It's pure Windows terminology. I think it's more related to doing bug fixes and security upgrades, etc.- major fixes packaged together to ease testing for IT departments and for limited Internet connectivity. It's hardly fading though, Ubuntu basically does this for their LTS releases.
Any idea if the Gigabit Audio bug is still in Windows 7. To test - play an audio track, then transfer a large file over the network via GbE. You should get the full transfer rate. In Vista it would limit the transfer rate to something closer to 100 Mbs. We were told this was to ensure proper audio playback.
I am running a 100 mbps LAN in my household, so I cannot test this issue. If anyone else on this thread can do this, I'd be interested to know the results.
Windows 7 is likely more aimed at XP users and people considering the unreasonably expensive switch to Mac.
I don't think it's really aiming to be the next big upgrade for Vista users, although I believe it will be anyway.
If you want to consider Windows 7 a SP, that's not a bad call, since it's built on Vista's backend directly. It's really an overhauled and re-imagined userland which really does warrant a version change. It doesn't act like prior Windows so it is fair to call it a new system, for user's sake.
I've been using the Beta for a while and it isn't a beta like say... an Ubuntu beta. This is a beta of a quality the open source world cannot obtain. We call this a release in linuxland. For this reason, I don't think there's anything strange about them aiming for a single RC.
Alternatively, this could easily be a case of an upgraded installer/software update tool rendering it unnecessary to separate RC releases. They might just upgrade the RC if they need another one.
I think the marketing angle on this is that Windows 7 is correct by design. Besides, Apple releases new versions of OS X that are basically service packs at full price all the time, and they don't even have large public betas. Consider that Microsoft has a far larger and more effective QA system internally than Apple. They CAN release like this-- they've got an army of internal testers aside from the millions of beta testers out there.
At least these guys encrypt your data instead of processing and farming it for marketing data and advertising cues. Ugh. What part of our lives aren't we going to hand over to google?
You missed Enterprise, which is Business + MUI, BitLocker, and SUA. So it's really two new versions, not one.
Also, there is a very noticeable (whether it's huge or not is arguable) difference between Home Basic and Home Premium is the lack of Aero in the former. There wasn't anything corresponding to that when comparing XP Home and XP Pro.
I didn't see Enterprise listed in the screenshot in the article. They might be bundling that with Business now... which certainly makes more sense. I am not sure it belongs in that selection because it is licensed differently-- I mean you can't just go to the store and buy a copy of Windows Vista Enterprise.
You're right about Aero and Home Basic, that's definitely a big issue. We're not really talking about Vista at this point, though, we're talking about Windows 7. I am making the assumption that Windows 7 Basic will include Aero on the grounds that it's a generation past Vista and desktop compositing is not really a big label feature anymore. It would just be awkward to offer the Windows 7 gui without Aero-- it has so many Aero-centric features.
If Windows 7 Basic doesn't have Aero though, I think they're going to have trouble getting people interested in it. I was under the impression that they wrote a fast software dx10 accelerator precisely because every system should be able to run Aero.
that's like saying a home builder will sell you a "Starter Edition" house that, once you open the door (he threw the door in as a bonus!), find out the house is basically a shell on top of the foundation.. no fixtures, cabinets, flooring, drywalls, just framing.
No, that's absolutely not what it's like. You're getting a fully functional operating system here, the components not included are really just extra features. It would be more like a house being cheaper because it doesn't come with kitchen appliances or a washer and dryer. And really, how strange is that? Some people just want the windows operating system, not the NFS server with it or IIS.
Actually, to take the metaphor even further, what your describing isn't even offered to consumers in the windows world. You know, this house has appliances, as well. What it's missing is a board room, maybe an office kitchen, fiber-optic wiring. Things you generally don't find in houses.
For many people, it's a good thing that they don't have to pay the licensing cost of a full business-level product. What does a business edition have that a low end home user is really going to miss?
If you really want to know the different, pop into add/remove windows components on Windows 7 beta. You'll see a motley connection of odds and ends relating to business and home use. Most of them aren't installed and are somewhat irrelevant to you.
Basic is baseline (like XP home) Home Premium includes media center (like XP media center edition) Business is basically XP Professional Ultimate is XP professional + media center
They didn't actually add any new editions except for Ultimate. I am sure the home users will really be lamenting their lack of NFS client/server capabilities.
Most of the guification will remain and all the desktop essentials are now under the Live Essentials umbrella, so the versioning should be irrelevant to everyone except people on slashdot who make it into a massive philosophical crisis.
Oh my god! They've made spins of their operating system with a feature relevant to the market and usage scenario! Oh my god! Media center costs extra! Oh my god! enterprise-level networking features aren't included on my mom's compaq!
This is a COMMERCIAL operating system. This is similar to the complaint that Ubuntu and Kubuntu are separate distributions because they have different software sets except they cost a different amount of money because commercial systems COST MONEY.
Let's break this down further:
Basic is for low-end bargain PC's Home Premium is for middle-high end PC's Business is for Business PC's Ultimate is for enthusiasts (like beta testers and people with pony tails and translucent panels on the side of their tower-- it exists because some people will pay for it)
By offering different levels of product at a different price point, they've made their product more accessible to people who would rather pay less and just have an operating system. If you use mostly F/OSS on your windows system, you should get Basic. It's not that complicated!
Interestingly, there are roughly 2 acres of arable land per person on the planet right now. And guess what? Global warming would actually increase that acreage by almost 25% if average global temperatures rose 3F. It's entirely possible that a warming planet (despite the realities of sunspot cycles and impending cooling cycle) is actually required to support humanity, rather than being a harbinger of its demise.
That's an extremely linear way of looking at global warming. I've got some friends who are running major climate simulations for a group of interested companies and governmental bodies over at the NCSA. As far as I can tell, we're looking at the effects of global warming changing the direction of undersea currents, moving climates instead of just "warming" them, drying certain areas and wetting others, and changing weather patterns. So really, it's not just a case of the world getting warmer-- the problems is that we don't wholly understand how this will affect the weather.
Currently, most of our food supply is dependent on an extremely stable growing season. Part of what we have to model is how these minor temperature changes will affect the nitrogen cycle and crop growth- and the current results aren't very promising. What that doesn't take into account is the geopolitical and logistic cost of the fertile region moving to another part of the country.
Beyond this, every time they model ahead x-thousand years, actual results keep beating the "worst case scenario" curve. We didn't know quite how much methane and CO2 were frozen in the sea and ice caps, so we may have started an unstoppable snowball effect.
We just had an unusally bad growing season here in Illinois. That's okay because we usually run at a surplus. We can only have so many of these bad growing seasons, though, before the problem goes from a nagging concern to a worldwide crisis. Chances are people will pass these things off as stupidity or superstition as long as they can. Most just can't cope with the idea of the most stable thing we can imagine, the Earth, is now in a state of very rapid flux that we can't fully grasp-- and it's because we burned every piece of carbon we could find on and under the ground. Let's pretend that this crisis is really happening. How do people act? Do they accept it or is there mass denial from those who can't come to terms with the danger? Can mankind as a huddled mass really handle long term crisis?
I think this is an alarm call for Microsoft to be more proactive on the alternative browser situation.
First, off, let's discuss a couple of nightmare scenarios that Microsoft would like to avoid:
- A vanilla copy of Firefox is bundled with Windows. A large sum of users are connecting to the Internet through this browser and there are quality and security issues which Microsoft now has limited capacity to fix or address. If Mozilla, for instance, complemented the Unix security model well while poorly addressing the Windows security model (completely hypothetical), a third party would then be inserting its own Achilles' Heel into the Windows platform. It's not that it WILL but that it CAN.
- If Microsoft is forced to ship either Chrome or Safari, they will be including products that are actively attacking their product share outside of the web browser market. These are wolves at the door for Microsoft, since Safari is basically a "switch to Mac" ad and Chrome is a "use google instead of Live" ad. I'd also like to point out that Safari does not play nicely with Windows' font rendering or accessibility.
- A litigatively determined requirement leads to a comical freakshow of third party browsers, leading to a free-for-all user experience nightmare, destroying the unity of the system.
My proposals for a solution:
- Microsoft can be proactive on the Mozilla Firefox product right now. They should first focus on having a testing structure for their own release engineered version of Firefox, and second consider placing a few developers on Firefox's security team to look out for their best interests. If Microsoft supports a more "Camino" approach to the Firefox problem, they could support their own open-source fork of the Firefox product that focuses on better integration with the Windows 7 environment while maintaining the standards-oriented compatibility with the web platform. This would be an ideal solution since Windows Live and Silverlight, etc. are already focused on Firefox support for Microsoft plugins, etc. Furthermore, having a presence on the Firefox team would allow Microsoft to address security issues much more quickly while improving face.
- Alternatively, I believe Microsoft could find an even cheaper and less idealistically challenging approach in simply licensing Opera. Why not? With their small team and focus on professional implementation, an Opera-branded Windows 7 specialized browser could be a ticket out of monopoly-town while not entirely losing the benefits of having an in-house browser team. The Opera team is smaller and centrally managed vs. the Firefox team, allowing Microsoft to work very actively alongside the developer in seeing features and compatibility issues worked out (ie Silverlight compatibility). Perhaps a more controllable and less wild product would be the ideal means of keeping control of the quality and security of the Windows Platform while maintaining a competive edge in usability.
Also, what Microsoft stands to lose:
If OEMs are left to deal with the notion of embedding third party browsers instead of Microsoft, they lose their control and their ability to maintain the quality and integrity of their platform. Imagine what OEMs would do with an open source product like Firefox-- there could be Dell Firefox, HP Firefox, etc. Microsoft needs to reign this problem in an preempt it with a workable solution before it falls out of their hands.
And finally, I'd like to underline the importance of maintaining Internet Explorer as a product: It's of the utmost importance that Microsoft offer a supported way to access the web within their platform for both enterprise IT considerations, which Firefox ignores, as well as the process of support and security patching. Keeping Microsoft branding in the web is important for their company's existing relevance in emerging industries. Also, I'd like to add that Microsoft participating in the "standards-based" web game will result in a better documented an
Okay, the hardware specs look good, but the software description scotched the deal for me. "Familiar Microsoft® Windows® Platform".
Of course, that's only the front-end. Chances are it's running virtualized using a secure separation kernel. This system is likely so thoroughly contained and hardened that it can't even access external networks- and if it can, it's doing so through a kernel like GHS INTEGRITY or LynxSecure or something.
Ideally, with a secure embedded system like this, Windows, Linux, Mac, whatever- they're only good as front-ends. The thought of any of those three running bare on a system with that much sensitive information is quite frankly frightening.
Users don't read manuals [joelonsoftware.com] and those that do would buy the books.
That's why Windows includes integrated contextual help files. It's basically got a support novel integrated into the system.
Awesome for what? Creating a troll post, making out that it was Abbie that blamed Ubuntu, who is now infamous for being an idiot. Yeah he's so awesome.
The high road is not for everyone. If you'd watched kindergarten cop, you'd know that in order to take on a group of children, you need to speak their language. Besides, as someone who is actually paid for what he writes on his blog, he's pretty big league in the world of journalism compared to most of what shows up on Digg or Reddit.
If you mean running [work for] then you're just making it up.
Thats pretty much all the people who work for Ubuntu at the UDS. None of them are as you describe.
What about my post gave you the impression I was in London? Here you are showing me a bunch of paid assets while I'm talking about all the unpaid liabilities Canonical drags around as "The Ubuntu Community". You know... "expert users". These are people who are paid for their work... different breed.
Does Dell ship these with their Ubuntu machines? Their existence is irrelevant if they aren't available to the user out of the box.
What I don't get about your post is how you associate Ubuntu user to be Ubuntu Community. If I use Windows to play some games does that make me part of the Windows Community?
Ubuntu is generally community supported, so it is represented by its community. Windows is fully supported by Microsoft for all users, so it is represented by Microsoft.
Then in a later post the very same reporter is laughing about all the attention he got on his site. Yeah, anything to make a quick buck while ruining Abbie's life.
That blog post was fscking awesome. He gets bonus points for ripping on the nerd horde.
There's only one reason why that news story got so much negative feedback and that's because it was posted on Digg, Slashdot and Reddit. Assholes of the internet. This story was never posted in the Ubuntu news letter which is in my opinion the Ubuntu community. Not like all these little shits on digg who think they are leet because they have linux and are standing up to the man to fight for open source freedom.
That's the upside to a corporate product-- you are able to distinguish who is affiliated and who is not. This is a great way to avoid misrepresentation. Canonical should take a more active role in preventing this, rather than letting their situation ebb and flow with the stampede. And why aren't these l33t kids the ubuntu community? How do you know this isn't the case? From what I can tell, most people I've seen running ubuntu have neckbeards and acne. I wish I were kidding.
I've found that wherever I have turned for support, I've been met with friendliness and the problems I've had have been resolved, mostly expediently.
But is this a consistent scenario? There needs to be greater focus on what help is "official" and "unofficial"-- does a supported copy of ubuntu come with a paper user guide? Perhaps the volumes of help most commonly viewed should be reproduced in offline form for users by paid/trusted editors at Canonical. Offline help is a major aspect of a Microsoft Windows desktop. The volumes of help documentation are unmatched by any other system. It seems like Ubuntu and OS X try to rely on "obvious" solutions instead of documentation. Some people will feel better with that extra bit of assurance that they're doing the right thing. Don't forget that online support is useless to those who can't get their system online. I think this situation with this girl in wisconsin demonstrates that you can't rely on the consistency of online support. Third party support should be provided for third party behavior-- anything included in the ubuntu ecosystem as supported software and especially that which is bundled should have full offline documentation.
What are your personal experiences dealing with the Linux or specifically Ubuntu community? How have you addressed the community? How have they addressed you in return?
My community response has been inconsistent. That's the best way to put it. Sometimes, people can help me- sometimes there's just no right answer. Generally speaking, I write FAQ's, not read them. I am more talking about the outward appearance Ubuntu is giving to mainstream users, not technical users like myself. I am not baffled by Ubuntu, but my girlfriend certainly is.
How is the user experience of Ubuntu different from that of Windows or OS X, in a way that makes Ubuntu and only Ubuntu amateurish?
It's a little bit of everything. Generally, Ubuntu seems very glossy, but underneath the glaze there's lots of (i hate to use this word again) inconsistency. Everything "just works" until something is out of the ordinary. Those little scenarios where things are abnormal are part of the reason that microsoft needs to have so many staff. Little things could go a long way- for instance, Compiz performance has always been sub-par and hitchy on Ubuntu, whereas Aero is smooth as... glass. There's issues with X and mode switching as well as handling of multiple displays. The only proper implementation of that I've ever seen on linux was on the EeePC with Xandros.
Furthermore, let's talk about the issue with the girl in Wisconsin putting her ISP CD in and not understanding why it doesn't work. Maybe a simple dialogue explaining to her that windows installers won't work on Ubuntu (flag disabled if wine is present)-- perhaps something like Apple's windows-mac equivalence guide would be helpful. Imagine that your users have no idea what to expect from your system.
It's all about polish-- trying to make the system more than just *seem* smooth, but to actually iron out all the little bugs and issues that users will face- and if you can't, make sure the user knows how to work around it without relying on some random jackass telling them on a message board. Do you want your system to be an alternative desktop or a desktop alternative? There's a lot of man hours involved in making that jump.
If this is a joke, it's some sly humor. Let me break this down: Ubuntu, the biggest most important figure in the home linux community is almost breaking even... at only $30 million? That's peanuts. Even Xandros is profitable!
This would be a tremendous deal if they had more market share than say... Mac. Then they'd be undercutting their competition, kicking ass and taking names. Meanwhile in reality, Ubuntu has finally gotten some mainstream coverage when a girl in Wisconsin accidentally bought a computer with it and couldn't understand how to get her internet working or write documents... and the community assaulted her like a bunch of maniacs. Her experience with this "easy to use" version of linux was so bad that she thought Dell was trying to put over some sort of scam on her. The local news anchor described the system as "low profile"-- and he's in a college town. You know what happened when a local man in Seattle complained about Vista not working with his printer? They sent a Microsoft engineer to go help him. This is why Ubuntu is not ready for the mainstream- because their "community support" ideal is a rat's nest of dipshits who are working out of religious passion.
How do we know it hasn't peaked? That this is just how many people there are out there who are willing to deal with an unsupported amateurish user experience where you get assaulted by a horde of zealots when you need help?
All this time, Microsoft has been parasailing on the heap of flames that Vista has become, releasing a beta for a new OS that is garnering more positive buzz than Ubuntu or Mac OS X Snow Leopard- and that's from the mainstream media as well.
I have a feeling this may be the end of a giant arc for the linux community as the venture capital dries up in the wake of the economic collapse and large companies can no longer afford to throw money at useless userland projects. Once the companies give up and the community is in charge again, it's back to directionless shit.
Wake me up when ubuntu breaks... let's say 1%. How about when they're profitable? Because this is nothing but grim news considering the state of their system.
Yes, I did combine your comments. I used ellipses for this. I think Sun Microsystem's failure in the market is a sign that open source is not delivering on the investment returns the hype of the bull market promised. Large corporations and small investors are operating on the same market in the same practice, in this case. I think the recession will see many large corporations re-evaluating the free exchange of technology with the question of whether or not they're actually pulling in hard money from this or simply melting down their technology advantage and rendering their position in the market as moot.
I've worked quite a few jobs that all involved office-type computer work and I've never ever received any form of training for the software that I had to use. I wonder how many employees out there really have been trained in working with the software they use. I'm guessing: not a whole lot.
If you're reading slashdot, then you are not speaking for non-technical users. It doesn't matter so much what they're trained for as what they're used to. If they're used to using Microsoft Office, they're productive with it. What's the benefit of switching an old version of Office to OpenOffice? What version of Microsoft Office is OpenOffice competitive with? For real? 98? 2000? 2003?
If you're setting up a new shop, it's a different question-- but people are just so resilient to change. Even moving simple context buttons confuses them.
Now, if you want to question whether it's a bigger change for users to use OpenOffice than Office 2007, that's certainly open for discussion. The last thing I am advocating is switching to Vista or Office 2007 as a solution. My solution is not falling for marketing hype and continuing use of your current office solution- if you're using OpenOffice/staroffice, certainly do not change.
...either maintained on a developer's free or salaried time... IBM, Apple, and Google, for example, have hundreds of employees who contribute to open source projects on company time......those projects would return nothing financially on their investment.
Okay, we have companies giving away salaried labor for projects that don't make financial returns. How would a recession not hurt this kind of investment? That's basically angel investment.
How is migration and re-training a cost cutting measure? So, you need to either fire your old IT guys and hire on new ones OR pay for training to have them switch to a new architecture? That's cheaper?
In order for these licenses to even be cheaper we're talking about companies dropping their support contracts altogether and using unsupported IT infrastructures. Any company that plans on "saving money" by switching to an unsupported and "community-developed" system for a commercial infrastructure in order to somehow save money is going to get slapped hard- and it's completely their fault.
The real answer here is that it's got more to do with sociology than with business or software. They're simply switching to free software because it looks good in a PowerPoint presentation and gives them something to do other than get fired.
IT is in a rough situation here, they can just keep their existing legacy infrastructures and just keep on as many IT people as they need to maintain it until the market improves; or they can turn to a hip new bleeding edge linux installation that's unstable, poorly undocumented, and full of unanticipated caveats- IT people won't just keep their jobs, they'll have to hire on an army of new people to keep their servers from detonating in lieu of that missing support contract.
Who needs a vendor that can issue quick security and bug patches to major clients when your job's on the line? With linux, IT is always busy and therefore indispensable!
COMMON SENSE COST CUTTING TIPS: Do not upgrade or migrate your IT infrastructure until the financial situation improves. Linux/F/OSS is mostly supported by angel investors and Sun Microsystems, both of which are in terrible shape due to stock market failure. Migrate to linux when the market is in GOOD shape so that it is being maintained, otherwise Windows Server will be innovating faster. If you are adding just a couple new machines, just spring for a couple extra Windows/Solaris/AIX licenses. Do a cost benefits analysis, this is most definitely cheaper. There's nothing more expensive than changing everything, even when it's free!
ALSO, Your employees WILL need to be re-trained to use Evolution instead of Outlook or Openoffice instead of Microsoft Office-- they only look similar when you start them up. The finer points are very different to a non-technical employee. Openoffice.org 3.0 is similar feature-wise to Microsoft Office 2000 or 2003, so it's better to just skip the upgrade to 2007 and wait out the financial crisis in comfortable productivity.
I am basing this on information I received where the military was evaluating the use of virtualization solutions to prevent having to use flash drives to move sensitive information between internet and intranet machines. For all I know this is another government branch that has sensitive defense information that is not expressly the DoD? I am not sure.
The only OS I've ever seen running on a military system was Solaris- occasionally linux- but that's just me, I suppose.
They don't use a lot of Windows on internal systems in the DoD. As I'm to understand, they run a lot more Linux and Solaris. In the interests of national security, though, all these systems are too close to make a big difference security-wise.
They may have different levels of attackability for circumstances relating to casual attacks and casual computer use (this is where we say "is the default linux installation in X version of linux more or less secure than the default windows installation in Y version of windows?) But when these systems have proper internal security policies set up, it doesn't make a huge difference-- when they are well configured, they're functionally the same.
DoD systems are generally set up so that one is connected to the internal network and one to the external network-- when you want to move a file, you simply use a flash drive. The chances are very good that these are running different operating systems, anyway.
For a coordinated and advanced attack on our DoD network infrastructure it has less to do with what operating systems we are running, which is really just a question of usability and administration time, but moreso broader questions of security policy-- such as where do you get your flash drives?
In short, if one OS was the issue here, this attack couldn't have gotten anywhere. An OS really doesn't mean much when you compare it to the overall security model for the network infrastructure, especially with the physical network restrictions used by the DoD.
The biggest difference for the operating systems for their purposes would be more on features like TPM-enabled drive encryption, etc-- things that would make it more difficult to hack a stolen laptop-- stuff like that.
I am not kidding. Our nation, in the last several decades, has been in a rapid pursuit to eliminate the middle class. Software jobs represented a middle class boom which both feeds the income of the somewhat educated and costs the blue chip industries lots of money. We're trying to develop an ownership economy, here, where the only people who make real money are those who own lines of international trade-- and you've simply become too expensive to maintain.
So, the opensource movement is a kind of economic lemming routine, where we are packaging all our technology and translating it in order to commoditize the industry and send it to India and China. It's not like there's anything wrong with foreigners writing software, but I'm not retarded. We're obviously devaluing this industry. I can't think of any companies that are really thriving on open source. The biggest, hottest, most internationally reported linux company, Canonical, operates at a loss. Sun open sourced everything and in turn 80% of their stock dropped and they fired 2/3 of their employees.
In fact, Sun is responsible for the largest percentage of open source work- so if the company fails, we're going to see a mass stagnation in the industry. If the angel investment that runs most open source startups gets drained on a failing stock market, then open source will be effectively run by the universities again. But our industries are capitalist, not socialized, so this will not benefit our society as a whole monetarily. Since we PAY to go to college instead of getting paid, we'll be paying for technology development with tax money that will then be maintained in Asia and gotten at factory wages by international industry.
So, you should learn to wait tables. Or sew clothing, or something. Companies like Microsoft and Apple that kept the software industry here are slowly losing the business market, and that's a losing battle for both technology and the US worker. The cost of software licenses was a small tax on big industry to keep the middle class healthy-- remember that "good guy" industries like IBM are very diversified and have a major hand in defense and other industry, so they're not going to get hurt when they eliminate the American software industry- it's just another cost cut and workload outsourced.
Just keep open sourcing your code, guys. You'll be like the old people who used to make big money making televisions in factories. And if you don't think waiting tables is hard, you should try it. Read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's a good primer on your future market.
so, you're a neutral bystander on the linux-MS debate, are you? Probably not...
What does that have to do with what I wrote? It's not like I work for Microsoft or Red Hat or Sun or anything. I'm an end user, not a journalist. I give linux distributions a fair shot every single release cycle, but I don't place any value on free software outside of accessibility. That means, I don't have a pro-linux bias because of the GPL- if the GPL (or non) tools I use work better in Windows, then I use Windows.
Microsoft has only been in this game for a short time and only recently got support for 256 cores. Getting support is one thing, getting **good**, optimised, support is quite another and that will take some time to get right.
I would argue that NT as a server platform is older than Linux as a server platform. I remember it being noted in a CS text book about the far higher SQL performance on Microsoft and Solaris systems when compared to linux, for instance, and that having much to do with the system architecture. I believe people use it because it's more optimized and has a more efficient underlying architecture. At NCSA, which is down the street from me, they run a pretty serious Windows HPC 2008 cluster, and they have very good things to say about its performance compared to the linux systems. The deployment time is also another plus, which is really remarkable for a cluster. One of the biggest issues, though, is issue resolution. When they have some sort of issue (don't let your windows 98 imaginations run wild, I am talking about little hiccups here) Microsoft usually has a hotfix or patch out in hours. The problem resolution and support positively topple any linux distribution and even Sun.
I would say that Windows HPC 2008 will be a pretty serious offering for small businesses that prefer to use easier to maintain Windows-based IT infrastructures. With enough time in cluster computing, they'll probably start picking up more enterprise customers as well. It's really nothing to laugh at-- it's the only solid non-unix offering, which is a big step ahead for companies not trapped in the 70's technology-wise.
Maybe with this global economic crisis, more companies will embrace this technology in order to cut IT and support overhead. You can crunch the numbers on a team of unix guys versus a couple of NT guys and a license. Support and effective administration infrastructure goes a long way. I think Microsoft is going to take back some of this market where Linux got ahead because Microsoft simply had no comparable offering.
Actually, INTEGRITY is quite a bit ahead of linux in feature set for its chosen market. It's one of those "90's" era architectures as compared to linux's 70's era architecture. In general, EAL4+ is known to be the highest security level a system can be retro-fitted to run at. To get EAL5 or above, a system must be secure by design. So don't think of it as an insecure system that has tons of bandages that make it secure, think of it as a system that does not have security holes because it was built with unbreakable security in mind, not adherence to a 70's era computing paradigm like linux or an 80's era paradigm like Windows or Mac.
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I never liked the words service pack.
It's pure Windows terminology. I think it's more related to doing bug fixes and security upgrades, etc.- major fixes packaged together to ease testing for IT departments and for limited Internet connectivity. It's hardly fading though, Ubuntu basically does this for their LTS releases.
Any idea if the Gigabit Audio bug is still in Windows 7. To test - play an audio track, then transfer a large file over the network via GbE. You should get the full transfer rate. In Vista it would limit the transfer rate to something closer to 100 Mbs. We were told this was to ensure proper audio playback.
I am running a 100 mbps LAN in my household, so I cannot test this issue. If anyone else on this thread can do this, I'd be interested to know the results.
Windows 7 is likely more aimed at XP users and people considering the unreasonably expensive switch to Mac.
I don't think it's really aiming to be the next big upgrade for Vista users, although I believe it will be anyway.
If you want to consider Windows 7 a SP, that's not a bad call, since it's built on Vista's backend directly. It's really an overhauled and re-imagined userland which really does warrant a version change. It doesn't act like prior Windows so it is fair to call it a new system, for user's sake.
I've been using the Beta for a while and it isn't a beta like say... an Ubuntu beta. This is a beta of a quality the open source world cannot obtain. We call this a release in linuxland. For this reason, I don't think there's anything strange about them aiming for a single RC.
Alternatively, this could easily be a case of an upgraded installer/software update tool rendering it unnecessary to separate RC releases. They might just upgrade the RC if they need another one.
I think the marketing angle on this is that Windows 7 is correct by design. Besides, Apple releases new versions of OS X that are basically service packs at full price all the time, and they don't even have large public betas. Consider that Microsoft has a far larger and more effective QA system internally than Apple. They CAN release like this-- they've got an army of internal testers aside from the millions of beta testers out there.
If you want a couple gigabytes of online storage for free that's got a multi-platform client for regular syncing, you can already have it:
https://spideroak.com/
At least these guys encrypt your data instead of processing and farming it for marketing data and advertising cues. Ugh. What part of our lives aren't we going to hand over to google?
You missed Enterprise, which is Business + MUI, BitLocker, and SUA. So it's really two new versions, not one.
Also, there is a very noticeable (whether it's huge or not is arguable) difference between Home Basic and Home Premium is the lack of Aero in the former. There wasn't anything corresponding to that when comparing XP Home and XP Pro.
I didn't see Enterprise listed in the screenshot in the article. They might be bundling that with Business now... which certainly makes more sense. I am not sure it belongs in that selection because it is licensed differently-- I mean you can't just go to the store and buy a copy of Windows Vista Enterprise.
You're right about Aero and Home Basic, that's definitely a big issue. We're not really talking about Vista at this point, though, we're talking about Windows 7. I am making the assumption that Windows 7 Basic will include Aero on the grounds that it's a generation past Vista and desktop compositing is not really a big label feature anymore. It would just be awkward to offer the Windows 7 gui without Aero-- it has so many Aero-centric features.
If Windows 7 Basic doesn't have Aero though, I think they're going to have trouble getting people interested in it. I was under the impression that they wrote a fast software dx10 accelerator precisely because every system should be able to run Aero.
We shall see.
that's like saying a home builder will sell you a "Starter Edition" house that, once you open the door (he threw the door in as a bonus!), find out the house is basically a shell on top of the foundation.. no fixtures, cabinets, flooring, drywalls, just framing.
No, that's absolutely not what it's like. You're getting a fully functional operating system here, the components not included are really just extra features. It would be more like a house being cheaper because it doesn't come with kitchen appliances or a washer and dryer. And really, how strange is that? Some people just want the windows operating system, not the NFS server with it or IIS.
Actually, to take the metaphor even further, what your describing isn't even offered to consumers in the windows world. You know, this house has appliances, as well. What it's missing is a board room, maybe an office kitchen, fiber-optic wiring. Things you generally don't find in houses.
For many people, it's a good thing that they don't have to pay the licensing cost of a full business-level product. What does a business edition have that a low end home user is really going to miss?
Somebody please enlighten me.
If you really want to know the different, pop into add/remove windows components on Windows 7 beta. You'll see a motley connection of odds and ends relating to business and home use. Most of them aren't installed and are somewhat irrelevant to you.
Basic is baseline (like XP home)
Home Premium includes media center (like XP media center edition)
Business is basically XP Professional
Ultimate is XP professional + media center
They didn't actually add any new editions except for Ultimate. I am sure the home users will really be lamenting their lack of NFS client/server capabilities.
Most of the guification will remain and all the desktop essentials are now under the Live Essentials umbrella, so the versioning should be irrelevant to everyone except people on slashdot who make it into a massive philosophical crisis.
Oh my god! They've made spins of their operating system with a feature relevant to the market and usage scenario!
Oh my god! Media center costs extra!
Oh my god! enterprise-level networking features aren't included on my mom's compaq!
This is a COMMERCIAL operating system. This is similar to the complaint that Ubuntu and Kubuntu are separate distributions because they have different software sets except they cost a different amount of money because commercial systems COST MONEY.
Let's break this down further:
Basic is for low-end bargain PC's
Home Premium is for middle-high end PC's
Business is for Business PC's
Ultimate is for enthusiasts (like beta testers and people with pony tails and translucent panels on the side of their tower-- it exists because some people will pay for it)
By offering different levels of product at a different price point, they've made their product more accessible to people who would rather pay less and just have an operating system. If you use mostly F/OSS on your windows system, you should get Basic. It's not that complicated!
Interestingly, there are roughly 2 acres of arable land per person on the planet right now. And guess what? Global warming would actually increase that acreage by almost 25% if average global temperatures rose 3F. It's entirely possible that a warming planet (despite the realities of sunspot cycles and impending cooling cycle) is actually required to support humanity, rather than being a harbinger of its demise.
That's an extremely linear way of looking at global warming. I've got some friends who are running major climate simulations for a group of interested companies and governmental bodies over at the NCSA. As far as I can tell, we're looking at the effects of global warming changing the direction of undersea currents, moving climates instead of just "warming" them, drying certain areas and wetting others, and changing weather patterns. So really, it's not just a case of the world getting warmer-- the problems is that we don't wholly understand how this will affect the weather.
Currently, most of our food supply is dependent on an extremely stable growing season. Part of what we have to model is how these minor temperature changes will affect the nitrogen cycle and crop growth- and the current results aren't very promising. What that doesn't take into account is the geopolitical and logistic cost of the fertile region moving to another part of the country.
Beyond this, every time they model ahead x-thousand years, actual results keep beating the "worst case scenario" curve. We didn't know quite how much methane and CO2 were frozen in the sea and ice caps, so we may have started an unstoppable snowball effect.
We just had an unusally bad growing season here in Illinois. That's okay because we usually run at a surplus. We can only have so many of these bad growing seasons, though, before the problem goes from a nagging concern to a worldwide crisis. Chances are people will pass these things off as stupidity or superstition as long as they can. Most just can't cope with the idea of the most stable thing we can imagine, the Earth, is now in a state of very rapid flux that we can't fully grasp-- and it's because we burned every piece of carbon we could find on and under the ground. Let's pretend that this crisis is really happening. How do people act? Do they accept it or is there mass denial from those who can't come to terms with the danger? Can mankind as a huddled mass really handle long term crisis?
I think this is an alarm call for Microsoft to be more proactive on the alternative browser situation.
First, off, let's discuss a couple of nightmare scenarios that Microsoft would like to avoid:
- A vanilla copy of Firefox is bundled with Windows. A large sum of users are connecting to the Internet through this browser and there are quality and security issues which Microsoft now has limited capacity to fix or address. If Mozilla, for instance, complemented the Unix security model well while poorly addressing the Windows security model (completely hypothetical), a third party would then be inserting its own Achilles' Heel into the Windows platform. It's not that it WILL but that it CAN.
- If Microsoft is forced to ship either Chrome or Safari, they will be including products that are actively attacking their product share outside of the web browser market. These are wolves at the door for Microsoft, since Safari is basically a "switch to Mac" ad and Chrome is a "use google instead of Live" ad. I'd also like to point out that Safari does not play nicely with Windows' font rendering or accessibility.
- A litigatively determined requirement leads to a comical freakshow of third party browsers, leading to a free-for-all user experience nightmare, destroying the unity of the system.
My proposals for a solution:
- Microsoft can be proactive on the Mozilla Firefox product right now. They should first focus on having a testing structure for their own release engineered version of Firefox, and second consider placing a few developers on Firefox's security team to look out for their best interests. If Microsoft supports a more "Camino" approach to the Firefox problem, they could support their own open-source fork of the Firefox product that focuses on better integration with the Windows 7 environment while maintaining the standards-oriented compatibility with the web platform. This would be an ideal solution since Windows Live and Silverlight, etc. are already focused on Firefox support for Microsoft plugins, etc. Furthermore, having a presence on the Firefox team would allow Microsoft to address security issues much more quickly while improving face.
- Alternatively, I believe Microsoft could find an even cheaper and less idealistically challenging approach in simply licensing Opera. Why not? With their small team and focus on professional implementation, an Opera-branded Windows 7 specialized browser could be a ticket out of monopoly-town while not entirely losing the benefits of having an in-house browser team. The Opera team is smaller and centrally managed vs. the Firefox team, allowing Microsoft to work very actively alongside the developer in seeing features and compatibility issues worked out (ie Silverlight compatibility). Perhaps a more controllable and less wild product would be the ideal means of keeping control of the quality and security of the Windows Platform while maintaining a competive edge in usability.
Also, what Microsoft stands to lose:
If OEMs are left to deal with the notion of embedding third party browsers instead of Microsoft, they lose their control and their ability to maintain the quality and integrity of their platform. Imagine what OEMs would do with an open source product like Firefox-- there could be Dell Firefox, HP Firefox, etc. Microsoft needs to reign this problem in an preempt it with a workable solution before it falls out of their hands.
And finally, I'd like to underline the importance of maintaining Internet Explorer as a product: It's of the utmost importance that Microsoft offer a supported way to access the web within their platform for both enterprise IT considerations, which Firefox ignores, as well as the process of support and security patching. Keeping Microsoft branding in the web is important for their company's existing relevance in emerging industries. Also, I'd like to add that Microsoft participating in the "standards-based" web game will result in a better documented an
Okay, the hardware specs look good, but the software description scotched the deal for me. "Familiar Microsoft® Windows® Platform".
Of course, that's only the front-end. Chances are it's running virtualized using a secure separation kernel. This system is likely so thoroughly contained and hardened that it can't even access external networks- and if it can, it's doing so through a kernel like GHS INTEGRITY or LynxSecure or something.
Ideally, with a secure embedded system like this, Windows, Linux, Mac, whatever- they're only good as front-ends. The thought of any of those three running bare on a system with that much sensitive information is quite frankly frightening.
Users don't read manuals [joelonsoftware.com] and those that do would buy the books.
That's why Windows includes integrated contextual help files. It's basically got a support novel integrated into the system.
Awesome for what? Creating a troll post, making out that it was Abbie that blamed Ubuntu, who is now infamous for being an idiot. Yeah he's so awesome.
The high road is not for everyone. If you'd watched kindergarten cop, you'd know that in order to take on a group of children, you need to speak their language. Besides, as someone who is actually paid for what he writes on his blog, he's pretty big league in the world of journalism compared to most of what shows up on Digg or Reddit.
If you mean running [work for] then you're just making it up.
http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=UDS [youtube.com]
Thats pretty much all the people who work for Ubuntu at the UDS. None of them are as you describe.
What about my post gave you the impression I was in London? Here you are showing me a bunch of paid assets while I'm talking about all the unpaid liabilities Canonical drags around as "The Ubuntu Community". You know... "expert users". These are people who are paid for their work... different breed.
You mean like the official book? [amazon.com]
and also this one.. [amazon.com]
Does Dell ship these with their Ubuntu machines? Their existence is irrelevant if they aren't available to the user out of the box.
What I don't get about your post is how you associate Ubuntu user to be Ubuntu Community. If I use Windows to play some games does that make me part of the Windows Community?
Ubuntu is generally community supported, so it is represented by its community. Windows is fully supported by Microsoft for all users, so it is represented by Microsoft.
Then in a later post the very same reporter is laughing about all the attention he got on his site. Yeah, anything to make a quick buck while ruining Abbie's life.
That blog post was fscking awesome. He gets bonus points for ripping on the nerd horde.
There's only one reason why that news story got so much negative feedback and that's because it was posted on Digg, Slashdot and Reddit. Assholes of the internet. This story was never posted in the Ubuntu news letter which is in my opinion the Ubuntu community. Not like all these little shits on digg who think they are leet because they have linux and are standing up to the man to fight for open source freedom.
That's the upside to a corporate product-- you are able to distinguish who is affiliated and who is not. This is a great way to avoid misrepresentation. Canonical should take a more active role in preventing this, rather than letting their situation ebb and flow with the stampede. And why aren't these l33t kids the ubuntu community? How do you know this isn't the case? From what I can tell, most people I've seen running ubuntu have neckbeards and acne. I wish I were kidding.
I've found that wherever I have turned for support, I've been met with friendliness and the problems I've had have been resolved, mostly expediently.
But is this a consistent scenario? There needs to be greater focus on what help is "official" and "unofficial"-- does a supported copy of ubuntu come with a paper user guide? Perhaps the volumes of help most commonly viewed should be reproduced in offline form for users by paid/trusted editors at Canonical. Offline help is a major aspect of a Microsoft Windows desktop. The volumes of help documentation are unmatched by any other system. It seems like Ubuntu and OS X try to rely on "obvious" solutions instead of documentation. Some people will feel better with that extra bit of assurance that they're doing the right thing. Don't forget that online support is useless to those who can't get their system online. I think this situation with this girl in wisconsin demonstrates that you can't rely on the consistency of online support. Third party support should be provided for third party behavior-- anything included in the ubuntu ecosystem as supported software and especially that which is bundled should have full offline documentation.
What are your personal experiences dealing with the Linux or specifically Ubuntu community? How have you addressed the community? How have they addressed you in return?
My community response has been inconsistent. That's the best way to put it. Sometimes, people can help me- sometimes there's just no right answer. Generally speaking, I write FAQ's, not read them. I am more talking about the outward appearance Ubuntu is giving to mainstream users, not technical users like myself. I am not baffled by Ubuntu, but my girlfriend certainly is.
How is the user experience of Ubuntu different from that of Windows or OS X, in a way that makes Ubuntu and only Ubuntu amateurish?
It's a little bit of everything. Generally, Ubuntu seems very glossy, but underneath the glaze there's lots of (i hate to use this word again) inconsistency. Everything "just works" until something is out of the ordinary. Those little scenarios where things are abnormal are part of the reason that microsoft needs to have so many staff. Little things could go a long way- for instance, Compiz performance has always been sub-par and hitchy on Ubuntu, whereas Aero is smooth as ... glass. There's issues with X and mode switching as well as handling of multiple displays. The only proper implementation of that I've ever seen on linux was on the EeePC with Xandros.
Furthermore, let's talk about the issue with the girl in Wisconsin putting her ISP CD in and not understanding why it doesn't work. Maybe a simple dialogue explaining to her that windows installers won't work on Ubuntu (flag disabled if wine is present)-- perhaps something like Apple's windows-mac equivalence guide would be helpful. Imagine that your users have no idea what to expect from your system.
It's all about polish-- trying to make the system more than just *seem* smooth, but to actually iron out all the little bugs and issues that users will face- and if you can't, make sure the user knows how to work around it without relying on some random jackass telling them on a message board. Do you want your system to be an alternative desktop or a desktop alternative? There's a lot of man hours involved in making that jump.
If this is a joke, it's some sly humor. Let me break this down: Ubuntu, the biggest most important figure in the home linux community is almost breaking even... at only $30 million? That's peanuts. Even Xandros is profitable!
This would be a tremendous deal if they had more market share than say... Mac. Then they'd be undercutting their competition, kicking ass and taking names. Meanwhile in reality, Ubuntu has finally gotten some mainstream coverage when a girl in Wisconsin accidentally bought a computer with it and couldn't understand how to get her internet working or write documents... and the community assaulted her like a bunch of maniacs. Her experience with this "easy to use" version of linux was so bad that she thought Dell was trying to put over some sort of scam on her. The local news anchor described the system as "low profile"-- and he's in a college town. You know what happened when a local man in Seattle complained about Vista not working with his printer? They sent a Microsoft engineer to go help him. This is why Ubuntu is not ready for the mainstream- because their "community support" ideal is a rat's nest of dipshits who are working out of religious passion.
How do we know it hasn't peaked? That this is just how many people there are out there who are willing to deal with an unsupported amateurish user experience where you get assaulted by a horde of zealots when you need help?
All this time, Microsoft has been parasailing on the heap of flames that Vista has become, releasing a beta for a new OS that is garnering more positive buzz than Ubuntu or Mac OS X Snow Leopard- and that's from the mainstream media as well.
I have a feeling this may be the end of a giant arc for the linux community as the venture capital dries up in the wake of the economic collapse and large companies can no longer afford to throw money at useless userland projects. Once the companies give up and the community is in charge again, it's back to directionless shit.
Wake me up when ubuntu breaks... let's say 1%. How about when they're profitable? Because this is nothing but grim news considering the state of their system.
I, for one, welcome our furry new infantry to battle overseas. I wonder what the U.S. military's policy on "yiffing" is...
"Dog tags" will take on a whole new meaning. Still, they should include:
Name
Rank
Religion
Fursona
"This man fought as a horse-- and we will bury him-- as a horse."
Yes, I did combine your comments. I used ellipses for this. I think Sun Microsystem's failure in the market is a sign that open source is not delivering on the investment returns the hype of the bull market promised. Large corporations and small investors are operating on the same market in the same practice, in this case. I think the recession will see many large corporations re-evaluating the free exchange of technology with the question of whether or not they're actually pulling in hard money from this or simply melting down their technology advantage and rendering their position in the market as moot.
I've worked quite a few jobs that all involved office-type computer work and I've never ever received any form of training for the software that I had to use. I wonder how many employees out there really have been trained in working with the software they use. I'm guessing: not a whole lot.
If you're reading slashdot, then you are not speaking for non-technical users. It doesn't matter so much what they're trained for as what they're used to. If they're used to using Microsoft Office, they're productive with it. What's the benefit of switching an old version of Office to OpenOffice? What version of Microsoft Office is OpenOffice competitive with? For real? 98? 2000? 2003?
If you're setting up a new shop, it's a different question-- but people are just so resilient to change. Even moving simple context buttons confuses them.
Now, if you want to question whether it's a bigger change for users to use OpenOffice than Office 2007, that's certainly open for discussion. The last thing I am advocating is switching to Vista or Office 2007 as a solution. My solution is not falling for marketing hype and continuing use of your current office solution- if you're using OpenOffice/staroffice, certainly do not change.
...either maintained on a developer's free or salaried time... IBM, Apple, and Google, for example, have hundreds of employees who contribute to open source projects on company time... ...those projects would return nothing financially on their investment.
Okay, we have companies giving away salaried labor for projects that don't make financial returns. How would a recession not hurt this kind of investment? That's basically angel investment.
How is migration and re-training a cost cutting measure? So, you need to either fire your old IT guys and hire on new ones OR pay for training to have them switch to a new architecture? That's cheaper?
In order for these licenses to even be cheaper we're talking about companies dropping their support contracts altogether and using unsupported IT infrastructures. Any company that plans on "saving money" by switching to an unsupported and "community-developed" system for a commercial infrastructure in order to somehow save money is going to get slapped hard- and it's completely their fault.
The real answer here is that it's got more to do with sociology than with business or software. They're simply switching to free software because it looks good in a PowerPoint presentation and gives them something to do other than get fired.
IT is in a rough situation here, they can just keep their existing legacy infrastructures and just keep on as many IT people as they need to maintain it until the market improves; or they can turn to a hip new bleeding edge linux installation that's unstable, poorly undocumented, and full of unanticipated caveats- IT people won't just keep their jobs, they'll have to hire on an army of new people to keep their servers from detonating in lieu of that missing support contract.
Who needs a vendor that can issue quick security and bug patches to major clients when your job's on the line? With linux, IT is always busy and therefore indispensable!
COMMON SENSE COST CUTTING TIPS: Do not upgrade or migrate your IT infrastructure until the financial situation improves. Linux/F/OSS is mostly supported by angel investors and Sun Microsystems, both of which are in terrible shape due to stock market failure. Migrate to linux when the market is in GOOD shape so that it is being maintained, otherwise Windows Server will be innovating faster. If you are adding just a couple new machines, just spring for a couple extra Windows/Solaris/AIX licenses. Do a cost benefits analysis, this is most definitely cheaper. There's nothing more expensive than changing everything, even when it's free!
ALSO, Your employees WILL need to be re-trained to use Evolution instead of Outlook or Openoffice instead of Microsoft Office-- they only look similar when you start them up. The finer points are very different to a non-technical employee. Openoffice.org 3.0 is similar feature-wise to Microsoft Office 2000 or 2003, so it's better to just skip the upgrade to 2007 and wait out the financial crisis in comfortable productivity.
I am basing this on information I received where the military was evaluating the use of virtualization solutions to prevent having to use flash drives to move sensitive information between internet and intranet machines. For all I know this is another government branch that has sensitive defense information that is not expressly the DoD? I am not sure.
The only OS I've ever seen running on a military system was Solaris- occasionally linux- but that's just me, I suppose.
They don't use a lot of Windows on internal systems in the DoD. As I'm to understand, they run a lot more Linux and Solaris. In the interests of national security, though, all these systems are too close to make a big difference security-wise.
They may have different levels of attackability for circumstances relating to casual attacks and casual computer use (this is where we say "is the default linux installation in X version of linux more or less secure than the default windows installation in Y version of windows?) But when these systems have proper internal security policies set up, it doesn't make a huge difference-- when they are well configured, they're functionally the same.
DoD systems are generally set up so that one is connected to the internal network and one to the external network-- when you want to move a file, you simply use a flash drive. The chances are very good that these are running different operating systems, anyway.
For a coordinated and advanced attack on our DoD network infrastructure it has less to do with what operating systems we are running, which is really just a question of usability and administration time, but moreso broader questions of security policy-- such as where do you get your flash drives?
In short, if one OS was the issue here, this attack couldn't have gotten anywhere. An OS really doesn't mean much when you compare it to the overall security model for the network infrastructure, especially with the physical network restrictions used by the DoD.
The biggest difference for the operating systems for their purposes would be more on features like TPM-enabled drive encryption, etc-- things that would make it more difficult to hack a stolen laptop-- stuff like that.
I am not kidding. Our nation, in the last several decades, has been in a rapid pursuit to eliminate the middle class. Software jobs represented a middle class boom which both feeds the income of the somewhat educated and costs the blue chip industries lots of money. We're trying to develop an ownership economy, here, where the only people who make real money are those who own lines of international trade-- and you've simply become too expensive to maintain.
So, the opensource movement is a kind of economic lemming routine, where we are packaging all our technology and translating it in order to commoditize the industry and send it to India and China. It's not like there's anything wrong with foreigners writing software, but I'm not retarded. We're obviously devaluing this industry. I can't think of any companies that are really thriving on open source. The biggest, hottest, most internationally reported linux company, Canonical, operates at a loss. Sun open sourced everything and in turn 80% of their stock dropped and they fired 2/3 of their employees.
In fact, Sun is responsible for the largest percentage of open source work- so if the company fails, we're going to see a mass stagnation in the industry. If the angel investment that runs most open source startups gets drained on a failing stock market, then open source will be effectively run by the universities again. But our industries are capitalist, not socialized, so this will not benefit our society as a whole monetarily. Since we PAY to go to college instead of getting paid, we'll be paying for technology development with tax money that will then be maintained in Asia and gotten at factory wages by international industry.
So, you should learn to wait tables. Or sew clothing, or something. Companies like Microsoft and Apple that kept the software industry here are slowly losing the business market, and that's a losing battle for both technology and the US worker. The cost of software licenses was a small tax on big industry to keep the middle class healthy-- remember that "good guy" industries like IBM are very diversified and have a major hand in defense and other industry, so they're not going to get hurt when they eliminate the American software industry- it's just another cost cut and workload outsourced.
Just keep open sourcing your code, guys. You'll be like the old people who used to make big money making televisions in factories. And if you don't think waiting tables is hard, you should try it. Read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's a good primer on your future market.
so, you're a neutral bystander on the linux-MS debate, are you? Probably not...
What does that have to do with what I wrote? It's not like I work for Microsoft or Red Hat or Sun or anything. I'm an end user, not a journalist. I give linux distributions a fair shot every single release cycle, but I don't place any value on free software outside of accessibility. That means, I don't have a pro-linux bias because of the GPL- if the GPL (or non) tools I use work better in Windows, then I use Windows.
Microsoft has only been in this game for a short time and only recently got support for 256 cores. Getting support is one thing, getting **good**, optimised, support is quite another and that will take some time to get right.
I would argue that NT as a server platform is older than Linux as a server platform. I remember it being noted in a CS text book about the far higher SQL performance on Microsoft and Solaris systems when compared to linux, for instance, and that having much to do with the system architecture. I believe people use it because it's more optimized and has a more efficient underlying architecture. At NCSA, which is down the street from me, they run a pretty serious Windows HPC 2008 cluster, and they have very good things to say about its performance compared to the linux systems. The deployment time is also another plus, which is really remarkable for a cluster. One of the biggest issues, though, is issue resolution. When they have some sort of issue (don't let your windows 98 imaginations run wild, I am talking about little hiccups here) Microsoft usually has a hotfix or patch out in hours. The problem resolution and support positively topple any linux distribution and even Sun.
I would say that Windows HPC 2008 will be a pretty serious offering for small businesses that prefer to use easier to maintain Windows-based IT infrastructures. With enough time in cluster computing, they'll probably start picking up more enterprise customers as well. It's really nothing to laugh at-- it's the only solid non-unix offering, which is a big step ahead for companies not trapped in the 70's technology-wise.
Maybe with this global economic crisis, more companies will embrace this technology in order to cut IT and support overhead. You can crunch the numbers on a team of unix guys versus a couple of NT guys and a license. Support and effective administration infrastructure goes a long way. I think Microsoft is going to take back some of this market where Linux got ahead because Microsoft simply had no comparable offering.
Actually, INTEGRITY is quite a bit ahead of linux in feature set for its chosen market. It's one of those "90's" era architectures as compared to linux's 70's era architecture. In general, EAL4+ is known to be the highest security level a system can be retro-fitted to run at. To get EAL5 or above, a system must be secure by design. So don't think of it as an insecure system that has tons of bandages that make it secure, think of it as a system that does not have security holes because it was built with unbreakable security in mind, not adherence to a 70's era computing paradigm like linux or an 80's era paradigm like Windows or Mac.