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Why 2002 Will Be Better Than 2001
Commercial Web Sites Will Make Money in 2002
Commercial Internet expansion will not stop just because some of the most-publicized early dot-coms were run badly and are now going broke. For every Amazon that goes down, there will be another company like J C Penney that expands its Web presence and turns it from brochureware into a complete online shopping experience, another airline like Southwest that decides to rely more on its Web site than on travel agents to sell tickets, and a whole new crop of online businesses that will be started by people who learned their lessons from the first burst of ecommerce and will be more hardheaded and profit-oriented than their predecessors.
There may never be as much venture capital looking for silly Internet schemes as there was before 2001, but so what? I started the limo business that gave me the "Roblimo" screen name without venture capital, and it is a lot more expensive to buy limousines than it is to make a Web site. I have many friends who own and operate small and medium-sized businesses they founded either with their own savings or with the help of friends and family, who are making excellent livings today and aren't thinking about going public or getting bought out. They take in more than they spend every month, expand a little at a time, and that's all they need to keep them happy. I believe we will see more of this thinking applied to Internet businesses in the future by both small-timers and big companies. The land-grab mentality is over. The Internet is now part of the business landscape, not something special.
Internet businesses will still come and go. The classic figure is that 80% of all small businesses fail in their first five years. But plenty of online businesses will grow and prosper, buy or lease server hardware, and hire programmers and Web designers. They aren't going to do it in frenzied end-of-the-20th-century style, and the days of workplace-as-playground are probably gone, but there will be more Internet jobs than ever once we get through today's shakeout.
Hardware Will Wear Out
Advances in hardware, especially desktop and laptop units, have been negligible over the past few years. Yes, you can now buy a GHz uP for less than you paid for a 500 MHz one a few years ago, and RAM is cheaper, and so on. That's all very nice, but it means nothing. A majority of desktops and laptops in the world today are used for nothing but running business software, email, and Web browsing. In this context, rather than in the geek/techie world of speed for its own sake (and for game playing), there is little practical gain in doubling CPU speed, and a 20 GB hard drive is plenty big enough, especially for a business desktop connected to a network -- as most are nowadays.
The generally accepted lifespan of a computer in the world of corporate accounting is about three years, and the IRS depreciation schedule says it's five years. So all those computers purchased in the last half of 1998, in all of 1999, and into the first quarter of 2000 are still new enough that there is no compelling financial reason to replace them. But computers wear out. Keyboards get grungy, monitors get dim, and cases start to get a yellow tinge even if they are cleaned regularly. Hard drives crash after they've spun around umpty-ump times, and parts failures in general increase with age. A manager who is trying to look thrifty might not feel comfortable asking to replace two-year-old computers, but can easily justify replacing three-year-old computers that are starting to need regular repairs. And after five years, when those computers are "depreciated out" by IRS standards, and buying new ones can start the depreciation tax break cycle all over again, it becomes mighty tempting for even the worlds' most penny-pinching boss to start taking bids for new boxes.
Computers bought in 1997 will reach the end of their tax-depreciation life next year. Computers bought in 1999 will be three years old in 2002. Even if no great new technologies hit us in the next few months, we are going to see a lot of old computers replaced before long, probably starting in the fourth quarter of 2001, in a cycle that is going to continue for at least another three years after that.
Why Corporations Will Happily Lease Software
As co-owner of DSM&RM Inc, the holding company that owns Robin's Limousine and rights to any freelance writing I do outside of OSDN, I love to lease instead of buy. For many years, the limousine I drove was owned by a corporation controlled by a friend, who leased it to me. We did this because limousines, like computers, have a five-year tax depreciation lifespan, while lease payments are 100% deductible in the year you make them. It gets a bit more complicated than this in practice, and you can buy up to $20,000 worth of computer equipment and deduct it all in a single year, but Slashdot is not a tax advice site and I am not a CPA or a tax lawyer (and this article should not be considered personal or corporate tax advice, which you should only get from a qualified professional) so we'll keep things simple here.
Suffice it to say that from a tax standpoint, most companies consider leasing better than buying. And as a side benefit, leasing leaves capital in your hands to carry you through a slow month or make a sudden purchase instead of tieing it up in things like computers, limousines, trucks, bulldozers, office furniture or whatever -- or in software, which the IRS allows you to depreciate over three years.
You can laugh at the idea of software having a three-year lifespan if you want, but that's the IRS rule right now, and if you look at Microsoft's release cycle, you'll notice a three-year pattern. You may not like Microsoft, and the company may make a lot of mistakes, but when it comes to macro-marketing, especially in the commercial arena, their people generally know what they are doing. And Microsoft is turning to software leasing.
"Ha ha," lots of techies say, "Who in their right mind is going to lease software instead of owning it?"
Answer: Lots of corporate managers who listen to their financial people and tax strategists.
Besides tax advantages, leasing software with upgrades as part of the deal makes software budgets predictable, and unless your business is software, you'd just as soon not spend any time or energy worrying about it. It's lots easier to sign a lease contract once every two or three years than to constantly track software upgrades. I'd like to do that myself. Of course, since my business runs entirely on Linux, I am not interested in leasing software from Microsoft. But isn't the Red Hat Network essentially the Free/Open Source Software equivalent of a Microsoft software lease program? If I sign up with Red Hat Network, every dime I spend on it is tax deductible, and I have a fixed-price contract with a known company that (for a fee) makes sure my computers have the latest stable versions of all the software I use, and will take care of security patches and upgrades so that I don't have to worry about such things and can concentrate on running my business instead.
And note that everything I say about my tiny, home-based business applies even more to larger companies. I have five computers, three of which are critical for everyday operation. If you have thousands of computers, anything that makes managing them and making their cost more predictable is worthwhile. Whether you are using Macintosh, Windows, Amiga, OS/2, BSD Unix or Linux doesn't matter. Money and taxes are totally OS-independent.
Open Source Opportunity
What I -- and most people in business I know -- really want from our computers is to have them do their jobs without any fuss. I have more personal commitment to Open Source and Free Software than most small business owners, and I'm more than typically willing to experiment with hardware and software, but in the end my main desire, most of the time, for my business computers, is to not think about them at all!
For me, business computer nirvana would be the ability to write a single monthly check (of moderate size) to a local company and have that company take care of all my computer needs. Other than out of curiosity, I wouldn't care whether my computers were running an RPM-based or Debian-based distribution. As long as my computers worked reliably and ran all the software I needed at a reasonable speed, I'd be satisfied
There are plenty of systems packagers and value-added resellers [VARs] that provide this level of service for Windows-based business computing, but few for Open Source users. This is silly, and it is going to change. There is a grand business opportunity in this area for small entrepreneurs who don't have a lot of capital, and it continually shocks me that companies like VA (which owns Slashdot, remember), Red Hat, and others that play heavily in the Open Source sandbox haven't been encouraging resellers and systems packagers all along, right down to providing franchise-style "Linux Consultant in a Box" packages complete with "approved" software, "certified" hardware packages, and all the rest of the support structure that has long been availbale to Windows-based VARs.
This is not the first time (or place) I've suggested this business opportunity, and it won't be the last. But now that investment capital is not easy to come by, and Linux companies need to make profits just like car parts warehouses and all the other businesses in the world, maybe a few more people will listen to the idea.
What I Say Here Doesn't Matter
Real life is real life. It will take its course whether you agree or disagree with what I have said here. Aging computers are going to wear out and get replaced either way. The cost of developing proprietary software is going to keep on rising, and Open Source is going to become an increasingly attractive alternative. Sooner or later -- probably sooner -- at least one innovative politician will claim he or she can save taxpayers millions (on the local or state level) or billions (on the national level) by switching from proprietary to Open Source Software and, especially if the local, state or national economy is in "down" mode at the time, will get additional votes by taking that stance. Other politicians will notice, and suddenly you'll see Linux and Open Source popping up all over the place in government buildings, even (perhaps especially) on office desktops.
IRS policies have -- and will continue to have -- more effect on corporate computer purchasing policies than all of the articles and comments on Slashdot put together. All the dying "pure" dot-coms in the world aren't collectively spit next to the big, established companies like J C Penney and Wal-Mart that are just now starting to pick up steam on the Internet (and are hiring laid-off dot-commers). And even these giants aren't going to have as much of an effect on Internet spending over the next few years as the millions of small businesses that are only now discovering that a Web site is less expensive (and often more effective) than a big Yellow Pages ad.
So relax. Whatever you and I say or do, things will be better next year than this year for almost everyone who works with computers or the Internet. And while Linux and Open Source may not dominate the world as fast as some people would like, you are going to see them become steadily more popular over the next few years, no matter what happens to any particular Linux or Open Source company.
If people now buy one $50 Redhat installer instead of 10,000 Microsoft licenses, there is that much less money into the economy.
I have to disagree here. Yes, less money is spent on software, and a much better value is delivered to customers. But to say that this results in less money into the economy is fallacious. It only means that much less money goes into the software industry. That money does not evaporate! It simply finds a home in another investment for the company or as profit to the share holders.
In practical terms, getting more for less is the definition of a growning healthy economic environment. Getting less for more is the definition of inflation.
I am not an economist...Thank Heaven!
mind explaining to the rest of us what this means?
I disagree with the implication that US Gov't meddling with Microsoft is ruining the economy. What happens to M$ can only have an insignificant effect. It's only one big fish in a huge ocean. Nobody ever talks about what Microsoft's monopoly has been costing us all along in terms of stifled innovation, anti cooperation, and higher prices. Think of how rich Bill Gates is. Then think of a different world in which Gates is only a millionaire and not a Multi Billionaire. Consider that all those other billions and millions could have been fueling innovative new companies with new ideas, and perhaps even better products.
To imply that Open Source will ruin the economy by taking money out of it is ludicrous as well. If my company doesn't have to pay $1 million for software, it will have that $1 M to spend someplace else. Perhaps they can hire more staff to support free software. Perhaps the extra dough will go to shareholders, and they can spend it on shiny new cars.
It is my observation that 2 things are slowing the US economy down.
1) The Energy situation is slowing things down for various reasons like, higher prices, lower consumer confidence.
2) The fallout from the dot bombs has lots of people pinching pennies now. If I was a millionaire on paper last year, and now I only have thousands on paper, you can bet I'm going to be saving a little more and spending a little less. All those former dot com employees are spending a little less too. And all those venture capitalists that blew their wad on some now dead company, now have no money to loan to legitimate ventures.
I think that taking VC money is like selling your soul to the devil. And the dot com frenzy almost forced companies to do it. If all of my competitors are getting millions to bootstrap themselves, and buy advertising, how can I possibly succeed without doing the same? So we ended up with sectors of dot com economy built on poor business models, and fueled by nothing but GREED. With people placing bets, just because they think stock prices willgo up, with absolutely no concern for the long term viability of the business.
I STRONGLY disagree that "not buying something" embraces the communistic ideal and leaves no potential for advancement! That's like saying that all companies must never create their own software, or reuse existing software, if a product is on the market that can be purchased.
Who does Trevor Goodchild work for? Microsoft?
They will not. They are just another business model.
First off, the internet. The only companies that can make money online are companies that can also make money offline. There is nothing fundamentally new about the internet, and by the law of diminishing returns it is a lot less revolutionary than the telegraph and telephone were in their day. It eases communication and remote business, sure, but it does not provide some new paradigm. The people, usually the High Priests of Wired magazine and denizens of this site, who claim that the internet is radically new are completely wrong.
Open Source, too, does not change business plans. Microsoft is moving to .NET and distributed application hiring models anyway. Redhat, Sun and the like are doing the best they can to keep up with this. Because in 10 years most businesses will be running dumb terminals and applications will be actually running inside the software giants houses, whether something is open source or not is largely irrelevent. This is the new reality we are moving too - what matters is not Linux, Windows and other OS's, what matters is applications and the ability to keep them up stably. MS can do this, as can Red Hat and Sun and IBM. We will see the return of an effective closed source business policy, as Red Hat will be leveraging its .NET equivalent, and customers will not be able to access the source code as said source code will be running on Red Hat's machines.
My view is that all the twaddle talked of new paradigms and so on is just rot. Business models haven't changed since the 1850's in any significant way. The law of declining returns is showing that new technologies effect our profit making capabilities less and less.
The British East India Company, the largest company the world has ever seen (who said multinationals were a new phenomenon? They have benefitted us for a couple of centuries, and are smaller now than they were last century), had a business model no different from Microsofts. While people may despise MS, I must say that as a libertarian I cannot in all conscience say that I would like them to be punished. Libertarianism is about allowing companies like MS to do what they want, as the market is always right. I agree.
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- Enter the niche market, want a Transformers T-shirt?
Actually I do want a Transformers t-shirtAlex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Good idea, it will be cheaper to replace the employee.
( N O T )
Wait a minute, you're saying that people paying RedHat $50 instead of paying Microsoft $100 means $50 less into the economy? Can someone explain this to me? Won't consumers just spend that $50 on something else (maybe hardware?), thereby still injecting the full $100 into the economy? It's just going into RedHat and some other company, instead of into Microsoft.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Historically recessions last 1/3 as long as expansions. Most economists believe the recession will last until 2005. Historically software engineers had to reach near total unemployment before a recovery started and we're not there yet. Either enough had to get disenchanted to drain the applicant pool or enough had to get fired to motivate startups before a recovery could happen. Unfortunately most CS majors who got laid off before 1993 left the industry and leave little perception of reality to today's CS majors.
Computers don't really wear out, my master browser at home is a 486/33 running FreeBSD, it must be 7 year old at least. But I'm getting ready to rotate it out and replace it was a P90.
I'm in a similar boat. I bought one of the first commercially available 80386DX/33s from my dad about 4 years ago. He'd bought it new in '84 or '85 and spent a fortune on it. It's my firewall but may have to finally get laid to rest since it doesn't seem to like the PCMCIA bridge I put in it for my wireless network.
The funny thing is that this computer is one of the original 80386DX motherboards. The cache logic (64k!) is done in discrete GALs and PALs. 16M is the total amount of memory you can put on it (4M in DIP, 4M in SIPP and 8M in 30-pin SIMM on a special riser card). I've never replaced the power supply, supply fan nor the 3.5" floppy drive (although I think that drive is a year or two newer than the system) and while the BIOS thinks that the year is 1901, the system works perfectly. Theoretically it should have given up the ghost long ago: DIP chips tend to become unseated and a motherboard that BIG and having that many solder connections should have had something go by now. But no... I have to replace P2 systems after a couple years of work but this old DTK system keeps on going and going.
Maybe those old systems were just engineered "better". I say better because as a consumer it's never given out on me but, as a systems designer myself, I know that truly engineering something includes End of Life calculations and having a design survive past that is an indication of underengineering. :-)
If he bought it in '84 or '85 he must have worked at Intel. As I recall Compaq was the first with a 386 box and they brought it out in 1986.
I'll have to reboot it tonight to see what the BIOS says. I'm pretty certain it's 1985 (I used to have a printscreen cap of the bios settings showing June 1995 I believe) but you may be right here... probably are. :-)
Mhh, would that box be worth anything at an auction? or would it get treated like the rest of the landfill x86 clones?
Probably landfill. :-) I've still got the original 120M (I think) HDD, but it doesn't work.
Take a look. Reagan had two recessions during his 2 terms.
What's going on in the US economy is a financial hangover from the binge-drinking VC funding of questionable Internet startups. It's not like computers or the Internet is going away. Businesses are going to leverage network technology a lot more adroitly in the near future. Businesses exist to make money, not change society. Those ventures that forget this are soon dispatched.
While I'm uncertain if more friendly tax laws for R&D will revive the bull market, I do think that it will only take a few months of investor wound-licking before a new surge happens. Despite the machinations of Al Greenspan, economic surges are a bottom-up phenomenon.
We are in a time of correction. Consumer and VC spending will be forth coming. Unlike the recessions of the Reagan years, this economy has some very strong things going for it. Investor fear will soon diminish.
It might be a good time for techies to take a vacation before the next wave of startups locks them away from sunlight again. ;-)
In the case of a lease, you're NOT allowed to use the software if you don't pay. With the way things are right now, if things don't work, you don't need the "enhancements" you don't buy a nev version. It's not leasing right now and frankly, I don't want it that way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Depends on percentages. You can deduct a percentage of the machine proportionate to the business use and it'll pass an audit- because it's allowed for in the Tax Codes.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Leasing equipment makes some small sense for small business- leasing software is a disaster.
If you own the software, you own your data.
If someone else owns the software, it is thier data as they control every aspect of it's use- especially if you're leasing it. If they don't agree to your usage, you're not entitled to it after you've put it there.
Personally, as a businessman, I don't want anyone except myself owning the information that I use and collect on a daily basis. If a business sees that, they're not going to like leasing as it's a liability not a benefit like it might be with physical items like equipment.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's given me plenty to think about, particularly since I just did my taxes (TurboTax via WWW).. I've got a nice return due me (a smidge more than $4.2K) and I'm thinking about my options as I look for a new job...
;)
And Re Y2k spending: I did some time as a Y2k consultant (built a HPUX/Solaris/Novell/NT/IOS lab for testing software/hardware for a bank) and I know at least _they_ were chucking non-compliant equipment by the shedload. Lots of cheap SCSI HDDs and even fixable-BIOS 586s (which were considered cheaper and better taxwise to simply upgrade than fix) were scavenged
Your Working Boy,
- Otis (GAIM: OtisWild)
The omens are that this will get worse. It seems that open source's time has come. It has been said that open source will provide 50% of software for the country. The result of this is less money into the economy. If people now buy one $50 Redhat installer instead of 10,000 Microsoft licenses, there is that much less money into the economy. Companies such as Microsoft will find that they will do less well, and the knockon effect will be on the economy - not just that of the US but economies around the world. The potential is for global recession without the growth caused by the IT industry.
How stupid are you?
Run that logic over an analogy: everyone should pay or their air, for fear of less money moving into the economy? Everyone must travel by space shuttle, since it's more expensive than car?
D'oh! I think not.
Communism damaged people because it was coercive. Free software is a gain because it is both more competitive and freely chosen.
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I develop linux software for bread, right now, but I still have to take issue with your comment about microsoft's treatment of developers. There are *MANY* things that I dislike about microsoft, but one thing you CAN say about the company, is they treat developers incredibly well.
Even microsoft knows, that you don't sustain an OS without apps ;)
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
Not just Americans.
I've been successfull in deducting phone bills in personal income tax by writing a nice letter telling the Finnish IRS that I need to access internet and use fax due to my work (I deducted bills for only two phone lines, data and fax).
Same with many other issues. A computer, too, deductable in three years.
However, with a company, I've been able to deduct a lot more. As I'm not the sole owner of the company (it's a real company that does real work), I can't of course bill everything from the company. But quite a lot, if I do my tax planning right and work a good deal with the other owners.
Still, last computer purchase was a lease. Because I didn't see any point in buying computers any more, even if the company is in IT sector.. Of course if You own the computers, many upgrades can be deducted at once, but there's a limit to upgrading, too.
However, when You use computers to the very end of their lifespan, owning may be cheaper. In such case I'd advice to check if You can get a good lease with an option to buy after the lease period. For me, about two years seems to be the "desktop" period of a new computer, after which it moves to some server duty, ending it's lifespan when I don't need another router or whatnot and thus don't have a suitable placement for it anymore.
Well said. The constant that exists is that people have to eat, and they will invent ways to make a living if the old way doesn't work anymore.
Eliminating inefficient uses of people causes those people to find other jobs, hopefully in more efficient tasks. This helps to drive the economy forward, because the global productivity value goes up.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
This again sounds like an atoms/bits confusion. In the first place, we don't really *purchase* software, we purchase a *license* that makes it legal to use it. The software remains the property of those who produce it. So how is leasing any different, just the tax advantages? Before you'd pay $60 for a dos license and that was that and the software house had to come up with something new and improved, and so you'd buy a Win31 license, etc., etc. So now what, does a software leasing company purchase a volumn license deal for say Windows 2K and then lease it out to customers for more than the customer could have paid for it (the leasing company has to make a profit now) + the maintenance? I'm all cornfused now.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
That's way cool man...oh yeah you forgot to mention that you must have two computers at home because if you use your "business" one for reading things unrelated to work and you still deduct it you are committing tax fraud.
I have several computers at home, I write about network operating systems. At the time I wrote my last book, I had a 5 node network.
You are the reason people with legitimate home office deductions are audited so frequently.
And the book that I wrote that brought my almost $7,000 dollars is not a legitimate use of my ome office?
And the book in 1999 that almost brought me $5,000 is not a legitimate use?
Here's hoping the IRS audits you!!
Gee, you're kind. You must be a joy to be around.
Geez..This parent got +3, damn moderators are ignorant about finance and accounting and jump on whatever remarks "seem" cool without knowing squat.
And you're fucking ignorant about tax codes and home office deductions.
Schedule C asks you what percentage of the home office is used for personal work versus business, and I do go conservative on that amount.
I underestimated that amount on my ISP, my computers, my books, my software, and my electrical consumption.
Maybe you're thinking of people that abuse the hobby clause, let me tell you that I've done this for 2 years, and made money both years, so I could even lose money for 2 years without worrying.
Anyhow, come back when your parents kcik you out of their basement and you actually fill out a 1040, with A, C and E forms.
Moron.
later, thermo
Roblimo is right, for us Americans, taxes can have a huge impact on what you buy.
If you don't have a homebased business, you should, it's amazing what you can deduct. And the IRS rules let you get creative on deductions. Ie, computers must be depreciated over 5 years, but I think you can claim parts all in one year. Buy a $50 Pentium, deduct it $10 a year for 5 years. Buy a 40 gig HD, a Pentium 500, 128 Meg of RAM, a burner, that's all supplies/office expenses, $600 you can deduct right away (about $150 back in my tax bracket).
So, gentlemen, start you SOHO businesses.
later, thermo
Or is it only when government intervention creates millionares that it doesn't damage society?
More money in the economy, less money in the consumer's pocket, less consumer confidence. It's six of one and a half-dozen of the other.
The Free Software Movement was an inevitable response to the way corporate america was handling software development. We let Microsoft do it their way for a long time, and computer experts were frustrated because the "hood was welded shut".
Interoperation is there, but done poorly. Microsoft had no interest in the internet by themselves, it took other people to point out that it was the next big thing.
Was I the only one to notice that Microsoft quit shipping a free programming environment many, many years ago? Now why the hell would they go and do that? Because they hate developers. Developers are their primary source of competition.
We won't see the fruits of the free software movement for another decade (in a way), and there had to be a downside when the overinflated market corrected itself.
The free market can work wonders, but it isn't very innovative. Something like government investment in R&D or free software has to come along to shake things up every now and then. It's life.
This is an old argument, trotted out and tarted up for review every time some new technology or business practice leads to greater efficiency. Unfortunately history has proven this argument to be a fallacy. It never makes sense in the long term to stick with a less efficient means of production. Never, ever, and greater efficiency has so far lead to every increasing wealth. Somehow all those manually telephone switchers found jobs elsewhere in the economy when automated switches replaced them.
It is getting to the point now where in my projects I can usually search the net and find a piece of free code or a free library that does a specific function, no matter how arcane or niche I might find that function to be - the code is out there and it is free.
Now, do you realize how marvelously productive this can make a single programmer? No license fees to pay, and little code to write - just script together other's components to create a new and unique piece of software. In the past this would have taken 1000's of man hours of programming, or thousands of dollars in licensing fees. Now it can take me a weekend.
How long can Microsoft compete? Not long. Sure, Microsoft will lose money, but the market as a whole will remain robust, I just think that the money will be more evenly distribute among smaller companies and freelancers whose job it will be to integrate and repack the free software for those that don't want to muck with the details.
-josh
Roblimo's editorial is spot on. All of my firms hardware is leased - much of it from the vendors in-house finance arm. Similarly at our client firms, their monitors all have "leased from" stickers on the back.
I think you're missing the point. The majority of hardware is still sold by OEM's like Dell to large corporate customers and non-enthusiast home users. Those users don't care if individual components are cheaper, as they're interested in the box and what it can do.
In the case of corporate customers, they're as much interested in the lease terms (notice how Dell prominently advertises their lease prices) as the specs.
(Found you in meta; some moderator marked you as insightful w/out actually thinking about what you said.)
Money being spent, does not help the economy. Production and creating wealth where wealth previously did not exist, is what helps the economy. Since produced things are often sold, I guess that makes it easy for some people to mistakenly think that the sale was the important part, rather than the production.
To give some examples of sales that do not include production of useful things: Hurricane repair construction, refining uranium for use in warheads (instead of power), MSCEs convincing a company to "upgrade" to Windoze.
A hurricane comes ashore and devestates a town. Thereafter there are many construction jobs. Lots of money is being spent on labor and materials. Was the hurricane good for the economy? Fuck no! The amount of money that is spent reconstructing after the disaster is a measure of how much the economy has been damaged, not helped. The same goes for most of Microsoft's sales.
If Microsoft's products allowed computer users to do things they couldn't previously do, or if they made it easier for people to do things, then MS could be good for the economy. But if you've ever used Windows and just about any other computer platform, you know this isn't the case.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yeah, but if software expands to use the CPU cycles and fill the memory, what have you gained? The MS bloat cycle is what is driving the craze for faster computers. (Well ... ok, games get a share of the credit.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No, Bob's bank account is not an exception. The bank takes that money and invests it in other companies. Arguably, that banked money is doing even more for the economy.
If people now buy one $50 Redhat installer instead of 10,000 Microsoft licenses, there is that much less money into the economy. Companies such as Microsoft will find that they will do less well, and the knockon effect will be on the economy
This ignores the fact that MS did not create the money it would take to buy these 10,000 licenses. It was generated through some other field of endeavor (probably ultimately tracable to some sort of extractive practive like agriculture, mining, etc.). This money is already in the economy!. If it isn't spent on Microsoft, it will be spent on something else. Since free software specifically promotes reuse of code (its whole purpose), then the process of creating software is more efficient. Thus this funding, which is already in the ecomony, can be put towards someting more useful, rather than being used on the inherently inefficient process of proprietary software.
Free software has every little to do with communism. It has everything to do with increasing efficiency, making capitalism work better.
signed,
a hardcore capitalist.
Rob, I think software leasing will, if it catches on at all, last only a short time. There's one fundamental difference between leasing a car and leasing software: with a car you know what you're getting and what you'll get when the lease runs out. The car won't change on you for the life of the lease, and when the lease runs out you'll get to pick which car you want to lease again and won't be in the position of having the car company decide they'd rather you used station wagons instead of limos.
Compare that to leasing software. Take a look at the havoc that comes when you upgrade critical parts of an OS. Linux is less obnoxious when it comes to kernel and libc upgrades than Windows is when you jump versions, but it's still a headache and you don't do it to production servers quickly if you value your business's stability. Yet most software leases include provisions for automatic, unannounced updates of exactly that sort. RedHat's better about that in that you can avoid the update if you want, but I doubt Microsoft's leasing plan will let you continue to run 98 or NT4, no matter how well they work for you.
Software leasing may eventually work, but before it does it's going to have to not be designed as a revenue generator for the software companies and not have automatic upgrades and such added in to the basic concept.
How is Microsoft resting? 80s technology? Where the hell have you been for the last 20 years?
Excuse me, Mr. Clueless. Windows 95/98 are nothing more that and updated DOS that boots directly to a graphical console. They took EARLY 80's technology and painted a pretty picture in front of it. I guess it is innovative...if you consider animations of flying paper that lock you out of using your computer when deleting files innovative.
Last time I checked, Microsoft has been innovating in many, many areas (notably Outlook and COM+). Let us not forget that they were first to bring professional quality desktop publishing and ease of use to the PC either.
Is Outlook part of the OS now? And I thought COM+ was and extension of OLE, which is nothing more than runtime linking, which was developed in mid 80's? And tell me again how developing a DP program advances the state of the art in operating systems?
I may be living in a dream world as you say, but at least people don't walk around with their heads up their asses there.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It removes the greed/growth that fuels our economy, our sandwich shops and our luxury goods, and replaces that with a communistic ideal which leaves no potential for any advancement.
You're not an engineer, are you?
In just about every system you design, the problem is not producing force or power. The problem is always how to efficiently control the energy of the system to do useful work. You can throw a 5,000Hp engine into a Honda Civic, but without a extremely well engineered drive train, all you will ever do is replace tires and CV joints as the engine rips both to shreds.
And so it is with capitalism. Unmitigated capitalism doesn't provide for the best society. It allows for certain parts of the system to destroy other parts. If one part of the system is broke, the whole thing is broke. Open source can be a mitigating/controlling factor, ensuring that commercial software houses continue to advance the state of the art. Why should M$ be able to rest on their collective laurels, reselling the same tired '80s technology? If a group of hobbyist can produce an OS as good as M$' flagship product in their spare time, why should I pay M$ anything? Linux has pushed them to feverishly develope better alternatives.
The greed/growth that fuels our economy has not been destroyed by open source. I has only been controlled.
Anyway, lost revenue for M$ means more revenue for my company, and eventually me (I hope). How does that damage society? I buy coffee, too!!
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
While obviously some of the reasons that people moved away from that sort of enviroment are no longer true, there are many reasons that remain stoppers to businesses wanting to do that. (There are also reasons why business should have stayed on the central server pardigm, but no option has all pro, or all con).
Dude... You are smoking crack:
Here is the msdn download center and here is the code example center. Just about every microsoft binary on the system is usable by a third party in COM without having to hack the source. All of MSDN exists for developers. What do you have to pay for? A gui, the convience of having MS send you updates to the sdk's on cd, and in the unversal subscription case the right and access to play with any ms development related products you don't already own. Also to get that remaining stuff free/cheap for students, Msdn is doing this
I've seen this type of argument before on /. It's a weird one - and very, very wrong.
You argue that increased efficiency is BAD for the economy; how will poor Microsoft keep their inflated margins up?! This argument was first memorably made by the Luddites. See, the mechanical looms put weavers out of work, bad for the economy, see? Of course, it's almost too stupid to point out that all that money NOT going into Microsoft goes into the pockets of the owners of businesses that use Microsoft products, and can result in lower prices for *their* customers, and more money all around (that's good for the economy). Just like it was a waste of time explaining to Luddites that while a few people would be out of a job, clothing would become cheap enough for most poor people to afford, even if a few of them lost jobs.
But I guess you're not really into capitalism at all, just Microsoft's bottom line. Your invocation of communism is bizaare once the fallacy of your economic argument is made clear. However, it seems to be common - common enough that I disregarded the possibility that you are trolling. It's like thinking that after eight coin tosses get heads, the ninth is more likely to be tails; it should really be taught in first year econ classes, if it isn't already.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
So it's pronounced:
Rob-LIHM-oh
instead of
Rob-LEEM-oh
Didn't know that. Now I won't look like an idiot if I ever meet the guy in person and have to say his name. That already makes 2002 a possibly better year for me than 2001 would have been so far, due to one less embarrassing mispronouciation...
Actually, as a professional programmer/software engineer working for a small business I think /. could use a little more of these type of things, and less of JonKatz. Damned surprising to see it right after the first cup of coffee, though.
Best Slashdot Co
I know a few others have already responded, but I just wanted to point out that the validity of this statement rests upon the assumption that our economy will continue to be fueled by product purchases. Historically, this has been false.
Approximately 60% (I forget the exact figure) of our GDP comes from the service sector. In recent years, economic growth from the product and manufacturing sector has been falling.
This is why developing countries are dominated by textile plants while developed countries are dominated by... cleaning services, law practices, entertainment companies, etc... SERVICE oriented industries.
The reason this seems to be the case is because every purchasable item, whether it be a service or product, inevetibly becomes a commodity, and in order to increase profits, business innovation must occur.
Product-driven industries have been around a lot longer than service-driven industries. Trade is what fueled world economic growth for nearly 500 years, up until the 1950s or so.
Most of the "stuff" that you need to survive (food, shelter, clothing, and recently, software and electronics components) has already been built. There is no longer a compelling business advantage to producing, for example, steel.
So US companies relocate steel production to places like Mexico and turn to more lucritive revenue-generating sources, like the consulting practice of what kind of steel to use.
So, given the historical record, it is likely a good thing that software is becoming a commodity, and people are paying less for more... because that allows more people to get it, and opens up a greater market for the services that revolve around those products.
-haledon
i want to live life, not just go through the motions
So what kind of hardware does it need?
Will I be buying more hardware in 2002?
George
Have to agree with this guy.
DivX;) encoding takes the most time and is my only current reason to upgrade my computer.
Other examples of applications pushing hardware upgrades are MP3s (CDR), bloatware software (CDs), 3D polygon games (Videocards) and downloading pr0n (highspeed internet connections)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
>Because in 10 years most businesses will be running dumb terminals and applications will be actually running inside the software giants houses,
I really can't see this. There are many reasons why it is good to have your applications on your own server. Security, simpification of customiztion and introducing more points of failure are important issues. Look at how many problems websites have when their servers go down or when they make a move.
>whether something is open source or not is largely irrelevent.
I have to agree with the end of this point, except that costs do make a huge difference for businesses.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I don't really mind your comment, I just think that the moderation on it is really bad.
>Now recently as these companies have started to do less well, beset by open source, antitrust and so on, the economy has done badly.
One, if open source is really a major cause then you should see RedHat stock pretty high, its not. Two, alot of tech stocks were overvalued. I don't think that Cisco has a direct Open Source competior, yet its market cap has crashed as Microsofts has.
>If people now buy one $50 Redhat installer instead of 10,000 Microsoft licenses, there is that much less money into the economy.
I don't get this part and don't think the moderators understand what this implies. Say that MS gets $1 million less in sales, that money doesn't disappear from the econmoy, it still exists in the hands of other business, who will use it for other expenses. It still goes into the economy. One can even make a good case that the $1 million gets distubuted more since its goes to say 100 different companies rather than just one. This would be a good thing.
>Companies such as Microsoft will find that they will do less well,
Fine, but I don't support welfare for one single company. That would be like communism or something.
>It removes the greed/growth that fuels our economy,
But isn't the corporation RedHat based on an Open Source product?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
While I don't really agree with the shaky basis of the opinion that hardware sales will go UP next year (cases get yellow?), it seems apparent that a fair amount of consolidation is taking place among online companies. With consolidation, we have increased viability, naturally...
It also seems pretty obvious that there is a lot of thinning of the herd going on right now, but that is because there was a new market for growth, and people saw other people getting rich no matter how stupid the idea was. Anyone who has looked at the Nasdaq anytime in the last 8 months can see that hemmoraging money is not a viable business model. Which brings me to the idea of viability. Is anyone surprised that companies like you mentioned, J.C. Penneys et al. are doing well and www.buyyourfreakingnecktiesonline.com is tanking? People that know how to run catalog operations are seeing this as a great opportunity to get their same customers without having to send out dead trees... It is not surprising that people with no experience and hence no name recognition or established customer base will have troubles.
As for venture capital - of course businesses started with personal savings are more likely to succeed... Your ass is on the line!
Market cycles dictate that there will be high and low points in our economy, but the rationale presented for a date of 2002 for a recovery seems unconvincing.
+++ ATH0 +++
This reminds me of a bit I've come across many times from The Soul of a New Machine (I've never read the book itself, just keep seeing this reference). As the Jargon File puts it:
Some days, that seems awfully temping.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The only free complete programming environments I remember from Microsoft are GW-Basic, QBasic and DEBUG.EXE .
q 258/2/65.asp
Those have been great times for developers world-wide. Sadly, QBasic isn't included anymore in Windows 2000, but fortunately DEBUG.EXE still is.
See http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/
My point was just that there is a sizeable impetus to develop these faster machines, not just for gamers and speed freaks. There is a point to these faster computers, someone is getting practical use out of them.
And businesses do too in ways they may not be aware of. For example, spell checking and grammar checking is now done on the fly in Word, it used to be a specific tool you had to activate, remember that? Because of x00 Mhz machines, they can slip something like that in and you don't even notice. Just an example, there's more.
I am sick and tired of the oft repeated adage that the only people who care about the new CPU speeds are speed freaks and game players. There are a huge amount of applications for which CPU speed is critical outside of the game market. The entire field of academics revels in CPU speed for analyzing data, as well as any kind of industrial or governmental research arena.
We're here, we buy fast computers, and we put them to good use. It's not just about games.
the dim flourescents, the grey cubicle walls and bone chilling air conditioning. This is sensory deprivation.
We work so hard for our homes but dont make enough to actually live in them. We just sort of visit them every night for a few hours.
There has to be a better way, not everyone can be rich. I know this sounds so Fight Club but its true. All I feel like doing is buying a sailboat, have it shipped down to the blue clear waters caribbean, the warm sunlight (something i rarely see anymore) and sail between islands fishing and harvesting live rock to sell to marine aquarium stores.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
I've never seen that formula before... very clever and quite accurate.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
When flat panel prices become affordable I think well see them start to sell like crazy. The energy and space savings are huge and companies with lots of CRT's are going to appreciate the electric and air conditioning savings that they get.
If the price comes down quick then LCD is going to be hugh, if it takes another two years then I think that LED flat panels may be selling like crazy.
I don't think people working/coding for free are wrong, I think the economy is wrong.
"Death is a motherfucker. Death is the end of this known existence."
And today, even Microsoft are offering reasonably compatible data formats, so the analogy does hold.
Who would believe in penguins,unless he had seen them? Conor O Brien - Across Three Oceans
Do computers really get worn out? Well the amount of ram they have soon becomes not enough and due to the memory form factor on the MB, you can't add more, or it is too expensive to do so (30 pin simms vs 72 pins simms vs dimms vs rimms etc).
Hard disks become too small and their bearings are shot from spinning too much. They can be replaced, and cheaply too.
The video systems can't display enough resoulution anymore and the monitors need new CRT's. The monitors can be replaced but maybe the video card can't because the MB won't support the new cards (ISA vs PCI vs AGP etc).
So what really happens is that software and applications outgrow the HW, and the new HW is not compatible with the old.
I've read that after a long enough time the silicon in cpu's and rom's will 'migrate' and become disfunctional but I think we are talking centuries here. EPROM memory and maybe FLASH memory will suffer charge leakage over decades and loose their content. So eventually I guess computers WILL become worn out. How many IBM PC-1's are still out there? Apple II's?
Even Linux won't run (well) on original 386's, despite the claim to this. Well maybe as a router switch, but not much else. Even Linux has become more demanding of the hardware over the last 10 years. Still you can take a cast off Pentium I system, scrounge up some more memory and have a decent Linux box. I've done it. But I still prefer my new 866 PIII. Now Gnome starts up almost right away.
Various Shirts
I've seen a lot of places that sell 'em online, shop around you'll probably find better deals
-----
crazy dynamite monkey
The only companies that can make money online are companies that can also make money offline.
I have to disagree, in my experience it is the companies that offer products to a niche market that really take it to the bank. The only reason most people buy things online is because they can't get them locally or easily. The companies that offer products or services that can be aquired locally will end up suffering because they cannot compete with the local marketplace. Enter the niche market, want a Transformers T-shirt? How about the latest Martian Successor Nadesico resin kit? I can't find stuff like this around town, where do I go? The 'net of course!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that there are two effective business models for online sales.
-Have an established company already, therefore loss will be minimal and you can offer better deals/service
-Be a niche supplier and don't get grandiose in design, keep it small and effeiciant and you will make money. Bloat and fear the reaper!
-----
crazy dynamite monkey
"What I Say Here Doesn't Matter"
That's right, you dumb f@$#.
Try not to open a wormhole with that kind of speed, ok? :P
I've upgraded my firewall/router several times (it's now a K6-3 400 with 96mb) but that's because I've been running increasingly more intensive stuff on it. I've found that maintaining an old box enough to keep it workstation worthy really is more of a pain in the ass than I realized. Finding parts for them is most of the times easy, but sometimes very difficult. Most people just don't want to bother, and unless it has 2^(this.year-1992) megs of RAM to run W1ndow$, it's no fun at all.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
After reading the article, I stopped for a second and looked around my office. And would you look at that!!! On my shelf, I have a dozen boxes from Novell...all software on a 2 year "lease." Then there's our McAfee license on another 2 year lease. Oh, and a 1 year lease on the Power Quest suit of software.
Here we've been "leasing" our software for years. This is nothing new. Sure, every year (or every other year) we shell out to release the software, but it always comes with free upgrades during the lease anyway and in the end we actually get more software (Novell, McAfee, Powerquest bundle their packages) for less. We also no longer have to worry about a huge cost every 3-4 years to upgrade software.
Software leasing is not new and it does work!
As an example, our McAfee license is $24/client/2 years. At 200 clients, that $2800 a year. This includes all products in the McAfee suite, from ViruScan to GroupShield. Now, let's say it would cost us $38(bulk probably a little cheaper) to purchase out right and McAfee upgrades their software every 2 years (which they do), it would then cost us $3800/yr for just VirusScan an not their other applications.
The main reason leases will work is becuase otherwise you will be purchasing upgrades. Gaurenteed upgrades in a lease with known yearly costs is a much better buisness prospect.
ÕÕ
I have the perfect solution for this! Send all that money which isn't going to Microsoft directly to me. I promise to put 100% of it into the economy. I won't save a single dime. Even Bill Gates can't claim that. I won't have any wasteful foundation either. Remember 100% straight back to the economy. I know it will be difficult, but I am sure I can handle it.
I'm glad you got rich though, Robin.
This is why, just as communist societies damage the people (communist countries, without exception, are very poor countries), so too communist software damages society.
I think you misunderstand what is the real problem with communism. It's precisely the greed -- the greed and the envy of the poor majority toward the rich few -- that made it such potent political force in the last century. What converted the ideas of Marx from an obscure economic theory into the violent mass movements was a very simple idea: take everyting from the rich and divide it equally among the poor. The majority of people who participated in the communist revolutions where motivated by the prospect of improving their living conditions at the expense of other people rather than by any of these beautiful ideas you can pick from your leftist college profesors in your expensive American universities.
In the free soft movement, the primary motivation for the programmers is to have freedom to develop cool software in cooperation with other programmers without the obnoxious interference from the suits. It has its share of problems, but it has absolutely nothing to do with communism
How could you confuse the desire for creative freedom with the desire for your neighbor's stuff is beyond me.
And Matrix 2. And Star Wars: Episode 2.
El riesgo vive siempre!
After the fallout ends, the companies that are surviving will look at each other, find out who has the best business plan, then either emulate it, or improve on it.
Yes, you can now buy a GHz uP for less than you paid for a 500 MHz one a few years ago, and RAM is cheaper, and so on.
That really underemphasizes the downturns we've seen in price in the last few years.
You can now buy a GHz for less than you paid for a 500 MHz last year.
I just installed 256 MB of RAM for $50, a quarter of what it cost a year ago.
We've seen an extraordinary year for prices of computer components, and as an avid reloader of PriceWatch, I don't see any slowing in the trend. I think this year of capitalism-at-its-best deserves more than a gloss-over. It's been a great year for the starving college student/computer enthusiast!
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Because Star Wars: Episode II will be out as well as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. So far 2001 has sucked as far as movies go, IMHO of course.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
The current slump with PC sales happens every few years. In a year or two everyone will want/need something faster and it will pickup.
But before we go on, let's accept the fact that 1998 and 1999 were unusually good, and that we're unlikely to see anything like those years again in our lifetimes.
I think that 1998 and 1999 were a reflection of how people felt. People felt good about the economy and tried to make money. So many people tried witht the web that they over inflated it. Now that things are "leveled off" they will pick back up and I predict many more "unusually good" or as I would say "over inflated years".
I work in the trenches providing IT services to small and mid-sized businesses that cant afford IT departments. This is the first article I have seen that even comes close the matching the reality i see every day in the business world. But you missed a few things for the most part we find our customers extremely paranoid about thier data and they will not go for an outside company holding the keys to that data. When your family depends on your small business to survive and it isnt a matter of I can get another job tomorrow you tend to be less trusting of anyone bigger than you.
Desktop publishing and an easy interface was the killer application for the Macintosh platform, who had both first.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
Oh my gosh please pull out your John Birch Society
membership card so I can puke on it.
Open source is communism folks! Somebody set up a congrssional hearing! We need inquiries! HURRY! SAVE AMERICA FROM THE RED PENGUIN MENACE!
You fucking loser. Go turn Rush back on and get back to cheating your Mexican gardener out of his overtime pay. Fucking dull headed prick.
I honestly hope your post was a joke.
"If people now buy one $50 Redhat installer instead of 10,000 Microsoft licenses, there is that much less money into the economy."
Ah actually--no.
All the rest of that money gets put into mp3 players, steak sandwiches, insurance plans for health care, ounces of weed, trips to Disneyland, or into Joe Bob's savings account. With the possible exception of Joe Bob's account---ALL OF THESE OTHER EXPENDITURES ARE STILL FUELING THE ECONOMY, LAME-O.
It just doesn't go into Bill's tyrannical megalomanical pocket. But don't worry---you'll be in Bill's pocket filling up space.
Will the Y2K hype of a few years ago repeat itself for the 2038 rollover? People spent tons to fix the 2 digit year. Will we all be running 64-bit systems by then or will we spend tons to to keep counting the number of seconds since 1970?
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
Don't do this. Send half to him and half to me. That way you get a better regional distribution, as well as the money fueling different sectors of the economy. Plus the money spent should be tax-deductable, so as to ensure that I will indeed spend the money rather than save it and rake in sick interest and dividends.
That's what you're really saying. ;)
BlackNova Traders
I guess what all of this means is, the Internet has pandered to the desire for more information, instant gratification, impulse buying, and convenience. So saying The Internet will not change society is kind of, nix that, is extremely short sighted, nearly blind. The Internet has already changed society, and as a result the economy, ecology, and psychology of the world.
All of this may not be good, but it certainly isn't all bad either. I do not relish the idea of a bunch of anti/un-social pasty faced net geeks sitting at home all of the time who are more willing to associate with their computer than their family or friends, but when I buy a stock I want to see the companies last three earnings reports, and if I can see those right now instead of in 2-3 weeks, I am ok with that. I like ordering groceries and having them delivered when I want them delivered, or shopping computer prices at pricewatch.com (coolest site around), or reading 5 different news sites a day, or even paying bills online. So there ya go. My view of the issue.
I still think everything will eventually be full circle. Back in the day banks and most large local facilities and companies ran those dumb terminals with the green (amber) screens, all powered by some mainframe. Today everything is compacted and we have internet. The only thing that will have been gained is color screens, internet, and the mainframe will be replaced by Linux or some MS product. Everything will be leased and things will run solid like they have in the past, then eventually companies will innovate slowly to maintain stability. Then when the time is right a little company will come along and say here is a new OS improved and more modular (some gimmick) than what you are used to and the whole cycle will run again.
Of course that's internet years.
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
It has been proven many times that open source/free software is not communism. It is also true, though many people are ignorant of or choose to ignore this fact, that the American economy is not one of pure capitalism. We have what is known as free enterprise, which basically means that any economic model (within the bounds of the law) is feasible. The Amish, for instance, have their own community with an economic model that's entirely different from the rape-and-pillage capitalism of Corporate America. If this country were truly capitalistic, they would have no place here. A nation that has room for both Amish farmers and corporate tycoons also has room for free-software hackers.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Well put, scharkalvin. I would add that sometimes even software upgrades are unnecessary. Is there really all that much more functionality for the average user to move from office 97 to office 2000? Albiet that jump requires more hardware (cpu, ram) for it to run smoothly It just looks a little prettier with a few extra features thrown in. I would put forth that it is quite possible (and may already be comming true) that ther will continue to be a decline in computer sales for quite sometime, until the next killer app that everyone wants to use comes out (and i dont mean divx). Although when it's time for me to build the dream machine so i can create musical masterpieces, i'll be on the upgrade highway baby!
-fohat
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
and cases start to get a yellow tinge even if they are cleaned regularly
oh crap, my computer is dusty, better replace it straight away!!
I disagree with some of the claims made about replacing computers. We've got a woman here running a 486-66 and we just ignore her, that way we don't have to buy her a new PC.
Our motto is, If it still works, dont fix it. or somesuch...
-fohat
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
Does anyone find it ironic that the same "landgrab" in 1998-1998 Roblimo is quick to retort as being viable in the future, was the one that brought Slashdot into being?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Mhh, would that box be worth anything at an auction? or would it get treated like the rest of the landfill x86 clones?
However I own a Tandy Model 1 from 1978 with 16 MB expansion base and CRT which is in perfect working order, as well as a BBC Micro model B with a floppy drive(British-made home computer) which has been in continuous use in a Dutch school from 1982 to 2000, and like the Tandy it is still working just fine.
I also have a Commodore 64 and a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K (another British home computer), both of which have seized functioning.
Maybe not all computers aren't built as durable as the Tandy and Beeb (I suspect PC hardware isn't built as durable as well) but that doesn't mean computers can't continue to function after 20 odd years.
I have been in a business that started in 1993 and moved their main focus to the Web in 1997 (in the same industry). Our President saw through alot of the hype and crap being thrown around by the media and his analysis is still one of the best Ive heard about the Internet and e-commerce: The internet is simply a tool to do the same thing your have always done, in a different way. For example, we run a marketplace online. The competition for our website comes not from others in our industry, but with other ways of doing things. We want people to use our site, rather than the fax machine and telephone, as buyers and sellers have done for years...
A brief outline because this is a reply to a post, not a new thread. But you are correct, people should not be starting businesses in this "New! Exciting! Me Too!" way, and these are the failures you hear about. Once more people realize that the Internet is just a way to do the same things, but more efficiently, you will see more success.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
I hope that by 2003, all the .com bombs, M$ court rulings, and continuing network security debacles will refresh our short memories on why we should just get out of this ratrace and get a real job growing food, healing the sick and treading lightly on the planet. *sigh* I'm sick of it all...
.sig! Come on down, the world needs real leaders and your invited to join a movement to a sustainable, healthy and content future vs. the desolation and bleakness that were forced to endure now!
Great idea - I couldnt agree more. Tough in a world run by Corporate SlaveMasters who have replaced our governments with Lobby groups and have morphed communities into markets, citizens into consumers. There has been a destruction of relevant/real priorities. We need to take control of the powerful corporate agenda and realign it with a Community Agenda with the goals being better lives for everyone - not more ratrace/enslavment to Corporatists and Plutocrats. We need to take control of the destiny of this planet, selfish, greedy, myopic, paranoid and untrustworthy Corporate Boards ARE NOT concerned with anything but their own pocket books and stock prices. Dont be confused about how to make the world a 'better place' - it is not going to come from the Capitalists.
Read
I hope that by 2003, all the .com bombs, M$ court rulings, and continuing network security debacles will refresh our short memories on why we should just get out of this ratrace and get a real job growing food, healing the sick and treading lightly on the planet. *sigh* I'm sick of it all...
.sig! Come on down, the world needs real leaders and your invited to join a movement to a sustainable, healthy and content future vs. the desolation and bleakness that were forced to endure now!
Great idea - I couldnt agree more. Tough in a world run by Corporate SlaveMasters who have replaced our governments with Lobby groups and have morphed communities into markets, citizens into consumers. There has been a destruction of relevant/real priorities. We need to take control of the powerful corporate agenda and realign it with a Community Agenda with the goals being better lives for everyone - not more ratrace/enslavment to Corporatists and Plutocrats. We need to take control of the destiny of this planet, selfish, greedy, myopic, paranoid and untrustworthy Corporate Boards ARE NOT concerned with anything but their own pocket books and stock prices. Dont be confused about how to make the world a 'better place' - it is not going to come from the Capitalists.
Read
I doubt this very much. Certainly 2000 was better than 1995, due to economic growth. This economic growth improved living standards, raised consumer happiness, improved employment, reduced unhappiness, etc. The reason for this growth was enterprise in the computer industry. Enterprise caused by companies hungry to make money.
The activities of companies such as Microsoft made billions of dollars for people - not just for their employees but for the economy. Now recently as these companies have started to do less well, beset by open source, antitrust and so on, the economy has done badly. The results of this have been layoffs, reduced consumer confidence (which means, eventually, that the guy who runs the bagel shop on the corner loses his job) and general economic decline.
The omens are that this will get worse. It seems that open source's time has come. It has been said that open source will provide 50% of software for the country. The result of this is less money into the economy. If people now buy one $50 Redhat installer instead of 10,000 Microsoft licenses, there is that much less money into the economy. Companies such as Microsoft will find that they will do less well, and the knockon effect will be on the economy - not just that of the US but economies around the world. The potential is for global recession without the growth caused by the IT industry.
This is regrettable; people assume that open source simply means 'free software'. This is incorrect. Free software is no different from Communism - a country where you have, say, 'free cars' - cars owned by everyone - open source cars if you will, do not do better. They do worse. Growth in society depends on the greed of man - the greed of brokers propelling the stockmarket higher. Unfortunately communism does not cater to this most important of human instincts. This is why, just as communist societies damage the people (communist countries, without exception, are very poor countries), so too communist software damages society.
It removes the greed/growth that fuels our economy, our sandwich shops and our luxury goods, and replaces that with a communistic ideal which leaves no potential for any advancement.
Crikey! How long have I been asleep?!?! The last day I remember was April 8th, but now I wake up to see this year-in-review stuff...I must've slept clear through to December, 'cause the year wasn't even halfway over last I checked...
With the possible exception of Joe Bob's account :-)
No, even that is no exception...Think of it: Joe Bob puts it on his saving account and the bank will use it to invest (=go back into economy) so that it can pay Bob's low interest plus make some profit.
Of course if Joe Bob keeps his savings in a sock, then my argument is null and void.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Now, sorry to burst your bubble...but banks are the most conservative in the IT world. A lot of banks still work with old IBM mainframes like the IBM AS/400. I've also seen HP and Sun unices, but I don't know for sure they are for core functionality (often running Oracle or Sybase databases that support the core) I've *never* seen a core functionality of a bank running on anything else. M$ is okay for desktop and fileserver/printserver eventually. Oh, and a lot of banks use SAMBA (yes that is OpenSource) to communicate between the NT (secured) desktops and the Unix servers. Linux/*BSD is rarely seen in banks.
I know, I worked for a lot of banks (as IT consultant).
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'm glad to see that there is some thought and reflection going on, and that you are capable of writing an opinion peice that would blow away any of the other comentary sites (ZDNet should repost it as a guest column, and Salon could Salonify it easily).
As for your opinions, I agree, the present is somewhat depressing but the future is bright for business. You've managed to completely change my opinion on leasing software. Now, if only I could get the IRS to believe my Microsoft purchases were unreimbursed business expenses...
Microsoft has about a 50% sucess rate selling services/tech to the home community. MSN isn't unseating AOL anytime soon, MSIE is the top browser, Media Player is having a hard time delivering DIVX:) codecs to the masses, etc., etc. I doubt subscriptions will catch on at home, and may drive home users to try Linux, but Microsoft knows this, and will probably sell a tradition package at home (bundled invisibly with the cost of the machine), or push for businesses to purchase liscenses that can be used at home (a great idea for any company that wants computer literate employees, able to do work at home).
What would still be nice is some kind of system that lets the little guys survive. Something Awful and other efront pages are now without a home, and even StileProject is having ISP problems. It seems easier for content providers to go the traditional media route - if a new comic wants to make it in the papers, it can survive the growing years based on money generated by Peanuts and Dilbert. In the online world, comic creators can start small, then run out of money just as the reach the popular point. Even Penny Arcade is asking for donations.
I'd like to see someone come up with a subscription-type system that works. I'm thinking of a newspaper-type model, where my subscription gets me my news, comics, and some items of tech interest, while part of my money supports items I don't care about, like sports and Lifestyles. I don't mind paying $X a month, an even getting some adds, if it will guarentee Rich Kyanka gets a hot meal every month.
Well, I'm rambling into off-topic land, so back to work...
You know what, me too. I wish I'd been born an Anasazi or something sometimes. As much as I love technology and advancement, I'm so SICK of the constant stock-market-like slam. You know all I want to do is make enough money to retire and travel. Now I'm struggling to work. I've got some of the best Tech skills available and the market stinks. -The Doc
They are anticipating a bad year. Probable but not definate. The market is bad right now but could get better in a quarter. -The Doctor
Another interesting tidbit, although second-hand: I heard a prominent venture capital lawyer speak a couple of weeks ago, and he said that most vc firm contracts specify that if their funds are not spent within four years, they must be retruned to the investors. I can't imagine that happening, so all those $1 billion+ funds raised in late 1999 and early 2000 will have to be spent in the next three years, and it takes a little time to spend $1 billion. So my next prediction is for the return of venture capital in 2002, no matter what the economic mood is.
Milo
"I figure you're here 'cause you need some whacko who's willing to stick his finger in the fan. So who are we helping?
as we had phenomenal web startup growth, combined with the beginning of the three year corporate ramp-up to Y2K. In 1996, the web was still "new" and Y2K was a joke. Recall that internet development technologies (remember those cute little useless Java applets?) and best practices were still in their infancy in 1996, and 1997 was pretty much the beginning of the maturation period.
I agree with the 2002 hardware recovery scenario, and it will easily extend through 2004, getting stronger along the way.
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
This was an interesting and insightful column, but I have a question.
"Computers bought in 1997 will reach the end of their tax-depreciation life next year. Computers bought in 1999 will be three years old in 2002. Even if no great new technologies hit us in the next few months, we are going to see a lot of old computers replaced before long, probably starting in the fourth quarter of 2001, in a cycle that is going to continue for at least another three years after that."
The implication is that there will be a boost to the tech sector because of distinct increase in computer purchases. But wasn't this year for replacing year-1996 purchases, and last year was the replacement year for year-1995 purchases, etc.?
It's not clear to me that next year's hardware purchases will be significantly greater than the past few years. And given the overall decrease in hardware margins, next year could be no better or even worse than this year.
Any clueful people to clarify?
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D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Goddamn it, I just bought a Kevin Mitnick ROM construct! Will that do? Or will I have to upgrade yet again?
Computers don't really wear out, my master browser at home is a 486/33 running FreeBSD, it must be 7 year old at least. But I'm getting ready to rotate it out and replace it was a P90.
What drives hardware sales is new applications that make older computers nearly useless. I think the latest one coming down the pike is DIVX:).
My main computer for a few years was my 486 laptop. When I started to write books, it was too slow, so I upgraded to a Pentium 75.
I had a Pentium 75 for my main computer for a year, but when I started to get into MP3's, it was inadequate. I upgraded to a Celeron 300.
Now, I'm getting into DIVX:), so I bought a barely adequate Celeron 566 Dell NETPC as a set top box. I hardly know anyone else who can play DIVX:), which is a shame, since I'd like to trade them RL.
The IRS is lame about that depreciation schedule,. I think 3 years is a lot more reasonable.
You can always be miserable in the present or be un-content with what you have in the present. You can always say "next year is gonna be better". But you need to make do with what you have in the present and learn to be content with that. If something isn't right about 2001... DO SOMETHING about it!! Just abit of philosophy... ;]
Along the same lines, GM recently issued a recall on something like 6000 of their 2002 model-year SUVs. I foresee that the 2007 model-year vehicles/software/everything will be shipped in 2005.
Just. Plain. Stupid.
MCH/VO S* W- N+++++ PEC+++ D(s++/r) A a+>+++ C* G++(++++) Q+ 666 Y
Trolls throughout history:
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
The .com boom/bust cycle was yet another tech cycle, similar to rail, telegraph, automobiles, radio, and TV initial cycles. Very, very similar. In fact, if you look at the Stock Market Crash and the Great Depression, you'll see a familiar tech stock market speculation cycle as part of it.
That said, your statement "something we won't see in my lifetime" is probably wrong. Unless you're in your 80s.
My guess is something similar will occur sometime between now and 2022, given the current rate of technological change. It might even be fusion power or something else, but we will have another popular stock market delusion.
There are two ways to avoid losing your shirt in these speculative cycles:
1. Buy only sound companies with good prospects for profits, good cash positions, and reasonable P/E projections. Choose the leaders, not the me-toos. And if you ever find more than 5 per cent of your money is in a single stock, start selling out of it slowly - it's better to have 28 percent tax on a 50 percent gain (36 percent real return) over three months than to have an 80 percent loss. And never go on margin, unless you are selling something else that day.
2. Don't participate - be a contrarian. Buy up the out of favor "boring" stocks (or even bonds) as their price drops. Real value wins almost all the time.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
You are right on as long as you are talking about at home. But Rob was largely discussing businesses. Machines in an office (or dirtier, rougher work environments) take a lot more abuse than the machines we baby at home. They run constantly, get plugged into overloaded circuits, get treated like cheap furniture by facilities staff, sit on the bottom of stacks of reports, splashed with liquids, used by multiple users, and treated generally with an "it's not mine" mentality. I've seen two-year-old computers in offices catch fire, and given the layers of dust inside and surrounding piles of paper this was not a surprise. Look at an 800Mhz PIII machine in a warehouse and it probably looks awful compared to your 486/33.
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
At this point, the market is pretty much saturated. Those who would buy computers, have done so. Those company's who would have created electronic solutions, have also.
Thus, things are winding down a bit, from the frenzied pace.
However, as rob stated parts break and hardware is pretty poor nowadays (i dont expect this comp to last as long as my 386 which has been chugging merrily for over 10 years now) and software is pretty poor too. This is due mainly to the fast pace that things have been done in the past few years.
So the software industry will still be going strong, fixing the buggy software of the past few years, and the hardware will do the same.
The downside to this (if you really think of this as a downside) is that company's are getting alot more picky about who they hire. Simply saying "i know computers!" isn't enough anymore. If you dropped out of college to join the industry, you might want to think about dropping back in and finishing up that degree (i know several people doing this).
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This points to a basic idea of how to look at OSS that I think much of society misses. OSS is a raw material, much like metal ore. Anyone can go out to some remote place, dig up some ore, smelt it, mold it, and then use it for whatever they need. However, it is much easier to pay someone who is specialised in the process to simply deliver the metal in a useable form. This is the business opportunity, and should be the business model, for OSS. Linux, for example, is a raw material. Now start your small business by deploying/configuring it and continuing to maintain it. Businesses will be a lot more open to Linux and other open source software if there is someone to hold their hand and they have a phone number to call when they have a problem.
$man microsoft
Crowded elevator smell different to midget. -Chinese Proverb
Disagreed, the problem most people seem to overlook with politicians (and it can be seen with almost all poles nowadays) is their in the game for the money. Sure you can brush this off but you have to remember, a politician is going to say anything to get a vote, and as time has shown their promises pretty much suck.
Now when I say money, you have to realize things that people with money have done for politicians in the form of contributions, as well as other who do cool things like helping out with donations... Yea the dreaded B. Gates.
Do you think a politician is going to give up software frmo companies such as MS, Sun, because OpenSource can save some money? You'd have to be crazy, if anything with the gov's history they'll overspend 400%.
NOW... back to the markets... If you take enough time to look at the big movers on NASDAQ (CSCO, SUNW, MSFT, etc.) you'll see they're still slightly above their original opening prices even though they've dropped tremendously, what happened with the past 2 years, was everyone wanted to get so rich quick, VC's dumped money into shithole stocks, which ended up creating a tight ass VC market. No one wants to spend on unproven stuff.
It doesn't mean that by next year, VC's are going to say lets fund everyone again, they've seen what will happen, so for the heavy hitters on Wall Street, they'll shoot back up to a mid capped price, but there won't be a tremendous waste of VC cash going on never again.
Even if the fed (Greenspan) makes moves this week as opposed to May for the economy, NASDAQ, is _STILL_ going to be where its at for a while, a lot of companies lost some big time bucks, and their gonna be leery to invest in techs for a while (4-5 years) since many have thrown away just about everything as is. Many won't want to follow until techs are stable...
my two cents
crypto/steganography 101
360 degrees of Karma
As a programmer and a 3D game lover, I can never get enough horsepower either at work or at home.
Intel long ago recognized the uselessness of more power after a certain point, and started building things like 3D right into their chip. MMX, MMX2, Internet services, whatever. Keep heaving it into there to give marginal speed increases to stay a reason for the mass market (not me) to keep buying.
The last upgrade I *had* to do was to get rid of my creeking and wheezing Mac IIci with 40MHz 68040 Radius Rocket accelerator card about five years ago. The old girl couldn't keep up with the newest Netscape release (3.0, 2.11, whatever) that was clearly heavily script-based, because you would type in a URL and characters would come up 1 letter per second. (Maybe they just search the entire history list each letter, that could have been it.)
Anyway, my choice was a PII 266, not another Mac, because both could surf, both could run Office suite, and the PC had a hundred to one game ratio.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
While leasing does have many benefits, the leasing decision is never a 100% win. Leased items are never yours.
In the company I work in, there are two types of programs. Thouse bought, and those custome built. The bought items could be leased (and for good reasons). The custom software could never be leased because no company has created them. The closest the company could come to leasing the custom software is to oursources the development and maintenance of that software. Still, because that company created that software, they control it. By leasing software, you lose control.
Another example of where leasing is inconvenient is as follows: our company still has some 16bit applications running on win95. For better or worse, this is the case. Now, for whatever reason (and I am not a programmer involved with this application), the C compilers we have in our 32bit environments will compile the 16 bit application, but it will not work. To compile the aplication, we need to do it on a win3.1 machine, and it will then run happily on other 32bit platforms (through to NT4 that we know of). This puts us in a business which is using decade old software. No company would maintain that other than ourselves.
Bottom line: whatever reasons there are to lease software, there are still reasons to outright own it.
.. if only.
... that when they say old hardware will wear out, that they are not implying that I should replace my TANDY!!
The whole Dot Com frenzy was just a bunch of people trying to get rich quick. They never thought about how they were going ot make any profits or about the usefulness of their services (buying dog food online.. yeah right! the shipping cost is too much).
And products like the internet toolbox (found advertising on late night infomercials) wern't helping either.
As the frenzy calms down and people begin to think before they try to start an online business, I think things will get better.
I think you bring up some very good points. I don't think that companies becoming more picky is a bad thing. I have seen several people in jobs that they are not qualified for at all. Another way to look at the industry slowing down, is to compare it with the World War I era. We can think of Y2K as the war that everyone is gearing up for (generating business) then spending the money for things after Y2K because it is "safe" now. So for the moment people are set in technology, and don't need to buy anything. I don't think this will last long. Something new will come out that "everyone" needs.
Uh huh...nice try, you'd have to capitalize those leases since the lease period is so close to the useful life of the product. Like a limo or a computer has any value at the end of five years. Right.
__________________ Hey Moderators!! Fuck Off! Thanks.
It is the nature of software that, over time, the price of software approaches the marginal cost to produce it, i.e. zero. That's is why formerly high-priced software such as databases, operating systems, etc. can now be had essentially free. How long before companies like Oracle, Siebel, Microsoft will have to lower their prices tremendously to compete against low-cost, good-quality open source software? Also, the hardware prices are falling constantly. Nobody needs a 1 gigahertz chip on their desktop when all they are doing is writing e-mails. I don't see things improving for the technology sector over time; they will only get worse.
Galactic Geek
* * * Free programmers? Why not? http://www.Geeks4Free.com * * *
"...but we also had a major pre-Y2K hardware and software buying frenzy."
Is this a joke? I worked at a "buyer" company in 1998 and half of 1999 and a "producer" company since then. All hardware and especially software purchases were pretty much on hold. Don't add to a potentially enormous problem, seemed to be the philosophy.
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324006
Over the next 18-24 months, there will also be a lot more tightening down on copyrighted material. We are already seeing an increase in the hardware solutions advocated by groups like the RIAA, etc. The sophistication of viruses is going to forever challenge the ability of network admins and security companies to defeat them. I don't see any reason why hackers won't continue getting more devious as well. My suspicion is that there is an impending backlash against technology in the coming year or two. All it needs is 2 or 3 disasters resulting from technology mishaps, or what the media might call technology mishaps, to turn the neophyte commoners against the computerization of life. It could be something as unrelated as a bio-engineered crop that kills people; the average person who may not even surf the web yet could easily throw their hands up in the air and blame it all on technology. There's already a conservative backlash going on in politics and religion all over the world. Consider the rash of anti-globalization rallies and riots. These protesters are striking back agaisnt policies begun in the 1400s onward. They are challenging the very root of modern civilization from the Age of Discovery to today. Religious conservatives are pushing back women's rights, civil rights, and social policy back decades, and in many places, centuries (witness the Taliban in Afghanistan). I can't say that things will get worse, but with recession on the horizon, I wouldn't be surprised if they are...
Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood
2002 will definitely be better than 2001 because Duke Nukem Forever will finally be out in December of 2002!
I'll have to buy new hardware to play it, but I'll just say the old hardware wore out, yeah...
------ 1001001
I think it will require a Matsushita Cyberdeck with associated cranial jack, a Dixie Flatline ROM Construct, and Bruce Scheneir's new Anti-ICE warez.
Oh, and a little bit of Zen, too...
------ 1001001
2001 is the most un happenin', un kinkin' piece of sheet in the hood right now.
Lets make 2002 the most techiest, funkiest mother sucker in the hood.
Mud the far cuss.
Now, you can run mp3's well on a 486 :) I bought a 450 PIII 2 years ago, fastest out there at the time. Then last fall I just bought a 700 PIII laptop. And, of course, now >1gigs are out, and much cheaper than the older stuff was last year. What ticks me off is how companies wait until they have some profit off the old systems, then release the new ones right after that. Plus, you can buy 256 megs of ram for less than 10 cases of Mountain Dew. Not that it matters anyway if you are stuck on running M$ anything.
The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them.