On 29 Dec 2007, at 18:53, iang@iang.org wrote:

> OLPC could not have picked a better time. Their new OS (with caps
> and all that good stuff in it) will inspire many of the research / geek
> sector, and therefore we predict it will become a credible alternative
> to the OS menu (at least as credible as Minix and the experimental
> linuxii, etc, and more credible than Next, etc). We might not know for
> 5 years whether it will storm the barricades, but this year will see
> its steady rise.
>

Will it ?

It needs a large central infrastructure.

Now the Asus EEE looks a lot more interesting and is actually available to mere mortals on an ongoing basis.

Not sure about your comment regarding Next.

> Which means we are seeing the slow but steady regularisation of
> the OS market. Once it was just MS Windows. Slowly, Unix is clawing
> back, with Mac

ahh you mean the Next OS ? that was bought in with Jobs and rebranded and guified to be a Mac ?

> and with Linux. Unlike with the CPU market which saw
> the dramatic turnaround from monster to duopoly over the only 4 years,
> this will be slow. Watch for signs of increasing annoyance from PC
> sellers and switching to non-MS-installed sales.

Though that has been a stream for a while since MS got smacked for insisting that vendors could not install other OSen on their machines if they wanted to be able to use OEM windows.

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Check out www.multifa.com for secure mutual authenication using certs via browser. Deployed without hassle, non-phishable, and two-factor.