Masood Mortazavi's Weblog

Wednesday February 23, 2005

[ Personal ] Linux on Laptop

Photo by Lyndsey Clare Pickup
Thanks to a European Sun colleague of mine who was visiting me this afternoon (I'm not naming him explicitly because I've not asked for permission), I'm now finally able to use Suse 9.2 on this laptop of mine at home.
The biggest challenge, which I'd failed to overcome on my own earlier but which my friend easily resolved for me, was wireless LAN driver problems with the Centrino chipset. Basically, with a driver tool, we were able to configure the system to use the Windows XP driver for the Centrino chipset.

My next wish is to move to a laptop where this sort of gimmickry won't be necessary at all.

Nevertheless, right now, I'm just enjoying this new Unix-like environment with a superb GUI and tools.

What liberation must millions upon millions be feeling as they move off to Unix-like environments, whether it is OS-X, any flavor of Linux, JDS or Solaris x86!

With the Open Office tools, there's really no reason not to try. In the last year, even as I used Windows XP on this laptop, my office "productivity" tool was Star Office version 7, and I had absolutely no problems exchanging Microsoft documents (including change tracking mark ups) with dozens of colleagues working for various companies who are Sun customers and partners or with whom I interact in standards organizations.

I'll be savoring this for some time.

Linux, Laptop, WLAN, Star Office

2005-02-23 21:47:42.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Philosophy ] Beim Stierkampf

Beim Stierkampf ist der Stier der Held einer Tragödie. Zuerst durch Schmerzen tollgemacht, stirbt er einen langen und furchtbaren Tod. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1946; Vermischte Bemerkungen, 50)
So, in the game of life who's the bull and who's the bull-fighter?

2005-02-23 00:36:30.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

[ Economics ] Transaction Costs and IT

I have no choice but to quote some more from Brown and Hagel's essay. To preface this quotation, I simply want to say that it is refreshing to see that some have a deeper understanding of transaction costs of IT deployments than is commonly the case. Without such an understanding and insight, it is impossible to help enterprises to take good advantage of IT technologies.

[M]any companies have become locked into the view that IT can reduce transaction costs but then think of transaction costs as encompassing only the transfer of bits and data from one place to another. Viewed more broadly, transaction costs encompass such challenging business issues as the creation of meaning, the building of trust, and the development and dissemination of knowledge. These dimensions of transaction costs often represent significant bottlenecks to performance improvments and competitive advantage . . . Although IT may be ubiquitous and increasingly less expensive, the insight and ability required for it to create economic value are in very short supply. It is far different from commodities like wheat and aluminum, where the processing operations are well understood and the economic advantage lies in being able to source the commodity at lower cost.

Information, Technology, Economics, Transaction Costs

2005-02-23 00:05:45.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.