[luau] Taiwan's desperate move into Linux

[W. Wayne Liauh]

Aloha everyone.  This news came from Linuxtoday:

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/6/3/55433/41738

There are a bunch of other similar or related news articles in my archive, but most 
of them are written in Chinese.

One of the most noteworthy part is that the Taiwanese government is 
going to immediately train 120,000 Linux users and 9,600 Linux experts 
("seeds").

I don't think anyone in the US knows the true story behind this relatively surprising (to an 
insider) development.  ("Surprising", because 
politicians, those who have the power to make the needed changes, don't 
really think the same ways as we do.  Yes, Linux has all the 
advantages--especially for Hawaii's schools, but try to sell those ideas 
to Cayetano.  Will he really care?  Or to Joe Blanco, he'll think you're 
an idiot.  I don't think we will have better luck with Linda Lingle, either.)

This move is indeed very political, and initially had nothing to do with 
technology and/or economic reasons whatsoever.  In a nutshell, Chen 
Shui-Bei, President of Taiwan, is running for his political life now 
after his government began a Microsoft-sponsored (yes, 
Microsoft-sponsored) crackdown on software piracy, causing huge public 
outcries, resentments, and rowdy protests (30,000 in one protest alone) 
in Taiwan campuses.  Opposition parties have seized this opportunity. 
And President Chen got the message.

President Chen was a classmate of mine at the National Taiwan University. 
He is a very smart guy, and I knew he will not stop at just slowing 
down the software piracy crack-down (which will show that he had made a mistake, 
no politician would admit that).  The only way for him to move out of 
this totally unexpected deep political trouble is to hitch onto Linux 
and move into it.

For those in the know, Taiwan not only controls a good part of PC hardware manufacturing, it now also controls 
hardware design.  With AMD now moving the manufacturing of Athlon XPs 
to Taiwan's UMC (I am sure Warren knows this story better than I do), 
they can make and design everything in a PC except harddrive.  But I 
always consider harddrive a nuisance for desktop PCs.  There will be 
more exciting developments.

A client of mine showed me a fully blown Linux PC which can be booted up 
and ready to work in less than 10 seconds.  Can Windows do that?