Thanks Victor........
.....for the post on Friedman - which I have enlarged and attached below.
Call me crazy, but a lot of my vision and understanding about technology and the internet is grounded squarely in the massive rise in power of this thing called "individual freedom".
Individual freedom is THE fuel for this Internet-fired global bandwidth explosion we are witnessing. Based on my record, I am usually 2-3 years ahead of the crowd. I see these things like they're crystal clear, but I have to understand how slow, boxed and backward the general crowd is. Call this naiveté or whatever, but the masses and Wall Street will eventually come to this table.
With NDS, Novell has built a solid foundation technology which can and will make all these enterprises open up, sing, dance, extend and grow.
Technology apps that tap into NDS will be tapping into the pure, raw power of IP, bandwidth and the Internet.
Think of it this way, Microsoft has spent billions trying to KEEP technology developers shackled to the Windows platform.
Before NDS, Windows technology developers were building apps to make the PC come alive. Now, WITH NDS, technology developers - even Windows-based developers - can build things that are truly cross platform and internet-driven - reaching these new globally-based massive application servers that are on the rise. All of this will -as in Dell's case - make the enterprisecome alive......
Why is IBM climbing???? Hello??
IBM should quickly climb on board with Novell's NDS before they, too, miss the boat. I know they're are a ton of competitive issues between IBM and Novell, but with the release of NDS for Native NT this is the perfect time to jump on board.
NDS for Native NT will create this giant sucking sound out of NT servers for it will expose NT app servers to the pure power of the Internet. NDS will open up NT in ways that are probably giving nightmares for Gates.
We are witnessing a watershed event in the history of technology.
Horse & buggy to railroads.....railroads to cars/trucks.....propeller planes to jets.....Mainframe to PCs.....PCs to PC/Local Enterpise Networks....PCs/Local Ent LANs to Fusion With Internet.
The only thing that's held back Novell's massive turnaround is perception and mindshare. Gates and Balmer worked night and day for 3-4 straight years to pummell Novell in the public market for perception mindshare within corporate higher level circles. They knew they didn't have the technology infrastructure to pull this NT Enterprise thing off. So they HAD to influence corporations to delay their move to really opening up to the Internet. NT security-holes, downtime, high admin costs have all worked wonderfully to effect this delay.
Novell's NDS for native NT - soon to be released - will be a mindblowing event for many in IT-land. It will cause a rift among many more recent vintage NT developers and the older - more experienced - IT developers.
The decision to "open up" a corporate enterprise to the power of the internet - ie. e-commerce, directory intelligence, security, high bandwidth throughput - is THE MOST important decision IT/IS execs have to make over the next 1-2 years.
Y2K is NO excuse. Companies that can open up NOW and also be Y2K compliant will have a major leg up in this "open race".
Novell's Netware 5.0 and NDS can take cos there today. Novell's technology is on the cutting edge of this massive new wave of Individual Freedom that sweeping the world thanks to the Internet.
I will get off my soapbox and head to church....
All the best. Go Novell!
========================
ECONOMIC SCENE
Just a Bump in Capitalism's Long Road
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
TANFORD, Calif. -- This does not seem to be free enterprise's finest hour.
Asian economies that were once vibrant have collapsed, sending millions of people who had pulled themselves up toward the middle class back into a struggle for survival.
Russia's movement toward democratic capitalism is in shambles. Even the world's biggest and strongest economies are at risk from the global crisis.
So it seemed fair to ask Milton Friedman, the iconic advocate of free markets, if the free-enterprise system had not proved inadequate in this era of interconnected financial systems and contagion by microchip.
His reply was that the problems in most countries were a result of bad policy at home and bad advice from the International Monetary Fund, not any failure of the markets.
Indeed, Friedman, whose libertarianism left him on the fringes of the mainstream starting in the New Deal and for decades afterward, was not conceding anything in the growing debate over whether the turmoil has exposed the limits of markets as a force for prosperity, democracy and stability.
Now 86, and as willing as ever to argue his cause in an interview, he was typically provocative about the interplay between ideology and the real world.
The fallout from the global crisis, he said, would inevitably create some setbacks in what he sees as a slow but inexorable movement toward less government involvement in the economy and greater individual freedom.
Economists are again debating the merits of controls on capital, and some countries, including the United States, are hinting that they might raise trade barriers to protect domestic industries from the ravages of a tumultuous global economy.
"There's always a tendency when things go wrong to blame the private market," said Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976. "Given that you've had these difficulties, there's no doubt there will be backsliding," he said in his office at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. The talk of global crisis, however, is largely overblown, he said, noting that the United States and Western Europe remain in sound economic health.
But in a broader sense, Friedman said, we are at a historical turning point, when a gradual acceptance of free-market principles on a philosophical level is beginning to translate into a fundamental movement toward market-oriented policies, institutions and politics. The implications for policy could be profound, he said, ranging from lower taxes to exposing public schools to greater competition.
"It's my impression that you have long cycles of public opinion on the one hand and public behavior on the other," Friedman said. He cited the long delay between Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," published in 1776, and Britain's move to repeal the Corn Laws and go on to free trade.
And, he said, although the Fabian Society was formed in the 1880s, "it was not until just before World War I that Britain started down the road to the welfare state.
"The case for free markets and market economies, right after World War II, was held by only a very small minority, who were looked upon as reactionaries of the worst kind," Friedman said. "In the period since then, the case for free markets has been won rhetorically.
Everybody now believes in competition, believes in freedom, believes that governments should have a relatively minor role and that markets should be relatively free. That's the rhetoric, and it's reached a peak since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"On the other hand, if you look at the practice, in the United States and also most other Western countries, government is more powerful, more extensive, more intrusive now than it was 50 years ago. In that sense we have moved backward and been following the prior socialist trend of opinion.
"I think we are sort of at the peak of the collectivist way," he continued, "Over the next 20, 30 or 40 years, the rhetoric, combined with the remarkable effects the Internet, is going to have on our lives, will produce a decline in the role of government and a widening of human freedom."
Why the Internet?
"Because it makes it harder to collect taxes," Friedman said, referring to the difficulty of defining where a transaction takes place when it occurs in cyberspace. "Governments can get funds fundamentally only from resources that find it difficult to move elsewhere. The greater the freedom of movement of capital and people, the harder it is for governments. That's the kind of external force that is adding to what's coming from the intellectual tide of opinion."
The question now, though, is whether the crisis set off last year in Asia will turn the tide again. As Friedman suggests, history can be slow to render its judgment.
November 22, 1998
ECONOMIC SCENE
Just a Bump in Capitalism's Long Road
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
TANFORD, Calif. -- This does not seem to be free enterprise's finest hour.
Asian economies that were once vibrant have collapsed, sending millions of people who had pulled themselves up toward the middle class back into a struggle for survival.
Russia's movement toward democratic capitalism is in shambles. Even the world's biggest and strongest economies are at risk from the global crisis.
So it seemed fair to ask Milton Friedman, the iconic advocate of free markets, if the free-enterprise system had not proved inadequate in this era of interconnected financial systems and contagion by microchip.
His reply was that the problems in most countries were a result of bad policy at home and bad advice from the International Monetary Fund, not any failure of the markets.
Indeed, Friedman, whose libertarianism left him on the fringes of the mainstream starting in the New Deal and for decades afterward, was not conceding anything in the growing debate over whether the turmoil has exposed the limits of markets as a force for prosperity, democracy and stability.
Now 86, and as willing as ever to argue his cause in an interview, he was typically provocative about the interplay between ideology and the real world.
The fallout from the global crisis, he said, would inevitably create some setbacks in what he sees as a slow but inexorable movement toward less government involvement in the economy and greater individual freedom.
Economists are again debating the merits of controls on capital, and some countries, including the United States, are hinting that they might raise trade barriers to protect domestic industries from the ravages of a tumultuous global economy.
"There's always a tendency when things go wrong to blame the private market," said Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976. "Given that you've had these difficulties, there's no doubt there will be backsliding," he said in his office at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. The talk of global crisis, however, is largely overblown, he said, noting that the United States and Western Europe remain in sound economic health.
But in a broader sense, Friedman said, we are at a historical turning point, when a gradual acceptance of free-market principles on a philosophical level is beginning to translate into a fundamental movement toward market-oriented policies, institutions and politics. The implications for policy could be profound, he said, ranging from lower taxes to exposing public schools to greater competition.
"It's my impression that you have long cycles of public opinion on the one hand and public behavior on the other," Friedman said. He cited the long delay between Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," published in 1776, and Britain's move to repeal the Corn Laws and go on to free trade.
And, he said, although the Fabian Society was formed in the 1880s, "it was not until just before World War I that Britain started down the road to the welfare state.
"The case for free markets and market economies, right after World War II, was held by only a very small minority, who were looked upon as reactionaries of the worst kind," Friedman said. "In the period since then, the case for free markets has been won rhetorically.
Everybody now believes in competition, believes in freedom, believes that governments should have a relatively minor role and that markets should be relatively free. That's the rhetoric, and it's reached a peak since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"On the other hand, if you look at the practice, in the United States and also most other Western countries, government is more powerful, more extensive, more intrusive now than it was 50 years ago. In that sense we have moved backward and been following the prior socialist trend of opinion.
"I think we are sort of at the peak of the collectivist way," he continued, "Over the next 20, 30 or 40 years, the rhetoric, combined with the remarkable effects the Internet, is going to have on our lives, will produce a decline in the role of government and a widening of human freedom."
Why the Internet?
"Because it makes it harder to collect taxes," Friedman said, referring to the difficulty of defining where a transaction takes place when it occurs in cyberspace. "Governments can get funds fundamentally only from resources that find it difficult to move elsewhere. The greater the freedom of movement of capital and people, the harder it is for governments. That's the kind of external force that is adding to what's coming from the intellectual tide of opinion."
The question now, though, is whether the crisis set off last year in Asia will turn the tide again. As Friedman suggests, history can be slow to render its judgment. |
