HP to Heavily Support and Invest in .Net

Dr.Stress writes: "CNet is reporting 'Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft plan to invest $50 million in a joint effort to sell corporate customers on the software giant's .Net Web services efforts....HP plans to devote 3,000 consultants from its HP Services unit to the effort and also train 5,000 people in its sales and support staff.' Microsoft will provide additional installation support, and the companies will jointly market .Net services. This was announced previously, but this article contains a few more details. Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??)."

Comments

split infinitives

[heffrey]

grammar seems a bit poor in the title....

Re:split infinitives

[RobotRunAmok]

Geeks have been traditionally forgiving of split-infinitives. Lexicographers and sociologists believe this dates from Kirk's voice-over "To Boldly Go..." in the original Star Trek series.

Re:split infinitives

[ch-chuck]

Damn straight, it's our duty to boldly split infinities wherever they occur. Grammar should describe language, not dictate it. For example, I think prepositions are a good thing to end a sentence with. And often start sentences with a conjunction. Never put statements in the positive form. Verbs don't have to agree with their subjects. A writer may shift your point of view. Writing carefully, dangling participles may be used.

Re:split infinitives

[John Biggabooty]

When did Slashdot turn into a college english course? If you read a sentance once, and understand it, let it be. It does not matter if it violates some archaic rule. If you have to read a sentance two or three times to grasp it's meaning, the writer has failed to communicate, even if a college english professor says that the sentance is technically correct.

Re:split infinitives

[swillden]

Splitting of infinitives isn't necessarily incorrect.

From _The Elements of Style_, the classic handbook of English literary style by Strunk and White (fourth edition):

"There is precedent from the fourteenth century down for interposing an adverb between to and the infinitive it governs, but the construction should be avoided unless the writer wishes to place unusual stress on the adverb." -- pg. 58

"The split infinitive is another trick of rhetoric in which the ear must be quicker than the handbook. Some infinitives seem to improve on being split, just as a stick of round stovewood does. 'I cannot bring myself to really like the fellow.' The sentence is relaxed, the meaning is clear, the violation is harmless and scarcely perceptible. Put the other way, the sentence becomes stiff, needlessly formal. A matter of ear." -- pg. 78

What's next?

[FyRE666]

I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??)

Well if memory serves, MS will use HP for as long as it takes to get its own team together, then screw them over. Of course, MS may really value the partnership, and have absolutely no ulterior motiv...... sorry, I'm laughing too hard to finish!!

Re:What's next?

[SerpentMage]

Exactly. This is MS's latest love slave. It did not work out that well with the others. Or MS has a new "VISION" and, well, you need new partners to realize that vision.

The old partners (IBM, DELL, BRISTOL, MAINSOFT, etc) just do not get it, like Microsoft does. But as the saying goes what comes around goes around. And right now one of the first companies that MS screwed over (IBM), looks pretty menancing for MS.

Re:What's next?

[uncoveror]

Did you know that IBM was behind the disasterous merger of Sperry and Burroughs that formed Unisys? That was just one of many examples of IBMs skullduggery. They also like to place moles in companies to bring them down, such as Carly Fiorina. The few at HP who think buddying up with Microsoft will save them don't know they've already been sold out.

Re:What's next?

[Beliskner]

Well if memory serves, MS will use HP for as long as it takes to get its own team together, then screw them over

Ahhhh, in that case HP should assign this job to H-1Bs. This way Micro$oft can't steal them, GO H-1B!!!!

Corporate chess in action.

Acquisitions sometimes turn out the other way arou

[amorsen]

Caldera bought SCO and turned into SCO. HP bought Compaq and turned into Compaq. It is not that unusual.

Bruce Perens

[Bartmoss]

No wonder they got rid of Bruce Perens...

What do you mean, "lately"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I worked at HP during the early and mid 90's. Let me tell you, cozying up to Microsoft is nothing new. Investing in Microsoft has been the stealth initiative of MANY of the ladder-climbers at HP. During my stay at HP, Rick Beluzzo was the big Microsoft pusher (ask me if I'm surprised he ended up WORKING for Microsoft in the end).

HP's downward slide didn't start with Carly, nor did it start with the merger--it started a LONG time ago, when the upper eschelons were taken over by MBA-types who thought that, instead of HP innovating, it would be MUCH easier to cozy up to the dominant monopoly.

Re:What do you mean, "lately"?!

[constantnormal]

Yup -- here's just the sort of thinking typified by such management types:
Let's see, we write software and we buy software from Microsoft... let's outsource our development staff to Microsoft for a cut in the pricing on the stuff we buy from them! We lose those expensive employees and get a break on our product costs! We're financial geniuses!!

So as they pollute and destroy whatever uniqueness HP products have, somebody else brings out a similar but better product for a lot less, and a third company brings out a significantly different, but more expensive product for a premium price. HP withers while the competition thrives.

Financial geniuses do not create world-beating products.

Re:What do you mean, "lately"?!

[Jason Earl]

Not that HP has much choice in the matter at this point. After all, it's not like HP has an application server of their own that they could sell you. It seems somewhat ironic to me that HP has not one but two UNIXes, VMS, and who knows what else, and no development strategy going forward other than to spend money advertising for Microsoft (and Dell). Sometimes I wonder if HP wouldn't be better off to simply stick with printers.

If there is one thing that HP should have learned by now is that the only way to win in the PC race is to let someone else do all of the front-runner testing and advertising. When it comes to actually purchasing .NET systems most folks are going to do so primarily on price, and Dell is going to win handily there (especially since they let HP spend the money on advertising).

no kidding men!!

[bryam]

Heavely???? 50M?? it is heavely? so what about the 1000M of IBM on Linux? ;-)

The true reason

[abhikhurana]

Okay, now that I did the unbelievable by posting the second message which not only was not a troll, but also pinpointed the cause of this change in HP policy, there is a related story on ZDNET on this

Okay, now that I did the unbelievable by posting the second message which not only was not a troll, but also pinpointed the cause of this change in HP policy, there is a related story on ZDNET. To quote from the article:

"Our relationship has significantly improved," Microsoft group vice president Jim Allchin told CNET News.com earlier this month.

Asked if the Compaq influence was the leading factor, Allchin said, "I suspect that's a large part of it."

So now you know why this happened.

IBM

[e8johan]

It seems like this is a part of HP's plan to 'do an IBM', i.e. become a provider of complete solutions (HW+SW+Consulting). They've got the HW and consulting, but still need a big SW platform to sell and promote.
As for scaryness, yes it is a threat to the freedom online. We have to hope that Liberty Alliance will succeed and that average Joe will become aware of the lack of integrity this type of solutions can result in.

HP's always been in bed w/MS

[Brento]

Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately

Then do something about it.

You remind me of the people who whine about the government, but never get out to the polls on voting day. What have you done about it? If you're alarmed by the closeness with Microsoft, then either you haven't been paying attention to HP or else you're one of the newly merged Compaq folks, who were a lot more open-source-friendly. HP's been in bed with MS for years: I distinctly remember HP being one of the first companies to adopt the restore-cd-only policy with their Pavilions, only including a restore CD and not an operating system CD. HP's Kayak dual-CPU workstations were among the first & best NT-running machines I ever used, and I know they didn't build it to run Linux. HP's always been close with MS.

So if HP's relationship with MS surprises you, then you need to get more active with your management in the day-to-day decisionmaking. Every time HP releases a solution that specifically favors MS, sometimes at the expense of their customers, speak up and try to change their minds.

Re:HP's always been in bed w/MS

[jarodss]

Actually I also work for HP, but I am one of the converted, a red team worker. The word here is to pick up on linux, our servers and desktops will be offered in win2k, xp pro and linux options very shortly, so the techs here supporting them need to have linux knowledge.

So don't count on HP getting in bed with MS all the way, it seems like their just fuck-friends, at least for the moment.

Re:HP's always been in bed w/MS

[Brento]

Well okay, but look what happened to Bruce Perens when he talked down MS at HP... boom, fired.

Perens wasn't working within the company framework. If I think my company's doing something wrong, I don't speak out in public: I work closely with my supervisors and make sure they do the right thing. If they continue to make the wrong choices, and I've tried my best, then I don't play whistleblower and run to the shareholders. That marks you as somebody who's not trustworthy, somebody who isn't a team player. You pull that, you get fired, no matter how high-profile you are.

I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that's how the system works. The officeplace is like the Matrix - ya gotta fight the bad elements from within.

Re:HP's always been in bed w/MS

[Beliskner]

Every time HP releases a solution that specifically favors MS, sometimes at the expense of their customers, speak up and try to change their minds

How many people on /. (except RMS) would take a $1billion check from Micro$oft and burn it instead of running to the Bank? Customers would rather buy cheap Indian software+hardware than HP's stuff, they know this and have planned accordingly, that's all. No corporate conspiracy here, move along now.

Re:HP's always been in bed w/MS

[Beliskner]

How is taking mony from MicroSoft a bad thing?

Yeah, it's good, which is why I say GO HP!!! Screw Micro$oft for all they're worth, then give cyanide pills to the workers that defect over to Micro$oft! When DRM hits I'll be downloading Win98 from Kazaa and buying used hardware. Now I'll need new Win9x hardware drivers when linux is killed by DRM, hmmmmm....

Let's see....

[Dredd13]

.... toss Perens, cozy up to Microsoft ...

Anyone want to place bets on how long before HP "decides that supporting Linux is just too costly" and bails on the platform entirely?

Wouldn't surprise me if part of this MS/HP deal was MSFT saying "before we'll consummate this, in a few months, you've got to get rid of that thorn in our side Perens. We can't have him out there publicly lambasting us, as an employee of your company, if we're going to do business with you."

Why, YOU'RE next, HP

[puppetluva]

"Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??)."

Let's look at past microsoft buddy-buddy relationships:

• Sybase. They promise you access to OS internals in exchange for db internals knowledge, then they steal your product.
  
• Sun. They license your technology in exchange for distribution. As soon as it seems like it is catching on, they try to sabotage it.
  
• Resellers. They allow you to distribute product. If you gain any distribution power, they coerce you into complying.
  
• Visio. They allow you to stay alive. . . as long as you don't expand into the Microsoft Office space and you "donate" technology to Powerpoint and other products. As soon as you get too valuable, they buy you for much less that they would have if they had let you grow unfettered.
  
• IBM. You commision them to write a windowed OS to compete with the Mac. They steal your money and write their own while holding up your project.
  
• Customers. You buy their product in good faith. The change the licensing terms on you (after the sale!) in exchange for fixes to the broken product you originally bought. The only reason you bought it, was because they've killed all competitive products, so you have no choice.
  

Well. . . from past experience, I think HP should bend over. . . we all know what's next.

The only defence would be to never make any money or headway in the business relationship at all. That way, if they actually kill your business while they are sabotaging it, they won't rob your grave and relabel the loot "innovation."

I feel really bad for Carly Fiorona. She may actually believe that she is digging a foundation for her company. . .

Re:Why, YOU'RE next, HP

[mccalli]

Not so with Visio - their aim was always to sell the company to Microsoft.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Why, YOU'RE next, HP

[tmark]

I feel really bad for Carly Fiorona. She may actually believe that she is digging a foundation for her company. . .

Why feel sorry for an intellegent (and highly compensated) person who should know better ? Why not feel sorry instead for the misguided Compaq/HP foot soldiers and shareholders who are going to be screwed over by her bunglings ?

Re:Why, YOU'RE next, HP

[ortholattice]

Add:

SourceSafe - Once was a reliable CLI program that ran under Unix and allowed you to check in and out dozens of files with a simple command line. Was bought by MS, ported to NT, lost its Unix support, and became a bloated GUI that required literally hours (on a 33MHz machine) of point, click, wait...wait... (and cross your fingers not to crash) to check in 100 files one by one vs. 5 sec from the old CLI. We discovered that rebooting after checking in every dozen or so files greatly improved reliability, and I recall that our record was checking in about 50 files in a single session without a crash. At least that was the case shortly after MS bought it; we scrapped it after numerous crashes corrupted its db, and I haven't used it in years.

Re:Why, YOU'RE next, HP

[Fjord]

We use soursesafe here and it's not as bad as that. There is still a command line version of sourcesafe and there are still unix versions (even linux). You can easily check in 100 files in the GUI with the standard CUI shift or ctrl clicking. Although the filtering isn't nearly as good as WinCVS, you can find the files checked out to you.

Sourcesafe is usable without getting in the way. Free products like WinCVS are better in most cases (SourceSafe does have one interesting feature that the project can have directories scattered around your hard drive, rather than a strict tree structure. I've never used it, and I think that NTFS symbolic links would be able to achieve this, but it's still the feature that SourceSafe has that I haven't seen in other GUI tools), but having to use it has only been a minor irritation (why does it make directories uppercase when you add them? why does it add all the files inside the dir, forcing me to remove the ones I don't want, and then going to the filesystem to attrib them back to writeable?). In day-to-day use it's only a little lacking.

....what's next??)."

[smittyoneeach]

Well, we can rule out his Majesty Satanic actually buying HPaq. That would trigger an anti-trust scatalogical storm of world-wide proportions.
So, how can Redmond achieve control without all of the legal overhead of a purchase?

Re:....what's next??)."

[sessamoid]

Well, we can rule out his Majesty Satanic actually buying HPaq. That would trigger an anti-trust scatalogical storm of world-wide proportions. So, how can Redmond achieve control without all of the legal overhead of a purchase?

I equate Microsoft's relationships with many of it's "partners" as that between parent and child. They don't necessarily own them, nor do parents actually own their children as chattel. However, Microsoft (like parents) provide most of the essentials for daily living and survival. The children could run away from home, but survival away from home is a lot tougher than under the thumb.

Unlike human parents, Microsoft seems to have a tendency to either eat or kill their children when they get too grown-up.

Re:....what's next??)."

[smittyoneeach]

Yes, but the market shares differ dramatically in your examples.

Media center PCs nothing new

[objwiz]

Computers have been built into stereo equipment for years. Pop open a proscan cd changer and you'll find a serial port which you can log in as root. Most stereo equipment runs embedded linux or BeOS. Shockingly more are starting to have Windows now that harddrives are getting added to the systems.

I used to write software for stereo components for Escient Labs, who had major OEM agreements with RCA, Harmon Kardon, and (more recently) Compaq (now HP). It was quite the cool experience to see all of my favorite hi-fi systems run linux.

Most companies are in bed with MS

[Anonymous Coward]

...and that is despite whether they support open source products or not. Afterall, they're running a business and providing products or services for the Windows/.NET platform makes business sense -- short term and long term.

When will you people realize that there will always be Microsoft playing a large part in the market for minimumly the next 10-15 years?

Re:Carly Fiorina, I presume?

[Ours]

They didn't "shut down" the lab instruments part. They made a spinoff called Agilent Technologies and that company seems to be doing just fine.

Re:Counter it

[miffo.swe]

I too have a hard time realizing that most people have already forgot how networks was in the 60-80'ies. To be tied into any vendor is a bad thing longterm because when other companies builds new great products you cant get them because your current tech isnt compatible with anything but themselves.

use this as motivation

[rnd()]

A lot of people will complain "Boo hoo, I wish HP would invest $50Million in Linux. I hate Microsoft". The fact is, HP has invested a lot of money in Linux so far, and will continue to do so. .NET web services are a standards-compliant improvement to previously existing technology that will IF ANYTHING help to promote cross-platform solutions: In other words this will help HP deliver enterprise solutions involving both Microsoft products AND gnu-linux.

If Linux was really 10 steps ahead of Microsoft, markets would recognize that fact much more than they have. The fact is, there are some areas where linux shines and some areas where commercial software shines.

To me, this is a good thing, since it will raise the bar on standards compliance in the industry and create more niche areas for linux to make its way into the enterprise.

Re:use this as motivation

[symbolic]

If Linux was really 10 steps ahead of Microsoft, markets would recognize that fact much more than they have.

On the other hand, if Linux had 5,000 paid "consultants" flanked by a huge sales force, there's every chance that the market would recognize it.

Re:use this as motivation

[rnd()]

.NET web services use XML for all data transfer. Thus, you can access them from any platform that supports XML. It's pretty obvious why XML is cross-platform and standards-compliant, so I won't explain that.

Re:use this as motivation

[rnd()]

You are right that the sales force helps, however if you're selling a solution you can either have the customer pay the Microsoft Tax, or you can sell an OSS solution and keep the difference for yourself. I think there is plenty of incentive out there for solutions providers and consultants to leverage gnu-linux and OSS.

Anyone who thinks MS is going to allow .NET to be an open standard is living in a fantasy world. And BTW, only the CLR is a standard. This completely excludes all the APIs which is what someone would actually use to write an application. The GUI is not included in the CLR either.

Microsoft has a pretty strong incentive to standardize the .NET... one of the main reasons they're developing it is to fix a lot of the problems associated with multiple versions of DLLs, dependence on various versions of windows APIs, etc.

If you're in doubt, look at the Mono project. Soon there will be .NET available for Linux, etc. Then we'll find companies like HP selling the Microsoft solution but implementing their projects with Mono and Linux and making more money in the process.

And what do you want them to do?

[g4dget]

The have two choices for moving beyond C++: Java and C#. I don't see one as being a lot more attractive for HP than the other. And Java has some baggage: their past spat with Sun, and much more competition for consulting dollars.

(Of course, I know what I would want them to do: invest the $50m in gcj and Mono...)

the microsoft compromise

[Chris Canfield]

"Microsoft is in a leadership position here where we've got an opportunity to help Hollywood feel comfortable with digital distribution and to help them develop (digital rights management) solutions so consumers can have content everywhere," she said. "We have two relationships we have to balance here: the consumer who wants the content and Hollywood so they feel comfortable with that process and don't clamp down and make that impossible."

It's still my computer. If you don't trust me with your movies, then don't put the f***ing things on my computer. I'll still rent the DVD's, you will still make money.

Most people would rather own their computer and rent at blockbuster than simply having a licence for their computer and lots of pretty movies to slowly, slowly download. Since when is this any sort of *compromise* when the terms are dictated from above?

The Digital - Microsoft Alliance

[Lol the unbeliever]

What's next you ask ?

I do not know. I do have a collection of "Digital - Microsoft alliance" t-shirts from when DEC still existed.

Embrace and Extend.

A fool and her money are soon parted

[dcavanaugh]

"I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately..."

You should be. I remember when Digital Equipment was this close with Microsoft and they convinced M$ to port NT to Alpha. Same thing -- big investment -- deployment of thousands of consultants and support people. Look at how well that worked.

What little remains of DEC now belongs to HP, via Compaq. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

Re:A fool and her money are soon parted

[dcavanaugh]

Technically, a sig is just a sig. By definition, it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. The Godwin effect is not invoked until someone takes the bait and starts discussing the sig. I guess you lose.

Re:.NET is great !!!

[IamTheRealMike]

.NET is great! The .NET framework library is very complete and easy to use. The .NET CLR is also very cool. I will be nice when I can develop things using Visual Studio .NET and deploy the assemblies on Linux servers using MONO.

Check out java. That does all those things, but it does them now, and it's got a lot of support and it's also multi-vendor. You will NOT be able to write stuff in VS.NET and run them on Linux, because very little of the framework classes are "open", for instance Mono uses its own gui framework based on GTK.

5 years down the line ...

[mystik]

...there will be two companies:

IBM-Sun, w/ java

HP/COMPAQ-Microsoft w/ .net

Re:5 years down the line ...

[Draoi]

... and Apple w/ MacOS X

Sorry, gotta be said.

Explains why Bruce Had to Go....

[haplo21112]

If HP is coxying up with Microsoft like this, it explains why HP let go one of the most outspoken MS detractors.

In an un related story....

[Lonath]

Dr.Stress: Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately

In an unrelated story, Dr.Stress was fired from HP for making !MS comments.

Oh wait. This really happened didn't it?

And remember kiddies, never give money to the copyright industry for any reason forever. If you're renting/buying anything that gives money to the companies backing the **AA's, you're a part of the problem.

Re:Acquisitions sometimes turn out the other way a

[haplo21112]

If only that followed through, and when Compaq bought DEC, they became DEC....we might still have a viable Alpha Chip...that might have had some clout to win some battles instead of being an also ran...
ah such potential...wasted!

Investing 50 million in vaporware

[macdaddy357]

Can anybody explain just what the hell .Net is, and for that matter, why I need "web services?" It seems to me that HP is investing 50 million in vaporware.

Re:Investing 50 million in vaporware

[macdaddy357]

Wow! Somebody must have pissed in your Wheaties! By the way, you still didn't explain what .NET is. Since people are still confused about it, I guess it's DOA. If your job depends on .NET being a success, get used to saying, "fries with that." It isn't a question. You are telling them.

Re:Investing 50 million in vaporware

[dpt]

... and for that matter, why I need "web services?"

So that you can make your broadband connection perform like a dialup, as SOAP is an XML protocol.

Just imagine, instead of sending your images/mp3s/whatever as a stream of bytes, you can send something like:

<int> 56 </int> <int> 42 </int> <int> 35 </int> ... [etc]

What a fucking breakthough! What insight! And, as an added bonus, you get the overhead of creating the XML at the sender, and parsing it at the receiver. Huzzah! The brilliance knows no bounds!

Yes, I know about the "array of bytes" type, but this is just laughable. You now have all the endian/packing problems of sockets, so if you use this type, SOAP has gained you exactly nothing and you might as well have used raw sockets. And I'm not even going to *ask* what happens if you want to send an array of floats efficiently ...

It's no suprise that SOAP is from the same geniuses that brought you the joke that was DCOM (which has been swept under the carpet I notice). Perhaps I should send these people some of the standard distributed computing texts for xmas, it's clear they don't have clue one about the topic.

--
Disagree? Reply, don't mod. Read the moderator guidelines!

Microsoft always gets somebody else to go first

[Dr. Evil]

Microsoft has always pumped money into a technology until it eventually becomes successful (Internet Explorer and Windows CE to name two), but has anyone else noticed that they let everyone else bet their bank on MS technology first, then they learn from their competitor/customer's mistakes?

E.g. The Sega dreamcast. Odd how Microsoft didn't use WinCE for the Xbox isn't it?

Isn't Corel jumping on .Net before MS Office?

The IBM/Microsoft OS/2 partnership and the subsequent WinNT?

I'm sure there are other examples.

Nothing but a $2 whore?

[iceT]

Does anyone else get the impression that HP/Compaq will do ANYTHING for a buck?

Sometimes, they're a Linux proponent. Sometimes they're a Windows toady.

If they WILL do anything that anyone will pay for, then why don't they just say that?

Re:Nothing but a $2 whore?

[Winterblink]

If you think that as a company HP's doing this for karma you're sadly mistaken.

HP's new marketing line...

[supabeast!]

We are supporting Microsoft! We are supporting Linux! We are going to move forward with HP-UX and Tru-64! Compaq hardware will keep on truckin! We love AMD and Hammer! We love intel and Itanium!

We will say anything to try and keep our stockholders from noticing that we made a former Lucent exec our CEO and are letting her run one of the most wacked-out mergers ever seen!

Re:HP's new marketing line...

[haggar]

We love AMD and Hammer! We love intel and Itanium!

You forgot PA-RISC: "we are committed to our PA-RISC development"

What do you expect?

[littlea1]

If HP bought COMPAQ (heavy M$ machinery) and they are betting on Itanium (Does Intel sounds familiar?), don't you think the next logical step is to sleep with Microsoft?

Then quit you whiner

[banzai51]

Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??).

Ohhhh, poor baby. Would you like your bottle? The trials and trubulations of a for profit company doing business with another for profit company to, can you believe the evil, sell goods and services for profit!!!! What is the world comming to? God forbid your company work with an OS that reaches over 90% of the PCs out there. The horror of having to consider the end user!

Re:Never attribute to malice if stupidity explains

[gi-tux]

Three or four years ago, I had people from HP calling me asking me when I would be moving my systems from HP-UX to NT. When I laughed and told them that we were moving from MS platforms to Unix (tm) and unix-like systems, the people on the other end acted amazed that anyone would still be moving stuff to Unix (tm).

Doesn't really suprise me that after the Compaq merger, they are even more in bed with MS. After all wasn't it Compaq that basically killed the Alpha?

GREAT!!!

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

When Scott McNealy was asked about the HP and Compaq merger at the CEO expo a while back, he was asked:

"Do you think of the merger as having one less competitor?"

Scott's response:

"No. Two less."

Let Fionrna (whatever her name is) play with .NET and I'll laugh at they crumble and news reports abound of HP and Compaq flopping like fish out of water. Watching two large companies merge is fun! Entertaining for the geek and economist alike. As long as their LaserJet series supports Linux and Apple, I could care less. .NET will drown them. Any developer ACTUALLY EARNING A LIVING AND NOT STILL IN SCHOOL will understand it's about the APIs. Clean and simple with Java (and other langauges, too) but .NET? A fscking mess.

Try NEVER...

[freeBill]

...the stock market is in the process of getting rid of the practice of not expensing stock options. With that gone, MS will be exposed as a Ponzi scheme, right at the point where corporate America needs to save some money. Microsoft's cash reserves are going to go to defense, not offense.

HP's going to go the way of other MS partners, but not the buyout way. By the time this is over, no one's going to want MS stock any more than they want HP stock today. Probably less.

Take a pill...

[jmcnamera]

Folks, calm down about this.

HP also signed a deal like this with BEA and people didn't go ballistic. HP signs many deals and they want to be big in services and this and the BEA deal is how you get big in services.

You should be careful about reading corporate press releases, they rarely are in context.

Favorite Scott McNealy Quote

[small_dick]

Linux Expo, 2002; refering to the HP/Compaq merger:

"...it's like watching two slow-moving garbage trucks in a head-on collision..."

What's next?...How about resumes?

[freeBill]

Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately (this, plus the media center PCs....what's next??)

Notice that line forming at the copy machine? Get out while the gettin's good. It's never fun to be on a big ship while it's going down.

HP is being smart

[anomaly]

Even if this doesn't make sense to us, it does make business sense.

Some (very large) percentage of the business community will purchase MS servers, clients, and want to use the new technology. HP has a services department that sells their knowledge about current technologies to businesses.

In the scheme of things, $50M is not that much money, and it's a smart investment because people will be knocking on HP's door asking for consultants that understand this ".NET stuff"

HP would be foolish not to make a play for this $$, particularly since they are a big reseller of MS products and can easily get the marginal revenues by offering "integration" services with the hardware/software sales.

BTW - I've seen some bashing of the .NET technology space here. I'm not a developer, but I have some very smart friends that are. They tell me that .NET is really cool - it enables small bits of code to do big things. Of course this means that the MS API is handling the majority of those big things, which means that it will be easier than ever to create DOS attacks against the web services and breach security, too. However, MS is cozying up to developers who have business problems to solve, and business frequently is willing to take on security risks because business people rarely understand them. Oh - the customers rarely understand them, too so there's little incentive to pay attention to what our customers can't understand.

Doesn't have to make sense to you, but it is the reality of the business world......

Regards,
Anomaly

Deceitful

[Baki]

The article states:

While acknowledging that .Net is still in its early stages, HP Services chief Ann Livermore said now is the time to start selling companies on the idea of using Web services to automate their businesses.

This suggests that web services == .net, which is nonsense. One of the selling points of web services allegedly is that it is platform independant and portable, not depending on a single technology such as .net.

Deceitful strategy, first they try to sell web services because of said platform independance, then the next step is to suggest that you need .net to build web services, leading to vendor lock in.

Not surprising HP is doing this.

[MtViewGuy]

I'm not surprised that Hewlett-Packard is working with Microsoft on the .NET initiative.

Don't forget that Microsoft is a company sitting on US$40 billion in liquid assets and HP knows Microsoft will be around for a long time, which gives MS time to develop and improve .NET software.

Besides, I'm sure HP is well-aware of Ximian's Mono project, which essentially is an Open Source version of .NET. That way, HP can sell servers running Linux with Mono which means HP will come out a winner in the end in the long run.

(Mind you, I think Microsoft has neferious reasons for assisting Ximian in developing Mono--it will essentially do an end-around attack on Sun's Liberty Alliance initiative. Sun might not realize what hit them when they find out why most of the world is supporting something akin to .NET for web services.)

Ah, yet another obfuscation

[intermodal]

Looks like Compaq's hiding their shady business behind the HP name again...

Step 1: Control HP
Step 2: Publicly announce evil plans under HP's name
Step 3: Profit????

Re:Never attribute to malice if stupidity explains

[HiThere]

OK, here's the fresh sig that you asked for:

Have you been GNUed today?

SourceSafe just hasn't screwed you (YET)

[Codex The Sloth]

The problem with SSafe is that once your project gets too big (5 GB is the number microsoft themselves suggests as a maximum limit) the database (which is just a bunch of files on an NT server) get corrupted and your screwed. Unlike CVS, hand rejiggering of the database is not possible...

The other problem with it is the "server" just uses NT file sharing and the shares have to give everyone write permission so there's no real security anyway...

Re:SourceSafe just hasn't screwed you (YET)

[Reziac]

Is it just me, or has anyone else long since concluded that M$ can't write a stable database to save their lives?? (Mind you I'm including database-like functions, such as the Windows Registry, and Word's method of applying formatting to the document.)

Re:SourceSafe just hasn't screwed you (YET)

[Codex The Sloth]

Well SQLServer is actually not terrible (although it started from the Sybase V code). I think they are incompetent at anything that has to be high availability though -- they're server products are total shite and anyone foolish enough to base their infrastructure around them will get what they deserve...

Re:SourceSafe just hasn't screwed you (YET)

[Reziac]

Re availability, a side note: I discovered a while back that it's possible to crash an NT4/older-M$IIS server using nothing more than standard browser requests, particularly when it's sending a lot of js that interacts with its database. Just interrupt it a few times in a row, and after a while it's likely to seize up. (And will miraculously come back online shortly after 8AM, when someone apparently arrives at work and reboots it.)

The culprit in this case was the Los Angeles County Assessor's Office site, which at the time I had to use a lot. Really annoying.

Re:SourceSafe just hasn't screwed you (YET)

[Fjord]

I've heard of this problem. We did load one project up to about 30G to see what would happen. The famed corruption didn't occur, but it became REEEEEEEALY slow. There weren't a lot of files (my current project has more), just a bunch of big ones. I do like the fact that CVS has each file with it's own database. Not only is it more fault resistant, but it is easy to restructure if you have shell access to the machine.

BUT, corruption of the db isn't a serious problem because, even with CVS, you should be backing the files up. I guess if it corrupted regularily, that would be a pain.

Re:.NET is great !!!

[HiThere]

Well, I'm no fan of Java (I strongly dislike it's extremely limited form of multiple inheritance, I strongly dislike the continual need for casting, I dislike....)

It would be no surprise if .net improved on those, but the little bit that I've seen didn't indicate this.

The question is what parts will be available under an acceptable license. The answer isn't clear. And if the applications end up being non-portable anyway (due to GUI platform dependencies, e.g.), then what's the advantage?

Saying that something is technically better than Java is faint praise indeed. Now if you could say that it was better than Python...

Don't point to proprietary libraries as a reason that it's better. That proves nothing at all. Those libraries are probably unuseable. Don't point to it being submitted to standardization as a bonus, unless ALL THE NEEDED PARTS are standardized, and not covered by restrictive patents or licenses. (This could be true, but it isn't what I've been hearing.)

If you think that the CLR being multiple language is a bonus, may I direct you to a web page entitled "Languages for the JavaVM" http://grunge.cs.tu-berlin.de/%7Etolk/vmlanguages. html (This link contains no spaces, no matter what you display shows.)

OTOH, it may well be an improved design. I'd be rather shocked if it weren't. This is *years* later.

What language is your legacy code written in? My legacy code either links nicely with any gcc compiler, or doesn't link with .net either.
(Sometimes both.)

That it is made by MS is not a de facto reason for disliking it. It is a de facto reason for not trusting any facet of it that I haven't examined. (The burnt child dreads the fire. Once burnt, twice shy. Fool me once, shame on thee, fool me twice, shame on me. You don't fool me three times. etc.)

I never hated and despised Microsoft until after I started using their operating system. After a few years, and a few license changes, it got to the point where it is now common knowledge where I work (well, within the department) that I refuse to install Microsoft software, because I won't agree to the license.

I encourage you to read the EULA before you install software. You are not exempted from the terms just because you don't read them. Your company is not exempted just because you don't care. If the crime of malfeasance applies to sysadmins (or other techs), then I suspect that agreeing to bind you company to those licenses counts as malfeasance. It really is a decision that should be made each time by upper management. No other decision of comparable significance (i.e., likely to kill the company) is made by tech personnel, and they shouldn't make this one either. I recognize that they are frequently coerced into it, but if you accept the coercion, then you are not a professional.

Re:Carly Fiorina, I presume?

[Reziac]

And a P/E ratio of -10.40. Eeep!

Re:No split infinitives here

[evilpenguin]

Yes, but we then use punctuation to indicate our meaning. For example, since you left out the comma between "words" and "people" in your example, I was not sure until I reached the end of the sentence if you were concerned with words in general, or if you were concerned merely with "words people must be able to understand." Since reading the sentence in the latter way left a dangling participle, I had to go back and try it the other way. The fact that I did this in a fraction of a second doesn't mean that it didn't slow me down and cause me a moment of confusion.

Sure, you can break the rules and still be understood. That's a bit rude, though. The rules aren't there to constrain your freedom. They are there to ensure our mutual understanding.

When you break a rule artfully and with intent, you are doing something of real value to the language. When you break a rule out of ignorance or laziness, you are asking the rest of us to do your work for you. That is rude.

Please understand that I recognize slashdot and other such forums (fora?) are an informal and ad hoc place for language. I think it was perfectly okay to leave out the comma where you did. I don't take people to task for spelling, punctuation, and grammar here or on usenet or any such place. I was using your sentence merely as an example. You would have to be writing pure gibberish for me to complain.

The "rules" of usage are an "open standard." They are like any other protocol. They define the way messages are encoded and decoded. When you fail to comply with the rules through ignorance, you are like a poorly designed IP stack, spitting out bad packets and expecting the rest of us to deal with it. When you fail to comply through concious defiance, you are like a certain monopolistic company, trying to "embrace and extend" the language. In either case, it is not a good thing.

There is, of course, a third case. When you fail to comply with the rules because you are trying to enhance the protocol, you are not doing harm per se, but you are trying to create. In English, this tends to happen in fiction and poetry, which are the test networks of the language.

I won't say we will never see poetry on slashdot, but few posts I see rise to the standard.

Re:HP is only listening to the field

[T3kno]

I WAS an HP customer, and I don't want, nor will I ever want, .NET. HP is in serious trouble, they aren't selling anything, they aren't innovating, and they think this will provide a boost to the seriously broken company. Prostitute yourself to Microsoft and sue people who find holes in your software, now there is a business model for the 21st century.

I remember when DEC and Microsoft "partnered"...

[Locutus]

The funny thing is that no matter how much money Microsoft threw at DEC to move everything over to NT, DEC crashed and burned. HP started a similar migration around the same time but pulled back when customers resisted the pressure from HP to give up UNIX for Windows. Lucky for HP. Is HP still smart? It doesn't look like it....

Microsoft threw $5 BILLION over to AT&T so they would use WinCE and what did that get them? It most likely did more harm to the other OS vendors who had working product and it probably delayed the release of the intended technology in set-top boxes.

IMHO, no company should take Microsoft "investment" capital unless they fully intend to disolve the business very soon. This news that HP is helping finance and back MS.NET just means HP is more likely to not be around for the long run.

In 5 years, HP will split itself up with maybe only the printer division keeping it's name. Or maybe they'll smarten up again and let customers solutions drive the market. Not the latest idea to protect the Windows monopoly, MS.NET.

LoB

very good analogy

[g4dget]

For most people, selling the Ferrari and buying the Ford is an upgrade. Just try going shopping or taking several kids to grandma's place in a Ferrari. And try driving that Ferrari as fast as it can go on congested highways.

You see, theoretical top speed is not a primary concern for most car buyers--or programming language users. Safety, capacity, and comfort are much more important.

Fight for your freedom if you believe in it.

[Ogerman]

Frankly, as an HP employee, I am alarmed at all this closeness with Microsoft lately

No surprise here. Megacorps aren't compatible with the very essense of Open Source because it does not allow them to corner and manipulate markets--simple as that. So stop complaining and don't work for them! Take your skills elsewhere. Start your own small business. Do whatever it takes to join the grassroots opposition to corporate controlled technology. It's not just about Open Source and buzzwords. It's about control. It's about keeping greed in check so that it doesn't erode basic freedom and privacy.

Supposed open-source geeks who go work for proprietary-minded companies are hypocrites. It'd be like fighting with the Nazi's in WW2 because they offered you better pay. Grow some backbone people and stand up for what you believe!

Why is happens

[gnovos]

I used to work for a starup which is now a "Microsoft Partner". The reason we became a "partner" is very simple, they came to us and said, point blank, "We are going to copy what you did and put you out of business. If you become a 'partner' and give us your code, we will let you survive on your own merits and help you get funding for two years before we make our version. If you don't, we'll put our own version out in a month and crush you before you can even get your next round of funding. It's your call."

That was almost exactly the deal, and my company agreeed with it becuase there was no way to compete.

Re:Why is happens

[cpeterso]

What is your company's name? How can we verify what you are saying is true?

Re:Acquisitions sometimes turn out the other way a

[amorsen]

Speaking of DEC... After it was announced that HP would buy Compaq, a rumour quickly spread that Apple would be acquired next. This is why.

Re:I remember when DEC and Microsoft "partnered"..

[Locutus]

that's pretty much what Microsoft is attempting. It seems silly when you think about it related to printers. But, they want to have full control of what runs across the I/O subsystem. The music and film industry like this but with Sony and AOL/TimeWarner in the mix, they don't want Microsoft implementing it. It's not going to be like the phone business where everybody said NO to Microsoft but there are enough big players on the other side of the fence to fight this. Thank gawd.

LoB