Google and Darth Vader

I stumbled on so many articles lately, both on the web and in print, about the emergence of Google as the second-most hated/feared company after Microsoft. OK, enough said. Let me now draw parallelisms of Google and Darth Vader. This can be simple urban legend of some sort.

Darth Vader : was born and then-known as Anakin Skywalker. He was born out of virgin birth (no father). He was created straight by the force. We was the chosen-one, destined to bring balance to the Force by destroying the Sith. However, he fell in to the dark side and became a Sith Lord himself.

Google : was incorporated in 1998 and had seen a phenomenal growth through the pasts years. Google was having an anti-corporate, developer's-dream image that it is a company that geeks love see as the most capable of being a Microsoft-killer (apparently climaxing at the much speculated GoogleOS). Story to be continued...

Made-up Story : with Google's war-making chest, it is capable of producing quality products that can be better than the much bigger Microsoft. But now, being as aggressive as Microsoft (the Sith) in its startup years, Google is being hated, if not feared, in Silicon Valley. Google's aim to outwit its competitors earned it the right for a second look from the tech community as well as corporations from the Silicon Valley. As Microsoft has said, Google is the most Microsoft-like company that they ever competed with. But, have you ever heard of "if you can't beat them, join them". Oh, it gives me the creeps that the more Google becomes aggresive, the more it'll be enticing from Microsot's eyes. It can either be defeated OR absorbed (merger). Without Google, there'll be no company large enough to battle with the giant (no, F/OSS community cannot do it without being backed-up or "forked" by a large company, ie. IBM). With Google merged/acquired by Microsoft, your desktop-bound and mobile life will end up micro-googling everything.

Beware, the heralded Google could be straying into the Dark Side.

richard@work

Open Source TODO too

I stumbled on this blog. It makes me realize how working on a non-open source company collides with an equal passion: development and contribution to open source. As I see it, I might only have a chance if I quit. But not for the moment, my job is my bread and butter. So, open source can wait. For the mean time, I'll tune in to our application (Java).

richard@work

Pinoy Bloggers

I have been a frequent visitor of Pinoy Tech Blog since it was started. It is good to see a presence of fellow-Filipino I.T. professionals and enthusiasts in the web, interacting for a common cause, that is, to share heterogenous information.

Mabuhay Pinoy Tech Blog!

richard@work

Windows and XEN

In my workplace, I am "forced" to use Windows because of only one thing. The need for IE in some cases. Without IE requirement, my desktop could have been Windows-free. With this scenario, I have two boxes, one loaded with Linux, one loaded with Windows.

But recent development with Xen will finally allow me to virtualize Windows inside my Linux. I could save a snapshot of a running IE then save it. Then I could immediately restore the scenario by loading the saved image. All these are possible through virtualization, moreso, with the open source Xen. Support for WinXP will be out in the next release, Xen 3.0.

Here is a picture that will change in future:


richard@work

Freespire

It seems like another commecial distro has succumbed to the community call. This time it is Linspire. Distrowatch reports of a new Linspire-based distro: Freespire. I am not sure whether Freespire is directly funded and supported by Linspire like what the other companies have done. We have Fedora, we have OpenSuse... who's next? Mandriva? Xandros? Obviously, all these "freeing" up of commercial Linux distros are a good development for the community. Proprietary codes removed, the distro is made freely available to the public.

Randomized!: SUSE is coming back home