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Microsoft Says IBM/Linux Their Biggest Threat
krypt0n0mic0n writes "An article at The Register shows that Microsoft sees IBM and Linux as the biggest threats to their market domination. Microsoft's Eric Rudder is quoted as saying that Linux is a "formidable" challenge and that "IBM is our greatest competitor. In the way they sell products and compete in corporate accounts." It goes on to say that they believe the NET server will be a challenge to these competitors."
Who's threatening you today?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
With the track record of IIS, I doubt that many companies will buy into another MS web server.
You mean to tell me a stable os might pose a challenge to a buggy one in the IT market? Ahh, get out. I don't believe it.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
To defeat Microsoft, dominance of non-M$ technologies in the enterprise area is key.
.NET CLR is either a non-starter (as it's been thus far), or .NET in such a way that business software will .NET, and that solutions .NET applications. The point of .NET is to sell more
If they gain a significant foothold there, their control will be near total, and they'll
have a cash source with which to fund the ultimate destruction of all competetors.
Conversely, if Linux/Unix/Java win the enterprise space, Microsoft will have no new source
of revenue and the encroachment of deskop alternatives (OSX and Linux and BSD) will
eventually destroy their financial base.
It's important to ensure that the
that quality, truly open source, implementations exist on non-MS platforms. Whatever they
say, Microsoft wants to control the uptake of
really only run on their platforms. They're not producing a public standard for the sake of being
good corporate citizens. They're going to try to ensure that they're the . in
that would have gone Java will go their way on their software. There's no incentive to have
real competition in server platforms for
copies of windows, SQLServer, and Visual Studio.
Funny how that's all they talk about now, who their competitors are.
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
"We believe IBM is a Monopoly and should be broken up by the government. They impeed on our ability to smash competitors."
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
We've done it! We've captured the MS brain bug!
Doogie puts his hands on it.
"It's... It's afraid!"
Crowd cheers.
The Internet is generally stupid
1. Call competitors a threat
2. ?
3. Profit
Microsoft: What virus will you choose next?
Anyway, with that said, why wouldnt they consider Linux/IBM (why is IBM first in the headlines?) a threat, doesnt linux have the largest chunk of the server market?
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
Well, it'a always great to hear that at least something is threatening them! Microsoft seems to be so full of themselves, they don't even consider others. Now if this threat is Linux, then so much the better.
Maybe IBM/(GNU)Linux is M$'s biggest threat, but that can be equated to saying that David is Goliath's biggest threat. Sure, once in a while David will win, but what are the odds as they stand now?
Let's just hope that Linux wins the same one that David did.
I am starting a fund to help Microsoft since IBM and Linux are being mean to M$. Please send me money so we can help our favorite company when they are in a time of need.
I thought the systems were supposed to be useful, not just purchased. The headline shows corporate greed, once again.
I would like to see a headline like "Microsoft is concerned IBM and Linux may offer more consumer benefits".
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
...that IBM is a threat. A company does not persist for four generations and a hundread years (1896) without doing things the right way. IBM will continue to be around long after these kiddos have crashed and burned. IBM knows how to do things and how to do them correctly.
Humm... Before, we were a cancer. Now, we're a puppy. Well, that's a step up... I think.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
didn't we already know this?
Let's all get in our good old Way-Back Machines, and travel back in time... Does anyone remember that joint venture product IBM was putting out? OS/2, version 1.3...then later version 2...and Warp, etc..? For anyone whose been fortunate enough to really work with any of the old OS/2 products, you'll remember that when correctly installed and configured, they're still a very rock solid product. Not much the same can be said for most of the current M$ products, save perhaps Win 2k.
:- While our "friends" and M$ could sell sand to a man stranded in the desert, sometimes the products they rush out aren't as solid as we'd like them to be.
The difference between these two corporate giants is that they really are opposites of one another. You see, IBM -can- make good, rock-solid products...however, they couldn't market themselves out of a wet paper bag.
I can see how M$ would be threatened. If IBM learned how to market things, they could be a formidable player.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
"Linux is free like a puppy." I've used Linux for years and it only occasionally craps on the carpet or chews my shoes. Now Windows on the otherhand...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
I find this rather ironic since Microsoft's big break in the beginning was to be able to create MS-DOS for IBM.
"There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system." According to Microsoft, for example, an operating system must include an integrated web browser. :P
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
In further news, the sky is blue.
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
This should be fun, where do I get tickets?
Microsoft's Eric Rudder is this years winning of the "Blatantly Obvious Award" for those that point out the obvious two years after it was first obvious.
This really isn't news. Just MS admitting to it (after everyone else already knew it).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Yeah, well... I use linux but I don't think linux is as big as a treat as the US Government trying to axe them up into a few pieces ;)
Microsoft has to become a major player in enterprises services. If they don't they won't be able to sustain their past growth rates. The OS is rapidly becoming a commodity, now that win 2K is stable enough that that most people don't need to upgrade ever again. Win 2K already does what most people want and more, so the only way to continue to grow is new markets.
That everyone already knows. Microsoft is doing all these interviews to paint a picture that .NET really is ready for the enterprise world of 24/7 computing. Back in 98 MS commissioned some company to prove SQL Server was good enough to run the NY EX, but everyone in the RDBMS business knows Sybase ASE run the stock market. Is it possible that if MS can't get it's act together with .NET, that they have reached their peek?
"Arrogance and Ignorance go hand in hand"
Hey, it's the American way!
Ahem, you mean
IBM/(GNU/Linux)
Getting rid of the parentheses gives
IBM/GNU*Linux
We have still not finalized the penalty phase. So now that MS has "true competition" the DOJs
proposal makes perfect sense. MS has been pushed aside in the onslaught of the IBM/Linux OS machine.
While the sarcasm light was on, let's face it, MS announces nothing that does not benefit them directly. If they are claiming IBM/Linux is a threat it is because they need to be seen as having a competitor.
Now the question remains "Why?"
Apparently Microsoft does not feel particularly threatened by the U.S. Department of Justice. Only by Snow White.
Yes, implementation always costs money. GNU/Linux is no different from any other operating system in this respect. But why is nobody in the media pointing out that *implementing and maintaining Microsoft software is similarly time consuming* and that, over any reasonable period of time, it's *at least as costly* as Linux? By allowing these constant references to "Linux being free like a puppy", and by not responding with incredulity, we're aiding Microsoft. It might seem obvious to you and me that the spin is silly, but journalists appear to be buying into it -- and so will potential users who are already frightened by the concept of arcane shells and incompatible office documents.
The true benefits of Linux need to be restated - as well as being 'free', it's also robust, powerful, usable. I'm concerned that these concessions by Microsoft are really just new forms of attack upon Linux - attacks that are potentially more damaging than the previous tactic of ignoring the operating system completely, since they play to the concerns of non-technical users (and management).
Thousands of happy Linux users can -- and must -- attest to the fact that Linux just works better for a large number of tasks. The ideas that it's more difficult to use well and involves more effort and money to deploy successfully are simply untrue, at least on the server market.
I was at a tech show a few months ago, and saw an IBM Linux demo by an IBM guy.
He made a big deal about how much money IBM spent on linux development, and how they made it back within a year.
He also said that they were going to port *ALL* of their products to *ALL* of their hardware lines at a point in the futire.
Think of the implications of this. You can buy an eleventy thousand dollar site lisc. for Microsoft Whatever 2004 and a support contract with Microsoft, or you can buy a $40 copy of RedHat linux and a support contract with RedHat.
That is quite a competitive standpoint for linux in general...
"Rudder said in 2003 Microsoft must ensure .NET becomes the preferred architecture for application development. To achieve this, Microsoft must convert millions of developers using existing versions of C/C++ and Visual Basic onto .NET versions of the company's languages."
So, I should stop writing C/C++ code that will compile on practically any architecture in existence, and switch to Microsoft's proprietary version that will limit my users to a single vendor's platform? The advantage to me as a developer is what exactly?
Not to mention that IBM has real server lines like RS6000, S390 and AS/400.(I forget the new names, old school... dont cha know) The last time I check MS does not even have a 64bit OS and what it does have only runs on x86. Not what I would want for my
Enterprise Data Warehousing needs. Desktop maybe servers, No Way, MS costs too much and offers nothing for it.
Big deal. Maybe they can kill each other off.
Folks on here are probably too young to remember IBM's play with their mainframes (still exists to some extent today) in the early 80's, before UNIX became scalable and a formidable foe.
Thanks and Attaboy,
The Boss at OSDN
-- "We need to build a vibrant and healthy developer community. That's the lesson Linux has taught us. Having people to help. Knowing where to get questions answered," Rudder said. --
M$, open up some of your source code. That might help.
maybe ms should buy ibm then
how about some road rage on the information superhighway?
Moving at the speed of government.
...we were supposed to call it GNU/Linux, not IBM/Linux. Let's hope RMS isn't reading /. today.
do not read this line twice.
Ford announced IT'S biggest competitors were other car manufacturers.
Duh...
Who else makes OSs for PC architecture.
Somebody mod that up. ;)
The Free desktop that Just Works
...and in other news, Stallman is demanding that IBM henceforth refer to itself as GNU/IBM...
So if you have two solutions, one based on Microsoft, perhaps not the best tool for the job, but it has some TCO numbers to make a decision, and you have another solution based on Linux, with great technical data but no long term financials, then guess who wins?
I think nearly all TCO studies have flaws, but like it or not, it's a big factor for enterprise decision makers.
Hopefully, now that analysts are doing TCO on linux solutions, this will all change.
Ok linux being a threat I can understand. It is a great OS with the stability to go with it, but IBM I don't get. As of late all IBM has been doing is crappy systems that break down in a matter of days. And why would microsoft say something like this when they are still helping IBM sell their systems with that buck a day crap? Microsoft gives them WinXP for almost free and then they go on saying that they are one of the biggest threat come on! I can understand why IBM would have been a threat, they were the ones that pretty much started the whole PC world but not now, not anymore.
It's all part of their evil plan, you see. They're going to issue "competitive" products, and then while the IBM and Linux worlds are bent double, laughing their asses off, they will come in and take over the world.
Wait, hasn't that already happened?
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
What really caught my eye about this article was the 47% increase in sales personnel that they have planned for 2003. If Server sales are down, and the competition is getting harder, then what is the implication of putting so much effort behind your sales organization?
Answer: Microsoft is not a technology software company. Microsoft is a technology Marketing company. Most of us probably already realize this, but Microsoft traditionally has not really created much Technically. But their ability to spin Marketing and Sales into a great package is unparalleled.
This isn't some kind of admission that Linux wins, or IBM wins, or Microsoft Loses. The fact that they have such emphasis on their Sales staff implicates that they are going to be continuing to push as hard as they can with the Sales Tactics in order to stay the coming changes
we also have to keep in mind that microsoft is simply saying that among its competitors IBM and Linux pose the biggest threat...but that doesnt mean that they pose a big threat.
:)
It is good to see IBM and Linux getting recognition for the quality/low cost services they provide.
It's a good step for linux, but a long way to go
proxy
Billy The Adolf
:)
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
Second, the .NET CLR has a great deal of momentum already, and will certainly pickup marketshare from J2EE, because with the IDE, its just too damn easy. Say what you want about IIS, but as far as IDE's and languages go, Microsoft is as good as anyone.
Third, with MS picking up Apache support for .NET, Microsoft picks up even more share. MS wont have any problems selling Visual Studio, they never do.
If Linux is going to pick up Desktop share, its going to have to become as easy to install and configure as XP, and that aint gonna happen anytime soon. When my mother can install Mandrake like she installed XP, then I might agree with you.
However, Flessner articulated Microsoft's response to Linux. "Linux is free like a puppy. It looks free but when you get all the pieces around it, it doesn't work out so free. There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system."
Whereas Windows is like a puppy that you can only take to one vet when he gets sick, and it is the same vet everyone else is taking their puppy to. And the vet has a very busy schedule, he is deaf and blind, and tells you that the puppy got sick because of something you did. Even though the vet sold you the puppy knowing he was sick. And the medicine he finally gives you for your sick puppy to cure his barfing gives him the shits.
What a dumbass analogy. They still don't get the concept of Free vs free, do they?
Libere, Gratis, Linux
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
is that they'll never be happy, even if they DO become a complete, unchallenged monopoly. Too much is never enough in their eyes.
Its like this wannabe punk rocker from around my parts who showed up in a BMW whining about how his parents just wouldn't buy him the Jag.
Why do so many corporations have such a hostile view of peaceful cohabitation in the marketplace, even among direct competitors? I mean, if you're churning billions of dollars through your coporation ever year, and making your CEO and founder the richest man on the planet in the meantime, doesn't that signal that you're in a good place and you don't necessarily need to release the hounds on everybody who comes tiptoeing across your lawn?
I don't believe anything Microsoft says.
- Serge Wroclawski
From what i remember it ceased to be a joint venture around 1.x..
At the least when it reached 'warp phase' it was
IBM only..
Thankfully too.. But thats academic now.. M$ won that marketing battle..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
.. uh, well, because, because, last time, when they bragged about something to their benefit, they were just lying, yeh, that's the ticket! Lying!
Keerist, why this lame acceptance as nonto ni verdad when everything else they say is a pack of lies?
For the record, I do my utmost to avoid M$ products, because (a) they are buggy as all get out, (b) they are like working with a straight-jacket (do it their way or no way), and (c) their business ethics suck major toad warts. But it's kind of annoying seeing all the bashing that goes on most of the time, then this where suddenly their word is gospel.
Infuriate left and right
Once you get it home, after emptying your wallet, you discover it needs all this other stuff, just like that the free puppy the pet store told you NOT to get from the lost & found kennel!
You shake your head sadly, knowing that you spent your last bucks simply obtaining this cute bugger, and wont have enough money until tomorrow to go out and buy a litter box to prevent it from shitting up your carpet.
Microsoft: shitting up server room carpets since 1980-something.
Linux is free like a puppy as Windows is overly expensive like a poodle from the pet shop at the mall.
Just another freak in the freak kingdom.
I am beginning to get pretty offended by the typo's of posts on slashdot. Imo, the xenon/xeon confusion is inexcusible. This is a technology site, please get the terminology right. It's .NET (as in dot net), not NET.
That single report did what 2 years of lobbying by me wouldn't. 2 days after they recommended seeking alternatives I was directed to begin loading Apache :) Today we use apache and IBM websphere, and IIS require a SVP approval and a rigorous security exam :)
:)
Following that incredible success story, a linux development team has been started and they are working on SAN connectivity issues now. The age of M$ computing as a server solution is coming to a close. They 0wn the desktop still but I don't support those
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
But Dude!
.NET runtime is seriously cool technology. Sure, the motivation for creating it may be sinister, but who really cares? .Net is simply a better mousetrap and MS should be rewarded.
The
Anon to protect karma.
- Microsoft tells customers and shareholders places where MS believes MS has room for improvement and where MS is going to have to work hard in order to keep pace with its competitors; Microsoft then tells them what it plans to do about this.
- Microsoft's customers and shareholders are aware that Microsoft is not just sticking its head in the sand, and that Microsoft has a definite plan to deal with the situation.
- Microsoft's customers and shareholders are more confident in Microsoft, and thus more likely to give Microsoft money.
Makes sense to me.The problem is that IBM has in the past tried to beat M$ with OS/2. But a lone I think IBM does not have as good a chance as if it could get one other group in with them.
AOL also has tried to beat M$ using Netscape over IE.
Now if AOL made a linux verson of there ISP software and bundled it with a IBM computer running Linux. Then they would have a biger chance since an most people just used there computer to surf, read e-mail and maybe a little word processing.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
"However, Flessner articulated Microsoft's response to Linux. "Linux is free like a puppy. It looks free but when you get all the pieces around it, it doesn't work out so free. There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system."
From what i was taught those things ARE the core of an operating system, not junk like browsers and trashcan icons.. blah, no wonder Windows sux..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Excellent beavis and butthead "cornholio" reference!
It's the marketing, stupid !
NT4 does support AGP video cards. You'll most likely need to upgrade the service pack before installing the (correct) video driver. It should be working in standard vga to that point.
-MoTec
Here are a few links to jog the memory:
Call me communistic, but I would love a world where everyone can have everything they need and what they want, within reason. Peer reviews let people have the things that are beyond reason.
this doesn't really work.
who gets to decide what's "within reason"? and why should they? whoever it is, what gives them the right to decide it as opposed to someone else, or to everyone deciding what's "within reason" for themselves?
Microsoft's real biggest threats come from the inertia of their own installed base (that they're beating into submission with Software Assurance 6) and from potentially adverse legal rulings against them.
IBM/Linux is a certainly a plausible-sounding competitor.
While I love Linux, open source, etc., I don't kid myself for one minute that MS is quaking in its boots about IBM and Linux.
It's more along the lines of a PR statement (one that some Linux zealots will go along with) to make it sound like:
"Provided by the management for your protection."
bowie, go fuck yourself. take all those stupid pixmaps, products of a depraved mind, and shove them up your poop-chute.
you are nothing but a meaningless troll, a pawn, one who could not be genuinely entertaining/funny if they had twice their current IQ. even the janitors here dislike you intensely, and still would even if your morbidly obese self offerred to be their bitch.
If this is Microsoft's view of Linux, then they are grossly underestimating their competitor. I'm not sure what "pieces" they are talking about, but the ones I use are free.
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
It isn't just the price that makes GNU/Linux more attractive, although that is a big part of it. For example, we use a NetBSD server where I work. Why? So we don't have to deal with Microsoft's stupid "per seat" license model, which is really just a way of charging you twice for the same item.
I also run NetBSD at home. Why? Because of MS' totally stupid and artificial restriction on inbound connections to XP. Because of this, I can ever forget running a website from home with Windows.
Whereas MS is like a pedigree puppy: very expensive to buy, very expensive to maintain, and prone to all sorts of very exciting diseases caused by generations of inbreeding.
--
E_NOSIG
Anyone think this is a strategic shift to get people think that if MS says they have stong competitors, they are not, therefore, a monopoly?
All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. - Johann Sebastian Bach
It is real simple what Microsoft is doing here, after years of domination, the courts on their collective asses, they have found an out.
They scream as loud as they can "LINUX AND IBM ARE OUR BIGGEST PROBLEM!". In one very quick and slick move they have created a competitor that really is not one, but on the surface looks huge and has teeth. The much touted Linux OS, and the big bad IBM has come together to give us a run for our money. I can hear it now "See we are not a monopoly, see we have to do all this evil things to be competitive!".
This gives them a nice trump card to play in court, and in the public eye.
Ho well....so much for that idea.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Come on I only posted about fifty times!
With the support of BIG BLUE, they might have a chance. When I read this article, the demise of LWN, and from Forbes.com (ala slashdot feed) ' "Other firms such as TurboLinux that had filed for IPOs eventually canceled their plans. The Nasdaq Composite has shed three quarters of its value since March 2000, and for the Linux stocks, the fall has been even harder. Cobalt and Andover.net are gone, swallowed up by Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and VA, respectively. VA itself now sells for under a buck per share, and founder Larry Augustin last week gave up the CEO job (he's still the chairman). His firm has changed its name to VA Software, and its media contact person declined an interview request for this story "because we're no longer a Linux company." ' I wonder wher the focus is.I ask why are the root and fundamental Linux proponets hitting the pavement and knocking on doors?
IBM is choosing Linux, and doing what other companies have failed to do: Compete directly with MS on their terms...with MONEY. This competition is at the server level, but in time perhaps with adequate funding and a focus on applied resources, perhaps inroads will be made in the next few years to challenge Microsoft on the desktop. Microsoft now sees this threat, and recognizes that IBM has a new tool in their arsenal to take on MS. Bundling pieces of Linux in their corporate high dollar solutions is a fiscally prudent move. Additionally, with the fundamental state and nature of OSS the IBM team has a wider variety of Eyes & Hands on developers that are providing pro bono service. Definitely a great bullet for promoting this type of integration with the bean counter!
So what does this boil down to? IBM has a recognized threat to MS server market. The ball is in the hands of IBM to push this, or the path to the Linux desktop will meet the fate of OS/2.
Just my
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Last week it was Wal-Mart and Linux...
OK, who's next?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
What I find most amazing, and downright stupid is that:
No sooner had the computing industry cast off the yoke of the IBM monopoly, they took on the yoke of the Microsoft monopoly. They didn't learn.
This bothers me in another way, to compare it with politics. In the US we've had a culture of democracy that has survived for a long time. Hopefully the current challenge posed by money will be rebuffed again, like at the last turn of the century. But in other nations where there hasn't been a culture of democracy, they're having a difficult time adopting on. Indeed countries seem to keep falling back to strong-men ruling.
The computing industry grew up under the thumb of IBM. After casting off IBM, it promptly got under the thumb of Microsoft. The computing industry has *never* existed in a normal, fully competitive marketplace. Let's say we're getting ready to cast off Microsoft in the next few years. Intel has been second-fiddle to Microsoft as part of the WinTel duopoly for years, so is it now time for Intel/HP to take the driver's seat? Have we still not learned?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
You really want some reasons that companies use IIS and not Apache when they upgrade.
#1. InterDev - They can hire 3 point and click monkeys to one coder that knows java well.
#2. Older code - They don't want to change what they use now. They would require whole coding projects to start over scraping what they have.
#3. The Lead Developers would cry, because they are not near as productive in (c, c++, java, php) as they are in vb, vbscript, and InterDev.
#4. Problems, they already have 99% of them worked out on nt40/2000 in their environment. They know it, they love it, they don't want to change it. They don't want the headache of changing code, OS, and all the problems and man hours that go with it. Just to have a "free os". They don't have the programers, they don't have the talent, and they don't have the downtime to do it.
#5. No one likes change.
#6. The CIO is a SQL/IIS old school user. You can't change 3000 hours of programing in ASP/SQL/XML into PHP/MySql/PERL/XML/CGI and not have a huge huge cost. More than anything you will ever see in savings from a system os. Plus you get all the problems...again.
Then again, what do I know I am just a gimp.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
But it sucks like a Vagas showgirl,
and that ain't bad.
In my experiece with managers it alomost seems like the logic is "It must be great, look at how much money they charge for it!".
Here's the one I was hit with at my last place of employment: "Well, ALL THOSE CORPORATIONS out there who are using IIS can't be wrong!" Another time he said, "Market share is all that matters, and since M$ has the highest market share that is what we're going to use."
What a moron. For several weeks after leaving there, I'd sometimes wake up after having a nightmare that I'd gone back to work there.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
I hereby retire my /. account. The posted responses to this article are so mindlessly idiotic and empty of any valuable thought, that my back has been broken by this straw. I know I am preaching to many members of the choir. This message is not directed to you. You already know the idiocy of many posts on this site. This is not a sudden realization on my part. I have seen many similar posts in the past. My brain hurts from trying to think of a way to describe the complete and utter stupidity of which I am in awe. Therefore, I am not even going to discuss it. Let it suffice to say that I will never read (or submit) another post on /. as long as I live. I will logout in a few moments, never to be heard from again. I will continue to visit the site for the simple purpose of finding news articles in which I am interested. That is it and that is all. I realize that few, if any, of you care. I just want to let the record show.
"Goodbye. Nice to know you." -Incubus
this is a left handed sig
"Rudder said in 2003 Microsoft must ensure .NET becomes the preferred architecture for application development." ...for hurting myself falling off of my chair in hysterical laughter?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
"Linux is free like a puppy. It looks free but when you get all the pieces around it, it doesn't work out so free. There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system."
Buffer overflows? Charging enormous amounts per seat ? Subscriptions? Stuff like that?
Like everybody else, (including themselves, oh sweet irony, [M$ killed minis from DEC, InterData, DataGen and others, who were moving in on mainframes of the time, {now my G4 laptop pushes more MIPS than the Crays did,}]) MS needs to see/remember what happens to upstarts who always seem to want to move up the food chain (prices paid are better at bigger corporations/ projects/ etc.,) and who disregard the competition that's crawling up their butts pimping something with a lower TCO (even a few bucks a crack makes a REAL difference when you roll out a few million at a crack.)
:-)
How long until banks with a few hundred (US) or thousand (US/Canada/rest of the world) branches, meaning they they already have Unix boxen (NOBODY runs SERIOUS, mission critical apps on M$,) realize that their apps can run for less TCO (M$ ain't free./ it ain't even cheap,) on Linux boxen?
Is M$ scared? (I can smell the scorch marks in Redmond's short from here in NYC.
Bully Gates will retire from a company as morallt and fiscally bankrupt as Enron, WorldCom or Data General. Its a good thing he's not leaving a thing to his kids.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Now we should really be worried. If IBM/Linux is Microsoft's greatest threat, then they really have nothing stopping them from taking over the world.
LINUX SHOP:
... eek! I'm out of M&M's!!! Flunky: Here, take some of mine.
... (eek! I'm out of M&M's!!!) ... Click, BANG!!!
9:00 am - Boss: Where's that damned tech guru? He's always late.
9:15 am - Boss: Where's that @% damned tech guru? He's always late.
9:30 am - Boss: Where's that *@$% damned tech guru? He's always late!
9:45 am - Boss: Where's that #%@^ damned tech guru? He's always late!!
10:00 am - Tech God: (yawn) Where's the coffee pot? G'morning, boss.
Boss: We got a problem with the server crashing!! We've losing money!!
Tech God: (yawn) I'll have a look. Where's the coffee pot?
10:05 am - Boss: Is it fixed yet? Tech God. Why, is the coffee pot broken?
Boss: The @$^% server!
10:10 am - Boss: Is it fixed yet?! Tech God: mmpprh coffee...
10:15 am - Boss: Is it fixed yet?!! Tech God: mmpprh coffee, coffee
(repeat every 5 minutes until 1:00 pm)
1:00 pm - Boss: Is it fixed yet?@# it! Tech God: I'm looking at the source. (need...more...coffee)
1:05 pm -Boss: Is it fixed yet?!&! it! Tech God: (need...more...coffee) I've just found the problem... I'm recompiling...
1:10 pm -Boss: Is it &$%#& fixed yet?!@%!& it! Tech God: (or, coke....) I'm just installing it
1:15 pm - Boss: Is it &$& fixed yet?!!&*%#$ Tech God: (M&M's, yum!!!) I'm rebooting.
1:20 pm - Boss: WELL???? Tech God: (plain or peanut, decisions, decisions) It's up.
1:25 pm - Boss: Still up? Tech God: Yup. 2:00 pm - Boss: Still up? Tech God: Yup. 3:00 pm - Boss: Still up? Tech God: Yup. 4:00 pm -Boss: Still up? Tech God: Yup.
Boss: Good. Thanks, good work. I guess that's why we pay you a lot of money. Do you golf?
Tech God: Nope. Boss: Too bad. You'll never get into management. I'm going golfing tomorrow. I can't take this stress. Tech God: (jackass!!)
5:00 pm - Tech God: Damned Slashdot. Look at all these lame posts.
6:00 pm - Tech God: Damned Slashdot. Look at all these lame posts.
7:00 pm - Tech God: Damned Slashdot. Look at all these lame posts.
8:00 pm - Tech GodDamned Slashdot lameness filter. Must take revenge grrrr!!!
9:00 pm - Tech GodDamned Slashdot lameness filter. Must take revenge grrrr!!!
10:00 pm - Tech GodDamned Slashdot lameness filter. Must take revenge grrrr!!!
....
MS SHOP:
9:00 am - Boss: Where's that damned tech guru? He's always late.
9:15 am - Boss: Where's that @% damned tech guru? He's always late.
9:30 am - Boss: Where's that *@$% damned tech guru? He's always late!
9:45 am - Boss: Where's that #%@^ damned tech guru? He's always late!!
10:00 am -Tech God: (yawn) Where's the coffee pot? G'morning, boss. Boss: We got a problem with the server crashing!! We've losing money!! Tech God: (yawn) I'll have a look. Where's the *&%^ coffee pot?
10:05 am - Boss: Is it fixed yet? Tech God. Why, is the coffee pot broken? Boss: The @$^% server!
10:10 am - Boss: Is it fixed yet?! Tech God: mmpprh coffee, coffee. I'm on hold with MS tech support.
10:15 am - Boss: Is it fixed yet?!! Tech God: mmpprh coffee, coffee. I'm still on hold with MS tech support
(repeat every 5 minutes until 1:00 pm)
1:00 pm - Boss: Is it fixed yet?@# it!
Tech God: (need...more...coffee) . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
1:05 pm - Boss: Is it fixed yet?!&! it!
Tech God: (need...more...coffee) . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
1:10 pm - Boss: Is it && fixed yet?!!??
Tech God: (or, coke....) . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
Flunky: Here, take some of mine.
1:15 pm - Boss: Is it & fixed yet?!!&*#$
Tech God: (M&M's, yum!!!) . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
1:20 pm - Boss: WELL??
Tech God: (plain or peanut, decisions, decisions) . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
1:25 pm - Boss: WELL???!! Tech God: . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
2:00 pm - Boss: WELL?!!?? Tech God: I'm still on hold with MS tech support
3:00 pm - Boss: WELL?@# it! Tech God: . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
4:00 pm - Boss: WELL?$@#@$ it!! Tech God: . I'm still on hold with MS tech support
Boss: Good. HAVE THIS FIXED BEFORE YOU LEAVE OR YOU'RE FIRED!! I'm going golfing tomorrow. I can't take this stress. Tech God: (jackass - I told you not to listen to those MS salesmen!!)
5:00 pm - MS Support Flunky: Oh jeez, dude - are you still there? Did you like the rockin' Manilow tunes we play? Anyway, it's not bug, that's a feature. But not to worry. The feature you want. Will be available soon in an upgrade. Tech God: You mean service pack?
MS Support Flunky: No, sir upgrade. We charge for those. We don't have service packs any more.
Tech God: When will it be available??!! MS Support Flunky: mmm 6, maybe 8 months. Let's call it a year. Tech God: ?@#$ year?!!!
6:00 pm - Tech God: %$@# Damned MS - lame software.
7:00 pm - Tech God: #%$#@ Damned MS - lame software. Scribble, scribble, sob,
So do we hate IBM today or not???!
It seems that what Microsoft perceives and what Microsoft admits (except throught leaks) are two different things. Microsoft must consider the threat from Linux and IBM to be about over to admit this. Here's how it works. A number of articles and opinions spring up stating that Linux is dead or dying or not a threat. Then Microsoft says that Linux and IBM are their toughest competition. Investors see both stories independant of each other and think they are so smart to discover that Microsoft's greatest threat is not really much of a threat. They then invest becuase little is more powerful a motivator than your own, original, brilliant idea. This way, as it play out, Microsoft is seen as either crushing it's greatest competitor or, if things don't go its way, Microsoft is simply seen as battling a worthy competitor. Either way it demonstrates that Microsoft has _competition_ which is all too important for public relations. These guys are not to be underestimated.
This is like bragging about climbing the "tallest" mountain in Kansas.
Here we go again. M$ is doing nothing but trying to fool the DOJ and the people into thinking that there really is healthy competition in the marketplace for operating systems. Don't believe it for a minute. I think M$ has more power over the market than they care to admit freely. Sure theoretically Linux/IBM might be a threat, but realistically, no.
/. and maybe the DOJ will take notice too. I for one ain't buying it.
They know comments like that will get published on anti-M$ sites like
eTrade SUCKS
M$ is down and weakened. Their public opinion is in the toilet. They're rapidly losing their marketshare overseas as countries see value in technological independence. The word "Linux" appears at least a half dozen times in every issue of financial newspapers. The MS Office cash cow is shriveling up due to (finally) useful free office suites or equivalent software. Hailstorm flopped and .Net is still vaporware. And WinXP sales have been lackluster because well.. who needs it? -- especially when the economy is down and businesses are rather looking for ways to save.
And yet, ironically, the Open Source community seems to have somewhat fallen asleep in the midst of the imminent success of our dream: a world dominated by free, open, community-built software where the user / consumer no longer gets screwed at every opportunity. Now, I'm not talking about the major projects where developers have kept up their excellent work. But it's many of the sidelines projects that have ground to a halt. And somehow it seems as if folks aren't 'scratching their itches' as much these days. What happened to the break-neck progress we were making on all fronts? I have a growing list of needed feature-adds, bug fixes, new apps, etc. that is now impossible for me to keep up with on my own. And many are seemingly abandoned projects.
What happened to the faith in the Open Source model? Why aren't programmers in the US going after careers doing Free Software? One would think now is as good a time as any, especially with the industry in a rut and jobs so scarse! It's so blatantly obvious and yet hardly anyone is taking up the opportunity. For Open Source to win the day, we need to become the next generation of consultants--a new breed that actually supports the software because they can with the code.
Listen and listen well: Software is NOT a PRODUCT. People need to get over that idea and realize it is an outdated model from the prior tech boom. So if you're a geek looking for a job doing programming, that means you shouldn't be looking for a "software company" in the traditional sense. Instead, look for service-based companies that get paid to scratch the itches of their customers. Or start your own consulting firm with some buddies. Get connected in your local community and then move outwards according to capacity. Start organizations to coordinate development of needed free business software. I can't even begin to count the number of businesses I've heard of that are thoroughly fed up with the proprietary custom packages they use currently. The market is there for the taking!! It's time to go for the kill!
No, Microsoft is their own worst enemy. Between their new pricing stategies, extremely restrictive licenses, and the general loss of useful features, they are their own worst enemy. They have given the world compelling reason to turn to Linux and IBM.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. -Einstein
Many, and perhaps most movies don't live up to the books they are based on. It is hard to plot much more than a short story to the silver screen, and Heinlein's ideas are pretty expansive. That said, this movie was a travesty. No powered suits, none of the spirit of the story, just a dumb parody of the book. I wish someone would go back and remake this movie, even in animation form. Surely no one who has read the book liked this movie at all. Ugghh.
"Linux is free like a puppy. It looks free but when you get all the pieces around it, it doesn't work out so free. There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system." Really? And microsoft would know this how? They never had good I/O and memory management. And there's a lot more to linux then memory management and I/O, this is just silly. I find having many pieces that work together and do that well a whole lot better then one big piece that doesn't work so well and you can't interchange pieces from. "We need to build a vibrant and healthy developer community. That's the lesson Linux has taught us. Having people to help. Knowing where to get questions answered," Rudder said. yes, and treating consumers like crap is a perfect way to get the developers on your side! GO TEAM MICROSOFT!!
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
"There's a lot more than I/O and memory management to make up an operating system."
Translation, they accept defeat on I/O and memory management efficiency and go on to claim that an OS needs a good flying madonna to be complete?
Talk about changing the topic of discussion.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
"We need to build a vibrant and healthy developer community."
Open source and closed source software work on completely different fundamental principals. In the case of open source, cooperation between individuals is encouraged and nurtured by it's very nature, while this is not the case for proprietary software.
This spirit of cooperation is one of the reasons that Linux, a relatively insignificant operating system from the corporate sales point of view, has such a vibrant developer base. Whereas the Linux developer community has a cooperative attitude, much of the proprietary software community has an adversarial point of view. Don't talk about the company code or be fired, sued, imprisoned, etc.
The open source environment nurtures cooperation but is an adversary to proprietary development. The two types of software can exist side by side but the proprietary vendor is always at risk that someone will like his product and choose to emulate it in an open source project. This can happen on Windows as well but by far open source is more prevalent on Linux.
Once an open source project is started that competes against a proprietary product it will become increasingly hard for the proprietary product to maintain enough added value to make its expense justifiable.
The proprietary market developer for the Windows platform, also must worry that Microsoft may make their product irrelevant. The very people who sold the developer's the tools to develop for the Windows platform may, if the product appears to be lucrative enough or have the potential of being so, decide to compete for that market share.
Netscape, Word Perfect, and Quicken are a few examples. In the case of Netscape, Microsoft crushed its competition though the inclusion of a competing product in an operating system that controlled a monopoly market share. Word Perfect is still alive and kicking but has lost almost the entire market share that it had.
How did Microsoft take away so much market share from Word Perfect?
Let me use an analogy. Let's pretend that you are in a long distance, cross-country race (you wish to build an application) in a land with which you are unfamiliar (Windows operating system). Your opponent (Microsoft) was raised there (Developed the operating system) and knows every inch. You are provided with a map (a list of Application Programming Interface calls), however your map is missing all of the short cuts (Undocumented API calls) that your opponent will surly use.
Who do you think will win this race?
Quicken is a shining exception. They have survived and actually kept a greater market share than Microsoft's Money application. However, all Microsoft would have to do to crush quicken, if it decided that it would be lucrative enough to warrant doing so, would be to "add value" to it's operating system by including a scaled back version of Money. Within a few years people would stop buying Quicken and start using the included version of Money. Microsoft could then offer a paid version that would compete with it's free version. (Like Word Pad and Word)
The bottom line is that open source nurtures cooperation whereas the Corporate environment does not. Not truly.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Pot. Kettle. Black. Mr. Flessner is speaking like a true suit.
I look around at the people running Linux servers, and what few I have asked of it (mostly friends, granted) have always stated that they don't want people breaking into their machinery, they don't want servers that you have to reboot once per week to clean up the swap space, and they don't want servers that are missing half the tools they need. This is amongst those who have installed on their home boxen Windows of some flavor, a Unix variant, an OSX user, and even an OS/2 Warp user. And of those, one Windows user has stated to me that instability is just something that he lives with, but he would NEVER install a Microsoft product on a server.
To take it to a different level (and I apologize to Ford enthusiasts), if you have had bad experience with the two Ford Broncos you bought in your lifetime over the course of three years, yet the one GMC and the one Honda you bought has lasted you for ten years with nothing more than the usual maintenance, would you ever go back to Ford?
My point here is that, IMO, Mr. Flessner has overlooked exactly why there are people who don't want to use his product. Personal bias aside, if you've had previously bad experience with a product, unless there's been a clearly defined change in quality that is highly visible, most (thinking?) people are not going to go back when the old product's manufacturer says "New and Improved".
This sig no verb.
1. A company or organization large enough to be able to afford "enterprise" software or support for the "free" equivalent thereof.
;o)
2. Corporation.
3. Any large business or undertaking.
4. Any company too large for Microsoft to swallow whole. See: Borg.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
I wouldn't call Exchange an enterprise level mail system. It has one key advantage, calendaring. If there was a single open source calendar server, I firmly believe that Exchange's days as a widely deployed mail solution would be numbered. .NET, it's windows only.
SQL Server isn't an enterprise database. Compare it to Oracle, even DB2, and it's nothing. They've patched on clustering and XML support, but it doesn't remotely touch Oracle if you need to do real hardcore database logic or require a really robust solution. And TSQL blows, particularly in comparison to PL/SQL.
And as for the Apache module for
The central part of the argument is that energy ought to be focused on the enterprise computing market for open source, then once that's won, go after the desktop.
There has to be some business model that would support this sequence of events. It just gives me such an optimistic feeling to even think about it! Imagine, no need for rinky-dink emulators and ports. Now if somebody would just solve the driver problem. Can you write a driver in Java?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
They would just come down on the price of their hardware. The average user isn't going shell out $1400 for an iMac when they can get a PC for half as much. Even the economic eMac is priced too high.
I guess Apple is going for the "luxury computing" demographic.
The open source community can already do this. All that needs to be done it implement a JVM that is Open source. Like Kaffe, only current. The problem with this is that of course, nobody wants to do this since it's too easy to just use Sun's implementation of the JVM. That and Sun's implementation is actually very good.
The open source community would have to reimplement all the APIs that sun has created. Much of this has already been done. The open source community wouldn't control the language, but I bet that if some group created a JVM that was as good or better then the Sun one, then Sun would listen to the users of the OS JVM.
You can argue that the OS community will never 'control' the language and Sun can always just go and change it, but so what? If the implementation of the JVM is good, then what does it matter? The mono implementation of C# will not be exactly like the MS implementation, I bet they will have different bugs in the implementation, but it won't matter at the end of the day if their implementation is good.
Anyone can write the tools to run java code, the only limitation is that you can't actually call it 'Java' with out Sun's blessing.
"The .NET runtime is seriously cool technology. Sure, the motivation for creating it may be sinister, but who really cares? .Net is simply a better mousetrap and MS should be rewarded."
How should we reward them? By sticking our willy into their better mouse trap and letting them slam it shut maybe?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Its odd to see MS talking about TCO when that has been the argument that Macintosh users have been using for years for why one should use a Mac over a Wintel box.
The Gartner Group and other researchers consistantly have confirmed such, but most do not listen. We'll see if MS's huge PR engines will have better luck.
So I'm a pervert. Welcome to the Internet.
This is true. Microsoft does tend to impose the One True Way (TM), which can simplify some things. However, other people regard the fact that you can choose the best technologies for your application as a positive.
Also often true, but: a) a lot of those capabilities are Windows tools that you probably wouldn't use in a Linux project unless you had to for compatibility reasons, b) a lot of them were open source packages that are usually packaged by the various distributions and are an apt-get away from installing, c) if they're open source, the extra licensing costs are zero anyway, and d) who says building everything into the OS is a good idea anyway?
And Windows is perfect?
It's good news that MS are changing their arguments to push their products over Linux-based solutions, because it tends to suggest that their customers (at least in this application domains) weren't listening to their old ones.
So I'm a pervert. Welcome to the Internet.
What the hell have the moderators been smoking again? Mod parent up!
What it doesn't mention is that they also consider virtually any company that they don't own as a potential competitor/threat. Sure, they don't compete with utility companies, auto manufacturers, and food companies right now, but someday...
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
It wasn't so long ago when Microsoft was telling everyone how open source was going to undermine business and innovation.
Now they've linked to a well known competitor - who is using it as a BUSINESS TOOL, no less. Microsoft's formal linking of Linux to IBM gives open source a boost of respectabilty it probably couldn't get on it's own.
Good luck undermining open source, the new business process.
I thought Janeway was their biggest threat.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
As of late all IBM has been doing is crappy systems that break down in a matter of days.
Excuse me? IBM... crappy systems?...break down?
Desktops maybe, but their servers are about the most robust there is when it comes to maximum uptimes. I'm the sysadmin of a half-dozen RS/6000 boxes in addition to a handful of DEC (now Compaq) Alphas, Suns, HP's (running their proprietary Unixes) and dozens of Compaq/Dell/IBM/Gateway x86 servers (running a mix of NT, Linux and FreeBSD) and those RS/6000 machines running AIX beat the pants off of everything else when it comes to uptime and stability. In my shop, second place is held by a Proliant running FreeBSD, 3rd place is the HP9000 HP-UX box, next come the Proliants running Linux and the Sun box. Dead last of course are my NT boxes (Proliants, Dells, Gateways and one IBM x86 server).
Brain-dead easy to install. You can even play Solitaire while you wait...which won't be long, considering the entire distro fits on one CD-ROM.
.ISO for Amethyst is available for download, so you can sample it for absolutely free.
It also works a lot like Windows and is skinned to look very much like XP. Once Open Office is a part of the general distribution it will be even easier and more like Windows. The
http://www.lycoris.com/
(no, I don't work for them)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I pretty much concur. Sure wish I had a mod point to give ya.
Also I might like to add that lately the trend in everyone trying to see who can come out with yet another development platform / programming language just for the sake of inventing yet another development platform is part of the *Big Problem*. We've got enough steenking development languages/platforms. What we need is for folks to get back to the business of creating useful (and supportable and *sustainable*) apps with what's out there now.
Mandrake 8.2, Lindows and Corel Linux (+ Xandros beta) are each very easy to install.
The key is not ease of installation. Rather it is having versions preloaded and just as easy to purchase as for Microsoft. Sure, WalMart will preinstall Mandrake or Lindows for you. They will even ship with no OS. But, that is only via their web site. And, many buyers will not shop that way. They want to see and touch just before they take out the wallet.
So, it will take linux pre-loaded for most people.
The corporate market is very different. There IBM could help but is not doing so. And, SUN has suggested it will offer a linux based desktop system but it is still slow on the draw. And, HP will preload Mandrake on a few systems but not the one most likely purchased by the ordinary consumer.
How can you help?
Talk to some or the local computer stores in your area. Suggest they offer Lindows, Mandrake or the upcoming Xandros preloaded with OpenOffice or StarOffice and actually do some price sensitive advertising. Bait and switch is not a nice thing to suggest. But, a very low cost PC with OS and an office suite can be half the price if Microsoft's prices and software are avoided completely. Even putting StarOffice or OpenOffice on an MS box is a start.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
But, wait, I thought they were trying to sell the gullable on the notion that .NET isn't going to stick you into a Windows-specific situation. Now they claim .NET is a way to fight Linux - but that would only be true if .NET and Linux won't be able to play nice together. Do they mean .NET won't actually be so cross-platform after all? Okay raise your hands everyone who didn't se *that* coming.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I've been supporting IBM RS/6000 machines for an accounting/database vertical market application vendor since 1990. IBM rocks. Their support organization keeps me sane. AIX 5L is very scalable and moderately Linux application friendly. When you buy IBM RS/6000 hardware, AIX is free (as in beer). IBM is exceptionally forthcoming with notifications of software vulnerabilities and improvements in AIX. I guess I'm biased. I think of them as a very good neighbor.
Don't quote me on this, because I don't remember exact numbers...but, last I remember, IBM employeed more people than Microsoft (if you count all IBM's subsidiaries, like Tivoli and Lexmark). People seem to think IBM is a PC company. Nothing could be further from the truth. A few years ago, IBM was loosing money on PC's. Its real "bread and butter" comes from servers and services they sell with the servers. They sell more servers (many of them multi million dollar machines), than anybody. They have the iSeries (which used to be called AS/400), the pSeries (which used to be called RS/6000), the zSeries (i.e. Mainframes), and the xSeries (or Intel based servers). All of the above can now run Linux, as well as their respective OS's (most can do both at the same time, by using LPAR's)... PC's, microchannel, OS/2, that was/is small beans to IBM. I would definatly have to agree that in the corporate market, IBM is Microsoft's biggest threat. I did notice in the article that they said Tivoli is MS's second biggest threat. Funny thing is, Tivoli is an IBM company...
HailStorm
A hailstone is something repeatedly raised by hot air that ultimately crashes to earth causing damage...
Or, to put it more succinctly: "Windows is only free if you pirate it and your time is worth nothing."
Fenris was a little puppy also, a cute little puppy that the gods in Valhalla took as their pet..
To describe Microsoft's upcoming kanine experience as "scary" and "unpleasant" is a gross understatement.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Despite the fact that are entire IT department and
engineering staff knows IIS (Internet Infection Service) is crap, we're stuck rolling it out anyway due to third party apps that use it instead of Apache.
Rational, are you listening? Clearquest needs an Apache port for its Web server!
Sun is hurting right now - their share prices are in the toilet.
IBM could very easily buy Sun, incorporate their servers into the IBM line (or phase them out altogether) and then Open Source Java. Given that IBM currently has more Java developers than Sun does, and sees Linux/Java as being the weapon to reduce Microsoft's dominance, it would be a perfectly reasonable course of action.
You have part of the answer already, but there are at least two other motives.
First, there's the simple fact that IBM/GNU/Linux is legitimate competition. MS might not be losing money, but the mere existence of a free alternative as a bargaining chip is flattenting their growth potential. It's not every day that you see His Billness personally closing sales like he's doing in Peru.
The other factor is that for years Ballmer & Co. are always claiming that this year is full of unique challenges that spell gloom and doom for Microsoft. Then when they hit their usual 20% growth benchmark, they beat "industry" expectations, driving up the value of MS stock.
I agree completely. Currently, my employer uses several million dollars worth of IBM hardware to do data processing that could just as easily be done on a Win2K box costing a few thousand. Why don't they switch? One word: reliability. IBM knows what Microsoft never figured out: build a rock solid, reliable platform, and you'll never have a problem making a profit. Regardless of how reliable MS claims their products are, their track record says otherwise, and no one where I work is eager to bet their career on the empty promises of Bill Gates and Company...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The article mentions how IBM is stealing all the big corporate customers and Linux is winning the hearts and minds of developers. I'm a die-hard Linux junkie myself, but don't have any illusions about it taking many desktops (corporate or otherwise) from Microsoft.
Apple, on the other hand, could tear a huge chunk out of Microsoft's (Windows) market share if it would just wake up and smell the Intel. OS/X has what it takes to be a Windows killer on every front-- BSD for the power users (developers), Aqua for the not-so-power users (from grannie to the proto-geeks) and Microsoft Office for the bean counters. All they need to do now is get rid of the "lock-in" mind-set and stop pretending it's too hard to support the Intel architecture. After all, they've got Darwin running on i386 boxes now and claim to be able to support non-Apple video cards in their high-end machines (which come with PCI slots). The only barrier to integration is attitude.
That was the quote that really got my attention. Others here have mentioned the obvious difference between Big Iron and a larger Wintel Server running Microsoft Products, but as far as the ingredients of an "Operating System" go, how is Windows so superior?
I mean, this is obviously an understatement but Linux is at least as good as Windows if you take a step back and look at what you can do with each system. I have a Windows machine and a Linux box within four feet of each other, and there isn't anything I can do using Windows that I can't do in Gnome or KDE. I/O and Memory Management? Sure, and a whole lot more! What's the meaning of such a strange, nonsensical remark? I don't get it, and it's not like people aren't enhancing Linux desktop environments every day.
What is in it for Microsoft (or any company, for that matter) to list who they view as their largest threats? I would think you would want the opposite.
slashdot!=valid HTML
But of course that one has been changing. The worst seems to be past us, because while the WinModem drivers for Linux aren't open sourced, and neither are the drivers for nVidia cards, at least Matrox and ATI have opened their hardware somewhat.
Then of course Palladium appears poised to finish closing hardware specs.
Microsoft's every effort is to make sure their products are not commoditized, and that the rest of the industry's are. (where it helps them)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
But Dude!
The
Anon to protect karma.
And Dude! You're getting a dell too!
Starts out quite soon. ERP anyone ? I tried to find a
useful ERP solution for a medium sized business running on Linux, but besides obscure stuff noone seems to know and to use and SAP (which is way too big and way too costly for the purpose) I turned up nothing.
Microsoft does not need to conquer the enterprise to wipe out competitors based on cashflow. They have perhaps the strongest cash position of any corporation in any market. Their shareholders are demanding a stock buyback. No amount of succesws will put more cash into the bank for Microsoft - they have too much already. Yes, too much cash on hand is a LIABILITY for a business. Its unused potential energy. Shareholder often insist thatr you use the cash for acquisitions to accelerate growth, or you buyback stock/pay dividends.
Yes we wrote driver for NTCIP in java. The utility classes had a few methods for taking care of unsigned/signed bytes but that was the only difficulty.
omico--
what's more interesting is that if such open source projects as mono get themselves in order, the .NET framework is pretty much useless.
.NET server? i can already see the vulnerabilities within the application localization capabilities alone.
can you imagine how many errors will be in
[ check out my ruby book @ http://ww
IBM states Sun is their biggest threat.
Linux advocates state that Linus' beer fridge is their biggest threat.
Film at 11.
so any script kiddie cna hack that crap?.
First, you sound like someone who's only done work with SQL Server. If you were a programmer and used PL/SQL and/or Oracle's Java based database triggers and procs, you'd never call TSQL "good enough" for Enterprise work.
Second, the enterprise editons of Oracle and SQL Server are at $40,000 and $20,000, respectively, per CPU. It's not as big a difference as it sounds. Given the massive difference in performance (Oracle is faster), reliability (Oracle is more reliable), choice of server platform (SQL Server only runs on Windows), and product features, only short sighted fools trust their enterprise data to SQL Server.
Third, the 80% you mention are small to mid range database users. If you're using standard editon of either SQL Server, that's only $5,000 per cpu. Of course, at that range of use (maybe your databases are a few gigabytes of data), you can use PostgreSQL. It's more featureful than SQL Server, runs on more platforms, has better server side programmability, and is free.
"It goes on to say that they believe the NET server will be a challenge to these competitors."
Microsoft's servers are based on per-site licensing. IBM's aren't, Sun's aren't, HP's aren't. As long as Microsoft plans to beat out the Linux/UNIX vendors in the long run, they need to find a way to give up on overcharging companies that want thousands of simultaneous connections, which means Microsoft has to go into the hardware market, or make Active Directory and Exchange somehow worth the cost and pain.
Umm, there's rather a lot of excellent open-source java work out there. Sun may not have released their JVM source code, but they're not the only ones writing VM's - check out Kaffe for a GPL version. The truth is that the java and perl worlds don't overlap a lot, but we just moved our shop from perl/mod-perl to java servlets and jsp's (Jakarta struts) and it's been well worth it. Java's not going to disappear anytime soon!
Energy: time to change the picture.
Two years ago our development team dropped ASP and VB for Java. Last month, our company just spent over 1.7 million on IBM WebSphere. .Net is .Not for us. The future is all blue
that in Microsoft's eyes, my computer is currently SATAN INCARNATE.
(IBM Thinkpad + Slackware 8)
TAKE THAT!
No, Beowulf clusters can't imagine in Soviet Russia.
In a article I read for not long ago, Microsoft said their biggest threat were Sun Microsystems.
By the way; does anybody really know how BIG these companies are?
If Linux is a puppy then Windows is an Elephant. The food bill is a lot higher and man do need a big shovel when It craps.......
MS never had a Java 1.2 vm, the farthest it got was 1.1.8. They never supported swing, Collections, and a bunch of stuff that has been standard for years.
Nobody used the MS extentions to the JVM. The extensions were not that good, don't go kidding yourself, the only really good extension was the one that allowed you access to the DLLs in windows. It was kind neat to be able to do directX stuff from java, but really you wanted to do that stuff in C++ anyway.
If someone created a VM that was better and many people started writing programs to it's specific features, then Sun would have to do something about it. Though Sun does have a large case of NIH syndrome, and it shows with every API that they make part of the standard.
I'm not sure open sourcing Java would be quite that good. Sun has top notch engineers and they don't take shortcuts. For example, the security in Java is nicely designed and integrated throughout allowing easy internal sandboxing, etc. Or how about a decently embeddable VM w/ debugging support?
I wanted to embed the Python VM in a multithreaded server app, but it's not multithreaded. (Thread safe, yes, but all threads don't run at once.) So I looked at Perl, Scheme, Ruby, etc. None of those VMs were done right. (TCL did, but I really wanted Python.) Sun didn't cut those corners. In fact, we've embedded Jython (Python written in Java) in multithreaded Java servers and it worked very well. (Real garbage collection, too -- no reference counting.)
Don't get me wrong, I like open source projects and think they should open it more, but I don't know if I want it just thrown out there into a free for all.
Maybe now that the foundation has been laid, it would work...
1. A company or organization large enough to be able to afford "enterprise" software or support for the "free" equivalent thereof.
This isn't as circular as it looks. It's simply a recognition of the financial element involved. See, e.g., TheBrain.com. These guys used to make $50 personal organizing software. Now they make $100,000 "enterprise" network organizing software. This after the company was taken over from its founder, Harlan Hugh, by a bunch of venture capitalists. Money still talks, and enterprise is where the money is.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
There is someone from Microsoft posting some major bs in the NewYorkTimes tech forums.
F -8&oe=UTF -8&q=%22bill+weisgerber%22
I asked him some things about linux/oss and whatnot... First off it "Seems" like he's never been to Netcraft. Secondly I think that yeah... DUH linux is a big threat, check this out.
MS PR WHORE DOGGIES always say the exact opposit of what the truth is when they are defending something. We've been able to get him to say all sorts of crazy things about Microsoft. Heh, actually he's spreading the MS.SPIN everywhere he goes...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UT
He told me this:::
-------------
"Seems like more people are using Windows webservers than linux webservers. Particularly the bigger and more informative websites. The hobbyists, the cheapskates, and the generally clueless seem to select linux more than Windows, boding ill for anybody trying to make a paying business out of supporting and supplying linux. You will only have the kooks like little harry as your customers and will soon starve to death."