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Ballmer on Windows Server 2003, Linux
no_demons writes "Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, has given an interview to CNet about Windows Server 2003 and Linux. He claims that 'our customers have seen a lot more innovation from us than they have seen from that [open-source] community'. Discuss." Also in the news: two critical security vulnerabilities (MS03-014, MS03-015), and this piece about Windows 2003 mentioning that Microsoft is trying to develop a command-line only server.
The customers can't tell the difference between the multiple applications being worked on by Linux developers. They can tell that Windows 2003 has all they need, with an easy point and click interface, without semi-redundant applications. The Comp-Sci department at my college desperately wanted to run our server off Linux, but after we installed it there was just too many choices.23 web servers: OK, I can handle that. Apache. 4 media servers, none of which support Quicktime, 3 of which support low-res Real only: unusable. Very little XML support, which is important because our document retrival system is based upon it. Very buggy when uploading to Windows clients, which is very important because all of our computers run Windows, since Linux is so easy to screw up and there's no applications for imaging or like Norton's GoBack.
What open source needs to do:
1. stop focusing on programming the new hot stuff, focus on the stuff you missed in between text-editing and a 3D GUI.
2. look up the keywords of a SourceForge project you want to start on SourceForge before you start it. If there's another similar project, just missing features from your idea, work on that instead.
3. make things easy to use. have your uncle come over and try to work your program. observe what gives him trouble, fix it.
One last final point: Open source was doomed from the beginning. Yes, it's a blanket statement that sounds ridiculous. Keep reading. Open source is based on the very principles of communism: everyone works on it, everyone owns it. The very thing that led to the collapse of Communism leads to the inability of open source to become popular: workers then tend to migrate quickly, and not work hard, since they can't gain anything from working on one thing hard. So, projects die as they become less "hot" to work on. People ignore the basic fundamentals required (a decent media server), and instead work on a 3D GUI for X. God knows how you'll fix this problem. Call me if you do, that way I can start my own perfect county based on Communism.
Command-line Windows?
I knew there had to be a reason for the Lindows controversy. Let's see...*Pictures B. Gates thinking hard*
1. Windows-without-Windows? Lame...
2. Non-Windows? Lamer...
3. Disk Operating System? Nah, used that one already.
4. Command-Line Windows? Mmmm... has potential...
5. command Line-Windows?
6. Lindows!
So it's in use? *Picks up phone...*
</tinfoil hat>
No
Ok, Balmer, let's see the actual innovation that your customers are seeing, that just isn't within the open source community. What is your answer to User Mode Linux? Nothing. You have nothing. Can I mount and reconfigure an ISO on the fly without special software with Windows? No.
Q: What can I do with MS that I can't do with Linux?
A: Nothing.
Q: What can I do with Linux that I can't do with MS?
A: A hell of alot.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
In this day and age, lies are bankable commodities. Believability increases with increased media exposure.
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
Let's just take a step back from all this and consider it from first principles --- imagine the Soviet Union had never existed, what did Marx mean by communism and how does it relate to free software?
Well,quite a bit actually. Marxists saw the communist society as one where people were freed from the realm of necessity - they worked for pleasure not cash (sounds like your average hacker).
Clearly such a society was one where goods were super-ambundant (unlike the USSR I may add) which is quite like software, as once you write a linux kernel it costs literally next to nothing to copy that to whomever wants it.
This what RMS means, I think, when he says software wants to be free.
These are the 'communist' ideas at the heart of free software and they are real and powerful. They have nothing to do with the Leninist butchery that was at the heart of the Soviet system.
Given that the experience of the USSR has effectively destoyed any rational debate about the term communism it is not much use as a debating point, but I'll just observe that it was Marx's view that the production process would advance so that more and more goods would be like software and that would create a communist society where the state would whither away.
I must admit, after perusing this entire well-developed thread and seeing how it spins out of control as most Slash Dot threads, that I am saddened.
Most comments serve Steve Ballmer well. He was given a podium and, smart billionaire that he is, used the opportunity wisely: He set out to piss you all off, and he succeeded better than even his devious mind could have imagined.
Nowhere in this mutated ugly thread is there anything but hurt feelings and spiteful emotional replies. Nowhere! OK, there are one or two calm thoughts on the matter at hand, but it is surprising how little Slash Dotters can contribute in the way of constructive thought. It is shameful!
Open sourcers, get this, and get it good: Your little platform idea has 1% tops of the entire user-end market. 1% tops. Linux is OLD now in IT terms, and you still have only 1%, if that. You have had your chance. If you were going to be a success, it would have happened long ago.
You can go on doing what you are doing now, but stop thinking you are going to change the world. You can't even change 2% of it.
"MS has multi-tasking. OS/2 had it before MS did, and many OS's did/do it better even after MS finally got around to it."
So I guess the IBM mainframes out there running the world, with their Time-Sharing Option (TSO), were all single-threaded super-computers? Your lack of education in IT is alarming.
"Windows NT was really IBM's OS/2 technology for the most part."
Total horse puckey. Do better research before you fell wild comments.
"MS has Excel. Anyone heard of Lotus 1-2-3? Or VisiCalc?"
Yes, most of us have heard of VisiCalc. One thing that Excel was first at was the threaded spreadsheet. No one had it before Wes Cherry and his team put it into Excel.
"DOS was purchased, and was, in any case, basically CP/M."
Another one of your clumsy statements. Yes it was purchased, but it was not basically CP/M.
I am not an MS apologist - I hate MS. But I also hate inept uneducated remarks.
If you really want enlightenment, step out of your trailer and go to a library and borrow a few books and LEARN something on your own before you publish ridiculous remarks like these again.
No worry of obnoxious code, as it's FS/OSS.
Uhm, right. Delusions must be great. Just because you can look at the code, doesn't mean you are going to. This entire discussion has been had several dozen times over, and the end result is that there can still be obnoxious code.
No worry of BSA-auditing and multimillion dollar extortion schemes.
Wrong. The BSA can still audit you.
No licensing headaches.
Uhm, SCO ring a bell? SCO vs. IBM. Keep dreaming.
Infinite scaleability per each individually bought copy (as in, you can install an infinite number of copies with one purchased [or downloaded] CD).
Please go look up what "scalability" means. Then get back to me.
Due to #4, ever-increasing savings as the number of computers onto which you install the software grows.
You just really need to go work for a few years.
Assurance that the product will not die off simply because a company goes out of business, as it is FS/OSS. Any worthy project will be taken up by others if it's original developers move on.
As opposed to FS/OSS, which just forks, or the maintainers leave it to die and nobody picks it up. Right... your idiocy knows no bounds.
Related to #6, ability to develop/implement your own features for your specific needs.
Or just buy a product that meets your needs, save development costs, have them come in and install and support it and not have to pay extraneous developers money you don't need to spend.
On another note regarding Oracle, it is basically slow crap.
Right. If your experience with Oracle is that it is slow, than it is because you are an idiot.
The executable alone is 18MB, so it naturally has poor performance;
What the fuck? I mean.. what the fuck.. this has fuck-all to do with anything. Because this car is yellow, it must go fast! You do realize that a lot of binaries are larger than 18MB and are extremely fast. An Oracle footprint can go to over 512MB on a decent sized database.. does that mean it has poor performance, too?
specialized database-systems will outperform it.
Not a properly tuned Oracle system. You just don't know shit about Oracle.
Btw, data assurance from Oracle doesn't come for free. It costs quite a bit. And for that extra money you spend on it, it'd be better just spending that money doing an audit of FS/OSS code to insure that it won't lose data, and creating backup systems. Using journaling file systems like ReiserFS and XFS is also useful.
Uh, right. Buying a platinum support contract from Oracle is much cheaper than buying a few developers and have them implement the features Oracle has, right after they do a code audit of an open source system. It must be nice to be so delusional. I bet you can have conversations with your spoon while you are watching saturday morning cartoons.
Where have you been the last five years? Some of the world's most powerful supercomputers are Beowulf clusters, using GNU/Linux. See an O'Reilly article [oreillynet.com] for an overview. In particular, GNU/Linux Beowulf clusters are being used for:
Ok, now you get to go look up a few more terms. A beowulf cluster couples the CPU power of all the systems together. If I have a compile farm, that is a type of cluster that is easily supported by open source. If I have a database cluster, that will not be supported by open source. The type of clustering that Sun does is have each server keep in sync with each other, on a kernel level. You can't do that with open source. Your problem is the only thing you know about is open source, so you think it can solve everything. Go into the field for a few years, and you'll realize you are just being an idiot right now.
Yep, this FS/OSS stuff is really useless. It's only made the movie industry more money then from any other movie (see Titanic), assisted
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.