Fudzilla talks to AMD’s CEO

AMD’s President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dirk Meyer was kind enough to spend some time answering some hot topics that included Core 2, Core i7, Notebook market share and plans, netbooks and even Nvidia’s potential plans to make a CPU. He even mentioned newly released DirectX 11 and Six core Istanbul chip. We would like to thank Dirk and all the other kind people that made this interview possible. The rest is below.
##CONTINUE##
Q1: How does AMD plan to compete with Intel’s Core 2 dual core generation? How do you plan to go up against Core i7?

A1: Well, first I would like to start by saying that we are increasingly focused on end-users and what they are trying to do with their PCs and datacenters. In clients, that means enabling a much more graphics-intensive experience for their dollar. And in servers, it’s about giving them a superior system TCO, including seamless upgradability and things like power and cooling costs. So, the direct CPU to CPU comparison is becoming a lot less relevant over time.

That said, AMD-based systems are designed to deliver maximum value across all price points. And unlike Intel’s Core i7 processors that require an expensive system upgrade, AMD Phenom™ II processors can be used in many existing motherboards, enabling a more affordable single component upgrade. Maximum value may mean delivering a top-of-the-line PC experience, with performance tuning headroom or a superior HD entertainment experience on HD-capable panels. With that in mind, AMD launched “Dragon” platform technology at CES which combines some of the most competitive components in the industry to deliver superior performance at an incredible value.

Q2: What is the plan on the notebook segment? How can AMD grow its business there?

A2: According to Mercury Research, in Q1/2009, AMD gained notebook CPU and integrated GPU market share. We believe this is because we know that most consumers want a full PC experience on-the-go, at an affordable price. We’re working with our customers to deliver differentiated experiences with our balanced notebook platforms. Our platform experiences only get better as we plan to refresh our platform for mainstream notebooks in the second half of 2009. The upgraded platform is designed to deliver an incredibly rich PC experiences on mainstream notebooks at affordable price-points.

Q3: Does AMD plan to challenge netbooks?

A3: We aren’t focused on challenging netbooks, rather, we are focused on how to deliver the best possible solutions for our customers. Earlier this year, AMD launched the AMD platform for ‘ultrathin’ notebooks. This platform addresses a large market segment that was not being served—consumers who are more lifestyle-oriented and want greater mobility, without spending more than $1,500 on a pricey ultraportable. These same PC users want a top tier visual experience because entertainment is important to them and they don’t what to compromise with a netbook. The HP Pavilion dv2, based on the new AMD platform for ultrathin notebooks, received the “Best Notebook of CES” award from LAPTOP Magazine.

AMD is committed to meeting consumers’ needs for an affordable notebook, while still addressing modern computing requirements. And let’s face it, today it’s all about the fun that we have with our PCs and people want richer, sharper photos, music that is clearer, HD and Blu-ray playback that is more vivid and even 3D games that play more realistically. AMD is committed to delivering platforms that enable greater value for end-users.

Q4: What does AMD expect from 2009?

A4: Today, AMD is unlike any other company in the industry with x86-based microprocessors and 3D graphics. There are only two companies in the world that deliver x86 microprocessors in volume and only two companies in the world that deliver leading-edge 3D graphics. Only AMD does both. We think this gives us a unique advantage to deliver platform solutions that are tailored to end-user needs. As such, in 2009, we are planning to deliver double the number of platforms year-over-year. We expect to extend our performance-per-watt leadership in server with “Istanbul” and we plan to introduce next generation graphics solutions to lead the industry to DirectX 11.

Q5: What do you think about Nvidia’s plan to possibly make a X86 CPU and can a company that creates only graphic cards survive in the years to come?

A5: I’m not surprised, as it validates the vision we unveiled with our ATI acquisition. Our message has always been that in order to achieve the maximum computing experience, you need to have a balanced platform.

-----------------------------
BY Fuad Abazovic
Source：Fudzilla

Copyright Fudzilla 2007-2009, All rights reserved.

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Tcl

Our series on the most popular programming languages continues as we chat to Tcl creator John Ousterhout
##CONTINUE##
What prompted the creation of Tcl?

In the early and mid-1980's my students and I created several interactive applications, such as editors and analysis tools for integrated circuits. In those days all interactive applications needed command-line interfaces, so we built a simple command language for each application. Each application had a different command language, and they were all pretty weak (for example, they didn't support variables, looping, or macros). The idea for Tcl came to me as a solution to this problem: create a powerful command language, and implement it as a library package that can be incorporated into a variety of different applications to form the core of the applications' command languages.

Was there a particular problem the language aimed to solve?

The original goal for Tcl was to make it easy to build applications with powerful command languages. At the time I didn't envision Tcl being used as a stand-alone programming language, though that is probably the way that most people have used it.

How does Tk fit into the picture?

One of the key features of Tcl is extensibility: it is easy to create new features that appear as part of the language (this is the way that applications using Tcl can make their own functionality visible to users). At the same time that I was developing Tcl, graphical user interfaces were becoming popular, but the tools for creating GUI applications (such as the Motif toolkit for the X Window System) were complex, hard to use, and not very powerful. I had been thinking about graphical toolkits for several years, and it occurred to me that I could build a toolkit as an extension to Tcl. This became Tk. The flexible, string-oriented nature of Tcl made it possible to build a toolkit that was simple to use yet very powerful.

What influence, if any, did Tcl have in the development of Java?

As far as I know the Java language developed independently of Tcl. However, the AWT GUI toolkit for Java reflects a few features that appeared first in Tk, such as a grid-based geometry manager.

What’s the Tcl eco-system like?

The Tcl ecosystem is so diverse that it's hard to characterize it, but it divides roughly into two camps. On the one hand are the Tk enthusiasts who believe that the Tcl/Tk's main contribution is its powerful cross-platform GUI tools; they think of Tcl/Tk as a stand-alone programming platform, and are constantly pushing for more Tk features. On the other hand are the Tcl purists who believe the most unique thing about Tcl is that it can be embedded into applications. This group is most interested in the simplicity and power of the APIs for embedding. The Tcl purists worry that the Tk enthusiasts will bloat the system to the point where it will no longer be embeddable.

What is Tcl’s relevance in the web application world?

One of my few disappointments in the development of Tcl is that it never became a major factor in Web application development. Other scripting languages, such as Javascript and Python, have played a much larger role than Tcl.

What was the flagship application made with Tcl?

Tcl's strength has been the breadth of activities that it covers, rather than a single flagship application. Most Tcl applications are probably small ones used by a single person or group. At the same time, there are many large applications that have been built with Tcl, including the NBC broadcast control system, numerous applications in the Electronic Design Automation space, test harnesses for network routers and switches, Mars lander software, and the control system for oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Unfortunately I don't know very much about those projects, and the information I have is pretty old (I heard about both of those projects in the late 1990s). For the oil platform project, I believe that Tcl/Tk provided the central management system for observing the overall operation of the platform and controlling its functions. In the case of the Mars lander, I believe Tcl was used for pre-launch testing of the system hardware and software.

Have you ever seen the language used in a way that wasn't originally intended?

The most surprising thing to me was that people built large programs with Tcl. I designed the language as a command-line tool and expected that it would be used only for very short programs: perhaps a few dozen lines at most. When I went to the first Tcl workshop and heard that a multi-billion-dollar oil platform was being controlled by a half million lines of Tcl code I almost fell over.

Were there any particularly difficult or frustrating problems you had to overcome in the development of the language?

One problem we worked on for many years was making Tcl and Tk run on platforms other than Unix. This was eventually successful, but the differences between Unix, Windows, and the Macintosh were large enough that it took a long time to get it all right. A second problem was language speed. Originally Tcl was completely interpreted: every command was reparsed from a string every time it was executed. Of course, this was fairly inefficient. Eventually, Brian Lewis created a bytecode compiler for Tcl that provided 5-10x speedups.

Can you attribute any of Tcl’s popularity to the Tk framework?

Absolutely. As I mentioned earlier, there are many people who use Tcl exclusively for Tk.

Generally, more and more and more coding is moving to scripting languages. What do you think about this trend given Tcl’s long scripting language heritage? Has Tcl gained from this trend?

I think this trend makes perfect sense. Scripting languages make it substantially easier to build and maintain certain classes of applications, such as those that do a lot of string processing and those that must integrate a variety of different components and services. For example, most Web applications are built with scripting languages these days.

Looking back, is there anything you would change in the language’s development?

Yes, two things. First, I wish I had known that people would write large programs in Tcl; if I had, I'm sure I would have done some things differently in the design of the language. Second, I wish I had included object-oriented programming facilities in the language. I resisted this for a long time, and in retrospect I was wrong. It would have been easy to incorporate nice object-oriented facilities in Tcl if I had done it early on. Right now there are several Tcl extensions that provide OO facilities but there is not one "standard" that is part of Tcl; this is a weakness relative to other scripting languages.

Where do you envisage Tcl’s future lying?

Tcl is more than 20 years old now (hard to believe!) so it is pretty mature; I don't expect to see any shocking new developments around Tcl or Tk. I'm sure that Tcl and Tk will continue to be used for a variety of applications.

-----------------------------
BY Kathryn Edwards
Source：TechWorld

Copyright 2009 IDG Communications. ABN 14 001 592 650. All rights reserved.

Nvidia: 10 Minutes That Mattered

Sometimes technology matters less than you think.
##CONTINUE##
Business is often built or destroyed on disruption--some sudden innovation, insight or strategic move that changes the game for everyone. The same is often true in our lives, when an important conversation, a made or missed connection, even an intrusion of pure fate, redirects our thinking and actions for years afterward. While brief, these moments are critically important for who we are. Forbes is asking leaders in business and other fields about the disruptive "Ten Minutes That Mattered" in their lives and will share those stories here. Share your thoughts and own stories in the Reader Comments section below.

Jen-Hsun Huang
Co-Founder and Chief Executive, Nvidia

"I'm introverted. I don't really like being with people. You can tell an introvert versus an extrovert depending on how they relate to people: If go to a party, I'm not energized, I'm exhausted. I can't wait to leave. I shouldn't be leading a business--I even hate traveling.

"Probably in 1986, I read this paper in the Harvard Business Review. I was an engineer at LSI Logic, and I might have stayed an engineer there the rest of my life. Brian Halla (the CEO at National Semiconductor told me to read this paper though.

"It was about semiconductor architecture wars and why Intel's x86 chip was doomed. It was a revelation to me, because I'd only read technical papers before that. This was about strategy. That was strange for an engineer to read--that the fundamental engineering advantages of Sun's Sparc chip and the x86 weren't fundamental at all. They were nuances.

"The paper was wrong. It said Intel's technology was obsolete. I thought that missed the point, and their problems were something that the engineers could fix. That was really exciting too--what was fundamental for Intel was a trust in Moore's Law.

"I started reading more and more about the interaction of engineering and strategy. It became fundamental to my interest. As I read those papers, I realized how important it is that a company sees itself the right way. Technology hardly ever matters. It's necessary, but it's not sufficient. Tech makes small differences. But it is how companies see the world that makes the big difference.

"When I started Nvidia, there were a lot of graphics chip companies. The competition thought the game platform was stable. I thought we'd have to build a new product every six months and make the demand for graphics insatiable. The idea was to give designers a way to create an artistic level, make the games delightful, with their own personal stamp on it. That was a massive difference versus the competition.

"Passion matters more than anything. Reading that article triggered a passion I didn't even know I had about business and strategy. Real passion can overcome a lot of dislikes."

-----------------------------
BY Jen-Hsun Huang
Source：Forbes

2009 Forbes.com LLC™ All Rights Reserved.

Mobile Disruptions

Sybase's John Chen on the opportunities he sees as corporations rethink how to collaborate.
##CONTINUE##
This is a transcript of a recent interview by Forbes' Quentin Hardy with John Chen, chief executive of Sybase.

Forbes: I'm here with John Chen, CEO of Sybase. Sybase is a long-standing database company in the tech business, a great survivor, but under your leadership a particularly interesting survivor, because you came to it at a time when things were particularly troubled. It had been rather overwhelmed by its competitors, fairly low market share.

You set things right, but then, you focused on the theme we like to think about on this technology channel, which is disruption and engaging with disruption to make it your ally. So, tell me a little bit setting things right and aiming at a disruptive force.

John Chen: OK. Thank you. Let's see, I actually came in late '97, early '98, and into the company, as you pointed out, we were losing market share and we were losing money. And we ran right into this kind of the dot-com boom, meaning that, you know, I was losing a lot of employees.

And in fact, interesting enough, at one point, I was having a 45% turnover in the company. You know, 45% turnover is just a staggering number, but one you could address. I told the board: I don't have to make any cuts because in two and a half years, we'll have a new crew here. You know, assuming I could hire anybody, you know, anybody that wants to come.

In this case, you were feeling the disruption of the Internet.

Right. I was feeling it. And we were late on that. We missed the application wave, and we were late on the Internet and app server. It was quite difficult, I would say. But anyhow, you know, thank God, we have a set of very loyal customers. They're running or are using our software to run mission-critical systems like trading systems, train-ticketing systems and all that.

And so, the first thing we do is go back and really secure that base. And then, we get our expense structure correctly so that we could at least make some money, because without making money, it doesn't have any confidence in the market that people should continue to buy from you.

So anyway, we did that, and we were successful, but we've got to grind it out. I mean, in a number of years, we had to take a lot of abuses that we'll talk more later. But we kept our eyes on the ball. And so, early 2000, things started to turn for the better. We now knew we could make money. And now the question is, who we want to be when we now grow up? Again, because we know this is playing defense. Playing defense is important but never wins you the Super Bowl.

Right.

And so, we know we're playing defense. And then I kind of sensed at the time the employees started to get a little bit restless on just cutting costs and just kind of stay focused on the fundamentals. And we had to get a win on something.

Are you saying that you have to have a sense that the employees want to be part of something that's growing?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, in the Valley especially. Actually, it's probably true in every industry around the world, every company, right? But in the Valley especially, people have a lot of choices, and they could work for a lot of companies, and a lot of great companies. And it's fun to do so. I could understand that.

So, you got to come up with something that, you know, makes people feel excited and that are somewhat logical. So, we did a lot of soul searching: What do we do well? What are the things that customers most need that they don't know yet? We figure if they know it already, then my big competitors are already working on it, and I'm kind of a day late and a dollar short again.

And so, the combination of those two led us to mobility. At the time, we saw a lot of e-commerce, you know, doing business on the Internet. We saw a lot of people trying to use devices as phones but not for data. And we said, "Wouldn't it be great if these phones actually become a data source?" And one thing led to another, [we realized that] broadband is coming, and wireless broadband is following. Although everything took a little longer than we expected.

Your director of engineering gave me another great example that I think the viewers could benefit from hearing about. You realized that in the mobility world, people were trading in phones that worked all the time for phones that worked some of the time.

Yeah.

But they had to have them. Even if the call quality was worse, even if the connectivity was not guaranteed, it was an object they had to have. So, obviously, there was something fascinating here that was going to grow.

Right. And then, when you look in emerging market, if you just look at the United States market, you may have missed a trend. OK. You're looking at emerging markets, China has more cellphones so every day [than was thought possible] in anybody's imagination. And partly the reason is because they don't have a fixed line.

So you look for behavior that indicates people on the surface not acting logically, but then when you think about it you see the logic, you identify the disruption?

Right.

What do you do about it? How did you take your company to the disruption front?

OK. So, the enterprise, you know, that I'm serving today, they need to adopt to that. Whether it is an employee using these devices or the whole, you know, consumer out there that they like to reach, [they] need to use the device. Then, we start focusing also on people like the telephone company. They need to get revenue.

You know, [the phone companies] spent a lot of money on the 3G licenses. And they're all in debt, and they're laying off a lot of people because this is like a highway without cars. So, I'm trying to figure out how to provide the on ramp and off ramp and try to make money on that. And so, one thing led to another. We put together a fantastic mobility story.

You looked at the overall system of wherein this disruption was going to take place, and you think, "How can I attach myself to this part, how can I attach myself to that part?"

Right. You have to build the ramp one at a time. But again, I think the basic fundamental question is: What could you do that you believe that the market needs but they don't know yet? If you could answer that question, you'll come up with something.

Isn't that kind of an infinite question? What's the thing they don't know? How are you supposed to know that?

Oh, you read the trade press, you talk to customers, you know they're not talking and thinking about mobile. At the time, I talked to one of the major firms on Wall Street--and I'm not going to name names--and I asked the CIO and said, "What's your plan on mobility?" They looked at me and they said, "We use BlackBerry."

And I said,"OK, they don't get it." They thought they got it then. That was not the question. I mean, you didn't answer the question. So, because the lack of the depth of the answer, I knew that we had a lot of opportunities. And thank God, we did. I mean, we stuck with it. In the beginning, it was very difficult.

Wait a minute: The BlackBerry's a pretty sophisticated device. Did he mean, "We just use e-mail"?

Right. When he said "BlackBerry," he just meant e-mail. It's a different server on the side. It's great stuff, don't get me wrong, but it's not an integrated component. [We needed to] just integrate that into their day-to-day life. In the business case, a lot of people could make a lot of money on that.

There were a lot more parts of the business that he wasn't exposing

Absolutely, that he wasn't thinking about. They think that was the answer. So, I figure if I could come and offer him a lot more than that, there's a huge business there.

There's a business.

Right. So, that's how we got to it.

OK. Well, so far, so good. Your stock is up 20% [over the preceding 12 months] when everything else is down 30%. That's good news.

Yeah. That's great news.

You made peace with that disruption. Do you see future disruptions you want to engage with? Is this a good kind of rolling business model?

Oh, yeah. I think we're in the tip of the iceberg on mobility. I mean, we're fortunate today, we're at about a $400 million business in mobility, and it's growing very rapidly. I think where we are is still very, very early. The next generation, which everybody's working on whether it's Cisco or IBM, even system integrators, is the whole idea of how you bring computing, collaboration and communication together in a very intelligent way, meaning contacts based.

You need to know what all these messages mean. The system actually knows what it means. And not just by forwarding you a bunch of bits and bytes, but to actually interpret it on the fly.

Usage is everywhere in the world. I mean, every industry from retail to defense to banks to everywhere.

And so, I think this is the new paradigm that's coming. It's not hard to see that everybody is focusing on it. Cisco is working on those, and Research in Motion, of course. Some of them are more focused on devices. Some of them are more focused on computing paradigm. We're more focusing on computing paradigm.

To begin with, collaboration sounds like an offshoot of wireless, but you're saying it actually grows to become something much more than that. Give me an example of how that's going to work, and what would be the disruptive force around collaboration in an enterprise?

A very simple example: You have an application running and let's suppose that you receive a text message on your device. It says [hypothetically] "The yen to U.S. dollars has now tripled," you know, a point of interest to you. Today, if you want to know what does that mean, you've got to start calling, you're going to start calendaring a meeting, you've got to do all that stuff. In the future, all you need to do is click on one of the icons, you will be able to connect with all the experts that you already defined on a conference call that is generated automatically for you.

And some to mobile devices, and some to landlines, some screens, whatever's going on?

Absolutely. And so, you know, that's just a very simple, first-generation stuff.

Well, it's very disruptive in as much as the company moves from being a kind of org chart to being a series of interlocked social networks.

Right, it's a knowledge base.

Around finance, around the product design, around knowledge of a country, however you want to define it according to your rules.

Right. It's an expert space decision-making environment. And it's going to be big.

That's very challenging.

It will make corporate Facebooks. It will be a necessary thing in the future. Facebook actually tells you what I'm interested in, what I'm good at and how I'm connected to ecosystems. Maybe friends that are friends or a cousin of your friend of your high school, you know, roommate or something. But that's how you could reach.

And in the corporate world, and in kind of a collaborative world in the ecosystems, I may be able to reach everybody in just one shot. And this is the beginning. I may just give you example, but that was just a lot of these different examples.

Do you have to build a whole new business around that? And does it change the way that you work inside Sybase? Are you thinking not so much around titles as around expert linkages if you organize the company.

We are moving that way slowly. It's always harder to change the normal. We know we need to change that. The good news is, kind of, because of our own, you know, thought process and our engineering and our development, our IT organization is adjusting with it. We've done a lot of things: For example, we don't keep any data on any PCs that is not connected by wires. We don't keep any data anywhere. So, to us, it's kind of a virtual session.

A common pool.

You could go to the hotel and get on one of those PCs that you can find in the business center, and we will give you a string of instructions to get you back into the corporate data back end. But when you leave, there will be no residual on that particular device.

Hopefully, it will take you to a point where building these databases and finding out customer needs will help you organize Sybase as well. Are you concerned that we're going to get into a repeat of the Sybase story, where the more powerful, wealthier competitors start to overwhelm you, or can you keep inside this and own this disruption?

If it's not a big enough party, it's not worth getting an invitation. It will come. When there is money, all the big competitors will be there. What I wanted to make sure we do is we have a rightful seat around the table. I'm not a believer that winners take everything. I think that if you can provide value, you'll be part of the food chain.

And do I worry about it? No, I don't worry about it. It's like it may happen in the future. Yes, it may happen in the future. And the one thing that we need to do is, keep focusing on what value we add which is unique, not spreading ourselves too thin.

Great disruption should touch everyone, right?

That's right.

If you're the only one working the space?

We won't be.

Thanks a lot, John.

Thank you.

-----------------------------
BY Quentin Hardy
Source：Forbes

2009 Forbes.com LLC™ All Rights Reserved.

独家专访诺基亚CEO：来华亲身体验电信市场巨变

全球第一大手机厂商诺基亚CEO康培凯昨日在北京接受新浪科技独家专访，就此次访华感受，中国3G启动机遇，上网本以及未来发展机遇等热点话题展开深入探讨。
##CONTINUE##
中国3G市场正式启动所蕴含的巨大机遇，让康培凯颇感激动与兴奋。他告诉新浪科技，该市场正在经历很多新变化，需要到现场亲身体验，这是“顺时而为”。他预言，中国3G将为诺基亚全球发展带来新动力，诺基亚将为3G做出比对手更多的投入。

对于中国自主研发的TD标准，康培凯表示出极高关注度。他预言，TD除了中国还将在国外市场取得好发展。诺基亚将全面支持TD，并希望赢得TD市场的领导地位。

康培凯还谈及目前在全球IT市场备受关注的“上网本”话题。他认为手机向电脑转变是大势所趋，因此诺基亚需要关注电脑市场。毫无疑问上网本是需要关注且持续关注的一个机遇。

展望未来，康培凯认为诺基亚将面临的竞争将无处不在，但也早已做好迎接任何竞争的准备。这包括在高端市场以及中低端市场与众多企业竞争。诺基亚将继续加大研发力度，他深信这种投入将有可能改变世界。

精彩观点：
- 我经常到中国来，中国是我们最大的市场，我需要了解这儿的动态，跟很多人会面，与政府部门沟通，倾听客户的想法。特别是现在，中国电信市场正在经历很多新的变化，我就更需要到现场来亲身体验。这儿有很多兴奋点，很多机遇。

- 市场上的确有这样(诺基亚可能进入上网本市场)的传言。我们说手机正日益变成电脑，就这一点而言，我们也需要关注电脑市场。毫无疑问，上网本市场是我们需要持续关注的市场机遇。

- 无论在低端市场，还是中端和高端市场，我们都面对着众多竞争对手。我们已做好准备与它们竞赛，我们相信我们的品牌以及我们在全球范围投资的可能性将让竞争对手面临巨大挑战。

- 我们对TD的投入在增长，TD市场在形成，我相信TD不仅在中国，而且在国外都将会有发展。我们支持TD技术，支持它在中国的发展。在TD领域，我们对自己的期望值很高，我们希望赢得领导地位。

- 在中国和全球其他市场，我们肯定会大力投入研发。我们不仅会看到现在的机遇，更会投资于长久和未来。我刚才提到Point and Find服务，听起来像是科幻小说，但它的确不是，我们的投入将有可能改变世界。

专访视频

来中国亲身体验电信巨变
主持人权静：你好，康培凯先生。我是新浪的权静。谢谢你接受我们的采访。

康培凯：很高兴能到这儿来。

新浪：你此行到中国，主要目的是什么？

康培凯：我经常到中国来。中国是我们最大的市场，我需要了解这儿的动态，跟很多人会面，与政府部门沟通，倾听客户的想法。特别是现在，中国电信市场正在经历很多新的变化，我就更需要到现场来亲身体验。这儿有很多兴奋点，很多机遇，运营商们正在推动3G的发展。我现在到中国来，亲眼目睹这里所发生的一切，是顺时而为。

新浪：您刚才提到，3G是目前最热门的话题，3G将给诺基亚带来什么？

康培凯：诺基亚是全球3G市场领导者。我们认为3G是我们向中国市场推出我们的终端、解决方案以及服务的良机。当我们谈到3G的时候，我们需要时刻记住，我们不只是在谈论技术，我们还在谈技术能够带来什么。我认为，对中国来说，3G意味着很多可能。诺基亚有机会参与贡献，并帮助发展这些可能性，这是极大的荣幸。

新浪：在中国，3G会不会成为诺基亚业务的重要组成部分？

康培凯：中国的3G市场将持续发展，这一点勿庸置疑。3G将带来很多发展机遇，成长中的3G市场必然会成为中国移动通信市场的重要部分。消费者将日益了解3G，了解3G能为他们带来什么。对诺基亚来说，我相信3G将为我们带来实现我们愿景的极佳机遇，让每一个人都能与这世界紧密相联。我们为用户带来了生活中每一瞬间的精彩，以及与自己息息相关的事物相联的可能。我认为，与自己息息相关的事物相联很重要。这不只是让人们与他人相联，更是让人们与自己想要的一切相联。

诺基亚3G时代比对手投入更多
新浪：众多国内终端厂商都将3G视作扩展其市场份额的良机。请问诺基亚将如何在3G时代保持自己的市场领先地位？

康培凯：就所有技术标准而言，我们都是全球3G市场领导者。相对于我们的竞争对手，我们能对中国的3G投入更多。我们必须记住，3G不只关乎终端，它越来越关乎软件、关乎应用，并关乎解决方案。你必须有能力了解并掌握所有这些方面的要素及整体局势。我相信我们有能力比任何竞争对手都做得更好。

新浪：您刚才提到，诺基亚能在中国投入更多。能透露更多细节吗？比如，诺基亚将在中国投入的金额？

康培凯：我们一直都在持续增加对中国的投入。我们在中国有大量的研发活动，而且还将持续扩展。对诺基亚来说，投资于TD-SCDMA非常重要。这是我们的重要机遇。我们对中国的投入一直在增长。

持续关注上网本市场机遇
新浪：一些电脑和互联网企业，比如戴尔和谷歌也在进入移动行业。移动行业正与互联网行业融合。全球一些最大的公司加入战局，对此你如何看待？

康培凯：你说得很对，移动行业正与互联网行业融合。实际上，另外一种形式的融合也正在发生——高端手机实际上已变成电脑。它们不是手机，它们是电脑。移动行业和互联网行业融合，手机和移动终端变成电脑，这对我们而言是巨大的机遇。在这一融合市场上，我们强大的品牌、巨大的规模效益、优异的全球表现以及投资能力，将帮助我们在竞争中脱颖而出。

新浪：新的竞争对手进入移动行业，诺基亚则可能进入上网本市场。有芬兰媒体报道说，诺基亚将进入上网本市场，这就是融合。诺基亚将推出自己的上网本吗？

康培凯：市场上的确有这样的传言。我们说手机正日益变成电脑，就这一点而言，我们也需要关注电脑市场。毫无疑问，上网本市场是我们需要持续关注的市场机遇。

新浪：对诺基亚来说，下一个强劲的对手是iPhone(手机上网)。iPhone的触摸屏技术非常受欢迎。你认为诺基亚5800 Xpress Music能抗衡iPhone吗？在这一点上你有多自信？

康培凯：诺基亚5800很有竞争性，目前正表现出它的抗衡能力它的表现非常优秀，这是一款极受欢迎的产品。在它上市的每一个市场上，诺基亚5800都是用户宠儿。目前诺基亚5800上市仅仅几个月，就已经赢得了全球触摸屏产品市场约20%的市场份额。这是一款极具竞争力的产品，而且还将持续保持它的竞争力。我认为，我们成功的关键是我们提供了一款具有价格竞争力的触摸屏智能手机。在诺基亚5800身上，我们将人们希望拥有这款产品的热望与可支付的价格完美融合。消费者非常喜爱这款产品。

有信心应对iPhone(手机上网)等对手的挑战
新浪：你担心iPhone会夺走高端手机市场的份额吗？

康培凯：无论在低端市场，还是中端和高端市场，我们都面对着众多竞争对手。我们已做好准备与它们竞赛，我们相信我们的品牌以及我们在全球范围投资的可能性将让竞争对手面临巨大挑战。

新浪：诺基亚计划将Symbian操作系统引入低端手机之中。这是出于什么考虑？

康培凯：我认为智能手机不应该局限在高端或高价格领域。以Symbian操作系统为代表的智能手机的价格有可能更低。全球智能手机市场将因此而扩大。我预计未来智能手机将在高、中甚至低价位出现。我们将推动这一趋势的发展，为我们自己也为别人打开市场。

诺基亚希望赢得TD市场领导地位
新浪：你怎么看TD-SCDMA标准？诺基亚会积极支持TD-SCDMA在中国的发展吗？

康培凯：TD-SCDMA目前正在发展。对TD-SCDMA的投入在增长，TD-SCDMA市场在形成，我相信TD-SCDMA不仅在中国，而且在国外都将会有发展。我们支持TD-SCDMA技术，支持它在中国的发展。在TD-SCDMA领域，我们对自己的期望值很高，我们希望赢得领导地位。

新浪：从美国和日本的3G发展中，中国能得到哪些经验？

康培凯：很多市场都已推出3G，我们可以从中学到很多经验。中国运营商正在从中学习。同时，我们必须记住，很多服务和可能性具有本地性，只会在中国市场发生，只会以中国的方式发生。它可能是本地化的内容，它可能是本地化的音乐，它可能是本地化的游戏，是任何中国用户看重的东西。所有的市场领导者，都必须理解本地需求和特色。诺基亚有全球经验，有一些全球和本地技术的经验，但所有这些都需要以一种方式，一种合适的方式融合起来，从而让中国消费者能与他们息息相关的人、物或事相联。

新浪：诺基亚是全球3G市场领导者。你们将为中国3G市场的发展推出哪些终端产品？你对中国3G的未来如何看？

康培凯：我们肯定会向中国市场推出涵盖所有技术的各种3G产品。我们刚刚发布的3G产品诺基亚8208就是一个范例。这是一款出色的3G手机，很快就会在中国市场上市。另外一个例子是6120 ci，它为用户带来了另一个选择。我们会推出各种价位和款式、覆盖所有消费群体的3G产品。因为3G一定是一个大市场。凭借我们的规模和我们的能力，我们能为3G发展推波助澜。

中国市场将对全球业绩有积极影响
新浪：在全球经济危机的环境下，诺基亚是否将中国3G的发展当作提升自身全球业绩的机会？

康培凯：对中国消费者来说，3G是一个很好的机遇。3G同样也是运营商、手机制造商和电信网络供应商的机遇，也是我们很多合作伙伴的机遇。这一机遇肯定会对我们的全球业绩产生积极的影响。

新浪：出口是中国经济的强大引擎，目前中国政府希望国内消费者成为下一个引擎。对诺基亚来说，国内消费需求能带来什么机遇？毕竟中国是全球最大的市场。

康培凯：中国是一个巨大的市场，并将一直是诺基亚的大市场。中国是诺基亚全球最大的市场。同时，诺基亚也为中国的出口做出了很大贡献。在我们所处的行业，多年来，我们一直是最大的出口商之一。我们在中国有两个手机生产厂，我们在中国有大量的研发活动，我们在其他领域也为中国的出口做出了贡献。

新浪：去年五月四川发生特大地震。当时诺基亚被指责没有为灾后援助提供足够支持。一年过去了，诺基亚在这一年中为灾区重建做了哪些事情？

康培凯：去年五月，我们与中国人民紧紧站在一起，做了我们该做的事情，捐款捐物并切实参与灾区援助。从那时起，我们一直在加强我们的努力。就在上周，我们宣布投入后续3500万元，用于长期灾后援助。实际上，我们所有的灾后援助，都旨在以一种长期可持续的方式重建灾区人民的生活信心。诺基亚一直致力于灾后援助、青少年发展以及环境保护的长期可持续发展，这三个领域是诺基亚履行企业社会责任的重点。

诺基亚未来试图改变世界
新浪：现在是2009年。移动行业正与互联网行业融合。两年、五年甚至十年之后，未来将会怎样？到那时，诺基亚将会扮演什么角色？

康培凯：未来有无限可能，未来只会被我们的想像力局限。移动性和互联网的融合，有多种可能的全新方式。请让我举个例子。诺基亚已推出一种服务，Point and find(即拍即现)。如果你对建筑感兴趣，你正在北京街头散步，你看到了你感兴趣的建筑，人民大会堂边的国家大剧院，那个著名的蛋形建筑，你用你的手机朝它一指，马上就能得到有关它的信息，比如它的历史，它如何被修建，这一服务说明了我们如何将情境引入移动环境。互联网环境下的情境能提供何时、何地、何事等信息，为我们带来更好的生活体验。有趣的一点是，这种生活体验由我们口袋里的手机带来，它知道我们正身处何方，即使你自己都不知道。

新浪：未来诺基亚的位置在哪里？

康培凯：在中国和全球其他市场，我们肯定会大力投入研发。我们不仅会看到现在的机遇，更会投资于长久和未来。我刚才提到Point and Find服务，听起来像是科幻小说，但它的确不是，我们的投入将有可能改变世界。

新浪：最后一个问题，我们很多网友都是诺基亚粉丝，他们喜爱诺基亚手机。请看着镜头对我们的网友说话，请代表诺基亚与他们沟通。你想对中国消费者说什么？

康培凯：我想说的是，移动通信行业有多种可能，诺基亚将是领导者之一。我们将为大家带来有趣的产品，有趣的服务，有趣的应用，有趣的体验，从而帮助大家与自己息息相关的人、物或事相联。

新浪：希望诺基亚在全球，尤其是在中国拥有美好未来。非常感谢！

康培凯：非常感谢。这是一次愉快的对话。

-----------------------------
文章出处：新浪科技
作者：全智

Inside the mind of Steve Jobs

Revealing documents from a court deposition last year show exactly what Steve Jobs thinks of his role at Apple
##CONTINUE##
Over the last few days, Forbes has been dribbling out information gathered from a very intriguing document that it obtained through a Freedom of Information application: the 2008 deposition hearing of one Steven P Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.

The deposition comes from the government's case against former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen, who was accused of fraud in the scandal over the company's backdating of share options.

While the case itself is over - Heinen settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $2.2m, and other Apple executives (including Jobs) made a $14m settlement - this is still a remarkable document for a number of reasons.

There's no doubt that there is something very, very interesting about getting notoriously secretive technology executives speaking on the record about their business - after all, who can forget the video of the deposition of Bill Gates, where the Microsoft co-founder gets argumentative, defensive and rocks back and forth in his chair.

Of course, the 119 page text of Jobs deposition doesn't give us the same insight as those videos of Gates - but it has plenty to tell us about Jobs himself, and about the way Apple works.

For starters, there is the ever-present subject of health. Early in the deposition, the questioner points out that Jobs "you mentioned that you're not feeling well this morning" and asks whether he is on any medication that could affect his answers. Jobs responds by saying that he wants mitigation for looking uncomfortable: "If you just play them this part, where I'm feeling really bad or I look really bad or I look grimaced or anything. It's not because of the deposition, it's just because." (p10)

It's also interesting to see that Jobs - who has a notoriously spiky attitude towards things past - is very fuzzy on the early days of Apple. He's vague on things like the year that Apple's stock market flotation took place, or which year he left Apple and went on to found NeXT and Pixar. While, admittedly, those events took place more than 20 years ago, it's still surprising that can't he pinpoint crucial moments such as when he became a multimillionaire.

When it comes down to the way the company runs, and the way he sees it, there are some fine-grained details. Jobs veers between a seemingly-intimate knowledge of the way the company's stock fluctuated and a hands-off attitude that essentially put some of the decision-making in other people's hands. It's something revealing about the way, and who he considered to be important.

It was Jobs' proposal to issue 4.8m stock options to senior executives as "golden handcuffs" - incentives to stay at Apple and not get poached by rival companies.

His "ultra key" team was just four people: Tim Cook - then executive vice president of operations, now COO and the man standing in for Jobs at the moment; Fred Anderson, the chief financial officer, who resigned from Apple after the scandal and is now MD of Elevation partners; Jon Rubinstein, the head of hardware (now chairman of Palm, which is largely owned by Elevation); and Avie Tevanian, then head of software, who left in 2006.

Around page 89 he also goes into some details about why he thought he deserved extra financial compensation from the board (something Forbes characterises as a "nobody loves me" speech).

"Everybody likes to be recognized by their peers, and the closest that I've got, or any CEO has, is their Board of Directors. And as we've seen in the discussions in the past hour, I spent a lot of time trying to take care of people at Apple and to, you know, surprise and delight them with what a career at Apple could be - could mean to them and their families. And I felt that the board wasn't really doing the same with me."

"So I was hurt, I suppose would be most accurate word, and, you know, the board had given me some options, but they were all underwater... I had been working, you know, I don't know, four years, five years of my life and not seeing my family very much and stuff, and I just felt like there is nobody looking out for me here, you know."

There's no sense that he doesn't take the deposition seriously, but there is a lot that he doesn't recall. Equally, there's a feeling of entitlement in his demands for recognition.

(At the time of the stock controversy, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told me that he wanted some corrective action because "basically leave other shareholders treated at a disadvantage" and that "Apple's going to have to correct that for what they've done")

If you want to take a look at the source documents and see what you can glean from them, then download the full deposition here. I'm interested to see if you read it the same way as I do.

-----------------------------
BY Bobbie Johnson
Source：guardian

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009.

Meet Microsoft's antidote to Vista

Julie Larson-Green hopes you'll like Windows 7. If not, well, now you and a billion other people know who to blame.
##CONTINUE##
Microsoft is counting on Larson-Green, its head of "Windows Experience," to deliver an operating system that delights the world's PC users as much as its last effort, Vista, disappointed them.

She's in charge of a wide swath of the system, from the way buttons and menus work to getting the software out in January as scheduled.

Given Microsoft's history, Larson-Green's plan seems downright revolutionary: Build an operating system that doesn't require people to take computer classes or master thick manuals.

"We want to reduce the amount of thinking about the software that they have to do, so that they can concentrate all their thinking on the task they're trying to get done," Larson-Green said in an interview.

Microsoft relies on Windows for half its profit, which helps fuel money-losing operations like the pursuit of Google online. Windows was still profitable after Vista's 2007 launch, but its poor reception dinged the software maker's reputation at a critical time.

Vista was designed for powerful, pricier PCs just as nimble rivals like Google were releasing web-based programs that could run on inexpensive computers. Microsoft appeared to be clinging to an endangered world order that spawned its operating system monopoly.

What's more, Vista's initial incompatibility with many existing programs and devices, and its pestering security warnings, exposed Microsoft to ridicule in Apple commercials that helped Macintosh computers gain market share. Businesses didn't give up Windows, but many delayed upgrading to Vista.

Microsoft's executives have since distanced themselves from Vista, acknowledging its flaws. Now the company needs Windows 7 to widen that distance even more.

You probably don't know her name, but if you're using Office 2007, the sleeper hit of the Vista era, you're already familiar with Larson-Green's work.

She was the one who banished the familiar system of menus on Word, Excel and other programs in favour of a new "ribbon" that shows different options at different times, depending on what a user is working on. It seemed risky, but it was grounded in mountains of data showing how people used the software.

Focusing on real customers might seem obvious, but Microsoft's programs more often have reflected the will of techie insiders.

One reason is that Windows' dominance relies heavily on third-party software developers who keep churning out compelling new programs. To give those developers as many options as possible for reaching PC users, over the years Windows spawned confusingly redundant features.

For example, you can tweak antivirus software settings by opening the program; by clicking on shortcuts from the desktop, task bar or "Start" menu; by responding to notifications that pop up uninvited from the bottom-right corner of the screen; or by poking around in a control panel.

Another bit of dysfunction stemmed from Microsoft's corporate structure. Windows employs thousands of people divided into groups that focus on search, security, networking, printing - the list goes on.

With Vista and earlier versions, each group built the best solutions for its isolated goals. For example, two separate groups added similar-looking search boxes to Vista's control panels and its Start menu. Yet typing the same query into both boxes produced completely different results.

Larson-Green, a 16-year Microsoft veteran, grew up in tiny Maple Falls, Washington, about 220 km north of the software maker's headquarters in Redmond. She waited tables to put herself through Western Washington University, then took a job in 1987 answering customer support calls at Aldus, a pioneering software company in Seattle.

During six years at Aldus, Larson-Green worked her way into software development and earned a master's in computer science on the side. But she credits her waitressing and customer-service work for making her good at her current job.

"The primary things that help you create a good user experience are empathy, and being able to put yourself in the place of people who are using the products," she said. "User interface is customer service for the computer."

Larson-Green, 47, is engaging and eager in person - to the point that in one interview, she couldn't keep from repeatedly interrupting her boss, Steven Sinofsky, as he sketched the history of Windows. But while giving product demos on stage, she lacks the showman's panache that a surprising number of Microsoft employees display. At a developer conference last year, she seemed nervous as she showed off Windows 7's new features.

Later, she explained that as a woman, she worried that honing the softer skills of marketing might prompt colleagues to take her less seriously as a technologist. Larson-Green has spent her Microsoft career working deeply on many Microsoft programs, including the Internet Explorer web browser.

When she landed in the Office software group a few years ago, Larson-Green was dubious that much could be done to improve the software, which dominates the market for "productivity" programs.

"I felt like it had been that way for a long time, (and) everyone was pretty happy with it," she said.

Yet customers weren't quite as happy with Office as they might have thought.

For years Microsoft had tested software with focus groups and gathered comments and complaints from customers. But around the time Larson-Green joined the Office team, Microsoft was trying a more precise way of garnering feedback. By deploying special software - with user permission - on computers running Office programs, Microsoft could track how people used their PCs day after day.

That helped explain one puzzle in Redmond: why Office users often asked Microsoft for features that were already in the software. The tracking data showed there were functions very few people had discovered deep in the menus and toolbars in Office.

More research and testing yielded a solution - the ribbon, which displayed different commands depending on what the PC user was doing. Then Larson-Green pushed Microsoft to get even more radical: to release Office 2007 without the hedge of a "classic mode" that would emulate the old look and feel for people who didn't like the changes.

It worked. Just as Vista was a magnet for complaints, Office 2007 won accolades from software critics and regular users. Larson-Green proved she had the stomach to challenge a Microsoft legacy. Her reward? The assignment to help fix Windows. When Sinofsky was tapped to lead the Windows division, replacing retiring Jim Allchin, Sinofsky drafted Larson-Green to come along, in a new position created for her.

"Some people are great at having ideas, and (have) no discipline. Some people are great at discipline, not much at ideas," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in an interview. "She's got both of those genes."

Larson-Green's team began with centralized planning, in contrast with the old culture that let Windows subgroups set their own agendas. For example, in the past, different groups worked on home networking. One group decided how Windows would share files among multiple computers at home; another group figured out how to get shared printers up and running. As a result, the steps for networking PCs and printers were inconsistent  and harder for PC users to master.

As she did with Office, Larson-Green sought insights in a daunting mass of data.

Vista was the first version of Windows to include the remote-tracking software that had helped Microsoft hone Office, and nearly 11 million Vista users had let their PC activities be logged. Larson-Green's team also surveyed more than 250,000 people around the world and showed other users prototypes, some as simple as sketches on paper.

From these billions of data points emerged big ideas that got boiled down into eight design principles. Larson-Green had them printed on folded slips of paper as reminders for everyone in the group.

Many of the principles come back to Larson-Green mantras of "user in control." The team tried to build an operating system people could use without studying first, one that would let them get right to reading the news or sending email without dragging them down a rabbit hole of settings and configurations. A system with manners, not one that constantly interrupts with bubbles, boxes and warnings that, data showed, people ignored or raced to close.

The Windows groups agreed in principle but old habits often reared up. Many Windows teams still wanted to be able to create alert bubbles for their functions.

"We've probably talked to every team in Windows about, 'No no no no, we don't want you to pop your notifications. Windows is not going to use these notifications to tell users things,'" said Linda Averett, a Windows user experience manager.

Larson-Green is already planning Windows 8, though her team continues to tweak the Windows 7 user interface. Signs point to a possible release months ahead of schedule, though Microsoft still says the official plan is for January.

Microsoft's marketing machine will pore over piles of charts to decide whether Windows 7 is a success. Larson-Green says her measure will be the conversations she overhears at Best Buy and comments posted by bloggers.

"I think people are going to like it," she said. Her voice rose a few notes when she added, "I hope so."

-----------------------------
BY N/A
Source：AP

Copyright © 2008 Fairfax Digital.

被解放的杨元庆

联想在保守中错过了消费电脑和新兴市场的机会，如今，杨元庆和他的团队要按自己的方式拯救公司
##CONTINUE##
愚人节的第二天，杨元庆和他的助手们就得面对这个真实的世界了。

4月2日，在北京东部的艺术区798工厂的一间厂房里，联想集团发布了全球消费业务战略。整个会场被灯光装扮得动感十足，几位衣着时尚的中外模特捧着联想笔记本产品在场下游走。杨元庆像明星一样出场了，这是他重新担任联想集团CEO的第61天，他没有打领带，而是把灰色衬衣的第一颗扣子敞开，他头上的白发也比两年前少了很多，看起来这是染发剂的效果。讲话的时候，他身后投影出一个巨大的转动着的地球，这让身形魁梧的杨看起来就像一位蓝色巨人。随后，杨元庆介绍他的几位重要助手出场，联想集团高级副总裁兼Idea产品集团总裁刘军、联想集团高级副总裁兼新兴市场总裁陈绍鹏，以及联想集团高级副总裁兼成熟市场总裁Milko Van Duijl。这是一场具有顶尖跨国公司风格的发布会，整个过程就像一场精心策划的秀，浮华，时尚。不过，一份真正艰巨的工作正等着台上的明星们完成。这家中国最优秀的公司如今身陷困境。

联想曾经是善于捕捉消费者需求的公司，它用拥有“一键上网”、“飞梭”等功能的产品在中国将惠普、戴尔远远甩在身后，在并购IBM PC之后，它又拥有了全球最高端的商务笔记本品牌ThinkPad以及业界无人可及的笔记本研发团队。但如今，这家公司在执行力上的衰退遭到了内外一致的批评，它需要一剂猛药来提起精神。最近两年，联想对消费者的需求反应迟钝，对上网本潮流的兴起错误判断，曾经利润可观的ThinkPad笔记本业务也因为经济危机而沦为亏损源头。联想在全球市场腹背受敌，苹果、富士通等品牌在高端市场发起了猛烈冲击，惠普和宏则在中低端消费市场将联想挤得无比难受。

是什么导致了这一切呢？请走前任CEO阿梅里奥也许就是联想董事会给出的答案。

阿梅里奥有着丰富的供应链整合与直销经验，对于消费类电脑市场却缺乏敏感。在阿梅里奥任职期间，联想遭遇了双重打击：一个是经济危机导致全球大企业的IT支出缩减，价格昂贵，且主要面向企业采购的Think笔记本顿时吃紧，而同期，中国制造又在国际上遭遇了一轮妖魔化渲染。另一个打击则来自消费者市场，消费电脑市场日益重要，联想却无法向这一市场提供足够的产品支持。尤其是通过上网本等新产品，竞争对手宏将反应迟钝的联想远远抛在后面。宏CEO兰奇预测2009年全球上网本市场规模将扩大至3000万至3500万台，宏将占据其中40%至50%的份额。而联想上网本在2008年底的市场份额仅为7%。

“联想要瞄准新兴市场和全球的交易型市场(编者注：联想所谓的交易型市场，指消费者市场和中小企业市场，相对于直销为主的关系型市场)。这个战略没有什么复杂的，我们两三年以前就已经明确了，但是没有坚决到位地执行，所以战略还是停留在画饼上。”杨认为联想必须做出一些利益取舍(但却没能做出)，“不能指着现在打新兴市场马上就赚钱，那是不可能的，前面要投入，开发对路的产品，开发市场，可能有短时期的亏损。”

“这是我为什么又回到CEO位置上的原因之一。”4月3日，在北京奥运主场馆鸟巢附近的一家高级酒店里，杨元庆对《中国企业家》说。跟杨元庆与联想的血肉相连相比，阿梅里奥就像联想一个过客。在普遍的概念里，一个纯粹意义上的职业经理人可能很难为了公司长远的战略与利益牺牲短期利益。

对于春节前一度流传的联想董事会有可能替换他的传闻，杨元庆反问，“我觉得不会是(传说的)那样，董事会有最好的选择为什么不做呢？”

“解放”杨元庆，让他重返一线，对联想董事会来说真的是“最好的选择”吗？跟四年多以前相比，杨元庆的英文已经练得相当熟练，国际交游也越发广阔。四年前，他对联想团队提出的整合关键词是：尊重、坦诚、妥协。但在这次的采访中，他没有一次主动提及“妥协”二字，而是要求中国同事凡事有意见要“说出来”、要“直截了当”，不要管谁在主持会议、谁是会场上的大老板。

“这是我们风格的转变。”他说。

从“妥协”到“直截了当”，他国际化“学徒”生涯就此告一段落。

从后台重返一线的杨元庆，首要任务是对公司的组织结构和班子进行了一次大规模调整，以符合新战略的实施。他将整个集团按照市场成熟度将业务划分为成熟市场集团和新兴市场集团，按照产品属性分为Think产品集团和Idea产品集团。

“联想在过去的组织架构里是非常强调职能化的。分为销售系统、产品研发系统、供应链系统。”联想集团高级副总裁刘军接受本刊记者采访时解释，与此同时，联想还按照地域将业务组织分为EMEA(包括欧洲、中东和非洲)、亚太、美洲三个大区。

2007年4月，眼看消费类业务得不到推动的杨元庆终于出手，他成立了消费产品集团，并亲自担任总裁。他很快就遇到了来自内部的阻力。

“那时候是招致了内部一些不理解，什么事他都是披荆斩棘。”现任Idea产品集团总裁的刘军回忆，“成立了一个独立的消费集团，肯定要拿一部分供应链和研发的职能。作为供应链的头和研发的头会觉得不放心，有不确定性，这确实是有一些阵痛的。”在亲自上阵为消费产品集团打开了局面之后，同年10月杨元庆将消费产品集团总裁一职让予当时离职学习结束回来的刘军。

刘军称，2009年，Idea产品集团将推出覆盖全面的近50款新品。

“我对现在这个团队非常满意。”杨元庆轻敲了一下桌面。爱将刘军和陈绍鹏在新联想的四大集团中撑起了半壁江山。而在前任阿梅里奥的核心团队中，不算杨元庆，老联想人只有陈绍鹏一人。不过杨元庆的目的并不是单纯为了替中国团队争得话语权。联想方面极力避免此次变革被解读为是在用中国人取代外国人。事实上，占联想营收25%的美洲业务此次并没有被纳入陈绍鹏的新兴市场集团，而是暂时由总裁Rory Read负责。“我们没有一下子把这块全都压到绍鹏身上，我们觉得他的‘带宽’还不够。”杨元庆在用词上的幽默让一屋子人发出整个采访过程中惟一一次笑声。

“过去几年我们是物理的整合，未来我们希望是化学的融合。”杨对他的跨国团队说，他开始主导一场自上而下的文化变革，并组建了一支8人组成的管理层核心团队。“通过执委会这个最高层的、跨东西方的联合团队，能解决最上面的问题。”刘军说。

这支被称为执委会的团队里包括杨元庆向董事会推荐的IBM前高管Rory Read，他担任总裁兼首席运营官。Rory被形容为一位性格温和的“操作导向”的高管，他接管公司日常运营，将解除杨元庆“在日常运作上的繁琐事务”。执委会里的另两位华人则是负责两大新设集团的陈绍鹏、刘军，首席财务官是来自香港的华人黄伟明。8人执委会里还有负责人力资源的高级副总裁Kenneth Dipietro，负责成熟市场集团的Milko Van Duijl，以及Think集团的女性总裁Frances K. O'Sullivan。

调整后的第一个月，执委会的高管们有10天左右在一起工作，这其中包括2天的会议。这种工作方式将会被延续，如果头一次他们在罗利集合，下一次集体工作就可能会选择北京或者巴黎。“我们现在的做法是，所有的问题都要在团队里充分地讨论，得到充分的共识，每个人都认可。”他说。

过去的情况可不是这样。CEO阿梅里奥在做出重要战略决策时，偏爱与首席战略官Cuong Viet Do商讨，Cuong Viet Do是一位越南裔美国人，他有着17年麦肯锡的咨询业务经历，并最终成为麦肯锡的董事和资深合伙人，他熟悉遍布四大洲的18个国家一些领先公司的战略、销售和营销，并因此深得阿梅里奥信任。“(战略)没有经过充分的讨论和共识，两个人就定了。CEO老说有清晰的战略，但是他没有真正的Buy in(买入)。”杨元庆评价。

3月底，在欧洲的员工大会上，杨元庆遇到了挑战。

“我们是不是回到了中国？联想还是不是一家国际化的公司？”“公司还重视不重视我们？”当地员工的问题相当尖锐。由于消费类业务与大客户业务截然不同，联想在海外市场撤换了一批本地负责人，所以也有人问他，“我们在公司里还有发展前途吗？”

“我们的左拳要护住我们的头和心脏，中国业务和全球企业客户业务。”杨元庆回答。他告诉海外员工，全球业务仍然是联想的两个核心业务之一。

“我们应该回答得都不错。打消了这些人的顾虑。”杨元庆知道这些员工也不满意公司过去丢失市场份额、亏损严重的状况，“他们也清楚，这个公司未来要有前景必须要有变化，我们跟他们讲了未来的变化。”

2009年注定对杨元庆不会是一个轻松之年。联想集团截至2008年12月31日止的第三季度净亏损9700万美元，最重要的中国市场也出现了首次负增长。尽管裁员计划将会在2009/2010财年为联想节省开支约3亿美元，要解决所有积留的弊端，并且在短期内使得上述调整产出真金白银实在是奢望。

“联想要实现中国模式在海外的复制。但中国模式是什么？其实中国模式就是执行力。”计世资讯总经理曲晓东说。他举例，联想Think的全球业务过去几年一直租用IBM延续下来的IT系统，要从IBM的这套系统中获得销售前端的反馈数据据说需要一个月，而联想过去在中国自建的IT系统却能够在1小时内知道前端的产品销售情况，“这是一个特别大的问题。”他说。

从2008年首日开盘到2009年4月9日，联想的股价已经从7.38港元跌至1.95港元，缩水超过三倍。虽然其中不乏经济危机影响，但同期恒生指数的跌幅却不到50%，从27560点下探至14474点。

祖籍安徽合肥的杨元庆今年45岁，1986年毕业于上海交通大学，1989年在中国科技大学取得计算机专业硕士学位，同年进入联想集团工作。1994年出任联想微机事业部总经理，7年后，接替柳传志成为联想集团CEO。

合肥地处江淮之间，当地人的性格中既有北方人的豪爽，又兼顾南方人的精细温和。这里曾经走出过晚清洋务派实权人物李鸿章。在联想内外，杨元庆以强势和坚韧闻名。“杨元庆压力最大的时候是收购IBM PC之前。多元化失败，又成为奥运会全球的赞助商。”曲晓东说，“但是在那种压力下，他做出了收购IBM PC的举措。杨元庆是永远不服输的性格，而且越挫越勇，压力越大，他的干劲越大。”

即将赴美的前一天，杨元庆只留给我们40分钟采访时间。整个采访中，杨元庆敞着西服和衬衣扣子，左手则叉在裤腰上，让人想起理查·基尔在《风月俏佳人》中的派头，电影中那是一位风度翩翩的投资银行家。

联想需要一个新领袖。

-----------------------------
文章出处：中国企业家
作者：林涛

Ask the Wi-Fi Guru: Episode XIV

Many years ago I thought that Alex Trebek was the smartest man in the world. After all, he knew the answers to everything! Well, it turns out the answers are fed to him. I know, right? Who knew? Now I wonder who told him to shave his mustache. My point is, it only seemed like Alex Trebek knew everything. Likewise, it is only natural that each month, I tend to choose wireless networking questions for which I think there's a good chance I know what to say.
##CONTINUE##
But, I also receive questions that are real stumpers. Some are stumpers because they ask for the impossible, like "can you tell me the password to my neighbor's Wi-Fi network?" No, I can't, even if I knew it (which I don't). Others are more like head-scratchers. I may have an inkling what the problem might be, but can't really be sure. Enter the wisdom of the crowd. So this month, we take a look at a few questions that I kinda maybe perhaps have a thought or two about, but could really use your input on. Of course, you're always welcome to share your two cents about anything you read here, but this month especially, we invite your ideas!

Q: I have to set up a temporary Wi-Fi hotspot at a seminar in a hotel. I would like to have some sort of bandwidth limit and an acknowledgement splash page, but no authentication. I would also like to have to bring as little equipment as possible.(Chilispot and other hotspot servers mostly require another computer to run on. I'm hoping to find something I can run on a router). I found NoDogSplash, which seems to fit my situation, however it likes OpenWRT. It seems like DD-WRT is a much more polished firmware. Do you think NoDogSplash will run on DD-WRT? – Jason

A: Let's first unpack this scenario—you want to setup a single piece of hardware that will give nearby users wireless Internet access. But, you want to force them to see a splash page upon connecting (such as ads from sponsors), and you want to define limits on their upload and download speeds, presumably so that no single user can hog all the available bandwidth to the Internet.

As you have discovered, NoDogSplash meets all of your needs, but with one catch—it runs on OpenWRT, which is a less user-friendly router firmware than, say, DD-WRT (or Tomato). The OpenWRT learning curve is considerable compared to these others, and although it is quite powerful, it may not be the most inviting choice for a turnkey solution.

Unfortunately, it does not seem like anyone has posted a successful report of installing NoDogSplash on DD-WRT or Tomato. However, there are two alternative approaches to consider:

• Flash your WRT54G-family router to CoovaAP. This open-source firmware is actually based on OpenWRT and includes a captive portal (for your splash page) and traffic shaping (for bandwidth limiting). But unlike OpenWRT, CoovaAP also includes a relatively user-friendly Web-based administration interface.
• Stick with DD-WRT and use NoCatSplash for the splash page, which can be hosted on an external Web server. Limiting bandwidth is slightly more complex (unless you buy the paid version of DD-WRT, which includes bandwidth management in the GUI). You can create an iptables script for limiting bandwidth by IP/MAC or other criteria using the nifty Windows app WRT54G Script Generator. Follow the step-by-step wizard to generate an iptables script which you can paste into DD-WRT's firewall script section.

Like Jason says, most captive portal solutions require interacting with an external server, most typically a RADIUS server. But for a simple, quick-n-dirty hotspot with bandwidth control, but without user management, what other solutions come to mind? Click on my byline above to send us your feedback, or use the Comments tool below.

Q: I have a Cradlepoint MBR1000 gateway that is wired to the desktop and works fine. I use it wirelessly to connect to a laptop and that works fine, but when I try to get my Vaio PCG Z1VA to connect, it shows in the task bar that it has a good signal, but I can't connect to the Internet. I get a message that states "Windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network." Can you you help me out? - Brad

A: You have to admire Microsoft for keeping its "Unhelpful Error Message Department" busy, continually inventing new and ever more cryptic ways to tell you that what you want to do doesn't work. The clue here is "certificate" because, chances are, your wireless network does not use a certificate. And the problem is likely with the client PC—in this case, your Sony Vaio, which may be misconfigured to look for a different kind of network than the one that you have.

It isn't clear whether you are connecting to the wireless network using Windows' built-in wireless management or the Intel PROset wireless connection utility pre-installed on the Vaio. If you are using the Windows connection utility, I would first try to switch to the PROset utility instead.

Failing that, two things to consider:

• The Vaio may be trying to establish a WPA-RADIUS connection rather than WPA-PSK (or WEP), depending on what kind of security you have in place on the Cradlepoint router. If the Vaio is mistakenly trying to make a WPA-RADIUS connection, and you aren't actually using a separate RADIUS server (which is almost certainly the case), this error may appear.
• Disable IEEE 802.1X authentication on the wireless adapter for the Vaio. Open the available wireless networks, right-click on your network, choose Properties, and look for the "Authentication" tab, where you can hopefully uncheck 802.1X.

Has anyone else seen this cryptic "certificate" error and, if so, found another solution to (or explanation for) the problem? If so, click on my byline above to send us your feedback, or use the Comments tool below.

Q: I had a nagging problem with my son's MacBook dropping wireless with a "security compromised" message. Turns out, my wife's laptop (XP) was corrupting the network with VPN. As soon as I switched to AES versus TKIP the problem disappeared. Not sure if Macs don't do TKIP well, or XP doesn't... but AES is quite stable. – Al

A: Perhaps we ganged up on Microsoft error messages too soon. A good number of Mac users have reported frustration and confusion with the infamous "Your wireless network has been compromised" error. What's worse, in fact, than Microsoft's empty rhetoric is that this message actually causes OSX to disable your wireless network for one minute. Gee, thanks Apple!

Of course, OS X thinks it is doing you a favor. After all, it has decided that your wireless network is being hacked by a nasty intruder, and so taking your machine offline is for your own good. The only problem is, chances are, that there is no intruder.

Little seems to be known about the exact cause of this error, and Apple has yet to address it despite reports dating back to at least 2004. Some users are affected frequently—as in repeatedly, every day—while others have never seen this error. Based both on my personal experience with this error and other user reports, it appears that the trigger involves the presence of a PC-based wireless client using WPA-TKIP.

For example, at a friend's house I had setup a wireless network using WPA-TKIP, and configured both her MacBook and my PC to the appropriate settings. The MacBook would connect to the network, but as soon as my PC would connect, the Mac would throw the security error and shut down her connection.

As Al discovered himself, changing all parties involved—the router and the clients—to WPA-AES encryption solved the problem and everyone got along happily.

The question remains, though, is TKIP encryption tickling a bug in OS X? Have you seen this error on a Mac and found any other solution and/or explanation? Considering how widely used TKIP is (as the default WPA encryption scheme in most wireless routers), it seems odd that this bug would persist in OS X for so many years. If you have insight to share, click on my byline above to send us your feedback, or use the Comments tool below.

Q: I am grappling with the concept of the Wi-Fi booster. For example the Hawking HSB2 is an RF signal amplification device with many fans boasting magical improvements--but how? It's surely easy enough to boost output power and thus be seen as a stronger signal from farther away. But the device comes with a paltry 2dbi antenna, leaving us all with the cosmic mystery of how the return signal becomes suddenly adequate. I suppose that the receiver within the booster could be extra adept at rooting around in the tall grass to extract signal, but if there is that much SNR left over, why aren't the "quality" component manufacturers exploiting it already? – Ron

A: Although my expertise in RF is limited, I am inclined to agree with the sentiment in Ron's first paragraph. These so-called "Wi-Fi boosters" are basically amplifiers that make the transmitted signal "louder" (if you think about it in radio terms). But unlike a radio, the client is not a passive receiver—it, too, sends signal back to the wireless transmitter. The client is limited by the power output of its own transmissions. In other words, the Wi-Fi booster may let your client "hear" the wireless router from a further distance than it would otherwise, but the client itself might not be strong enough to send anything back—leaving you in the same boat as if you couldn't see the wireless network at all. Or more specifically, dangling an SSID that you can see, but not associate with.

Also remember that when you amplify signal you also amplify noise. Many users have reported that, when cranked to max output, these Wi-Fi boosters can actually hinder performance of nearby clients, whose own receivers essentially "drown" in the noise. To minimize this problem, one may need to compromise by setting the Wi-Fi booster to a mid-range power level—say, 100 to 200 milliwatts. Of course, this will also reduce its maximum range, and so what's the point?

The point, according to those who have evaluated these boosters, is to better fill in your existing wireless range. In other words, if you expect the booster to give you a strong signal much further away than you could before, this may not pan out. But, if you would like to give a boost within the range you already experience—and maybe catch some of the "dark corners" that are otherwise too weak—a signal booster set to a mid-range power output could very well do the trick.

An entirely different way of using a Wi-Fi booster would be for creating a long-range fixed wireless link. In this case, you don't care so much about clients near the receiver, so you can pump up the power output. Plus, you would want to use a pair of boosters, one at each end of the link, so you don't wind up with the asymmetrical power problem described above. Finally, you would also want to replace the "paltry" 2dbi antenna with a more powerful directional antenna. You'll always get the longest range using directional antennas precisely aimed at one another, but of course this will not provide much or any signal outside their straight-line path.

-----------------------------
BY Aaron Weiss
Source：Wi-Fi PLANET

Aaron Weiss is a freelance writer, book author, and Wi-Fi enthusiast based in upstate New York. To submit your questions to the Wi-Fi Guru, simply click on his byline (above) and put "Wi-Fi Guru" in the subject line. Click here to read last month's column. For more by Aaron Weiss, read "How to: Monitor Bandwidth with Tomato Firmware." For definitions of unfamiliar term, visit our searchable glossary.

Copyright 2009 WebMediaBrands Inc. All Rights Reserved.

10 Individuals who have contributed the most to FOSS

This is a followup to my previous post on the top 5 companies involved in enterprise Linux. enjoy!
##CONTINUE##
10. Rasmus Lerdorf
Rasmus Lerdorf is a Danish-Greenlandic programmer and is most notable as the creator of the PHP programming language. He authored the first two versions. Lerdorf also participated in the development of later versions of PHP led by a group of developers including Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, who later founded Zend Technologies.

He graduated from King City Secondary School in 1988, and in 1993 he graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering. Since September 2002, he has been employed by Yahoo! Inc. as an Infrastructure Architecture Engineer.

9. Michael Widenius
Ulf Michael Widenius, born March 3, 1962, in Helsinki, Finland, is the main author of the original version of the open-source MySQL database and a founding member of the MySQL AB company.

After studying at (although not graduating from) the Helsinki University of Technology, Widenius started working for Tapio Laakso Oy in 1981. In 1985 he founded TCX DataKonsult AB (a Swedish data warehousing company) with Allan Larsson. In 1995 he began writing the first version of the MySQL database with David Axmark, released in 1996. He is the co-author of the MySQL Reference Manual, published by O’Reilly in June 2002; and in 2003 he was awarded the Finnish Software Entrepreneur of The Year prize. Until MySQL AB’s sale to Sun Microsystems in January 2008, he was the chief technical officer of MySQL AB and still one of the primary forces behind the ongoing development of MySQL. During the 2007 MySQL Users Conference & Expo, Michael Widenius was awarded the honor of being the world’s first MySQL Fellow — the highest honor one can achieve from MySQL AB.

On the February 5 2009 he announced that he was leaving Sun in order to create his own company.

8. Miguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza (born c. 1972) is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects.

De Icaza started the GNOME project with Federico Mena in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Earlier, De Icaza had worked on the Midnight Commander file manager and the Linux kernel. He also created the spreadsheet program Gnumeric.

In 1999, De Icaza, along with Nat Friedman, co-founded Helix Code, a GNOME-oriented free software company that employed a large number of other GNOME hackers. In 2001, Helix Code, later renamed Ximian, announced the Mono Project, to be led by De Icaza, with the goal to implement Microsoft’s new .NET development platform on Linux and Unix-like platforms. In August 2003, Ximian was acquired by Novell, Inc. There, De Icaza is currently the Vice President of Developer Platform.

7. Marc Ewing
Marc Ewing is the creator and originator of the Red Hat brand of software, most notably the Red Hat range of Linux operating system distributions. He was involved in the 86open project in the mid-90s.

Ewing graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992. While at CMU, he was known to wear a red hat as he walked between classes. Ewing and co-founder Bob Young named their initial software after the hat, and the name Redhat stuck.

6. Mark Shuttleworth
Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African entrepreneur who was the second self-funded space tourist. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and as of 2009, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system.

In the 1990s, Shuttleworth participated as one of the developers of the Debian operating system.

5. Andrew Tridgell
Andrew “Tridge” Tridgell (born 28 February 1967) is an Australian computer programmer best known as the author of and contributor to the Samba file server, and co-inventor of the rsync algorithm.

He is known for his analysis of complex proprietary protocols and algorithms, to allow compatible free software implementations.

Tridgell was a major developer of the Samba software, analysing the Server Message Block protocol used for workgroup and network file sharing by Microsoft Windows products. He developed the talloc hierarchical memory allocator, originally as part of Samba.

For his PhD thesis, he co-developed rsync, including the rsync algorithm, a highly efficient file transfer and synchronization tool. He also was the original author of rzip, which uses a similar algorithm to rsync.

He is the author of KnightCap, a reinforcement-learning based chess engine.

Tridgell was also a leader in hacking the TiVo to make it work in Australia, which uses the PAL video format.
In 2001 he formed the Shuttleworth Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to social innovation which also funds educational and free and open source software projects in South Africa, such as the Freedom Toaster.

In 2004 he returned to the free software world by funding the development of Ubuntu, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian, through his company Canonical Ltd.

In 2005 he founded the Ubuntu Foundation and made an initial investment of 10 million dollars. In the Ubuntu project, Shuttleworth is often referred to with the tongue-in-cheek title Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator for Life, abbreviated SABDFL. To come up with a list of names of people to hire for the project, Mr. Shuttleworth took six months of Debian mailing list archives with him whilst travelling to the Antarctic aboard the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov in early 2004. In September 2005, he purchased a 65% stake of Impi Linux.

On 15 October 2006 it was announced that Mark Shuttleworth became the first patron of KDE, the highest level of sponsorship available.

4. Eric S Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is a computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. His name became known within the hacker culture when he became the maintainer of the “Jargon File”. After the 1997 publication of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, Raymond became, for a number of years, an informal representative of the open source movement.

Raymond coined the aphorism “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” He credits Linus Torvalds with the inspiration for this quotation, which he dubs “Linus’ Law”. The quotation appears in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, published in 1997. Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement and co-founded the Open Source Initiative in 1998. He also took on the self-appointed role of ambassador of open source to the press, business and public. The release of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998 was an early accomplishment. He accepted stock options from VA Software to provide credibility to the company and act as a hired “corporate conscience” and has spoken in more than fifteen countries on six continents including a lecture at Microsoft.

3. Andrew Morton
Andrew Keith Paul Morton (born 1959 in England) is an Australian software engineer, best known as one of the lead developers of the Linux kernel. He currently maintains a patchset known as the mm tree, which contains not yet sufficiently tested patches that might later be accepted into the official Linux tree maintained by Linus Torvalds.

In the late 1980s, he was one of the partners of a company in Sydney, Australia that produced a kit computer called the Applix 1616, as well as a hardware engineer for the (now-defunct) Australian gaming equipment manufacturer Keno Computer Systems. He holds an honours degree in electrical engineering from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

In 2001, Andrew Morton and his family moved from Wollongong, New South Wales to Palo Alto, California.

In July 2003, Morton joined the Open Source Development Labs under an agreement with his then-employer Digeo Inc. (makers of the Moxi home entertainment media center), in which OSDL supported Morton’s Linux kernel development work while he continued in his official role as principal engineer at Digeo .

Since August 2006, Morton has been employed by Google but will continue his current work in maintaining the kernel.

2. Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often abbreviated “rms”, is an American software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project’s lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he started the free software movement and, in October 1985, set up the Free Software Foundation.

Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft and is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license. Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against both software patents and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws. Stallman has also developed a number of pieces of widely-used software, including the original Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger. He co-founded the League for Programming Freedom in 1989.

1. Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project’s coordinator.

Torvalds attended the University of Helsinki from 1988 to 1996, graduating with a master’s degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled Linux: A Portable Operating System. His academic career was interrupted after completing his first year of study when he joined the Finnish Army, selecting the 11-month officer training program, thus fulfilling the mandatory military service of Finland. In the army he held the rank of second lieutenant, with the role of fire controller, calculating positions of guns, targets, and trajectories, finally telling the guns where to shoot. In 1990, he resumed his university studies, and was exposed to UNIX for the first time, in the form of a DEC MicroVAX running ULTRIX. In June 2000, the University of Helsinki issued Torvalds an honorary doctorate.

His interest in computers began with a Commodore VIC-20. After the VIC-20 he purchased a Sinclair QL which he modified extensively, especially its operating system. He programmed an assembly language and a text editor for the QL, as well as a few games. He is known to have written a Pac-Man clone named Cool Man. On January 2, 1991 he purchased an Intel 80386-based IBM PC and spent a month playing the game Prince of Persia before receiving his MINIX copy which in turn enabled him to begin his work on Linux.

-----------------------------
BY l2admin admin
Source：l2admin

Q&A: Turing Award winner Barbara Liskov

The winner of the 2008 ACM AM Turing Award for lasting and major technical contributions to the computing community was announced last month as Barbara Liskov, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
##CONTINUE##
The Turing Award, which is named after British mathematician Alan Turing, has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery every year since 1966. Past winners include Vint Cerf, Google's Internet evangelist and commonly called the "father of the Internet."

Liskov, who heads up the programming methodology group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT--where she has conducted research and has been a professor since 1972--is only the second woman to receive the prize. IBM's Fran Allen won the 2006 award.

Silicon.com recently spoke to Liskov about her work and current research interests, and heard her views on a variety of IT issues--from data breaches and cloud computing to the relative lack of women in the IT industry.

Can you explain the significance of the work that won you the Turing prize. What impact has it had on computing?
Liskov: I won the prize for my work in developing techniques that...make it easier to build big software systems. The problem in software is there are no obvious boundaries to contend with. For example if you build some kind of electrical device you do that with discrete components--wires and boxes--and this naturally leads you to think about a design in which you go for pieces that may have very complicated insides but on the outside they have some sort of simple interface.

A good example here is a clock where there's a kind of standard interface but on the inside there may be a very complicated way to implement it. As far as the user's concerned, all you have to think about is, "What is that interface about?" and "What do I get to do with it?" You don't have to worry about the implementation details and you can use one clock or another clock and there really isn't--as far as you're concerned--any difference between them.

In software though there were no obvious boundaries like that--and the work that I did was to develop a way of putting complicated software systems into modules where each module presented to its users a relatively simple interface and then on the inside there could be a complicated implementation; the user didn't have to worry about that. And furthermore if that implementation changed then the user was unaffected by that change.

So this is the idea of abstract data types or data abstraction. What inspired it was some early work I did in building a system where along the way I began to think about, "How am I ordering this system and what is a good way to do it?" Prior to my work the only way that people modularized software was in terms of what were called subroutines, so you could think about, "I want a procedure that's going to sort a bunch of items into some increasing order." You could use the sort procedure to accomplish that and you didn't have to worry about the algorithm that was used inside.

What I did was to extend the idea to abstract from details of how data were represented. That gave us a much more powerful abstraction mechanism where the modules could be much bigger and a lot more information could be hidden.

I then developed a programming language that included this idea. I did that for two reasons: one was to make sure that I had defined everything precisely because a programming language eventually turns into code that runs on a machine so it has to be very well-defined; and then additionally because programmers write programs in programming languages and so I thought it would be a good vehicle for communicating the idea so they would really understand it.

That programming language, which was called CLU, never made it out beyond academic circles. It was definitely an implemented language. We used it at MIT and it was used at a number of other academic institutions but it didn't make it into commercial use. What happened instead was that the ideas in CLU moved into mainstream languages because they were accepted by the community as being important ideas. So they moved into Ada, which was a language that was developed by the Department of Defense. They moved into C++. Later they moved in Java and now into C sharp.

(My ideas) are now widely accepted and all programs are built using these techniques.

What inspired you to get into computing?
I got in sort of by accident. When I graduated from college I had a degree in math and I decided I wasn't interested in going to graduate school right away. So I decided to get a job and I couldn't find an interesting job as a mathematician--I was able to get a job where essentially they wanted me to plot graphs--but I got an interesting job as a programmer. Then I discovered that I had a real bent for computation and so that's what got me into the field.

How does one write good software? Are there a basic set of principles software engineers should follow?
It's not easy to write good software. It's not difficult to write tiny programs but when you try to write a big piece of software and--after all, in our everyday life nowadays we deal with very large pieces of software. For example Google--behind the scenes, immense quantities of software (make) that system run.

There are really two parts to it--one of them is understanding the basic techniques that you can use, so this idea of data abstraction and modularity is very important. The other part of it is more like a craft. Because you have to think about what's the right way--even when you have the right idea of what the building blocks should be still there's huge flexibility in how you decide to put the whole system together.

It's a craft and some people can learn it, and it has a lot to do with valuing simplicity over complexity. Many people do have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be.

There's another problem that people in the real world have to cope with and that's called feature creep. This means there's sort of the minimal features that a system needs to have in order to be useful. But there's always piled on lots and lots of other things that it would be nice to have. It's very, very difficult when you're in a commercial environment to stand up against this kind of pressure. The more stuff you throw in to the system, the more complicated it gets and the more likely it isn't going to work properly.

What are your current areas of research?
I work in what's called...distributed computing which has to do with applications which have parts that run on many different machines. This is the norm in many of the big systems that you see today--so for example Google runs on hundreds of thousands of machines, Amazon is going to be similar.

My particular focus recently has been on storage on the Internet. I really do believe that in the not too far distant future more and more of our storage is going to be moved off of our personal devices and on to storage provided thorough Internet providers. You can see Amazon is already offering something like this, Google's offering something like this. (Some) corporations are outsourcing the storage of their data to third party providers.

I'm also very interested in how...I could take advantage of this as a private person. For instance I would really like to get my data off of my personal device because I'd like to be able to access it from many devices like my cell phone or if I happen to be in an Internet cafe. I also would like to not have to worry about making backups. I'd like to not have to worry about what happens if my computer crashes and I lose all of my important information, so I've been looking at what is the underlying technology that...needs to be developed in order to make that vision a reality.

(However) the problem is with cloud computing, as it's defined today, it doesn't actually solve all the problems--for example there are huge confidentiality problems. You know you don't want to put your tax information out in cloud computing unless you have very strong guarantees that it's not going to be visible. There also are very important guarantees needed about preservation of data, reliability.

You need to be guaranteed that whenever you want to see it it's there. You'd like to be able to share it with some people but not others so there are a lot of things that aren't yet in place that need to be in place before this really becomes a commodity that everybody's going to feel comfortable using. I believe actually that when it comes to issues like confidentiality (it's going to require) a combination of technical work and laws (to solve it).

Can code ever become hack-proof?
I don't know. Right at this moment in time what you see going on is like a game. People who don't want to let the hackers in develop new techniques that the hackers at that point in time can't circumvent. But then before very long the hackers have figured out a way round it. I'd like to think there will be a time when a lot of our basic software will be hack-proof but there's a lot of...criminal activity out there. That's going to go on and you know what they're going to come up with is going to be hard to predict.

Is the Internet fundamentally insecure?
It is actually. The Internet was designed in an era when people didn't think about this kind of stuff. I mean "hacker" used to not be a bad word--hacker used to be somebody who was interested in building programs. But it's migrated into this other meaning, which is somebody that's doing bad stuff on the internet.

How might data breaches best be prevented?
First of all the data ought to be encrypted whenever it's put on any sort of removable media--that's sort of obvious--but that won't solve the problem entirely. That's really the kind of thing I'm working on--that's what I meant when I talked about confidentiality. What can we do to make it much less likely that the data gets released?

It's something that the research community is very interested in right now. What's going on is thinking about, "How do we conceptualize the problem? What can different techniques accomplish?" Security is not only about data, it's also about tracking what you're doing...everything you do on the Internet can be collected and people can mine that information, so there's another kind of breach of confidentiality that's lurking there. And so there's immense problems lurking--coming up in the future.

We're talking about things like identity theft, which is already happening...We're talking about government eavesdropping--which as you know is already happening also. These are problems that are clearly ahead of us that need to be dealt with.

Does Google know too much, have too much data?
Well you know if Google ever decided to misbehave I think there'd be big trouble. I mean people put a lot of trust in Google and actually all the other online providers.

How might computing languages and software engineering change over the next few years?
There is...a potential looming crisis which is that computer manufacturers are starting to come up with machines that have many processing units inside them--these are things called cores. And the machine on your desk has maybe two cores or four cores but people are talking now about machines with maybe hundreds of cores, thousands of cores--but people don't really know how to program these machines. So perhaps there will be some interesting advances in programming languages because of the need to figure out how to get programs to run on those machines.

You did your thesis in artificial intelligence. What excites you about the potential of AI? And what concerns do you have, if any?
One thing that we might see coming at some point is a much better search engine. Right now when you search on Google, if you happen to put the right keywords in you'll get what you want but we've all had the experience where you get lots of hits but they aren't really what you're looking for.

With artificial intelligence techniques it may be (possible) to come up with a much better way of finding what you're looking for. That's something I think we can expect from artificial intelligence in the future. Unfortunately those very same techniques will allow very efficient data mining of the patterns of your use on the Internet and so forth--so there's the good side and the bad side.

Will machines have emotions? Will they be able to interact with people the way that people do? Do we want that? I think there are ethical issues too (around artificial intelligence). One thing that's looming in the near future, I don't know how close this is, is the possibility of fighting wars with robots. This is a very scary thing and is going to require probably new conventions--international conventions--governing the use. It's like many of the advances we see in science, like biotechnology and some of the stuff that's going on there, there are ethical issues that come into play.

Do you think there are barriers to women getting into computing? And if so what are they?
Yes I definitely think there are barriers. It's a little hard to understand what they are but if you look at the numbers you can see that we're at maybe 20 percent...On the faculty at universities it's somewhere between 15 and 20 percent so it's a small fraction compared to the fraction of women in the population as a whole.

Exactly what the barriers are--people have theories about this (but) they don't totally understand it. I think a lot of it has to do with our societies. It's probably strongly related to other things we see going on like the fact that women are not well represented...in the top maths. If you look at, for example, who's doing well in the maths contests that happen internationally you'll see that women are underrepresented there.

I don't believe any of this has to do with basic abilities but I do think it has a lot to do with the way that our society is--what we think is appropriate for women to do (and) what we think is appropriate for men to do. I also think in the case of computers that the way computers (are seen as geeky)--the whole notion of the nerd sitting at the computer by himself or playing a violent game is also a turn off for girls. That's probably another reason why girls aren't going into computer science.

I do think it's mostly a problem before they get to college--if they get to college and they still are open-minded enough to be interested and they didn't cut themselves off by taking the necessary science and math ahead of time then I think at least they aren't going to hit the glass ceiling until they get quite far along.

We have seen a gradual increase in the number of women in the last few years (at MIT) and again I don't think we really understand what this is all about. It's possible that the advent of social networks and the use of the Internet for things like Twitter and Facebook...is making it seem more like something that girls would be interested in. Perhaps it's having an impact on the girls who're in there before they get to college and this is causing them to be more interested in the field, but I really don't know.

Do you think there is prejudice against women in the IT industry?
I think there probably is--it's very hard to identify it. Like in many professions it really starts to kick in now at higher levels. If you talk to women undergraduates or graduate students, they would probably think there's no discrimination at all. But if you start to talk to women who are out in industry and they're moving into upper management--even if it's a technical track of management--I think you'll hear a different story. It's like the legal profession, it's like so many professions--it's as you get up higher that this glass ceiling comes in.

There's an ongoing debate about how computing is taught at universities--and whether computer science degrees should have more input from industry so they focus less on theory and more on teaching students skills businesses need to plug employment gaps. What's your view on this?
This is a very long standing argument. Where industry keeps saying, "Oh we want somebody who knows how to program in C++." And universities say you need somebody who understands what computation's about. I'm absolutely on the university side here. It's such a short-sighted view to think that you should get people out of university who are training to do one specific thing. The problem is that the field moves and if you don't have somebody coming out of university with general skills that allow them to move with it, then in a few years they're obsolete.

Do you have a favorite operating system?
Well the operating system I use for my daily work is Linux.

-----------------------------
BY Natasha Lomas
Source：cnet

Natasha Lomas of Silicon.com reported from London.

©2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved.