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Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

The IBM Linux Portal has an interview with industry analyst Stacy Quandt. "Within the next three years I believe Linux will overtake Windows as the number one operating system based on new server shipments. Another milestone to watch for is when Linux gains enough momentum on the desktop to pull in more ISVs. There’s the potential for a lot of innovation that could take place in user space applications on Linux. The desktop is Microsoft’s last stronghold in the market. So there’s a lot of potential for Linux to become a much stronger play there."

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Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 29, 2004 22:09 UTC (Thu) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link] (13 responses)

That text has the "dread questionmark disease" which can only mean they
used MS Windows to write it. How amusing. I guess someone should tell
them so they can fix it.

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 29, 2004 22:55 UTC (Thu) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

I don't see them. What font/browser/OS are you using?

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 29, 2004 23:07 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (9 responses)

Ross, you should really ditch that browser. ;-)

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 29, 2004 23:46 UTC (Thu) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (6 responses)

Ross, you should really ditch that browser. ;-)

Mozilla on Linux, you mean?

That's what I'm using, and I see open square boxes where there should be apostrophes.

I hardly think it's a useful or reasonalbe suggestion to tell people to ditch the most standards-compliant browser out there because some annoying monopolist company decided unilaterally to change their fonts in a non-standard way, and because most people don't notice it as they're fully mired in that monopolist's products.

-Rob

Just incorrect charset setting

Posted Apr 30, 2004 0:17 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (3 responses)

The page doesn't set the charset correctly:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset="iso"-8859-1" />
Note extra quotes. Browsers should assume iso-8859-1 if the charset is not specified. However, Mozilla allows to set a different charset as default. If the page doesn't specify the charset properly, the default charset applies. If the charset is e.g. koi8-r, the apostrophes will be shown as stippled squares. It has absolutely nothing to do with the OS on which the text was prepared. It's just the webmaster's curly hands plus a non-standard setting in Mozilla.

It's depressing to see that we have whole threads started with insinuations, and nobody takes a minute to check the facts. I, for one, welcome our new Slashdot overlords :-)

Just incorrect charset setting

Posted Apr 30, 2004 6:39 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

Browsers should assume iso-8859-1 if the charset is not specified.

And that would "break" some Hungarian sites which don't set the charset but use ISO-8859-2 characters. It's really annoying to change the encoding when I go from a site to an other :-(

Bye,NAR

Just incorrect charset setting

Posted Apr 30, 2004 6:41 UTC (Fri) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link] (1 responses)

If you're seeing the smart quotes then the problem is you're running windows which conflates the cp-1252 charset with iso-8859-1. The difference is that cp-1252 defines characters in the range 0x80-0x99. ISO-8859-1 does not. Unfortunately, windows believes that the two character sets are the same, hence all sorts of pages incorrectly labelled as ISO-8859-1.

However, it should be easy to fix. Just go to your browsers menu and there should be an option to select the correct charset somewhere.

-Dom

Just incorrect charset setting

Posted May 6, 2004 6:01 UTC (Thu) by spitzak (guest, #4593) [Link]

Hate to say it, but everybody really ought to just fill in those characters from 0x80 to
0x9F with Microsoft's assignments. There is absolutly no reason for a "hole" there, it was
put there for old systems that might strip off the high bit, to avoid printing characters
turning into control characters. That problem is long gone now. And everybody has to
face the fact that documents that assumme those slots print those characters are a fact
of life.

I recomend the Unicode standard have the codes added and every system using Unicode
and UTF-8 start printing them. Just because Microsoft invented it does not mean it is bad.

However their "smart quotes" algorithim is stupid, as it turns apostrophe's into the
close-quote character. Even word processors in the 70's were smarter than that. This
completely breaks the ability to search for words with apostrophe's in them, and means
that anything that wants to analyze the document has to do an algorithim that the "smart
quotes" should have done in the first place. The fact that Microsoft would do such a thing
is actually quite apalling!


Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 30, 2004 10:52 UTC (Fri) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

As you could have noticed, the remark was not intended to be useful or reasonable. I was referring to an earlier thread. I'm quite sure Ross got the point that you obviously missed.

... and because most people don't notice it as they're fully mired in that monopolist's products.

For your information, I am running Mozzilla 1.6 on a custom Linux 2.6.5 kernel and I am having no troubles at all reading that page. For an explanation of the "problem" Ross was having please see below.

If you are truly worried about the problem you seem to be hinting at -- which I don't think you are, by the way -- you could unleash your powers of observation on Longhorn, XAML and Avalon, instead of quibbling about apostrophes.

More on quotes in HTML

Posted Apr 30, 2004 15:59 UTC (Fri) by dash (guest, #6182) [Link]

For more discussion on this topic, see David A. Wheeler's Curling Quotes in HTML, SGML, and XML document.

--
Dag Asheim
Linpro AS

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 30, 2004 7:00 UTC (Fri) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link] (1 responses)

Heh. Yeah, I know. I actually use four different browsers depending on
what computer I am using (Netscape 4, Mozilla, lynx, and IE). The problem
happens in everything but IE :) Others have told me that some versions of
Mozilla recognize CP1252 even if the page is marked ISO8859-1.

But anyway, I wasn't complaining about the browser or about the problem as
much as pointing out the irony that IBM's article about Linux taking over
shows they are still using Windows.

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted May 4, 2004 11:59 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Except it doesn't, as others have tried to point out.

This "curly quotes problem" has absolutely NOTHING to do with Microsoft, except in that they seem to get the blame for it (Amazing, MS actually innocent for once!).

Yes, their products suffer from the problem, but so do a lot of others, and to conclude, on hitting a dodgy webpage, that "it must be MS" is a very dodgy and stupid assumption.

Cheers,
Wol

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 30, 2004 2:44 UTC (Fri) by error27 (subscriber, #8346) [Link] (1 responses)

Some Linux text editors use smart quotes as well. For example, I believe that the default Abiword does, although it lets you turn them off.

Maybe Linux use is spreading, but not to that web page

Posted Apr 30, 2004 6:57 UTC (Fri) by Ross (guest, #4065) [Link]

Smart quotes are ok depending on how they are implemented. If the
character set truely has curly quotes then it's fine to use them. But
the problem is that certain products from a certain vendor use reserved
characters to represent some extra symbols. And it uses those same
characters no matter what character set is actually being used. It's a
good example of "embrace and extend".

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted Apr 29, 2004 22:26 UTC (Thu) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] (5 responses)

hmm I had a feeling Stacey was good people, based on what I've heard from her in the past...

Hey, does anyone know if she's still single ;)

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted Apr 30, 2004 8:01 UTC (Fri) by piman (guest, #8957) [Link] (4 responses)

I have no idea, but I suspect you still are.

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted Apr 30, 2004 15:41 UTC (Fri) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] (3 responses)

Wow, you read a lot into my comment -

but really, I think Ms Quandt is great, what I've heard from her in the past struck me as insightful, and not what you'd hear from one of the cluless old-boy gartner types spouting the party line.

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted May 1, 2004 2:59 UTC (Sat) by piman (guest, #8957) [Link] (2 responses)

I didn't read anything into it, besides what you put it in. To quote from the HOWTO:

"You may think that your "Are you single?" line is hysterically witty and suave, but she's heard it a million times. Even if you're joking, even if you already have a girlfriend or are married--don't do it."

I don't see most females writing "Hey, I wonder if [author] is still single" after any article by a male author; if a male did it for any male author, or a female for a female author, I would expect several insultory responses.

What you did was uncalled for, plain and simple.

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted May 1, 2004 6:59 UTC (Sat) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link] (1 responses)

You seem to be taking up an offense for Ms Quandt!

I rather think she would have been a much better sport about the tip of the hat, than you were. In any case, I stand by my positive appraisal of Ms Q!

But really, if you want to browbeat me further about this, I invite you to do it via email, as this has no doubt become a colossal bore to those who come here to read Linux related news.

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted May 2, 2004 15:22 UTC (Sun) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

To quote a female friend of mine, "How would blokes like it if every time they show signs of intelligence, some big gay wrestler type hit on them?" I am not saying that you intend to put people off, merely that to many women, men whose reaction to intelligent work by women is, "Is she single?" reminds them strongly of the days when regardless of intelligence, women were expected to make good housewives, and defer to their husbands.

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted Apr 29, 2004 22:58 UTC (Thu) by jonabbey (guest, #2736) [Link] (1 responses)

Nice interview, but I thought it was weird that Stacey chose to end it with:

Note: All trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

I guess that just goes to show you how thorough a professional analyst can be!

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted Apr 29, 2004 23:37 UTC (Thu) by andy (guest, #21272) [Link]

No, that's at the foot of /all/ of the interview pages on IBM's site...

Analyst Stacey Quandt on the future of Linux (IBM)

Posted Apr 30, 2004 7:55 UTC (Fri) by Ajarn (guest, #8521) [Link]

I am using Opera 7.23 and I see no irregularities at all


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