.

Heh heh, for all his contacts I bet Bunnie doesn't have the Ferrari phone I got - it was custom-made based on my specs onlee (& his ferrari phone is a staid ol' monolith onlee

). Shenzhen is like the Mongolian BBQ of mobile devices. No wonder GB has an entire research lab there dedicated to innovating on manufacturing processes, SCM and related stuff.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Jan 2013 09:56

in general more agile and more freewheeling a process is, higher the quality of people needed esp if as stated their output in phones is also high even with mixed model production. and they work well enough for 2 yrs to notch up millions in unit sales around the world. the indic college smartphone buyer is plenty tech savvy...he wont buy if the meat aint good.

so I am sure not just high school dropouts, but A1 level engineers are the principals behind these ops.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 31 Jan 2013 11:24

The meat of the product gets made at MediaTek who have the professional engineers just like your desktop's mobo is made by via or chipz or Asus. The mama-san shops don't need engineers, they need folks with nimble hands who can read and do assembly. Highly integrated SoCs have made the mobile devices like desktops esp in the low-end, where a small minority makes the core HW while the vast majority are merely assemblers with requirements for little technical skill. As a result you may get a mobile phone which burns a hole in your pocket or toasts your balls, but hey its cheap and throw-away!

manish · Post by **manish** » 31 Jan 2013 11:29

Satya_anveshi wrote:Thorsten seems to be lead from behind type but he could definitely do some slick presentation to keep audience engaged and excited.

Vivek Bharadwaj did a wonderful job demonstrating and selling BB10 and so did Marty Mallick from alliance perspective. May be I missed but wished to see or hear much more on the manageability and enterprise solutions perspective that could have conveyed the value differently.

Reminds me of Palm that has/had quite a few desis in the rank and file. Hope it could carve out a different future.

In fact currently the single largest investor in RIM/BB is also an Indian origin man - Prem Watsa.

Wiki says

Prem Watsa was born in 1950 in Hyderabad, India and is the founder, chairman, and chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, based in Toronto, Ontario.[1][2][3][4] He has been called the "Canadian Warren Buffett" by some during successful periods of investing.

He is a CFA charterholder, an alumnus of the Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a holder of an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business of the University of Western Ontario.

Prem Watsa Big Bet On RIM Appears To Be Paying Off

Watsa’s Fairfax Becomes RIM’s Biggest Shareholder

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 31 Jan 2013 11:32

shanzhai seems to be a whole youth culture there
http://www.chinahush.com/tag/shanzhai/

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 31 Jan 2013 16:28

Micromax, Lava and Karbonn are doing to Samsung and LG what they did to Sony in the consumer electronics segment.

krisna · Post by **krisna** » 01 Feb 2013 06:32

BlackBerry, Rebuilt, Lives to Fight Another Day

Blackberry 10 has good review.
Hope it succeeds.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 01 Feb 2013 09:39

Sorry to rain on the M$ parade but here is some bad news from LA Times

Microsoft's Surface Pro has far less open storage than advertised

Although Microsoft's 128 GB Surface Pro tablet is advertised as having 128 gigabytes of storage, the amount of space available to users is much less than that. That's also true for the 64 GB model.

The Redmond, Wash., company confirmed Tuesday that the 128 GB Surface Pro has 83 GB of free storage, while the 64 GB version comes with 23 GB of open space . The reason for the difference: space already taken up by the tablet's Windows 8 Pro operating system and various preinstalled apps.
...

and here is a comment from /. for perspective on how much a Linux development machine would take up

by Dr_Barnowl (709838) Alter Relationship on Wednesday January 30, @08:09AM (#42737009)

Let's see... on my current Linux install my root drive (no user documents or settings) is 9.5GB.

I have..

* A full office suite
* An email / calendar program
* A bitmap graphics program
* A vector graphics program
* A general diagram tool
* A diagram tool for making GUI mockups
* A UML modelling tool
* A mind mapping tool
* A project management tool
* A selection of different media players, each tailored for a purpose (music, video)
* A CD ripper
* A CD creator
* A DVD / video transcoding application
* A webcam app
* A photo management app
* Two different web browsers
* More than three different text editors, all with features that blow Notepad.exe out of the water
* A backup system
* Database management tools
* The tools for three different version control systems
* Development kits for C, C++, Ruby, Python, Perl, XML, Java, C# (probably missed some out)
* Two Java development environments
* File differencing tools
* A hex editor
* The thoroughly awesome GNU tool set which by itself makes you more productive with a large folder of text files than anything else
* Encryption software
* Archive tools for every common archive format and most of the uncommon ones

* Several sets of remote desktop / system management tools
* VPN software
* A Windows-compatible file server

* A sticky notes program
* A BitTorrent client

* A unified instant messenger client
* A specialized IRC client
* Skype
* A unified social network client

* A cloud folder with 5GB of complimentary storage

* A calculator
* A few desk toys
* A typing tutor

* The usual system management widgets

* A means of pretending to be Windows when the need arises

And

* A package management system that keeps ALL of it up to date (not just the operating system)
* and doesn't need a reboot every time it does it ... No, I don't think 40GB of Windows provides all of that.

(no, not all of this came out of the box, but all of it was available for free, and all of it fits in that 9.5GB ; there's some "payware" on there too but I didn't include it above)

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 01 Feb 2013 10:46

^^^Thats pretty much true in some sense for all devices in that category though only 23GB left is a bit extreme (probably it comes with a bunch of stuff pre-loaded?). Linux unfortunately will never take off as a viable mass market OS being used by the regular non-techie mango abdul and a big chunk of the blame goes to the "philosophical" influential members of the open source movement. People don't care about open, they care about convenience, integration, utility - something that works out-of-the-box and doesn't require hacking. Linux has been saying that Mickey is dead and it is the year of Linux since a decade ago - its starting to sound a lot like Osama died in Tora Bora statements by Gen. Bandicoot.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 01 Feb 2013 12:23

My company is trying to make an application to process payments using credit cards in India. Something to the tune of squareup.com and payanywhere.com .

Deal is, that we are dealing with a Chinese OEM who supplies us the card reader and the APKs/APIs.
That part of the software is clear and lucid. But. We don’t know if the card reader is skimming some of the personal card numbers and then sending them back to China, to the OEM. We have to undergo a PCI DSS review..which certifies us as a company that can process credit card data.
1. Question is, how to know if some skimming/ scamming is happening with respect to the card reader? Since the core code that the OEM has supplied to us, is a black box.
2. How to trust the Chinese OEM. We already know, as a group of people, what the Chinese are capable of, in terms of the leakage of information from remote locations.

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 01 Feb 2013 13:48

mahadevbhu wrote:My company is trying to make an application to process payments using credit cards in India. Something to the tune of squareup.com and payanywhere.com .

Deal is, that we are dealing with a Chinese OEM who supplies us the card reader and the APKs/APIs.
That part of the software is clear and lucid. But. We don’t know if the card reader is skimming some of the personal card numbers and then sending them back to China, to the OEM. We have to undergo a PCI DSS review..which certifies us as a company that can process credit card data.
1. Question is, how to know if some skimming/ scamming is happening with respect to the card reader? Since the core code that the OEM has supplied to us, is a black box.
2. How to trust the Chinese OEM. We already know, as a group of people, what the Chinese are capable of, in terms of the leakage of information from remote locations.

No expertise or even exposure to this but just penning down my initial thoughts. Try some initial test cards and notice outgoing data in firewall. If its a deferred transfer that the device is programmed to do then keep an eye on the firewall.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Feb 2013 14:02

if you cant trust the vendor in the first place why buy from them in such a critical area? arent there other alternatives available?

Javee · Post by **Javee** » 01 Feb 2013 16:14

mahadevbhu wrote:My company is trying to make an application to process payments using credit cards in India. Something to the tune of squareup.com and payanywhere.com .

Deal is, that we are dealing with a Chinese OEM who supplies us the card reader and the APKs/APIs.
That part of the software is clear and lucid. But. We don’t know if the card reader is skimming some of the personal card numbers and then sending them back to China, to the OEM. We have to undergo a PCI DSS review..which certifies us as a company that can process credit card data.
1. Question is, how to know if some skimming/ scamming is happening with respect to the card reader? Since the core code that the OEM has supplied to us, is a black box.
2. How to trust the Chinese OEM. We already know, as a group of people, what the Chinese are capable of, in terms of the leakage of information from remote locations.

Like Yogi said, keep watching the firewall, typically the data should only go to your payment gateway (known IP's), any unknown one's will be a red flag. OTOH, you can use wireshark to capture all the packets and analyze the source and destination of the packets. I have not analyzed any encrypted data packets, but with wireshark you can see all the network activity from your hardware.

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 02 Feb 2013 09:30

^^

FOlks...ultimately my net is going to be through GPRS internet connection. So how to monitor that from the android phone itself ? Possible?

Maybe I can use the android emulator on the phone, to run the simulations....for if they transmit data outbound to china .

Also....how the fk to find trusted OEMs.

All i got is alibaba.com and globalsources.com. Thats it.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Feb 2013 11:19

Since we are on the topic of hackers and hacking...

here's a blog post by a Mozilla hacker I know (also a prolific contributor to FirefoxOS, the Mozilla browser app, Fennec etc. and most recently WebOS), talking about how to modify behavior of Android apps on-the-fly. He claims he found it by coincidence, I think its becoz he got rejected recently by Chacha during a job interview.

Android hacking: hooking system functions used by Dalvik

member_20292 · Post by **member_20292** » 02 Feb 2013 19:33

^^^ page does not exist RB saahib.

Sharma ji sharmaaa gaye.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 02 Feb 2013 22:16

^^

I wonder why he hastily removed it, hmmm......

Saw his wife today on the trail, asked her to ask him.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 03 Feb 2013 02:01

Raja Bose wrote:^^^Thats pretty much true in some sense for all devices in that category though only 23GB left is a bit extreme (probably it comes with a bunch of stuff pre-loaded?). Linux unfortunately will never take off as a viable mass market OS being used by the regular non-techie mango abdul and a big chunk of the blame goes to the "philosophical" influential members of the open source movement.

Android is Linux with a Dalvik VM slapped on top and is mass market hainji?

People don't care about open, they care about convenience, integration, utility - something that works out-of-the-box and doesn't require hacking. Linux has been saying that Mickey is dead and it is the year of Linux since a decade ago - its starting to sound a lot like Osama died in Tora Bora statements by Gen. Bandicoot.

Well seriously speaking, Linux has been the single greatest threat to M$. The reason is simple. M$ can be challenged of two conditions hold true

(1) It is easy to come up with new platforms quickly. Android was developed in a remarkably short period of time, because they based it off of the linux Kernel. So is Chrome OS. It can take years to get process management, scheduling, file system, memory management and network stack right (anyone remember the priority inversion bug in the first Mars rover?). OTOH if there is a opensource OS that has most of these right, it is much much easier to slather a UI on top of it, pick and choose components and spin up a "new" platform. The new Ubuntu phone OS, Boot to Gecko (whatever it is called these days), Android ityadi are all examples. Without Linux, android would not have been possible and M$ would have had atleast 50% if not more of smartphone market. What is their marketshare in Smartphones and tablets? Apart from FruitCo, what is the reason for it?

So predicting the death of M$ due to a free and open source Kernel is not entirely wrong. You can argue that Ubuntu (and other distros) didnt challenge M$ on desktop due to bad UX. That is Legit and is a failing of Gnome and KDE. But the thing about opensource is this: If the founders have their head stuck up their musharraf (like the new unity interface), someone else will use the kernel to dispel all the UX problems the founders dont want to address. Android did that. That is the real threat of opensource.

(2) The second piece of the puzzle is the the developer-user conundrum. Developers wont invest time in developing apps for your platform (unless you line their pockets) unless there are enough users. Users wont adopt your platform unless there are applications. So a new OS coming up to challenge M$ is unlikely. Unless .. you can write portable Apps in some way. If you have a new OS (and a browser) on a new phone, you can access email, maps, calendar, facekitab, youtube, twitter and numerous other services through the web. No native app necessary (you can argue the UX is not as good as native apps, but my point is, you will survive. Try accessing twitter.com on your mobile browser. It is perfectly usable). On the other hand, developers can invest in developing a good mobile website, because they can be used on all platforms.

M$ saw this coming and thats why they fought hard against Netscape, Linux and Java. The same three factors (Free Kernel which gets most of the OS functions right, web based services) and Java, (in the form of Dalvik) is the reason why Android succeeded. Thinking about it a bit more, web-based services are cheap because the OS most of them use to run the services is Linux and is free. If facekitab or twitter or Chacha had to pay through their nose to install windows on their 50,000 machines in their datacenters, neither email, search, facekitab, maps or numerous other services would be free to begin with (all TCO fake studies by M$ not withstanding)

You can argue which form of computing delivers the best UX and best value to users, app developers, OS vendor and hardware maker -- that is a good and real serious debate. But Linux becoming an existential threat to M$ is not a frivolous statement. It need not appear on computers in the form of Ubuntu running Gnome. It can appear in the form of services running on Linux delivered over the web, to devices which run the Linux kernel. That has already happened and is happening. In fact I will go on a limb and predict that if you graphed the proportion of consumer (and enterprise) computing that runs on Mickey OS, that graph is tending down (I also include online services). Linux is a major reason for that.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 03 Feb 2013 04:48

>Well seriously speaking, Linux has been the single greatest threat to M$. The reason is simple. M$ can be challenged of two conditions hold true

I think what Raja Bose Ji posted was about "Desktop Linux"

> It is easy to come up with new platforms quickly. Android was developed in a remarkably short period of time, because they based it off of the linux Kernel. So is Chrome OS. It can take years to get process management, scheduling, file system, memory management and network stack right (anyone remember the priority inversion bug in the first Mars rover?). OTOH if there is a opensource OS that has most of these right, it is much much easier to slather a UI on top of it, pick and choose components and spin up a "new" platform.

Linux Kernel is cool, but it is still a kernel..... but one can do what Blackberry or Apple did: develop their platform on top of freebsd and qnx.

> The new Ubuntu phone OS, Boot to Gecko (whatever it is called these days), Android ityadi are all examples. Without Linux, android would not have been possible and M$ would have had atleast 50% if not more of smartphone market. What is their marketshare in Smartphones and tablets? Apart from FruitCo, what is the reason for it?

Ubuntu Phone OS or Boot to Gecko don't have a chance, what is MOST critical for phone OS is MONEY and they don't have enough of it to compete with Apple Google or Microsoft. Without linux, Google could have gone with Freebsd.

>So predicting the death of M$ due to a free and open source Kernel is not entirely wrong. You can argue that Ubuntu (and other distros) didnt challenge M$ on desktop due to bad UX. That is Legit and is a failing of Gnome and KDE. But the thing about opensource is this: If the founders have their head stuck up their musharraf (like the new unity interface), someone else will use the kernel to dispel all the UX problems the founders dont want to address. Android did that. That is the real threat of opensource.

Biggest problem with "linux" isn't either its UX or anything.. after all its opensource and anyone can "fix" anything that is wrong with it. Then why haven't they fixed it ? That is because it is what it is meant to be. Seriously, IBM, Redhat, Oracle, and even Microsoft(who happen to be its biggest contributors) don't care about success of Desktop Linux, for them "linux" is just what they want it to be. hint: it works well with their products and services.Gnome 3 is just what Gnome developers wanted it to be...
Kde 3 is just what KDE developers wanted it to be...
Unity is just what Mark Shuttleworth wanted it to be.
And as you said Android is just what Google wanted it to be, they completely ignored LSB and don't even use vanilla kernel.

And that is the strength and weakness of Opensource, they are giving it away for free so they will do just what they want to do. OTOH, Microsoft would do just what it needs to do to make money. EVen if it means contributing to linux kernel(to make it work well with hy-perv).

And guess what, they make more money selling Windows Server than any company selling linux or linux related services.

>(2) The second piece of the puzzle is the the developer-user conundrum. Developers wont invest time in developing apps for your platform (unless you line their pockets) unless there are enough users. Users wont adopt your platform unless there are applications[..]

People/Companies are already doing and have been doing what you are saying... and despite the fact there are free alternatives such as Linux and paid alternatives from Apple using which one can access FB,youtube,twitter etc.. Windows's marketshare haven't decreased and linux is still around 1%. Reason is that with Windows one can access all those sites and also have access to huge library of native apps.

And MS doesn't see web as a threat.. as they are pushing HTML5 with Windows 8. OTOH Apple and Google are making sure their apps and services work well only on their platform.

> In fact I will go on a limb and predict that if you graphed the proportion of consumer (and enterprise) computing that runs on Mickey OS, that graph is tending down (I also include online services). Linux is a major reason for that.

On PCs linux will not do better than 1-2%, and even in server (one place where linux was really good) more people are willing to pay for Windows than the "free and opensource" operating system.

In fact, the non free OS have ~50% marketshare and Linux have 20%

source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23665812

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 03 Feb 2013 05:57

If M$ has nothing to fear from Linux and open source why the Halloween documents hain ji ?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Feb 2013 06:08

Anujan wrote: Android is Linux with a Dalvik VM slapped on top and is mass market hainji?

No saar, actually its not.

That's like saying Fruit Co's OSX is BSD onlee, Bibi's QNX is BSD onlee and GB's Maemo6 (i.e. N9 wala "MeeGo") is Linux onlee. Android is derived from Linux in a technical sense but that's where the similarity stops - everything else is different whether it is the licensing, the "open source" model, distribution, partnerships, dev access. And in the end it is not really the technology which counts when it comes to determining whether a platform becomes commercially dominant or not - it is the whole package. As an aside, no wonder valley VCs keep harping, the technology is the least important piece of your startup - whats more important is your (1) who you gonna sell it to, (2) how you gonna sell it, (3) where you gonna sell it to, and how you gonna grow (1), (2) and (3).

Anujan wrote: Well seriously speaking, Linux has been the single greatest threat to M$. The reason is simple. M$ can be challenged of two conditions hold true

(1) It is easy to come up with new platforms quickly. Android was developed in a remarkably short period of time, because they based it off of the linux Kernel.

It is a threat but in an indirect sense and mainly becoz of the bolded part. Also, the threat is more in a relative rather than absolute sense. What Linux provides is a easy way to bring up new HW, develop new forms of devices and if you have the time or moolah, new platforms. The former two reasons are why I use it extensively.

However, when it comes to Linux itself it has failed to be a threat directly mainly becoz of internal politics in OSF/Linux Foundation/hordes of pompous idiots who think hacking your computer is the way to go. They fail to realize the value of convenience and out-of-box functionality to folks for whom the computer is a tool just like a microwave oven and is not their profession (like us ITvity abduls) or the centre of their lives (geeks). That has made Linux much less of a threat of Mickey than any shenanigans by Mickey itself.

Anujan wrote: Without Linux, android would not have been possible and M$ would have had atleast 50% if not more of smartphone market. What is their marketshare in Smartphones and tablets? Apart from FruitCo, what is the reason for it?

Let me correct the history here.

Mickey lost that market share in mobile devices long before Android was even conceived by Rubin mian. That time was 2000-2002 AD......when Windows Mobile was the dominant smartphone platform and Microsoft was the dark overlord of ITvity and the world was engulfed in darkness & misery - the seething masses cried out for help but there was no savior in sight. That was when a certain Finnish company known for making rubber boots, TVs, tires and telephone polls who had earlier lead a partnership with a certain tiny British company called Psion decided to break this hegemony of Mickey$ in mobile and thus was born a platform called Symbian. All mobile device vendors rushed to join the movement. Symbian was singularly responsible for removing Windows Mobile from its dominance and itself became the dominant platform with over 86% marketshare worldwide at its peak. Many years later that same Finnish company had itself became a hegemon and in similar circumstances as when Symbian was born, was born another movement called Android, this time led by a US company known for its search engine and e-mail - see the David/Prahlad-esque pattern here where the incumbent is displaced by a newbie

. All mobile device vendors rushed to join the movement. Android is singularly responsible for removing Symbian from its dominance and is now itself the dominant platform. After some years there will come another platform to displace Android and thus, the world revolves....

(That is why when I repeatedly say Android is the new Symbian, I do so on many many levels). Anyhow it was not Linux that really displaced Mickey from mobile.

Anujan wrote: (2) The second piece of the puzzle is the the developer-user conundrum. Developers wont invest time in developing apps for your platform (unless you line their pockets) unless there are enough users. Users wont adopt your platform unless there are applications. So a new OS coming up to challenge M$ is unlikely. Unless .. you can write portable Apps in some way. If you have a new OS (and a browser) on a new phone, you can access email, maps, calendar, facekitab, youtube, twitter and numerous other services through the web. No native app necessary (you can argue the UX is not as good as native apps, but my point is, you will survive. Try accessing twitter.com on your mobile browser. It is perfectly usable). On the other hand, developers can invest in developing a good mobile website, because they can be used on all platforms.

This is the way to go but again technology is not going to determine the outcome of this. HTML5 as a technology is cross-platform but there are many ways to lock it from the device vendor's side especially since the future trend is for device vendors and service vendors to go vertical - folks who used to do software and services are now going into devices (Chacha, Mickey) and folks who used to do devices are now going into software and services (Sammy, GB). So every party in this battle wants to ensure that consumers stick to their platform. How they do that is going to determine the outcome of the above.

Anujan wrote: In fact I will go on a limb and predict that if you graphed the proportion of consumer (and enterprise) computing that runs on Mickey OS, that graph is tending down (I also include online services). Linux is a major reason for that.

Actually if that were the case Mickey's growth numbers for Windows would indicate that. Rather what they show is the opposite (Windows8 overtook Linux in marketshare amongst consumers within 1.5 months after release despite limited launch of Win8 HW in 2012). It may be quite true that statistically the proportion of computing devices running Mickey's OS is lower percentage-wise and that is expected. However, it does not translate into a threat to Mickey's existence becoz it is too simplistic an outlook. That is why even though hardcore Linux believers have been harping about death of Mickey at Linux's hands, it hasn't happened. The fundamental truth is there will never ever be a single platform used everywhere whether it be Windows, Android, OS X, System V, Linux, Solaris whatever. So as the proliferation of computing devices grow in numbers and form (the latter is very important), the share of the dominant platform will decrease. What determines whether that decrease is a threat or not to the company behind the dominant platform, is whether: (1) Growth in number of users is decreasing for that platform or is negative; (2) Growth in revenue is decreasing for that platform or is negative; (3) Percentage of revenue being generated from that platform is increasing or remaining dominant; (4) Whether that platform is being upgraded to work in new emerging forms of computing; and (5) Who is the new challenger? In Mickey's case, they have managed to ensure that (1), (2) and (3) are not true and working on ensuring (4) [remember Uncle Fester's message to shareholders in Fall 2012?]. (5) is nowhere in sight which is why Mickey can get away with schizophrenic stuff like Win8 in the short-term. Then there is a (6) which is how fragmented is the competition? I may have a 24% marketshare onlee but if the rest of 76% are fragmented, they don't pose a threat to me. In this case consolidation of marketshare and convergence across devices is the name of the game. Consolidation for developers and convergence for the users. That is also something Mickey is trying to do and Fruit Co is already doing at a elite level and something Chacha should have actively started doing 2-3 years ago - they are trying to leverage HTML5 for that but that ensures that Chacha's services work on every platform rather than Chacha's platform is in every form of device. The latter ensures that Chacha doesn't get locked out (same reason why they have Android and Chrome). Mickey despite being the fattest, baldest and stodgiest in this trio is going it both ways, interestingly.

So, I am sure Mickey will die eventually (just like everybody other company) but it's unlikely to be at the hands of Linux if Linux keeps at it in its present form and ways.

OT but to kill Mickey decisively one needs to ends its dominance in desktop/laptop. Chacha had the chance but I have a feeling they missed the window of opportunity there. And it can't be done by saying tablets are the future and the world will switch within the next year to an all-tablet world - consumers are conservative by nature hence, that can only happen if introduction to new gadgets lead to decrease in the total number of gadgets the average consumer uses on a daily basis rather than an increase. Till now that has not happened.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Feb 2013 06:14

Anujan wrote:If M$ has nothing to fear from Linux and open source why the Halloween documents hain ji ?

When it comes to strat-e-jee, Mickey is like ChipZ - they truly believe in the maxim: "Only the Paranoid Survive" (like Grove mian's kitaab). That is also the reason both of them have remained strong since the 80s despite so many upheavals.

BTW one of the SDRE authors of those docs is now local (he is a VC in SF) and bears an uncanny resemblance of Chacha's Pasha of search, Amit Singhal.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Feb 2013 06:17

anmol wrote:Linux Kernel is cool, but it is still a kernel..... but one can do what Blackberry or Apple did: develop their platform on top of freebsd and qnx.

IOW anything but M$ - you cannot get a kernel from them can you?

On PCs linux will not do better than 1-2%, and even in server (one place where linux was really good) more people are willing to pay for Windows than the "free and opensource" operating system.

There is a limit to the Physical RAM on a Win7 server (IIRC 48 GB). Is there a limit i Win8 (or whatever number M$ gives servers these days) servers? We have 512 GB/16 core compute machine running CentOS and there are no problems at all.

Serious questions (not rhetorical though they might sound like rhetorical): How much would I have to shell out for a Win8 to run on this machine? Would I be able to access all the 512GB RAM?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 03 Feb 2013 06:27

^^^If your current solution is working fine for your needs, why do you want to switch to Win Server unless your existing vendor is being PITA or your setup needs Windows?

Don't fix something which ain't broken.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Feb 2013 06:39

Raja Bose wrote:As an aside, no wonder valley VCs keep harping, the technology is the least important piece of your startup - whats more important is your (1) who you gonna sell it to, (2) how you gonna sell it, (3) where you gonna sell it to, and how you gonna grow (1), (2) and (3).

Yes, you are right. But to even get off the ground to prove that you do have demo-able product (which is a minimum requirement to get the funding beyond the angel investment - either self-funded or your family and friends funded or "kickstart"ed) you need a platform. You can assemble a fairly capable OSS stack for nothing but your time (i.e. seat equity).

I know what you are talking about. One book every hopeful entrepreneur need to read is "Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore (Aug 20, 2002)" which lays out clearly what are the "holes" that need to be filled in the ecosystem before one's product can be successful in the market place. There are several case studies of companies one can recognize. I think Netscape and US Robotics (and Palm) have failed due to reasons explained in this book. After reading the book It was clear to me why "Indian SI Valley" and "Cyberabad" haven't produced any products till today. But I think situation is changing for the better.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Feb 2013 06:51

Raja Bose wrote:^^^If your current solution is working fine for your needs, why do you want to switch to Win Server unless your existing vendor is being PITA or your setup needs Windows? Don't fix something which ain't broken.

Our machines are not a customer facing servers. These are in-house machines for performance evaluation. Well, we need to make sure our line of products (they are libraries written in pure ANSI C and compiled with -pedantic -Wall with all warnings completely resolved except a few sources that use pthreads on *ix and NT threads on Windows) work on all currently in-use Windows platforms.

May be I should go with running different Windows versions in VMs.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 03 Feb 2013 07:18

matrimc wrote:There is a limit to the Physical RAM on a Win7 server (IIRC 48 GB). Is there a limit i Win8 (or whatever number M$ gives servers these days) servers? We have 512 GB/16 core compute machine running CentOS and there are no problems at all.

Serious questions (not rhetorical though they might sound like rhetorical): How much would I have to shell out for a Win8 to run on this machine? Would I be able to access all the 512GB RAM?

4TB

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 03 Feb 2013 08:07

Is this for Win8?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 03 Feb 2013 10:54

30 indian product firms have broken out of the nasscom thing and formed their own group today
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech ... 312774.cms

30 software product firms break free from Nasscom
By Sujit John & Shilpa Phadnis, TNN | Feb 3, 2013, 03.48 AM IST

BANGALORE: Thirty Indian software product companies have come together to form a new association, marking the first break from the omnibus IT industry body Nasscom and reflecting the growing confidence and maturity of the software product community.

The founding members, led by Bharat Goenka, co-founder of Tally Solutions, Sharad Sharma, former head of Yahoo India R&D, startup mentor and founder of Brand Sigma, Naveen Tewari, founder of InMobi, and Vishnu Dusad, founder of Nucleus Software, will have their first meeting in Bangalore on Monday to formalize the association and develop action plans.

The association, called the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table, or iSpirt, has been formed with the vision that India now has the basic building blocks to develop a powerful software product industry that can help transform the country and deliver invaluable solutions to the world. All founding members have strong customer bases in India or worldwide and the objective is to share expertise and experiences, and create a larger awareness in society and government about the industry's critical role.

"A few good software services companies may be good enough to serve the top 500 hospitals in India. But if you want to address 500,000 or more hospitals around the country, you cannot do it without software products," says Goenka, who many regard as the father of the Indian software product industry. His Tally accounting solution is used by virtually every small business in the country, an accomplishment which earned him Nasscom's first and only Lifetime Achievement Award.

The problem of scalability arises in software services because of its total dependence on people to implement solutions. This is the kind of work the Indian software industry, including companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, have traditionally done. Software products, on the contrary, can be bought off the shelf and customers can implement many of these on their own. The best examples of these are Microsoft's Windows and Office.

Naveen Tewari, whose mobile ad network is used by over 250 of the Fortune 1000 companies and is second only to Google's AdMob, notes that all IT solutions in education today are directed at the likes of the IITs and IIMs. "You need education products to reach out to the mass of educational institutions. India today has extremely smart people who can develop such products. The market outside India is also huge. There are 3-4 billion people living in countries similar to India who can be serviced by Indian product companies," he says.

Every town in India is seen to have one or two people who have developed some software product that they are selling among a small customer base. One association study found there were at least 17 software products developed for jewellery in India, but the developers had an average of no more than 2,000-3,000 customers each, even though there are an estimated 3 lakh jewellers in India. "These small developers are unable to see the big picture, think big. The association's initial efforts would be directed towards creating the knowledge bank and environment required for these developers to explode," says Sharad Sharma. He says it will simultaneously work to create awareness about why the industry is important for the national agenda. "Once society recognizes our value, we hope to influence the government to create better taxation and policy frameworks," Sharma says.

Asked how Nasscom felt about the new association, Goenka said, "I've been talking with Som Mittal (Nasscom president) for about six months on this. Nasscom has promised support. We won't be in conflict with anybody." Vishnu Dusad said iSpirt would work with all industry associations, including Nasscom, that are dedicated to creating world-class products and intellectual property.

Nasscom tends to be dominated by IT services companies, and sub-segments within it, including the BPO companies, have often felt that their issues were not being sufficiently addressed. But this is the first occasion where a segment is breaking away, though some will be members of both Nasscom and iSpirt. And this is happening just when Nasscom had established a committee under Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy to make recommendations on how to make the organization more relevant given the changing IT environment.

iSpirt's other members include Capillary Technologies, Eka Software, QuickHeal, FusionCharts, OrangeScape, One97, Kayako.com, iCreate, Komli Media, Data Infocom, Srishti Software, Rategain, Drishti Software, CIIE, Greytip, Infrasoft, NewGen, Pramati, Practo, Sapience and IIM Bangalore, as also some individual numbers. It may open up to more members later.

iSpirt will not have a president or any such nomenclature. There'll be a governing council consisting of Sharma, Goenka, Tewari and Dusad. "We'll have a flat structure and a volunteer model. We believe that creates higher quality outcomes than one where you have a paid official running the organization," Sharma says.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 03 Feb 2013 19:50

matrimc wrote:Is this for Win8?

Windows Server 2012, Windows 8 is for PCs.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 03 Feb 2013 20:18

Type in "File:///" without quotes in any app in OS X Mountain Lion, and it will crash that app.

Anything, copy paste or simply type in anywhere. One can even send this as a message or in any others form to a person using OS X and it would crash the app that that will receive such a message.. for example iMssage.

"Thats not a bug, it's a feature!" - Steve Jobs

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 03 Feb 2013 21:08

^^^And what is your point? Apple will have a patch pushed out very quickly. Certainly faster than what MSFT could do for Windows.

For the 2nd time this month Apple has disabled a Java web plugin because of a security hole left by Oracle.
OSX = Unix. It is inherently the best and most advanced operating system in the world for consumers.