NeatDeskScannerThe NeatDesk Scanner creates

and saves images, text, and

data files converted with its

“Intelligent Text-Recognition”

software. The NeatWorks soft-

ware identifies and extracts key

information from the files and

then organizes the information

into an easily managed data-

base. Individual slots in the

scanner let you stack and

process up to 10 receipts, 10

business cards, 10 docs, or as

many as 50 pages at a time in

the automatic document feeder.

You can scan up to 24 pages

per minute in color, grayscale, or

black and white, and the size

range goes from the smallest

taxi receipt to double-sided

legal documents, all in a single

pass. Data can be sent to Excel,

Word, Outlook, Quicken, Turbo-

Tax, and other formats. The

database can scale to approxi-

mately 1.5 million receipts. The

software can import PDFs and

statements, and it can create

searchable PDFs from scanned

documents. The built-in search

capacity uses keyword and

advanced search techniques. The

scanner is a compact 8.5" ✕

7.5" ✕ 7.3", and it weighs

4.4 pounds. The PC version runs

on Windows XP, Vista, or Win-

dows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit), and

there’s a Mac version that

requires Mac OS X v10.5.8 or

later. View a demo at

www.neat.com

Sony P and STabletsThe Sony S Tablet, a wedge-

shaped, 9.4-inch touch-screen

computer is now available for

pre-order, and the P Tablet, a

folding device that features two

5.5-inch touch screens is listed

as available soon. Sony is a little

late with a tablet offering, but

they have arrived ahead of the

last big shoe to drop, the Ama-

zon tablet due late this year or

early next. Both the P and the S

tablets offer access to Sony

World of Entertainment and

content services. They feature

“Video Unlimited,” which will

be released at the device

launch, along with a service

called “Music Unlimited,” a

cloud-based digital music ser-

vice. Both tablets are PlaySta-

tion Certified and will provide

access to the Sony Reader Store

cloud-based Personal Space ser-

vice. With these tablets, you’ll

be able to control your home

entertainment devices and share

content wirelessly with Wi-Fi

streamed to other devices. The

apps that run on the Sony

tablets include those available

from the Android Market. The

unique form factor of the P

Tablet allows two different

screens to be used. You can

read e-mail on the top screen

and manage and write with a

keyboard displayed on the

bottom. For video, the bottom

screen can be for the controller,

and, for websites, both screens

can combine to provide a large

single page. www.sony.com

Logitech iPadSpeakerThe sound from the three small

speaker vents on the bottom of

an iPad is acceptable but not

great. But if you’re taking a

presentation on the road, you

might want to amplify the

sound for the others in the

room. Logitech offers an auxil-

iary speaker for the iPad that

clips onto the edge of the

screen and plugs into the

speaker jack at the top. The rub-

berized clip holds the iPad or

other tablet and raises the

screen at one end. The batteries

that drive the speaker can be

charged over a USB connection

and will last up to eight hours.

The speaker comes with a soft

traveling bag and a USB-to-mini

USB charging cable. Logitech

TECHNOLOGY

TOOLSof theTRADE

58 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I O c t o b e r 2 0 1 1

also has a larger set of stereo

speakers that feature a wireless

Bluetooth connection that can

be placed as far as 50 feet away

from the tablet source. The wire-

less speakers have built-in

rechargeable batteries that run

up to 10 hours on a charge. The

wireless version also comes with

a soft case. www.logitech.com

The UbuntuOperating SystemOne of the best ways to try out

the Linux operating system for

desktop or laptop computers is

with the Ubuntu system. You

can download it for free and

easily set up your laptop or oth-

er computer to dual boot two

systems. If you have a computer

that runs on an older Windows

system that you’re no longer

happy with, or if you have a

netbook with a decent amount

of memory, it’s an interesting

exercise that might open up

new possibilities for your com-

puter. This isn’t an experimental

version of Linux. The Ubuntu

kernel is in its 11th iteration,

and it’s a powerful, secure,

uncluttered operating system.

A lot of free software runs on

the system, including the full-

featured OpenOffice from

Oracle. The OpenOffice software

suite has word processing,

spreadsheets, presentations,

graphics, databases, and a

number of utility applications.

OpenOffice is available in a

number of languages, stores all

your data in an international

open standard format, and can

also read and write files from

other common office software

packages. Like Ubuntu, it’s

free. www.ubuntu.com and

www.openoffice.org

There was a birthday celebration the last week of August

that escaped most people’s notice. A software program that

began as one Finnish student’s hobby turned 20 on August

25, and geeks around the world observed the day. The pro-

gram is Linux, and it’s a computer operating system (OS)

like Windows or OSX. For the average person, that’s about

as exciting as sand, but, then again, the average person is

likely to be more knowledgeable and care more about

chips that come from Lay’s than the ones from AMD.

But take away the silicon chips that help move, orga-

nize, light, and heat our world, and the impact would be

devastating. In a similar way, OSs toil away in the back-

ground reading millions of lines of code deep within our

computing devices, allowing them to correctly follow the

instruction sets of the apps and programs we see doing

things on the surface (monitors and cell phone screens).

The Linux OS is remarkable for several reasons. First,

it isn’t the product of a corporation like IBM (developer

of the AIX system) or think tank like Bell Labs (creator of

the UNIX OS). Nor is it strictly the product of one devel-

oper. It has been created by hundreds of programmers

worldwide, and it has stubbornly remained free, as in

“available at no cost,” to whoever wants to load any of its

variants, called flavors, on any kind of computer or

device from their TiVo to supercomputers. Today, Linux

is one of the most widely distributed OSs, and its most

rapid growth is in the fastest-growing market segment—

mobile computing.

HISTORY

Before we look at the origins, just a word about the folk-

lore. Linux doesn’t have a logo. Instead, it has a penguin.

Like Disney’s mouse, Tux (that’s the penguin’s name) is

the program’s identifier even though he’s likely to assume

different shapes and costumes depending on the Linux

variant. As the story goes, Linus Torvalds, the Finnish stu-

dent who created the open source system, was visiting the

National Zoo and Aquarium with the Canberra Linux

Tux Turns 20 By Michael Castelluccio, Editor

continued on next page

TECH FORUM

O c t o b e r 2 0 1 1 I S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E 59

Users Group in Australia, and he was bitten by a

Fairy Penguin. His fondness for the little crea-

tures inspired him to suggest the penguin as a

fitting mascot for the software. One version of

the story claims the penguin’s name means

(T)orvald’s (U)NI(X). Others think the name is

just a reference to the feathered formal attire of

the penguin, its (TUX)edo.

On August 25, 1991, Torvalds, a student at

the University of Helsinki, posted the following

notice on a computer bulletin board online:

“I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a

hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu)

for 386 (486) AT clones. This has been brewing

since April, and is starting to get ready. I’d like

any feedback on things people like/dislike in

minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat…I’d

like to know what features most people would

want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won’t

promise I’ll implement them:-).”

Since then, the group Linus reached out to that summer

20 years ago have formed into the coding consortium that

together writes, edits, and tests the developments to the Lin-

ux kernel. Writing in his book, Open Life: The Philosophy of

Open Source, Henrik Ingo estimated that “As of 2006,

approximately 2% of the Linux kernel was written by

Torvalds himself. As thousands have contributed code to

the Linux kernel, such a percentage represents one of the

largest personal contributions to the overall amount of

code. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new

code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.”

LINUX V MICROSOFT

In the beginning, the Linux OS was touted as the open

source alternative to Microsoft’s desktop OS, Windows. That

war never really developed beyond the skirmish phase, but

today that theater is becoming more irrelevant as Linux has

grown into what Gizmodo calls “the invisible king.” In The

Telegraph’s (U.K.) coverage of the Linux birthday, Christo-

pher Williams points out, “Linus Torvalds’s ‘hobby’ now

runs the majority of the world’s Web servers.” In the contest

with Microsoft’s Windows, Williams says, “It may have lost

that battle, but it’s won the war. Today, it is Linux quietly

powering growth in what are arguably the two most impor-

tant areas of computing: the Web and mobile.”

The Android platform (Gingerbread on smartphones and

Honeycomb on tablets) appears in a wide variety of devices

and has recently overtaken Apple’s iOS as the biggest selling

smartphone system. Android is built on the Linux system.

But it isn’t only the Android devices and the Googles,

Facebooks, and Amazons of the world running on Linux.

More than 90% of the world’s supercomputers are now run-

ning Torvalds’s “hobby system.” See the chart above from the

Top 500 Supercomputer sites that shows the OSs used by

supercomputers.

This group includes Watson, the IBM artificial intelli-

gence computer that this year defeated the two human

Jeopardy television show champions Ken Jennings and

Brad Rutter. Watson is a cluster of commercially available

servers that any client can purchase. IBM claims, “The

power behind Watson lies in IBM’s DeepQA software run-

ning SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 11 on 10 racks of

IBM Power 750 servers. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is

the fastest operating system on IBM POWER7® based on

recent SPEC benchmarks. This makes it a natural choice of

operating system for IBM’s DeepQA software that powers

Watson.”

As a student, Linus Torvalds wanted a powerful UNIX-

like operating system for his new computer, but he couldn’t

afford it. So he and his friends created something that even-

tually became a world-class platform. That platform cur-

rently powers the Web, most new mobile devices, and the

supercomputers that are looking more human each day.

Belated happy birthday, Tux. SF

60 S T R AT E G IC F I N A N C E I O c t o b e r 2 0 1 1

TECHNOLOGYTECH FORUM

Chart created by Benedikt Seidl

Operating Systems Used by the 500 Top Supercomputers (in percent)