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May 05, 2004
SuSE vs. Redhat in the Enterprise
A review of SuSE 8.0 and Redhat ES 3.0 at DevX finds SuSE the clear winner.
09:35 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Philip Greenspun on Open Source Economics
In a recent IT Conversations, Philip Greenspun talks about the economics of open source. Ars Digita, a company he founded, was built around an open source platform. He makes two interesting points about open source:
- Control of the code base and the ability to add things to the source release is one lever that a company can use to extract money from open source. Companies will pay to have changes incorporated into the code so that it doesn't have to be re-customized each time a new release is made.
- When your based on open source, you have to keep costs down because open source does not allow the margins that closed source does for a simple reason: if you get too expensive, the client will hire someone else to make the modifications to your source code.
11:04 AM | Recommend This | Print This
Riding Radio Waves
Baseline has an article on the use of RFID in theme parks.
Baseline has learned that Walt Disney Co. is planning to use radio waves to track assets such as laundry, beverages and bus shuttles that ferry visitors around its parks. The Disney pilots are in the early stages--the company in some cases hasn't even selected a tag vendor yet--but the company does plan to use radio frequency identification (RFID) tagging throughout its parks.
Disney would not comment, and details about pilots by the company and other theme park operators are sketchy. Oklahoma City-based Six Flags Inc., however, did confirm that Memorial Day will kick off pilots at four of its water parks in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas and Jackson, N.J. Six Flags plans to give patrons wristbands with chips that emit radio waves. The wristbands can be loaded up with the digital equivalent of cash. Instead of digging through wet dollar bills, park visitors swipe their wristband past a reader and have an amount deducted from their stash.From Riding Radio Waves
Referenced Wed May 05 2004 10:51:32 GMT-0600
I'm always amazed at how technology never rolls out how you'd think. This is convenient for users and gives the park great feedback on how rides are used, when and by who. I think the article makes an important point when it says that the difference between supply-chain uses of RFID and theme park uses is that supply-chain RFID is a way to drive costs down whereas theme-park RFID is a way to drive revenues up. That distinction is often useful for analyzing technology deployment. People with a way to drive up revenue will overcome obstacles and put up with early stage inconveniences that people merely trying to save money will not.