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The OS Community Embraces IBM
Joel Dutt writes "IBM... 'the corporation known as Big Blue has seen its reputation in the global open-source community shift from suspect sugar daddy to knight in shining armor.' Newsweek has an interesting article in its latest issue, discussing the relationship between the open-source community and the corporate giant."
Sure, they make hardware and sure, they sell software. However, they have legions of consultants that make money providing SERVICE to their clientele. Supporting software and tools that are both inexpensive/free and easily (freely?) maintained only helps their consulting business which is probably where their highest margins are. You have to sell LOTS of computers and peripherals to make the same profit you make by parking a dozen consultants at a customer location for 6 months.
Cheers,
the final solution was finalized in 1942 at the Wanssee conference. The man who devised the plan was Reinhardt Heydrich. He was at the time #3 in the Nazi party, a fanatical hitler supporter, a deputy reichsfuhrer, and in charge of bohmeia and moravia (sudetenland). He was later killed by czech resistance members who flew in from england. he was killed by a bomb on a corner in prague. hitler responded by razing the city of lidice (http://www.lidice-memorial.cz/index_uk.htm).
as for pencil/paper accounting, yes, it can and was done. keep in mind german fanaticalness regarding order. it was possible also because most of the prisoners went into ghettos, then later, to a final camp. (sorry to be so objective and analytical). the records were kept at each place. the germans checked in and checked out everyone who came and went. it wasn't like they let them leave or anything. now, did the nazis use ibm adding machines and stuff. hell, at that time, who wasn't?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
In case you haven't really noticed, IBM's big thing (except for a small abbaration known as the PC *wink*) has never been PCs, but large-scale systems, like the zSeries today. And large server class systems have never been and will never be "point-and-click" easy. In addition, just about every large corporate buyer, likes support contracts. If something seriously borks, you can expect IBM to fix it ASAP. The closest analogy a support contract can be made to (for an organization with an already well-seasoned IT staff) is insurance, because when your company is loosing $10,000/hr on a borked computer, you better damn well make sure you have every resource available to keep downtime to a minimum.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.