What's good for GM...

Image via Wikipedia

Thomas Claburn writing for InformationWeek offered this observation about the recent announcement by Google of their forthcoming Chrome OS...

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows represents slightly less than 90% of the personal computer operating system market, a position it has held for years.

I assume that Mr. Claburn was suggesting that MSFT has a lock on OSs and that Google might do well to direct their efforts in a more profitable direction. Well, I have one observation to make about MSFT's lock on the market...

What's good for GM is good for the country.

Pressure to bear on the Redmond monster

Image by michperu via Flickr

The heart of Mitch Wagner's observation is that Microsoft will prevail...

Google's Chrome OS Threatens Linux, Is Good For Microsoft
Posted by Mitch Wagner, Jul 8, 2009 11:47 AM
. . .
Where there is confusion in the marketplace, hardware manufacturers and consumers look to the safe choice, and the safe choice is Microsoft. When the Unix market was fragmented into multiple different flavors, Microsoft settled the confusion by driving everybody to Windows. Now, with Linux fragmented, Microsoft has the opportunity to make history repeat itself.

...in a manner of speaking, yes, Microsoft will survive. Microsoft will always survive. Personal computing will change. Personal computing will evolve. Personal computing will improve because the collective effort of Google and Linux and BSD and BEOS and OSX and all the rest will relentlessly pressure Microsoft into getting their sh*t together, finally. And that would never have happened if the market had not brought pressure to bear on the Redmond monster.

I need to get a life...

I was curious so I signed up at Second Life. Learned to walk, talk and fly. Managed to stumble and tumble around for a while and then it hit me...like a ton of virtual bricks... allow me to elucidate...

05:00 Pager goes off - sent by my primary network management system - "Wake up call." Serves as my programmable alarm clock _and_ tests the paging system.

05:30ish...
First thing in the morning I usually check my PDA for my daily schedule and then wifi for my gMail. A quick read of the gNews followed by a check of my gReader feeds... kiss my lovely wife (the Saint) and then dropping teenagers off at highschool. Yes, I did remember my laptop, my cell phone, my PDA and my pager, thank you very much... "Make sure you e-mail me if your mother is going to pick you up after school."

07:00ish
Visual check of the Simplex Fire Alarm system on my way across the lobby, green is good. Check the snail mail. Checking for 'red-light' messages on printers, fax machines and copiers as I wind through the office. Through two locked doors to access my office and the network operations center.

Check the status of the network. Hobbit reporting which systems are on-line, which have system messages, which PCs have recently been rebooted. Hobbit also displays Server status - CPU loads, disk utilization, tcp connections and more. MRTG generates traffic graphs for key network connections. This big peak means the back-ups ran on schedule last night. This long sustained peak means that Sally is trying to send Halloween pictures to her sister again.

Fire up gReader on my main Slackware system (v.11 running KDE 3.5, tight) start in on the professional blogs...Trade Slicks (magazines) for the 21st century. Dock the laptop and fire it up... corporate e-mail - good the spam filter is working. Load the CCTV application - double check that all the cameras are on-line, good. Generate the Internet proxy report for last week and send a copy to the boss.

07:25 Pager goes off - sent by secondary network management system, "Morning staff meeting." Snag my first cup of office coffee then off to the morning briefing...

I need to get a life...yeah right, just what I need, a Second Life.

New Google Feature

Log into Google and go to Google Docs

While the entire world is a buzz with the GoogleTube extravaganza Google has continued to quietly build the state of the art online office experience. Google Docs appears to be the central interface of access to the "working" side of the online office.

My son, of whom I am very proud, was excited beyond words with the thought of his stop-motion videos being accessible via Google. His interests are not in the business of websites but rather the enjoyment of his creations. GoogleTube will be just the forum for the display and admiration of his videos. Keep up the great work!


tag: Google, Online Office,