Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft claims Linux provides weak value
Microsoft's Ed Muth (him again) is claiming that
Linux offers little value since it has fewer off-the-shelf
apps, and no long term development road map. Moreover it suffers
from a lack of integration between the OS and the apps, which
is needed so that users can drag barcharts between Excel and
Word. (Heard of Corba? No I guess not). Indeed Ed claims Linux
usage figures are inflated. Finally, it must be obvious
that good programmers won't code for free so they can't be
good -- just like Van Gogh could not have been a good artist.
If nothing else, Ed's good at rhetoric -- "Let's say, for
discussion, they are equally scalable" implies nicely that
NT is obviously more scalable. But his outburst is somewhat
odd given that Microsoft's trial is not over, and the
SIIA is recomending it be broken up. Thanks Alex Prestin
for this link.
And he's right of course, like we've all said: MS just isn't getting it when it comes to the "capitalism" point. Why shouldn't the "best" programmers invest in a project that isn't *greed based*. Isn't altruism a positive human quality?
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Oh man... this had me cracking up. I'm still not sure if he was trying to make fun of NT or if he really believes NT scales better. How silly!
I think the Oracle guy bashed MS enough in his little speech-o-matic. I mean... sure NT sucks, but I don't want to listen to somebody bash MS the whole time... LinuxWorld is about Linux.
It seems valid to me - To my understanding (3 or 4 economics classes) pressure to drive costs down is one of the strongest forces in an economic model.
Since I'm working towards an Economics minor, I know a little bit about economics, although certainly I'm aware that I don't know everything.
Yes, it is all about money, but not in the way you are thinking. To a business whose interest is in maximizing profit it's all about lowering costs. Hear that? Lowering costs. It's not about paying Microsoft for low quality software just because there's a lot of support (although alot of businesses obviously take that route), it's about finding the cheapest way to produce whatever you produce in the long run.
To a business, the main obstacle to implementing Linux solutions is probably support. These days it's probably not due to application support, but installation and troubleshooting support.
So really you're argument has no legs to stand on. To us, the linux users/gurus/administrators of the world, it IS all about the most stable platform to run your apps on.
Your main argument states that the "Real World" is different because it is all about money, but in reality the real world is more complex than you and I can comprehend. It is not all about money, but a complex set of variables of which money is but a single.
Let me put it to you this way. You have a job to do. You can do it in two ways:
1) Buy the crappy Microsoft solution and live in the endless cycle of buggy product upgrades, hoping the next cycle solves all your problems, but it never does.
2) Implement the inexpensive, more stable, more reliable and often more robust free software solution.
I predict that as businesses start to implement more free software solutions they'll find their costs going down, leading to increased market share and/or increased profits. Therefore these companies will become more successful and eventually dominate the economic landscape.
P.S. a hotmail email doesn't count.
Oh, you're so right, I should just shut up because I have nothing productive to say. In fact, I might as well go kill myself, because obviously I can't contribute to society at all.
Geez. Why don't you offer something constructive...or perhaps *you* need to get an education first? Perhaps you're too afraid to put up a reasonable counter-argument?
To everybody else: I'm sorry about this obviously flammatory post, it's just that kind of post really pisses me off.
By Ranger Rick, Slashdot Reader
THE INTERNET, Worldwide -- Think of it as a burst of cold international rain on the Microsoft parade. In a far-reaching interview this week with himself, Slashdot reader Ranger Rick sounded off on the closed-source operating system, outlining what he considers are fundamental flaws with the Microsoft business model and the OS itself.
"I see it as more of a threat to Macintosh. Windows is a challenge, a competitor," Rick said. "The more I study Windows, the weaker I think the value proposition is to customers."
Technical misgivings
Rick delineated two main technical reasons why he believes Windows will not succeed with corporate customers.
First, a broad base of support for applications -- especially small, interoperable, easily-customizable, instantly-available applications, with modern internet distributions channels -- is necessary for an operating system to compete in today's market, he said.
"Five years ago, everything was shrink-wrapped, and the trend since then has been to customize standard shrink-wrapped software for individual business needs," Rick said. A "closed-design" ethos will not work in corporations, he said, where open standards ease interoperability and customizability.
The second failing, Rick believes, is an extreme level of integration between the OS and its applications. It's a point that touches on ground where holy wars are fought.
Indeed, some Microsoft advocates say Microsoft's integration of one large codebase with everything in one package is what makes it appealing. Reed disagrees.
"People want less integration," he said. "They want a choice between tools to use, with an open standard of interoperability. On the server side they want strong queuing and security. This is all done through a comprehensive set of tools that can be customized to their needs, which use open protocols for talking to each other. Microsoft has a high degree of integration, and therefore is more rigid and uncontrollable. Microsoft is basically a big step backward for those two reasons plus others."
Economies of scale
Rick next turned to the economics of Microsoft. He said his preliminary cost analysis showed Microsoft actually costs end users more than Linux.
"We have very little concern we can't compete with Microsoft on a TCO level," Rick said. "We think the total cost of ownership of Linux is lower than NT, but it's still hard to do good TCO studies because at the moment they're hard to compare since a large majority of Linux applications are free and have been developed, debugged, and improved upon for years, while NT supports so few Internet standards out of the box."
"Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable," he said. "And let's assume applications are available for both, and setup time is the same. Given all these factors, the best you could hope for is about the same cost per transaction between servers."
But Ranger Rick turned that argument on its ear.
"The problem with that is there are fewer applications available with the base NT install, there's a shaky development road map (with the Windows 2000 release date being pushed back again and again), and there's a higher technical risk in using it," he said. "You could cut NT some slack if it were sharply lower in cost per transaction than Linux, but that's not the case."
Acknowledging the phenomenon
Ranger Rick did acknowledge the myriad marketing forces that have propelled Windows NT into the spotlight, to the point that the OS was even featured in major print and online publications.
Ranger Rick attributed the closed-source hype to a number of factors, including a lack of fairness in media coverage of Windows NT.
"We're all in the business of wanting the customer to have the information needed to make informed choices," Rick said. "We haven't seen a flavor of NT coverage that addresses that. Some criticalness is needed.
For example, "some people say positive things about NT when their message is anti-Linux," he said. "But I wonder, in 36 months is this the next [Network Computer] or is it a viable OS? We don't see people question the NT numbers."
Ranger Rick pointed out that it's hard to track shipments of an open-source platform and its applications when they can be downloaded for free from any number of Web sites. "We feel that 2 to 20 percent of Windows NT shipments turned out to be 'shelfware,'" he said. "From what we can tell, many servers come bundled with Windows and then have Linux installed instead. In fact," he continued, "many supposed Windows NT file and print servers are actually running Linux, and the users can't tell the difference!"
As for the recent vendor support at Windows conferences, Rick wasn't suprised, adding that the media needs to apply the same critical eye to this trend.
"Take IBM," he said. "They have long supported multiple OSes on X86. They are fundamentally in the service business. You would expect them to support Windows and Linux. But the deep investment is in services. It's a human investment -- developers, support -- the operating system is irrelevant. You have to separate out what OS they will install if you ask them and what investments they make."
But Ranger Rick's most passionate argument came on the development, where he said skill and enjoyment is the wild card that many observers have been ignoring.
"I find it hard to believe that some of the best computer scientists in the world will want to do their work in a stuffy corporate environment, missing deadlines, making code compromises, sitting in meetings," he said. "Without a long-term road map, programmers are free to make the best possible technical decisions, without worrying whether deadlines must be met, and worrying if the marketing department is happy. I have a hard time believing these visionary programmers and developers would get the same satisfaction just being another cog in the machine. I do not believe in that vision of the future."
But hey, it's competition
For all its shortcomings, Windows NT is part of a larger competitive landscape in the server realm, Rick said. "In the OS market, a fair person would see extraordinary barriers to competition," he said. "And the competition exists in terms of business model and channel model, and NT is a very interesting case."
For linux, that's key, since the question of whether it faces "real" competition in the OS market has been a contentious issue.
Linux has done well in server market share, Muth said, but "we have lots to do in some parts of the market. Take the $100,000 to $1 million server range."
"There is extraordinary competition," he reiterated. "The market is a rich mosaic of parry and thrust from the vendors, with competing OEM service deals in the way of a free OS marketplace where choice rules. We have to earn our stripes every day. That's how it should be."
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Haha... gee, uhh... yeah. I think I heard something about that at Slashdot.
(grin)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Exactly.. and its not like M$ had 10,000 integrated apps waiting for them when M$dos and/or win3.0 / 9x went mainstream either. It took a little while for development to build up. But I guess Muth *wasnt paying attention* back then.
I guess M$ thinks an OS or anything for that matter can just pop up from nowhere and have a ton of integrated apps waiting for it to appear.
.
Regarding shrink wrapped applications, sure, coporate users would probably perfer those over some downloaded from an FTP site, but look at the big distributions today, they come with SO MANY apps. Not only stuff for coders, apps word processors, e-mail readers, and internet stuff. Out-of-the-box Redhat has more apps than Windows. GOOD apps.
:P
I fail to see how Word to/from Excel integration has anything to do with integration to the OS. Windows has OLE and we've got CORBA, which isn't one big bug like OLE is
Security through integration? Huh?! How much integration can one handle? WinNT has "services" and we have daemons. Not much difference.
Linux costs more than WinNT? Well, if one considers time = money, then *maybe* for *end users* but not one who knows what he's doing. And, in the end, if it does take longer to *set up* Linux, don't worry, there goes all the blue screens.
Linux supports so few applications? What an idiot. It supports that small thing called POSIX, it has many of X apps, it has multiple binary support and even has impressive DOS (dosemu) and Windows (wine) support.
Blah, I don't want to read more.
More FUD for the weak-minds of the world...
:wq
Yeah, business is about earning money. About earning money for *your* company, not earning money for Microsoft (unless, of course, you work for Microsoft, then the two are equivalent). So, while it's in Microsoft's best interest for people to spend lots of money on their bloatware, it isn't in anyone else's best interest to do so...
this may well be true...
Imagine that MS changes the Linux kernel, inserting some "crashing" routines on purpose, and then shows off at the Win2000 launch a computer with the Win2000 and another with the sabotaged Linux...
MS would make Linux crash and the NT computer would just run along fine (apparently, of course) thus making people think that NT is ACTUALLY better than Linux!
This is simple propaganda. Not worth getting up in arms about.
Our friend Ed Muth is simply fulfilling his duty as Billy's loyal dog and spitting out sweet nothings to make the MSLemmings feel warm and fuzzy. Sit Ed! Roll-over Ed! Good boy.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Sure. Even an MS OS can stay up for two years if you don't actually DO anything with it.
Going to install anything? Reboot. Change settings? Reboot. Install a service pack (I you haven't) ? Reboot.
Actually RUN an application? Crash! Reboot.
There's just no way its been up for two years.
Sorry...I just don't believe you.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Sure, the Windows Explorer (with shell integration turned off) may be more stable than gnome running w/ enlightenment.
But what does that have to do with anything? We're talking SERVERS here, boy, and servers have no place using a GUI in the first place.
When you can tell me that a web, FTP server or SQL server running on NT is faster and more stable than that same server running on linux... I'll laugh my head off.
Posted by Hawaiian Style:
I see a great battle looming on the horizon.
This kind of FUD (and the mindless repeating of it by their monkeys at ZDNet) really irritates me... maybe someone should hack their site ??!!
Linux Links and more:
http://home.earthlink.net/~hawaiistyle
Posted by tollboothwilly:
The only stripe I'd say MS has earned is the one that runs down the back of that skunk software they pass off as an OS.
I mean my god. The original Win95 was released in Aug 95 and they just now figured out it may hang after 49.7 days due to a timing algorithm bug I'm suprised it only took three years to get a Windows box to stay up that long.
Relaying this through a linux box thats been up longer than 49.7 days
Posted by Hawaiian Style:
... nice and pretty.
First of all, I was being sarcastic,
(I would NEVER advocate the mis-use of computers),
so I actually meant *hack*, as in, FOR FREE, show them how much we will do for nothing. The Works(TM), complete redesign
Nah, I'm just bored.
And pissed off.
*sigh*
and bored.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
...because they haven't discovered sex yet. Saying that something is good because it's popular doesn't prove a thing, just that the general public is too foolish to even realise how it's long term interests are best served.
It's like saying, "Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all *really* good guys, because they came to power through popular support".
Sure, right dude. You obviously don't work very much with Microsoft products. If you did, you'd know just how often they blue-screen and die.
If your going to put non-Microsoft OS's down, then at least have the courtesy to make your insults entertaining and witty. That way, the rest of us could at least get a laugh. In that respect alone, you are *too* lame for words.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
Yeah, sure. But lets consider the fact that there is a fundemental difference here.
Consider the flame wars that periodically errupt over open source issues ( such as GNOME versus KDE ). In many ways, this is very *imature*, but it serves a useful purpose in that the rival groups of partisans then have to put their time and energy where their mouths are ( so that their favorite system becomes progressively better ).
In short, rivalry and name calling in open source is useful in that it motivates people to go one step furthur.
Not so with propriatory systems. They just flame anyone that they disagree with, sit on their fat posteriors and do nothing.
So in this case, arguments over "maturity" aren't really very relevant.
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
!
!
!
/. to convince all of us that anyone and everyone who likes Microsoft has had a lobotomy.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SQLConnect();
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
SQLSetColumns();
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SQLFetch();
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Oh Ghod, you are such a loser! Have you ever read the x88 SQL standard? It was designed to maximise data exchange "...between systems written in COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I and Pascal...".
In short, it was designed around languages that were already obsolete when it was drawn up back in 1988.
Wait, I finally worked it out! You really don't like Microsoft at all! Your really a closet Linux user who's dropped in at
Ahem! Well, while your intentions are certainly praisworthy, it is a little bit rude of you to be taking such an obvious dig at all of the "mentally challenged" people out there who can't handle anything beyond a "point and drool" interface. Remember, Linux is quite capable of standing on it's own merits, so there really is no need to indulge in this kind of thing.
If you want to promote Linux, it would probably help if you were to take a more charitable view to those poor and unfortunate individuals who haven't realised yet that there are actual alternatives. Remember - good manners cost you nothing.
Regards.
Posted by wraith-q:
hahahahahahahahahahaha
nuff said
Posted by AnnoyingMouseCoward:
...but since you have asked a polite question and since you have the conviction to put your name to your words, I will respond.
Im a profesional programmer with 13+ years of industry experience. I first started programming at university under unix on a PDP-11/60 twenty years ago.
In short, I've been around. I've used Unix, CMP, Apple II, MS-DOS, Windows 3.1/95 and now I'm moving into Linux.
You are perfectly correct - money is everything. As an old drinking buddy of mine uesed to say to me at university
"Money talks, bullshit walks!"
This is the whole reason why so many people ( including the Fortune-500 companies ) are migrating their systems across to FreeBSD/Linux.
They are satisfied with the current level of technology. They don't give a damn about making life any easier than it already is for their staff.
In short, they don't want more capabilities for the same ammount of money.
They want the same capabilities for less money.
A constant ( high ) cost operating system is therfore un-acceptable to the manufacturing/primary industry sector.
So while all the accountents out there might love Microsoft, it doesn't matter. Money is *indeed* what it's all about and that's why Microsoft is going to fall. The financial big guns are out to make money for themselves - not Microsoft.
Posted by tid242:
hm.... a company owned by a M$ subsidiary (sp?) that ranks linux as faster than NT in regards to NT's own prococal.
you know something's up there....
Somebody must die!
Microsoft would be a good start.. Using my name like that.. bastards
I do want to be able to move an Image from my File Manager to my Word Processor and Move a chart from Excel. Everyone does. Linux can do this, but it takes days of downloading and compiling and tweaking. It's fun to geeks, but who wants that besides them? People want a product that's easy. Buy it, pop in the CD, install, and go. Not downloading 20 tgz's and compiling all day to get buggy Gnome running which uses so much cpu I might as well be using Windows. I like the challange unix brings. That's why I use FreeBSD. It's fun. Linux is not a solution for the desktop. I find that funny. It's going to take a lot more then Gnome and KDE to make Linux even clode to a desktop viable solution. Linux has no direction really as I see it. It's just a unix os that was in the right place at the right time. I hope I get lots of flames from all you Linux Kiddies.
"Users of FreeBSD sit back in the shadows, know they have an OS that actually WORKS.
erik
This is why Linux will go no WHERE. It's all these kids and they can say is... "Linux rules! Windows Sucks! YEAH!" About 0.0001% of people actually have valid arguments against Windows and What not.
I don't trust it. It might be that 200000 people use Windows and boot into linux for 4 minutes. That's dumb and I think that chart is a sham.
FreeBSD is not a good desktop os. FreeBSD is just what I use. I never said it was better. I just said I used it. Windows is a better Desktop OS then FreeBSD too.
Of course, Phineas T Barnum offers a dissenting voice: "There's a sucker born every minute". There's still a vast market for refried Osmond Brothers, i.e. Hanson, the Backstreet Boys and others of that ilk. Maybe MS needn't worry at all.
--
--
=8^
sed: Stream EDitor
ls: LiSt
grep: Get Regular Expression Pattern
seems mnemonic enough to me...
Only for English-speakers.
--
--
=8^
why would i want my best work stuffed away in some
proprietary box instead of being shared with the
world and have far more exposure and use?
what makes him think he knows how the best coders
think? he seems to only see the value of software
in the money it can make!
1)Ignore the competitor, at least publicly.
2)Come out swinging - tell everyone how useless/bad/undesirable the cometing product is
3) Announce a product that "Has all the features only better!"
4) Release a crappy me-too copy (unless the competitor has been purchased by this time).
5) Release an improved, almost workable me-too copy. But this time Embrace and Extend (TM). Competitor begins to wither.
Interesting thing is, I don't know how MS could pull off Act 3 this time! Can't wait to see where this is going...
'I suppose SGI, IBM, and so on, are making a benevolent contribution to the self proclaimed "linux community"?'
I suspect Corel, at least, is driven in part by Larry Ellison's personal dislike for Bill Gates. But hey, if we get more open source (in the case of Corel, mostly Wine) out of it...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"Regarding shrink wrapped applications, sure, corporate users would probably prefer those over some downloaded from an FTP site"
Actually, I think corporate users would like to have access to the source, and generally could have just one person do the build. If you use an application a lot, then each bug costs you appreciably and the advantage to being able to fix it yourself (possibly by hiring someone to fix it) is significant.
What companies do like, I think, is having a company behind the software that is motivated to fix most of the bugs and to do further development. So a company that allows people to see and modify their source -- even if they can't distribute it or reuse it in other apps -- is probably close to optimal for most businesses.
Also, more and more companies are getting fast internet connections. To them, a download may in fact be preferable to having to arrange a purchase or send someone out to buy a program.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
A fundamental flaw to Muth's whole thinking is calling this "work." For many of us, programming projects of our own choice (as opposed to those assigned by an employer) are play, not work. And people will play for free.
Obligatory Star Wars (Empire Strikes Back) quote:
Luke: "I -- I don't believe it!"
Yoda: "That... is why you fail."
And of course, there are others who get paid who will improve the tools they're working with. I've found that employers are often more willing to pay more in salary than to buy productivity-enhancing tools.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Whoops, am I getting my companies wrong? Ellison is CEO of Oracle...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I gaurunteeee! Seriously, though. What should we expect from the mouth of Sauron? It's kinda like asking Gobbels if Hitler was a nice fella. "Why, shit, yes!" would be the reply. Muth is clueless technically. He's reading a prepared script. He'd be saying the same thing about Sears' brand of washer or dryer as opposed to GE's if he were working for Sears.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Actually, plain old talent can win out in the end. Not that I think that Microsoft's lawyers have shown much talent, but they have managed to do enough damage control to keep their witnesses from getting tossed in jail for contempt or charged with perjury. Considering some of the things they've said, that's no small feat :)
I have been extremely impressed by David Boies though. I've read through quite a few days worth of trial transcripts and I like the way he works. They never see it coming, or if they do, they can't do anything to stop it. It makes perfect sense really. Get them to admit to a few things, then hit them with the tough questions and watch them start to backtrack and contradict and correct themselves. Makes for few laughs sometimes too.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I HIGHLY doubt that ANY NT machine can stay up for 2 years without a reboot, let alone TWO of them. Let's see, what version of NT was out two years ago? You must be running a pretty old version of NT since you can't upgrade without rebooting. Heck, you can't even install most software without rebooting. Quite frankly, I don't buy it. Those machines would have to be doing next to nothing to stay up for anything near that length of time. I think you're just a troll who is fibbing.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I didn't know Plato was a Linux person. They didn't teach us that in school. I think it's time to revise the curriculum. :)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually it was NT 3.5 with service pack 3 that was certified on (I believe) 3 different hardware configurations. Everything else you said looks correct though :)
I have to agree with you on the Ed Curry issue. He really got screwed over bad. For Microsoft, the truth has always been a touchy thing, best left to "behind closed doors" discussions rather than something to be known publicly. Unfortunately, that's also the way that much of the government is run. It's not surprising that they are taking sides with Microsoft. To put it plainly, something stinks.
The government, and the military in particular, have been switching entire installations over to Microsoft OSes and software illegally. Congress has already ruled that a couple of these transitions were illegal, but didn't do anything about it because it would cost more money to change them to something else now that they've been switched over to NT networks. From what I've read, there were no consequences for anyone. I've also read that there are more of these conversions still going on and that they will probably continue because the government won't put a stop to it. I'd like to know who is making the money off of these deals besides Microsoft. Somebody has to be making alot of money or this wouldn't be happening.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Here is a link I found on the Rainbow books.
http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/rainbow.htm
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Ah yes, kamikaze. Unfortunately Ed isn't that great of a pilot; he overshot by a thousand yards and plowed into Bill's new house.
No serious apps of any scale that requires stability and flexibility should be written with VB. Check out this page that I originally wrote for my team: DLL Hell
That was VB5 and I'd rather poke my eyes with a jagged skewer first before touching VB6.
Fuck Microsoft.
:)
This "structure" you speak of sounds like a warm fuzzy way of saying "forced down your throat & proprietary". There is plenty of money to be made by supporting systems that operate well and and comply with open standards. In fact, that's what I do at my job, every day.
Besides, if I'm in the business to make money, what have I to gain by overpaying for shoddy product?
Dear Sengan,
Corba is a development framework. Dragging barcharts is an application feature. If there was an app using Corba to drap and drop, then you could make a connection between the two but not now.
> I find it hard to believe that some of the best
> computer scientists in the world will want to do
> their work for free
People who code for money know how to get jobs. People who code for free know how to code.
M$ was founded by Bill Gates
:)
Minor Point: M$ was founded by Paul Allen in Albuquerque, NM. He asked his lil' buddy Bill to join him. Bill dropped out of school, moved to NM, and then proceeded to get in trouble for his bad driving habits.
Um, no. FOLDOC says that it comes from the ed (Ed is the Standard Editor!) command `"g/re/p", where re stands for a regular expression, to Globally search for the Regular Expression and Print the lines containing matches to it'. Some Unix commands are poorly named -- that's why most shells have support for aliasing./p>
--
W.A.S.T.E.
W.A.S.T.E.
Microsoft claims that they can't be a monopoly, because they only have a tiny share of the "Super-insanely-expensive-multi-terra-of-ram-monst er-server" Market. Truth of the matter is that NT (and definately 9x) is not scalable to that level of operating. NT's solution to everything is "throw another box at it." Here, where I work, we have aproximately 400 users total over a wan. At each location there is an NT box which services aproximately 10 - 25 users each. (PII 400, 512 Megs of Ram 9 gig drive et al). That's fine for the small branches, and I'd have to say for a small workgroup, NT is fine and dandy. Lets then look at our main office. 300 or so users. First, we have a box that's just the PDC (Primary Domain Controller). Its job it to make the Network Neighborhood look all nice and tidy and make the NT boxes see each other. How cute. This is a PII 300 with 1 gig of RAM. Crashes now and again, but overall not too bad. Then we have the Exchange server. Its a Alpha, pretty speedy, but I don't know the exact specs. I kinda remember something about 400+ Mhz and 2 gigs of RAM. Web server - P200 with 512 Megs of RAM. 2 BDC's (backup domain controller). These kick in if/when the PDC blows, and allow people to login to the domain when the main server gets lagged. Main file server (2 of these) actually house the files. Now, all totaled, we're looking at like 15 boxes to serve webpages, mail, and files to 300 users. Sounds like a good use of hardware to me.
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Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Man, themes silly words, so I KNOW your joking..
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
*Sniff* That was... beautiful. I've don't usually do this, but...
<AOL> Me too! </AOL>
Seriously, I wish more people thought and acted like this. What disturbs me the most about America is too many "yuppies" -- you know, the kind of people who live in suburbs, drive SUV's, play golf at the country club every weekend, own a $2,000,000 home, and maybe give $100 to charity every two or three months. So reading your post, Mr. "dev/null", was like a breath of fresh air. Thank you, and I hope I meet more people like you.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
If you want to look at a really new OS, check out the Extremely Reliable Operating System (a.k.a. the EROS project). It's not ready for users yet, but if want to hack on a new OS, the pre-release might be just what you're looking for.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
Hey, have any of you noticed something about this particular AC? He's posted the *EXACT SAME THING* (spelling mistakes and all) on all the recent Microsoft discussions. Go back and search through old Microsoft articles for yourself: notice "trail" instead of "trial" and "PED" instead of "QED". This guy blitzed out an astroturf (note "good for the consumer", "innovative and bright people" -- obvious Microsoft buzzwords) post and is pasting it in every time he sees a Microsoft discussion.
This guy's a Microsoft employee doing the "astroturf" campaign. Ignore him.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
I'm almost certain I've seen *this* post before, too! "I would given a medal..." [sic]. This is another copy&paste troll. He's submitted the same thing multiple times before, AFAIR (As Far As I Recall).
Whatever. People have already answered this one. I'm not even going to bother.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
Unfortunately, your vision of the "real world" seems to parallel a certain cable television program far more closely than reality.
You did get one thing right though. Microsoft is all about money, and that's the problem. If MS can get away with foisting poor products on it's customers while continuing to make money, it's darn well going to do it. And that is exactly what it has been doing, in addition to doing everything it can to keep any potential competitors out of the market. Where's the incentive to put out a quality product? With almost no competition and loads of people stupid enough to put up with poor software, poor support (how many times have people called MS tech support to report a bug and paid MS for the service?), and the MS upgrade cycle, MS will continue to make record profits. And as long as the bottom line is not in danger, there's no reason to change it's business tactics.
So where does that leave us? Well, since Microsoft has blocked nearly every commercial route to the market, the free software community is the only way to put MS in check. Personally, I think the commercial software industry has been out in la-la land for so long, that when people finally start to get a dose of the reality (free software, with paid support), it's the free software community that's percieved as being strange. that's perceived as being strange, when, in fact, the commercial software world is the one not based in reality. At least, I haven't heard Microsoft claim it's prices are high to cover piracy in a while, that's one of the silliest things I've ever heard.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
It was NT 3.51 that was certified C2 secure. They never had it re-evaluated for NT4. I find it hilarious that the C2 certification is still bandied about for an OS that you can't even buy any more...
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Read the script:
MyWindowsMate: Linux, is shit shit shit. It's the spawn of satan. Windows is the OS of the Holy.
Me: I don't believe you. Can I come round to your house and check it out (turn it to the dark side)?
MyWindowsMate: Yes, I've got this web browser which is so much better than Netscape. It gets Service Packs all the time.
I went round to his house, he ran Windows for me and put on this web browser (I can't remember the name but it's adventurous). Less than one minute and it brought the computer to life, which then proceeded to eat all his children, splattering blood everywhere.
MyWindowsMate: Err...it never usually becomes demonic
Me: Do you actually make sacrifices to this infernal machine?
MyWindowsMate: No, but I installed Service Pack 1.
Me: Do you ever see a shining halo above your computer?
MyWindowsMate: Err...no, but it's holier than the Angel Gabriel.
Conclusion: BOLLOCKS, If I used windows as much as I used Linux then I would have it opening portals to the nether world allowing demons through every minute. Windows is evil. Fact. Programs released are all version 6.66. Fact.
dylan_-
ps. This really happened.
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
At least 5 times I've tried opening a file in Word from a floppy disk with bad sectors (obviously I didn't know it at the time). NT 4 WorkStation, SP3. Result: BSOD.
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
*sigh*. The important thing here is this: on a Windows box, after the Gimp crashed, the entire OS would have died. The Gimp isn't Linux, however much you'd like it to be.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
They can't beat Linux on total cost of ownership so they say that cost per transaction is the most important thing. If that were the case everybody in the world would be running Solaris on an E10k.. In any case OS cost per transaction -> 0 as transactions gets large it's seven figure hardware costs and big support costs that bite you.
Cost of NT is an extremely big issue in a medium scale server application and using it in a large scale server application is idiotic since it does not scale very well and doesn't come close to running on Big Iron (Linux doesn't run on Big Iron either but it will before NT does). Linux beats NT where it counts, cost and reliability in serving NT domains and medium scale server aps on PC hardware. Add the ability of Linux to run more varied and cheaper hardware and you have a clear winner in the server world. I can see how MS could be smug about the user side for a while longer but they're losing the server side now to a supperior product.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I think breaking them up would be too unweildy of a hammer. I would like to see transparent pricing and fully documented API's. Let the market take care of the rest.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Exactly how is calling Linux a "Kiddy OS" any different then the sometimes childish things Linux advocates say. In my experience I have seen many lucid expositions of Linux's strengths on a technical basis but few such expositions of Microsoft's strengths from Microsoft advocates. The only counter example I can think of that clearly argues a _technical_ advantage of MS was the CS professor who wrote about the fundamental scalability of NT's internals. and pointed out some problems with Linux 's internals. I have respect for that, although I would have more respect if it meant something in practice.
I do not have much respect for monkeys on either side but they don't bother me much as long as I have the choice to choose what is best for my own use.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
If trolling were a word it would not be used in the context you used it.. Do yourself a favor troll an read the dictionary.
While you're at it shatter your illusions of MS-DOS.
In response to your opinion that the IBM PC was far more advanced than the Apple ][. I respectfully disagree. The Apple had much better graphics capabilities, BASIC in the shell and was cooler overall. The PC took off not because of DOS, which, let's face it, is a no brainer of an OS, but because of programs like VisiCalc and because the bare exposure of the hardware made it easy to write games. Microsoft is right in one thing, apps attract users and users attract apps. Too bad that doesn't work in the server environment where far fewer apps are needed and the big costs are support and downtime. For a server you need a real OS
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I applaud your analysis
"L'IT c'est moi!"
You forgetting that since the trial, all internal e-mail is forbidden. Try going around telling this to 25,000 ....
people
Couldn't they just use their brain-zappers? 8-?)
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Hell I'm Austrlian and I defiantly don't want them.
Hettar.
ZDNN is carrying a version of the article. This version allows you to add comments. I've got the second one up there, and there's a comment from Alan Cox (supposedly), too. I'd encourage some of you to write respectable comments to this version of the article.
Yeah, FreeBSD is dead, which *EXACTLY* why yahoo, cdrom.com, and hotmail are all using it, and why 3.1 just got released. Cripes. Some of you morons really need to get out into the world a little more...
*munch munch munch*
Bleh!
Nope, still as unsatisfying as all the other FUD out there. Keep trying guys, I'm sure you'll get it eventually!
-Seth
Linux does provide little value. To Microsoft, that it. That's the only way they see "value" anymore; what they can get out of it. And you've got to admit, from that standpoint Linux has no value; what can M$ get out of it? Nothing.
Perhaps, also, they mean raw monetary value. And once again, they're right: Linux provides very little monetary value. But it's not because of the things M$ said about it. It's because Linux has grown up according to an economic model so fundamentally different from anything which Microsoft has ever encountered (in particular the abscence of monetary compensation, or money in any form) that they can't really be expected to comprehend it. This is a Good Thing, because it means when M$ falls, they'll be caught completely off-guard. And I, for one, would love to see the look on Billy's face when he realizes that.
...away anything that microsoft currently has to offer. What other os can run so many server functions of half the memory required to run the same functions on a NT server. The last time I assisted in the setup of a Back Office server, It took up 85% of system resources with one person loged on and only idle processes running in the background.
I know of a Linux server that coughed up a major hairball and still survived. It one day decided to spawn 300 copies of a sendmail application. People were able to get to the files on the server with no slowdown, people were getting thier mail and internet just fine. In fact the only reason this problem was discovered was when the admin logged on locally and noticed the slow login. One issuance of the killall command, and a bit of re-configuring the sendmail app later, the machine went on for several more weeks till it had to be rebooted for a kernel update. Lets see M$ NT do that.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
And why should exposure be a better motivation that money to somebody that doesn't need an ego boost?
What else would I need money for then to boost my ego?
I mean, we're not talking about making a living here. If you're a good programmer you will be able to make a living in the next couple of years without much problems.
To be happy with what you do you need someone who tells you that it's good. And you will get the most honest responses if people can see what you've written.
If it comes to slim, reliable production systems, wheres NT?
-squid
-bind
-sendmail
-cron
-command-line based administration
-instant scripting
Let those M$ weenies go with M$-Office, but when it comes to servers, nobody who ever managed to find out how Unix really works (including BSD, Linux), will go the way back to NT.
Whoo! It's getting warm in here!
3 months ago, this would have concerned me.
Today this is just pure amusement.
Burn baby burn!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Maybe we could key their cars and burn dog doo on their porches, too.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I buy a $1 Million server, and then run out and buy Microsoft's "Just Like Daddy's" server OS to use on it?
While I'm at it I'll go have my Jaguar painted at Earl Sheib.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Right-click RPM file, click install.
My God, that nearly killed me!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
So work as a pornographer, or make snuff films.
Maybe you could be a lawyer that defends insurance companies against 5-year-old cancer patients.
I mean God, doesn't your conscience bother you?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
It's good to see that Microsoft has sharpened your technical knowledge as much as your grammar.
I thought trolls only lived under bridges?
I fail to understand what he means by Linux costing more than NT per transaction.
Does he mean Support? Could someone please enlighten me?
Unfortunatly, Mr. Muth has absolutly nothing new to say short of "Linux sucks! NT Rules!"
I'm not the least bit worried. It will be interesting to see what becomes of him
when Windows 2000 is released and is deemed a failure shortly after. I'll bet Microsoft's
answer will be "He was low level employee..."
Do not read this
But it helps sooo much when you're confronted by twenty years worth of heterogenous, incompatible, and back-assward systems that are piled on top of each other (many of them Microsoft's own messess, although the ODT3 is a close second to Win3).
ERP systems have to be cross-platform in order to succeed. (I mean, like, duh!) Shrink-wrap has nothing to do with it; if the ERP design scope isn't flexible enough to encompass a truly diverse environment, what does that say about the designer's concept of "enterprise?" Having the source available to the community goes a lot farther to fixing those problems instead of just re-framing the question as "what are you running if you're not running NT?"
Not a first post.
Indeed, and I will help MicroSoft make the move to any of the above countries with a swift boot to the posterior. You MS flunkies just don't get it do you? MicroSoft is irrelevant, in fact I challenge you to come up with a single task to be done on a computer that can only be done via MicroSoft software. Believe me, we don't need MicroSoft and threats about them leaving the country are about as frightening as Michael Bolton threatening to cease releasing music. I have never in my life met a top quality programmer who had any affection for anything MicroSoft - *never*, they are the purveyors of crufty, inelegant apis and bloaware - should they choose to depart my only response would be "good riddance". By the way, should you be prepared to claim "I'm a top quality programmer and I love MicroSoft" be aware that I have interviewed on the order of 100 developers in the last year and I shall subject your claim to serious scrutiny.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
I have gone back and forthe between the
"real world" and school sreval times. I did grow
up as a white upper middel class kid with
privlige, but I have also been to pore to thke the
buss. Do I care about "MONEY"? Not more then I
care about freedome and not fucking over othere
people and the world we live in. Have you evere
stoped to ask you self what the "real world" is
who defines it and who it serves? I think you will
find if you do that the people who define it are
the ones that it serves. The real world is we make
it and I chose to try to make it one where bullys
don't win and every on hase equla fredome and equality.
Actually, it was NT 3.50 that was certified at an Orange Book C2 level on a specific hardware platform (I don't remember just what platform).
There are many different publications from the National Computer Security Center. The Orange Book (properly called "Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria") is used for NCSC's Trusted Product Evaluation Program (TPEP). The Orange Book only addresses single-system security. In an effort to extend Orange Book evaluation classes to networked systems NCSN published the Red Book ("Trusted Network Interpretation of the Trusted computer System Evaluation Criteria"). The Red book is used for TPEP network evaluation. No Microsoft OS has ever been put through this evaluation, so far as I know.
There are many other color books, such as the Lavender Book for trusted database management systems, the Venice Blue Book for security subsystems, the Pink Book for the Rating Maintenance Phase Program (this is what Microsoft should have been working with to extend the C2 rating to later versions of NT), and the Purple book for formal verification systems.
You can find out more about these sorts of things in the O'Reilly book "Computer Security Basics," by Deborah Russell and G. T. Gangemi Sr.
Finally, the man who sheperded NT through the formal security evaluation process is Ed Curry. For his efforts and his attempts to play by the rules both the Federal gov't and Microsoft laid down, Microsoft destroyed his consulting firm and put him and his family in a precarious financial position. He's still trying to make sure the government knows the exact status of NT security, but seems to be meeting with substantial counter-efforts by both Microsoft and (oddly enough) the Feds themselves. Do a web search for Ed Curry, familiarize yourself with the issues, and help him in whatever way seems best; I advise helping however Ed asks for help. It's in all our best interests to keep the government open to the truth. (Apologies to non-US readers.)
Doug Loss
i think, death cries of so called "best software firm in the world" just begins :)
hany
Next stop: we win.
:)
stormr
----------------------
GPL Win32 UNDER RICO!!
Hello????? This is reality calling. You have no idea what you are talking about. Activex (and OLE IIRC) is a propriatary Microsoft invented technology which isn't very impressive and has absolutely NOTHING to do with being a server.
...to talk to this guy and ask him what it is like to get paid to lie for a living. Talk about a lack of morals. Falsehoods are all we ever hear from him and it makes me _seriously_ angry both at Microsoft, and at Mr. Muth.
Not that I have anything against FreeBSD, but you just compared Gnome to Windows, decided that Windows has a better interface, and concluded from this that FreBSD is better than Linux. How did you get to talking about FreeBSD? I am using Gnome on a system that could never support Win95/98.
BTW, I use Linux and it works, so I assume from your last comment that you were refering to windows as not working. If it was Linux you were refering to, then you simply sound bitter to me.
Good day.
When Microsoft began touting Linux as an alternative to Windows in their case with the DOJ, they didn't believe their own words. Now they are trying to backpeddle. It's fun to watch Microsoft try to convince the DOJ that Linux is competition and, simultaneously, convince customers that it isn't.
Even more fun since huge numbers of people are starting to see that it really is more competition than Microsoft will be able to handle.
Having worked in both corporate and small business America - I've seen a wide variety of OS. A few have different advantages over others in different arenas, but the point of the article wasn't NT's superiority over Linux - it was aimed at breaking the wave of publicity and the surge of popularity that Linux has been experiencing by telling the world what Microsoft thinks the world should want.
It's infuriating which is why a lot of us get upset, but the world will make up it's own mind eventually. If they want to live in mediocrity, so be it. The rest of us who know a better way will use it, whether it's Linux or BeOS or whatever is up to us.
I love freedom of choice.
You are absolutely right. Intuitive is what you are used to. Everyone talks about ease of use, but no one seems to be able to define it and justify the definition outside the framework of an existing platform. My personal opinion is that ease of use should be defined as consistency across applications for common functions and features. The justification is that something is easy to use if you don't have to learn anything new in order to use it. So, if applications have a lot of similarities then the user will be able to start using it quickly and therefore that applciation mst be easy to use.
This has already happened with most GUI applications. Common functions are almost always found in the same menus and operate the same way across applications. The file menu is a good example of this. This really isn't an operating system issue, but a style issue. The operating system or actually the GUI system can come into play as an enforcer of style, but it is the consistent style not the operating system that makes the computer easy to use. This is why Mr Muth claims integration is an ease of use feature it is how Windows enforces style. The only thing is he is mixing up method with result. The ease of use feature is extending the copy, cut, paste skills that everyone learns, to work across applications and with more than just text across those apps. Method is only imprtant to the programmer not the user.
just for the sake of clarity:
sed: Stream EDitor
ls: LiSt
grep: Get Regular Expression Pattern
seems mnemonic enough to me...
j---------
----- when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro -- Hunter S. Thompson
I dunno, I thought the same thing when I read it. Considering the fact that Microsoft named Linux as a competitor in their antitrust trial, and the fact that said trial is still going on, why is this guy coming out and saying, essentially, "Microsoft does not see Linux as a competitor"? Honestly, one would think that Microsoft would at least clarify their position on Linux within the company so as not to have multiple conflicting statements made..
-mike kania
Ok, you received them "free," but the OEM you bought it from paid for it, and you can be sure that at least part of that cost was passed on to you, the consumer.
-mike kania
Argh. This is the type of post that completely pisses me off. If you're going to refute his claims, tell us what exactly makes you think that his claims are invalid instead of just telling us they are. If you don't support your position, it becomes just as weak as the position you're trying to tell us is so bad.
-mike kania
Linux is, frankly, past the stage where simple FUD tactics will stop its momentum. This seems to be common knowledge for everyone outside Redmond.
Still, I hope Muth believes his own rhetoric, and that his opinion represents the mainstream thinking at Microsoft. Such head-in-the-sand mindsets will make Linux's success that much easier.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
Cold dose of reality -- success isn't the issue. Breaking laws that exist for good reason is the issue. You can't just do whatever you want -- in business, or personal life. That's called anarchy, and most philosophers I know of seem to think its a bad thing. I tend to agree.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
Rob, are you logging where the submissions are coming from tonight? Seems we have quite a crop of anonymous pro-Redmond types checking in. Perhaps Muth was only part of the latest PR plan?
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
I agree with you. A few months back, this would have been a routine "keep them in line" action. Now, it seem pathetic and desperate.
The next year seems exciting, indeed.
Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from
Kythe
heh, sounds like some lyrics from one of his sounds
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
They must. That's the only thing I can think of that explains brain-dead blathering like this.
Ed? Ed? Time to put the happy-smoke away.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
OLE? My, my, you want Linux to utilize a broken, proprietary, never-lived-up-to-expectations protocol like OLE? No thanks.
CORBA? Uhm. FYI, flamebait, Linux already utilizes it. Thanks for playing.
OLTP? Shakes his head and just walks away before he makes a complete fool of this AC
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
An extremely well written and incisive article.
Good job!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Name one office suite that's as good as Office?
..
....
......
There is no office suite "as good as" Office. Because Office SUCKS. It's all bells and whistles. Anyone who is looking for straight PRODUCTIVITY...should I say it....yeah....HATES OFFICE!
There is one office suite that's far, far better than Office. Basically it's one that Office has spent YEARS and dollars uncounted trying, unsuccessfully I might add, to emulate.
Two words for you.
Word Perfect
Integration is not always desireable. Office is highly integrated into the WinDOS platform. One of the REALLY major side-effects of that though is that if Office crashes, it usually drags WinDOS down without much of a fight.
Under Linux, you may lose the app, but unless you're some doofus running as Root for everything you do, you seldom, if ever lock the box up.
I'll agree. Currently IE is the more stable browser on a WinDOS platform. NS seems to get less and less stable around the time upgrades are made available. How much is Netscape's fault, and how much of it is malicious little "tweaks" left in by MS programming (or is what they do pogromming?), I cannot tell you.
Also, face it. The entire computer market is NOT the desktop market, nor is it all on the Internet.
Linux currently occupies a server niche, but is rapidly moving in and becoming a credible desktop environment.
In addition, when being used as a server, there's little sense in keeping a desktop open to run a graphical browser. And if you just need to make sure a page exists or looks good, do it the RIGHT way, from a desktop machine. Why bog down your server? (Oh, and before you start screaming about Linux not handling loads, I can and have had over 9 gigs of transfer on a server a month (light I know), with Web, IRC, FTP, Telnet, and a few other things running, and STILL am able to open up a desktop and play around.) It's not about that. It's about using the right tool for the right job. If you want to drive a nail, do you use a pipe wrench?
Also, Microsoft is definitely NOT "trying to make great products". They're trying to leverage mediocre, buggy, unstable software by knitting it as close as possible to the OS kernel so that what would otherwise be useless, not to mention painfully slow, appears more as a "feature" and is far quicker than it would be if it were truly a standalone program. This is why most non-MS software packages run slower than the stuff MS puts out. MS has access to all those nice little undocumented API calls to give it higher/better access priority with the kernel.
Also, there's a reason that Linux is, as that bootlicker Muth called it, SHELFWARE.
Not because people try it, don't like it, and chuck it up on a shelf never to use it again.
It's because they try it, find out that it works like it's supposed to, and never have to reinstall the beastie ever again. Upgrade? Sure. Reinstall completely, once in a red-white-and-blue moon.
Please troll elsewhere. We've had enough laughs on this issue. If we laugh much more, we're going to asphyxiate.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
yeah...more stable than gnome
---
Wordperfect has a better spellchecker than the one you're now using.
---
"Think of it as a burst of cold Redmond rain on the Linux parade."
It's not raining, it's FUDding!
"We're all in the business of wanting the customer to have the information needed to make informed choices," Muth said. I guess one of the fringe benefits to working for MS is that you can afford some really fine drugs.
About this Total Cost of Ownership deal. Anybody know how much of that is hardware, how much is electricity, how much is paper and toner cartridges, how much is furniture, buildings, et cetera; in other words what percentage is either software and support costs for that software (keeping support personnel trained)or what percentage isn't?
"I find it hard to believe that some of the best computer scientists in the world will want to do their work for free," he said. "Without a long-term technical road map, without multimillion-dollar test labs, someone wants me
to believe these visionary programmers and developers will want to do the best work of their lives and then give it away. I do not believe in that vision of the future."
Of course not, they're going to write really lame stuff for their personal use and then put out in public with their names attached so as to totally trash their own reputations.
"Without a long-term technical road map..."
Like the one that let them see the internet coming so much sooner than everybody else?
Apparently Muth is planning a second career in stand-up comedy, and thought he'd get in a little practice and try out some new material.
"Muth attributed the open-source hype to a number of factors, including a lack of fairness in media coverage of Linux."
See, he's a regular -insert name of your favorite comedian here-.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Oh-lay! means there's a lot of bull nearby.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
To:ranger@NoSpAm.befunk.com
Hey Ranger Rick!
Did you know that some guy at Microsoft named Ed Muth got hold of a galley proof of your post, changed all the instances of "Linux" to "Windows" or "NT" and vice versa, made a few other changes of the text to be consistent with the name swaps, and then posted it at ZDNET?
Overlooking his plagerism, I must say that his was much, much funnier!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Ironically, I'd like to get a copy of Bob for my niece and nephew to play with, but I've never even seen it in a remainder bin, and I'm pretty sure MS won't be to eager to help me out, although to be fair they haven't completely purged all mention of it from their archives. Anybody know where I could find a copy (preferably never opened)?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
What is the point of posting links to shit like this? All it causes is yet another Linux sucks/Linux rules flamewar -- like, we really need another one of those.
Linux is more efficient and reliable than NT, Java (from a design and implementaion standpoint) scales way better than VB, and CORBA works much better in the real world (the one with the internet and large corperate WANs).
And all of the above will work on x86, Alpha, Sparc, UltraSparc, and PowerPC platforms, so your customers have a choice.
--
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Two points. 1) 500 days is a year and a half of continuous run time. Linux can run that long, but usually in that time someone upgrades the kernel or monkeys with the hardware. 2) I've heard reports of several 2.0 machines crossing the 500 day boundary. The result was that the uptime counter was reset, the systems kept running.
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You used the strong word 'never' and the weaker word 'most' in the same sentence. I'd never say never with regard to anything in the computer biz (even "MS will never make a great OS"? that's right). In this case I might have let it pass if you had said "OSS will never address ALL software needs", since "all" is as strong a word as "never". But never support most?
:)
After all, there are OSS spreadsheets and accounting software (geeks need to do their bills too). When you said "'a suit' can run _his_" accounting software or spread sheet" (emphasis added) did you "MS Money and Excel"? Sure, if you want a specific spreadsheet then you are out of luck, but if you want _a_ spreadsheet, you're good to go. Heck, the only genres of software I can't think of an OSS app for are ones that I never use and hence wouldn't know about.
Some people tend to get hung up about specific apps. But the wonderfull thing about the human brain is that its good at generalization. Once its seen a couple spreadsheets, it won't have trouble adapting to another (sadly the human brain also seems to like routine, so not many ever try that second spreadsheet).
Anyway, I will give you that "OSS will never be the be all and end all", because it's hard to argue against so many superlatives
The enemies of Democracy are
Well, that's fine. As I said, I would have let it go if you said "all", but you didn't. Financial software is a good example of the niche the spare-time geek won't fill (though spreadsheet is most likely not). My thrust was that 'most' and 'never' are not readily combined in a tenable fashion in this case. As 'most' typically means 'more than half', it seems quite possible to accomplish penetration into 'most' niches - and however likely or un- it may be, that is enough to nullify 'never'. Even a harsher definition of 'most' of 75+% is not so unreasonably that I believe you could say 'never' with any assurance.
:)
Geeks are geeks are geeks (has a certain ring to it), and since when do geeks care about user-friendly interfaces? Yet we have KDE and Gnome. Of course strong OSS projects are a one man operation, but what does that have to do with it?
And there is something that you are forgetting - 'Open Source Software' doesn't mean 'geek working in his spare time on what he thinks is cool' necessarily. There are entities that do have cash and employ geeks and tell them what to write that produce open-source software. RedHat, Abisource are examples.
RedHat, I needn't remind you, has paid developers working on Gnome. Because they think making linux easy to use will sell more boxes. So now we have OSS being supported by commercial entities, and those entities can provide the motivation and money to make electronic stamps or up-to-date tax software.
Granted, there are reasons why large-scale adoption of OSS practices by corporations is unlikely, but to say 'never' would be hasty. So with corporations making OSS products, why can't OSS cover every niche? Again, I dislike saying 'every', since there are so many niches, so instead let me say 'a vast preponderance, approaching all'.
The geek population and the working population overlap, and as long as they are making OSS stuff, who cares if they work for Redhat or their own personal pleasure?
And remember, when you use the word 'never', time cannot prove you right
The enemies of Democracy are
But, just think of the fun it will be to shatter all the frozen Microsoft employees come winter! ;)
Woo Hoo!
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
That's a very weak argument. Windows itself is many times bigger than Linux, it supports a lot more applications, is installed on tons more systems, and has many more users so this kind of a comparison is idiotic.
As is yours. Size is a relevant comparison between software, but not in the way you use it. It is a proven fact that as the lines of code increase, the time/costs involved in coding/debuging/testing/bugs increase exponentially.
Secondly, while it may or may not be true that Windows supports more applications, (Keep in mind that Linux has access to a decent chunk of the UNIX software out there) that is ultimately a function of it's market deployment. As the deployment grows, support (both commercial and non-commercial) grows. It's a fairly simple relationship. And Linux's market deployment is CERTAINLY growing.
Furthermore, compared to Windows, which is descended from the Windows of yore (3.x, 2.x, 1.x)
and MS-DOS, Linux is still a young OS. As Linus stated during his LinuxWorld keynote, it's been around for 9 years. ONLY 9 years!
There's nothing to say that 10 years down the road, when Linux reaches version 4.0 (0r 5.0/2000), people won't be 'Linus-bashing' and jumping ship to FooBarOS.
But, in the intirm, Linux has become a commercialy viable server OS, and is making inroads to the desktop market. Perhaps it will fail. You takes your chances. But contrast that to Windows, which is ultimately a desktop OS, desperately attempting to make inroads in the network server market.
Of course Windows is 'easier to use' for most people. It was built from the ground up for 'user friendliness'. (user candy) But what does that say about Linux/UNIX in general, which was built from the ground up to Serve?
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Point taken. ;)
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Value is not what the sellar attaches to the broduct, but what the buyer percieves from it.
i guess ED would have to go back to his school for his lessons in english.
Value is not what the sellar attaches to the product, but what the buyer percieves from it.
i guess ED would have to go back to his school for his lessons in english.
Didn't Microsoft just announce that most of what little shrink-wrapped NT software exists isn't going to run on NT5/Windows 2000?
Guess what, no one needs 40 million different Word Processors!!! I dont sit there and get upset that my Mac only has say 10,000 peices of software for it, when my Windows machine has 1,000,000. After you get past about 20 or so you use, the rest either suck or are of no use to you! For instance, even if no one made anotehr Paint program or Text editor for the Mac, i would stil be happy cause i think BBEdit and Photoshop satisfy my needs perfectly. And on linux, even if no one ports there Application Server, PHP3 works great for me, better than ANY shrinkwrapped package i have seen. And are we forgetting, Perl? DO we need a shrinkwrapped package for Perl now? Give it up Microsoft, number of peices of crap software != value of system.
-- Steal Me --
I see a lot of people trying to argue with you that Linux really isn't that hard, etc. The real point that you need to realize is that you just can't handle Linux. It's an unfortunate fact, but one a lot of people are going to have to deal with. Linux is never going to be written for the people that can't handle reading a manual and perhaps *gasp* looking for new video drivers. What were those video cards that you couldn't make work, for the record?
So, in short, I'm sorry you had problems, but I'm not really going to call it a fault of Linux. It's more of a self-selection thing going on.
Later,
Zach
My
Thou speakest with ignorance, fellow man.
FYI, I've been using StarOffice under Linux for the past two months now without a hitch. It kicks ass. There IS an excellent word processor for Linux. I'm using it. I haven't been so happy since the day I stopped using Windows entirely.
StarOffice has got a great spreadsheet program that works beautifully. It doesn't hog up my system like Excel does, and I don't have to worry about Word Macro Viruses, when I load Word Documents.
Hey Staroffice does have presentations, too. Now I really can wipe Windows from my laptop, since I can use the presentations in StarOffice instead of that PowerPoint POS.
-- If you met me, you probably wouldn't remember me. I'm pretty hard to remember.
Ed's been smoking crack again.
a bolster for corprate insecurity, good only for
pleasant waffling in board meetings.
What Linux and OSS is about is solving every
problem at once, in parallel, without reins. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I don't think we can discern his exact motivations from one position paper.
I realize Slashdot is mostly College kids (as am I) who come from preppy ass upper-middle class homes in the richest parts of U.S. cities and small cities.
I have not seen the demographics on slashdot readers. It would be interesting to know "Who is your average slashdot reader?".
But once you get out into the real world, you will realize that there is more to business than just _the most stable platform for running your servers_. Microsoft is all about MONEY. So are businesses [at least the last time I checked]. Business and making money out in the real world depends on having a structured support system. (maybe someone else with more of an economics background could elaborate for me)
You are correct in that the purpose of a business is to make money. As a matter of fact, if you are an officer of company with shareholders, you have a responsiblity to them to try and make money. In the case of a publicly traded corporation, failure to do so could be illegal. However, I think it is bad business strategy to offer a consistently inferior product to the consumer. This strategy can surely not be successful in the long run. Yes good marketing allows firms to sell poor products, but we are entering a new economic age, where the cost of discovering information conerning the quality of a product is approaching zero. The web offers me the "Consumer reports" of the new economy. If I want to know which O/S is best for my needs I can read opinion papers, expert analysis, anything. And yes I can also read cute little ads. I often conceive of starting my own software / consulting firm. I have decided that the quality of my work will be my most important marketing weapon. Certainly I will seek to publicize this quality to perspective customers/clients, but I will also be willing to take fair criticism. I think this attitude stems from the way I was raised by my parents. They made it clear to me from a young age that I should never submit a homework assignment that I hadn't done to the best of my ability. "Would you want your name on poor quality work? Work you know you could have done better?". I believe the answer is no. In the new economy I hope that quality can be a vital part of corporate strategy.
Don't just reply with and say I'm a troll, as I will give an e-mail address at the end of this. I am not in a mood right now to elaborate more on this, so I will let others do so. But I would like to say this: don't ANY of you give a fuck about MONEY? If you do, then don't just keep saying 'fuck Microsoft',
I have sought to move away from saying 'f*ck Microsoft'. Though to be honest I let it slip a few times a day while reading ZDNet articles. I have decided that my energy and excitement is better used towards developing new business ideas, creating quality software, and serving as resource to newbies(be they new to the Internet, linux,whatever).
because while their software (most of it) is of very low quality, they do have a very structured business UNLIKE most of the Linux world.Their business and management structure, are yes structured. As evidenced by the Redmond campus with its 30 or 40 or "who knows how many" buildings that house different product teams. In addition their marketing efforts are coordinated and targeted. At these levels they do run an excellent business. The "Linux World" is not a corporation. It is a community with many diverse participants. Some are seeking to explore business issues with Linux. Others are looking to improve the kernel or device drivers of linux. Some are looking at how to develop applications and interfaces that are useful to them and others. Rigid structure would not serve this community's participants well.
Someone else who is more educated in Economics might want to elaborate on this a bit more, because I am just speaking from a REAL WORLD point of view. I now work in the Real World, and the Real World is a little bit different than the college world that many of the Slashdot.org readers are used to.
To give you my demographics. I am a 4th year student at the University of Pennsylvania studying computer science engineering and business as a undergraduate and Telecommunications and Networking as a graduate student. I have worked in the "real world" for IBM, Bellcore, and 3Com and was glad to meet people at each of these companies that were committed to producing high quality work.
Again, please feel free to e-mail me... stifle33@hotmail.com
And please feel free to e-mail me at Stuart.Eichert.wh99@wharton.upenn.edu with your thoughts on these subjects. I am considering writing an essay on the role of product/service quality in software companies.
Stuart Eichert
U. of PENN student/FreeBSD hacker
Stuart Eichert
You know, file sharing and web servering were done long time before OLE and ActiveX, and they have nothing to do with web servers and file servers. furthermore, recent tests have shown that Linux+Samba(a file server which uses NT's protocol) totally outform NT.look here.
besides, Linux today supports Corba, a DCOM alternative
Natureman
You want a good word processor other than microsoft?Applixware,StarOffice,WordPerfect, and soon gwp and go
Yoy want a good spreadsheet?just take a look at gnumeric, it's quite close
A browser better then IE?I use the good old netscape 3, and i think it's better than both ie and netscape 4.0
Natureman
Can you please find out what version of Gimp did he run?
Natureman
This is so funny I've gotta pick out some holes in it!
./configure, make, make install? Plus I don't even have to go through the struggle of taking the nasty shrinkwrap off ;) And it's better for the environment!
/ 199902/ntdllcache.txt.html
>First, a broad base of support for applications >-- especially off-the-shelf, shrink-wrapped >applications -- is necessary for a modern >operating system, he said.
What's so hard about downloading a gziped program and typing
Hmmm... Well if we had everything shrink wrapped like Microsoft does we'd get the same time of dumb default setpu problems they do, ie setups that set up services you don't know about and provide a big open door for people to get into your system. Can anyone say IIS? Which brings me to my next point.
>On the server side they want strong queuing and >security. This is all done through integration. >Linux has a low degree of integration. Linux is >basically a big step backward for those two >reasons plus others."
So Linux has week security. I guess he hasn't visited Roothshell or AntiOnline and found the plethora of security related bugs and hacks that exist for the Redmond based baby! Sure this site also has bugs for linux but the difference is that it is usually a matter of days, maybe even hours before they're fixed, in Microsoft land it can take months!
Just check out http://www.rootshell.com/archive-j457nxiqi3gq59dv
See ya
Euchrid
Hm... Let me see...
If
a) you *do* work for MS
and
b) you code (or work) like you spell/write
and
c) there's more of you in that company (likely?)
I would say that explains a thing or two about the
bad quality of most MS software...
Argathin
... Now the article seemed a mix of ignorance and FUD fight. Imply the last step.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
The Ed's Formmula to Transaction Cost (TC):
TC = ((Setup Time+Avalable Applications) * (Development Program * Pi * Usage Risk^2)
The Ed's Formmula to Integration (I):
I = ((Number of Icons in the Desktop)^2) * (4 * (Excel Bars + Word Documents))
The Ed's Formmula to Software Quality (SQ):
SQ = (Salary for coders + Salary for developers) * (test labs quantity)^2 * (Cost of the labs)
The Ed's Formmula to Linux Users (LU):
LU = (Population in the world) - (Population in the world) + 100
The Ed's constatant for what people wants (PW):
PW = What we want them to want.
It's SO EASY TO MAKE FUN OF THIS GUY THAT MAKES ME FELL SORRY FOR HIM
But I wish he did! Then it would be easy to take over their market share...with people as dull witted as that!
Sorry but most of the people that I know in Microsoft right now are actually pretty pissed off at the company so....
me thinks this is a funny Linux guy...
Nick
LSG
Oh One more thing about ZD-Net.....
No one that I know in IT even reads the damn thing... I mean come one give me a break..they have a cheesy place called the "Linux Briefing Center" I mean come on... do people really go there? Who? and WHY? Everyone knows the ZD-Net is a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank which is run by guess who...Microsoft!! wow what a revelation...get with the program son... no one takes ZD-Net seriously....
Of course I think your actually a Linux guy but hey that's just MHO...
Cheers,
Nick
LSG
Nick
LSG
Trust me folks....Microsoft is running very scared. Those of us who have been in the business for a while and can
remember our first Altair, know that Bill Gates and Co. didn't "get it" 20 years ago and he still doesn't "get it" now.
His worst nightmare has come to pass. Those "hobbiest" programmers are giving away code! How dare they! Don't you
know that when you do that it makes it hard for people like him (his coders) to write good software and sell it for a 200%
mark-up?
Needless to say we all know that a majority of people that work on the code for Linux and it's various apps. blow away the
neophytes at Microsoft.
But hey as my martial arts teacher Shoto Tanemura once said to me..."If you were not scared...there would be no need of
a defensive reaction, the person in control of himself can respond...not react. Remember that reaction is when your
environment dictates you actions... Response is when YOU are in control of you.."
Redmond is scared silly....Bill's worst nightmare is here...and succeeding...
If economic stats make you feel any better, a senior IT market analyst from Forrester Research was on CNN a couple of
nights ago and said something close to the effect of "The Open Source Software model is dynamic and effective. Even
Microsoft with all it's money and resources can't out program or out perform it because they don't have the ability to
harness the collective IQ power of programmers across the world."
Microsoft is more into cable companies and DSL access now than Operating Systems folks...
smile, relax, and run Linux.
Cheers,
Nicholas Donovan
President
Linux Systems Group
New York
I'll be very simple and very direct....
My company uses OSS and proprietary software such as Sybase and Oracle because they suit our needs.
Frankly the thought of using Microsoft is just to risky as it is not really a supported product.
I mean if something goes wrong who can I have come in and fix it? No one! I can trust Oracle as their products have never given me issues... Sybase so far has been good as well. In previous companies I have either managed or had ownership in we have tried Microsoft products but they proved to be too unreliable.
Often a company can release the preliminary API to the OSS community and let them cut their teeth on it. Guess what the Ethernet drivers in Linux are written for us by NASA. Some of out kernel code comes from guys from Australia to New Zealand to Zaire. Don't tell me that companies can't afford to have their people working on OSS. Often people work on it in their own time and the advances they make contribute to the companies overall code pool. I'd much rather have a Linux programmer than a Win32 only programmer as in my over 20 years in IT have shown me.... people that are from a Unix/Linux background tend to be more well rounded. Which is why Linux/Unix programmers and administrators are usually paid more as well..
Cheers,
Nick Donovan
Linux Systems Group
New York
After reading the article, AND not having a chance to flame 'um directly..., I'm depressed! Total FUD. Hell, Linux is scaleable, works wonders with older hardware, and hopefully I'll be bringing up a new ISP with it shortly..., without all of the licencing and MS burps.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
and I'll use it to light the small bonfire I'm planning for my Win95 CD.
:)
(soon as i get everything working right w/ Linux of course
~Grell
Microsoft does have a Year 2000 problem. We're it.
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears. Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky
Oh, where to start, where to start? First off, the "idea" of a personal computer was around for one helluva lot longer than Microsoft. In fact, the first mass-marketed PC was a little box called the Altair, which a young Harvard student named William Gates wrote a BASIC interpreter for. _Not_, as you would have us believe, for the IBM PC. Secondly, it is true that QDOS was the basis for MS-DOS. However (and someone out there please back me up on this, my memory is admittedly shaky here), the company and code was swallowed up by MS. Thirdly, my 64K OS/9-based Color Computer (yes, I said Color Computer) whomped on the original IBM-PC's with MS-DOS. It even had some productivity software, though it was pretty awful. Most of what I used, I wrote! Finally, having used Linux, WordPerfect, etc., as well as Microsoft products, well, I don't call it Microsoft LookOut for nothing!
Meow.
Windows is the Acme of computing -- in the Wile E. Coyote sense.
After reading this, it became clear that MS is getting rather nervous, to say the least. When something they don't like appears, start the FUD engines churning and try to destroy their economic base, just wait out the company until it goes under or is primed for buyout. Unfortunately, that is completely useless against the Linux community.
Even if MS is successful in turning away the corporate community in the short term, Linux will continue as always. In fact, I can see the FUD having the opposite effect on developers, getting them so enraged by the bad press that they go out out of the way to create excellent software. MS is now at the beginning of a very long struggle. They are a not so immovable object facing a truely unstoppable force.
So let MS chatter on, the best that they can do is slow down Linux in the short term. As with all empires, this one too must fall, nature strives for entropy, MS cannot maintain its order forever.
So take this article for what I did, a good laugh. More of these will come along, and the community must be ready to take them with a grain of salt. Letting MS generate discord will let them gain the upper hand.
this is why I _love_ slashdot so much. I come in to work in the mornings (hey, I'm on GMT+2) and read the newest articles. The headline was greeted by histerical laughter! I just really find it funny that the M$ can be so bloody wrong. Thanks again to slashdot for providing me with comic relief in the morning :)
--- "He who dies with the most toys, wins."
If Microsoft hired you... Well I can see why their products crash so much. If you can't spell, write a complete sentence, or use proper grammar, it becomes obvious what is wrong with microsoft.
I thought MS Word had a spell check, and a grammar check. Use it.
As to linux crashing... I bought a dell laptop and a few months later they sent me a Win98 upgrade. That day I saw on the new how Bill was demonstrating Win98. He used a scanner and the damn thing locked up on him. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
We *are* talking about the the same "programmer" who couldn't write a working flood-fill routine for MS Basic, aren't we?
Read _Barbarians Led by Bill Gates_. An eye-opener; I'm amazed they ever shipped a single product.
-- Cerebus
-- Cerebus
No more needs to be said. We don't want a redmond here... 'tis bad enough our government lets M$ get away with what they do against our own IT companies - the last thing we need is Bill playing cricket in our own backyard.
Besides - they'd hate it here. Australians are renouned for backing the battler in any fight - and I can't remember the last time M$ fit that description.
'sapientia potestas est'
'nuff said.
'sapientia potestas est'
Does anyone else feel like a Macrosloth PR guy has rocked up at a childcare centre and offered all of the kids a lolly-pop to go to /. and push the MS-line??
/.
Just about all of the pro-MS crap here has been posted by an AC, with the content covering everything from CORBA to Active X to the stability of NT, but all seemingly worded through the mouth of a 10 year old. Each post essentially says "Microsoft is good for us, so leave them alone or I'll tell my dad..."
Something smells funny on
'sapientia potestas est'
Does anyone else find it odd that the "operating system" upgrade that is Internet Explorer 5.0 is being sold separately on the M$ website? Everything article on the site referring to IE almost never mention the added-value the OS gets, just talks about IE as a browser.
Are investors that stupid to keep pouring money into a company that cannot organise a coherent defense? Or worse, one that sends a relative rookie (the M$ lawyer is what, 35-37?) to the highest court in the US to defend its business. Talk about thumbing your nose! And mind you, I'm not age discriminating here. I'm sure the lawyer is smart...however, when it comes to law, there is ALWAYS something to be said about age since both wisdom and presentation are factors.
Jesse
Ofcorse NT is lacking apps, Nobody can port the damn programs because they are lacking the idea of just passing around the source code.
./configure, make, make install.
With Unix (Linux, *BSD, Et Cetra....) We can pass around the source code, and compile it extreamly quickly, with Win32 and WinNT, you halfto pass around the binarys, and when you hit a diffrent platfrom that NT is running on, thows programs wont run, and they have no way of porting the programs, because they dont share the soruce code.
Hell, look at Win2k, they are trying to make it the most advanced os, but when I took a look at it, tryed out beta1, it stunk, it was slow, it crashed offten, it only liked usb hardware, in short, it was a peice of crap, it would probaly have done better in an imac system then a i386.
And so we can only pass special binarys, so what, it dosent take a rocket scientist to do
my $.02!
The fact you say that it cannot share files and serve web pages as well as NT makes it clear you have not done any homework.
Linux is not perfect, no OS is, but where it competes with NT/98 it tends to do better.
In fact my Linux can mount my FAT32 98 partitions, whereas NT does not, go figure.
Ice Tiger
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
As it happens every day,
or at the most 47.9 days.
Ice Tiger
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Yeah as opposed to Linux and Gnome users who on the whole are so mature. Face reality bud, and realize that it's not just the pro MS crowd who is being immature.
The revolution will be mocked
Ed is the standard text editor
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
try this
That guy is so incredibly stupid, it is hard to believe...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
If not - they they good treatment against hallucinations out there. Try it.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Yeah, and if you write it down on restaraunt receipts, you will warp space in no time...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
There is no question in my mind that this is purest bull. There's no way you can run an NT box usefully for that long without rebooting it; even if you don't have problems with stability, about half the applications you install will want a reboot; changing IP settings requires a reboot, etc. If you want to put any kind of load on the box and run anything that might make NT useful, like IIS, or something similar, you are going to have to reboot at least every once in a while. This guy is clearly not telling us something (like maybe his two-year-old NT boxes are sitting in a dusty corner, not doing anything whatsoever).
But in this case it's total propaganda.
... er ...
... but then this article is designed for non-technical people -- to try to scare them away from Linux.
Claiming that there is a "higher technical risk" in Linux is the most laughable part of it. What about the "technical risk" that Microsoft will change the next release of NT so that your existing Microsoft software (or competing software) stops working, forcing you to buy the "upgrade". What if the next version of NT just happens to break your in-house application? The one that has been working so well for the past two years that you've reassigned most of the programmers?
And who's in the better "technical" position to fix any problems caused by a new release? The linux programmer who has the source code in compilable form, AND a full source code patch history of each and every change, or the NT programmer who has
What's the technical risk of that?
This is pure FUD, designed to scare management types who don't understand what open source is into thinking that Microsoft is looking out for them.
Notice that he never specifically described any "technical risks"
> "Without a long-term technical road map..."
Here he is referring to "Microsoft Bob"
- jms
Okay, he's right. Linux does not have off the shelf apps. I can't go to my Best Buy and get the latest version of Oracle for Linux in a box. But I've got one coming anyway.
The fact is, many apps for MS are installed the same way the Linux world does it. Primary apps like Oracle and WP are ordered on CD, and you as the IT of your own little computer base install it for better or worse. How many non-IT people ever install large packages for their corporation?
The smaller apps are downloaded, unzipped, (we've got an extra step), then installed. Anyone using the web and MS will say that a lot of their apps were installed that way. Netscape (don't have to unzip it), MSIE (download cabs? those are zipped files right?), etc. The fact of the matter is that the distribution model of going to a reseller is crumbling in this industry. You don't go to Best Buy, you go direct to Dell for your computer. You don't go to Circuit City, you go direct to the software team. MS is perpetuating the old model, as well as the hardware periphery companies, to help those companies that have been forced to be the grunts of their monopoly.
I bought my computer at Best Buy, for an immediate solution and knowledge that my warranty would be void the moment I got home. I opened this bitch up and started with the upgrades and tearing apart. I recently painted the thing. I didn't go to Best Buy because I was too stupid to build one, nor go to Dell because I wanted custom. I needed both of those solutions, but I needed them fast, so I compromised and got a fairly decent computer, never mind the OS (that comes off easy, hmm... fdisk or format... fdisk, I'll have to do it sooner or later.)
Big corporations can look to Linux, because the apps are there, and their IT people know how to go about getting them and putting them on. Muth just has lost touch with the IT group at ms. Linux is only run by the IT group, and a few well trained individuals. None of us started out gurus, and the learning curve is equally steep for all OS for a novice. I just hate the fact that MS increases the learning curve by putting out a shoddy system that does it all for you, too much goes on behind the scenes and people just adopt the "as long as it works" attitude. I have noticed that the Linux community has the attitude, "as long as it works, alright, but when it fails then what..." Well, ms says reboot, reinstall, reformat. Linux actually lets you recover without those extremes in most cases and most of the time you can do it without the extreme of reboot and reformat. Why, because we already know the frustration that computers cause us in the programming phase. I think we look at our users, or at least should, in the respect that this is a computer, it is not a toy. If you want to treat it like a toy, use ms. After that people will begin to understand that blue screens of death and the like are what's to be expected of an operating system that doesn't understand its customer base, except to treat them as the lowest common denominator.
Basically, that's why the world is getting more stupid, because no one is forced to learn, and that makes everyone but the true lovers of knowledge happy. The day I stop learning is the day I take my last breath. How many dead people do you know today?
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
No the REAL real reason that VHS beat BETA was that while VHS (formerly known as Alpha before Sony sold it) was available to manufactures for a small licensing fee Beta was held tightly under the control of Sony. With more manufactures producing VHS machines and cassettes consumers soon favourd it and Sony had to license VHS (Which THEY DEVELOPED from whoever they sold it to, I think it was Philips or Toshiba but I forget) Now what chance does Winbloze stand considering it is both technicaly inferior AND highly proprietary. compared to Linux which is even more free than VHS and far superior.
Personaly I am unsure if you are for real or a joke cause stupid people are often very obnoxious so that hightens the chace of your icredible levels of both in concert.
How bout we ship micro$oft up to CFB Alert with a bunch of copies of Winbo$e to burn for heat. The personel could use em fer target practice (Our military dont see much action against anything as close to human as a microserf very often.
If M$ ever moves its headquarters to Canada, there will be a disaster unlike this world has ever seen.
:)
It's your crappy company, you keep it
I will not address most of his arguments. All of us here know that MS software is mediocre at best, and that its quality is absolutely inexcusable. However, I do think Linux has some fundamental problems. While it is true that Linux continues to evolve and improve upon itself while Windows remains relatively stagnent, I must say that Linux development is far from perfect. People who say that Linux is particularly innovative are kidding themselves. Name one totally new creation that OSS has brought us. I will not say that the OSS community will never innovate, because they will. It is the rate that I question. I believe the saying that Linux/OSS is designed to 'scratch an itch' is pretty accurate. The question is, whose itch. OSS developers fix their own problems, and impress their friends and what not. Do they really worry about weather or not 'a suit' can run his accounting software or spread sheet program in Linux. 90% of the slashdot community is excessively anti-commercial. Slashdoters seem to lose sight of the fact that most all commercial products only make money by offering some redeeming value to the consumer. Nor do they worry a great deal about ease of installation. Most all of the linux installation development has been at the hands of COMMERCIAL interests such as Redhat.
OSS will never even address most software needs. Nor do I believe that it'll break a whole lot of new ground. I myself have no problem with paying for software, I have a problem with crappy software. That is why I use Linux. There is a certain amount of benefit to be obtained from Open Source code and community contribution, but it is not, and will never be the be all and end all.
Geeks are Geeks are geeks. You are saying that they are geeks, so you are admitting that they are indeed somehow different. Their needs and wants are different as well. Most people will only consider using a computer when it will actually SAVES them time, this is not true for many geeks. Many geeks have plenty of time to burn, and its those geeks that are usually writing these programs. Do you honestly believe that the only thing that seperates the alternative OSS equivalents apart from their commercial cousins is marketing? 99% of these types of programs are secondary projects of even the author(s), they are considered to be beta and unstable, etc etc etc. They require a fair amount of time and sophistication to learn. Many of these programs involve more than mere coding skills, they involve updating them based on the latest tax laws, etc etc etc. How about an OSS MRP system. How about the thousands of other niche markets. How about projects which actually take a direct infusion of cash to make into a reality? On TV I recently saw a product that creates US mail postage using a laser printer, the user can purchase 'electronic' stamps online. OSS would _never_ make this happen. This took some persuasion to get the post office to allow it. Not to mention the fact that there needs to be a web site to support it. Granted, there is some 'hardware' involved in this, but my point still stands.
I don't mind superlatives. Time will prove me right. The basic problem is that there needs to be a sufficient geek population in every niche to fill every demand OSS style. This is simply not the case. None of the strong OSS projects are a one man operation. Even the geeks need to work for a living. One geek working part time simply can't compete with a strong commercial operation. End of story.
Significant innovation is in my opinion the act of making a piece of software to fill a new niche, to do something that it couldn't effectively do before. I would definetly say apple/Macintosh innnovated for example. Even though Xerox technically invented the first GUI, and wysiwyg, and the laser printer......none of them were properly working. Xerox dropped the ball. It was Apple that made this a reality. Or more precisely, Steve Jobs. Innovation is indeed hard work. My point is that OSS lacks the push factor. Steve Jobs had a certain vision of what a computer should look like, and he pushed, and payed to make this a reality. I don't see this sort of thing happening in the OSS world, neither conceptually or empirically. For anything to really fly in the OSS world, it has to be a vision shared by many people. Even if this vision exists, I don't think the OSS timeline can compete against well run commercial organization. I predict that the next great apps of tommarow will NOT come from the OSS world. OSS might however come along after the fact, when there is a clear and obvious need and fill in for the failings of previous companies.
The internet wasn't the first network. There were propietary protocols long before. It was originally military funded anyways. I wouldn't call this a significant innovation. OSS platforms were not the first machines online mind you....The internet happpened mainly by chance, and "Open" part is coincidental for the most part. Although it has improved its stability and succesfullness.
Science and Academic Discovery != Innovation
Mathemeticians don't build things, nor do other academics for the most part. Programming is about alot more than just an idea, the hard part is development. My central point is not that OSS is absolutely incapable of innovation. It is that:
a) OSS pursues different goals then that that the average consumer needs or wants.
b) OSS actually lacks a thing or two when it comes to real innovation.
The Internet is based around RFCs and open standards. Open standards are not entirely new. Anyone can spec out a protocol, this is not THAT difficult. Developing a mature product in a timely fashion is entirely different.
Really ? Do you have a reference to that ?
In any case, 500 days is a LONG time to go without reboots.... Mind you, I have 1 (Linux) Box thats been running for 16 Months without a reboot (Unless I had a power failure & never noticed...).
Perhaps I should shut it down and add that extra disk I've been promising it....
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
To quote Shakespear,
"My ASS"
If you want to be able to "move an Image from my File Manager to my Word Processor and Move a chart from Excel" why not use Applixware like I do ? I bought SuSE Linux Office Suite 99 on CD which installed without any "downloading, compiling and tweaking", and all for about £50 UK (compared to £400+ for Microsoft Office). That leaves me £350 for games, more RAM, new sound card and a meal at a restaurant.
I'll admit that getting X to work was a bit of a fiddle, but then I was using an undocumented monitor and an no-name video card. However, SuSE's X installer ('SaX') guessed some settings that gave me 800x600 in 8 Bit color, whereas the best Win98 could manage was 640x480 in 16 colors until I installed new video drivers.
It is a desktop operating system - I use it on my desktop. Fact. I use NT at work and usually reboot 2-3 times a day. Fact. (And yes, I am a sad git, I do work on my computer for 5-7 hours a night at least 3 nights a week, so both machines get a pounding.)
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
"You could cut Linux some slack if it were sharply lower in cost per transaction than NT, but that's not the case."
... well less than we'll be paying for 3 mos. of NT support...
Hee hee hee... at work we're paying Big Bucks for an NT guru to get our email servers working... If I were using Linux we'd be done, it would work and Redhat could support us for
So is MS giving away stuff to lower their TCO? (cash would work) Apparently I missed that memo...
Best not even ignore Mouth of Micro$oft.
What better value for small-time users than Linux/GNOME, or whatever...and...
...Micro$oft already have the ear of the corporate world and the suits are especially sensitive to reactive ravings. Where logic isn't available they become unhinged by emotion and religion (except their own).
It's 1776 all over again. Keep your powder dry.
Old King William is rallying his troops. This is merely a skirmish.
Buzz Lightyear
Ed would never lie to me. Never, never, never. Ed good. Microsoft good. Linux? Linux bad.
I love Ed.
Is there an Ed Muth stuffed toy forsale, one that would keep me safe at night from the awful linux boogeymen running rampant in the night. Shudder. Evil linux.
I suppose SGI, IBM, and so on, are making a
:)
benevolent contribution to the self proclaimed
"linux community"?
Heh. They're gonna make a buck off of free
software. OpenSource == OpenWallet
To be honest, I don't think there's that many pro-MS trolls active, just a few very industrious ones. A lot of the pro-MS flamage that's appearing has a lot more in common than I'd expect - tendency to flip letters in the word "products", a keyboard with an "l" key that sticks, and lots of statements designed not so much to highlight what few strengths NT has, but to push the right buttons on Slashdot users (i.e. if I was to post a comment defending NT, I probably wouldn't focus on stability or web server performance. However, if I wanted to drive people into a frenzy, I'd post one saying my NT box had been up for years and was a really really great web server). The first two suggest a lot of this is just one person, the last suggests they're more interesting in rattling people's cages than actually making a point.
Just to contribute something to the discussion - a place I used to work recently replaced the senile old SGI I'd set up as their mail and web server, largely because their sysadmin was more familiar with NT than Unix and he'd been rather dependent on staying in contact with me after I left to keep it going. This machine was around 4/5 years old, not exactly a speed demon, yet stayed up for months on end and the only unplanned e-mail/web downtime we ever had was an hour one weekend when the power supply blew up and I had to cannibalize another machine.
It was replaced by a dual Pentium II 350MHz box with 256Mb running NT4 and Back Office. For two weeks, anyway. The Unix box is now handling the e-mail again because the NT box couldn't cope and, I am told, crashed daily during the time it was in service.
I liked the part towards the end where he contradicts the rest of the article. Lets see here... get all the Linux people worked up by saying linux sucks and isn't competition, then we can call it competition again....
As for excelent coders "working" for free, he just needs to hang around the open source community a while. Money isn't everything. Besides, it is possible, and even pretty easy, to get paid for coding open source.
--
Oviously it isn't running the latest service pack.... Guess you better not let anyone find out where they are... there have been at least 10 different DOS attacks via TCP/IP alone over the last couple years. Some that come to mind: WinNuke, Land, and Teardrop.
:P As soon as the 2.3 development gets underway, I may never have a need to reboot again. Some people have built a kernel upgrade method that does not require rebooting... just about 10 seconds inaccessibility while the kernel swaps itself with the new one. Lets see an NT Service pack do that!
The only reason my linux servers are ever rebooted is for kernel upgrades or hardware changes.
There are v1.3 machines all over the place that have been up > 2 years. I think Cox or Raymond (forget which) has a machine nearing 3 years uptime. Running continuously since the kernel was released is pretty common. Big thing that keeps my uptime low is my taste for new kernels
--
Where do they get 'journalists' like that?
"Microsoft exec dissects Linux's 'weak value proposition'"
Hardly english. I don't even know where to begin...
"Microsoft anatomizes Linux"
No such word as "anatomizes".
Consider the leading sentence - "Think of it as a burst of cold Redmond rain on the Linux parade." Think of what? This sentence should follow one that establishes what "it" is.
In the next paragraph, "far-reaching" and "sounded off" (both terms used inappropriately) are used to inconsistently refer to Muth's views on Linux.
"'... the weaker I think the value proposition is to consumers'". What kind of pseudo-authoritative gobbledy-gook is this? Muth is hardly better than the journalist.
"Muth delineated two main technical reasons".
"delineated" and "main" are used inappropriately.
I won't even go into the over use of emotive language, jargon and the overall lack of logical flow in the article. It is poorly researched, poorly presented and fails to have a point.
My high school English teacher would give it an F.
Cautionary tale for the young 'uns. Read fewer articles like these and if you must, examine them critically. If I catch you writing drivel like this for a technical report I have anything to do with - yer out on yer bum.
-t.
I was just over at:
http://leb.net/hzo/ioscount/
"The Internet Operationg System Counter"
and here is what I found:
===============BEGIN DATA===================
Date : Jan.`99
Host OS recognized (grouped, sorted) 09/98 %recog 01/99 %recog +/-%
------------------------------------ ------- ------ ------- ------ ----
1.( ) Linux 223441 27.6 287093 30.8 +3.2
2.( 4.) Solaris/SunOS 109579 13.5 178350 19.1 +5.6
3.( 2.) Windows 95/98/NT 190726 23.6 171829 18.4 -5.2
4.( 3.) BSD Family 170228 21.0 150961 16.2 -4.8
5.( ) IRIX 43987 5.4 52941 5.7 +0.3
===============END DATA===================
Folks, sombody is sure using a lot of Linux out there and it may just be us. After all I have 7 Linux systems running off the last set of CDs I picked up. My boss wants to put it on a high end server host that is not being adequitely used and then pull some older 200 MHx Pentiums out of the parts room and let anyone who wants to play have one. That looks like another 10 systems. If anything the numbers are way too low.
Is that the super OS that has been in development since 96 or 97, and that is supposed to come it in 2001?
I meant 5.0
This, folks, is what happens when people read and believe their own press releases. Let me answer some of this foolishness...
Mr. Edward Muth states that
"People want more integration," he said. "They want to take a bar chart from Excel and put it in Word. On the server side they want strong queuing and security. This is all done through integration. Linux has a low degree of integration. Linux is basically a big step backward for those two reasons plus others."
And MS Windows has such *STRONG* queuing and *SOLID* security. For integration, CORBA is, of course, chopped liver. For desktop/chart manipulation MS is still way ahead. Unfortunately, it is a house built on sand.
In comparing the two, he sets up a straw man by stating:
"Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable," he said. "And let's assume applications are available for both, and setup time is the same. Given all these factors as equal, the best you could hope for is about the same cost per transaction between servers."
This is so ridiculous that I'm apoplectic. "equally scalable"? Hem! "setup time is the same", LINUX is more (at first). "applications are available", yeah but for LINUX, most, if not all functionality, is FREE!
From this interesting opening he goes on to state:
"The problem with [Linux is] that is there are fewer applications available for Linux, there's no long-term development road map, and there's a higher technical risk in using it," he said. "You could cut Linux some slack if it were sharply lower in cost per transaction than NT, but that's not the case."
Obviously, Mr. Ed "Mush-for-brains" Muth thinks that, GNU, Apache, compilers of every shape and form, database programs, log analysis programs, countless POSIX and UNIX programs aren't 'available' because you can get them for free. He also seems to think that MS has a "long-term development road map". HAH! He also assumes that having an open source platform is higher risk than being dependent on a single source provider for *all* your technical support/bug fixes.
Concerning development he states:
"I find it hard to believe that some of the best computer scientists in the world will want to do their work for free," he said. "Without a long-term technical road map, without multi-million dollar test labs, someone wants me to believe these visionary programmers and developers will want to do the best work of their lives and then give it away. I do not believe in that vision of the future."
Regarding "Long-term road maps", MS has no long-term technical road map other than "Every few years/months we're going to f*** all MS developers with new API's, 'standards', plug-ins, and OS architectures. He fails to note that people develop on/for LINUX, not because they can give it away free, but because they can get the *own* work done better/faster/more reliably. And then give it away for free.
Mush-For-Brains finishes with some statements about the OS market :
"There is extraordinary competition," he reiterated. "The market is a rich mosaic of parry and thrust from the vendors. We have to earn our stripes every day. That's how it should be."
Yeah, right bud. The only reason you can't shit on LINUX is 'cause LINUX/GNU/freeware doesn't buy anything from you, or sell anything to your platform. If they did, like Apple (MacOS and MS Office), Sun (Java) etc., you would have bought our technology, sold us a bill of goods and hung us out to dry. Go spread your puke in your own alternate reality universe.
Daniel "Enkidu" Lee
daniel@enact.com
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Is it me, or are the M$ employees that are hanging around here posting pro-M$ messages acting a bit weird? Don't they normally seem to post reasonable sounding messages without shouting? Do they strike any of you guys as a bit odd this time around?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Darn! I guess I wasn't logged in. This was me who wrote this, btw.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
Your thoughts on this have, as others have stated, have no ground.
..you will realize that there is more to business than just _the most stable platform for running your servers_. Microsoft is all about MONEY. So are businesses [at least the last time I checked]."
"I realize Slashdot is mostly College kids (as am I) who come from preppy ass upper-middle class homes in the richest parts of U.S. cities and small cities."
Yes, I am a computer engineering major at the University of Kentucky, but, college isn't cheap, and fortunatley, im not a trust fund baby, so i have to work, and pay my way through school, which, guess what, puts me in the "real world"
First off, people choose MS out of ignorance. NT brings nothing to the table other then marketing.
"
Your right, buisness is about money. But, i don't think you understand how it works. The name of the game is to produce the best product or service at the lowest cost. And this, speaking only in terms of economics, is where linux beats NT hands down. Which is why linux is becoming increasingly popular in the buisness sector. It cuts cost in start-up, hardware, down time, software, etc.. NT is an expensive bloated beast of a system, that is proving itself as a horrible buisness solution.
"But I would like to say this: don't ANY of you give a fuck about MONEY?"
No. There is more to life then money sir, and the sooner you realize this, the better off you will be. I would prefer to make a far lower salary working on and coding for linux, then to be stuck fixing and coding for M$. There ARE people in this world, believe it or not, who do not agree with the Redmond philosophy that Money determines your self worth. What a wonderful world this would be if greed and money weren't used as the deciding factor on a person's character. Personally, I find Mr. Gates, and all the other country club, CEO, trust fund babies rather disgusting. Im not sure i could live with myself knowing my anual income was greater then the wealth of 3rd world countries. Im couldn't sleep at night, in a house, far beyond my needs, with 60+ bedrooms knowing that there were people in this world happy to find a dry alley to sleep for the night. So, no sir, i do not care about money, and no, i do not agree with the Redmond philosophy. And it is rather disturbing that so many people in this world do.
Lynx.. Everything else is for perverts
Thank You! This is beautiful!
-- hgc
-- hgc
Linux: There is no infringing code.
Muth should have read his own company's memo which said FUD wouldn't work against Linux. Yet here he is spewing a huge wad of FUD and sending his spam-monkeys to slashdot with their usual "Microsoft is so awesome, Linux sux" bullshit that no one here is going to buy anyway. Should we assume based on this that MS is settling their antitrust case?
BillGs own employees admit he will commit fraud to protect his monopoly!
On the other hand, the last time Bill did an OS demo, it was Win98 that crashed. So maybe his programmers are not even bright enough to doctor the Linux source code enough to crash on demand.
I hate microsoft. Wanna know why? I don't want them and they're extremely agressive (and IMO immoral) marketting techniques forceing me to use a shabby product. I won't drive a car that crashes on at least once weekly, and neither will I run an OS which does the same. MS's goal is NOT to futher the computer market, they are out to make money and nothing more. Let the dumb people drop their change on microsh*t. I'm gonna use what I want, when I want.
/.? This is a LINUX oriented page, you KNEW you were going to get flamed up one wall and down the other. WHY PISS US OFF? To make a point? You have made no point. You've proven yourself exactly the opposite of what you said you were, rather intelligent my butt, more like a f*cking retard. Sit on it and rotate!
He said something about taking a great big backwards step? Why the hell not? If you run too fast you trip and bust your nose anyway. And thats beside the point, I don't see how he can call linux a step back. I don't want my browser to be part of my OS. IMHO, an OS should do one thing-- DEVICE INTERFACE, and linux does just that.
MS is only there cuz they got lucky and they realized, "Hey, I bet we can make a pretty penny off dumb people"
And one more thing, what the hell are you doing reading
Andrew Moenk
Who says we can't write code for it? I have coded under win32, then I found linux and said 'screwit!'
Ed Muth said, "I find it hard to believe that some of the best computer scientists in the world will want to do their work for free. Without a long-term technical road map, without multimillion-dollar test labs, someone wants me to believe these visionary programmers and developers will want to do the best work of their lives and then give it away. I do not believe in that vision of the future."
Idealsts picked this fight, but pragmatists will finish it.
What MS forgot is that the first line of users isn't Mom and Dad, but other programmers, trying to write good code in short order for the operating system. Coders haven't been served well by MSDOS and Windows.
Linux serves coders, and those coders get a kick out of contributing code to the public, getting feedback, and honing their code for users or other coders. It's a highly recursive, parallelizable algorithm which virulently proliferates service and goodwill.
Or put another way, it's a pyramid scheme of goodwill. Linus gets the most goodwill, followed by the kernel contributors, application developers, and then Linux users for helping to make it a mainstream operating system.
Maybe that's not right, but it's the real world. Been waiting all my life to say that without feeling ashamed.
=-ddt->
> IT has to be good if 95% of the computers in the world run it.
"Eat feces, 200 trillion maggots can't be wrong"
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
>Of course Windows is 'easier to use' for most people. It was built from the ground up for 'user friendliness'. (user candy)
This, of course, isn't true either--Windows wasn't "built from the ground up" for anything. Maybe you could say it was "an afterthought, hacked to run as a shell on top of DOS and be user friendly".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Wow, 3-4 months. I am jealous of you. I ran an NT box that did Win95 filerservering (Good volume on it) and Win95 printing (Lots of volume too). The thing had to be rebooted every other day. Drove us crazy since us Linux guys had personal machines on the Internet that did a good amount of volume too, with 5 month uptimes. We took them down to change the kernel.
After awhile we were like dogs at the Microsoft door, waiting for the next fix to be fed to us.
After 8 months of that, I quit and the next interview I did, I stated that I would not run any NT boxes and explained my problems with NT. Needless to say, got the job! However, I am bored, my Linux machine work all the time, because they always work once you set them up.
PS> Part time school job, so nothing major.
Linux O Muerte!
It sure looks to me like he is saying, "NT is better than Linux because it has more market share."
To put it another way, Microsoft is the smarter choice because it is a monopoly. No operating system could possibly be a better choice because Microsoft is a monopoly.
Are they just giving up on the case and chasing Linux now, or what?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
>You remind me of all those ms haters at work who use amipro...
[SNIP]
>I work for microsoft and Bill is expected
Don't make me puke
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q 216/6/41.asp
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
You know... A message like this posted on a pretty much pro-linux site... Hmmmm. I think someone just wants to cause some trouble.
.ad.
Either way.
Everybody, laugh with me at OLE as loud as you can... You know you want to. Not only that, you can't help it.
Old Bill Gates had a farm
W-I-N N-T
And on that farm he had some FUD
W-I-N N-T
With a FUD FUD here, and a FUD FUD there
Here a FUD, there a FUD, everywhere a FUD FUD
Ol' Bill Gates had a farm, W-I-N N-T.
And that's all I have to say about that.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Well, I can't write anything in OLE (hehe) or (bwa...bwahahahaheheh!) COM...
:) Oh yeah, and all the software I'm using is free.
I'm sorry. They make me laugh. Let me try again.
I can't write anything in OLE or COM (horrendous design infuriates me), but I am (right now) writing a database library generator in Perl. That is, a Perl program that takes in a database specification and outputs a set of Perl code that allows fast, easy access to that database from Perl. Do that with Virtually Basic.
So, I'll keep my tools, ignore the toys, and you can stay in your little VB box and watch as the world passes you by.
- the mad hawk was here
"Let's say, for discussion, they are equally scalable," he said. "And let's assume applications are available for both, and setup time is the same. Given all these factors as equal, the best you could hope for is about the same cost per transaction between servers."
:)
Exactly what is this guy on about? Does he mean each e-commerce transaction or what? More Microsoft Fud, and ZDNet seem to publish tonnes of this shit happily lately. Obviously they are part of the Microsoft Brainwashing Team. They make typical claims of no application support, and lack of integration and consistancy. OK say maybe all X programs bring up the same Dialog box for opening files, but neither does windows.
MS give the example that users want to be able to paste a spreadsheet graph into word, and that if linux cant do that then it cant be as good as Windows. This is obviously Fud aimed at desktop users who are using bloatware like MS Office.
Its obvious MS are out to brainwash us all into believing their shit, but unfortunately I think the Media's ability at brainwashing the entire earth population with their commercial money scamming crap just isnt going to work on me
meridian at tha.net
He claims that they have less than 15% of the $100000-$1M server market (and thus they're not a monopoly!), but do they have anywhere close to 15%? Does NT run on anything that cost that much? I would suspect they would have maybe 1-2% of that market.
And it still supports my ancient printers! I hope we'll soon have the complete suite on Linux.
I resent that!
:-)
(j/k
iSKUNK!
"We've got a mind of our own, so go to hell if what you're thinking is not right"
...get the picture.
............
I know you are being sarcastic, and I agree who gives a flying fsck what ZD thinks. I have problems believing that they printed M$ opinion on Linux, which bunch of morons are they targetting.
Then again if you tell yourself something often enough you begin to think it is the truth, sane people call it being delusional. Those who ignore the whistle of the oncoming train
And the comparison to NCs, they will see the difference when we leave our collective feet in their
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Regards,
Bill Kocik, Blackspring Communications
http://www.blackspring.com
-BK
Chemical Blog
Let's talk about modern operating systems for a minute....
disk quota's
multiuser
remote administration
loading libraries and kernel mods w/o rebooting
POSIX (without a seperate resource kit)
Doing anything without rebooting...
Supporting world standards, not writing a proprietary one and saying everyone should standardize around it.
Come to think of it my favourite shell utils and apps that I have been using for 15 years on UN*X boxes don't come built into NT boxes.
not writing databases so that Joe Anycoder thinks he's an instant expert and writes queries that couldn't scale to save his a*s!!!
M$ is running scarred my friends. We should have a community rebuttal site for this kind of FUD. I hope some info for this article and the many more that will follow show up on unix-vs-nt.org I've already told everyone in my IT department to look at it.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
My War! You're one of THEM!
You say that you're my Friend!
But you're one of THEM!
One of THEM!
How about KDE? The KDE developers how created an extensible and easily programmable environment for Linux. The intent was not just to be used for the programmers involved but, to help the linux community. I have been learning how to program KDE apps and becuase of the way that the system is designed this is very easy. KDE is more stable, runs faster, and is more configurable than the windows desktop. One of the primary purposes of KDE is to make linux more used friendly so that newbies can use it and this includes the suits. That is why all options can be configured from the gui and not require the commandline.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
I'm glad that something has come out to quell the now abundant linux fires. If the hype about this "New OS" gets to big, it'll just be another flash-in-the-pan and no one will even care in 6 months. So keep the criticism coming! The numbers and facts will prove them all wrong. Lower total cost of ownership? Homosaywhat? $500 OS vs. FREE? Charge up the ass technical support vs. volumes of free resources on the web? What a blowhard.
-davek
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
I have also had personal experiences with NT, none have been good so far. I reboot several times a day on my NT Workstation (at work of course, I couldn't imagine having to put up with it at home)-as a matter of fact, the MS Proxy service causes my PC to lock up every time I try to read Slashdot (but serves me right for goofing off at work), /. is not the only one however-it locks up on other sites as well-that's another story though. One thing about Linux is the fact that it is NOT taking the path that Microsoft has taken-it is where it is today because of that fact. If Linux had a "roadmap" and confirmed everything twice before it actually did it (without an option NOT to, I might add) and gave your the configuration for your hardware that it thought was appropriate-we might as well call it Linux NT. That's the whole point-it does what YOU tell it to do, it is 100% user configurable, and you have every option in the world at your fingertips. I have experienced NT and Linux both on a 400+ user network-guess which outperformed? (expecially print services)-By the way-I don't know which distribution you installed, but I have never installed Linux without a graphical menu interface, without any type of help file available for each option. There are always updated video, sound, nic, etc.. drivers available on the web-did you happen to even look before you made your judgement? I will have to admit-a server configuration can be much more complicated than a workstation/home config, but I believe it is well worth it. I'm glad that the only thing that article has done is spark some laughter and piss a few people off. Looks like the desperate attempt of a sore loser to me.
Couldn't agree with you more....
Ignorance annoys me.
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.
Wouldn't that be interesting. Didn't we learn anything from the AT&T breakup? They broke up into a bunch of mini-bells, and now, everyone is merging back together again!
I guess it would be interesting to see what would happen if they did break up, I suppose. Any thoughts or predictions?
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding new hardware.
Every computer company in the whole industry does not know how to do bussiness other then
microsoft. Microsoft is the only company trying to make great products and doing great bussiness deals while the other companies just whine.
M$ was founded by Bill Gates. Lil' Willy is a ruthless businessman who does not mind being unethical to get what he wants... i.e. $$$$
They don't sit around in Redmond and have discussions like: "gee... what can we do that will make our customers get a warm fuzzy feeling in their tummies as they use our 'wonderful' products."
Trust me... they are in the business of making money. If they can sell you an upgrade to fix their mistakes in the previous version, they are accomplishing this. M$ has created an entire technical support industry who's only job is to keep their buggy OS's running. They don't care about you 'Anonymous Coward', they care about the $$ you throw at them.
I don't hate M$. I use my 95 machine as a night-light and an arbitrary distributed.net keycracker(allbeit a very slow one).
Linux will become a viable desktop OS. Maybe not THE Desktop OS, but then, that's not really important. What's important is that the power and flexibility will always be there, and those who wish to utilize tools to maximize their potential and accomplish their goals, will use Linux when it comes to computers.
Windoze whatever will always be a viable OS for the sheeple (i.e. You.) who believe everything they hear on tv and read in the paper. It will probably never die. (there are an awful lot of people making money off of the fact that it's a piece of junk)
Linux only continues to get better and better. *shrug* Watch and see.
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
Umh, when will M$ learn that Linux can't be killed. It is a FREE OS, as long as SOMEONE cares, it will continue, and personally, I think that there are too many ppl that want an alternative OS (I was forced from the Amiga to the PeeCee).
I think what scares M$ is that, while they have to wait a year or more to get out a new OS, Linux can be updated within a month.
The only hope for M$ to compete(sp) with Linux will be to release their own version.
BTW, anyone out there know of a M$-DOS -completion (file names) program?
"We feel that 2 to 20 percent of Linux shipments turn out to be 'shelfware,'" he said. "From what we can tell, real-world deployments of Linux are very thin."
I would be happy to provide Mr. Muth with my shelfware copies of Windows 95 and Windows NT. I do not, however, anticipate a refund...
"Half of this game is 90% mental."
. . . and here I was impressed that they had end space at Best Buy. Wow. Thanks, MicroSerf. Ye've made me day! =)
----
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
No, Microsoft should open its source, put thousands MORE people to work for it (indirectly, of course), stop causing inflation, enrich the computer business, and greet everyone with a big warm fuzzy hug! Let the world help it with its Y2K problems, and prove it wishes them well. THAT'S it, AC.
:P
But I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Nah,
It seems Betty Ford wasn't sucessful.
if you think of how many times the wheel and the fork were being reinvented in the software industry only to be burried again in another closed source code program?
...and i obviously have root previledges on the pentagon mainframe. do us a favour. next time you wanna talk out of your @$$, dont move your mouth so much. oh yeah, it helps to know just a little bit of signicant information about the subject too.
Didn't read the story - i got better things to do with the time - like pick my toes.
Its the best coders that have an idea and will run with it till its a working idea. Thats exactly why this free software we have is the best.
We've got to have something to do after we've finished our mundane day-jobs.
__// `Thinking is an exercise to which all too few brains
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Dear Ms. /.:
Thank you for submitting your quirky idea.
Unfortunately, it is inconsistent with our long-term mission statement:
To proactively leverage our world-leading customers' technical investments to provide
multi-tier innovative solutions for the next millennium.
Please return to your current maintenance duties.
Yours sincerely,
HP.IBM.M$.DEC.
Microsoft is at it again. Same FUD tactics differe nt operating system. Ed Muth just slamed Linux, but he didn't say why NT is better. Down with the evil empire.
MS Backoffice server (25-user) on Pricewatch.com: $1199. Includes mail server, SMB file & print services, SQL, Proxy, internet services (secure web/ftp/etc), and some directory services.
Recurring costs:
Want to add a user? $40. Each. Want to upgrade to a new version? A few hundred. Service pack on CD? $20.
Similar linux (commercial installation):
SQL (PostgreSQL): free
SMB file/print sharing (Samba): a pizza coupon
Proxy (squid): free
Mail (sendmail&cyrus): free
Secure Web (Raven): $350
The rest of the stuff to keep the system running is mostly GPL.
Number of users? As many as your hardware can handle. Want to allow more? Get a new CPU.
Oh, and the Linux system configured with everything will run on a P-166. Backoffice needs a dual PII-266 so it doesn't crawl to a halt.
Sure, initial costs aren't all of "TCO", but I want to see what ass Mr. Muth pulled his numbers out of. It looks to me like NT costs a wee bit more.
Wait a second, all costs aside: Let's assume you have a NFR copy of backoffice that your reseller-licensed company got for $100. So you've gotten a great deal. What do you do now? Install it. Want to change something about the server? Let's add and IP alias for one of those virtual hosts you'll inevitably be running. Oh no, time to reboot! Change something in the Exchange Administrator? Go find the control panel entry for it, stop (wait two minutes) and start (wait two minutes). You're fixed!
Linux?
ifconfig eth0:3 10.0.4.48 up
route add -host 10.0.4.48 eth0:3
killall sendmail
sendmail -bd -q15m
Whoa, both changes in thirty seconds. That was fun.
-Chris
(who had a bad day with an NT machine today, and just HAD to vent)
File sharing? Can we say Samba? Web servering? How about Apache? Sorry to have to dis you like that. Mabey try running a linux-based server before knocking them next time, ok?
Ok.. MS has more products that have good quailty, but linux can do some great stuff that Windows cant... But i'm waiting for Freedows OS to come out so I can have the best of both world.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
It's been in developement since the late 80's.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Actually I think NT went into developement in 88.. I had 3.1 all on floppies in 89.. Even though the mother board I was using was a POS.. It held 16 meg, but couldn't really manage it worth a damn.. So I never got that version to run..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
They have lots of fat.... =>
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Name one totally new creation, period. Depends on what you mean. It's easy to argue that nothing is really new.
But with a less demanding definition of free, Usenet comes to mind. So do any number of other networking applications. Many things originally developed at universities were open source before open source was cool. Real-time Internet chat, the web, the concept of software archives, a good chunk of e-mail... those are all arguably open source projects.
You have a good point, and maybe a subtler one than you intended to make, though. Everyone says that Microsoft doesn't do anything new, that OSS doesn't do anything new... that Apple didn't do anything new, just took interface ideas from Xerox, etc. The underlying principle here is that the nature of software is that most of what you're doing isn't new. Reusable code and all that.
What would you prefer, an application that's stable, works day in and out, and lets you accomplish what you're spending your time doing today, or a program that has a lot of cool features that you may (or may not) need tomorrow, but crashes all the time? I know which one I'd take.
And that's what OSS needs to be good at, to produce the software that people will want to use rather than write press releases about. The innovation and features will come without being obsessed about. Those of you who are programmers know what I mean. It's almost impossible to keep yourself from coming up with new ideas. Getting them tested, working for everyone else, documented, and stable is the hard part. And while Microsoft isn't very good at it, we're rather spotty at it ourselves. No one in the software industry is very good at it yet.
OSS isn't some magic formula to make us better at this than Microsoft is. Writing stable software is work. It takes time, energy, and a willingness to forgoe features to get the software more stable. And we're just as susceptible to not doing that as Microsoft is, if not moreso because most OSS projects don't have a team of professional docwriters in the wings whose job it is to document things.
This is just another part of their FUD campaign.
Did anyone catch the article in Windows NT magazine (Dec 98 by Mark Russinovich) talking about how Linux was only suitable for the small server market. The reasoning being that the kernel is single threaded and hence Linux will never be able to "fully utilize" multiple cpu's...etc..etc.
Its the IT managers et al that actually purchase servers for the data centers they need to keep in their camp. If M$ wins the data centers, they win the game. Period.
**** Sworn to Fun, Loyal to None. ****
There's no way that Australia can absorb a Microsoft. We've got a serious shortage of programmers already (must be due to the real sand, real sun, and real surf up here in sunny Queensland) and we're only a 12th the population size of the US. They can take over Cambridge or Peking instead where they've already got labs.
Lawrence
Maybe us Linux people like installing stuff ourselves, and not have some stupid Windows program take over our computer for hours while it downloads things and installs them for us!!
:)
File sharing??? Ever heard of FTP?
Web Sever???? Apache maybe? And by the way: they're both free
m$ ya gotta love em.
strong like bull......brain like streetcar.
I wonder what motherboard the guy was using... And why would you want 4 videocards?
You're an idiot.......
This guy is MS's veritable Mauna Loa of FUD.
I simply chuckled.
This will be their eventual undoing.
Just watch.
On that point:
This article almost reads like it was written a year or two ago, judging from the MS' "view of the world" that it expresses.
Has MS's view of the world really not changed at all in the last year or so, or is this just an example of desperate thrashing on their part?
A little of both, maybe?
After reading /. I got this fortune cookie ...
"Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause"
Redmond's cause is getting weaker by the day.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Well then you just go right ahead and continue lap-dancing for Bill and company. Who knows, maybe he'll actually put a dollar in your G-String. (Don't hold your breath, don't you know in "Club Gates" you pay to dance naked, not the other way around?!?) What a fscking idiot! Please stay away from Linux, you'll water it down.
Best OS around, your joking not??? It is expensive and unstable. For about $75 you have a complete Linux system with pop, www, gopher, ftp, archie servers, firewall support and lots more. Do you get that with NT. I think you only get www and ftp server there. IIS. Linux has Apache inside (sorry intel). Was elected best webserver...
You don't mean that, do you.... But let's get to the point. 1 major advantage of linux: Free, 1 major advantage of most linux soft: Free. IBM supports Linux, Compaq: Supports Linux, Netscape: Supports Linux, Oracle: Supports an writes for Linux, Corel: Supports and writes for linux. Apache: Most used webserver around. elected best webserver. Standards.... duhh... Microsoft does everything to change internet standards, while linux does support TCP-IP: "THE INTERNET STANDARD" as the way it was designed.... Java...sounds familiar. Was used to created a standard you can use on every platform. Microsoft instead, changed it so much its own version of Java (own version???, Java = (c) by sun) only works on a Windows computer with a MicroSoft browser........ I call that misuse of monopoly position....
Tech Journalist say: "Linux is gonna beat WINNT"
What is this I just read?
"when Bill wrote dos..."
you have overlooked a very important detail...
this infamous Bill character didn't write shit. He BOUGHT dos from some programmer in Seattle for 20k and marketted it. Correct me if i'm wrong, but Microsoft is in many ways similar to VHS and Beta. Beta is obviously superior, but because of better marketing, VHS quickly ruled the market. Sounds striking similar, doesn't it?
What is this I just read? ;-)
"when Bill wrote dos..."
you have overlooked a very important detail...
this infamous Bill character didn't write shit. He BOUGHT dos from some programmer in Seattle for 20k and marketted it. Correct me if i'm wrong, but Microsoft is in many ways similar to VHS and Beta. Beta is obviously superior, but because of better marketing, VHS quickly ruled the market. Sounds striking similar, doesn't it?
Oh, and as an answer to your last questions:
there are no programs "as good as" microsoft.
only better.
They did it to NDS..until they copied novell, they did it to Sun until they stole their JVM. Those bastards at Microsoft dont know their ASS from a HOLE in the ground and they would not know a scaleable OS for the desktop if it bit them in the ASS. They should have taken MOnicas place since they suck so good.
Nilo
Linux is easy to install if you know what your doing. The worst part about a redhat install is partitioning the drive and thats easy to. It always pays to do a little research before installing any new Unfamiliar OS.
I admit linux has aways to go before someone like my father or mother could install it however that time is coming.
B2
Can ya feel it....the power of linux is at hand!
What color is the sky in your world?
:)
You must be one of those M$ public relations people who spam forums with BS posing as users.
Talk about being afraid to compete - resorting to such low methods like this just because there are very viable (and much better) alternatives to the crap developed in Redmond. And, surprise, surprise, people are starting to wake up and adopt these systems for their businesses (finally) because they are tired of burning money on trying to get your vaporware to work.
Who's afraid to compete again?
BTW: I've got news for you - people who read this news site are educated, intelligent human beings, many of whom are probably at least partly responsible for this new phenomenom that you are so obviously afraid of. We will not fall for your dumb FUD which you can quote that to your brainless Windows using drones, so please stop posting crap on this site - it's a waste of Internet bandwidth. Oh wait, you work for Micro$oft - wasting valuable resources is all you and your software knows how to do. Well, you can go do that on your Presspass site, aka PRAVDA - no offense to the former USSR
What color is the sky in your world?
:)
You must be one of those M$ public relations people who spam forums with BS posing as users.
Talk about being afraid to compete - resorting to such low methods like this just because there are very viable (and much better) alternatives to the crap developed in Redmond. And, surprise, surprise, people are starting to wake up and adopt these systems for their businesses (finally) because they are tired of burning money on trying to get your vaporware to work.
Who's afraid to compete again?
BTW: I've got news for you - people who read this news site are educated, intelligent human beings, many of whom are probably at least partly responsible for this new phenomenom that you are so obviously afraid of. We will not fall for your dumb FUD which you routinely quote to your brainless (single digit IQ) Windows using drones, so please stop posting crap on this site - it's a waste of Internet bandwidth. Oh wait, you work for Micro$oft - wasting valuable resources is all you and your software knows how to do. Well, you can go do that on your Presspass site, aka PRAVDA - no offense to the former USSR