Warners Bros. has released the new poster for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II.
Hitting 2D, 3D and IMAX 3D theaters on July 15, the tagline of the poster says "It all ends." This is true seeing that the most successful movie franchise comes to a bittersweet in in less than two months.
While the poster looks amazing, I am sadden by the fact that July will be the last time I will get to see Harry, Hermione, Ron and the rest of the gang on the big screen.
In Part 2 of the epic finale, opening July 15, the battle between the good and evil forces of the Wizarding world escalates into an all-out war. The stakes have never been higher and no one is safe. But it is Harry Potter who may be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice as he draws closer to the climactic showdown with Lord Voldemort. It all ends here.
Check out the banner posters featuring Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Draco Malfoy and Lord Voldermort below.
amanda knox|chupacabra|new orleans saints|nflx|macauHP’s bombshell announcement that it will “discontinue operations” for WebOS devices, most notably the TouchPad tablet, inspired immediate comparisons with Microsoft’s disastrous mobile phone, the Kin. Indeed, there are striking similarities:
But none of those numbers really matter in the final analysis. For both Microsoft and HP, there were much more significant intangible costs associated with these high-profile failures.
It’s embarrassing to fail so quickly and in such spectacular fashion. In the case of Kin, the failure was with a niche product aimed at a youth market. In HP’s case, the humiliation is much more profound. HP had literally bet the company on WebOS. In the press release announcing the Palm acquisition, HP bragged that “Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy.”
And HP had big dreams for WebOS. In March—less than six months ago—HP CEO Leo Apotheker talked about the “massive platform” opportunities for WebOS. According to Business Week, Apotheker had a grand vision: “Starting next year, every one of the PCs shipped by HP will include the ability to run WebOS in addition to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows.” Now, with HP’s announcement that it plans to spin off its PC business, there’s a good chance the company won’t even be shipping PCs at the end of 2012.
But for Microsoft and HP alike, the worst writeoff of all is the opportunity cost associated with their respective failed ventures. Microsoft sunk two years of precious development resources into Kin while Windows Mobile was failing. During that same period, Apple’s iPhone was thriving and Google’s Android platform was gaining critical momentum.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted in a September 2010 interview that the Kin project “just defocused activity from Windows Phone.” Nearly a year later, Windows Phone is still struggling to gain traction in the marketplace.
In HP’s case, it’s too early to assess how much damage this wrong turn caused. But the fact that Apotheker and HP’s board feel compelled to exit the PC business—its onetime core—suggests that the ultimate cost will be very high indeed.
See also:
Remember watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer every Thursday nights? Remember the good old classic fisherman horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer? Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. were known as the "it" couple in the late 90's along with Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe. After a decade of success, what ever happened to these actors? All we see ever see these days are Disney "stars", who keep shooting out like gumballs! To see what Sarah and Freddie have been up to, keep reading below!
Blast from the Past:
Sarah was best known for playing Buffy Summers in the vampire hit show Buffy The Vampire Slayer in 1997-2003. During her successful rise, she teamed up with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr in the mega popular horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer. Freddie on the other hand, was best know for
They both met in 1997 while filming I Know What You Did Last Summer but didn't start dating until the year 2000. In 2002, Freddie and Sarah got married in Mexico and marking their 5 year marriage, Sarah changed her last name to Prinze in 2007. On September 19th, 2009, they had their first newborn baby named Charlotte Grace Prinze.
"I'm not going back to work anytime soon. I'll only have my first child once and see these milestones once. I can't imagine not being there. We're (she and husband Freddie Prinze Jr.) just taking it one day at a time. I'm such a cliché right now, but she is the greatest gift that anyone has ever given me, and I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to do right by her. What still overwhelms me is the reality that we created this life together, and now we are responsible for her. She is here; she is ours. I'd say that makes us pretty lucky, indeed." -Sarah on her baby
"I will be the best father you've ever seen. I will win father of the year everytime. And Sarah will be the most fantastic mother." -Freddie
Where Are They Now?
At the moment, Sarah is taking a mini break from filming, as her and Freddie have officially become parents, they hope to start their family and live a normal life with Charlotte. However, late last year, Sarah filmed a new pilot for a new tv show titled The Wonderful Maladys, which hopefully gets picked up for a full season! Meanwhile, Freddie has signed on to play Cole Ortiz in the hit action series 24 and will appear in 24 episodes. Congrats to the couple! Hopefully they will return to our tv screens once they've settled down.
So what other stars have been M.I.A. for a while? Let us know and we'll track them down!
TRIVIA: Did You Know...?
- Sarah went to high school with Tara Reid, Jerry O'Connell and MaCauley Culkin.
- Favorite Singer: Mariah Carey
- Freddie auditioned for the role of Stu in Wes Craven's horror flick: Scream (1996)
- He collects: Comic books
There may not be many fans of Symbian here in the U.S., but Nokia promised they would continue to roll out new handsets and software updates even while working on Windows Phone devices and today they delivered. Nokia announced three new smartphones, the Symbian Belle update, and a NFC-powered stereo Bluetooth headset. Check out my image gallery for phone images and Belle screenshots.
| Image Gallery: Check out press photos of the new Symbian phones and screenshots of the Belle OS update. |  |  | ||||
The three new devices are the Nokia 700, Nokia 701, and Nokia 600 that are all named with the new naming convention and they all run Symbian Belle.
The Nokia 700 is Nokia’s most compact smartphone in the Symbian range and most compact touch monoblock smartphone in the world. It weighs 96 grams and is 110 x 50.7 x 9.7 mm in dimensions. It has a 1 GHz processor, 3.2 inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, 2GB internal memory and microSD card slot, 5 megapixel camera and NFC technology.
The Nokia 701 is Nokia’s brightest display device ever with a 3.5 inch CleaBlack display. It also has a 1 GHz processor, 8 megapixel camera, 8GB internal memory, and microSD card slot.
The Nokia 600 is Nokia’s loudest smartphone with a built-in FM radio antenna so you no longer need to plug in a wired headset to serve as the antenna. It also has an FM transmitter like many other Nokia smartphones and includes the 1 GHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, 2GB internal memory, and microSD card slot.
The Symbian Belle update will come on these devices and roll out to other existing devices through 2012 so you N8 owners that just received Anna can probably expect Belle in another year too. Belle is a UI update that includes things like more home screens, different sized widgets, pull down menu and taskbar (aka Android window shade), and more.
For more detailed information on each of these devices and OS update, check out these links to All About Symbian:
chicago bears|google labs|hawaii five o|nikola tesla|david wuThe beautiful Blake Livley stopped by Regis & Kelly in New York to talk about her upcoming film, The Town starring Ben Affleck, among other A-list actors!
Livley was last seen in Toronto promoting her movie at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
Make sure to watch this fashionista talk about The Town, Gossip Girl, fashion and her secret talent!
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It’s happening today – Rihanna and Eminem are Survivor’s Jeff Probst has recently signed with CBS Distribution to host a daytime talk show beginning fall 2012.
However, the Emmy-award winner still has plans to stay on the reality competition series Survivor, which he will most likely shoot during the summer months of his talk show’s hiatus.
“I’m fascinated with human nature and thrilled that this show will allow me the opportunity to connect with real people and explore their stories on a personal level,” claims Probst. “As I continue with Survivor, I am excited to extend my relationship with CBS with this new adventure in the world of daytime.”
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Britney Spears and boyfriend/former agent Jason Trawick were spotted looking happy in Maui, Hawaii where they've been vacationing! Britney's two boys, Sean Preston and Jayden James, have been spending time with her parents while she is away.
The couple took in the view from their balcony before heading down to the pool to catch some sun. Sounds like a pretty relaxing getaway!
hrc|gwyneth paltrow|snape|nate dogg|donovan mcnabbThe Biggest Loser winner Michael Ventrella chatted in an NBC conference call sharing his entire experience with us! Michael talks about his journey on the ranch, his bond with Ashley and what he plans to do with the quarter million dollar prize!
Did you ever think you'd make it this far? Were there any struggles that you had to overcome?
Michael: I thought there was going to be a lot of different things that might interfere with my journey. Being at 526 you have no hope for a future. You have no hope. I knew that I was going to give it my all and I knew that I would be relentless at my efforts of healthy but I surpassed my wildest dreams.
On this season, Stephanie and Sam found love in each other, are you dating anyone right now?
Michael: My love life is nonexistent. The only thing that I’m learning to love is myself and that’s the only thing I have time for right now because I haven’t done that ever. I never learned how to respect myself, respect my body and take care of me. So before I learn to love somebody else I need to learn how to love myself. I’m still not done with my journey, the finale for my weight loss is yet to come.
What are you planning to do with your $250,000 grand prize?
Michael: Get out of debt, at least try to. We’ll see what happens. So as I’m losing weight I’m getting things sorted out and I’m really cleaning up my life in every angle.
You and Ashley seem to have grown really close through out the competition, what's it like to compete with someone you're so close to?
Michael: Ashley and I’s relationship is just phenomenal. She’s like my twin, not evil twin, but my twin. We encourage each other and push each other to our limits and see what we’re possibly capable of and we’re always comforting each other because deep down to the root of things we started off this whole journey feeling the same things, going through the same things.
You two seem to be flirting a lot, is there something more we could expect from you two?
Michael: We flirt, we joke around, like we like getting a rise out of people when they say, “Are you guys dating?” And we look at each other and just like giggle. So but I mean if it ever went past that I think it would ruin it. We both talked about it. I mean there’s obviously - we’re obviously attracted to one another, you know, physically, characteristically, personality, mind, you know, soul, spirit, but it’s just one of those things where, you know, if it just went past that it just wouldn’t work.
Is there something that you've always wanted to do that you couldn't do before when you were heavier?
Michael: Yeah. I’d love to go to a theme park with all my cousins and ride a roller coaster and be a kid for the first time in my life. I am thinner now and have a smaller waist at 31 than I did when I was like 13 or 14. So I never got to experience what being a kid really was and I want to do that. And I love kids. I love to be around them. I like to be playful and I love my family.
Your sister Rosangela was featured on the show a couple of times. We notice that she looks up to you a lot, has she ever thought about auditioning for next season?
Michael: I know that she did audition after - while I was away. I don’t really know, because I haven’t had the time to sit down and talk to her, what came out of it. With my sister the progression, like as far as how she’s going to tackle the weight loss, is a lot different than me because I knew I was already on the first or second step. I knew that there was a problem that I had to take care of. Now my sister, she just is in the middle of Step 1 where she’s assessing that, you know, “Yeah, I’m not happy like this. And I’m not healthy. I don’t feel good about myself. I’m starting to feel all the effects of what being a heavy person, you know, feels, you know, feeling exile and feeling unwanted, feeling unhappy and feeling depressed and all those things.” I have yet to feel that she is ready to totally encompass everything that you need to do it because let’s face it folks, it’s not a magical pill overnight, it’s not a special, you know, DVD or piece of machinery. It’s hard work.
Congrats to Michael for his successful weight-loss and winning the title of The Biggest Loser!
Check out the runner-up's before and after looks:
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Researchers from Kaspersky have sampled their customer base, and found out that on average, every PC has 12 different vulnerabilities.
During the second quarter of 2011, the company saw 27,289,171 vulnerable applications and files detected on users’ computers, and detected an average of 12 different vulnerabilities on each computer.
Here are the vulnerabilities discovered:
The company contributes the decline in Windows vulnerabilities, to improvements in the automatic Windows update mechanism and the growing proportion of users who have Windows 7 installed on their PCs. Moreover, Kaspersky Labs emphasizes on the fact that seven of the Top 10 vulnerabilities are found in one product only — Adobe Flash Player, and that vulnerabilities from 2007-2008 remain in the Top 10, with seven of the ten vulnerabilities were discovered in 2011, and the other three in 2010.
See also
With vulnerabilities found in Acrobat Reader and Adobe products clearly dominating the threatscape, end users and enterprise users should ensure that they are running the latest versions of their installed applications and browser plugins, at any time.
mariah carey twins|snape|phillies|prometheus|nnamdi asomughaIt is that time of year again. Before you set off on your summer vacations, festivals and whatnot, take ten minutes out of your day to secure your Facebook account.
The last Facebook Lockdown Guide in January has been deprecated, and many more changes have occurred. Thankfully, on the most part, settings you have changed since then have been vastly kept the same.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to check — does it?
For my 900th post for ZDNet, find four updated guides, each focusing on an intrinsic part of Facebook’s privacy and security features, allowing you to work your way through with step by step help in each area.
Updated: Updated guide with all your profile securing tools at your disposal. Also included is a new photo album views and some general Facebook tweaks to keep your pages secure.
Updated: All the stuff you had before, with added support for encrypted Facebook browsing, updated advertising settings and more support for mobile devices.
Updated: All of the settings you need to secure your Facebook privacy, and now added support for the iPhone and iPod touch devices.
Updated: How to secure your miscellaneous Facebook bits, including instant personalisation and how to disable facial recognition features rolled out last month.
–
Related content:
Keep up to date with ZDNet iGeneration
You can also follow iGeneration posts on Twitter, or like the Facebook page to keep it within the realms of your feeds. You can also, with your ZDNet membership, subscribe to iGeneration posts by email (hourly, daily or weekly), and RSS feeds if you still use them.
uva|casey anthony case|jason derulo|president obama|kyle ortonWhile we're all anticipating for Disney's upcoming film TRON: Legacy, Disney Interactive Studios has released TRON: Evolution, a video game that's now available around North America. Just in time for the holidays, TRON: Evolution would be an absolute gift for your friends and family!
TRON: Evolution will take place between the very first TRON from 1982 leading up to the 3D picture TRON: Legacy, hitting theatres next week.
TRON: Evolution has a story set around a series of seismic events within the Grid of TRON. Players control a security program, Anon, who must protect the digital world from Abraxas, a dangerous computer virus. Players will witness unique moments that are referenced or shown as the backstory of the thrilling TRON: Legacy story. The game features the iconic TRON vehicles - light cycles, light tanks and recognizers - and has high mobility combat using light discs. The multiplayer modes enable up to 10 players to take on each other online in a variety of maps with on-foot combat, light cycles and light tanks.
TRON: Evolution is available for the XBOX 360, Nintendo DS, Playstation, and TRON: Evolution - Battle Grids is exclusive to the Wii(tm) console.
"'TRON: Legacy' re-envisions a unique digital landscape that is perfectly suited to the video game world, TRON: Evolution is a natural extension of 'TRON: Legacy,' and I can't wait for fans to see them both." - Sean Bailey, Producer of TRON: Legacy and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures president of production.
For more info on the new video game, click here! Plus, check out the trailer below!
new orleans|aaron carter|bidu|lil b|michele bachmann quotesAfter attending the Marchesa fashion show at New York Fashion Week last Wednesday, Hudgens has chosen the designer for her wedding dress.
"I want [Marchesa] to dress me for my wedding", the High School Musical star told PEOPLE. "[Their lace work just blows my mind", she added of designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig. "Anyone would be lucky to have a Marchesa dress in their wedding."
Only thing missing is the groom! "I don't know when that is going to be," she said of the future wedding date. "But when it happens, Georgina's going to do it. Already got one hassle out of the way!"
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Samsung is the biggest name in 3D TV, and its Galaxy Tab is the best-known Android tablet competitor to the iPad. So when Best Buy decided to bundle a free Galaxy Tab with a 46-inch 3D Samsung LED-baclkit HDTV for $1,499.99 for the next week, it would seem like it was a case of making a good thing better, either way you looked at it.
But that’s not how everyone is looking at it. Samsung says the promotion is design to boost TV sales, not tablet sales, which is a bit of a bad sign for the HDTV industry. It confirms research that shows that demand for new sets is flat, and that 3D wasn’t the panacea manufacturers had hoped. However, given the HP TouchPad’s unceremonious exit from the stage last week, one can’t help but question how well other tablets are selling in the face of the iPad onslaught.
Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps sums it succinctly for the Wall Street Journal: “It’s like bundling two losing products together.” Nonetheless, Epps seems more convinced that the tablet side of things is probably more of a concern for Samsung, as well as every tablet maker, since ““[r]etailers say that tablets are just sitting in the channel.”
The 46-inch TV and tablet deal is only available in Best Buy stores, but the retailer is offering a 55-inch TV and Galaxy Tab combo online for $1,999.99. Do these bundle deals seem appealing to you? Should more HDTVs be sold with tablets? Let us know your thoughts in the Comments section.
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Beritabola.com Barcelona - Bek In the preview of next Sunday's episode of True Blood (posted below), Tara has gotten herself in some serious trouble at the hands of Franklin.
Tara is taken by Franklin to the vampire king and finds Bill, who refuses to help her. Tara manages to escape captivity, only to be chased by a werewolf.
Remember this is NO NEW episode of True Blood this Sunday due to the Fourth of July holiday. This episode of True Blood will air NEXT Sunday (July 11) at 9PM on HBO.
casey anthony released from jail|carmageddon|paz de la huerta|george carlin|rupert murdochSo, HP’s TouchPad tablet went from launch to having the plug pulled on it in 49 days. What lessons can other tablet OEMs learn from this fiasco.
Don’t launch a product, launch an ecosystemOne of the biggest mistakes that HP made with the TouchPad was to release a product and then hope that an ecosystem would magically form around it. Things might have worked that way with the iPhone, but that was a long time ago and the platform didn’t have much in the way of competition.
Why should consumers gamble on a product like the TouchPad (and HP’s lack of commitment to the platform shows just how much of a gamble it was) when there is an established player in the market.
New products entering the market now need to have an ecosystem that users can tap into. If a company wants to launch a product without a decent ecosystem to support it, then that company better have invested in time travel technology, because the only way it’s going to work is to travel back in time to a world before the iPad.
How much faith do you think HP had in the TouchPad to trash the project in 49 days?
When consumers by a PC or a tablet or a smartphone, they don’t just want a device, they want to see a long-term commitment from the vendor in the form of updates and apps. This means that users expect a vendor to properly support a product for a decent length of time (a few years).
If HP can bin the TouchPad so rapidly, how committed is it to its other products and services? What message does this send customers and potential customers?
I’m not really sure how many TouchPads HP was expecting to sell in the first year, but I can’t imagine how bad the initial sales had to be for the company to dump the product after less then two months.
Did HP expect the TouchPad to be an overnight success? Seriously? Has hardware gone the way of movies where success or failure is judged on the basis of the first weekend? I hope not.
Companies don’t operate in a vacuum, and dumping products shortly after releasing them isn’t a good way to build long-term consumer confidence.
Think about it - if you’d just bought a TouchPad, would you be in the mood to buy another HP product in a hurry?
People have heard of Windows and Mac, and Android and iOS. webOS came from nowhere and HP expected people to embrace it without giving customers a solid ‘why’. The promise of apps and updates wasn’t enough (and given that the platform died within a couple of months, can you blame people for being wary).
If you’re going to bring out a tablet with an unknown OS, take the time to actually sell it to customers.
Where do you think HP went wrong with the TouchPad?
See also:
Earlier this week, Miley celebrated her new clothing line Miley & Max for George in the UK, appearing at the ASDA supermarket.
The teen starlet stepped out in a vintage white blouse, L’Agence black mini ($590), and a pair of black Louboutin pumps ($595).
To get this chic and sophisticated look without breaking your bank account, check out the similar picks I put together:
Thanks to Forever 21, I found a great combo of Miley’s look from head-to-toe! From the Lace Contrast Dress to the simple black pumps, believe it or not, this entire look will cost you less than 50 bucks.
$22.80 - Elegant Stiletto Pumps, $22.80 - Lace Contrast Dress
fourth of july|high school musical|borders|phillies|nba lockoutWarner Bros. has confirmed that the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises will be filmed in three locations including the UK and Los Angeles.
Ravi Mehta, the vice president of Warner Bros. addressed the rumors of where the third film was going to take place. "I know they are going to the UK, LA and there will be a third city."
In the previous two Batman films, scenes were shot in Chicago for the Gotham City backdrop. However, keeping things a bit more tight-lipped from on-set spoilers, third location has not been confirmed as New York and Detroit are a possibility as well.
annalynne mccord|cheap airline tickets|big brother 13|phillies|frank mccourtVery few enterprises that are adopting cloud applications and infrastructure are giving enough thought to governance. The result is a mish-mash of SaaS silos and cloud islands, with very little attention paid to data consistency and integration, and even less to policy management and oversight. This is bad enough in organisations that run all their operations in the cloud, but most enterprises are not in that happy space. The vast majority have to manage a hybrid infrastructure that encompasses large swathes of existing on-premise IT assets along with a swelling population of SaaS applications and a handful of cloud infrastructure initiatives.
I’ve been advising enterprises to put a strategy in place that looks something like the schematic above, which comes from a webinar I presented on Focus.com back in April (unfortunately the webinar is now offline). Developing a strategy along these lines at least forces you to start thinking about the issues — such as how to extend access policies from the existing enterprise infrastructure out to cloud applications; how to automate other aspects of policy management; and how to manage connections between applications, data and other resources.
Although it’s good to get your head around the issues, things go rapidly downhill from there. Practical action is difficult and requires a huge investment of in-house resources, because this whole area is very sparsely supported by vendors, whether they’re cloud providers or conventional on-premise middleware and systems management vendors. While there are a smattering of players offering cloud integration, the governance layer is a largely uncatered for. There are just a few glimmers of innovation here and there: Ping Identity continues to advance its federated identity management offerings; ServiceMesh is an interesting start-up with a strong take on policy-driven cloud governance; another player that’s crossed my radar is IT automation vendor UC4. I’m sure there are others I’ve missed, but there’s currently no easy source of information about solutions in this much-neglected area, let alone guidance on best practice that enterprises should be following.
One starting point has appeared recently, though, and from a solid background. This type of framework is well established in the field of service-oriented architecture, and therefore it’s more a case of repurposing old skills and knowledge rather than having to invent an entirely new set of wheels — even though it comes with more of a REST spin than the old SOAP-based web services. As fellow ZDNet blogger Joe McKendrick reports, SOA guru Thomas Erl has recently adopted the new moniker of Service Technology for his expertise. His most recent book, SOA Governance: Governing Shared Services On-Premise and in the Cloud, is one of the first to consider the strategic role of governance across both cloud and on-premise resources.
What are your thoughts about joined-up governance and management of cloud in an enterprise IT environment? Add your comments and advice in Talkback below.
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Beritabola.com Liverpool - Pemain 
Sure, on the desktop, it’s a Windows world, but guess what Sherlock; the desktop is declining in importance. The mobile, server, Web and cloud worlds are where the twenty-teens’ billionaires will come from, not the desktop. And, guess, who’s already in all those spaces large and in charge? Yes, that’s right, Linux.
Let’s start from the top on where Linux beats Microsoft.
Mobile
The mobile computing world is a dog-fight between Apple iOS and Google’s Linux-based Android. Windows Phone 7 is much of a non-player on smartphone as Linux is on the conventional PC desktop. While Apple owns the high-end of smartphones, Android is cleaning up everywhere else.
Until recently, you could argue that nobody, but nobody, really sold tablets except for Apple. That argument doesn’t hold water any more. Android now has 20% of the tablet market. I wonder, I really do, if that’s why Apple launched its legal attack on the Samsung Galaxy Tab’s design in Europe, Is Apple that insecure? Maybe.
Until the last few days, you might also have been concerned about how Google could fight off the endless legal challenges to Android. You need worry no more about that. Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility has given Google all the ammo it needs to win in the mobile patent wars.
Of course, it’s always possible that another mobile operating system will win out. Like say HP’s webOS, which is, ah, Linux based. Or, there’s Intel MeeGo, which is, wow, what do you know, Linux based. You get the picture. One way or the other, tomorrow’s mobile operating systems are likely to be Linux operating systems.
Servers and the Web
There are a lot of Windows Servers instances humming away in offices. It’s hard to say exactly how many Linux servers are out there since you don’t need to buy a Linux server, you can download one, or a hundred and one, for free. Sure, Red Hat, which primarily makes its money from its server offering, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), is well on its way to being the first billion dollar open-source company, but there are probably far more CentOS, openSUSE, Debian, etc, Linux servers quietly and invisibly running. We just don’t know. What we can count though are Web servers.
According to Netcraft, Microsoft has only 15.86% of the Web server market in August 2011. Apache leads the pack with 65.18%. In third place, you’ll find ngnix with 6.54% and Google takes last place with 4.38%. And what operating system are you most likely to find Apache, ngnix, and Google running on? Yes, you’re right in one, it’s Linux.
It’s not just Web servers though. Supercomputers, the fastest of the fast, run Linux almost exclusively. Cutting edge computing platforms like IBM’s Jeopardy champ Watson? Linux again. It’s not just computing engineers that turn to Linux though. The world’s major stock exchanges also run Linux. Once you’re away from the desktop, you’re living in a Linux world.
The Cloud
I was privileged to speak recently at a small cloud conference in my hometown of Asheville, NC. Two things surprised me there. First, how many new businesses were already actively using the cloud’s scalability to create new business models and, second, how everyone was using Linux on their cloud businesses.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), the most popular of the public clouds, doesn’t report on what operating system images people use on it, but The Cloud Market, does scan Amazon EC2 for operating system and other information. According to The Cloud Market’s numbers, as of August 15th 2011, Ubuntu Linux had 38.4% of all images; that was followed by generic Linux with 31.5% and then Windows with 13.5%. After Windows, there were numerous other Linux variants. Adding it all up and we’re left pretty much with Linux was being used by 86.1% of all cloud users.
So, victory over Linux Microsoft? I think not.
Indeed, even on the desktop, as we turn more and more to using Web browsers for everything, I see Linux winning out in the long run. You’ve had a great run Microsoft, and you’ll still be a power for the rest of this decade, but victory? No, you’re just sliding into a long decline and, at the end of it, Linux will still be behind the scenes running everyone’s back-room services, their tablets, their phones, and, yes, even their Web browser-based PCs ala Google Chrome OS with Linux-powered clouds keeping it all going.
Related Stories:
Microsoft declares victory over Linux, names Apple and Google main rivals
Windows’ Endgame. Desktop Linux’s Failure
The one big move Microsoft could still make in mobile
Google and Motorola Mobility: It’s all about the patents
Google’s Chrome operating system gets a much needed update
mta|new orleans|chris hansen|denver broncos|independence dayHP’s bombshell announcement that it will “discontinue operations” for WebOS devices, most notably the TouchPad tablet, inspired immediate comparisons with Microsoft’s disastrous mobile phone, the Kin. Indeed, there are striking similarities:
But none of those numbers really matter in the final analysis. For both Microsoft and HP, there were much more significant intangible costs associated with these high-profile failures.
It’s embarrassing to fail so quickly and in such spectacular fashion. In the case of Kin, the failure was with a niche product aimed at a youth market. In HP’s case, the humiliation is much more profound. HP had literally bet the company on WebOS. In the press release announcing the Palm acquisition, HP bragged that “Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy.”
And HP had big dreams for WebOS. In March—less than six months ago—HP CEO Leo Apotheker talked about the “massive platform” opportunities for WebOS. According to Business Week, Apotheker had a grand vision: “Starting next year, every one of the PCs shipped by HP will include the ability to run WebOS in addition to Microsoft Corp.’s Windows.” Now, with HP’s announcement that it plans to spin off its PC business, there’s a good chance the company won’t even be shipping PCs at the end of 2012.
But for Microsoft and HP alike, the worst writeoff of all is the opportunity cost associated with their respective failed ventures. Microsoft sunk two years of precious development resources into Kin while Windows Mobile was failing. During that same period, Apple’s iPhone was thriving and Google’s Android platform was gaining critical momentum.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted in a September 2010 interview that the Kin project “just defocused activity from Windows Phone.” Nearly a year later, Windows Phone is still struggling to gain traction in the marketplace.
In HP’s case, it’s too early to assess how much damage this wrong turn caused. But the fact that Apotheker and HP’s board feel compelled to exit the PC business—its onetime core—suggests that the ultimate cost will be very high indeed.
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