If Microsoft makes good on its self-destructive threat to pull Windows from the South Korean market rather than accede to local demands to un-bundle its proprietary media and IM apps, there’s a safe harbour waiting in the form of blanket, country-wide licenses for the OS formerly known as Lindows.

Noting that South Korea blows $100m per year on Microsoft bugware, Linspire honcho Kevin Carmony has made a formal offer to South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to license every computer in the realm for the bargain price of $5m.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2.....ally_free/

here on earth, it’s nothing more than a fairly decent shot at publicity for Linspire. however, i wonder how many “U.S. educated PhDs” playing starcraft are worrying about switching over their games.

So much negativism. Not like you at all. BTW, do you have an apple for a teacher?

dda,

I love your ?€œ??¼! ??´ ?±´ ??€??¤?€?. So cute. Maybe you lost your individualism and learn to go with the crowd, but I am an American. I sort of like to be a lone wolf howling at the moon. A one-and-only wiseass who eventually prove to be right.

Korean government can do a volume purchasing and “order” all government branches and, listen to this, all schools and individuals to use one format(HWP or unicode). It just takes one day to change Korean format for entire Korea. One day! Korea is a still somewhat dictatorial and can do this in just one day. Not too many powerful lawyers yet.

You’re right. Korea is not even Brazil. Have you noticed that people would rather spend a month there than here?

You certainly put your finger on it when you placed the blame on our “so-called” education. Mind-numbing rote memorization without critical reasoning combined with racial supremecist brainwashing rife with historical distortion. The result? Just look around you. What do you see? Honestly.

Substandard intellectual capacity, inferior infrastructure, a shaky economic system, a lawless citizenry, an unsave food supply, lack of public order and civility, a government of theives…and a tendency to blame others for all these problems rather than take it upon ourselves to improve our caliber.

What kind of “intellectual powerhouse” can’t even create jobs?

Unfortunately, a lot of those clueless U.S. educated PhDs are not pumping gas and rolling kimbap. They’ve been hired by our large corporations who pay empty lip service to global standards but don’t want change. They’re content that these PhDs haven’t learned a thing in the U.S. and don’t even speak the English uage beyond a second grade level.

Meanwhile we argue over who owns what rocks and who done who wrong way back when and right versus left and all other sorts of 19th century issues.

Make no mistake about it. Korea is Hobbitown, which one wag describes as “a small town inhabited by “people” with parochial perspectives which do not extend much further than the next block and the next meal. Great adventures and epic battles ensue with all manner of entities, transforming the entire earth, yet the good people of Hobbitown never had a clue. In their common sense, such stuff was just not possible.”

Baduk, my friend, we grew up and were educated in Hobbitown. We just want to shut the rest of the world out in order to maintain the supremecy of our old tired erroneous ways of thinking. But while we Hobbits congratulate ourselves for being a “technologically advanced intellectual powerhouse”, the Fellowship of the Quest is underway in earnest outside Korea. In comparison, we are going backwards.

Expecting from a government whose leader couldn’t find his own arse with a map and a torch to dictate anything more complex than a set of instructions on how to wipe one’s arse with copies of the JoongAng Ilbo is a little bit optimistic.

Korea is not Brazil. Korea is an over-educated and technologically advanced intellectual powerhouse. Too many U.S-educated Ph.D?€™s pumping gas and rolling Kimbob.

The usual Korean save the face answer. When they boast about something they WILL BE the first to accomplish and some dude shows them that it’s been done already, thanks Guv, they come back at you with “??¼! ??´ ?±´ ??€??¤…” Nice display of Koreanitude, YoMo.

Linux has a great chance working out. It will eventually feed many small companies in the US as well.

AOL used to be a big dog in ISP arena. However, it had nothing special technologically. Just a big market share.
Microsoft is like AOL right now. Nothing special. Equivalent softwares to Windows, IE, Office and MediaPlayer can be made in less than six months in one univesity. No special technology at all. Just a big market share.

When MS leaves, the Korean government will dictate the formats. Hangul format(I strongly favor Unicode), media format,etc. Some centralization is desperately needed in Korean computer scene. When the big dog(MS) leaves, Korean government can do something about it.

bazil started going open-source two years ago.

And what would be gained by it? Where is the supposed progress in this? All I see is an enormous expendature of energy pursuing a task without gain. For the sake of what - pride? In fact, the most we can hope for is that it doesn’t set us back too much in the meantime. Knowing how hastily and shodily we work, can you imagine the resulting glitches, mistakes and confusion this will cause?

Glavanized? Have you ever seen Korea united and galvanized - except in orgies of protest or in our unique ultra-nationalistic brand of sports mania?

The very problem we face as a nation is precisely this baseless, irrational pride and arrogance that we wallow in to our own detriment. Pride is how we rationalize our cultural isolation and tenacious clinging to dirty old habits. Or else we blaming our resulting problems on others -the Japanese…the Americans…the Chinese…the IMF…

It seems we couldn’t wait to start patting ourselves on the back for copying the techical ingenuity of other nations…quite prematurely, in fact. Now, having cloned the Japanese educational and business model, a glance across the pond should serve as a frightful warning of where we are inevitably headed. I’m talking about Japanese-style zero growth and an irrational infrastructure, all fueled by a dreadful lack of creativity and vision.

Japan is weighed down by its creeking Zaibatsu (Korean: Chebol)and its now-apparant failure to keep pace with the vanguard of the American enterpreuneurial, dynamic flexiblle, responsive business model.

It seems you can only take the reverse engineering model only so far. In the information age where developments occur with the speed of light, the lumbering complascent, fat Chaebol manned by good ol’ boys just can’t compete. And we call ourselves dynamic!

An educational system that rewards rote memorization and a neo-Confucion business culture that promotes workers on the basis of their networking and brown nosing abilities just can’t compete with hard-nosed businesses that reward merit and strategic vision.

Copy Linux instead of MS - and this is your idea of vision? What a poor substitute for the real thing! Is that as daring as our notoriously low standards will permit us to rise?

And do you really expect the rest of the world to look toward Korea with bated breath and goo-goo eyes for having taken such a regressive and ultimately valueless path that could have been much more easily avoided by rational action costing us nothing except baseless, costly pride?

1) Korea can be doing volume purchasing. Don’t you think Red Hat will be selling a million copies of its Linux for a dollar per copy? I do. Susse Linux, SCO Linux, IBM Linux? Just as a promotion?

2) Korea will be uniting under Linux. The first country to go totally Linux. The news will shock the world. Every countries will look at how it turns out. And, Korea-China-Japan Linux will rule the world some day.

3) Korean government will go into 1-year all-out effort to develop the best Linux system in the world. It may buy up a small Linux company like SCO Linux or start from scratch. With many computer science majors working in gas stations, Korea desperately need make-work project like this one. And, the government can officially sell this system to each tax payer or give it away for free. Some Chinese may like to copy this format.

This project will unite Korea under one single purpose. Galbanized. I am so excited just thinking about it. The time is ripe for Linux. And, Korea. A win-win situation.