Wal-Mart, Moore's Law and Open Source

J.E. Kazor writes: "In MIT's 'Technology Review' magazine, Michael Schrage writes about Wal-Mart, Moore's Law, and Open Source. Perhaps instead of spending all of our energy bashing bashing the 800-pound gorilla, Microsoft, we should align the support of a 900-pound gorilla, such as Wal-Mart. Such a symbol of cost conscious efficiency should embrace the benefits of Open Source."

Comments

Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[the_radix]

So, instead of tackling what many people consider a monopoly, albeit a harmless (in the ecological sense) one, one should ally him- or herself with a company that the majority of liberals in this country believe is both an ecological destroyer and a monopoly on a much worse scale?

Microsoft is software, with a dash of hardware, but they are still a high-tech company. Wal-Mart is a retailer that drives many other small local retailers out of business. Considering how easy it is to get high-tech things on the market through the use of the internet, versus the difficulty of being a local merchant, I would call Microsoft the lesser of two monopolies. If Microsoft suddenly used its power to lower all its prices so that other non-free (beer) software companies couldn't compete and went out of business, would you be happier?

Yeah, I chose Microsoft over Wal-Mart. So mod me.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[redfenix]

Microsoft doesn't engage in anti-ethical business practices? Surely you jest!

If Wal-Mart emulates the smaller business that it later undersells and bankrupts, wouldn't you call that an economic/retail version of "Embrace and Extend?"

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a personal vendetta against Microsoft, but to say that they have not done the exact thing that Wal-Mart has--only on a software level--is just untrue.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[hillct]

In an ecological sense as well as when you ecamine small town economies in a simplistic sense, Wal-Mart is a great ofender, however the range of damage to the economies of the world doesn't begin to approach the carnage that appears in the wake of Microsoft as it stomps it's way across Tokyo, London, and Washington.

The Open-Source movement doesn't need to select a new enemy so much as recruit allies more effectively. The OSS movement doesn't often address the political issues (to the extent needed) surrounding modification of market models that is at it's core - because the Free Software Foundation isn't getting the job done. This is promarily because the OSS movement is made up primarily of technically savvy indeviduals rather than politically savvy indeviduals. The OSS movement needs to take a page from the NRA with regard to fund raising and political power brokering. OSS proponants often make the mistake of believing that the Electronic Fronteirs Foundation is representing the cause of OSS in the political arena, when in fact the EFF is a civil liberties organization - which serves a great purpose and addresses a great need but does not by charter serve the interests of the OSS community, except where (as is often the case) the civil liberties issues they do address are of interest to the OSS community.

Selecting a new enemy at this time would be admitting defeat. The OSS community doesn't need to select a new enemy so much as confront the selected enemy in the arenas in which it does battle. The Open Source Software Community needs an effective lobying organization acting soecifically in it's interest.

--CTH

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[blkros]

Wal-Mart is a retailer that drives many other small local retailers out of business.
But, Walmart is not a monopoly, and it does better by being more efficient, rather than mowing over everyone in its way. Business is hard. The market rewards efficiency. Kmart used to be a top dog--look at them now. Sears was the top dog for almost a century--look at them now.(Not as bad off as Kmart, but not were they where.) Good business practices help all businesses, even the small ones, because it keeps them sharp.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[anthony_dipierro]

Wal-Mart is a retailer that drives many other small local retailers out of business.

Open source software very often drives small local software developers out of business.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Nelson]

I think it remains to be seen if Walmart is a monopoly or not. I'd be willing to bet that in a large number of areas where Walmart has a presence in the western US and the midwestern US they are the only source for a large number of products.

They aren't a pure monopoly, but neither is MS, nor was US Steel, or most other monopolies. They are a defacto monopoly in many cases though, just like MS is. The typical Joe 6pack goes and buys a computer, he buys an MS product or a set of them, whether he knows it or not. If you live in rural Kansas or Nebraska or Texas and you need to go buy something, a large percentage of the time it's going to be from walmart, not becuase of cost but because it's the nearest store you know will have the item you wish to buy.

I think the original message hit it on the head with Walmart. If you look at their managment, it's mostly white men, to a startling degree. There have been inqueries and lawsuits around racism and sexism at Walmart. They have a history of union busting, not that I think unions benefit the consumer a whole lot but it's disheartening the know that a corporation has chosen to close a store (a huge part of a local economy) because its employees' political views and associations they may have. And if you take the defacto monopoly business to heart and then realize that they are the only source for music, books, and even medications in some places and then look at what they have chosen to sell and not sell (I'm speaking directly about medication and contraception here, morning after pills, etc.) we're talking about a company that not only has a huge impact on the economy but on the lives of people and how they live them in a lot of places. This is not a company you wish to partner with, I think they make MS look like saints.

Personally, I think the matter of opensource allies is kind of missing the point. We need to keep doing what we're doing. It's not a matter of IBM, Sun, Walmart or E-Trade agreeing to use free software that makes it better or takes it to the next level, those are signs that what's happening is the right thing. This is a community lead effort and if we want things to be better then become part of the community, help out, write code, use it. Looking for allies is passive. If walmart starts using linux, it won't affect or impact any of us any time soon (unless they employ Linus and bully him or something) It might give it more legitimacy but it already has legitimacy and you further legitimize it by using it and working on it. If we work on it and make it better then they will use it becuase it's the best thing to use, that's what's happening elsewhere and that's what undoes the MS monopoly.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[rjkimble]

....one should ally him- or herself with a company that the majority of liberals in this country believe is both an ecological destroyer and a monopoly on a much worse scale?....

I had no idea liberals believe this. I'm going to immediately alter my purchasing habits from now on and try to purchase everything through Wal-Mart.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Registered Coward v2]

Wal-Mart is a retailer that drives many other small local retailers out of business.

Wal-Mart doesn't drive stores out of business, ratehr, it's the consumers who chose Wal-Mart over their local stores that cause small stores to close. It's a matter of choice, and many people chose to vote with their pocket book. Wal-MArt often is no cheaper than other chains - in fact, their policy is to price at the competitor's prices and make a greater margin due to lower costs. If a competitor wants a price war, they'll fight back and win, but they typically don't start one.

So how do local stores survive - by offering things, such as service and selection, that Wal-Mart doesn't. I buy video games at a small store - I know the owner, and he tajkes care of me. If a game is junk, he recommends not buying it. When PS2's were hot, he had them for his regular customers - at retail price. If I want a certain used game, he'll hold it when he gets it. Wal-Mart doesn't provide that service, and I'll pay a little more for it. He also beats the big chain rentals by charging less and having reasonable late fees - such as a dollar for one day rather than a full 3 day rental price.

Price isn't everything, and by serving customers who value service over price, small stores can survive. Wal-Mart's real threat is to the Kmarts and Targets - which is why Target went up market and KMart looks like it'll stick to urban locations here wal-Mart can't get space and some Super-K's.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Chester K]

Wal-Mart doesn't drive stores out of business, ratehr, it's the consumers who chose Wal-Mart over their local stores that cause small stores to close. It's a matter of choice, and many people chose to vote with their pocket book. Wal-MArt often is no cheaper than other chains - in fact, their policy is to price at the competitor's prices and make a greater margin due to lower costs. If a competitor wants a price war, they'll fight back and win, but they typically don't start one.

So if this isn't bad, why do we hate Microsoft again?

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[rosewood]

Agreed! Wal-mart is by no means a monopoly. There are Targets, were KMarts, Sears, whole Malls, and then your specialty stores. If Wal-mart drives every single one of these out of business by just being more efficient and not cheating, a la sueing someone out of existance or taking a great loss on a product like US Steal used to or making deals with cities that say if there is a walmart there can be no target, etc. then there will still be room for others to do it bigger badder longer stronger.

Its almost like calling McDonalds a monopoly

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[jtosburn]

This is only true where Wal-Mart has established, large scale competitors.

When Wal-Mart opens a new store, they usually sell many items at a huge loss, ostensibly to draw in new customers. But since many local, small-scale businesses cannot afford to match those below cost prices, they founder and die. Once gone, wal-Mart raises prices. This is called predatory pricing, and is illegal. In that kind of game, the deepest pockets win, which is why when they compete with larger companies (Target et. al.), their prices are similar; they each have enough resources to price match the other for an extended period of time.

Wal-Mart has been found guilty of predatory pricing and fined. But the practice continues. Hence the comment that Wal-Mart drives local, small retailers out of business. They do.

You're right, though, in that one of the real problems is that most people shop to save a buck. They'll drive all over town getting 18 mpg in their SUV because Coke is $0.49 cheaper at Schnucks this week.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[nomadic]

Hmm, that reminds me of one of the senior Bush's campaign slogan, something like "Vote Bush to Annoy the Media". Both pithy statements, and both idiotic motives to base your decisions on.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Hostile17]

I know the owner, and he tajkes care of me.

This is a lesson more people should learn. I work for one of the big computer OEM houses, but I don't buy our own products. I go to a small Ma and Pop shop not far from where I live. Even though they are more expensive then buying from my own company, especially with my employee discount, they give me what my employer can never hope to give me. I easily spend $5000 a year on computer equipment, to my company, this is nothing, a drop in the bucket. But to these people that makes me one of thier best customers. They know me by name, and treat me like a friend, sometimes cut me good deals, and talk honestly about new products. When I was having trouble with one of my systems, the store owner took the system home with him, fixed it and charged me only for the parts. When my wife was in the hospital not long, they sent her flowers. Try to get that kind of service from Compaq, Dell or IBM.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[wierdo]

I think it remains to be seen if Walmart is a monopoly or not. I'd be willing to bet that in a large number of areas where Walmart has a presence in the western US and the midwestern US they are the only source for a large number of products.

While this is not true in Wal-Mart's back yard (there is nothing I can find at Wal-Mart in the NW Arkansas area that I can't get elsewhere), in many small towns across the Western US, it is true. Oftentimes, however, it is true because Wal-Mart came in and built a market for certain goods that were simply unavailable previously without a drive to a larger town. In many cases, Wal-Mart has done well for cities and towns, while in many other cases it has driven all of the local competition out of the market. There's really no way to tell which will happen until the store is open, and that is the problem I have with all the Wal-Mart "NIMBYism"

-Nathan

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[c_jonescc]

Walmart is NOT more efficient. They just use cheaper labor, as in pseudo-slave labor. Walmart has a history of human rights and workers rights violations up to par with companies like the Gap and Nike.

It's easy to be cheaper when your "producers" are starving to death, forced to work 20 day, not allowed to organize, and are forced into birth control and abortions for the sake of "efficiency".

Remember how badly it hurt Kmart when people realized that Kathy Lee's clothing line was made in sweat shops? That's because their cost went way up suddenly, while their competitor, Walmart, didn't have to change a thing.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[blkros]

It's easy to be cheaper when your "producers" are starving to death, forced to work 20 day, not allowed to organize, and are forced into birth control and abortions for the sake of "efficiency".
Huhh.
Won't have workers for too long if they keep starving to death and can't reproduce.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Perdo]

"many people chose to vote with their pocket book."

It sure would be nice if I had a pocket book I could vote with. Except these are the real voters. Enron is a classic example. They got their guy elected, set the US's energy policy and placed their executives into positions where they could do the most good for big oil. This is not new and it's not going to stop. Moron defending big business. Brainwashed into thinking that they are on your side.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Tardigrade]

Enron wanted to be bailed out, but they weren't. Enron wanted the Kyoto Protocol signed (they've been investing in Kyoto Protocol positive projects), but it wasn't. I hate it when people are this ignorant.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[Bob Uhl]

You've got be kidding. Wal-Mart is great. It brings decent quality goods at great prices to rural towns. The local retailers can't compete: that's their problem. The populace chooses Wal-Mart. They'd be fools not to. In the town of Sherman, Tx. (where I went to college), the Wal-Mart was a 24 grocery, toy store, gun & ammo shop and furniture store. They had lobsters, for Pete's sake! Only some big-city high-income-bracket sort would begrudge those in the boonies the joy of a Wal-Mart.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[isdnip]

Read the araticle. Wal-Mart IS more efficient. They are a distribution company, and they distribute things (from manufacturer to consumer) very efficiently by means of very good IT.

They are by no means alone in using cheap labor -- Gap and Nike do, and usually have much higher prices. I do not condone the labor violations that Wal-Mart and other stores may be committing (nor am I rendering judgement), but the whole point of the Technology Review article was that Wal-Mart automates its supply chain better than its competitors, so inventory is more carefully ordered and moved around.

Re:Microsoft the lesser of those two evils

[4of12]

If you search around on the web you can find evidence of local, grass roots opposition to the ruthlessly efficient business practices of Walmart of building a megastore in an otherwise small or undeveloped neighborhood.

There's a great deal of money involved, and Walmart has used it's advertising dollars well by getting Paul Harvey, the Voice of Trust as far as many midwesterners are concerned, to talk about how they are "good neighbors", trumpeting charitable giving (even if it's really financed by local employee donations instead of corporate largesse), etc.

The reality is somewhat different from the Walmart advertising. Everyone loves the cheap goods that result from the economies of scale that Walmart enjoys. They dislike the congestion around a Walmart store, wouldn't want one located right next door to their house, dislike the anti shoplifting guards at the store exits snooping over their receipts, and find that the jobs are generally part-time, low-paying, without lots of benefits, staffed by retirees who need the income to supplement their meager social security checks.

Apart from devastating small local merchants, the Walmart stores tend to use a pricing structure so that certain loss leader items are buttressed by the less common items being overpriced.

And, IMHO, the quality of the goods from Walmart is less than from Sears or from other retail outlets. Low price, low price, low price.

Then there's the homogenizing effect of Walmart on our culture. In America, it's just kind of depressing, while in Europe, I think there is downright antagonism to Walmart.

When their marketing surveys show a need for a change of venue, Walmart has no compunction leaving a big box store vacant and building a brand new one in a different, erstwhile pristine, location. You've never seen a sorrier looking place than an old, abandoned Walmart store.

I don't mean to single out Walmart for heavy criticism; there are other retailers that behave similarly. It's just that it today's world, you get plenty of advertising to tell you one version of reality and the other version you just kind of have to pick up.

And, you can't argue that they haven't been successful as a business. Owning Walmart stock for the past decade has been lucrative.

But, despite some advantages their size gives them over their competitors, Walmart is not a monopoly in the sense that Microsoft is a monopoly. When 90% of most retail goods are sold through Walmart, and when suppliers start to get browbeaten by Walmart executives to thwart competitors, then one can start to make a comparison.

PostgreSQL developers are you listening?

[_typo]

Imagine the ripple-or rather, tsunami-effect on the future of systems design and development in the retail, wholesale and consumer goods sectors. What happens to a Microsoft or Oracle in that environment?

So if PostgreSQL reaches 7.3 with full replication support and if Redhat (or Suse or whatever) support it (and Linux) well, we might get some major corporate players on our side. It would be huge.

Forget about Oracle changing all it's servers over to Linux. Oracle is a 1000-pound gorilla that requires manual tuning for performance and that (i've been told) has crap support tools.

Re:PostgreSQL developers are you listening?

[teg]

So if PostgreSQL reaches 7.3 with full replication support and if Redhat (or Suse or whatever) support it (and Linux) well, we might get some major corporate players on our side.

Red Hat already supports and ships a version of PostgreSQL: Red Hat Database

Well, at least Walmart.de runs on FreeBSD

[rainer_d]

It's a beginning ;-)
Walmart.com runs with IIS on Linux...

Re:Well, at least Walmart.de runs on FreeBSD

[[Entropy]]

Taken from http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html:

Why do you report impossible operating system/server combinations?

Webservers that operate behind a caching system, load balancer, reverse proxy server or a firewall may sometimes report the operating system of the intermediate machine. Hence reports of 'Microsoft/IIS on Linux' may indicate that either the web server is behind a Linux server that is acting as a reverse proxy, or has configured the Akamai caching system such that the first request to the site goes to one of Akamai's servers [which run Linux], or as in the case of www.walmart.com has been configured to send a misleading signature.

Wal-mart is a tough customer

[jACL]

When working for a past employer who sells its merchandise through Wal-Mart, I was exposed to its methods.

As a retailer with Wal-Mart, your product has to maintain a 98% sell-through rate, or you don't sell through Wal-Mart anymore. (This, by the way, says something to me about the Mandrake distro, which still sells at Wal-Mart.) You're required to keep track of the inventory using Retail Link.

Wal-Mart piloted Retail Link across the Internet via VPN in 1995 using Sun's Sunscreen product, prior to the standards even being accepted -- they're a bleeding edge company. Wal-Mart is always keeping an eye on ways to streamline its operation and cut costs. You can bet they've already checked out Linux. If it saves them on operating margins, they'll be ahead of the curve.

Re:Wal-mart is a tough customer

[Kirkoff]

Sell-through rate is how much of your product sells between stocking cycles. The optimal situation is that you're getting new stock as you run out of the last shipment. Anything that is extra above that is inefficiency.

Also, I'd have to say that Target is a pretty rough company. They require not only a large amount of stock, but a gaurentee that you'll have a HUGE amount ready to sell to them. If your product doesn't sell well, they don't reorder and you're stuck with thousands of units that you don't have orders for.

Wal-Mart and Open Source? Never...

[dtdns]

I for one work for Wal-Mart, and do not think they will ever embrace "open-source" in the manner that many would like, at least not in the next 5-6 years anyway.

I can tell you that they do use several types of operating systems through their stores, such as a minimized version of DOS for the handheld terminals, HP-UX as part of the POS (point-of-sale) network, another UNIX for the SMART (Systematic Merchendising and Applied Retail Technology) system, as well as Windows NT/2000 servers to cache all those ads you see playing on "Wal-Mart TV" in electronics (and throughout hanging TV's in some stores).

Would it be cost-effective for Wal-Mart to go Open Source? Not likely. The turnover in staff at the home office alone, combined with training for new positions, etc, would cost millions, not to mention that they would have to literally double their server count at all of their 3,000+ stores. They would need to develop, test and deploy thousands of servers with the new software, hook them into the existing systems to take over various jobs, and then remove the existing servers. All of that for what, to save licensing fees? No, I don't think so.

Wal-Mart has spent BILLIONS of dollars on its current infrastructure, and to change it drastically would cost even more. Wal-Mart keeps it's "everyday low prices" that way specifically because they do NOT do things like this.

Now, the Cart Pusher is a wonderful tool that they are getting for most of the stores, however, which will help save hundreds of thousands on accidents, injuries and other damages. And people wonder why Wally World does so well...

Re:Bad analogy to Slavemart.

[Drakin]

Uh. That's a big violation of company policy. Management can get in serious crap if the employee calls up regional/head office (which they're entitled to). I'd say those employees don't know their rights.

I've done Oracle DBA

[Moderation abuser]

And it's a pain in the arse. Completely over deployed. Twit IT managers insist on Oracle for little databases that couldn't remotely be called mission critical.

It requires so much work that other RDBMS simply don't.

Oracle's fine for *big* stuff where you have a dozen DBAs working on a project but it's like taking a jet 5 miles down the road to work every day.

Re:I've done Oracle DBA

[_typo]

This was exactly my point. And it's why I'm asking if PostgreSQL can take over from them. And it's why I mentioned replication since it's a much requested feature. Are there any other major ones missing?

Re:walmart == the devil

[nomadic]

like enron embracing campaign finance reform.

Better analogy--like Enron embracing the Kyoto Treaty. Which they did, but not for any moral or ethical reasons...

quandry

[Alien54]

here we have again a situation where the consequences of a programmer philosophy may at some point clash really hard will political philosophy. A sort of cognitive dissonance, at least for some folks.

what happens when the technology you are promoting is adopted by people you might not like? You know, the whole anti-globalist thing?

Lots of differnt answers to that question.

Get real.

[mindstrm]

Open source hippies. Sheesh.

"Embrace open source?". The hell the should.. just as they should not 'Embrace' any other buzzword or technology. Why? Because to PROPERLY be flexible, you have to look at ALL Your options.

That's the problem with many open source zealots these days. So many of them can't see beyond the purchace price of the software, or the fact that they can hack away at the code. They blab about security.
Open source security? Is open-source a better model for security? In a way.. as anyone who cares to can go have a look at it.. but does that make anything open-source better? No, absolutely not. It's like arguing risc-vs-cisc... someone saying their processor is 'better' because it is risc. In other words, they mix up a technology or methodology being better with an actual implementation being better.

Cheaper? Certainly in some cases. But in others, the cost of windows is NEGLIGIBLE compared to the cost of other tools in use... tools that don't HAVE an open-source equivalent. Tools that have some serious technical support.

I'll advocate free tools anytime... if they make sense. But in many cases, the proprietary stuff IS better, that's reality.

Re:Get real.

[Malcontent]

"I'll advocate free tools anytime... if they make sense. But in many cases, the proprietary stuff IS better, that's reality. "

What if you could get 50% of the functionality for free? What if you get 70% or 80% or 90%.

For example sure ms office is better then star office. But str office is 70% as good and is free. MS sold SQL server for years with the mantra "sure it's not as good as oracle but it's a hell of a lot cheaper". The same argument here. Corporations will always choose a cheaper product if it's "good enough" or "almost as good".

Linux is "good enough" or "almost as good" some even say it's "better" but it's always free.

Re:Get real.

[Steveftoth]

The point is that if it doesn't do what you need, then it is useless.

If you are getting 50% functionality, but the 50% includes what you need then it may be a good idea to use the free software.
Linux is only worthwhile to use if it does what you want. And that is not true all the time.

A few interesting bits on that page..

[mindstrm]

Except really, it's just a front for the UFCW to try to unionize wal-mart. Why.. because they have some great interest in the well-being of all the walmartians (hey.. cool word) out there? No.

Because adding the walmart staff to the UFCW roster will significantly boost the pay & profits of the union executives.

UFCW... just say no.

I pay $.77 for gas... thanks Walmart!

[fred911]

... or should I?

Sure I *love* spending the .91 a gallon I pay for premium fuel, all sparked by a Walmart gas war. They are selling at cost. They have been doing this for the past week. 2 mom and pop stations are now doing the same. I'm sure "the mart" can hang on much longer then mom and pop can.

I wonder what I'll be paying for gas when mom and pop aren't market participants (how long do you think that will be)?

todays prices... .77 reg, .84 mid grade and .91 for premium.

Embrace the mart? not I

Re:I pay $.77 for gas... thanks Walmart!

[VAXman]

Sure I *love* spending the .91 a gallon I pay for premium fuel, all sparked by a Walmart gas war. They are selling at cost. They have been doing this for the past week. 2 mom and pop stations are now doing the same. I'm sure "the mart" can hang on much longer then mom and pop can.

THE HORROR! I'm sure all those mom and pops like Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron are shivering in their shoes. Maybe they'll actually be forced to come up with ways to be more efficient, so they can lower the cost, too, and reduce their own prices.

Re:I pay $.77 for gas... thanks Walmart!

[Seanasy]

Who marked this insightful?

Do really think they're trying to put Exxon, Shell, etc. out of business? Who do you think WalMart gets their gas from? Many, if not most, gas stations are privately owned. Thery're more like franchises. There's someone in your community that owns that station. They just buy all their gas from one supplier and advertise it that way.

This isn't WalMart against Shell. It's WalMart against Your Local Mechanic. Sellingat or below cost isn't efficient, it's abusive.

Re:I pay $.77 for gas... thanks Walmart!

[Anonymous DWord]

Aww, you poor bastards. Gas up here is 84c - per LITRE, not gallon. Multiply by 4, suckas.

Re:I pay $.77 for gas... thanks Walmart!

[VAXman]

This isn't WalMart against Shell. It's WalMart against Your Local Mechanic. Sellingat or below cost isn't efficient, it's abusive.

That's for the consumers to decide. If consumers want to pay a premium to support a local business, they are free to. It is likely that most will simply go for the cheaper gas, and the less efficient supplier will go out of business.

What's the problem? Should decisions about who sells what to whom for how much be made by the consumers who are actually paying for the goods, or by some elites who have some random agenda?

Re:I pay $.77 for gas... thanks Walmart!

[LatJoor]

the less efficient supplier will go out of business

Cutthroat pricing has absolutely nothing to do with efficiency. Walmart is selling at cost, not charging less because they've reduced their costs through efficiency. Then, when the neighboring stations go out of business they can jack up the price higher than before and gouge consumers, who will have nowhere left to turn. It's a technique that Standard Oil perfected before they were split up for being filthy stinking criminals, just like Walmart.

Not to whine... but

[mindstrm]

that link also doesn't show much for an operation the size of wal-mart. I've seen small, independed supermakets with more claims than that.

Plus. their 'news' is stuff like "Wal-mart CEO sells millions of his stock". Oh wow....
Someone who was granted stock options actually used them to make money? SO WHAT. THATS WHY HE GOT THEM.

Problems with the article.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Walmart is an early adopter. The author implies it is not.
2) Linux does have a "market giant" behind it: IBM. IBM is number one in system services/integration.

Basicly what Walmart did is computerize inventory
and actually used the data. Walmart was full of
things you wanted to buy. Kmart was full of stuff
you didn't want to buy. Kmart left the unsellable
stuff on the shelves and failed to re-order what it did sell. Hell, Walmart could run their business on home made no-OS software. What they do is not all that difficult; Target easily duplicated it. The problem is a management and commitment problem: Walmart computerized, studied the data and followed through.

Sears, Kmart, Woolworth wallowed in pretending to use technology. They had systems, but dumped the data on the floor. There's a big difference in collecting the data and using it. Most middle managers couldn't tell the difference between an arithmetic mean and fitted curve. Their job was to deny benefits and raises to minimum wage slaves. Walmart treats their workers like shit too, but somebody there is studying the workflow and constantly tweaking it. Sears employees let customers pile up at the registers as they refused to accept Visa and Mastercard (Sears card only).

Walmart's crushing of the dinosaurs is not some great innovation. It was common sense and pretty easy to do. Crushing Microsoft is a bit more difficult to do than bankrupting Kmart.

This is a standard bussiness practice

[Billly Gates]

Retailers like Walmart and Staples do not like to pay out full time benefits like health care and vacation time that is required by employment laws for more then 40 hours a week. Where I work at Staples we get about 50 to sometimes 60 hours a week worth of work and only recieve part time benefits. Eventually HR cut our hours to under 40 a week to prevent lawsuits from the government. So what does our store manager do?

Cuts our pay and tells us to do the same amount of work in under 40 hours or else he'll fire us! As it is we do not eat lunch or break and work off the clock to finish it for %15-%20 less money because of our hours being cut. Yet he still subtracts our lunch breaks even though we don't take them. Hey, retail sucks and if I stayed in college I wouldn't have this problem so I have no one to blame but myself.

But in a time where stock prices have plummeted, the low end of the economic scale has to increase efficiancy as well. Even if we don't get paid for it. Staples lost alot of money and this is why they make recievers/merchandisers work off the clock. All in the effort to boost our stocks.

Doesn't everyone?

[MarkusQ]

Walmart forces people to work off the clock. It has been on the news and I have had employees confirm this to me. They set a 'goal' and if they don't reach it they are expected to punch out and return to thier job off the clock. Some efficiancy!

Having worked at (note: "at" /= "for") Intel, Microsoft, and two dot coms, I've started thinking of this as normal. In fact, if the trend of the last few decades continues, I expect to wind up at a company that doesn't specify any hours, but just has a little real-time LCD display outside every cube, labled "Your score/GP/Lives remaining."

-- MarkusQ

Re:Doesn't everyone?

[MarkusQ]

If you're an exempt employee (which you probably are), you get paid a salary, not by the hour. Wal-Mart workers are non-exempt, and are entitled to overtime pay.

Was, not are.

And joking, not serious.

And at one of the startups, entitled to, not paid.

But other than that I agree with you.

-- Markus

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[dj28]

What? It's their property; They can put as many security cameras as they want on their property just like you can do to your home. They can also CHOSE which music they want to sell. You don't have to shop there. You act like they are forcing you to shop there. Get real. I don't know what moron modded that up.

Read this before you think about it more

[z7209]

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0215-06.htm

In any case, the wal-mart culture of middle-america is definitely not something I'm interested in aligning with. Makes microsoft look warm and cuddly.

Censor

[sehryan]

So we should embrace the policy of the way Wal-Mart cencors music that it finds offensive? I didn't realize censorship was part of the Open Source movement.

Re:Censor

[Captn Pepe]

In general, not carrying an item is not censorship. However, the case is a bit fuzzier when your record label's single largest distributor calls up and tells your producer that either you change the lyrics in your album or they drop the thing altogether.

Same goes for mass-market book and magazine publishing, video games, you name it.

An old article from the Boston Globe

Rock Out Censorship calls for a boycott of WalMart

Here's a page of helpful links about WalMart and its practices in a number of areas.

Re:Censor

[Anonymous DWord]

Nirvana's In Utero, for example. Waif Me?

Re:Censor

[Xofer D]

Hey, that's nothing. Wal-Mart censors photos.

I'm not talking about photos that they sell - I'm talking about their photo developing shop. My friend once took a roll of film down to be developed which featured some shots of his girlfriend at the beach wearing a bikini swimsuit; she's well-endowed, and the suit was not, so there was quite a bit of skin showing according to my friend.

When he went to pick them up, some of the photos were missing. He asked about them and was told that it was their policy not to print pornography! He asked for the negatives, and they told him that they had been destroyed.

This was not explained to him by the attendant, nor was it displayed on signs in the store. Even so, he hadn't thought of them as pornographic. Meanwhile, he handed the roll over and shots (not replacable, in general) were destroyed. They even tried to charge him full price for what was left.

Re:Censor

[Kirkoff]

Actually, personal censorship is definatly part of the Open Source Movement. They choose not to sell items X, Y, and Z. That's a lot like my having a system and telling my users that I don't want them putting pr0n on it. I'm censoring them while they're in use of my computer. If they want pr0n, they can feel free to go get all they want on their own computer. Contrary to some people's beleif, the consept of personal freedom includes one choosing to abstain oneself or one's company from using/selling things they don't like.

Re:Microsoft-IIS/5.0 (WindowsNT) on Linux.

[nneul]

Wouldn't running IIS behind a Squid or other linux based proxy server yield the same results with netcraft?

Given Walmart's current Point of Sale OS...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see them converting any time soon. As a former employee of a very large company which provided Walmart all of its Point of Sale equipment, I can tell you that Walmart runs all of its Point of Sale devices on an OS called 4690, which has a shell and set of APIs that look a whole hell of a lot like DOS, while having some nicer things in the kernel like multithreading. This OS has been specifically tweaked and enhanced over the years particularly for these guys, and I can tell you that they aren't going to abandon this OS that has been essentially created for them and for a particular purpose; it is absolutely rock-solid for what it does, granted that that is slim. But I am agreed that Linux would be a great alternative for an emerging Walmart. Many large companies want to run cash registers on wimpy (486 or worse) boxes, which Windows doesn't do so well.

Re:Given Walmart's current Point of Sale OS...

[Animats]

The IBM 4690 Retail Operating System now supports Java and TCP/IP. So it's now almost at the "thin Internet client" level.

Re:Given Walmart's current Point of Sale OS...

[argoff]

Contrary to popular belief, the IBM 4690 is a hardware cash register, that is basically an x86 in a fnacy case with alot propriatary interfaces to cash drawers, led displays, etc...

It can run any opperating system that an x86 does, but typically only runs dos, os2, and windows opperating systems. I imagine that it could and would run Linux but would be willing to bet that the drivers are not there for the periphials.

Wal-Mart sells "Naked PC"'s

[mikethegeek]

Wal-Mart is selling PCs without OS's

I submitted this as an article to ./ 2 weeks ago. Rejected. This is a major example of how Wal-Mart could hurt MS.

Re:Wal-Mart sells "Naked PC"'s

[weave]

Damn I wish I had mod points. This *is* news. Finally, I can buy a computer without paying the Windows tax and reformatting it off as the first thing I do.

Re:Wal-Mart sells "Naked PC"'s

[SilentChris]

Um, there's no evidence that Walmart is actually saving consumers money on these machines. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see them making a profit.

Re:Wal-Mart sells "Naked PC"'s

[nathanm]

Um, there's no evidence that Walmart is actually saving consumers money on these machines. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see them making a profit.

First, the whole point of a corporation is to make a profit. Otherwise they'd go out of business.

Second, the exact same model of computer is $99 more with Windows XP Home Edition.

Re:Wal-Mart and Open Source? Never...

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously do not work at corporate in arkansas. They already are experimenting with Linux at corporate. If tests go well (most likely they will), they will start rolling out Linux into stores in about 12-24 months.

My understanding is that they are always seeking ways of lowering cost and have realized that staying with an M$ based system would not lower it anymore (high price on OS,sysad, virus protection, software cost, && development productivity ). This is a company that is ALWAYS trying to lower the overall cost / transaction. While they have spent BILLIONS of $ on hardware and software, they have already paid for it. By moving to Linux, they are able to re-use the same hardware. The companies who did not provide Linux based apps to Wal-Mart when they asked once (& only once) will simply not be part of the plan. Apparently, they have in extreme measures of security and most folks do not find out until they are rolling out the products into stores.

As to training, I would think that creating a similar interface for the users would allieviate all that. However, the turn-over rate of employees means that wal-mart is always training employees anyways, so that make that argument simple FUD.

Re:Wal-Mart and Open Source? Never...

[Ami Ganguli]

Agreed that nobody is going to rip out perfectly good infrastructure for no reason, but

HP-UX as part of the POS (point-of-sale) network, another UNIX for the SMART (Systematic Merchendising and Applied Retail Technology) system,

Is there any reason that new stores couldn't use Linux/BSD on cheap Intel hardware in place of proprietary Unix? I bet somebody already has those applications running under Linux, if only for development and testing. And it's not like there's much of a learning curve in going from Unix to Linux.

Windows NT/2000 servers to cache all those ads you see playing on "Wal-Mart TV" in electronics (and throughout hanging TV's in some stores)

A Windows caching server? Another ideal candidate for "let's do what's cheapest". No business logic, just caching. That's easy.

I would be really surprised if it takes 5-6 years for this stuff to happen. It might take 5-6 years (or even longer) to replace everything, but I'd bet large amounts of money that there are a few pilot Linux boxes at Walmart already.

Re:mndstrm is a mickeysoft troll

[mindstrm]

Cool! I've been waiting for that for years.

What's a Republican? Bush?
I don't have a Republican congress.

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[JordanH]

• 4. Ive heard of some walmarts not selling birth control in any form.. (I guess they want to decide who lives and dies)

Huh? Walmart wants to decide who lives and dies because they don't sell birth control?

I guess we can really tell who represents Big Brother by who uses new speak.

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[Technician]

4. Ive heard of some walmarts not selling birth control in any form.. (I guess they want to decide who lives and dies)
They also don't sell backhoes.. The gas station does not sell bicycles. So what. If you want birth control, go to a drug store. The inventory choice might not be driven by any factor other than keeping a low profile so even church people will shop there. It might not be a political statement. Their choice of inventory is left up to them and should not be driven by public opinion polls. It is a business. Maybe they want to be seen as the clean cut family shop on the block where you don't have to explain products to your 3 year old. They also don't sell adult magazines and videos. It's their choice. They do not claim to have every product made.

Re:Walmart employees

[Glytch]

Ain't that the truth! As a poor student trying to earn some money as a walmart electronics drone, I'm kinda saddened by all the bullshit that goes on from customers, managers and employees.

I'm also saddened by the fact that I'm only person in the department who knows *anything* about stereos, TVs, video games, etc. Every other electronics drone there fought their way up from cashier jobs just so they'd have en excuse not to have to go anywhere else in the store, lest they develop a foot blister or something. I think I'm the only decent human being there. Well, with exception of someone who's name starts with S, a nice older lady who actually tries to help people out and learn about what we sell! Shocking, I know.

As opposed to someone else who's named starts with C, the absolute living incarnation of every "yes, manager" hellish walmart drone ever created, mashed together into one single not-quite-human being. You know the type.

I've heard the *department manager* try to convince a customer that the "Nintendo X-Box" was a better buy than the "Sony Playgame" because it could play DVD and VHS movies as well as play Pokemon. I wish I were making this up.

Walmart, huh?

[filtersweep]

"When it comes to managing high-impact innovation, there is no contest--Sam Walton still matters more than Bill Gates. "

What the article doesn't mention is that many metro and suburban communities VIGOROUS oppose (if not block) the openings of new Walmarts.

There have been huge union issues related to Walmarts the sell groceries.

At a more immediate level, it is downright depressing seeing retirees slaving away minimum wage.

There are a TON of sites about the evils of Walmart:

Walmart Memoirs

Walmart Trash Page

Yahoo stuff

And lest you forget all the censorship that Walmart does regarding music....Censorship at Walmart on Yahoo

I could go on and on about their business practices.

Not to mention that you could hold Jerry Springer auditions at almost any Walmart in the US...

I fundamentally find it ironic that Walmart is used as an example... a very profitable retail chain that is widely hated... that has many questionable business practices... that crushes and destroys the small "mom and pop" retailers in smaller communities.... then again, maybe it is the perfect example?

Re:Walmart, huh?

[nathanm]

And lest you forget all the censorship that Walmart does regarding music....Censorship at Walmart on Yahoo

It's not censorship. Wal-Mart is not part of the government. They can sell or not sell what they please.

80-20 and Economies of Scale

[MadFarmAnimalz]

I read the article, and to be honest there's nothing really new in there to justify the newsworthiness; there's no revolutionary thinking there.

The whole idea has been stated often enough before, and I think the author was looking for the term 'critical mass'. Open source adoption has to reach critical mass - this means that we don't need to get everyone on the bandwagon, we just need enough to get the rest back on.

This is also sometimes expressed as the 80-20 rule, a personal favorite of mine which I leverage whenever I can. 20% of the causes yield 80% of the results, generically stated.

And while Mr. Schrage makes a good point of WalMart basically being the behemoth that can represent 20% of the causes on its own, this does not necessarily mean that it is reasonable to think they might one day go open source. It is here that the submitted story fails to compile - scale has nothing whatsoever to do with acceptance of open source. Indeed, scale may be inimical to implementation of open source.

With an organization of WalMart's size, as another post correctly pointed out, it is always advantageous to go the tailor-made way. The reason here is another concept called 'economies of scale'; the tendency for life to get easier the bigger you get.

A small illustration; Company A, annual net profit $10,000, and company B, annual net income $1,000,000. Both need software which, tailored, costs $1,000. It does not really get more expensive to tailor software the bigger the organization gets. More computers does not mean more individually tailored apps. You only, in other words, develop an application once. I know there's exceptions here, such as per license fees and such, but these are exceptions. In our example, company A runs CustomApp on 10 machines and company B runs it on 1,000. Each user, naturally, gains in productivity from using software created exclusively for this particular task he/she performs, and it is here that we notice that the productivity gains in company B are 100 times that felt in company A. The example here is very rough, and full of holes and I'll probably pick up a lot of posts arguing here - but it is basically a sound analysis. Tailoring just makes more sense with these big puppies.

And tailoring software does not mix well with the ideology behind open source.

Essentially, targeting the Company A's of the world would probably be a waste of effort, enticing as their support would be.

Things have to be done the hard way, I think; Company B's are the way to go.

The facts from a former corporate programmer.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this anonymously because, well the NDA's are pretty vague as to what I can really say and what I can't....

1. Wal-Mart *DOES* use Opensource

A: About 2 1/2 years ago they started looking at Redhat, about 6 mos later (and I quote the memo that went out, given that's been 2 years ago, but I still remember it) "We will be consolidating our existing Unix Platmforms on Linux", yup, the ISP (In store processors) were to move to Redhat on Quad Dell box (they are btw Dell's largest single customer). I have no idea what the current progress of this is, but given Kevin Turner's (the CIO) statment to "Make Open platforms really Open" I doubt they would turn back on that commitment.

B: Perl. Perl is an offically approved Language to develop on inhouse although we had quite a bit of resistance from certain in-house teams at first.

2. Wal-Mart "going opensource" (as one poster put it) would have little effect on Sun or Oracle. This is because neither are approved vendors. Sun pissed Wally World off years ago and Oracle is deemed to be just too damned expensive (as was MS SQL Server, Informix and DB2 where the only approved databases).

You will likely NEVER see contributions back to the community from Wally World, they simply don't allow that kind of feedback. Remember your talking about the Worlds largest company, that despite the 1700+ Programmers they have in-house, don't even allow regular Internet access from Corporate (certain sites only and no download access regardless).

The author of the article should have done a bit more research on the topic before writing the story. A quick email to president@wal-mart.com would probally get you a better response.

BTW: also remember your talking about a company that does NOT patent it's internal software like many other companies, they view it entirely as trade secret instead (just ask Amazon.com :-) )

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[Cutriss]

Given Walmart's practices of invading cities and eliminating all the mom-and-pop stores, I think I can safely say that they are forcing you to shop there<\QUOTE>.

Where do we diverge? :)

[timothy]

I was with you right up until: "And tailoring software does not mix well with the ideology behind open source."

Why do you say that?

Most programmers (something between 80 and 90%, if the Smart People I've heard are to be trusted) work on custom, in-house software (whether working full-time or as consultants, one-off programmers, etc), just the sort of tailoring you're talking about.

I don't know what percentage, but certainly some number in the several thousands of programmers just in the U.S. program with open source tools. They're free to modify GPL or similarly licensed software to do whatever the heck they want, and if there's no redistribution (that is, if it truly remains in-house), they have no obligation to release source to anyone else, either, though they might if they wanted to take part in some cross pollination :)

(Or do I completely misinterpret your point, which is possible :) ?)

timothy

Read what I wrote

[_typo]

support it (and Linux) well

No company will buy a linux solution if it isn't supported. And most don't have a full IT staff so they need someone else to handle all the non-obvious bug/performance stuff. That's where Redhat comes in. Question is. Is their support good enough?

not whether to integrate, but where?

[dbuttric]

This article raises some good questions about Linux, and business.

I dont think that there is a question that OpenSource could save money for Walmart, but you can see from the other posts here that there are questions about whether or not the churn rate at Walmart would have some impact on systems and profitability at some layer or other.

So the question is this, which services can Linux and its applications offer that offer a clkear incentive to Walmart. Maybe we need to start thinking about which services Linux offers that can minimize the impact of that churn rate.

Or maybe we need to think in a different way than that -- Instead of trying to replace systems entirely, how can we help to augment systems? Can we fit in the food chain in some other place?

"Retail Link" has got to have a large food chain associated with it.

* Integration between retailers systems and the retail link software on the supplier's side.

* The retail link software for suppliers.

* The messaging gateway between supplier and walmart.

Any of these could be a component that we could offer up as a tool.

what if the feature set in the "Retail Link" that we offered, was more modern, and more scalable thanks to our judicious use of the Linux Kernel?

What if we sought out freely available messaging tools that offered SSL, or TLS capabilities?

I guess all I'm saying is that the Linux community can move quickly, we are small, retailers are big, if we want to swim with the fish, we might have to decide which way the current is going first.

The real message...

[dinotrac]

The real message is not necessarily to work Wal-Mart, thought working Wal-Mart certainly could make a big impact.

The real message is to identify those businesses in the supply chain that have incentives to cut costs and have some ability to ripple down the supply chain.

One great example is automotive manufacturers.
Don't know how interested they are, but they have the power, the resources and the skills to implement Open Source solutions if it suits them. They also have huge chains of suppliers who must integrate or go out of business.

Other potentials are any company that must compete with Wal-Mart. These outfits must be desperately looking for ways to streamline. If a compelling case can be made for Open Source, someone out there will bit.

And so on and so forth.

Re:Wal-Mart and Open Source? Never...

[Ami Ganguli]

So educate me. What is this PICS thing? I did a Google search, but all I found was some software that extracts still photos from video. Likely not the same thing.

and another thing they sell

[timothy]

More important than naked PCs is that they sell a boxed distribution, in the form of Mandrake-Linux, actually in stores throughout the country. (The naked PCs appear only to be on their website.)

It would be nice if they also sold Red Hat or some other distribution (along with FreeBSD, etc, too), but if I were running a Walmart, had limited shelfspace, and wanted to (or was willing to at least test) selling *some* version of The GNU/Linux/XF86/ Operating System, Mandrake would probably be my choice, too, because it's the distro that has so far worked best with various and varying systems. As it happens, Mandrake and HP are also somewhat buddy-buddy, and HP and Walmart likewise. Would be nice to get a peanut butter / chocolate magic combination by selling some HP machine bundles pre-configured with Mandrake and working with *everything* (CD-RW, DVD, printer).

In the meantime (am I the only one not boycotting Walmart?), when I stop in for the random oddments of life, I tend to creatively re-arrange the Mandrake boxes in Walmart to take up more space / look larger.

timothy

Re:and another thing they sell

[Captn Pepe]

Judging from their size and crazy profitability, I'd guess that no, there's likely someone else out there not boycotting WalMart. Too bad, really, because it is really a poster child for much of what is wrong with corporate America. I.e. make as much money as possible, with no regard for the costs to society, except when executives feel like using the vast power of a megacorporation to further their personal agendas.

Consider: WalMarts destroy local business via predatory pricing, aggressive marketing, and outright intimidation. Best estimate, for every two jobs created by a WalMart, three jobs in the larger community dissapear. These jobs are regularly worse than average, too: less than 35% of WalMart employees have health insurance, a majority the jobs WalMart creates in communities are part-time, with variable hours and no benefits or opportunity for promotion, and as a result, a significant fraction (a majority in some areas) of WalMart employees live below the poverty line. WalMart justifies these facts by claiming that it primarily creates retail jobs appropriate for working part-time after school or in conjunction with a "real" job. This, when it is single largest employer in many communities.

Nationwide, a majority of WalMart employees qualify for food stamps.

WalMart is also guilty of enforcing cultural homogeneity. Because it is such a large buyer, many publishers in a variety of media -- especially music and magazines -- have begun self-censorship out of fear that WalMart executives will yank a given product from their shelves. The article linked from this story discusses WalMart's increadible influence in the IT market; their influence in a dozen other industries is even larger. People yell about Nike and The Gap because they are brand-image based empires, but most of the output of Mexican, Pacific, and domestic sweatshops ends up on WalMart's shelves, and WalMart is big enough that they don't have to care if people hate them for this.

The WalMart model is a major contributor to urban sprawl and the degradation of community-oriented life. By destroying the local business base, and by locating stores on huge plots of land on the peripheries of towns and cities, it contributes to the flight to the suburbs, thereby increasing dependence on automobile transportation and the assorted problems that leads to.

Enough ranting for now, but maybe you understand why some people aren't too fond of this company. I can't possibly include a reasonably comprehensive set of links here, since people despite WalMart for so many reasons, but a really good links page can be found at Wal-Mart Watch.

Re:and another thing they sell

[sql*kitten]

WalMarts destroy local business via predatory pricing, aggressive marketing, and outright intimidation

That may be true, but you're missing something: no corporation can do anything without the market letting them - there simply would be no money in it. If you must blame someone, blame consumers for voting with their dollars for lower prices and homogenity over higher prices and variety. Given that this is what consumers prefer to pay for, Walmart would be fools not to sell that to them.

You can rant at Walmart all you wish, but if you want to do something about it, you will need to get the market behind you. Convince them that the benefits of "community" are worth a higher weekly grocery bill. I wish you luck.

Re:and another thing they sell

[Captn Pepe]

You can rant at Walmart all you wish, but if you want to do something about it, you will need to get the market behind you. Convince them that the benefits of "community" are worth a higher weekly grocery bill. I wish you luck.

Believe me, there is no shortage of people -- myself included -- who are trying to do exactly that: convince the market that Wal-Mart is too high a price to pay for discounted retail goods. After all, with a few exceptions (violations of labor laws, abuse of local monopolies) Wal-Mart is not a problem that can be solved through external regulation. Instead, it must be attacked by communities deciding that they will not give their dollars to such a corporation, meaning both boycotting existing Wal-Marts and vocally opposing the opening of new ones.

So no, I'm not just ranting about Wal-Mart because it makes me feel better. I'm hoping to make converts and spread the meme of opposition to evil corporate practices, which is why I try to include links documenting my claims as well as links to organiztions involved in this fight.

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[miracle69]

And how do they eliminate the mom and pop stores?

When you stop shopping at them

And you're still not forced to shop there, as there is a big competitor called the "Internet" out there.

Don't be so down on yourself

[LinuxHam]

Hey, retail sucks and if I stayed in college I wouldn't have this problem so I have no one to blame but myself

Please change your attitude. You certainly can succeed in the IT world, even without a college degree. You just have to sell yourself a little harder. Perhaps you have tried to break into the industry and not had much luck, I don't know, but I've done very well for myself with only a couple years of college.

PostgreSQL vs. Oracle, and the Big Picture

[jabbo]

I've done MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle DBA on live sites which were heavily beaten on and had, as customers at various times, Olivetti Inc., CNN, CSPAN, NBC, Fox, Reuters, Bloomberg, Business Week, NOAA, and the Department of Defense. Currently I run PostgreSQL for everything except Snort logging, because

0) I can tune it in about 5 minutes a day, from cron

1) it's cheaper than Oracle, with full transactions, and

2) I can only get Windows binaries of Snort that use MySQL. (eg. the one thing I use MySQL for)

I would not consider MySQL for serious applications because it doesn't do subselects (AFAIK) and its transaction support is fairly new (again AFAIK). Our applications DO need full transaction support for some applications that need versioned updating which only increments on success (hard to explain without showing you the code, which I can't under my NDA.)
I use MySQL for Snort because Roman says that its performance for ACID is the best, and my site seems to bear that out. MySQL 3.2x crumbled in production on a site I managed, and that soured me on the product.

Oracle is a BEAST. Properly tuned, it can blow the doors off of competitors, and OracleTool (http://www.oracletool.com/ is a terrific, free tool. But licensing costs for Oracle make it a tool that is best used in places where it's been in-place for years. I wouldn't adopt it at a new company. Since that's exactly what I work for these days, we use Postgres.

I doubt Wal-Mart will switch from Oracle (or DB2, or Sybase, or SQL Server) if they have a running installation of it. Most likely, it's on Sun if it's an Oracle installation; Blockbuster has a couple of E10K's (or did, last year, at Exodus Sunnyvale) for what appears to be their inventory control and billing system. If it ain't broke, why 'fix' it?

If you need replication, there's always RServ for Postgresql, right now. The number of sites which actually need multimaster replication is not great, and those that do seem to be running DB2 on a Parallel Sysplex or Oracle HA on a SunCluster, in my experience.

Red Hat already supports PostgreSQL. That version is called 'Red Hat Database'. I run Red Hat because I find ext3 to be a useful innovation, and I compile custom kernels; in my personal experience, the individual kernel maintainers for a given functionality (eg. LVM) can be hired for consultation or reached through mailing lists at a similar time-and-opportunity cost to what I'd encounter with a support contract from Red Hat.

Then again, I've been doing this for a while, and am probably not a 'representative' engineer... I've seen some pretty scary loads in my day, not what your average mope encounters, and my customers do not accept downtime.

We use Win2K servers where I work, too, because sometimes that's what is necessary to get the job done. I'd suggest that Wal-Mart's philosophy is closer to mine than to the average open-source hippie's, but with thousands of employees, you have to figure that many of them will be most familiar with Windows, and there is a lot of lock-in incentives for NT/2000/XP on the server side. It wouldn't make sense to expend effort and/or money to chase some mythical Linux 'savings' in many of the applications they find to be 'core'.

As always, YMMV.

Re:not open source.....

[Kalabajoui]

There are thousands of examples of software written by altruistic programmers who code for the joy of it and give their work away. It's a given that they make little or no money for their efforts directly. Indirectly, they gain experience; build their resumes, and their standing in the programming community with their work, which speaks for its self. The opportunity to be paid for their code materializes when a business needs someone to implement, maintain, and or customize it for their particular use. (I'll bet the number of programmers who'll volunteer their time to a for-profit business, for any reason, is vanishingly small.) Not only does open-source software increase productivity and create jobs, it also encourages competition and standardization. Best of all for programmers, it gives them greater control and autonomy over the technical and practical direction of their work. The open-source philosophy is also capitalism at its best because it fulfills the promises of trickle-down economics and the old saying, "A rising tide lifts all boats." You shouldn't worry about the employability of programmers on account of open-source software. To the contrary, a background in the open-source community is one of the few things that will set you apart from the hordes of semi-skilled IT opportunists and H1B-Visa holders. Which is more desirable to you, being an innovator who expands the IT market and creates jobs for skilled and semi-skilled workers alike, or competing for work with the aforementioned competition?

Wal-Mart

[Anonymous Coward]

I may not be the best to talk about Wal-Mart, but I do play in it's sandbox. Here at the University of Arkansas, Wal-Mart has poured millions into the business college. They have a $6,000 dollar 42" plasma tv scrolling news about the department. EVERY classroom has overhead projectors. The business school has the nicest computers on campus, hands down. And don't get me started on how nice the rest of their stuff is.

All this time, my side of the computational divide (computer engineering) can barely put together a functional networking lab. It's a kludge of old gateway pc's that run about 133Mhz on average. The teacher who runs it refers to it as the "Crapper Lab". Out biggest donation that I can remember was a half million from Acxiom to fund a database chair. Woop-de-do. I don't think we've seen it because of politics somewhere in the College of Engineering.

Wal-Mart is not about technology. Wal-Mart is cultural juggernaut that is stream rolling across the country leaving concrete deserts in its wake. Wal-Mart may be on the bleeding edge of "efficiency optimization", but they'll never adopt linux. Look at where their education donations go. Imagine their corporate enviroment. Wal-Mart does not take chances. Every dime they spend has a nickel's worth of research behind it. They're not about software innovation, they just want to know what's going to reduce cost and increase sales.

There may be a linux box stuck in the corner someday installed by a wayward techy, but for the most part Wal-Mart Associates (that's what they call ALL EMPLOYEES) wouldn't step out of line any more than a borg drone.

Re:Wal-Mart

[lw54]

Wal-Mart gave $50 Million a few years ago to the University of Arkansas College of Business. They now have the finest computer labs and *every* classroom has everything a professor could possibly want to use.

However, Wal-Mart has done some really awful things to contractors who work for them. (I've heard other stories) A good friend of mine did a bunch of work for them. After completing almost all of the project, one of the things they were working on didn't test properly. Instead of allowing my friend to go back and correct the problem, Wal-Mart said they couldn't fix the issue and refused payment for the *complete* project.

It's been tied up in court for almost two years and my friend has almost gone under because of this. They can afford to hold out until my friend settles for pennies on the dollar.

Wal-Mart does donate money, don't get me wrong, but don't kid yourself. They are a corporation and it's all about the bottom line.

Who's the douche who modded this post down?

[jabbo]

Your actions represent the worst of the Slashdot community. The poster expressed a valid, provocative opinion, and the best you can do is try to suppress it?

If you have no counter-argument, you could at least leave the post visible enough for someone who does. Microsoft may be bad for Linux, Wal-Mart is bad for inefficient mom-and-pop shops and perhaps the diversification of our economy and culture. Is that better or worse? Your moderation does not adequately answer this question.

I sincerely hope I'll see your action in metamoderation!

Cheap Junk and Trailer-park trash...

[Robber Baron]

Not to mention that you could hold Jerry Springer auditions at almost any Walmart in the US...

One of the things that has kept me from "embracing the Wal-mart experience" are the bulk of it's customers: Crack ho's and trailer-park trash. That and the fact that most of their products are cheap junk (I guess to appeal to the trash). They want to build one a mile or so from where I live and already there's a sizable opposition to it. I hope they manage to convince city council to say NO. But if they're depending on my business, they won't see dollar one. If local business are forced under, I'll drive great distances before I'll give any business to Wal-Mart.

Re:Cheap Junk and Trailer-park trash...

[Malcontent]

"Why, so they can be excluded from even the attempt to compete? "

There are several reasons. One is that wall mart does not build regular stores. They almost always need to have the zoning regulations changed to fit their business models. In this case they want special treatment and the city is under no obligation to give special treatment to this corporation.

Two> The city has to look at the overall welfare of all it's citizens. When a wall mart opens the money that is spend at wallmart get's funneled out of the city. If you spend your money at mom and pop they will eat at the local restaurant or buy their shoes at the neighborhood store or go the local theater. When you spend money at wallmart the money goes to the east coast and your local community never sees it. The fact is that frequently wall marts harm the local economy. they open up a store, the drive local businesses out, the town's economy suffers because all the money is gone, wall mart closes up shop and moves to fresh feeding grounds.

The city has to look at all factors short and long term when deciding to make accomodations for busineses. They don't work for corporations they work for the people. they damn well better stop corporations from "competing" if the result will be collapse of the city, massive unemployment, death of the down town, and destitution of people who are long term residents.

Re:Cheap Junk and Trailer-park trash...

[base3]

I apologize to you on behalf of minimum wage workers that cook your food, clean the beds in your hotel rooms, and make your lattes for not being able to afford to shop at botique shops and Nordstroms. We humbly apologize for the introduction of Wal-Mart and the like into your midst and promise to work harder to keep our poverty out of your sight.

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[Cutriss]

I can't point you to any statistics or studies of the fact, but I think you'll agree with me when I cite the fact that while approximately one in two households has Internet connectivity, the lacking half is likely to have lower income. It's that whole "Digital Divide" thing that Bush has been talking about.

Furthermore, not to slight Walmart shoppers, but the majority of Walmart shoppers come from the lower income brackets. Putting two and two together, the majority of Walmart shoppers don't have Internet access.So your Internet comment is way off base. Besides...I think plenty of people proved that you can't run a business by selling groceries and petfood online.

DotCom Graveyard 2000
DotCom Graveyard 2001

And how do they eliminate the mom and pop stores?

When you stop shopping at them

And why do people stop shopping at them? Because of the above reasons. When the majority of Walmart's shoppers are in lower income brackets, they have a tendency of placing more value in the almighty buck than they do of community relationships and small business. You can try all you want to say that it's my fault that Walmart wins, but the fact of the matter is that Walmart is bigger than me and I have no hope of winning when they undercut all the other stores in town. So go ahead...shop at your mom and pop store. Don't come to me and complain when they close because nobody else did, and you couldn't convince them to do otherwise.

In the end, the rich really do rule the world, because they can make the poor their unwitting slaves. Think about it.

Switching sides

[Jahf]

Wal-mart is more evil than Microsoft. I've seen way to many small cities where I've lived (Wichita, Ks, Huntsville, Al, Murfreesboro, TN) have a Wal-mart show up, setup a small store ... put tons of small shops out of business, then abandandon the small store (usually leaving an ugly skeleton sitting around for years) to put up a super-center and proceed to put the other -chains- in the area (grocery stores, electronics stores, etc) out of business.

The standard of living goes down in these areas as the shop owners are forced to work as employees instead of employers for far less money and the profits of all of those businesses go to Wal-mart's HQ in Texas instead of back into the local economy.

The culture of the area also begins to vanish as the area is homogenized into the streamlined Wal-Mart style of strip mall neighborhoods.

There are many many many other examples of this across the country. There are social and scientific studies done on the matter. Very few show positive benefit for the local economies or culture.

Microsoft may put technology companies that have been around for 5-10 years out of business. Wal-mart puts shops that have been around 50-100 years out of business and destroys pieces of Americana in the process.

At least with Microsoft they do add innovation to their market. There are things that I can do on my Linux desktop today that I probably wouldn't be able to do without Microsoft. I want to see Microsoft brought back in line so that they are not monopolizing the industry, but I don't want to see them removed completely.

Wal-mart on the other hand could go away completely and I would be happy. Even with the rising prices. And, if the corporations that feel stung by Wal-Mart would realize it, they could help stave off this problem by treating other retailers equally to how Wal-Mart is treated (ie, equal costs and equal availability).

Wal-Mart is the monopoly with the far worse need for being regulated here.

Re:Wal-Mart and Open Source? Never...

[dillon_rinker]

I hesitate to rep to such an obvious troll...but here goes. Your key paragraph, the one one which your entire argument rests is this one:

Would it be cost-effective for Wal-Mart to go Open Source? Not likely. The turnover in staff at the home office alone, combined with training for new positions, etc, would cost millions, not to mention that they would have to literally double their server count at all of their 3,000+ stores. They would need to develop, test and deploy thousands of servers with the new software, hook them into the existing systems to take over various jobs, and then remove the existing servers. All of that for what, to save licensing fees? No, I don't think so.

This is perfectly valid in the extreme short term - say, a month, or a quarter, or maybe even a year. But do you REALLY think that WalMart is going to retain ALL of its existing systems for a period of five or ten years? Do you think the corporate heads are looking at the next quarter (a la Enron) or the next ten years (a la WalMart of the past)? I'd say the latter. That's why you're a troll: you assume that there will be NO changes in software, NO process improvements, NO training, NO turnover for the next several years. I'll grant you that next to such a pristine, unchangeable standard as perfection, open source doesn't look so good. But when you compare the implementation costs of going to Linux to the implementation costs of going to some other operating system (which *will* happen unless WalMart decides never to upgrade again), you see comparable costs.

"Efficiency" really stealing from public good

[michaelmalak]

"Such a symbol of cost conscious efficiency..."

Wal-Mart "passes the savings on to you" by:

1. Importing goods produced by Chinese slave labor
2. Transferring "last mile" distribution costs to customers, taxpayers, the environment, pedestrian safety, ...

This second item bears more explanation:

• Wal-Mart takes from its customers. Customers "willingly" drive farther to shop at Wal-Mart, but usually based on the price of gas (6 cents per mile) rather than the full amortized price of automobile operation, which according to AAA is 51 cents per mile.
• Wal-Mart takes from taxpayers. Wal-Mart generates a lot of VMT (vehicle miles traveled) but doesn't pay for the roads to carry it. Oh, they may pay for an extra lane and signal in front of the store, but not for increased capacity in the several-hundred-square-mile market area.
• Wal-Mart takes from everyone in its market area. VMT by its nature steals from the public good because cars on a per-mile basis don't pay for their negative side effects: air pollution, water pollution (including temperature rises due to impervious surface runoff), noise pollution, increased danger to bicycles and pedestrians.
• Wal-Mart takes from the environment. Besides the environmental concerns due to increased VMT, there are two more. First, there is the runoff from its vast parking lots and large store (during a rainstorm, this suddenly increases the temperature of streams by several degrees, which kills fish since fish cannot tolerate temperature changes the way people can). Second, Wal-Mart makes disposable buildings. Wal-Mart builds its large buildings to last seven years, then leaves them as vacant blighted eyesores as they move to even bigger superstores.

When it comes to Wal-Mart, "efficiency" means "theft" -- not the sort of efficiency that Linux should associate itself with.

Re:"Efficiency" really stealing from public good

[Chester K]

Customers "willingly" drive farther to shop at Wal-Mart, but usually based on the price of gas (6 cents per mile) rather than the full amortized price of automobile operation, which according to AAA is 51 cents per mile.

I don't know about you, but the Wal-Marts in my town are right alongside the other retail chains. I don't have to drive farther, so those extremely long stretches of logic you used to pin theft on Wal-mart don't even apply.

Re:"Efficiency" really stealing from public good

[michaelmalak]

I don't know about you, but the Wal-Marts in my town are right alongside the other retail chains. I don't have to drive farther, so those extremely long stretches of logic you used to pin theft on Wal-mart don't even apply.

Then perhaps your town is the only one in which Wal-Mart didn't put other stores out of business. In other towns, those who lived near the neighborhood stores now must drive to Wal-Mart.

how walmart destroys towns.

[Da_Monk]

I saw this in a small town in upstate NY,
walmart sent reps to all the small towns in the area, advising them to prepare to be driven out of business. the reps also took not of the average prices of certain items. when the walmart opened, all the prices were lower than the neighborhood small stores. once all the small stores were driven out of business, unable to match the prices, the walmart proceeded to raise its prices ABOVE what the small stores were selling items at. whenever a new store opened up, the walmart would lower its prices again until that store went away.

I really dont understand why slashdotters continue to harp on the evils of microsoft when walmart and AOL-Time Warner are quite a bit worse.

The perfidity of Wal-Mart is not the point

[Jack William Bell]

I wish I had some way of marking every "Wal-Mart is evil!" post as offtopic in one fell swoop. Walmart probably is evil to some extent; every large corporation is. But the author's use of Wal-Mart as an example tends to obscure his real point. The key passage in the article is the closing paragraph, quoted here with every instance of 'Wal-Mart' changed to '[Big-Biz]':

Today's economic reality is that high-tech decisions made in Arkansas play a larger role in boosting America's productivity than decisions made in Silicon Valley or Seattle. If you appreciate clever innovations, spend more time with inventors, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. If you want to know which innovations will rewrite the productivity statistics, ignore early adopters and identify the [Big-Biz] in key vertical markets. Moore's Law is a necessary but not sufficient condition for economic growth; [Big-Biz]'s motto is what makes Moore's Law matter.

Those of you who want to focus on '[Big-Biz]' as evil are obscuring a more important question; can Open Source break into [Big-Biz]? The thing is, computers really have produced a considerable pay-off for [Big-Biz] and small-biz. That is why they use them. In the case of [Big-Biz], however, cost-effictiveness is probably the sole reason they use them. [Big-Biz] doesn't care about the cool factor.

So, if we want to see Open Source grow beyond colleges and a few small-bizs we need to seriously consider how to show [Big-Biz] they can save money by adopting Open Source Tools.

Implicit, but not mentioned explicitily, in the article is the extra question "Can we get [Big-Biz] to adopt the philosophy of Open Source as a cost saving measure as well?" By definition [Big-Biz] wants to make lots of money and to squeeze out their competitors. That kind of behavior is what made them [Big-Biz] in the first place. From their viewpoint you don't squeeze out your competitors by creating great tools and giving them away for your competitors to use against you. We need to find ways to make the argument that the win from this behavior is greater than any possible loss.

However, if you hate [Big-Biz] because you hold anti-capitalist views, then you should also be against helping them to understand Open Source. Personally I think that kind of stance is both quixotic and wrong-headed. But you should be clear in you purposes.

Jack William Bell

Re:Walmart.. or Big brother?

[Captn Pepe]

They also don't sell backhoes.. The gas station does not sell bicycles. So what. If you want birth control, go to a drug store. The inventory choice might not be driven by any factor other than keeping a low profile so even church people will shop there. It might not be a political statement.

However, it is political. WalMart is overwhelmingly run by southern conservative christian white men, to the extent that they have been investigated repeatedly for racism in hiring and promotions (numerous lawsuits pending). WalMart is the nearest drugstore for something like 30-40% of Americans, and the only accessible drugstore for a sizeable fraction of that, because all the others have been driven out of business.

WalMart has been fined several times because executives made a policy of looking the other way in the face of sexual harrassment complaints. Also, of the roughly 34% of WalMart employees who have health insurance (most employees are classified as part-time, i.e. less than 39 hours a week, and thus would have to pay WalMart to be included in the health plan; very few WalMart workers can afford this, as a majority of them already qualify for food stampes and other public assistance), none are offered coverage for contraceptives in any form. WalMart has also been fined for lying to judges and destroying evidence related to victims of assaults that occur on its premises, because its executives don't want to get involved. The vast majority of such victims are women.

Taken together, one should start to suspect a pattern larger than not feeling like selling certain drugs. See this page for a useful selection of links on this and other issues.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Productivity

[cyberon22]

The only problem with the Solow paradox is that it's wrong.... ;)

Solow made his infamous statement in 1986, long before email, the Internet, and even word processing were standard business tools. More recent stats tell us that productivity SURGED in the late 1990s (at least in the US). Slashdotters might even remember (fondly?) the debate from about three years ago when some were questioning if any limits remained to perpetual productivity gains!

This is a nicely written piece, but he has no evidence other than rampant speculation to suggest that Wal-Mart is somehow a greater source of productivity gain in the American economy than... say... email, or the plummetting costs of telecommunications.

A nicely written article, but Schrage should be more careful not to draw such unsubstantiated conclusions.

Oracle's features are it's biggest pain

[Moderation abuser]

And it's biggest asset.

If PostgreSQL implements all the features that Oracle supports, it'll become just as much of a pain in the arse as Oracle to administer.

I wouldn't be in a big hurry to add masses of features.

The real value of free software

[argoff]

I don't think many people understnad...

Today I can roll my own opperating system for under $1000, where merely 10 years ago it would cost over 10 million - that is the value of free software. (in fact, with any free software, not just opperating systems)

Today if I want my 500 friends (business partners, whatever) to veiw special graphic files, I don't half to send them out to buy a $300 software package. Now they can get it for free saving 150K between us - that is the value of free software

Today I can collaberate with my 500 friends (business partners, whatever) - if we each make a $200 improvement to a software package we each get a piece of software with $100000's worth of improvement. That is the value of free software.

These forces are pushing free software into the marketplace, and are the reason why it is and will become prevalent everywhere. Even if WalMart goes gung ho against Linux, it will make no difference. They are not the force driving Linux - WalMart is small compaired to global marketplace, Linux will happen either way.

The fact that he is so up there thinking that chains like WallMart are going to make all the difference shows that he just doesn't get it and is out of touch with what is really happening in the trenches.

Not on nearly the same scale.

[autopr0n]

Microsoft has driven a few comanies out of bussness. Netscape, Borland, Corel... But each of those comanies were huge, had some degree of missmanagement that caused their own downfall. And more importantly, anyone who worked for those comanies would have no trouble finding another job. Also all of those companies were on the same scale, or at least near to, the size of M$

Walmart on the other hand, kills small bussness left and right, small local stores, who's employees then have no choice but to move, find another line of work, or work for wallmart.

Microsoft may make our lives more annoying, Walmart ruins peoples lives. The two are hardly comparable.

What?

[autopr0n]

You think people would stop upgrading their computers if M$ stoped adding more crap to their OS?

That's a hell of a strech there dude, Nvidia for everquest addiction, or the free software foundation for Eric S. Raymond.

Re:Walmart employees

[Glytch]

Yeah. I've got similiar problems. One of my *favourite* things is when the head manager (a home office hatchet man who's been in charge of 24 stores in 20 years) comes by, demanding to know why there's always two people in electronics when there's few customers around and no cleaning left to do. "You're just standing around! One of you go into chemicals and clean up." My partner shrugs helplessly, knowing I'm a better salesman, and goes off to clean up.

And then the head manager has the gall to wonder why we didn't have two people in the department when some guy steals a dvd player while the thief's partner has me distracted! Asshole.

He's also the same head mananger who kept the store drastically understaffed during the christmas season (while the store was making record profits) just so there would be less expenses, and thus, a bigger bonus for him at the end of the year. Second to last saturday night before christmas, I was all alone from 7pm to 11pm. Four hours alone on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Insanity.