Steve Ballmer on MS Server, Linux, Yahoo & More

yorugua writes "Furniture trembled as Steve Ballmer was to be interviewed by InformationWeek. He then went on to talk about Linux: 'How does Microsoft beat Linux? The same way "you beat any other competitor: You offer good value, which in this case means good total cost of ownership," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says.', Embrace-Extend-Extinguish: 'We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. [...] If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.'"

Comments

Frankly...

[MadMidnightBomber]

I'd rather NOT hear about Steve Ballmer's deviations. Maybe that's just me.

Re:Frankly...

[Reverend528]

There are certain things that no man should ever do to a chair.

Re:Frankly...

[moderatorrater]

So he doesn't like to "connect" to "networks" the same way that you do; who are you to judge?

Re:Frankly...

[JordanL]

I find it mildly desturbing that the parent was modded "Informative" by anyone.

Re:Frankly...

[the_B0fh]

Just remember that he likes squirting, and that he thinks everyone should squirt and be squirted at...

Re:Frankly...

[jez9999]

Don't you know? He wants to squirt you a picture of his kids.

Re:Frankly...

[Foofoobar]

Personally, I'd like pictures, film footage, skin samples and hair cuttings of Steves deviations. But thts just me. I'm build am army of clones to enter into the Chair throwing event in the 2020 summer Olympics in Iowa.

Re:Frankly...

[tirefire]

I'm from Iowa.

Please don't get our hopes up like that.

Re:Frankly...

[orkysoft]

It is an inappropriate Use of Weapons...

Re:Frankly...

[Foofoobar]

Tell ISCA I said hi.

Re:Frankly...

[Jarik_Tentsu]

He should be talking about "How does Microsoft beat its own older software?"

Re:Frankly...

[sticks_us]

Hey, a fellow (ex-) ISCA-er? Cool!

ISCA is still up and running, though I don't think it's being technically hosted by the U of I computer association anymore. Not too much has changed, otherwise...

Re:Frankly...

[utopianfiat]

Oh, see I thought the furniture trembled due to the seismic force of his steps hitting the ground. I'm saying Ballmer's a whale, get it?

Re:Frankly...

[MadMidnightBomber]

I'm not judging - I just don't want to know :p

Re:Frankly...

[Dasher42]

I find it mildly desturbing that the parent was modded "Informative" by anyone.

But now you know. And knowing is half the battle!

Re:Frankly...

[Jesus_666]

Remember, this was the man that tried to get the public to associate MP3 players with squirting.

Re:Frankly...

[Enlightenment]

The other half is trying to forget...

Furniture trembled?

[Brian Gordon]

He'll never live that down :D

Re:Furniture trembled?

[NineNine]

No, he won't ever live that down. That's because his insistence on "Developers, developers, developers!!" is what's going to keep MS in the lead for the forseeable future. Too bad there aren't any OSS people as excited about supporting their developers.

Re:Furniture trembled?

[Anonymous Coward]

He will never live that down *here*, on Slashdot. Please stop mistaking that for the rest of the world where they could care less.

Re:Furniture trembled?

[smittyoneeach]

Sure, he said "Developers, developers, developers!!"
but are you familiar with the reply?

Re:Furniture trembled?

[ApostasyX]

Couldn't care less, the phrase is couldn't care less, else it makes no sense.

Re:Furniture trembled?

[Tawnos]

Unless they truly could care less, yet doing so would require effort on their part, thereby making the "Caring less" more work.

I think that saying is a shortening similar to "easy as pie" which used to be "easy as eating pie."

Re:Furniture trembled?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they truly could care less, yet doing so would require effort on their part, thereby making the "Caring less" more work.

See? Makes no sense at all. Whereas "couldn't care less" makes sense.

Re:Furniture trembled?

[Machtyn]

But did you know where he's going to take them?

Re:Furniture trembled?

[smittyoneeach]

So, you're saying there may be a connection between the software borg and the political borg?

Re:Furniture trembled?

[popmaker]

It does make more sense.

How does microsoft beat linux?

[inflamed]

Microsoft will beat linux the same way they beat any competitor: by purchasing a rival (or in this partnering with Novell) and offering the same product with ten times the marketing force.

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[thewils]

And the FUD, don't forget the FUD.

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[MonsterTrimble]

Not quite in this case. If you push with ten times the marketing and grab a huge lead, it's still linux. Thanks to the GPL it all has to be released. It's kind of like an elastic band. You can build a big lead (stretch the band), but the competitors will come up quick behind you because they have everything you do (snap back).

Of course, this does not account for microsoft linux not following the GPL, etc, but in theory that's how it will go.

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[Amouth]

i thought FUD was built into marketing these days.. i alwasy asume that if someone is to do marketing that they are going to spred fud..

or i could be wrong... or live in a diffrent world.. havn't found a s/n yet to confirm that...

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[poetmatt]

The reason we call it FUD is because for Microsoft it's pronounced "food". After all, gotta feed those starving kids in Africa something right?

All flames aside, I thought Microsoft beating Linux was an oxymoron?

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPL only applies to the Linux kernel. Microsoft could very well partner with a company like Novell and offer binary only packaged versions of their server software without having to publish a single line of code. If Microsoft really needed to hook into the Linux kernel they'd do what nVidia does which publish a gpl-licensed shim that loads a big proprietary binary blob into the kernel.

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

... and forcing "upgrades" down OEM and user's throats.

Their *3* ways they beat any competitor are: purchasing rivals, offering the same product with 10x the marketing force, forcing "upgrades" down OEM and user's throats, and an almost fanatical devotion to incompatibly extending established standards ...

Their *4* ways... no... amongst the ways they beat any competitor ... ... I'll come in again.

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

... which is, ironically, the same tool most commonly used against them!

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[randomsearch]

Whilst I know plenty of Linux developers and users would love to see the demise of Microsoft caused by the rise of Linux (myself included), I'm not sure if the Linux-Windows issue is that important.

In terms of Desktop users, Linux is almost irrelevant to MS. Apple is far more important and a realistic threat to their customer base.

Sure, in the server market Linux has taken significant market share, but this does not necessarily create a large headache for MS.

In many ways, the development of Linux has taken place with complete disregard to MS. Linux has continually improved, following reasonable development paths not dictated by the whims of executives or fashionable buzzwords of the day. I think that's because the Linux community is not chasing market share, just trying to make a decent O/S.

Perhaps the biggest threat from Linux for MS is that it may be a distraction. "Competing" with Linux isn't really possible - you can't put Linux out of business, because it is not a business. But time and effort wasted on fighting Linux in small markets may mean MS fail to see the real threat coming from other sources such as Apple and online Apps.

Re:How does microsoft beat linux?

[jcast]

Of course, if they `beat' Linux that way, it'll mean people running Linux anyway. Linux is a technology, not a company.

Embracing standards and deviating from them

[Reality Master 201]

If you're deliberately not complying with the standards, that's not really embracing them, is it?

Though it's nice that they'll now start being up front about how they're introducing incompatibilities, as opposed to the quiet evil way they used to do it. Baby steps, I guess.

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[MightyMartian]

Is there some particular reason you actually believe him?

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[Em Adespoton]

Their solution to not complying with the standards is to buy their own standards based on how they currently do things. Sure, they might not be the same standards everyone else uses, but they fully disclose that they use them. They even provide documentation on how to use these standards to interoperate with various black box products they produce.

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[Reality Master 201]

It was something of a facetious remark.

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[ozbird]

For "embrace" read "rib-crushing bear hug".

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[hey!]

We have to be careful about the dishonesty here.

There's nothing wrong with having things over and above, or alongside what a standard calls for. Almost everybody does this.

What is wrong is selling people a product that supposedly uses a standard but does not interoperate with that standard. That isn't just deceiving the customer it's freeloading on the know-how and goodwill that went into the standard.

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[tsa]

Yes. We have to thank the EU for that.

Re:Embracing standards and deviating from them

[Jesus_666]

On the other hand, nowadays they can't even stick to their own standards anymore. (cf. MSOOXML)

Deviations? We don't need no steeking deviations!

[HangingChad]

If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations

And if we're threatening IP litigation through surrogates, we'll be transparent about setting up pipe funding to finance IP litigation through surrogates.

Marketing Speak

[Lord Haw Haw]

All very vague marketing speak. What's the point here?

Re:Marketing Speak

[RLiegh]

...apart from cmdr taco raking in cash (in the form of ad revenue) off of the slashbot hordes that are queing up to post the usual "M$ sux" comments (which will race to +5 insightful) and lame jokes about ballmer throwing chairs (which invariably get rated +5 funny)?

No point at all.

Re:Marketing Speak

[hrimhari]

I suppose that your post getting a +5 Insightful and posts like those you mentioned getting -1 is just to prove you wrong.

I have more faith in /.'s moderation than any yadda-yadda from Ballmer. But hey, I'm a /. reader. But hey, you too!

To be Continued

[TheRealMindChild]

"you beat any other competitor: You offer good value, which in this case means good total cost of ownership," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says.', Embrace-Extend-Extinguish: 'We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. [...] If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.'"

"And you better take a step back buddy, or there is a chair with your name written ALL OVER IT! I'll embrace and extend your face if you know what I mean"

let's get this right.

[jd]

If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations

Is he saying that Microsoft is filled with transparent deviants? We can be certain this doesn't refer to standards, given the problems with compatibility.

If you tell a lie long enough

[Billly Gates]

Eventually it will believed to be true. I think even the liar will start believing it.

Sadly many IT professionals believe Windows saves money because its an integrated platform. But ignore the reboots and being forced to buy alot more servers as Windows is not friendly with using one or 2 more apps on a single server compared to Unix.

Oh and lets not forget about the blanket licensing fees. What is the average? $12,000 per year for licensing and support per desktop? Uh yeah thats true TCO.

If it were not for Microsoft already setting the standards for Office the corporate world would have abandonded them years ago. Linux is alot cheaper and has 1/10th of the issues if only it could the VB apps and Office.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[blind biker]

Mod parent up:

nd being forced to buy alot more servers as Windows is not friendly with using one or 2 more apps on a single server compared to Unix. This is so true! And it has been true way back, already in the days of NT 4.0. Each box was a separate specialized thing, and people who migrated from NetWare or Unix realized that they had to do way more administration work on NT.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Anonymous Coward]

|Linux is alot cheaper and has 1/10th of the issues

1/10 the issues because it has 1/10th of the user base. Linux would face all the same issues if it were uses daily by the same semi competent to non competent users that Windows has to deal with.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the GP post is referring to issues that are not caused by that thing between the keyboard and chair.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[pchoppin]

Agreed Another misconception is that support for MS is cheaper and you have to pay higher rates for Unix sysadmins. This is only true insomuch as the cost of support and staff is higher for good quality support. You get what you pay for. Low quality MS support does cost less.

Also, let's not forget security. Even the most up-to-date completely patched Windows system is more vulnerable than a Unix system out of the box. This is not to say the Unix is all that much more secure, Windows is just hacked more.

The corporate world is willing to believe the lie in order to save a few dollars in upfront costs, but they end up paying a higher price in the end.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[MrMunkey]

I agree with you that they're living in a fantasy world when it comes to the TCO... especially in the server market. I've only worked in smaller companies, so I can't speak to the larger shops. When we have replaced a Windows server with a Linux server the number of people in the IT department didn't change, and the salaries definitely didn't change. We already had a few Linux servers, so there was no additional training needed, just a lower TCO because we didn't have to pay for all the licenses (which are more expensive for smaller companies, even with volume licensing).

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I kept having problems with file permissions, so i logged in as root and made all files world read/write/executable. Now i don't have to worry about file permissions!

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Windows is not friendly with using one or 2 more apps
>> on a single server compared to Unix.

And as I see it, that's almost *unpatriotic*. Every extra server uses extra energy, and in regions of the US where power plants are oil-fired there is, figuratively, blood running through those power supplies.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[soundhack]

I don't get the point of this. Do you mean installing apache, MySQL, cygwin, and whatever else (in my case, Zope/Plone and svn/trac) is not easy to do on a Windows server box?

Or that performance is worse than running the same apps on a linux box?

I actually don't mind using Windows as a low to mid level server, although I don't worry about ActiveDirectory or Windows domain controllers.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[electrosoccertux]

So, for our embedded systems, my software friend was telling me that it's about the availability of the support. That there are a billion more MS trained guys than Linux guys that they can have on site any time they need help.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[PitaBred]

Windows often gets unhappy if you try to run too many "enterprise" applications on one box. Linux generally doesn't. You don't run your main database AND web server on a Windows machine... that is suicide. It's not the best idea for Linux, but that's only because the hardware won't keep up. The software will do it's thing just fine.

Windows still hasn't figured out how to do task switching. Linux figured that out a long time ago. It's way too easy for one process to "run away" on a Windows machine and make it completely unusable, even to kill the offending process.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[L0rdJedi]

Oh and lets not forget about the blanket licensing fees. What is the average? $12,000 per year for licensing and support per desktop?

You got a source on that number? By my estimate, the cost is nowhere near that for any decent admin. It may be that high for non decent admins, but you have those in both camps (Linux and Windows), in which case your support costs are going to be high either way.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Helldesk Hound]

> Sadly many IT professionals believe Windows saves
> money because its an integrated platform. But ignore
> the reboots and being forced to buy alot more servers
> as Windows is not friendly with using one or 2 more
> apps on a single server compared to Unix.

The real reason why MS Windows is poor as a server with more than 1 application running on it is that MS windows was never intended to be a "server". Its origins are as a desktop platform.

The reason why programs are called "applications" on the Windows platform is because they were an application of the Windowing graphical interface to a particular task.

As you know, MS-DOS is not a multi-tasking system. Originally MS Windows ran on top of MS-DOS. Applications of MS Windows can only ever have one application with the "focus".

It was only several iterations later that MS developed a version of MS Windows that did not need to run on top of MS-DOS.

the primary focus was still, however, the graphical user interface - and still with one application at a time having the focus. MS is still working out how to run a version of MS Windows without a "head".

Unix, however, was a full multi-user/multi-tasking system from the very beginning.

Unix systems fundamentally expect multiple programs and multiple users - and, with the help of the X server, can even manage multiple graphical applications across a network.

Windows fundamentally expects only one user, and that one user running only one application with the focus at any one time.

Until that changes MS Windows will continue to have problems with multiple applications and with scaling. At this stage MS is still struggling to produce a headless multi-user/multitasking system that can run any application across a network.

The big question is: Why does anybody actually believe MS Windows is a genuine server platform?

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[squallbsr]

I was having issues with permissions on my C:\ drive, so I just added the 'Everybody' to the permissions and gave it 'Full Permissions' - Now I don't have to worry about permissions!

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Serapth]

That number is complete bullshit unless there are some SERIOUSLY major flaws at the company, or they have some pretty obscure needs ( military level security protocols, triple redundancy on everything they do, etc... ) that bloat the support costs.

At the last company I worked, we were @ 750 desktops. Under our EA agreement CALS for XP + Office Pro + Exchange + Messenger + Sharepoint were under 1000$ per user. Actual desktop support was handled by two techs making 50K/year each, so I guess for 750 desktops would be 100,000 / 750, or say 133$ per user on average.

Beyond desktop licensing, the only other costs I can think of are about 20 Win2K3 server licenses ( for various reasons ) at about 1000$ a shot, various 5 SQL server per proc licenses at 5K a piece and then Exchange server... not sure the cost there, but it was minimal as we were on CAL based licensing. So, from a server side of things, that adds another 20,000 + 25,000 == 45,000 in server licensing, meaning 45,000/750 = 60$ per user.

So, we were looking at 1000$ + 133$ + 60$ or 1193$ per user for all servers, desktop software licensing and physical support!. Finally we had ( at our peak ) 4 net techs averaging say 60K annually and 2 dev/sql guys again around 60K per year. So even factoring IT staff into the equation into the formula adds 360,000K to the number, or 480$ per user.

All thats really missing from this equation is connectivity charges, physical server costs, backup, utilities like hydro, etc... which you are going to have to pay regardless to technology you go with... otherwise thats a pretty accurate budget for running a 750 user IT shop using Windows tech.

No where close to 12,000$, not even by a long shot.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[drsmithy]

Eventually it will believed to be true. I think even the liar will start believing it.

Indeed. For example, lies like these:

Sadly many IT professionals believe Windows saves money because its an integrated platform. But ignore the reboots and being forced to buy alot more servers as Windows is not friendly with using one or 2 more apps on a single server compared to Unix.
Oh and lets not forget about the blanket licensing fees. What is the average? $12,000 per year for licensing and support per desktop? Uh yeah thats true TCO.

If it were not for Microsoft already setting the standards for Office the corporate world would have abandonded them years ago. Linux is alot cheaper and has 1/10th of the issues if only it could the VB apps and Office.

If Linux were even half as much better as people like you thought it was, business would be falling over themselves trying to save money using it.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Serapth]

You seem to be confused.

Windows up till Windows Me was based around MS DOS, this is true.

That said, with the development of Win NT, they did a complete kernal re-write. Since NT 4, the MSDOS aspects of windows have been completely emulated.

Basically, everything you said became wrong after the release of Windows NT. Windows server versions since NT4 server are as multi thread/multi user friendly as any version of Unix.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[drsmithy]

The big question is: Why does anybody actually believe MS Windows is a genuine server platform?

Because not everyone is as stupid and ignorant as you are.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[phoenix_rizzen]

Uhm, you do realise that Windows NT was designed from the ground-up to be a multi-user desktop and server system? And that all current versions of Windows are based upon that codebase, and not on Windows 3.x/9x or DOS? Such that none of what you wrote has applied for over 8 years?

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[markbark]

Linux would face all the same issues if it were uses daily by the same semi competent to non competent users that Windows has to deal with.

You mean all those MS certified admins really have no idea how to run an enterprise infrastructure?
SAY IT AIN'T SO

--MAB

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[adminstring]

Unix systems fundamentally expect multiple programs and multiple users - and, with the help of the X server, can even manage multiple graphical applications across a network.

Windows fundamentally expects only one user, and that one user running only one application with the focus at any one time.

Until that changes MS Windows will continue to have problems with multiple applications and with scaling. At this stage MS is still struggling to produce a headless multi-user/multitasking system that can run any application across a network.

MS has had a multi-user/multitasking system that can run any application (graphical or not) across a network since 1998, with the release of NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. Windows Server 2000 (and subsequent versions) have a built-in Terminal Services component which uses the same Citrix technology to provide thin-client support. The only limitation in most cases is the hardware, and the administrator's willingness to put up with Microsoft's pain-in-the-ass licensing... which reminds me of something Princess Leia once said to Darth Vader about the downside of tightening his grip.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[wolrahnaes]

If Linux were even half as much better as people like you thought it was, business would be falling over themselves trying to save money using it.

I think you underestimate the PHB effect. My boss is practically falling over himself to get us "upgraded" to Windows Server 2008 from our current Debian setup simply because it has a familiar GUI so he can think he'll actually be able to administer the damn thing.

I've managed to hold him off for 6 months, we'll see how long I can keep it up.

Idiot bosses who fancy themselves skilled at IT plus wannabe admins with MCSEs probably account for the majority of Windows Server installs in my mind.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[SanityInAnarchy]

Some businesses are.

I don't think Linux is the answer to absolutely everything. I do think that it's very relevant, and in many cases, even its price is worth considering.

A few off the top of my head -- the EEE PC and Amazon EC2. If Amazon had to pay a license for every copy of an OS they run, EC2 would be a lot more expensive -- and Asus didn't want to have half the price of the laptop be for the software.

Now, Windows has gotten better at most of the things on his list... but it is something to consider. What is Windows buying you? And what is it actually costing you?

It's often been said that, on the desktop, Linux has to beat Windows by a lot for it to be worth the switch, due to lack of application support and a (mostly gone) learning curve. The same is true of Windows on the server -- even if Windows is better than Linux, or any other Unix, is it better enough to justify the licensing fee?

(That's a long way of saying: I challenge Microsoft's TCO studies, and I think Linux does better. But it's not an absolute, by any means.)

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Billly Gates]

I read a study by the Gartner group back in 2003 which showed those numbers for a typical fortune 500 company. Costs include hardware, repair, support, licensing, and other expenses per desktop. This also included non microsoft and custom made applications I admit but a very large amount if someone makes only $35,000 a year. It would cost the business $12k + another $15k or so in taxes.

Licensing fees for SQL Server, Office, and Windows get very expensive fast compared to cheaper alternatives. Having a monopoly means Microsoft can charge a large amount of money.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[Billly Gates]

Micorosft made their licensing expensive to access via a terminal in order to kill the network pc idea and return to the ad-hoc crazy pc environment. Otherwise terminals are alot cheaper.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[twiddlingbits]

You are getting a discount for volume and a discount (CALS) for being 100% MS. Not everyone gets that deal.

I don't think it's 12K/user unless they have one user and have bought one of everything at retail price, but I think your figure is a bit low. You DO have to add in physical server costs, backup costs, electricity, racks and floor space as well to get TCO.

It's not just licensing, scalability kicks in too with large apps that use multiple servers. If it takes 12 servers to run the app with Win2K3 and SQL but only 8 with Lunix and a database such as MySQL then there is an instant savings of more than 33%.

So the same techs at 50K each take care of 750 desktops and users, the 20 Win@K3 servers and the SQL servers? Thats a tremendous amount of work for two people. That number of servers really needs a dedicated sysadmin perhaps two or three depending on the expertise level of the admin and if 24x7 on-site is required. I've seen UNIX and Linux shops where they had one admin for every 150+ servers. The UNIX/Linux servers just don't require a lot of work. I know one business associate who has an old Sun Ultra-2 server that he hasn't had to reboot in serveral years.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[gr8scot]

1/10 the issues because it has 1/10th of the user base. Linux would face all the same issues if it were uses daily by the same semi competent to non competent users that Windows has to deal with. Prove it.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[blind biker]

I am talking server tasks. Exchange, IIS, Domain Controller (yes, even that had to be segregated), MS SQL - you could not have several of these running on the same NT box. Even Microsoft strongly recommended against in their study material - and in the tests. Yes, the reason was performance but also stability.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[dbIII]

Part of it is the age and ubiquity of the applications. For example - on a *nix box doing stuff with DNS was just using bind which was on every box anyway, not a big deal at all. Microsoft came in late with everything and needed more excitement, whistles and bells - so suddenly the name server had to be a dedicated box. You even needed at least TWO boxes for domain logins to do it properly, and nothing else running on those two. Memory leaks were a big thing with just about every major application so you had a seperate server for each one to deal with this. However, things have improved and we no longer have steaming piles like Microsoft DNS servers that have to be rebooted every week, an OS like NT4 that can't handle more than two modems without arbitrary software restrictions reducing performance, and email server software that you can't back up properly while it is running like MS Exchange 5.5 (which was also open relay by default with one patch - total lack of testing there). They have got away from shiny and new things cobbled together to relatively solid applications apparently - but I'm getting most of that from sales talk since I gave up on their server software back when it was utter garbage. Even if bits of it are still garbage you could virtualise problem services so you don't actually run out of memory and CPU time.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[dbIII]

Yes, but quite a lot of us have used it and have seen many of it's limitations. Take a look at the Microsoft knowlegebase for some ideas of the problems. The strength of MS Windows NT is it has been good enough to run various tasks on cheap hardware. It has many flaws but they can be worked around or ignored to get the job done but that is a very different situation to singing it's praises. It is a server platform and putting words like "unreliable", "reliable", "resource hungry" etc etc will depend entirely on what application it is being used for and I'd say "genuine" would be a fairly irrelevant sales pitch.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[cjalmeida]

I think I might finally put my Business degree to some use in Slashdot! Let's see..

$1193 per user to "keep things running", plus $480 in IT development: total of $1673. You also forgot to mention that by using Linux you could extend workstation "life" from 4 to 6 yrs since you don't need to upgrade the OS to the latest OS available. Since a WS costs about $1000, it means ~$75 per user/yr. From the total ~$1750, let's say you managed to save $1250, leaving $500 to pay for a couple of python programers. Since you have 750 users, global annual costs equals to $937,500.

Capital budget theory states that you could "translate" a recurring cost into a single down-payment using the discounted cash flow technique. I will assume a cost of capital of about 8%/yr. Since those costs shall rise, I must adjust for inflation, about 3.5% giving, roughly, 5.5% real cost of capital. The net present value of this recurring cost is $17,045,454.

It means that a project for wiping Windows, thus potentially saving $1250 in costs/user/yr, makes sense if it costs less then $17M. In fact, it could be more because of tax issues I won't discuss here.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[BadOPCode]

Ya thats my experience too. To further this notion, the majority of MS advertising seems to have nothing technical instead it just uses cool token words and lots of colorful graphs and charts.

Re:If you tell a lie long enough

[BadOPCode]

Well and don't forget everyone has the ability to customize Linux to explicitly do what they need it to. It really isn't practically to pay the stipend for Vista and just use the API to make a customized shell interface and strip everything (bloat) out. You still could but its not exactly cost effective especially considering how readily available the source is for Linux and its free.

One page text only

[akuykenda]

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900810/

This way you don't have to see his ugly mug.

Re:One page text only

[Anonymous Coward]

Remove the '/' at the end.

Re:One page text only

[Software]

Single page link without the trailing slash, so that it actually works.

Persuade me I need Windows Server

[Colin Smith]

Because, frankly, Debian is making my life easy.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[jez9999]

If you want to develop with Visual Studio, C#, and .net, you pretty much need Windows Server. Unless you want to torture yourself getting it working with Mono.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[jez9999]

Before anyone says, I'm talking about ASP.net, not just .net.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to develop with Visual Studio, C#, and .net, you pretty much need Windows Server.

Yeah, that's why I tell people not to even bother learning C# or .Net.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[asuffield]

If you want to develop with Visual Studio, C#, and .net

You've responded to a question of the form "I already have something to do foo. Why should I switch to this other thing?" by saying something of the form "So that you can replace your thing to do bar with this other thing". This is both irrelevant and circular, since you can just go right back to the first question again.

(.net only looks impressive compared to the MS stuff that came before it. Compared to existing free software development systems, it's mediocre at best; there's nothing in there that the rest of us haven't been doing for five years or more)

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[PitaBred]

So... you're saying that if you want to use Microsoft technology, you have to use... Microsoft technology? Any other insights you'd like to share? Is water wet? Is gravity still defining "down"?

If you want to use a proper, portable language that has open implementations, there's much to be said AGAINST Windows, and very little for it.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[bendodge]

Compared to existing free software development systems, it's mediocre at best; there's nothing in there that the rest of us haven't been doing for five years or more) Please point out something like .NET! I've been more and more attracted to Linux in the past year or so (I'm now booted into Kubuntu ~80% of the time) and I would love a replacement for C#.

Everything I've tried either takes too long (I'm more writer than coder by trade, I just need to made widgets now and then) or has an unbearable IDE. C# has great IDE's (I like SharpDevelop), wonderful libraries (.NET), and it's very, very fast to work with (I made a widget to fix a small, specific problem in less than an hour).

I tried installing Lazarus on recommendation, but it always crashed Adept. Mainly I want something with good libraries and a forms designer. What is there? Is Lazarus good enough to waste more time trying to get it installed?

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[KiltedKnight]

Before anyone says, I'm talking about ASP.net, not just .net.

Like I tell everyone any time someone asks if I work with ASP... "An asp is a deadly snake that should be avoided at all costs. Look what it did for Cleopatra."

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[onefriedrice]

You got modded down, AC, but your point is valid. Lock-in is indeed one of the notable reasons IMO why Microsoft continues to be so successful.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[SanityInAnarchy]

You're talking about desktop apps, I think. If that's the case, I can suggest KDevelop and Qt, but I have no idea how good they are, and there's always the licensing fee if you produce anything commercial.

Of what I have worked with:

• Eclipse rocks for Java development. It's probably decent for other things, too -- I haven't used it for much more than editing JavaScript (VERY different than Java) since college.
• Kate is decent. It has some very cool features, and some really horrible and twisted ones. It's at least lightweight enough for me to move (mostly) away from Vim, though.
• Perl has CPAN. It has a library that already does what you're trying to do. I say this without knowing what you're trying to do, because that's how freaking huge CPAN is. If you can think it, there's already a CPAN module that does it, to some extent.
• Believe the hype: Rails is damned good. And, because of Rails, there are a lot more rubygems out there. (Rubygems is like CPAN for Ruby, only there's not as much stuff.) And you can always find an HTML form designer, if you really need one.
• Firefox has Firebug, which makes Javascript a serious possibility. And Javascript is almost as powerful as Ruby, and has tons of classes. I mentioned Rails first because you'll still need a backend...
• Or maybe not? Adobe is porting AIR to Linux, and AIR includes Webkit. So you can develop a cross-platform, client-side Web application, have it talk to a SQLite database. I'm not sure what's available in the way of tools, though, especially on Linux.
• Java is now open source. Since C# was basically built to counter Java, you could always try that (see Eclipse). I hate it, though.

By the way, what do you mean "crashing Adept"? If you mean "you got an error", I don't know, but if you mean "Adept actually crashed, and I got a bomb symbol and everything", you can always open up a Konsole and type "sudo apt-get install lazarus".

But to be able to really recommend something specific, I'd have to know what you're developing.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[bendodge]

Yes, local apps. By crash, I mean it is halfway through downloading (maybe installing, but I think it was downloading) it just quits. I will try again, but I believe it did the same thing in console.

I will look into the things you mentioned, especially Java, since I have several good Java folks to talk to.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[RiotingPacifist]

By the way, what do you mean "crashing Adept"? If you mean "you got an error", I don't know, but if you mean "Adept actually crashed, and I got a bomb symbol and everything", you can always open up a Konsole and type "sudo apt-get install lazarus

Not even a bomb symbol sometimes, adpet-manager on kubuntu is quite unstable, i either drop to command line:
aptitude (does all the dependancy solving and cleaning for you)
or apt-get (is faster)
or in previous installs i simply installed synaptic as searching for software seams alot easier there.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[Nicolay77]

If you try Ruby, or Python, I recommend wxRuby and/or wxPython.

You have a native GUI in every platform and it's easy to use.

Although I don't know too much about a form designer, mainly because I have never needed to use one.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[plover]

Absolutely. We're locked in to a lot of Microsoft licenses, and because we're locked in to them any project, team, or pyramid that wishes to use a non-Microsoft platform is going to have to come up with a lot of financial justification to switch just because our company does not have the infrastructure to support a Linux desktop.

Combine that with the fact that we have to pay for support of the desktop regardless of what desktop it is makes switching a financially unattractive option. Yes, we'd have to pay for Linux support -- our business forte is not that of kernel development, but of our business. And both SuSE and RedHat want more for desktop licenses for support than Microsoft wants to support XP!

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[SanityInAnarchy]

I did not mention Python, but I feel like I should now. The main advantage I see there is speed, and the fact that python can be bytecode-compiled, in case writing closed-source apps is a requirement.

Also, both Python and Ruby have some sort of Java runtime port, though I have no idea what the status of them is.

I also feel like I should mention why I don't like Java: Compared to other languages, Java tends to be verbose, limited, and not really have any advantages other than a decent bytecode runtime. It was a reaction to the complexity of C++, but it solves that by removing features.

I'll point you to this discussion, in which points are made both ways about type safety. I like this quote in particular:

A team has to have ingrained discipline around unit tests and continuous integration. Once you have that, compiler is just an extremely weak and limited form of unit testing.

I tend to agree -- I think automated tests (unit and otherwise) are essential, and once you have that, your tests will tend to protect you from type errors.

That said, it's a big enough debate that there probably isn't one right answer, or at least, you will become a better programmer by learning about both sides. (The same goes for any major differences between languages. A quick list of languages to learn just to challenge how you think: JavaScript (as taught by Douglas Crockford), LISP, Haskell, Erlang, C (really), and a traditional OO language like C++, C#, or Java.)

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[expatriot]

For most non-geeks, the question is "I have this app that is really important for me and it is only available on Windows, how can I justify giving up my critical requirements just to change operating systems?"
For me as a technical writer, there is more than one app: FrameWorks, Acrobat Pro, PaintShop Pro, Captivate, Visio, Outlook (lots of meetings), and even the humble Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

One or two of these might be replaceable by FOSS to some degree. Employees have to deliver results efficiently. The cost of the software, even if in the thousands, is insignificant in the bigger picture.

I have tried Linux, and we do use some open source software where it is as good as the alternative: Subversion, Eclipse, Perl, Python. And sometimes use Linux alternatives to document software running on Linux, but that is limited to the hated Gimp.
Aside for the missing apps, cryptic configuration options that have to be run in script files, most frustrating for me is trying to cut and paste data and graphics between different apps.
Windows server is probably the easiest software to replace with Apache. I think this is why there is a special push by Microsoft to counter Linux on servers. For the end user professionals (other than C++ or script programmers), the Windows XP desktop is a better working environment. Microsoft seems to have jeopardized this advantage with Vista.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[Colin Smith]

If you want to develop with Visual Studio, C#, and .net So... What you're saying is that if you insist on developing exclusively on windows and for windows, you are largely restricted to windows server? Really...

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[Jesus_666]

I wished that Java had better low-level functions. It's hard to take a programming language seriously when the official way to copy a file in said language involves two File objects, a BufferedReader and a BufferedWriter. I think it's reasonably safe to assume that most OSes have a standard API for copying files that Java could call - and if that isn't an option Sun could transparently implement everything in Java.

Java is nice, but only if you work in a pure Java environment and can set up everything so yu don't need to talk to the OS much. Once you run into things like PID management or basic filesystem interactions you need to fall back to horribly obtuse solutions like the one above. In a heterogenous environment (where Java needs to talk to applications written in other languages and rewriting the other apps to be used with JNI is unfeasible) Java can be quite a pain.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's hard to take a programming language seriously when the official way to copy a file in said language involves two File objects, a BufferedReader and a BufferedWriter. I think it's reasonably safe to assume that most OSes have a standard API for copying files that Java could call - and if that isn't an option Sun could transparently implement everything in Java.

I know for a fact that neither POSIX nor Linux provides a "copy" API. Sure, cp might be more efficient than Java, but it's still actually reading from one file and writing to another.

Which means that copy-on-write is impossible to do at the filesystem level.

Still, it would be much better if Java provided an API for this.

Java is nice, but only if you work in a pure Java environment and can set up everything so yu don't need to talk to the OS much.

That is true. That's also the point of Java.

At the very least, I would guess the average Java app is more accidentally portable than the average C# app, where calling out to OS libraries is dirt-simple, and done often enough that most of them have a better chance of running under Wine than Mono.

But no, I wouldn't recommend Java, I just wanted to point out that if you're going to do it, Eclipse is pretty damned good, and there are things I miss, even in Ruby.

Re:Persuade me I need Windows Server

[Jesus_666]

Eclipse is good, even if somewhat quirky at times.


As for Java being designed to work in a pure Java environment: I know, but even though something is not supposed to be the primary design goal that doesn't mean you can't implement it. Like copying a file or a way to execute an external application and read its output that can be done in less than twenty lines.

1-page, no ads version

[renrutal]

The one page, no ads version:

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900810

Really?

[bhunachchicken]

"How does Microsoft beat Linux? The same way you beat any other competitor: You offer good value"

So what were Vista, Zune and the Xbox 360 all about then..? ;)

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of Vista, he meant exactly that - the customers. Customers of course, are different entirely from "users". Customers are things like "Dell" and "the IT department". Users are people like you and me.

Our own deviations

[koh]

If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.

And we'll patent them. Thanks, Steve, but no thanks.

If Windows was any good...

[Joce640k]

They wouldn't need to mess around with protocols, etc.

But they already admitted that lock-in was necessary to stave off competition - in the famous "Halloween documents".

Bill Gates also said that open file formats and interoperability could be the death of Windows.

So this is all just spin. What's really going to happen is delays, obfuscation, API churn... and as many other spanners in the works as possible while still "complying" with the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

Re:If Windows was any good...

[gr8scot]

So this is all just spin. What's really going to happen is delays, obfuscation, API churn... and as many other spanners in the works as possible while still "complying" with the letter of the law, but never the spirit. I think that's more accurate now.

Embrace-Extend-Extinguish

[nurb432]

This is why they should be feared.

its one thing to run a business and want to do the best you can, but its another to operate under the premise of extinguishing everything in sight as your primary goal.

Re:Embrace-Extend-Extinguish

[squallbsr]

We the people of the Open world have something called IEEE.

Microsoft has something called MEEE - Microsoft Embrace Extend Extinguish.

Who says they don't comply with standards? Just because they choose to travel the 'higher' road of the MEEE?

From the man....

[MLCT]

... who called Linux a "cancer". Somehow I imagine what he has to say about Linux is neither going to be informed, balanced or interesting, just more deluded BS from the king of deluded BS.

Re:From the man....

[TaoPhoenix]

What if he (or his successor?) goes from deluded FUD to INFORMED FUD?

Knowing just enough of the truth to make his spin that much more vicious could be dangerous.

The same way "you beat any other competitor"

[bizitch]

... by throwing lots and lots of chairs ....

Balmer is a used car salesman

[roman_mir]

Take something like SharePoint alone. It's a big deal. - only if you don't care about actually using your documentation for anything useful. For useful development WIKIs are much better.

The quality of the databases, that's a big deal. - Agreed, that's why Oracle takes presedence. DB2, Postgress are later in line. SQL server of-course runs on Windows platform and who in their right mind want's that kind of a db server?

The availability of tools, of Visual Studio and .Net and the ability to build bespoke applications, those are all part of the value and the total cost. - those are wonderful proprietary tools I don't like using. Visual Studio was ok when I last used it (versions 4 and 5) and even .Net is quite powerful. I prefer open standards though, something that can't be locked down and something that I can extend myself. So I admit, I like Eclipse better, also it doesn't need Windows to run.

And I think we've done a good job. In the areas where we haven't done a good job, we'd have less share. We have a smaller percentage of the market, for example, in high-performance computing. That's about 40% of Linux business. We really didn't enter the market with what I would call an engineered, high innovation, high-value-add offering until last year. Now that we're in the game, we're gaining share in the high-performance computing work load. So in a sense, the old formula: Keep the prices low, keep the innovation high, keep the total cost of ownership low. - keep license fees coming.

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[pchoppin]

I was trying to think of a good term for him. You got it!

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[ciggieposeur]

Agreed, that's why Oracle takes presedence. DB2, Postgress are later in line.

Do you have enough experience in both DB2 and Oracle to give good reasons for DB2 being "later in line" than Oracle?

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[roman_mir]

Yes, I do. I've used Oracle and DB2, DB2 at a check processor and 4 major Canadian banks, Oracle with many other firms, including Bell ExpressVu, Hydro One, ADP, AT&T Canada, Xerox, Coke Canada.... plenty. In fact I would say they are about the same really, it depends on the DBAs and developers to get either one doing what they are supposed to do, however Oracle is a more used database from my experience and thus there is more knowledge around it in the world, so for me actually this question is not a technical one, rather a practical one.

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[Serapth]

those are wonderful proprietary tools I don't like using. Visual Studio was ok when I last used it (versions 4 and 5) and even .Net is quite powerful. I prefer open standards though, something that can't be locked down and something that I can extend myself. So I admit, I like Eclipse better, also it doesn't need Windows to run.

... what does and IDE have to do with open standards? Besides that, what is not open about Visual Studio in the first place? I suppose you can argue you don't have the source code to the IDE, but to 99.999% of developers, that wouldnt mean a damned thing. Otherwise, Visual Studio is remarkably open. Hell, I do Ruby and Python development along side C++ and C#. As to standards compliance, C++ is as compliant to the spec as it has ever been.

You dont like Eclipse better... you like Eclipse. By your own admission you havent used Visual studio in more then a decade ( Visual studio 97 ( version 5 ) was released in 1996... ). Dont write off a product you havent tried.

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[LiENUS]

Funny you should mention used car salesman... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbWLfr-Z4s

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[roman_mir]

you are confused, I agreed that VS was a good enough product to do what it was supposed to do. The last time I used .Net VS was 3 years ago at Christie Digital, I was writing a C++ middle tier to connect my Java front tier to the C drivers, it was a funky media project to play movies from different types of hardware on video walls.

I however prefer open standards, Eclipse runs on any platform and VS .Net does not. I don't want to use proprietary Windows tech, that's about it.

Re:Balmer is a used car salesman

[fade-in]

This stuff is so humorous... Steve's lucky the writer's strike ended before he gave this interview

InformationWeek: One of the concerns I found that people carry over with them from -- certainly the Vista release and their past experiences with those operating systems, is the concern about application compatibility at the beginning. What kind of things is Microsoft doing today that it hasn't done in the past to assure customers that they can start moving fairly soon to Windows Server 2008?
Ballmer: Well, we've done a lot of work, obviously, even in the Vista context.

Well, that you've done a lot of work "in the Vista context" it isn't so obvious to anyone that has tried to use it. You don't even have a computer at your desk, do you Mr. Ballmer?

Ballmer: Take something like SharePoint alone. It's a big deal. The quality of the databases, that's a big deal. The availability of tools, of Visual Studio and .Net and the ability to build bespoke applications, those are all part of the value and the total cost. And I think we've done a good job.

Monkeyboy, you are no developer. It's questionable that you even own a computer. You've never had to use those tools before. Before you tell anybody that you think you've "done a good job", you should try to use some of your company's software.

InformationWeek: Many of those do so because of perceived "bugginess" of an initial release. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has said that this version of Windows Server is among the most rigorously tested products that the company's come out with yet. What are some of your proof points there?
Ballmer: It builds off the Vista code base. So all of that testing plus another year.

So that's what, one year of testing?

InformationWeek: The openness pledge you guys made last week, one thing that I didn't really get a better sense of is, do you feel like Microsoft is moving more toward embracing open standards than you have in the past?
Ballmer: We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. We're going to embrace a lot of standards, we're going to be transparent about how we embrace those standards. If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.

So, you'll tell us how you're going to screw us before you screw us now? That's considerate of you, if not a bit misguided.

Ballmer: Microsoft has always strived to be at the center of where innovative work is happening.

Yet, despite all of that striving, your company hasn't ever really been there. It must be very frustrating. Though I don't think that I'd ever resort to throwing chairs and cursing at innocent bystanders. But, then again, I use Linux, and therefore do not experience much frustration.

Just once time I'd like to hear the plain truth

[erroneus]

Just let them state that they intend to continue with their undermining of standards, compatibility and other dirty tricks against 'partners' and other 'Microsoft Friends(tm).' Let them state that they are willing to take huge losses against just about every activity they are involved in and that these losses, which are propped up by their abusive monopoly, are designed to keep any competition down and prevent them from becoming a threat.

Re:Just once time I'd like to hear the plain truth

[WhiteWolf666]

Have you read the Halloween Documents?

Notable quotes:
OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft, particularly in server space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benefits that are not replicable with our current licensing model and therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat.
* Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects.
* ...to understand how to compete against OSS, we must target a process rather than a company.
* OSS is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it.
* Linux and other OSS advocates are making a progressively more credible argument that OSS software is at least as robust -- if not more -- than commercial alternatives. The Internet provides an ideal, high-visibility showcase for the OSS world.
* Linux can win as long as services / protocols are commodities.
* OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.
* The ability of the OSS process to collect and harness the collective IQ of thousands of individuals across the Internet is simply amazing. More importantly, OSS evangelization scales with the size of the Internet much faster than our own evangelization efforts appear to scale.

There was more stuff linked to here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/03/1524250 but its fallen off the web, and I'm not sure where to find archives of it.

In short, its out there; internal stuff thats been leaked.

Re:Just once time I'd like to hear the plain truth

[erroneus]

Yeah, I'm aware of that (but it's good that you put it up there once more since Google is always watching) but for once, I'd like to hear it as a public statement. Has this been confessed to Microsoft's shareholders? Have the Halloween Documents been validated as authentic by anyone 'official' within Microsoft? Have the contents been admitted as part of Microsoft's official opinion position?

It would be nice if Microsoft were "one mind" but they simply are not. The Halloween documents said "FUD isn't gonna work on them!"; Microsoft uses FUD every day with their vague and veiled patent threats. So it would seem they're trying to use FUD in spite of the warnings that it shouldn't and that it wouldn't work. On the other hand, the notion of Linux winning as long as services and protocols (and file formats!) are commodities is certainly being actively fought and resisted in various ways not the least of which involves stacking the deck in the ISO adoption of OOXML procedures, pressuring or influencing governments to reverse decisions related to file formats (and applications by extension) and other practices that look and feel more like mobster-style corruption than legitimate business activities.

I think just about everyone's grandmother has warned us all about lies (and deception, and dishonest practices) lead to more lies (et al) until they spiral out of control. It would seem it has taken control and has become their business model. Microsoft makes public claims about quality and value all the while their actions, practices and leaks speak otherwise. I just want to hear the straight and plain truth from Microsoft.

TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[exabrial]

Aparently his version of TCO doesn't include buying completely new machines in order to run Vista. After all, Vista is only 1/2 as slow on the same hardware... I remember the day when your programs took more resources than the operating systems... those were the days.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[maird]

Vista is only 1/2 as slow on the same hardware

I had to ask...on what hardware is Vista twice as fast?

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[xSauronx]

I read about IBM and their new z10's the other day...

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Ash Vince]

Aparently his version of TCO doesn't include buying completely new machines in order to run Vista. A new machine is usually cheaper than single day wasted by a highly skilled member or staff. If you are taking about some executives then a single hour can buy a laptop.

Where I work we used to have a large number of memory leaks in one of our applications code (written by someone else before I joined the company). I wanted to audit the code and fix them as that seemed like the correct thing to do. I was overruled and told to just go and put vast amounts of memory in each server running the application. Since the application in question was only intended to be used for a five year project and that is nearly up this was a sound financial bet, we never fixed the code, but we did fix the issue effecting our customers by the cheapest possible means.

Since everyone out there is familiar with windows from their home machine Windows gets it's much lower TCO from the money saved by not having to train your staff in the use of a new OS. The occasional inconvenience windows throws at us is not enough to justify the loss in productivity of training all our staff to a new and unfamiliar OS.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[mocm]

Why do people always say OS when they mean GUI/UI?

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[BokLM]

A new machine is usually cheaper than single day wasted by a highly skilled member or staff. If you are taking about some executives then a single hour can buy a laptop.

Buying a new machine is a lot of time wasted. And you're usually not buying only one machine.

Since everyone out there is familiar with windows from their home machine Windows gets it's much lower TCO from the money saved by not having to train your staff in the use of a new OS. The occasional inconvenience windows throws at us is not enough to justify the loss in productivity of training all our staff to a new and unfamiliar OS.

Did you know that Vista is a new and unfamiliar OS ? You're going to stay running XP forever ?

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[hairyfeet]

Um, Have You actually tried Xandros or PCLinuxOS lately? Compared to Vista, both Xandros and PCLninuxOS are more "windows like" that it is. Just out of curiosity, and to see if it would raise my support calls, I decided to switch my mom to Xandros Pro without telling her. She does the same thing your typical office types do,email,web browsing,etc. This is a woman whom if you say "linux" she looks scared,and has been working on Windows since 3.11. A month later I went to her house for dinner and was told "I like the new desktop theme,it is very pretty". That was the only thing she noticed. That, and I had somehow "fixed her dialup" which was buggy and crashprone on windows.

With Vista the advantage of "they already know how to use it" is gone simply because they changed so much of it just for change sake. Give someone who has experience in the Win2K/WinXP way of doing things and aren't tech minded Vista+Office2K7 and watch how they get frustrated.Their keyboard shortcuts don't work,things aren't were they are supposed to be,etc. OTOH,give that same person Xandros Business or PCLinuxOS, and watch how little you have to teach them. Folks are used to the Win2K/XP way of doing things,and Vista changes enough that you can count on support calls. So if you are going to have to change anyway, why not switch to something that'll need less hardware,cost less, and be more secure at the same time?

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[killjoe]

Could you please let me know the name of your company either here or via a private email so that I can make sure I never invest in it.

Your management is amongst the stupidest I have ever seen anywhere and I want to make sure I don't invest in a company being run by such idiots.

Imagine taking down every server and cramming it full or RAM rather than fixing a bug. Holy crap that's stupid.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[number6x]

You are absolutely correct.

I worked on the project to train employees to go from Windows 95 to Windows NT 4.0.

Then I managed a team that trained employees to go from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP.

Now we are budgeting the employee re-training program for the eventual move from Windows XP to Vista.

Each move has been much bigger and more costly.

If you choose to deploy Windows as a desktop OS you guarantee a high cost of re-training employees 2 to 3 times a decade. The argument that a switch to Linux would cost too much because you would have to re-train employees with the switch is a joke. With Windows you also incur the cost of re-training.

However the three top Linux GUIs (KDE, Gnome, and XFCE) are all highly customizable. Although they are upgraded and updated regularly it is easy for an IT department to deploy the upgraded interface in a way that minimizes the UI changes to staff.

One switch to Linux could probably pay for itself by avoiding the high cost incurred by choosing Windows and the forced upgrade/re-training cycle Microsoft imposes on its customers.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[rtb61]

You now how really really stupid that is. You see in every business I have ever been involved in, the only thing that counts is applications. The OS shoudl be invisible and have absolutely no impact upon productivity at all. Open applications and copy files, that is it.

Now unreliability and instability cause far more problems for everybody, becuase if your cant retrain a staff member or lack the competence to adjust the desktop layout and file structure to match what they are used to, well than you are either lying or incompetent.

This is just typical of the continuation of M$=B$ marketing, whilst I can accept it in applications, in the OS, it is just a lie. The majority of staff, do not configure the system, do not update the system, do not update drivers, do not adjust network configurations and do not install and configure applications.

The cost of using any OS has been and always will be down to reliability, stability and security. How much work is lost when the system crashes, how much productive time is lost will the system is rebuilt, and how much productivity is lost due to stuff frustration as a result of system bugs,and of course how long does it take to patch the system and the cost of failed patches. Security of course is another big issue and by far the most important one.

I could just imagine your office, two identically coloured desktops, and two indentical icons located in exactly the same spot for the same application and you have spend thousands retraining your idiot staff because they get confused by the different boot screens.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

So the Linux argument comes down to "could probably..." fill in the blank.

Always playing the guessing game around here and never interacting with the real world people.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not stupid if successfully addresses the problem at a lower cost than the 'right way'. Engineers generally hate ugly solutions but this does not render the latter invalid.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens when Xandros / PCLinux OS breaks? Are you saying it will never break? If you *are* confident that it wont , start selling customer support service for linux for cheap.

OK.. So.. there are plenty of people who have had a good switching experience from XP to linux. Unless all the people over on linux support forums creating dozens of new threads every day are gone, what you say is irrelevant.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[marcosdumay]

"A new machine is usually cheaper than single day wasted by a highly skilled member or staff."

Well, just customizing a new machine, backing everything up, moving to the new computer, getting all the old software running again and all the "where the hell did that file go?" problems can easily spend several work days.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[haruchai]

  What "everyone" are you talking about. I'd say no more than 5% of ALL Windows users know more than to
double-click to launch a program. If the icon is missing, to them it means the program is missing, broken
or needs to be re-installed.
And, the ones I know are equally confused by Win XP or Vista. I'm tempted install Linux on their machines,
customize it to look like XP or Vista and wait to see how long it takes them to notice that it's changed.
I bet I'll be nearing retirement before they buy a clue.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[hairyfeet]

I have been running Xandros Business for 3+ years,including giving my laptop out as a loaner to family members that are notorious for boning an OS,and have never had a problem.As someone who has been repairing Windows machines since the days of Win95,both in shops and freelance,I can tell you a majority of windows problems can be broken down to spyware,bad drivers,and having to run as admin to get anything done.

Now,if it were my company and I wanted to switch? I would simply pick up a cheap server,put a few fat hdds in a RAID 5,and pick up a copy of Xandros server to function as my email+backup+any other jobs I wanted to switch.Xandros server has an excellent backup server built in,with which I would schedule backups of the Linux and Windows machines. And you can slap any Windows admin on Xandros server and he will pick it up in no time,thanks to the Xandros Management Console(Just like MSFT MMC) and nice wizards that will walk you through if you need it.And because Xandros uses Xandros Networks,and only has stable business packages,a lot of the hassle you get from a bleeding edge distro like Ubuntu is gone. And you would be surprised how much less support you have to deal with when you remove Windows malware from the equation.

And as far as forums go,the only headache I've had with hardware on Xandros is those damn $50 Lexmark all-in-ones,which I tell folks either keep paying me to come fix their windows boxes when they break,or get a printer that doesn't suck.Lexmark will never work right on anything but windows,and they are often buggy on it.But for a good 90% of the machines you would find in an office Xandros will run like a champ.It even correctly detected and set up my wireless,which is one of those evil BCM4318 chipsets,which I never thought would work.So I think a lot of the support hassles comes from picking the bleeding edge like Ubuntu,instead of going with a more stable distro where most of the bugs have been ironed out.But as always my 02c,YMMV.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[QuietObserver]

I agree with your point on Vista having changed simply for the sake of changing things. I work in tech support for dial-up ISPs, and I've had to completely change the way I handle calls where the customer has Vista; Vista doesn't have INETWIZ, so I'm forced to use the new network setup wizard, which does things differently for no real reason and takes four times longer to get into. Worse it doesn't really make the setup process go any faster, since all the user has do is enter their access number, username, and password anyway; the only step I don't have to worry about on Vista is renaming the connection, since 'Dial-Up Connection' isn't as confusing as 'Connection to' and a phone number.

Other annoyances I've had are supporting IE7, which again seems to have made huge changes without any real purpose; while it's nice to have the dialog for clearing all of the different types of data consolidated in a single window, I really hate that I'm now forced to ask the customer to describe the General tab of Internet Options so I can figure out what version of IE they're using. And I've also found the new 'friendly' error messages more irritating; the computer makes no effort to tell you the reason for a connection failure unless you use the main dialog or go through an intolerable number of diagnostic steps. My reasons for hating Vista grow every day; I'm extremely happy that I have chosen to abandon Windows, except for a VM that runs the only application suite I require Windows for.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[killjoe]

>It's not stupid if successfully addresses the problem at a lower cost than the 'right way'.

It's stupid to think that it solves the problem.

Really, I want to know the company. I don't ever want to work for them, consult for them or invest in them.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Ash Vince]

Why do people always say OS when they mean GUI/UI? No idea. But I actually meant OS not GUI.

The retraining would not be limited to the GUI, it would have to include elements of the underlying OS. Although that is probably just because we are a development shop, most office staff would probably just need to learn the new GUI.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Ash Vince]

Your management is amongst the stupidest I have ever seen anywhere and I want to make sure I don't invest in a company being run by such idiots. Do you actually have any money to invest? You sound more like a young student who has not learnt the value of pragmatism yet. I used to be like that, now I have grown up a bit.

Imagine taking down every server and cramming it full or RAM rather than fixing a bug. It was not so much one bug as huge number of memory leaks in a codebase that takes up several hundred megabytes. That is a lot of code to go dredging through looking for every object that hasnt been destroyed properly. Finding and fixing every leak would probably have taken 250-300 man hours. Going to datacentree and upgrading a few servers takes 10 man hours max (it actually took 2-3). When you compare those two numbers and decent manager will want to know what the ROI is on the first option, since that is a huge number if you convert into dollars.

Each man hour = approximately $150, assuming 1 day dev time costs $1200 (My companies current rate).

That means one solution would have cost $37,500 - $45,000. The other solution costs a maximum of $1700 including the cost of the memory. If you can see why we went for option 2 then you are pretty daft.

I know that any decent techie will want to fix the bugs, but in this instance it just was not worth the expense on a project that was due to expire in just over a year, even though it did generate more than $200,000 in revenue for our company in that year.

Re:TCO: Doesn't include the hardware to run Vista

[Ash Vince]

If you choose to deploy Windows as a desktop OS you guarantee a high cost of re-training employees 2 to 3 times a decade. Not necesarily.

Since most companies will not touch a new OS until it has been on the market for at least a year, maybe two. That means that by the time you do upgrade a large percentage of your staff will have bought new home machines running windows and already be familiar with the new OS.

That is why using windows saves you money on training. Not because it needs less training to use but simply because it is the most commonly used OS and most people have used it in a previous job or at home.

How do you quantify a TCO of...

[Farakin]

free?

As a Microsoft customer...

[enjerth]

What does ownership have to do with anything? Ownership of a great license? Because if I remember correctly, you don't actually own the product.

Technicality? Not if the restrictive/intrusive license is your biggest objection to the product.

Re:As a Microsoft customer...

[pembo13]

It's only a technicality if you consider armed BSA agents busting down your door a technicality.

One Small Problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

Though it's nice that they'll now start being up front about how they're introducing incompatibilities, as opposed to the quiet evil way they used to do it. Baby steps, I guess.

One small problem - they'll be transparently disclosing the deviations through patent filings.

"Embrace-Extend-Extinguish"

[VoxMagis]

Maybe I'm daft, but I'm not seeing this statement in this interview, although the original post seems to imply it's there.

Don't get me wrong, I don't LIKE Ballmer, and I'm no MS fan (as I type this from my Ubuntu desktop with Firefox, etc. etc. etc.) I just think they do their own damage, we don't need to add to it.

Re:"Embrace-Extend-Extinguish"

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

He says they'll be more transparent when they are embracing a standard, and the deviations (extentions) they use to compete (extinguish) with linux. Different words, but the basic meaning is the same.

What does transparent mean?

[bornwaysouth]

I am not sure what is meant by transparent? It should mean invisible. There is even an acronym,TTTU which is defined as 'Tranparent to the User', but that in turn is difficult to find a meaning for. I've understood it to mean 'You are not burdened with seeing the cogs whizzing around, it just works.' This seems a meaningful use of transparent.

Accountants seem to use the term to mean 'Fully visible'. Presumably, they regard Michaelangelo's David as the classical 'Transparent Man'. I think they should use 'translucent, but it is all a little late for that. So transparent seems to have two completely opposite meanings.

IT people mean "It works so well it is invisible"
Money people mean "It doesn't have to work, but all the cogs have to be visible"

Please, is Steve Ballmer an IT professional or a money man.

Or have I got the IT meaning screwed up. Not for the first time :-)

Re:What does transparent mean?

[Shados]

Transparent in this context has nothing to do with IT people vs Money people or whatever. Its just the context. In this context, it means "being upfront and well documented".

Re:What does transparent mean?

[just_another_sean]

IT people mean "It works so well it is invisible"
Money people mean "It doesn't have to work, but all the cogs have to be visible" I don't know about "money people" but to me transparancy means I can see what's inside. It is the opposite of "invisible,
it just works". That's "black box". A black box does something, hopefully it does it well, but you don't get to see how
or what it is doing. A transparent system allows you to flip switches, ramp up debugging or throw edge, test cases at
it in an intuitive way so you can "see" what is going on. If a system is transparent then it is much eaiser, even for
laymen, to troubleshoot and identify problems.

I tend to think this is what Ballmer meant but as others have said I see this as so much marketing speak. Frankly I will
beleive that Microsoft will operate in a transparent manner when I see it. ( pun intended :-)

Re:What does transparent mean?

[SanityInAnarchy]

There is "transparent" with regards to something "agnostic", which is like your "Transparent to the User". I can't define it particularly well, except by example: The POSIX filesystem API is storage-agnostic, which means that we can make accessing network shares transparent with regards to the filesystem API -- or we can implement a filesystem in RAM, and most of our programs would never know the difference (at least until we ran out of swap). The Linux block device API is device-agnostic, which means we can do transparent encryption -- that is, transparent to the filesystem, which just sees a block device.

This makes sense in that you can see through all the cogs whizzing around to see what you wanted to. It's not that the cogs are hidden, it's that you only see them if you look for them -- otherwise, you just see through to what you were really after. (My filesystem didn't want cyphertext, it wanted plaintext.)

There is also "transparent" as a contrast to an opaque (black) box. Instead, the mechanism is inside a transparent box, and you can see the cogs if you really want to. This is about open-ness -- open source, open standards, etc. The same is true for "money people".

I don't see a contradiction, though, as I look at both of these things as opposed to an opaque wall, preventing me from seeing what I want to. Transparency enables me to see what I want to see.

So, in that sense, perhaps there is a better metaphor, because transparency is a bit confusing when we try to compare it to a real-world object -- a "transparent" steering system means that you turn the steering wheel, and your wheels turn, without you having to know what happens under the hood. But a "transparent" hood means you do see everything under it. A well-designed car should allow for both -- I shouldn't have to look under the hood, but if I do, there should be labels and possibly diagrams, and I should be able to change my own oil, etc.

TCO?

[pionzypher]

I thought we had moved past this and on to the fear of possible litigation for use. TCO is pretty damn easy to debunk. A few years ago I set up a little intranet server with LAMP and some scripts to retrieve and parse data that was scattered all over the place. Add in some ModbusTcp stuff and it was chugging along. Our instrument tech, who was working on a similar line gave us crap every day. The worn lines of "It's only free if your time is free", "linux is an OS for people mad at microsoft", "It's a hacker OS" and the wonderful "Microsoft knows how to do enterprise software, they make it easy". My answer was the simple one... It was free. I don't have a budget for this project, and this works. Forget arguing the deeper issues. It works and it didn't touch our budget.

Three years later, we've now moved a separate workstation over to linux for all of our operator functions such as data entry and trending.
End result... He's still working on implementing the reporting aspect. He pulls much of his data from our DB and is no longer quite a hardline about sticking with a single vendor. He's beginning to look at RT linux solutions for the next iteration of our embedded MCS system. Wow, hell of a tangent. Yeah, MS should leave the TCO alone... It's simply too easy to just set something up in a back room and let the technology prove itself.

TCO ads in Linux mags

[linux_geek_germany]

I've seen some ads by Microsoft about the lower TCO of Windows compared to Linux with testimonials by Continental AG and some other companies printed double-sided in Linux magazines. Obviously that's part of the strategy to beat Linux although I (and probably most readers) found it quite hilarious.

Re:TCO ads in Linux mags

[molarmass192]

Wait ... you means those were REAL ads? I always thought those were jokes put in by the editors. Windows has a lower TCO than Linux in the same way a Ford has lower TCO than a Toyota. The problem is in 2 years time, your Ford will have been through 2 recalls and 5 warranty repairs while the Toyota will just keep working. Sorry to pick on Ford, they're nowhere near as bad as Microsoft.

Re:TCO ads in Linux mags

[Mr. Arbusto]

I'm a Systems Administrator for a company that could be one of the "Windows Provides Lower TCO" stories. I even think we've been approached about using our name. Unfortunatly, we're a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, which means we have 25+ "Free" licenses for Windows Server products and 100+ "Free" licenses for Windows Desktop products. It still takes 2 people to support the windows side of the business, but the licensing cost for our production environment can be considered free on the ledger.

Steve Ballmer's favourite word

[microbox]

Interviewer: So... tell us about windows server 2008

Balmer: We innovated ... innovated, the developers can then ... innovate, and when we're done with ... innovative testing and furniture distribution innovation. That's how we do business.

I think they've got brilliant business and marketing knowhow - but somehow with all of their talent you'd expect more innovation. I guess it must be a sore point for them.

Re:Steve Ballmer's favourite word

[MasterOfCeremonies]

...innovative testing and furniture distribution innovation.

So that's how he explains the chair throwing incident?

Building ballmer worlds

[BigJClark]

I used to always joke with IBM, you know, we were opening up the desktop to them, and they were opening up the mainframe and the data center to us. And who out-hustled who is a big deal in terms of who wins.

Is it me, or does this guy appear to not differ that much from, say, your average used car salesman.

Oh, not TCO again.

[serviscope_minor]

I wonder why I had never heard of TCO until relatively recently (measured in years), and in terms of a comparison of Linux to Windows.

I now know: becuse TCO is a meaningless measure which is not used in the real world. The real world measure used is ROI (return on investment).

As a silly example, a windows box might have 50% of the TCO of a Linux box. If it does nothing useful then it has a vastly smaller ROI.

That said, it's a somewhat dubious claim that windows does have a lower TCO.

Re:Oh, not TCO again.

[turing_m]

"I now know: becuse TCO is a meaningless measure which is not used in the real world. The real world measure used is ROI (return on investment)."

Now, that was insightful. In the real world, if you go FOSS you may (but not in my experience) have an initial higher investment taking into account research, training, etc. After that, the only cost is support, if you choose to buy it. There is no perpetual (and large) income stream going to the software vendor and no cost of retraining when the vendor decides it has to force an upgrade on the customer. So ROI is almost always better.

And in a recession, FOSS is that much better, because companies tend to want to keep necessary employees but stop large cash outlays.

Re:Oh, not TCO again.

[Red Flayer]

That's not quite right.

ROI relates to capital investment in business, and includes revenue calculations for the return on investment.

TCO is used to evaluate overhead, where there is no measurable "R". Sure, proper cost analysis brings in all the costs associated with TCO -- but there are many, many small business out there that do not have good analytics in place (often because the ROI of analytics is so small for them :) ). So in order to "remind" them that there are costs borne other than those at time of purchase or via depreciation, MS (& others) like to use the term TCO.

As a financial analyst, I find the term very useful, especially when discussing or presenting to management.

Sales people like to refer to ROI when discussing their own product since it helps them convince people they'll be making money if they buy their product. They like to refer to the TCO of a competitor's product since it helps them get people to associate that product with cost, instead of revenue.

At any rate, TCO may be meaningless to you since you've never heard it used in the real world -- but I think your real world is a little limited in scope. And regarding your example:

As a silly example, a windows box might have 50% of the TCO of a Linux box. If it does nothing useful then it has a vastly smaller ROI.

Yes, silly. Because you appear to have forgotten that TCO includes the opportunity cost of lost productivity.

If you can't beat them, join them.

[deweycheetham]

Open your source, the we (the rest of the world) can fix your code...

Re:If you can't beat them, join them.

[nguy]

Open your source, the we (the rest of the world) can fix your code...

Don't bet on it; it may be beyond repair.

The real Microsoft? Read Comes-3096.pdf

[kbonin]

A very illuminating Microsoft Confidential presentation from the antitrust discovery process. If you're in a hurry start with the slides at page 9. This is what he should have been asked about...

Comes-3096.pdf

Consumers Can't Evaluate Free Properly

[MBCook]

OK. You "offer a good value". Let's ignore how tough it is to offer good value compared to something really cheap, how do you compete with free? Consumers can't judge "free" properly, the Consumerist just posted about that the other day. Wouldn't that make competing with Linux even tougher? As it gets closer and closer to acceptable for most people (and it's WAY better than it was 2/4/6+ years ago) the free thing makes it even worse for MS.

Re:Consumers Can't Evaluate Free Properly

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers can't judge "free" properly

Damn straight they (well, most of'em) can't: that's why I smack my forehead when people get excited that Hillary or Obama will give them "free" healthcare.

Very likely the same thing will happen as with the chocolates: over-consumption. I'm not certain as to the specifics of any "universal" health care plan dealing with over-use situations, but I can tell you this: people will abuse it if it's "free" to them. E.g. little Timmy has a 38C/100F fever: why wait for an appointment, to the Emergency Department! Heck, call an ambulance. Most services will not deny transport to the hospital for fear of prosecution.

Remember, the government only "gives" to the people after it takes from them first. Tanstaafl. AC cause it's OT

In Ghandi's own words.

[AftanGustur]

First they ignore us.

Then they laugh at us.

Then they fight us.

Then we win.

Unfortunately for Balmer, the world just continues laughing at him.

Re:In Ghandi's own words.

[Anonymous Coward]

this is what i always think about when I see some slashbot pasting that quote. being self-grandiose is arrogant and retarded.

Re:In Ghandi's own words.

[whereiswaldo]

Uh, aren't the next steps after us laughing at him:

Then Balmer fights us

Then Balmer wins

? If not, then explain why Ghandi's catchy quote doesn't apply in both directions.
(sorry, I'm playing devil's advocate here)

value

[pak9rabid]

If I had a nickel every time Ballmer squeezed in the world 'value' into a sentence, I'd be a very valuable person.

Total Cost of Ownership?

[wozzinator]

Well, I think what we have to do rather than convince people they're wrong is we've got to convince people that the stuff that we do ship, that the partnership on top delivers real value. And that's what we've been doing a very good job of. I mean, the fact of the matter is, how do we beat Linux? The way you beat any other competitors: You offer good value, which in this case means good total cost of ownership, right? Because total cost is really, at the end of the day, the issue. And the fact that, quote, Linux is open source, therefore it appears to have a zero price -- that actually made it easier to shine a spotlight on the thing that always mattered anyway, which is total cost. We have a better proposition today, I would think, for total cost of ownership, and we have to offer better value where better value reflects the applications that are available, the quality of the tools. Take something like SharePoint alone. It's a big deal. The quality of the databases, that's a big deal. The availability of tools, of Visual Studio and .Net and the ability to build bespoke applications, those are all part of the value and the total cost. And I think we've done a good job. In the areas where we haven't done a good job, we'd have less share. We have a smaller percentage of the market, for example, in high-performance computing. That's about 40% of Linux business. We really didn't enter the market with what I would call an engineered, high innovation, high-value-add offering until last year. Now that we're in the game, we're gaining share in the high-performance computing work load. So in a sense, the old formula: Keep the prices low, keep the innovation high, keep the total cost of ownership low. With all of this talk of "total cost" and "real value" and other such terms, is it just me or is he supporting Linux and devaluing Microsoft? "And the fact that, quote, Linux is open source, therefore it appears to have a zero price." - Is this guy completely ignorant to the fact that Linux is free and it has better overall value and the _lowest_ cost of ownership?

Re:Total Cost of Ownership?

[RedK]

You're missing the Total part of his equation. Basically, their premise is that Linux isn't free (as in beer) as you put it, it actually has a cost attached. TCO includes not only license costs, but support personnel costs, hardware cost, training costs, maintenance contract costs, actual maintenance costs, etc..

Their argument is basically that Windows has lower cost because there are more professionals out there that are trained to support/maintain Windows based system, and these professionals usually have lower wages/consulting fees than their equivalent Unix/Linux professionals. They also argue that Windows training in general is cheaper, that it is easier to maintain through their many support/update tools and include some highly dubious claims about Linux legal costs by up there because you don't have a single vendor backing you and that you will be liable for copyright/patent infringement and that the IP holders will go after you directly as a customer.

So that's basically why he thinks Windows is better TCO.

Tell me steve

[Andrei D]

We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. How come you have to pay 899E to the EU if you're that transparent. Ha? Ah, it's just the same old BS you say over and over again.

good luck

[nguy]

Well, Mr. Ballmer, if you think that adding even more crap to Windows is going to make Windows appeal to Linux users, go right ahead.

Translation

[asuffield]

Stripped of all the gibberish and delusions, Ballmer's statement comes down to this:

We're going to beat them by being better than them

As corporate visions go, it is fairly typical, and (as usual) completely missing the point. You don't get better by saying that you're going to get better.

Re:Translation

[nuzak]

If you want to be that reductionist, then you could say dictionaries are useless because every entry simply consists of a term followed by the same term. Ballmer gave a fairly thin, but at least somewhat substantive account of what the strategy is.

Not that their conduct in standards committees resembles competing on merit in any way. So either Ballmer's lying or not in control.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, not a troll - he makes a valid distinction. These are the kind of moderations which make me wish I could select what I meta-moderate.

Re:Translation

[popmaker]

But you'll have to say it at least get people to buy you stuff.

Re:The real Microsoft? Read Comes-3096.pdf

[magus_melchior]

That's precisely the stuff he would stonewall with: "Sorry, I can't comment on ongoing legal cases."

Obligatory youtube link

[Spy der Mann]

Aparently his version of TCO doesn't include buying completely new machines in order to run Vista.

No one does bloatware like Microsoft!

Re:Obligatory youtube link

[jimmypw]

Are they still gassing on about this TCO nonsense

Which side of the road are you driving on?

[xixax]

Cool, Steve will let me know when the MS behemoth complete with millions of passengers comes rolling through, driving on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. Sort of like the obnoxious tour group leader on his way to Vegas who can't be arsed that people actually live and work in the neighborhood he's taking a shortcut through.

Xix.

Re:Which side of the road are you driving on?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sort of like the obnoxious tour group leader on his way to Vegas who can't be arsed that people actually live and work in the neighborhood he's taking a shortcut through.

Hey, we're working on shooting out his tires. They're just extra thick and our ammo isn't quite up to it yet.

"beating" GNU/Linux with "value"

[bitspotter]

'How does Microsoft beat Linux? The same way "you beat any other competitor: You offer good value

He makes some sense here. This is how markets are supposed to work, when competition exists. The existence of a FOSS Operating System does happen to provide competition to the "marketplace". Imagine the shitball we'd be rolling in without FOSS competition (or Mac OS).

But the scope Ballmer and his company operate in is limited. Software isn't just something that "offers value", to be "traded" in a "marketplace". It's something that works better with collaboration than competition. The marketplace can only go so far to produce useful tools when so many people can contribute to their own utility.

Sure, they might "beat" GNU by "offering value" by their own lights. All they are is a profit-seeking enterprise. But as a user, and not a "consumer", of software, I don't care about that. They can monopolize the entire software "marketplace" for all I care. I'll still be using software that grants user freedom, because, unlike Microsoft "products", it exists outside the marketplace entirely. From the narrow parochial market perspective, FOSS is undead. You can take away its marketshare, but you can't kill it.

You can't buy - or sell - freedom, despite its well-established value. You have to fight for it. And mere market "value" is no substitute for freedom.

His lips moved ...

[ScrewMaster]

Embrace-Extend-Extinguish: 'We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. [...] If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.'

Liar.

Only way they can beat Linux....

[Nick Driver]

...is do do away with the concept of CALs altogether, and sell their server OS for dirt cheap.

Gandhi

[imtheguru]

But, M.K. Gandhi's word's are not quite relevant to this interview or indeed their recent marketing strategies. Seems they're beguiling customers into believe that they're getting something equivalent to, if not better than existing OpenSource tools.

Cheers.

And now for something completely different...

[imtheguru]

And the FUD, don't forget the FUD. Amongst our weapons....
Hmf...
Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surpr...



I'll come in again.

Re:And now for something completely different...

[Drasil]

...and an almost fanatical devotion to developers, developers, developers!

Re:The real Microsoft? Read Comes-3096.pdf

[drsmithy]

A very illuminating Microsoft Confidential presentation from the antitrust discovery process. If you're in a hurry start with the slides at page 9. This is what he should have been asked about...

So I read through to page 45 or so and I'm wondering exactly why I'm supposed to be surprised or concerned that a business is operating just like every other business, and exactly how I would expect it to.

Or are you seriously try to suggest that these sort of discussions and attitudes don't happen within Apple, IBM, HP, Sun, et al ?

Three hours and only 128 comments... wtf slashdot!

[binaryspiral]

You all are slipping... this is way to much fuel for the flame wars not to have at least double this many posts.

"We'll be transparent about the deviations."

[kybur]

Maybe, just maybe, they will be transparent internally to their own developers. (if they think of it at the time)

Re:Deviations? We don't need no steeking deviation

[Locutus]

good one. It's amazing how people still believe these guys. Don't they get it that it is all a game of smoke, mirrors, and slight of hand? From what I can tell, only a small small few get it. IMO.

LoB

Re:Three hours and only 128 comments... wtf slashd

[msebast]

Somebody forgot to pay the astroturfers. Or it's Friday and they went home early?

Re:Stupid context for this quote.

[LingNoi]

While I can certainly understand the reasons why some people go with Linux, I have run all but dry of understanding for programmers that willfully pick Windows as their platform of choice.

From you link I believe that whole thing is taken out of context.

Microsoft has some awesome stuff, but it also has some really crap stuff. I believe the quote above is referring to the all windows crowd that do not evaluate their tools and instead just pick Microsoft, because Microsoft is God and nothing is better.

Embrace-Extend-Extinguish

[J3rryken]

i tough linux already Embraced, Extended, Extinguished microsoft already at least in my country loads of companies switched from windows to linux already server/desktop i work for international dredging, we where using os/2 above windows xp/vista for our gps systems now we switched to linux

no sign he knew there was an NYT article

[gr8scot]

InformationWeek: Did you see the New York Times story yesterday with IBM saying that the mainframe's coming back?

Ballmer: I really don't think that's true. They may continue to sustain life and they may grow their revenue, that's a different story. But if you actually went to most of your readers and said the mainframe is actually coming back, I think you wouldn't find 25% who would agree with that statement. The NYT article referenced contained no survey. It was all about the technical merits of virtualization and mainframes. Considering their market share, the 25% Ballmer quoted looks like he's not very confident in the technical merits of what he's selling.

Re:no sign he knew there was an NYT article

[gr8scot]

Sorry, the New York Times article Ballmer didn't read:

I.B.M. to Introduce a Notably Improved Mainframe

By STEVE LOHR
Published: February 26, 2008

The mainframe, the aged yet surprisingly resilient survivor of computing, is getting a face-lift. A model called the I.B.M. z10, which is being introduced Tuesday, is far faster and has three times the data-juggling memory of its three-year-old predecessor, the z9.

But the significance of the new machine, analysts say, is that it is a big step in a broad campaign by I.B.M. to make the mainframe computer a high-performance, energy-efficient engine for running all kinds of nonmainframe software.

The goal, according to I.B.M. executives and analysts, is to recast the mainframe as a nimble supercomputer in corporate and government data centers, running Web-based programs, Linux, advanced data mining and business intelligence software.

To do that, I.B.M. has refined its mainframe hardware and come up with new software tools, as part of a five-year, $1.5-billion overhaul.

The mainframes ability to survive is only as good as its ability to innovate and compete for these new computing workloads of the future, an analyst at Forrester Research, Brad Day, said. And I.B.M. is starting to succeed at that.

The stakes are high. Though the sales of mainframes account for less than 4 percent of I.B.M.s revenue, the sales of mainframe software, storage and services are a big, profitable business. The overall business dependent on mainframes represents about 25 percent of company revenue and nearly half of its profit, said A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

At Hannaford Brothers in Scarborough, Me., a supermarket chain with stores in five states, the company has consolidated many programs onto its two mainframes. They include its consumer Web site, its Web portal for tracking shipments from suppliers and store and customer data that were once housed on computers in individual stores. The mainframe has become very flexible and very scalable for us, said Bill Homa, Hannafords chief information officer.

Robert Woeckener, a senior technology manager at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, Ohio, said his company had consolidated more than 1,300 programs onto 480 virtual computers software that emulates a machine that run on two mainframes.

Nationwide began the program more than two years ago, projecting savings in energy, administration and other costs at $15 million over three years. Were probably running ahead of that, Mr. Woeckener said.

I.B.M. competitors say that some individual success stories among mainframe users do not change the reality that the mainframe is in retreat.

In 2004, Microsoft founded the Mainframe Migration Alliance, a group of technology companies that helps corporations move software applications from mainframes to smaller computers powered by low-cost microprocessors and typically running Microsofts Windows server operating system. Microsoft tracked 85 mainframe migration projects last year, and the company says 55 more are under way.

I.B.M., to the contrary, says that the mainframe is in the midst of a revival. It is adding customers in developing nations, the company maintains, as banks, corporations and government agencies expand and need the kind of reliability and security that the mainframe delivers. I.B.M.s mainframe revenue in India, China, Brazil and Russia grew 18 percent last year.

Six hundred software applications, it says, were introduced on the mainframe last year.

Rising energy costs and environmental concerns are putting pressure on growing computer data centers, with their voracious appetites for electricity. The z10, I.B.M. says, delivers the computing power of 1,500 industry-standard servers, running on personal computer microprocessors, while consuming 85 percent less energy and covering

I love your point...

[symbolset]

Slashdot didn't evolve into a "Microsoft sux" since you joined. It always was one. You're still here after all these years.

It's self moderated and you're right -- posts that disparage Microsoft and discount Ballmer do fly to the top of the moderation. That's not because some corporate sponsor has a geek lab in Bangalore with 1,000 blogdrones astroturfing the moderation. It's because Slashdot attracts geeks and that's what the geeks really think. That's honest opinion survey for you. I think a lot of that is because the observation that "M$ sux" actually is insightful, and the Ballmer's futile thrashing of a chair in helpless frustration over Google really is funny.

When you add that slashdot is still one of the popular sites on the intertubes you have to ask: does Microsoft have a problem?

And remember, an answer to every Microsoft problem is available all over the web.

They have to be running scared now. Vista has been out for a year and a half and OEMs are still introducing new machines that not only don't run Vista -- but never will be able to, and people are buying them up like crazy.

Re:I love your point...

[spasm]

Oh hell, I joined Slashdot in 1998 due to an anti-Microsoft story in The Australian (New York Times equivalent for reach/impact in Australia) on Geoffrey Bennett successfully coaxing a cheque out of Toshiba Australia for the Microsoft tax - it was the first time I'd even heard of Linux. The idea of a) a free functional alternative/improvement to Windows (a hardware-agnostic equivalent, before any 1990s Mac fans chime in); and b) someone sticking it to a company that was painfully arrogant to deal with even at that point was kind of liberating..

Linux, GNU, Gnome, KDE, everything GPL, M$ is dead

[twitter]

The GPL covers much more than the Linux Kernel, but that does not forbid Microsoft from offering binary applications through rape buddies like Novell. As you noted, others have done as much and people do use the results. What you failed to notice is the costs of i386 only binary blobs. They make updating a bitch and lock you into softare that's as obsolete and hard to upgrade as Windows itself. Those problems only highlight the TCO problems of their own platform and customers know it.

The real problem for M$ is that no one needs them. If you must run M$ stuff, you are better off doing it through Wine, Dosbox, Qemu or others. Done right, M$ can't tell your installation from any other and will have a hard time sabotaging you the way they have repeatedly done to other competitors. By the time an organization has decided to run free software, M$ has been moved into "legacy" status. Current applications will be run in virtual environments until they are no longer needed. The move to GNU/Linux is driven by freedom. M$ is out until they give up and offer customers what customers really want.

This is hilarious

[symbolset]

I know you didn't mean to be funny, but James Plamondon flipping them the bird on the way out was precious.

(paraphrase)Won't you help us promote W2K?

Cya suckas! I be on the beach drinking pina coladas and laughing at you! Got mine. Peace, out.

(end paraphrase)

The text is hosted at groklaw

[symbolset]

link

If you were looking for an excuse for an "informative" mod, here it is.

From: James Plamondon

Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2000 5:33 PM

To: Darryn Dieken

cc John Colleran

Subject: Re: Windows Evangelism!

Darryn -

Sounds great! But I'm leaving the company In early March, and indeed will be on vacation until then, starting at the end of next week. Upon departure from Microsoft. I'm moving my family to Australia, where I will sit on the beach, drink pina coladas, and laugh at the world.

Here are some documents from the Good Old Days that you might find to be handy in starting this new group. Don't worry about them leaking; they were already entered into the public record by Bristol Technologies as part of their private anti-trust case.

> > Timeline.doc >> > >

Hoping that these will help you keep the flame alive after the old warhorses like me go out to pasture, I remain Yours

mangled logic

[recharged95]

I thought linux offered good value (free) and a superior product (apt/yum/security) that is industry proven (based in UNIX). MS? right.

funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering about you, but then I noticed you're the resident kook around here. Never mind.

It must be hard out there for high school dropouts right now. Best of luck.

Re:Three hours and only 128 comments... wtf slashd

[PPH]

The Linux camp is busy ROTFL at Ballmer's remarks.

The Windows fans are busy installing Vista SP1.

Windows TCO

[Unoriginal_Nickname]

Do you think Microsoft's TCO analyses account for the EULA provision allowing the BSA to conduct random audits and the gigantic punitive fees should your office manager fail to save every receipt, or should a disgruntled employee maliciously install a pirated copy of Word 97?

The best person to ask

[Lewrker]

about any product is its producers biggest competitor.

It's like schoolyard bullies say about the brains

[gr8scot]

If you can't beat 'em, just beat 'em up.

Good old twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

The laughingstock of Slashdot.

BALLMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT!

[Mr.Ballmer]

The 'Ol OpenSource Trap! The International Organization for Standardization votes again next week on wether or not to approve our Office Open XML document formats. My PI, Jack Stone informed me last week that the votes in favor will fall short of approval again! His report said that we were going to fail spectacularly agian, because most of the members of the board thought of Microsoft as (I quote:) an "Insular, self-obsessive, paranoid entity which cares nothing for standards or interoperability even amoung it's own applications!" They simplly don't realise that getting OOXML approved as an international standard is the lynch-pin of my whole strategy to undermine the entire OpenSource movement! Then the answer came to me! "Just lie to them!" That is what the big announcements were about today! I paraded out all of the Microsoft top brass and had them say that we are ready to work with the Free-freaks and OpenSource morons! The press is eating it up too! "Microsoft finally learning to let 'X' talk to 'Y'" "Microsoft to share information" "Microsoft opens door to open-source software community " "Microsoft Pledges To Open Up Software" WOW! I'm a hero again! How can they vote against me now? I have repented brother! This poor standards-sinner has seen the light! Halleuah! As an unexpected side effect even those filthy, greasy-haired, garlic-smelling, bad-teethed, snail-eating EU judges who keep ruling against us are believing us! lol HAWWWW GLORY! hehehehe http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

It really doesn't work very well

[dbIII]

Yes I know - in fact I have an NCD Thinstar on the floor next to me that can attach to that. However, in comparison the terminal server software rates poorly against X windows and is even far behind VNC. In fact the thin client itself (which uses WinCE) runs a lot better with that added on X server than it can with MS terminal server. IMHO they provided functionality is such a way that they could say it existed but hardly anybody ever bothered to use it because it was too much trouble and expense. What's the point of a thin client when a PC running in the same sort of environment can actually cost less?

You can actually run headless Microsoft servers with approriate third party hardware and software but it boils down to the equivalent of having a KVM switch wired up to all the machines so you can give it a head when required.

.NET is the best thing MS has done for a while.

[cavebison]

.NET is a nice dev platform. Shock horror it brought VB into the real world, which is a pretty innovative thing to do just in itself. I like .NET. I grew up with MS and the shenanigans make me a sad panda, but .NET really restored my faith in MS's ability to innovate and create. It's still in there somewhere.

Everything that came after that though - Vista, Office 2008, even SQL Mgmt Studio 2005 were like, OMG what have you done to my productivity?! I don't get it - it's like MS's usability dept has lost the plot! It's hurting everything they do. Really basic UI principles out the door, and I mean basic stuff like just being able to see as much info on screen as possible and achieve things with a minimum of clicks and keystrokes.

I'm worried for that little kernel of innovation that still exists in MS, as proven by .NET's existence. It was their first new idea in ages, and it really made waves. Sadly it feel like MS is being less about innovation as time goes on. If Silverlight is just another type of Flash, forcing it on people won't change the fact it's not really innovative and therefore not really that necessary.

MS's problem is that they're looking down the barrel of not being *necessary* anymore. Maturing alternative OS's and office systems will do to them what 3rd party PC's did to IBM. But IBM is still innovating. Can MS do the same? Or is .NET destined to be their final magnum opus?

Transparent?

[Raphael Emportu]

Calling Alfa's RC's and Beta's SP1? How does he think he can beat Linux by offering value for your money? As I can see it Linux will beat MS anytime or does he want to lower the price of windows even more, Lets say to $O,-- with the offer of sending you free Install CD's if you request them?

Re:Linux, GNU, Gnome, KDE, everything GPL, M$ is d

[Anonymous Coward]

The real problem for M$ is that no one needs them.

Have you thought about a career in journalism? I hear Fox News is hiring. You sound like a perfect match for them.

Missionary Position???

[nightcats]

What language does this guy speak? "...the partnership on top delivers real value..." What does the missionary position have to do with competing with Linux?

Ballmer makes no sense

[khton]

Sure, it's helpful. It's sort of like all of these things. Interoperability is a two-way street -- the other guy takes share from you and you take share from the other guy -- and always will be. Everything that sort of starts with the word "interoperability" has that characteristic. Our customers benefit, which is a great thing. We go in thinking we have an opportunity to benefit, you're looking for risks, the risks I guess are that interoperability does more harm than good. I don't think that's likely, but nonetheless it's there for us and it's also there for the guys you interoperate with. Sure, I'm not a native english speaker, but it seems to me that nothing in the above makes sense. Does anybody un derstand what he means ???

Dauber

[Danzigism]

Is it just me, or does Ballmer remind you of the idiot from the TV Show, Coach, who played the character Dauber? Ballmer should be coaching a football team not a freakin software company..

Re:D real Microsoft? Also read Vista-Class-Action

[yorugua]

And a very interesnting reading also: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/vistaexhibitsone.pdf

Don't forget about complience costs

[walterbyrd]

If you are using Windows: you better keep all the correct documents organized, and on hand. Better be ready to provide - on a moments notice - all the proof that the BSA requires. In case you get a friendly visit.

If you are using Windows, you will need a sophisticated asset management system, and a thorough knowledge of licensing rules.

.NET in context

[gr8scot]

MS was badly cornered at the time by a confluence of market forces that really threatened to make them irrelevant if they didn't make development for their platform reasonable. JDK was already free, and more "interoperable" than the competition. Yes, at the time, it was. Microsoft does not "innovate," they adhere to standards so little that when they do catch up to current technology, on one front, it's so novel that it creates the illusion of "innovation."

I'm worried for that little kernel of innovation that still exists in MS, as proven by .NET's existence. OK, you keep using that word. What exactly is so "innovative" about .Net?

MS's problem is that they're looking down the barrel of not being *necessary* anymore. Their problem is that they've gotten out of the habit of being competitive. I don't believe they have a single clue among them how to compete in a market they can't dominate.

Steve Ballmer is the Man!

[tuxgeek]

I always make time in my busy day to review and read out loud Mr. Ballmer's speaches.

It's Vogon poetry to my ears!

"The ability to build bespoke applications"???

[jthill]

and the ability to build bespoke applications

What state of mind do you have to be in to claim that as some sort of Windows-specific thing?

Who Cares?

[Master of Transhuman]

Just more lies.

Microsoft does not sell software.

It sells lies.

Re: Customizing to look like XP

[TaoPhoenix]

Then make sure that apps create a shortcut on the desktop. Windows users need Clickable Things.

Re: Renegade infiltrations

[TaoPhoenix]

I've been plotting one for some time now for work.
I discovered long ago that my workflow *locally* is extremely simple. I have made some remarks a few times about the fallout from Vista as my colleage keeps telling me to order XP if possible.

Instead, I'd like to make a linux machine be my successor to my XP machine. I have all the time in the world, which is vital to avoid deadline-crunches. All I have to do is be "no less of a burden on support than the regular windows users". (Funny contest - I'm starting from scratch, but slightly more clever than the average user, they're only reporting problems as they happen.)

Thanks to a recent conversion, the horribly blobby proprietary killer app is now fed through a server to client stations. I just have to be able to navigate basic workflow without making a total fool of myself. (I still am right now, but better to be a fool on /. than at work! The worst y'all can do is laugh.)

actually, I've found Ballmer useful

[alizard]

I use his monkeyboy video in various versions to test new Linux multimedia software.

Andy Kaufman

[fuzznutz]

I saw a lot of Andy Kaufman in my day including the SNL bits like Mighty Mouse and wrestling women. Andy was only (moderately) funny doing Latka. I never understood how he could ever get back on TV. He wasn't funny. He wasn't entertaining. He was just a jerk and maybe a disturbed one at that.

I'm a guy that likes to laugh. I have a pretty good sense of humor and even laugh at stuff my wife finds juvenile, but I always found Andy just... dumb and annoying.

Re:Andy Kaufman

[smittyoneeach]

Kaufman, IHMO, is best understood as dada, and best enjoyed in little bits.
The betrayal of "I trusted you" manages to work well alongside Ballmer.

Visual Studio is crap for what I do

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I have been using VS for doing Windows CE 6 builds. The brains at MS decided to build the WinCE tools into VS to make everything easier to use, rather than using standalone tools as in the past.

Anyone who was given one of those penknives with a built in fork know what a crap idea that is.

Debugging messages sent to the Visual Studio output logging box take a long time to show up. I have seen messages coming through a few at a time over half an hour after the target was stopped.

Building/debugging are unbelievably slow too (especially when compared to Linux) when running on similar platforms.

No wonder MS are losing ground in the Windows CE space.