Slashdot Mirror
ESR: Microsoft Could Collapse In 6 Months (updated)
mjh writes: "ESR gave an interview in which he says, 'I now think that Microsoft monopoly is going to collapse for other reasons in the near future.' He basically says that the drop in PC prices will cut into the margins that PC sellers can afford, and that they'll drop the M$ tax, and replace their bundled OS with something cheaper, like Linux. This was a very interesting interview." It's a good read, and ESR seems to be mellower in it than in some other venues (and to me, that makes him more persuasive than usual as well). However, the idea of Microsoft collapsing because of lost OEM-license dollars seems pretty stretchy -- they make money in a lot of other ways, and have a nice war chest to draw from if licensing losses should become anything like a crisis. Updated by timothy, 13 Dec, 5:52GMT: It's Microsoft's monopoly which ESR said could collapse, not the company per se. Apologies for the poor phrasing.
ESR may be a good programmer, a good project manager, and a decent guy. However, he's also an evangelist. He truly believes in Linux as the Saviour against the Great Satan of MS. As a result, most of his commentary and predictions are readable only as light entertainment.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
On the other hand, Senator Slade (the "Senator from Microsoft") won't be coming back.
> Microsoft keeps up with things; they aren't about to lose their monopoly due to changes that were expected (cheaper, smaller, faster) but will rather require many more unexpected events to appear on the horizon
That tiny little thing called the internet blindsided them. And all this time later they still have a "standalone system" mentality that bites them in the ass now and then. I honestly think they can't understand why the e-mail virus problem won't go away.
However, I think the fall of Microsoft, whenever it comes, is going to come from below. That is, when investor faith in MS's infalibilty pops, their stock pyramid will pop shortly thereafter. Sure, they've got a huge bankroll, but they don't seem to know how to use it for anything other than keeping their stocks afloat. With the kind of money they've been sitting on for all these years, they could have revolutionized computing for real, if only they had any interest in doing so.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't believe Microsoft has a thing to worry about. My. Freakin. God. What a mess.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I wouldn't say "no problems"
People still aren't buying it. The W2k adoption rate is still like 1/3 what the analysts were saying, and 1/10th what Microsoft was hoping. ActiveDirectory being the only compelling feature, and at the same time, a compelling reason NOT to upgrade (due to the added overhead and cost to implement).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The microsoft monopoly of the os market will continue as it exists. There are several reasons why this is true:
1) The average cost of a top of the line PC is not really dropping. Sure Pentiums and x486 are cheap now, but the computers everyone wants to buy are still in the $1000-$2000 range. Next year that range will be the same, it will just feature Ghz Pentium 4 and Athalon systems with faster memory, next generation NVIDIA cards, etc.
2) There is pressure for cheaper systems, but that will be absorbed somewhat by the Xbox and other consoles. There will also be a market for older/slower/less capable computers, but most of the people buying those computers will be computer newbies, and will require much handholding. In part, this means they will want to use what everyone else is using.
3) Applications take a long time to write. Even if there were a moratorium on all new applications for windows, there are currently enough out there to sustain Windows as a viable choice for much longer than 6 months. WINE might help somewhat, but without killer apps, people will just go with Windows because it's easier and the support costs would be lower than doing both.
4) Businesses will still be using Windows PCs in 6 months, and a large chunk of the home PC market revolves around people using windows because that's what they are used to from work.
5) Microsoft has lots of money available. In the worst case they could just lower the price of the OEM licenses to forstall anyone using anything else. And give discounts for not shipping competitor's products, bundle more software for the same cost, etc.
6) Even if Linux were ready for primetime and enough of the applications and games were finished, it would take more than 6 months for the PC industry to switch focus and start pushing the new systems.
My expert opinion:
Windows will continue to dominate the market it has right now, and MS will use that position to try to leverage other markets as it is currently doing. It is conceivable that eventually there could be enough free applications that Linux would take over that market in a relatively short timeframe, but that will not be within the next six months.
As for cheap PCs, the OS is still a relatively small cost of the overall system. The most expensive component seems to be the display, and I don't expect a revolution in settop boxes and whatnot until TV screens can display readable text, or computer monitors shrink in size, become much cheaper, and TV capable as well. Theoretically HDTV will help, but the economics of a $5000 display and a $300 computer don't make sense for that trend. Those who insist that x486 computers have plenty of compute power for reading email are encouraged to go buy one at a garage sale to remind themselves why there will continue to be demand for more computational power.
It is not unreasonable that new markets would choose to go with free software. This would include new geographic regions not already entrenched by windows, new demographics of computer users that didn't have a need for current computers, or new sets of devices for which the benefits of using MS are not clear. Current markets should not change much for the forseable future.
apply
* I will not login to every website on the internet.
** The moderation here is terrible, this will probably sit at -1 forever.
RMS is wildly optimistic but, OTOH, the loss of OEMs to Linux (or any other OS other than the MAC) would be the beginning of the end. As many people have pointed out, they don't get a huge chunk of their income from the MS tax but thing about the implication of machines having some other OS loaded at sale: no more Office sales! That is such a big hit to their income that it could bring them down.
A similar argument holds for the future .NET: take away IE and the default bookmarks MS will no doubt be putting into it and were does .NET go?
This just underlines why they are so keen to force OEMs to put Windows on their machines "or else": whree Windows goes Office follows. Where Linux goes StarOffice or KOffice follows and Bill doesn't make any money on them.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Jonathan Corbet, LWN.net
In related news, the flaws in the electoral collage will mean that the United States will never survive past the year 1879. Catholicism, based on a single book, will not last past 'The Dark Ages'. And the sky is falling. Thank you, goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.
What the vendors do won't change the fact that most people still want MS products. MS is the "standard" on the desktop, if you want to share office documents you need MS products, if you want to play games you need MS products.
Vendor support for Linux will not happen unless a large percentage of the general public wants it.
--
enterfornone - logging in for a change
60k bugs is either fact or not, and pretty much irrelevant anyway, so I won't comment. I don't know about the schedule, so I won't comment there either. What I do know about though is the 'without any problems' nonsense. I'll cheerfully acknowledge that win2k is by far the best windows yet, but if it ran without any problems, I'd get over 100 hours uptime on a regular basis, which I don't. Almost without fail, windows crashes (or becomes unusably tangled) between about 75 and 125 hours uptime. That's a damn sight better than the ~5 hours uptime I'd get with win95, but hardly problem-free.
Imagine if MS spokesmen spent their time with unfouded attacks on Linux. They don't - which is a sign of self confidens and maturity.
Do you live in a box? We have a german MS ad insinuating that the many flavors of linux are bad. Has anyone counted the number of versions of windows in the last 5 years (I seem to recall there are about 10 versions each of win95 and 98, not including the different language versions (which, by the way, have different sets of bugs in each), though winME and win2K are too new to have fragmented yet) and compared it with the number of linux distros?
How about the Naked PC page which insinuates that anyone who doesn't buy windows with their computer must be stealing it later.
For my third exhibit, I present The Linux Myths Page:
I should stop now, as this is becomming a rant, but surely you see my point? If not, I'll summarize: You're wrong. If MS were self-confident, they'd ignore linux and continue to push windows on its own merits. Unfortunately, it has comparatively few, so they've got to try to make everyone else look bad to make themselves look good. Maturity?!?
If you don't agree with RMS' style, that's fine. In fact, you should say so. Claiming that RMS' faults somehow make his arguments invalid is not the way to go about it though.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
If Microsoft's monopoly collapses, then so does Microsoft.
Puh-leaze. Just like ATT whithered and died?
On your other point, though, you're quite right. No one is going to give up the comfort of familiarity without a really, really good incentive to do so.
Agreed. ESR continually annoys me. In part, he has brought this on himself: his annotations to the "halloween documents" are weak snipes at MSFT, he compares Bill Gates to Hitler, and he openly calls MSFT and Bill Gates the enemy.
I think a lot of this comes from a lack of perspective. Bruce Perens seems to have mellowed since his look-at-me resignations from SPI and OSI. Hopefully, ESR will do the same. I'm fascinated by ESR and RMS: full-time free software advocates.
This is the best interview I've read in a long time. It's a shame that Slashdot has painted it with the anti-MSFT brush.
The only real threat to Microsoft is that no one will want WinCE. But RMS' argument really does hold water in that little slice of the market, IMHO.
Not all computers need to run anyone's "favorite" software. More special-purpose embedded stuff seems to be appearing. Take Tivo, for example. No one cares that Tivo can't read MS Word documents.
When you have specialized equipment that really just needs to run one application, the legacy issues go away and designers are free to use whatever is cheaper or works best. Those criteria tend to leave Microsoft out in the cold.
Alas, it's still just one slice of the market, and I doubt it's going to have much an effect on desktops.
Tangent: certain companies have successfully poisoned standards (and people's perceptions of what standards are) in a way that has strengthened Microsoft's and Netscape's market stranglehold. Notice that a lot of the cheap dedicated surfing machines have tended to run modern OSes like BeOS or QNX instead of 'Doze. But these boxes aren't selling well (AFAIK) because no matter how good their web browsers are and how well they support standards, they invariably don't handle proprietary defacto standards as well (e.g. RealAudio, Flash, etc.)
Thus, something as generic and ostensibly platform-independant as the WWW has become a place where the John Q Public thinks he needs his "favorite" software. Every time a w3b d3$1ng3r uses a proprietary extension, the world becomes a little more homogenous and a demon earns his wings, because he has prevented price/performance selection from happening.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I have to suspect that something is wrong with your Windows 2000 system (beyond whatever faults may or may not exist in the operating system, of course.) I'm using Windows 2000 Professional right now on a home workstation/server, and I've found it to be INCREDIBLY stable. I reboot it perhaps once a month, and the only time I've ever seen a blue screen is when I once downloaded some beta (as well as faulty) video drivers. I replaced those and haven't seen one since.
I'm not sure what exactly you're doing to that poor computer of yours to make it crash so often, but I doubt that your experiences are typical.
Hi, I'm a pretentious cock who will make some gay comment about ignoring AC posts here.
There's a lot here about open source, VA, Sun, IBM, RMS... Nothing I found particularly interesting, and he's ducking the hard questions (the word "Mozilla" is nowhere to be seen - the man who was so eager to wrap himself in the glory of that project now pretends it doesn't exist) - but focusing on that one bit of nonsense completely misses the point.
Oh well. Let's get back to the lengthy flamefest conducted by people who haven't read the article!
you could try, but if you did a traceroute, none of the packets would come back alive..
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
How many corp end users havr to set up anything. None I would say. It's the sysadmin's job. If I have a problem with access to the internet, say, I phone up the IT helpdesk and they sort it out for me. Linux would be just the same.
Not to mention the fact that all the game people are still writing to Windows. Now you and I may know that you should play games on your Playstation 2 and leave your computer free to run stock simulations, but Joe Average Luser wants to play games on his PC. Telling him to buy a Playstation 2 is simply hiding your head in the sand, though he probably actually already has one. Loki's cool in that department if you don't mind getting titles that were released for Windows 3 years ago and you don't mind buying them off the Internet, because you're not going to have any luck finding their stuff in any of the local brick and mortar stores (At least not where I live.)
And don't think Microsoft is going to sit there and let Linux compete either. They're going to do their damndest to prevent the Open Source community from competing with them. Do you think it's a coincidence that Joe Average Luser can't get DVD player software for Linux? Microsoft is a BIG contributor to the DVD consortium. As more and more media gets tied up in copy-protected formats, Open Source software proponents will have a much harder time pushing their software since it won't be able to play any media off the net.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
He was talking about the colapse of the Micro$oft monopoly.
I'm glad someone else mentioned this. Why did Timothy need to give the article a sensationalist bullshit header which is out of contect to even what the submitter wrote, let alone the actual article?
This happens often enough as it in the comments area, with people bullshitting and whining about stuff without actually reading the articles.
And this would be good why? I did the OS/2 thing. I rooted for a technically superior but market-share challenged proprietary underdog. (Who knew IBM would be so inept?) BeOS may have some technical advantages over Windows, but where are the applications? BeOS may have some advantages over Linux, but Linux is free--to use, to modify, to sell, to pay someone to fix, etc.
I'll grant that competition is good, even when both choices kind of suck, because it helps to keep people honest. That's why I root for Apple every now and then.
I'll cheerfully acknowledge that win2k is by far the best windows yet, but if it ran without any problems, I'd get over 100 hours uptime on a regular basis, which I don't. Almost without fail, windows crashes (or becomes unusably tangled) between about 75 and 125 hours uptime. That's a damn sight better than the ~5 hours uptime I'd get with win95, but hardly problem-free.
I'm not quite sure how everyone manages to get Windows set up so horribly. I'm currently writing this from a Windows 98 box with 88 hours and 16 minutes uptime. 75-100 hours uptime is the norm for me on Windows 98, so I find it hard to believe that your Win2000 box can't at least match that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
> "Nietzche is Dead." --God
Care to trace that quote to its source?
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
--
Game over, 2000!
Counting bugs is irrelevant - if I started counting the "admitted" bugs in the Linux kernel I'd be counting for quite a while.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Remember what he said before Windows 2000 came out?
:)
Yep. What's your point? Visionaries are more often spectacularly wrong than they are spectcularly correct. If you take what ESR says as being prophecy, you'll find him to be a remarkably lousy prophet. If you take what ESR says as being rumination, you might find a lot in there that warrants consideration.
And frankly, I find his ruminations to be far more interesting than anything I've seen from you here on Slashdot.
[N]ow it's out without any problems at all.
Win2K adoption is running less than half what was predicted, and far less than Microsoft was hoping. They put out a media blitz for Win2K which brought the Win95 launch to mind--in some ways it was even more over-the-top; Microsoft paid top dollar to make sure that every PC in the Bond movie The World Is Not Enough was running computers marked as "Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" and all the handhelds were running WinCE. That kind of massive media blitz costs a lot of money and suggests MS had a lot of confidence it'd sell like hotcakes.
So far, sales have been tepid.
Insofar as reliability goes, my Win2K box crashes about every three or four days. Windows NT 4.0 crashed once a month or so. Win2K, on my own machine at home (dual PIII/800s, VIA mobo) has failed to be reliable.
I think the problem is that he is a hangover from the immature days of Linux.
As soon as I have to wear a suit and tie to be taken seriously in the Linux community, I'll defect to FreeBSD. I do my hacking sitting in my boxers at 3AM. Kernel development proceeds chaotically and "immaturely", yet at a breakneck pace.
If you take away the "immaturity", you take away Linux's greatest strength--that it's young and still explodingly vibrant.
Imagine if MS spokesmen spent their time with unfouded [sic] attacks on Linux.
You have been living under a rock, haven't you?
It's said that in civilized debate, the first person to compare his opponent to the Nazis automatically loses. Sorry ESR, you lose.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What would an OS data structure be, if not a file? How about simple things like the floppy drive? That's a file under linux, and thus can be controlled by file permissions, as can ports, peripherals, etc.
/dev/port/80 so that you don't have to be root to open ports 1024? No.
I dunno. How about sockets? Can I do chmod +rw
Can I put access protections on the access protections so that someone can read a file but not see what the protections on the file are? No.
Can I put protections on only parts of a file? Say I want the introduction of my paper to be public but the financial data to be private? No.
Can I put access protections so that other people can't see what processes I'm running? Or so that they can only see how long it has been running but not how much memory it takes up? No.
--
Game over, 2000!
Microsoft could afford to give their OS away and still make a large profit. Per financial reports, Office alone produces 40% of MSFT net profits. Windows has a 25% share but, due to lowered expectations for earnings and a huge bankroll, MS could take the OS loss and still be extremely profitable. In fact (heresy here but what the hell) Linux would be seriously threatened if Windows became freeware. Due to current MS sensitivity to charges of monopoly, a freeware Windows probably isn't in the cards. But don't be surprised if, after the court decision has been reversed and MS is pressured by computer makers, MS does decide to give their OS away for a while.
2k sales will surpass 4.0 sales this quarter for the first time.
t ic leID=16345
http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Ar
Win2k has a ton of compelling features, and is a lot more robust than 4.0
ostiguy
> It might be nice if they ran the free software under Linux, or even BSD, but this isn't going to happen overnight.
Of course, as more and more Windows users adopt GNU tools and OSS toys, some will inevitable ask why they're paying for Windows when they could run the same stuff elsewhere.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The stock price manipulation is much more important than just that. As someone mentioned in a previous article, those stock benefits come at the cost of shareholders. If the stock slips, not only do they lose their work force, they also fall down a very slippery slope. If it starts to really slide, like down to the $20-30 range, having stock options given to every joe blow at MS becomes a serious threat to shareholder value. Then MS has to pay their employees better, and on top of that, they lose that really slick tax break they get for employee stock options. If MS goes, it will go down quick and hard.
Now as far as when that will happen, ESR predicting the fall is a bit like the CIA trying to predict when the Soviet Union would collapse. Open Source advocates just have too much involved in trying to make MS collapse for them to make any rational predictions as to when or if it will occur.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
But, hey, 6 months isn't too long from now, let's just wait and see.
Ok people. I don't wanna defend Raymond. Frankly his interview has some weak points.
But what I see here!..
Microsoft has a decent mail system? Cool, show it to me... Outlook? That piece of trash with good look? Very good. If you are a user then you must be a damn lucky guy to not have trouble with it. If you are a sysadmin, damn or you are REAL GOOD or you and me are not living on the same planet...
On what concerns the desktop. KDE vs Windows? That's old. KDE2 is not worser, in most points to Windows. It may be different. But most users consider it at the same level as Windows. Some even comapare to autos of different carmakers. And here I mean general users. Those who don't know nothing about command lines and bash scripts. Those who know this stuff, prefer things like WindowMaker or AfterStep.
Sorry StarOffice bashers. Yes, the tool has some serious esthetic drawbacks, but, sincerly, most people I see, either choose it or Office97. So second place in front of Office00 is not bad at all. And while the masses still use Windows, I'm already seeing a 50/50 OS fight among advanced users. For example, in the office I'm now, we have 5 Windows and 4 Linux desktops. On a comapny I know, the financial director already uses Linux for all his work. We suse StarOffice for nearly 80% of documents and i have not seen any serious drawbacks in the conversion of M$ docs.
On what concerns your stupid trend "Linux is not ready for the desktop". It is not ready and it will never be ready. In most sense. Linux is a building block. Something like a Lego box. If you don't wanna burn your brains building it for a month or two then go and get Windows. But don't come here saying this "linrftd" BS. If you don't have the preparation or the guts to make a desktop system, it's YOUR problem. My Linux box is working for the 5th month in a row. And because one HDD physically crashed. Or else it would be in its 11th month. My collegue is using a box with nearly no big changes since July last year! Now our Windows fans here, fully reinstall their piece of crap every month!
Yes it is a hard thing to do. My box took nearly one month to get into full work. But it is an office desktop machine.
The only thing I would agree is that Linux is not ready for games. Correct, I give up on this one. But I'm in an office and I have a job to do. Games, I can play in other machine.
And what concerns Microsoft loosing its monopoly. It already lost it. If you don't see, then you're quite blind. Many advanced users are already using Redhats, Mandrakes and even Debians for their regular work. And this is making many common users to pass frontlines. Just yesterday I had three users asking for my Linux CDs. Everyday I hear people asking things about Linux settings, configurations. Most, only claim the lack of games as the main barrier to not use Linux fulltime. And what is more significative, is that a large group of dial-up users uses only Linux in their Internet roaming. So don't tell me tales.
I'm seeing lots of talk about how if linux could only become "deployed" by OEMs it would be the next best thing since sliced bread. But OEMs will NEVER use it until they can make a profit. And they cna't make a profit off an operating system that isn't profitable to the companies they sell to. all companies will rely on windows b/c it is compatible and for the user who doesn't care what OS he runs, it is simple and effective. Unless the community makes a concentrated effort on changing linux DRAMATICALLY such that the typical user who only wants to surf the internet and word process can do it better then with windows, then nobody would gain by switching companies over to it.
I use linux and love it, but I'm a programmer. The typical user is not a programmer. the typical user wants to remain compatible, and wants ease of use, and wants multimedia. and you can not tell me that linux makes it easy to be compatible, or that linux is easy to use. if you tell me linux is easy to use, then I'll point out that every time I add a piece of hardware I have to reada howto, wheras with windows I could just Plug and play, and if yout ell me it is good for multimedia, I'll ask you a/b DVD, a/b quicktime, about netscape plugins, and all sorts of stuff, that havn't been developed because there isn't enough commercial demand for them.
So I ask that all us linux users stop fantasizing about the day companies switch over to linux, and make it something that companies would WANT to do.
Cos the shoddy ones are free. It's a matter of perceived value. Is ms office $400.00 better then star office? is photoshop $700.00 better then gimp. Well not for a lot of people but for some people yes. But they keep gettig better and better and one day it won't be worth the extra money to but office. Office will still be better but not enough to part with $400.00.
When that day comes MS will lower the cost or office will become just-another-office-suite both of which will make me very happy. With the two major cash cows windows and office becoming comodity items windows domination of the tech industry will finally come to an end and they will the just-another-software-company.
Already MS makes more money by buying and selling companies and stock then by selling software so I don't thinkg it's hurt Bill very much but what the hey.
War is necrophilia.
That's two totally misleading headlines you've posted about Microsoft in one week. Headlines that had nothing whatsoever to do with the story being quoted.
I suggest you guys take a course in remedial journalism. Better yet, get some kid from the local high school paper to help you out.
It reminds me of nothing so much as Apple at its deadly worst. Instead of OpenDoc and eWorld, we have SOAP and .NET. Instead of Pippin (remember Pippin?) we have X-Box. And instead of "beleaguered" (which ended up being a darn good wake-up call) we have "MS will never stumble, it always has more than enough money ahahahaha! It will never bobble, never never ahahaha! Here, have some more stock!" which to any normal investor or business person has to set off howling warning klaxons everywhere.
Tell me, if any other company was telling you about .NET, would you say it was even going to _ship_? If any other company told you it was going to expand outward into game consoles and beat hell out of Sony despite having no experience, console marketshare or reputation, would you believe a word of it? Do you seriously think _everyone_ is going to continue to believe black is white, X-Box is progress and .NET is the future just because MS used to have an awful lot of money?
The MS monopoly is outrageously expensive to maintain- they must spend huge amounts on simply maintaining total money hole products like IE to win marketshare and there IS no more marketshare and there aren't any sensible proposals for how they're going to shift to a sustainable profit model not based on continuous exponential growth. If they were forcibly broken up this would be a very good scapegoat for a complete overhaul that would leave them in good shape for years. As it is they are cruising towards a collapse because they insist on treating everything the same way they did when they were unseating Netscape and flooding the world with W95- and they are only the 900lb gorilla in computer software, not consoles or back-ends or servers or media. I don't think they will be able to adapt unless forcibly broken up.
(The big thing in this article is about how IBM is releasing new code under an Open Source license. The believe of Micro$oft being troubled plays well on /.)
ESR talks about how wonderful Open Source is. ESR talks at LinuxWorld and The Bazzar about how BSD is a fine open source product, and should get far more press than it does. (or how the BSD Kernel is better written code overall)
Yet, rather than talk about how Open Source OSes will become dominate in the market, ESR chooses to promote only Linux. Fetchmail comes in Linux pre-built binaries, and linux formatted packages...no BSD specific versions.
ESR is willing to be politically neutral on KDE/GNOME. ESR is willing to talk about how BSD needs more press, then uses Linux as the generic term for Open Source OS. If your position is as a 'leading' Open Source advocate, then choose to only mention BSD rarely, what kind of "open source OS advocate" are you?
If you are going to talk the talk about how BSD should have more promotion, why won't you walk the walk? ESR, why do you not promote BSD more, given you are a "leading Open Source" advocate? Lead by example, rather than empty rhetoric.
Or are you a good corporate shill for VA Research^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLinux?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I think the problem is that he is a hangover from the immature days of Linux. But now that Linux is growing up and becoming commercially valid, isn't it time that its spokesmen grew up as well? Imagine if MS spokesmen spent their time with unfouded attacks on Linux. They don't - which is a sign of self confidens and maturity.
It's time for RMS & ESR to behave in the same fashion, IMO.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
I love BeOS and use Windows all day at work. I've tried Linux several times, but have hated each time. Oh well, so it's not my cup of tea, but I gave it a shot. I'll try MacOS X eventually, too.
Anyway, I have an open mind, so I talked my roommate into buying an iMac instead of upgrading his Windows machine. Big mistake! I mean, I just ASSUMED MacOS was actually user friendly, since that's what all the Mac zealots are always throwing in our faces. The experience we had was definitely anything other than "user friendly."
First, we pull it out of the box. Cool design, cool keyboard, cool "zero-button" mouse, etc. We boot it up, the registration screens come right up to get us started. Mid-way through setting up the network, the thing freezes up solid. We wait 5 minutes and give up. Reboot. (Sound familiar?)
On the second attempt, it works OK. He starts trying out the different applications and getting used to it. He starts using the much-acclaimed MSIE for MacOS, and after browsing for awhile the system freezes up again. Reboot.
Later in the day, he wants some files off my Windows machine that he copied their before he trashed his old machine. Some MP3's. I figure, this'll be easy, right? It's fairly simple to access my Windows machine from my BeOS machine, so Mac must make it even more "user friendly."
Yeah right. Two hours (and several 3rd party application downloads) later, we've got a flaky connection to my PC using "DAVE." I don't remember the details (this happened a few months ago), but to put it mildly, DAVE was a pain in the ASS.
So we download these MP3's. Hmmm, what's this, some of them are not recognized? Oh shit the names got cut off because there was a shorter limit on MacOS filenames compared to my Windows MP3 filenames... so the ".mp3" got cut off and the Mac didn't make it too "user friendly" to get them working. (I ended up writing a perl script for the Windows machine to rename the long files before the transfer...)
The next day, he wants to get Quicken running again. I say, no problem, your iMac came with the latest version of Quicken! Surely this fine program will make it easy to import from your Windows Quicken files, right?
And so begins a day-long journey to get the Quicken files over to the iMac. I cannot describe how frustrating the MacOS file handler system is... it's ludicrous. BeOS is the king here with it's mimetype and smart filetype determination techniques. Windows at least let's me easily associate a program with a file extension. Christ I felt like a snake charmer trying to get MacOS to recognize the Quicken files we brought over from my machine! It was IMPOSSIBLE! The files would be sitting there, but you couldn't drag them onto Quicken to open them. If you double-clicked them, they opened in QuickTIME! I realize some Mac pro probably thinks I'm incredibly stupid, but I've been using computers for 18 years, and programming them for 5, and this was a huge pain in the ass!
Then on the third day, my roommate was getting pretty frustrated with the machine, and I was feeling real guilty for talking him into buying it. I tell him, if you will turn it back into Apple for a refund, I will build you a Windows PC that blows this iMac away.
Lo-and-behold, the company with the awesome hardware and "user friendly" operating system does NOT accept ANY returns WHATSOEVER. We told them everything -- it crashes, it's not user friendly, we are totally unsatisfied with the machine, etc. -- no deal! We complained to the BBB, and we got back a letter from Apple saying NO DEAL. I think that says a lot about their products. No money-back guarantee because they know (and I know now) that what sells the new Apple machines are the looks, and not the user-friendly OS!
So in rebuttal to the original post, the only way I'd give me grandma an iMac is if she put me in her will... if you know what I mean!
-thomas
"And like that
Linux Journal a few months back. The realy amazing bit is how much M$ makes by playing with their own stock. Also keep in mind many of their coders are staying for the stock because they are not making what they could in salary so a decent sized slip in the stock price could really snowball on them. Collapse is a little extreme go way downhill from where they are now makes alot of sense.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
A few years ago, I walked into a used computer store, looking for a machine for my sister. They had a few boxes sitting there with just a boot prompt -- No OS. when I asked why, they explained that the machines didn't come with proven MS licenses, so they couldn't load dos or windows onto them to prove that the machine worked. Microsoft was being snarky about cutting them a deal.
I suggested that they get a copy of Linux and explained that there would be NO problem with counting licenses. I figured that, if nothing else, seeing a bunch of storefront machines loaded with a competing operating system would cause the Microsoft marketing weenies to reconsider their intransigent attitude.
I think that that possibility is still there, but on a market-wide rather than a single-store basis. Although I find Linux far easier to install than Wintendos it's still a nontrivial task for most 'consumer' types. People going home with a box loaded with Linux and a couple of 'free' applications would go a long way towards breaking the 'linux is difficult' myth.
`ø,,ø`ø,,ø!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I agree, it sounds terribly atypical, but that's my experience with it. I'm still trying to figure out why Explorer crashes so often and takes down the entire system. It's a stock install with only mild tweaking.
I don't think you are correct.
They are _very_ different scenarios. The first is entirely possible depending on just how much they've been 'cooking' the books over there- they're running a stock pyramid and not charging option pay against earnings and the real situation could be absolutely anything- their financial statements should not be considered trustworthy. The second scenario is impossible. No matter what happens to MS, people will be using the software for quite some time, just out of habit and due to the momentum of the platform. This is orthoganal to MS's ability to earn real money- in fact their titanic installed base and interoperability with PC components is their worst enemy as well as Linux's, because they too have to replace all that W95/98 out there in order to maintain a marketshare of _new_ products. It may be mostly Windows out there but they were already paid for it and won't be seeing revenue from all those boxes again- it is a formidable handicap and very expensive proposition to maintain compatability with all the stuff out there.
If MS collapses as a business in 6 months, it'll be because their accounting was even sleazier than I thought. MS as an installed base won't be collapsing anytime soon, but it also isn't necessarily going to do MS the company any good.
1) Son of a Bush settles the federal case.
2) SOB pushes M$ throughout government.
3) M$ starts running a major PR campaign against linux, with a bunch of "frankenstein" horror stories, replete with viruses, hacks, etc from their "linux labs".
There is hope that the strong presence of IBM and AMD in Texas may well mitigate the uber-rights' influence on SOB to perform tasks 1/2...not to mention the close election...he may not want to infuriate the CA and UT reps/senators at this point.
But if the uber-right forces SOB to perform 1/2, I have no doubt M$ will push 3), then it would only be a short time till they control it all and start sending us monthly bills...the grand microsoft end game.
Then it will be up to a few of the euro and asian countries (perhaps china) to pull Linux back.
Great Big Googly Moogly, M$ has at least 30B in cash, plus a wide variety of investment income, and several apps that are selling at least somewhat at this point.
All they need now is for SOB to make DOJ settle the fed case...after which several states will drop out...and it will be back to "fleecing as usual".
I can't believe people are buying into the whole "oh yeah, i want to pay a microsoft bill every month, just like my phone bill". Geez, people, just stop using their crap and help Linux...that's the single best way to get rid of M$...and insure you never end up with a monthly software "Bill".
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Lack of hardware and software support? What lack are you talking about? Serious lack? Cards absolutely not configurable in Linux? Show me that please. Show me a field that is fully not Linux supportable. That you don't have one single turnaround.
Unification. The HELL with that!!!!! I DON'T want unification and most Linux users DON'T want that. The Hell with these KDE/Gnome wars. Let them both live in the herd. I'm neutral to them as I neither use none of their desktop managers. And i don't need common users hanging on BlackBoxes or WindowMakers.
Developing Mac/Windows complex apps? What do you mean by this? I am an ex-Windows/DOS developer and I saw three years of my life going through the pipes due to M$ "permanent revolution' of their SDKs. I have not seen worser Hell then to support a Windows app. Every three/six months a new patch or debug to hold apps in place. And every one of it taking days to solve, because M$, once again, decided to make changes to its super-embedded system. So you have to dig up sometimes farer than their SDKs. And they forbid reverse engineering. Oh my!..
Command lines are throwback? Do you realise what are you talking about? You have an automatised app doing a very specific job of sending and receiving files. Why the HELL I need to bloat it with a GUI interface? WHY DO I NEED IT?? If I can do 90% of the administration by using a command with three/four options on it? Why do I need to slowdown things, bloat them and cut my chance of combining commands, do batch tasks and more complex stuff?
And what concerns my friends needing help on Linux does not mean Windows ones need less. For them we have two whole departments of FIFTEEN people! One for the STUPID questions, the other for the less dumb ones. The last group is three persons only. Besides they support Windows desktops ONLY. Windows servers are FORBIDDEN inside our ISP network for very OBVIOUS reasons.
...ESR didn't say that MICROSOFT was going to collapse. He said that their MONOPOLY would collapse. In other words, they would have to compete on more equal ground. Given how many people read your editorializing, I think it is important to make that distinction in your comments.
Screw Micro$oft.
There is no way Microsoft is going to collapse in 6 months. None.
Microsoft has so many different streams of income that cutting one off will do nothing to the company. They may need to reorganize, they may need to downsize, but collapse? No way. Also, I fail to see what is so bad about Microsoft. If you want people to switch to Linux, you don't need to kill Microsoft. It seems a bit hypocritical that their strategy is to destroy all their competitors, and we hate them for it, yet when they might go down we all cheer.
Competition is good, and Microsoft isn't going anywhere.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
How many corp end users havr to set up anything. None I would say.
Too many people appear to confuse this with some kind of "home" setup.
It's the sysadmin's job.
Guess what? The last thing any sysadmin wants are end users installing their own software, messing around with low level settings, etc. Whilst these may be a plus for a home system they are a disaster waiting to happen in the corporate world.
If I have a problem with access to the internet, say, I phone up the IT helpdesk and they sort it out for me. Linux would be just the same.
If it was a problem with your machine it's less likely that you'd get booted out of your seat though...
If the transition between 95/98 to 2000 is difficult for them, imagine how moving from 95/98 to Linux would be!
At worst equally hard. Quite possibly less hard, because the people have less reason to cling to their Windows 9x assumptions.
The whole wizard-driven nature of Windows (like it or loathe it - I tend to the latter) means that most of them can set up stuff without needing more knowledgable people about. Installing programs is usually a couple of clicks, and there's an icon in the start menu so they can find it and run it.
Or youc an do this and BANG dump of the CPU registers on a blue screen. There might be an icon in the start menu but it could easily be something obscure and far from intuitive.
I don't believe in copying windos, it's the primary reason I use neither KDE nor gnome - they're trying so hard to be windos-like that it sickens me.
My complaint is more in copying the Windows approach of self administration. As a sysadmin I want to be able to set up a machine such that a use can simply login and use it. Rather than being expected to setup things like what browser proxy to use or mess around configuring POP3/IMAP access to files directly accessible in the first place. Also the ability to restrict changing configurations, either for all users or for specific users and/or groups...
The MS case is a LEGAL case, or hadn't you noticed. If the president could exert significant influence on legal proceedings, then how the hell do you explain the Supreme Court siding with Bush, despite the Democrat in the White House, or for that matter the Florida Supreme Court siding with Gore despite Bush's brother in the Governor's Mansion? This case is out of Bush's hands. Unless he pushes a bill through congress which does away with anti-monopoly laws (hardly seems likely given the make-up of congress), he cannot do anything to impede the case.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Richard: Good to see you here (I remember your excellent contribution
to the DOJ vs. MS trial analysis). If Bush *were* (I think it
unlikely) to try to get Microsoft of the hook, realistically, what do
you think his options are?
Thanks. It's always nice to be appreciated.
:),
It would presumably take the form of appointing an Attorney General who
would petiti0on to dismiss the case. Microsoft would certainly agree
but the other states wouldn't. This would simply remove the feds as a
party, but not otherwise affect the case.
Bush has indicated support for such a dismissal in the past, but I
expect his position would change when fully briefed. The general
free-market position is to avoid anti-trust actions, as they're
usually not justified by the economics. I agree with this, and fit
in firmly with Bork and Posner on it. However, after analysis, this
is one of the other cases.
Another possibility would be that the DOJ could push for a milder
remedy. This is possible; I'm certain there will be a remedy,
but I won't bank on the form. I believe that a split would actually
be less intrusive than any of the other possibilities, all of
which would require heavy-handed government involvement in running
the company. Were I a microsoft shareholder, I would much prefer
a split than such intrusion.
hawk, esq., etc.
Heck, I never quite succeeded in a fully functional 3.1 installation . . . I hve to resort to the default reinstallation . . .
hawk
case is that it is one of the handful of anti-trust cases that Bork
has actually supported.
I think I can't resist asking another question: Microsoft seem to
be basing their appeal on the argument that Jackson showed persitent
bias throughout the trial, confirmed by the lack of consultation over
the proposed remedy. Do you think they have much chance of success
with this?
ESR sez: and that they'll drop the M$ tax, and replace their bundled OS with something cheaper, like Linux
....and completely ignore what the general public wants, selling them computers that can't run their favorite software and games. Yeah, companies last real long when they do that. I hear DVD drives are expensive too, perhaps OEMs will drop them and replace them with Betamax drives.
NO CARRIER
However, I think the fall of Microsoft, whenever it comes, is going to come from below.
Or it might come when the 'gestalt' of the situation is right. I'm thinking of the 'nuclear accident' scenario, where several small and otherwise 'inconsequential' mistakes, were made, which in combination created a sudden and unstoppable 'shock'.
Debating where these small sparks might come from may be more interesting that the big "yes it will/no it won't" argument here on /.
The site seems to be slashdotted.
Here's a mirror
Flavio
people actually listen to what Microsoft says. You might say they are deluded or naive, but the point is that MS marketing works on the masses.
/. post for evidence.
The only people who listen to what linux people say are other linux people. When I point general people who are curious about linux to pro-linux sites, they tune out out of annoyance from the sheer chest-thumping and patriotic drivel. Just read a random
Yeah, go back to making wisecracks on MS and high-fiving each other. MS is still beating linux on marketshare and winning more newbies every year. Meanwhile, linux supporters keep wallowing in self congratulation. I thought the behavior would change, but it's getting more deluded than ever before.
method 1:Use the PC file exchange to set up Windows file types/extensions. When I download a file from the internet (*.qif) without a file type in the resource fork...this file association will be automatic if I have that set up
.qif-to-Quicken mappings, but they never worked correctly.
.html file into my text editor if I want to edit it, even though it is assocated with MSIE.
:-/
I tried the PC file exchange application, and it was totally unintuitive. (I don't remember the details of why I thought that, but I do remember thinking that.) We did try to setup
method 2:Did you try 'import' from the Quicken application?
Yep! And equally frustrating, the import window could never 'see' the quicken files we were trying to open. We would navigate to that directory on the HD, and those files would simply not appear, so we could not select them for importing!
A question then...What happens on Windows if two competing vendors of software decide to use the same extension? One installs over the other and the registry is all kinds of wacked. Is there some process/protocol/method to manage that sort of potential conflict?
No, but I never run into a problem. I usually don't have a filetype that I want to open in two different programs that often. But unlike what I say in the MacOS, I could drag a
I agree that Be is a good OS. Tried it...liked it, but it has similar drawbacks to Linux to average joe end user, no?
Uhhh, no? BeOS is incredibly easy to use, more-so than Windows, and especially Linux. My brother (a total newbie) boots into BeOS simply because the CD burner that comes with R5 is so much easier to use than anything he has in Windows! Linux is by far THE hardest OS I've seen in terms of installation, configuration, maintenance, software upgrades, and driver installation/upgrades.
That said...I'm very excited for OS X!!! Hope you enjoy it!
I hope so, too. Then again, I probably will not try it until Apple comes out with some less expensive hardware (and/or offers a money-back guarantee).
-thomas
"And like that
PC makers will, and probably have been, sick of the mandatory MS license. I don't think that switching to Linux would save them though.
For one thing, they would need to pay the cost of training all their employees on whatever Linux flavor they plan on shipping. I'm not a Linux guy so I don't know the answer to how often updates are released and how much those updates change things that the average user wouldn't understand.
Right now I work at a software dev shop / ISP and the ISP side of it isn't too bad. Anybody that calls up and says they have Linux, all I need to give them is the DNS and phone numbers. I don't know how long it would take for me to master Linux to the point where I could walk somebodies grandfather through setting up dial-up networking. It might not be too bad from what I have seen of Linux. Probably no worse than the different flavors of Windows that they keep moving the network settings around in.
Still, I think the initial cost of retraining and rebuilding knowledge bases would be prohibitive.
However, there may be a coup against MS and the vendors will band together and tell MS who's their daddy. In any case, it'll be interesting.
I'm not sure that it's even one of the few--off the cuff, I can't recall any others that he supported.
I think microsoft's chances are very slim. If the fact that a judge was
underwhelmend and annoyed by the incompetence and misconduct of the
attorney's before him became grounds for reversal, the system would
be in *big* trouble. Ruling against you is not a sign of bias . . .
hawk
They will NEVER remove Windows from PC's and replace it with something cheaper/free. 95% of all PC owners DO NOT want Linux on the desktop because it won't run the apps they need in everyday life.
The question you have to ask yourself is this. Which company can last longer giving its product away from free? MS or Dell/Compaq/Gateway? Obviously its MS so all MS has to do is nothing at all and the PC manufacturers will have to eat the cost or pass it along to us because they can't slice their own margins any thinner. Haven't you been listening? That's what monopolies are for. To maintain the price at any arbitrary level regardless of the market. And you know what? Let's say the doomsday scenario comes to pass and Dell/Compaq/Gateway go under. Someone will step in to take their place and MS will just continue to sell Windows to them, this time though for a higher price.
Guess what: the U.S. DOJ is *not* the only victorious plaintiff in the suit. Even if it were to dismiss, you still have a gaggle of states who would press on for remedy. He'll also probably get better economic and anti-trust advice, and see that an unfettered microsoft is *not* pro-competitive, but that's a side issue.
The question is not whether or not the suit will be dropped, but what the remedy is. While I'm at it, the folks opposing the breakup because the free-market will take care of it are right about the market--but the market will take a few (5-10?) years, during which consumers continue to lose billions of dollars to the illegal practices.
Also, the notion that Linux is tricky to configure while windcows is not seems to come from people who actually haven't configured both of them (you may have tried, but that would make you a rare exception). Installing windows from scratch is *much* harder. And when the machine ships with an OS, the user doesn't have to configure it either way.
hawk, antitrust lawyer and economics professor
However, Microsoft still has the patented Evil Secret Escape Pod of subscription-based software...so the minute we see their operating system prices come down (in fact they could even do this themselves on purpose), I expect we'll see most of the other software people are dependent on them for to switch to a subscription basis, and *blam*, they maintain their lock.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Secondly I think that independent re-discovery of the technique should be an affirmative defense against patent infringement, that is, you can't patent a technique, keep it secret, and if then somebody else uses the same technique, suddenly surfaces with the patent and say "oh, here's our secret technique which we have patented, and this means you can't use it."
ESR is either being overly simplistic to make a point or he's ignorant of what a patent IS. You can't "patent a technique [and] keep it secret." A patent means that you make your invention a matter of PUBLIC RECORD. In return, you have a time-limited monopoly on the use of your invention. Because patenet information is available to everyone (legally speaking), you can't re-discover it, anymore than you can re-discover relativity. Sure, you could learn the same mathematics Einstein knew, start with his postulates, and proceed to the same conclusions, but NO ONE would suggest that you had re-discovered relativity.
Since patents are a matter of public record, it could become very difficult to sue someone for infringement. I could secretly research your patent. I could conduct a few months of phony research - perform experiments, build devices, and (most importantly) keep careful records. whatever. I could then 're-invent' your device, and I'd have the paperwork to show that it was independent. How would an outsider know that I had actually stolen it? How would you prove it? Yet stealing it is what I would have done.
I do agree that 'submarine' patents are bad; applications for patents should become immediately matters of public record.
Wake up: things don't last forever. If Microsoft is 'broken up' I give them ten years before they become irrelevant.
If they are not 'broken up'- I give them three years.
I'm not going to claim to be an authority on this, just gonna give my two cents and let the slashdot crowd tell me if I'm off my rocker here.
;)
Linux is good. It's not great, yet, but good. I can name several big institutions that run their entire network with Linux, FreeBSD, and DU. It's a great system for computer enthusiasts, "hackers" (not necessarily the malicious kind), and geeks. It is still not ready, however, for the average computer user. I know this because I work support for the average computer user and have a good understanding of what users want.
Users DO NOT want to spend days figuring out how to setup a device. Nor do they care about kernel level optimizations or text-file configurations. They, as their name implies, USE the computer to play games, browse the Internet, process documents, and draw pictures. Linux HAS all of this, except it is missing the components that keep the low level "tech" from them. Case in point: most Windows users will stare at you blankly if you ask them ANYTHING about the "command prompt" or "dos-mode". Isn't that something they got rid of a long time ago? Wasn't it something only used when computers were a geek toy? The answer is YES. Windows, for the most part, does not require the user to operate the CLI at all. Linux, OTOH, almost requires the user to have at least some familarity with the console and text-files, directory structure and conf file locations. Why do some "personal" versions of Linux come pre-installed with a web-server? Huh? It's still AIMED at people interested in computers.
Maybe a splinter group (or is there one out there?) should focus on adapting Linux to the common person - one that my mother could use, and one that I don't have to spend days massaging (note that I enjoy playing with Linux on a lower level, so this isn't really a concern for me).
I think, at the present time, Linux can NOT replace Windows on the average desktop - and possibly not for at least another year. Add to that the fact that Linux/X is a much different experience than Windows.
BeOS, OTOH, is a much better direction in terms of something to de-throne the giant.
Bah, but what do I know anyhow?
Price, Quality, Time. Pick none. What, you thought you had a choice?
A monoploy that could be brought down by other people simply buying other available products. ROTFL
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Hey,
I would give my grandma/ma/kid/pal a Mac before inflicting Windows on them.. In fact, I just did (I gave my ma a portable MP3 player and set her up on an iMac because I wasn't going to pay or l33ch for M$ USB support) and I couldn't be happier..
Unless you _like_ doing tech work for free during your free time.. I used to, until I exited my teenage years and discovered my time was worth something more than PC tech slavery..
Your Working Boy,
Microsoft's dominance of the desktop has reached such a critical point where it's hard to expect the entire world to change. Predicting that [one | some] free operating system(s) will cause Windows to lose it's majority (a prerequsite for Microsoft losing it's monopoly) in six months is a bit like predicting that the US will convert to metric in six months.
Sure, we use base 10 for everything, so one could argue that the US will switch to metrics shortly because it makes sense. But we (as a nation) are so comfortable with the english system, as we are with the Windows platform, that change will be slow and painful. ESR says that the fact that PCs are getting cheaper is a good indicator that PC manufacturers will get fed up, but this I doubt.
I say this because PCs have always gotten cheaper, and hardware is getting cheaper as well. Given how most people see windows as indispensible, they have no objection to paying for a license. If the so-called "MS Tax" ends up being a much larger percentage of the total cost of the computer, I think the logical response from Microsoft would be to lower their prices; not to keep charging an amount people won't pay until they die.
Microsoft keeps up with things; they aren't about to lose their monopoly due to changes that were expected (cheaper, smaller, faster) but will rather require many more unexpected events to appear on the horizon: but note, MS has their radar up.
-bugg
And remember what he said about Y2K?
I admire and like Eric--he's an uber-hacker--but I think in his zeal to sell "Open Source", he's become too confident in his theories.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Exactly, besides the fact that margins being down is more likely to affect smaller makers, which tends to do some weeding in the marketplace. The time is now for any pc maker who thinks they may need to, um, think differently, if they want to avoid direct competition with 800 lb. gorillas, to start looking at more alternatives than just Linux. Their solution might include Linux, but I'd doubt that on its own, Linux is enough of a differentiating factor.
I do not have a signature
However, whatever it says, there is no way Microsoft could collapse in six months. The make more money from Office and their other ventures than the OEM. I highly suggest this read
http://www.netaction.org/msoft/world/MSWord2World. html
To see just how far reaching Microsoft really is... their investments include everything from Dreamworks to BET to Apple.
check it out.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.