There has been a lot of FUD spread around lately concerning Linux, and Wal-Mart.
To be sure there are arguments on both sides, but I’m here to take the Linux point of view. Read on…
Gotta love tech bloggers and so called ‘journalists’. There is alot of buzz in tech media this week related to an AP report that claims that Wal-Mart is dropping the Everex Linux PC’s.
As a regular Wal-Mart customer myself, I can tell you that if there is something ‘neat’ and not necessarily mainstream that I’m looking for, I’ll generally go to Wal-Mart.com first and then order it from there (generally ship to store and then pick it up). Sure Wal-Mart no longer offers ship to store for the Everex gPC and they don’t have it in stock either on their shelves but that’s all part of the Wal-Mart model.
Wal-Mart is all about volume and margins.
For a product to remain on their shelves they need to be able to sell it at reasonable volumes and then be able to take a reasonable (though often thin) margin. Linux PCs ARE NOT a volume business at this point. That’s not Wal-Mart’s fault and in fact when Wal-Mart first announced they would be selling the gPC I actually suggested that people don’t buy it. The reality is first you need to create demand and awareness. While price alone at Wal-Mart can often drive demand, when you’ve got little mass consumer mind share with Linux for the consumer desktop it’s hard to justify Linux on every Wal-Mart’s ‘real’ shelves.
That said, I think it’s GREAT that you can order it online from Walmart.com which after all is one of the leading ecommerce sites on Earth.
What might be interesting to see is if Dell (which now sells certain computers at Wal-Mart) will eventually offer an Ubuntu PC. Dell with its own volumes could likely strike a shelf space deal with Wal-Mart that a smaller vendor like Everex simply could not.
Don’t tell anyone, but I run Linux, and open source.
SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. was sued Wednesday over allegations its iTunes online music store and iPod music players are illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the Internet.
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Atlanta-based ZapMedia Services Inc. sued Apple in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing the Cupertino-based company of violating two ZapMedia patents.
(AP) — From iPods to navigation systems, some of today’s hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam.
Computer consultant Jerry Askew says a digital photo frame tried to infect his computer with four viruses.
Computer users have been warned for years about virus threats from downloading Internet porn and opening suspicious e-mail attachments. Now they run the risk of picking up a digital infection just by plugging a new gizmo into their PCs.
Recent cases reviewed by The Associated Press include some of the most widely used tech devices: Apple iPods, digital picture frames sold by Target and Best Buy stores, and TomTom navigation gear.
In most cases, Chinese factories — where many companies have turned to keep prices low — are the source.
So far, the virus problem appears to come from lax quality control, perhaps a careless worker plugging an infected music player into a factory computer used for testing, rather than organized sabotage by hackers or the Chinese factories.
It’s the digital equivalent of the recent series of tainted products traced to China, including toxic toothpaste, poisonous pet food and toy trains coated in lead paint.
But sloppiness is the simplest explanation, not the only one.
If a virus is introduced at an earlier stage of production, by a corrupt employee or a hacker when software is uploaded to the gadget, then the problems could be far more serious and widespread.
Knowing how many devices have been sold, or tracking the viruses with any precision, is impossible because of the secrecy kept by electronics makers and the companies they hire to build their products.
But given the nature of mass manufacturing, the numbers could be huge.
“It’s like the old cockroach thing: You flip the lights on in the kitchen, and they run away,” said Marcus Sachs, a former White House cybersecurity official who now runs the security research group SANS Internet Storm Center. “You think you’ve got just one cockroach? There’s probably thousands more of those little boogers that you can’t see.”
Jerry Askew, a Los Angeles computer consultant, bought a Uniek digital picture frame to surprise his 81-year-old mother for her birthday. But when he added family photos, it tried to unload a few surprises of its own.
When he plugged the frame into his Windows PC, his antivirus program alerted him to a threat. The $50 frame, built in China and bought at Target, was infected with four viruses, including one that steals passwords.
“You expect quality control coming out of the manufacturers,” said Askew, 42. “You don’t expect that sort of thing to be on there.”
Security experts say the malicious software is apparently being loaded at the final stage of production, when gadgets are pulled from the assembly line and plugged in to a computer to make sure everything works.
If the testing computer is infected — say, by a worker who used it to charge his own infected iPod — the digital germ can spread to anything else that gets plugged in.
The recent infections may be accidental, but security experts say they point out an avenue of attack that could be exploited by hackers.
“We’ll probably see a steady increase over time,” said Zulfikar Ramzan, a computer security researcher at Symantec Corp. “The hackers are still in a bit of a testing period; they’re trying to figure out if it’s really worth it.”
Thousands of people whose antivirus software isn’t up to date may have been infected without even knowing it, experts warn. And even protective software may not be enough.
In one case, digital frames sold at Sam’s Club contained a previously unknown bug that not only steals online gaming passwords but disables antivirus software, according to security researchers at CA Inc.
“It’s like if you pick up a gun you’ve never seen before. Before you pull the trigger, you’d probably check the chamber,” said Joe Telafici, vice president of operations of McAfee Avert Labs, the security software maker’s threat-research arm.
“It’s an extreme analogy, but it’s the right idea. It’s best to spend the extra 30 seconds to be sure than be wrong,” he added.
Consumers can protect themselves from most factory-loaded infections by running an antivirus program and keeping it up to date. The software checks for known viruses and suspicious behaviors that indicate an attack by malicious code, whether from a download or a gadget attached to the PC via USB cable.
The AP contacted some of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers for details on how they guard against infections, among them Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which is based in Taiwan and has an iPod factory in China; Singapore-based Flextronics International Ltd.; and Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc. All declined comment or did not respond.
The companies whose products were infected in cases reviewed by the AP refused to reveal details about the incidents. Of those that confirmed factory infections, all said they had corrected the problems and taken steps to prevent recurrences.
Apple disclosed the most information, saying that the virus that infected a small number of video iPods in 2006 came from a PC used to test compatibility with the gadget’s software.
Best Buy, the biggest consumer electronics outlet in the U.S., said it pulled its affected China-made frames from the shelves and took “corrective action” against its vendor. But the company declined repeated requests to provide details.
Sam’s Club and Target say they are investigating complaints but have not been able to verify that their frames were contaminated.
Legal experts say that manufacturing infections could become a big headache for retailers that sell infected devices and the companies that make them, if customers can demonstrate that they were harmed by the viruses.
“The photo situation is really a cautionary tale. They were just lucky that the virus that got installed happened to be one that didn’t do a lot of damage,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “But there’s nothing about that situation that means next time, the virus won’t be a more serious one.”
Hey, folks - unless I’m in my own Linux comfort zone I’ll not buy any device.
As a Dedicated Linux, and open source user I thought that the issue of Wal-Mart had received a little bit too much press.
Since I keep spreading the word about Linux I thought that I would post a response.
Opinion — The other day, Wal-Mart let it slip that it would no longer be selling Linux-powered computers in its stores. The retail giant will, however, continue to sell Linux desktop and laptop systems via its online store.
Wal-Mart, according to Everex, will continue to sell its new gPC2 for $199 without a monitor and its gOS-powered UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC), the Everex CloudBook, for $399, through Wal-Mart’s online store. Currently, Wal-Mart is selling a no-frills gPC2 desktop system and the CloudBook laptop.
In a Washington Post story, O’Brien expanded on her comments, saying, “We are America’s retailer, so the decisions on what we offer in our stores [are] based on how our customers vote with their purchases.” It wasn’t that Wal-Mart is rejecting Linux, she said. “The idea was to see if shoppers in our stores would respond as they do online to the offering. The answer is that customers did not respond to expectations, so we decided not to restock.”
So is Wal-Mart’s decision to drop these gOS Linux-powered computers a big deal or not? I decided to do a little old-fashioned reporting to see if I could get to the bottom of why Wal-Mart will no longer be carrying cheap Linux systems in its stores — besides, I needed to get some more Diet Coke anyway — so I visited several of my local Wal-Marts.
At these stores, I talked with some Wal-Mart workers. Since Wal-Mart likes reporters almost as much as it does union organizers, I’m not going to even mention any individual store names.
Here’s what I found out. Customers did want to buy the computer, but they, and all too often the workers, were thoroughly confused because the PCs came with Linux and not Windows. The word “clueless” comes quickly to mind.
But let’s be realistic here. How much technical expertise do you think an average Wal-Mart customer, or any ordinary U.S. citizen, really has anyway? The one technically adept customer service representative I met told me, “These are the same people who really can’t tell the difference between the computer and its software. At best, they know they need Windows to run Quicken, Office and games. That’s it.”
The people who ended up buying the gPC, I was told, were either technically savvy — “They came in looking for it,” said one worker — 0r, all too often, “They thought it was a normal — read, Windows — PC and they exchanged it.”
The irony is that gOS with a broadband Internet connection is perhaps the easiest operating system for a novice to use, with its dependence on Google applications. It would, in many ways, be ideal for someone who just wants to use a PC and doesn’t want to buy additional software. Say, for example, the typical Wal-Mart customer who wants the best deal for the lowest price.
So, I concluded, after my informal survey, and bringing home three cases of Diet Coke, that the gPC didn’t fly off Wal-Mart’s shelves for several reasons. The first, as David Liu, founder of ThinkGOS, the company behind gOS, told blogger Dana Blankenhorn, is that there’s very little profit margin on a $199 computer in the first place. If you’re not selling a ton of them, you don’t have cash flow to speak of.
Another reason, as Adrian Kingsley-Hughes observes in his blog, is that Wal-Mart is no place for a “soft launch” of any really new product. Another brand of diapers, sure; another kind of computer that’s not quite like anything they’ve ever seen before, no, that won’t work.
I’ll add another reason to that list. Before there will be mass consumer pickup of the Linux desktop, any Linux desktop, the public needs to know more about Linux. I’m not talking about Linux 101, I’m talking about Linux 01.
Before Linux desktops will start flying off store shelves, people need to know three things: Linux is not the same as Windows; but it’s cheaper; and you can do pretty much all the same things except play games. That’s it. Once people know that much, then with that keyword “cheap” in mind, you can expect to see Linux start to make inroads into the Joe Six-Pack market.
There, finally, one other point. Linux has good home accounting programs such as GnuCash and KMyMoney. Either can be used to replace Quicken, and GnuCash is a decent substitute for QuickBooks as well. The Linux vendors need to start pushing these programs more in their distributions. Consumers want home finance programs, and when Linux companies don’t make it as easy to find these programs as they do OpenOffice.org or Firefox, they’re putting another small barrier between a potential Linux customer and a Linux customer who’s willing to put down his or her credit card.
