If Linux was a best-of-breed operating system, you wouldn't have to chase config files all over creation, like it was MSFT Windows for Workgroups 3.5. It appeals to people who are needing job insurance, because if you don't really know what you're doing with Linux, you are out of luck. If you have a modicum of Windows understanding you can actually run a domain. Linux is cheap, cheap, cheap. It's as manipulable as your workers are fanatical. Devotion to Linux started out as a pledge to something that's NOT MSFT. It has survived on economics. If it cost even a third as per much per host as Windows Server, its market presence would be a shadow of what it is today. Open source apps are in the same boat - they're really cheap. Again, you have to know what you're doing. One of my kids could set up a website on Windows - they could not do that on Linux/Apache. Open source is about large numbers of users doing very similar things. If your business is just like thousands of other businesses and you can go buy the package somewhere, really cheap, and maintain it really cheaply (at a hosting company) then that's a great candidate for open source.
I don't think they have veins, do they? HPQ has a lot of problems to solve. It won't happen quickly. Their competitors will eat their lunch in the meantime. Dell is eroding their market share in all the places that it counts. IBM is a non-player - look at their server numbers. IBM's strength is totally about their services and software business. CSCO is a player, but networking is in a sea change and they will be very busy trying to keep their customer base while SDN disrupts everyone's plans. CSCO's competitors, including HPQ, are all over the sea change and licking their chops. Quite a time to place bets, if you have a strong stomach. Or, you could buy PM miners in the event that central banks run out of tricks on holding down gold prices.
Agree Caddy - OpenStack is not in need of saving and whatever face-saving might happen with a RAX purchase, IBM is trying to get OUT of commoditized biz, not IN. RAX and all the other players can slug it out for several quarters to see who blinks first on the pain, but OpenStack is and will be used in the private cloud according to its merits, not because IBM or anyone else is puffing it. Note that Dell has opted out of the hosting biz for the exact, same reasons. It's funny but I got blasted on another thread for suggesting that anyone (aggregate) would be seriously considering private cloud when public is so cheap. Plenty of entities will be doing private cloud, and OpenStack is still attractive for all the reasons that it was created for.
IBM: Risk-Reward Still Compelling Despite The Price Recovery [View article]
It could be a good buy at these levels...until it's not, which is probably around mid-summer after everyone has spent their tax returns on something useless, and the unemployment numbers can't be dressed up as easily in some slimy accounting gimmick. Then, there will be a pause for reflection - one that portend the other shoe, dropping.
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
BTW - Greece and Spain used to get cheap rates, too. We weren't talking about the best deal Japan ever had - we were talking about what happens when they can't cajole that rate anymore.
Market Running On Fumes, Prepare Your Exit Strategy [View article]
No wonder you're miserable - you're looking for the govt to save you. "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George W. Fine, let it wield the sword, when appropriate - but don't let it run the economy, or we'll just keep getting more of what we've been getting.
The Good News, The Bad News And What's Very Ugly [View article]
: ) I agree with Tack to the extent that if there were not so much gallows humor, waiting for the other shoe to drop, that the market would probably be far ahead of where it is now, and that strange day when all SA is happy would come with even more vengeance. Our collective negativism (rationality) is the only brake on this locomotive...
The Good News, The Bad News And What's Very Ugly [View article]
Au contraire - introducing real solutions in a time of crisis is probably the only time things can actually get done. After all, Mr Rahm Emmanuel and Mr. Barack Hussein Obama have done that all along, except their vision is an awful one of Orwellian descent that puts Man's crony law in place of Constitutional Law. Our only real hope during this adminstration is that their tyranny becomes transparent to even the most confused members of the "Progressive" party, and they recoil at the venality. It could happen.
Market Running On Fumes, Prepare Your Exit Strategy [View article]
"...credit dried up because counterparties lost faith in each other..." I would venture to say that many hands are hovering over the dump button and lost faith could come back with a vengeance, and with little warning. Don't get too comfortable.
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
Just another beauty contest at the glue factory. The scary part is the collateral damage that could result from a severly teetering Japanese economy. If you thought the EU was a problem, take another look.
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
Pretty much every illegal out there is consuming more per capita than they contribute to our society. That doesn't even consider what it means to be an American, speaking English, in a country with a Constitution that you call your own.
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
"...you don't understand how economies and governments work." And, so if the country's wealth/debt is a wash, it doesn't matter? Well, yes it does, as the ones who saved the money will not be the ones that get to spend it. Just as in America - the reflation of the banking sector is coming out of the pockets of Joe and Maggie Sixpack, and their college graduate-with-no-jobs children. Tell me there's no problem there. Jamie Dimon will do quite well, thank you, instead of warming a cell, somewhere, he, along with hundreds of others who profited mightily off the machinations of the FED Chairman and the Banks-in-general, will do just fine. And, Mr. Obama will do just fine, giving his post-Presidential speeches to simpering masses of turncoat cowards who toast each other for dinner. The middle class is getting raped here, just like Japan's will be. Maybe it doesn't matter to currency traders in Dubai but it will certainly matter to Ms. Takanawa.
The Good News, The Bad News And What's Very Ugly [View article]
You can still pull your money back into a cash position, though, right? If so, there will be days coming when you'll want to do that with a chunk of it.
Can IBM Save OpenStack? [View article]
Open source apps are in the same boat - they're really cheap. Again, you have to know what you're doing. One of my kids could set up a website on Windows - they could not do that on Linux/Apache.
Open source is about large numbers of users doing very similar things. If your business is just like thousands of other businesses and you can go buy the package somewhere, really cheap, and maintain it really cheaply (at a hosting company) then that's a great candidate for open source.
Can IBM Save OpenStack? [View article]
Hewlett-Packard's CEO Discusses F2Q 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript [View article]
HPQ has a lot of problems to solve. It won't happen quickly. Their competitors will eat their lunch in the meantime. Dell is eroding their market share in all the places that it counts. IBM is a non-player - look at their server numbers. IBM's strength is totally about their services and software business. CSCO is a player, but networking is in a sea change and they will be very busy trying to keep their customer base while SDN disrupts everyone's plans. CSCO's competitors, including HPQ, are all over the sea change and licking their chops.
Quite a time to place bets, if you have a strong stomach. Or, you could buy PM miners in the event that central banks run out of tricks on holding down gold prices.
Can IBM Save OpenStack? [View article]
IBM: Risk-Reward Still Compelling Despite The Price Recovery [View article]
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
Market Running On Fumes, Prepare Your Exit Strategy [View article]
Fine, let it wield the sword, when appropriate - but don't let it run the economy, or we'll just keep getting more of what we've been getting.
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
The Good News, The Bad News And What's Very Ugly [View article]
The Good News, The Bad News And What's Very Ugly [View article]
Market Running On Fumes, Prepare Your Exit Strategy [View article]
I would venture to say that many hands are hovering over the dump button and lost faith could come back with a vengeance, and with little warning. Don't get too comfortable.
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
4 Scary Charts Warning Of The Next Financial Crisis [View article]
And, so if the country's wealth/debt is a wash, it doesn't matter? Well, yes it does, as the ones who saved the money will not be the ones that get to spend it. Just as in America - the reflation of the banking sector is coming out of the pockets of Joe and Maggie Sixpack, and their college graduate-with-no-jobs children. Tell me there's no problem there. Jamie Dimon will do quite well, thank you, instead of warming a cell, somewhere, he, along with hundreds of others who profited mightily off the machinations of the FED Chairman and the Banks-in-general, will do just fine. And, Mr. Obama will do just fine, giving his post-Presidential speeches to simpering masses of turncoat cowards who toast each other for dinner. The middle class is getting raped here, just like Japan's will be. Maybe it doesn't matter to currency traders in Dubai but it will certainly matter to Ms. Takanawa.
The Good News, The Bad News And What's Very Ugly [View article]