The thing you have to remember is "what is your core market?" A disruption in your core market is devistating, but a distruption in an ancilliary market isn't- in fact, it's often an opportunity.
Two examples: Sun and Linux, and SGI and PCs.
What killed SGI/Cray was _not_ Linux- it was cheap PCs. SGI's (and Cray's) core market was selling hardware to solve large linear algebra problems (almost all uses for super computers- from scientific simulations to weather predicting to Hollywood special effects- are at heart simply large matrix problems). These problems parallelize very easy, meaning it doesn't matter if the MFLOPS come in one big box, or a whole bunch of little boxes, what matters is the total cost for the necessary MFLOPS.
As such, it wasn't Linux that killed (is killing) SGI/Cray, it's the explosion of cheap powerful PCs and low-end Workstations, which make it possible to buy a few hundred PCs and wire together the same number of MFLOPS as a major super-computer, at a much lower cost.
Now, let's look at Sun. Like SGI/Cray, Sun's core buisness is selling hardware. The main purpose Solaris has in life is to give customers a good OS to run on the hardware Sun is selling. But, unlike SGI/Cray, Sun concentrated on selling Database machines. Unlike large linear algebra problems, databases don't parallelize so well- the various CPUs end up needing to communicate a lot more. It's easy to replace a Cray doing weather prediction with a stack of PCs, but extremely difficult if not impossible to replace an E10K running Oracle with the same stack of PCs.
If Sun can convince Linux users to run Linux on Sparcs, then Linux is no threat to Sun's core buisness (hardware). In fact, it's an opportunity to cut development costs of Solaris (allowing Sun to target Solaris at the high-end, where Linux isn't a good fit at the moment). If Linux were to grow to the point where it could replace Solaris at all levels, then Sun could drop the overhead of supporting Solaris altogether. While I don't think Solaris is a loss for Sun, it certain isn't a profit center. In either case, Sun doesn't lose in it's core market.
Now, a company whose core market _is_ expensive PC-based operating systems has a lot to lose to a disruption in that space. So it's important to look at what the core market is for the companies before panicing about a possible disruption in the low-end.
Even Microsoft's PR dept would have the decent to get their quotes right. You have at least one misatributed, and added words to at least two others _which changed their meanings_. This is from reading only four of the quotes, two (the fourth one I didn't recognize).
Specifically: the addition of the word "computer" to Feynmann's quote, the addition of "[Open Source]" to the "programming is like sex" quote (hint: _all_ programming is like that), and jdstone@ingr.com was quoting either Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain, I forget.
If you wish to be taken at all seriously, checking the references is a must.
The rest of the paper displays an equivelent slipshod approach to argument that the quotes do to citations.
Hmm. This page looks an awful lot like a private anti-Linux pro-Microsoft page I ran across recently. I'll see if I can find the URL and post it here.
My responses:
1) RE: Benchmarks. There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.
2) WTF is a "proof point"?
3) A journalling file system does _not_ prevent data loss! It simply makes fscks faster (a worthy goal in itself, but much short of the walking-on-water powers normally associated with journalling file systems).
4) I wouldn't brag about the uptime gaurentees provided by HP, at least- they gaurentee that uptime _only_ running a small number of "certified" apps and only one a small number of machines and configurations. And you pay for it. And they don't count scheduled downtime. And 99.9% is sucky- that's like 9 hours of (unscheduled) downtime a year. No wondering clustering is so important to NT.
5) The only TCO study I've ever seen showing that NT is cheaper than Unix (which was included in the MSDN, BTW) among several other humorous assumptions, assumed that anyone using Unix on the desktop also needed to have a Windows box on their desk as well for office apps, email (Unix doesn't have email, don't you know...) etc. In other words, TCO(NT) = TCO(Unix) + TCO(NT). Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
6) I'll be the first person to agree that ACLs are better than Unix's protection scheme. The only problem with NT's protection scheme is that you can't use it. Little known products like Microsoft Office need all sorts of rights, like the right to write in C:\Windows. Yeah, if you know what you're doing, you can mostly lock down an NT box (leaving only a few gaping security holes absolutely required by the applications), but most people _don't_. Yeah, Unix's protection scheme could be signifigantly improved, but at least it's used.
6) I like the weasling on the C-2 security ratings. Last I heard, NT only got C-2 by disabling the networking. And 4.0 wasn't certified for years- so long the guy who was originally suing them was threatening to take them to court. Oh, and C-2 doesn't mean that much- the only lower rating is D (no security at all, ala DOS). Some versions of Unix can even hit B levels of security (there's a version of HP-UX that does this, IIRC). The only reason Linux hasn't gotten C-2 is simply that no one has walked it through the paperwork (i.e. for the same reason it's not "Unix").
7) Um, NT doesn't support PnP either. My experience has been that Linux has support for more hardware than NT. And is gaining on 98 (especially since 98 seems to be dropping support for older hardware). And hardware support is mainly done by the hardware vendors, not by Microsoft- Linux is starting to pick up support from the hardware vendors. For instance, I'm willing to bet that Linux will be native (and 64-bit, but that's cheating) on Merced before Windows will...
8) Funny, I'm using Linux on the desktop even I type this (at work, even). For my work Windows would be _less_ effective. But I'm willing to agree that I'm a special case. "Easier to administrate" is a tricky concept- administrating one Windows box (or one Mac) is easier than administrating one Linux/Unix box, agreed. But administrating 500 Linux/Unix boxes is signifigantly easier than administrating 500 Windows boxes. Things which make life _more_ difficult in the single-box (like using text-files for configuration) suddenly change to be helps in the 500-box situation (for example, letting you write scripts to automatically reconfigure all those systems).
Once you start ignoring administration costs, I'd pit Gnome/Enlightenment for user friendliness against anything Windows has to offer. Especially considering there is no user interface rule that Microsoft themselves don't violate (for example, the DDK viewers don't even have menu bars, just tool bars).
And the question is not "how many applications are on a given OS", but "are the applications you need on the given OS?"
Arguing that justice should not be dispensed because of it's effect on the stock price is silly- you're arguing that justice should _never_ be dispensed against a company, in effect declaring companies above the law.
Besides, Microsoft's stock price is due for readjustment anyways- it's P/E of 65 is like 3x higher than the stock market average. It'll be worse when it actually happens- the stock market _always_ overcorrects. Can you see MSFT selling at $15 a share? You may...
This philosophy was widely espoused a century or so ago, very widely. It lead to the robber barons and the great depression. And our current set of laws and goverment interventions to prevent a recurrance.
It sounds neat, in theory. In practice it has been shown not to work.
Intel realizes this, I think. But on the other hand, the clock is ticking on the life expectancy of _every_ 32-bit chip. If you average desktop system being sold today has 128M of memory today, and that number is doubling every 18 months, then in 4 more doubling, or 6 years, the average desktop system will have 2 gig of ram. Already it's not unusual to see large servers with 10's of gig of ram, and high-end workstations with multiple gigs of ram. Intel is the _only_ desktop & server chip manufacturer still selling only 32-bit chips.
The 386 was released in 1986 IIRC. It wasn't until 1995 that Microsoft managed to release a broadly-accepted 32-bit OS. And the situation doesn't look any better today. But Intel can't wait ten years for Microsoft to get it's act together. This explains Intel's sudden support for Linux- it's one operating system that Intel can assure itself will be running on Merced (if you want something done right...). Intel already has had experience with the GCC compiler (remember pgcc), and once GCC is ported, even Linus agrees that porting Linux is easy.
Much more likely is the theory that Microsoft bought Softway simply to bury the technology. Microsoft has a vested intrest in making sure that cross-platform development remains very difficult (to keep all the software, and thus all the users, on Windows). And certainly promoting the Unix API as _the_ cross-platform API is Microsoft's worst nightmare.
As to hiring talent for 64-bit Windows, why did Microsoft throw a hissy fit over Compaq's dropping NT-on-Alpha, and not simply hire the entire Compaq/Dec group to continue doing what they were already doing? Here you have a group of people already familiar with a 64-bit architecture _and_ the internals of NT, and in sudden need of a new job. It's possible that Microsoft was just being childish, but more likely they aren't looking for outside help.
As for Microsoft being immune from competition, I think the book "Megatrends" said it best- "There is no divine right of inherited markets any more than there is the divine right of kings". The book was talking about Railroads, but the lessons apply.
The whole libc5/glibc2 transition took orders of magnitude longer than it should have, thanks to the foot dragging efforts of slackware among others (Hiyah, Caldera!).
Why is this important? The next time you hear some Berst wannabe complaining about incompatibilities amongst the distributions, this is one of the big things they're talking about. Programs compiled against libc5 won't run if only glibc2 is installed, and vice versa.
I'm not suggesting that distributions jump on every bandwagon that comes along, but how many years ago was development on libc5 stopped in favor of glibc2?
Why is it that having a dozen vendors shipping products which are only mostly compatible is worse than a single vendor shipping a product utterly unlike anything else? I'll grant you that a dozen vendors being only mostly compatible isn't as good as a dozen vendors being completely compatible, but that wasn't the choice.
No, the "Windows Invasion" had nothing to do with Unix's balkanization (nor would a lack of balkanization have aborted it). Instead it was a consequence of IBM granting Microsoft a monopoly on the PC OS market- a decision no one in the Unix world had any effect over. The Unix Balkanization problem was raised after the fact as an excuse ("it's not Microsoft's fault- really!").
If Balkanization is a problem, then Windows has it as well (NT/2K, 95/98, and CE being three _different_ and only mostly compatible OSs). And thus is primed for a (un-Balkanizable) Linux invasion...
You're being too generous, I think. If you want to know when someone accesses your website, why not just turn on logging in the webserver? I'll grant that knowing someone is scanning you is helpfull- but that doesn't keep the hacker out of the website, does it? It's kind of like saying that if you have security cameras, you don't need locks on your doors.
First off, the author misunderstands what is meant by STO. It does not mean Security through secrecy. All security depends upon a secret- be it the factorization of a composite, a secret key or password or passphrase, or the combination of a safe. The fundamental security is how difficult is it for an attacker to guess that secret.
So, the logic goes, make it more difficult for the attacker to know what secret they need to guess. Hide the security algorithm from them. Does the safe require a combination, a key, a palm print, or some combination?
The problem is that, by obscuring the implementation, weakness that can signifigantly reduce the amount of secret key the attacker needs to guess are hidden ("Um, it's a bad idea to put the door hinges on the outside of the safe. I don't bother picking the lock- I pop the hinges and simply remove the door.").
And this is the advantage open-source has. It's peer review limits the existance of such backdoors. And fixed faster when they are found.
Do not think for a moment that restricting access to the source code makes it less likely such vulnerabilities will be found. The "black hats" (be they the evil hackers or the evil NSA) always seem to have enough time to reverse engineer the software from the binary. The "white hats" generally have better things to do with their time. By making it harder for the legitimate people to look for security holes, you are simply making it more likely that the people finding the security holes will exploit them, and not announce them. By making it illegal to reverse engineer the products, you're gaurenteeing this.
If you don't beleive me, I recommend Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography".
I find it humorous that the exact same behavior (focusing corporate effort on taking out a competitor) that is so exemplary in Bill Gates is so quixotic for Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison. Would someone please explain to me how what Microsoft did to Digital Research or Netscape is any different from what Sun and Oracle want to do to Microsoft?
McNealy and Ellison want to take one Gates for the same reason Dillinger robbed banks- "That's where the money is." Why is it considered irrational to look at the richest man in history and go "gee, I'd like a peice of that action"?
And lastly, I think the amount of time Ellison/McNealy spend on taking on Gates is vastly overrated. Even such proposals as RawIron (which is tangential to Oracle's anti-Microsoft thrust if anything is, considering the OS they're talking about replacing is _Solaris_) was seen as yet another bungled attempt to take on Microsoft (see http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_2878.h tml). If you insist on seeing everything Oracle or Sun does as an attack on Microsoft, they've racked up an impressive string of failures (which reinforces the assumption that they're obsessed with taking on Bill- else why would they keep making such doomed attempts?). If, on the other hand, you look at them as attempts to please their customers...
It's a fact of life: an overstressed, tired programmer makes stupid glaring mistakes and then can't see them. Very quickly, the programmer is doing more harm than good- i.e. they're introducing more bugs than they're fixing. Working eighty hours a week is _less_ productive than working fourty, in terms of working debugged functionality.
No, I don't have a study to back me up, only about 200 years of experience sitting around the thanksgiving table all agreeing on this.
There are two problems, I think. One is the myth of the programmer as a teenager with no life who has nothing better to do with his (ever notice how the archtype programmer is always male?) time than sit and code. The other is that, as programming teams get larger, and ever increasing amount of time is spend communicating rather than programming (see Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man Month"). I've known of programmers who had fifty hours of meetings per week- they were already ten hours into overtime and hadn't done anything yet.
The solution is for us to not put up with that cr*p. It's easy for programmers to find new jobs (especially if you live in SanFran or Boston, where you can't hardly swing a cat without whacking three tech companies). Also, employeers need to recognize that overworking their employees is dumb.
This is not to say that occasional periods of OT are not part of the job- they are. It is the pattern of regular massive OT that is destructive and stupid.
I sat down the other day and counted- there are at least 5 radio stations in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area on which you can hear Alanis Morriset (KS95, KQRS92, Cities-97, Zone-105, and now Point-104). This is good if you happen to be Alanis Morriset. If you're not, it just makes it that much harder for your music to be heard.
Note that I'm not picking on Alanis here- I'm just using her as an example. The playlists of pretty much all radio stations is limited to a small handfull of national bands the music industry backs, and maybe a local artist or two. It's hard for a small band like Six Mile Bridge (http://www.loosegoose.com/) (plug plug:) to gain any sort of national radio exposure.
This is where MP-3s will come in. Consider for the moment the advantage of a small band releasing some of it's tracks for free- and go "if you like this, come buy our CD/MP-3/Cassettes!". Open-source music as loss-leader for the musicians.
The bands who do this won't make as much money as Alanis or Madonna- but it'll make it easier for them to garner a national following and sell to a slightly smaller percentage of a much larger market. Which would mean the difference between the musicians being able to make a comfortable living doing what they want to do, rather than having to flip burgers to pay the rent.
Oh, and more real choice in our music selection, rather than just what radio dial position we want to listen to Alanis on.
It's wise to be wary of Microsoft, and I'm always in favor of improving Linux, Apache, or any other free/open software. But I don't think there's cause for panic.
First off, W2K isn't that frightening- especially after Jesse Berst has all but declared it DOA. W2K won't solve any of the fundamental problems- mainly stability and cost- which are driving people away from NT and towards Linux.
Second, Microsoft _can't_ afford to simply give everything away. Gates' billions are irrelevent. They're mainly paper billions, based on the inflated price of MS stock. And MS's stock is inflated because they have been growing their sales at 20% per annum for years, and people are betting they will continue to grow their sales, and grow into their stock price.
There are two ways Microsoft can keep this rate of growth- one, they can find and conquer billions of dollars a year in new markets (tricky, even for Microsoft), or they can simply force their customers to disgorge more money for the same products.
Either way, however, you don't dare give something away for free that you used to sell- this is just ups the amount you have to grow everything else. Which is why I don't think they'll give away IIS for free.
Third, there is already a "cool new feature" in IIS/Explorer- it's called "ActiveX". And no one, outside of Microsoft, uses it. Because the fundamental reason to have a web page is for people to look at it- why deny 10%, or 25%, or 50% of your potiential eyeballs simply to use CoolNewFeature?
This issue came up recently on the linux kernel mailing list. And many of the same arguments that are being used here to try and limit the flamming were used there as well- and my opinion remains the same.
Anyone who is looking for an excuse not to use linux, or to advise other people not to use linux, will find one. It doesn't matter if Pope John Paul the Second nominates Linus Torvalds for Sainthood- the decision has already been made. The accusations don't even have to be true- look at Bob Metcalf's recent article.
Anyone who looks at the issue honestly won't be swayed (either way) by flamming, or by profanity in the kernel (are you _sure_ there's no profanity in the source of NT?).
First off, bridge building doesn't change all that much. The basic structure and design of the highway bridge over the creek on I-80 is more or less the same one the romans knew.
Second, certification is no measure of competence, it is simply a measure of how well they take a test. For example, simply because you pass the bar or get a license does not automatically make you a good lawyer or doctor. So- how do we know if a lawyer or doctor is qualified to continue practicing? Peer review- which (while welcomed by the open-source community) is against the fundamental principal of proprietary software. Do you really think Microsoft will open it's code simply to allow us to judge the competancy of their programmers?
Third, and most important, it's trying to solve the wrong problem. At least as many software problems are the fault of the software managers as it is the software writers. Impossible deadlines, being forced to used an unworkable technology, a constantly changing set of requirements, etc. I'd recommend a read of the book "Antipatterns" for a sample of the ways Management can screw up a project (there are also examples of how the writers can screw it up).
The solution is nowhere near as simple as this- no more than we can stop violence in our highschools by simply banning doom. Instead, a completely different approach to software is needed. One in which quality is prized above all else, in which the code is peer-reviewed and not released before it's ready (and I don't care when the salesperson promised the customer it'll ship- he shouldn't have been promising that anyways!). One like open source software.
I like the assumption that Windows has some localization advantage over Linux- considering it's lead developer isn't a native english speak (he does speak english fluently, but it's _not_ his native language!). Not to mention a huge developer precesnce from Germany (SuSE, Star Division) and a growing Pacific contingent (Pacific Hightech).
The next thing to remember is that the threshold to spend on luxury goods (including computers) is relative to the local economy, not an absolute. How much does a home cost? A home in small town Iowa, for example, costs a heck of a lot less than a home in San Fransico, or New York. Most of the cost of an item is _labor_- in areas where labor is cheaper, cost of living is cheaper. Supply and demand.
What would they want a computer for? Perhaps they want to join the 21st Century with the rest of us, and plug into the international dialog. Or is the internet and computing only the purview of the very rich?
As for electricity, most of the major cities on the planet have it. No, the Kalahari bushmen don't, but there are a lot people who do. Note that my estimate is based off the assumption that only about 1 person in 4 is economically well off enough to even consider buying a computer, and about 50% of those who could, would. And that the price of the computer would rule out _by_ _necessity_ a Microsoft operating system.
The cold, hard facts are that Microsoft has killed this market because it cannot afford the margins Microsoft wants to maintain. You can't charge $100 for an OS an expect to sell it to someone for which that represents two weeks salary. Why do you think software piracy is so rife in China and other third world countries? Because for most of the customers, it's a choice of pirating the software, or not using it at all.
On the other hand, huge profits await the first company to do this. Consider- if each machine makes $10 profit (a mere 5%, a fairly thin margin) times 100 million machines is a billion dollars.
Consider: the "middle class" of this planet- probably numbering a billion people or more- are the people in developing third world countries earning about $3,000 USD/year. These people constitute a _huge_ market for computers and OSs- if the package costs $200 or less. That is about the equivelent of a $30K/yr person buying a $2K computer. Purchasing the standard $2,000 computer for these people would be like purchasing a $20K computer on a $30K salary.
The problem is that Microsoft is uninterested in this market- why? Because they want to charge $200 for the OS alone, sans computer. You need an OS that can sell for $10, or better yet $5 per copy, which runs well on a variariety of low-end hardware (ARM chips, low-end PPCs, 68Ks, 486's, whatever you can get on the super-cheap) and small memory foot prints, with internationalization capability, but with a decent user interface.
Linux fits this bill with flying colors. 80% of that 750 million people will probably be people who've never owned a computer before- and who aren't living in America or Europe.
Everything I've said here also applies to BSD, BTW.
As to High School: Been there, done that. To all you outcasts and misfits and loners: hang on. Give the football stars and cheerleaders their day in the sun- yours is comming. Pity the people whose _best_ years are high school- for them, from here on out it's all down hill. Your best days are still comming.
...only last time it was D&D that was driving Kids to violence and suicide. Anyone here remember the 60 Minutes episode?
My conclusions from the last time around remain: what drives kids to do these deeds is not rock music or D&D or Video Games, but broken and abusive homes. Unfortunately, such a conclusion doesn't give rise to pat answers or simple solutions, while blaming it on rock and roll/video games/D&D/the internet/whatever does (just ban the offending source of ideas, and viola- problem solved in time to go to commercial).
Having finally gotten through slashdot effect and seen the article, I have some comments.
First off, I'd recommend a course in logic. If you assume both A and not A, _anything_ can be proven with perfect logic. And yet, in the same sentence, he says Windows has a monopoly and Windows does not have a monopoly. From this starting point I can prove that cheddar is better than swiss, with perfect logic.
Next, if literacy is in such flower, why is requiring literacy to use a computer a bad thing? The reason is- as Stephenson was trying to point out- that literacy is in flower only among a _subset_ of our society. He admits the command line is a better tool for some jobs than the GUI- so what is the problem with using the right tool for the job? Because that would require _learning_- reading documentation (possibly as much as several books- dear me!) and learning an arcane syntax! That's much too difficult!
And don't give me that "I don't have time to learn" argument. Using the right tool for the job saves time in the long run. This is like arguing, while discussing taking a hundred mile trip, that it'd take longer to learn to drive than it would to walk the hundred miles. Therefor, it's not worth it to learn to drive. For a single hundred-mile trip, this logic probably applies. But on the _second_ hundred mile trip... Besides- who needs to take hundred mile trips anyways? Most people never travel much farther than 20 miles from their place of birth- being able to do a hundred mile trip in 90 minutes is therefor not all that important, right?
Third- the metaphor is not the reality, the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal, and MICROSOFT IS NOT A WHIRLPOOL. It's a company. Monopolies can, and have, been broken up to the benefit of the competition and the customers. I offer as proof Standard Oil and AT&T.
My experience has been that there are at least as many pro-Windows flaming advocates as there are pro-Linux flaming advocates. So why don't the pro-Windows idiots hurt Windows the way pro-Linux idiots hurt Linux?
Because, in the alternate dimension where ZD resides (the dimension where benchmarks are never rigged and never lie) these pro-Windows flaming idiots don't exist. Instead, all we have is rational, calm dialog from intelligent Microsoft spokesmen and physcotic anti-social diatribes from the Linux lunatic fringe.
_Anyone_ who demands that _everyone_ in a group of several dozen, let alone several million, be calm and rational in all situations is living in a dream world.
There is at least one other alternative interpretation to "living in a dream world" to explain this discrepency- that certain journalists are looking for anything they can use as an excuse to advise people not to use Linux.
Oh sorry, am I flaming? Or simply calling things as I see them, and thereby saying things other people don't want me to say? It all depends upon what spin you want to put on it...
Slashdot Mirror
The thing you have to remember is "what is your core market?" A disruption in your core market is devistating, but a distruption in an ancilliary market isn't- in fact, it's often an opportunity.
Two examples: Sun and Linux, and SGI and PCs.
What killed SGI/Cray was _not_ Linux- it was cheap PCs. SGI's (and Cray's) core market was selling hardware to solve large linear algebra problems (almost all uses for super computers- from scientific simulations to weather predicting to Hollywood special effects- are at heart simply large matrix problems). These problems parallelize very easy, meaning it doesn't matter if the MFLOPS come in one big box, or a whole bunch of little boxes, what matters is the total cost for the necessary MFLOPS.
As such, it wasn't Linux that killed (is killing) SGI/Cray, it's the explosion of cheap powerful PCs and low-end Workstations, which make it possible to buy a few hundred PCs and wire together the same number of MFLOPS as a major super-computer, at a much lower cost.
Now, let's look at Sun. Like SGI/Cray, Sun's core buisness is selling hardware. The main purpose Solaris has in life is to give customers a good OS to run on the hardware Sun is selling. But, unlike SGI/Cray, Sun concentrated on selling Database machines. Unlike large linear algebra problems, databases don't parallelize so well- the various CPUs end up needing to communicate a lot more. It's easy to replace a Cray doing weather prediction with a stack of PCs, but extremely difficult if not impossible to replace an E10K running Oracle with the same stack of PCs.
If Sun can convince Linux users to run Linux on Sparcs, then Linux is no threat to Sun's core buisness (hardware). In fact, it's an opportunity to cut development costs of Solaris (allowing Sun to target Solaris at the high-end, where Linux isn't a good fit at the moment). If Linux were to grow to the point where it could replace Solaris at all levels, then Sun could drop the overhead of supporting Solaris altogether. While I don't think Solaris is a loss for Sun, it certain isn't a profit center. In either case, Sun doesn't lose in it's core market.
Now, a company whose core market _is_ expensive PC-based operating systems has a lot to lose to a disruption in that space. So it's important to look at what the core market is for the companies before panicing about a possible disruption in the low-end.
Excuse my language, but it's true.
Even Microsoft's PR dept would have the decent to get their quotes right. You have at least one misatributed, and added words to at least two others _which changed their meanings_. This is from reading only four of the quotes, two (the fourth one I didn't recognize).
Specifically: the addition of the word "computer" to Feynmann's quote, the addition of "[Open Source]" to the "programming is like sex" quote (hint: _all_ programming is like that), and jdstone@ingr.com was quoting either Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain, I forget.
If you wish to be taken at all seriously, checking the references is a must.
The rest of the paper displays an equivelent slipshod approach to argument that the quotes do to citations.
Hmm. This page looks an awful lot like a private anti-Linux pro-Microsoft page I ran across recently. I'll see if I can find the URL and post it here.
My responses:
1) RE: Benchmarks. There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.
2) WTF is a "proof point"?
3) A journalling file system does _not_ prevent data loss! It simply makes fscks faster (a worthy goal in itself, but much short of the walking-on-water powers normally associated with journalling file systems).
4) I wouldn't brag about the uptime gaurentees provided by HP, at least- they gaurentee that uptime _only_ running a small number of "certified" apps and only one a small number of machines and configurations. And you pay for it. And they don't count scheduled downtime. And 99.9% is sucky- that's like 9 hours of (unscheduled) downtime a year. No wondering clustering is so important to NT.
5) The only TCO study I've ever seen showing that NT is cheaper than Unix (which was included in the MSDN, BTW) among several other humorous assumptions, assumed that anyone using Unix on the desktop also needed to have a Windows box on their desk as well for office apps, email (Unix doesn't have email, don't you know...) etc. In other words, TCO(NT) = TCO(Unix) + TCO(NT). Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
6) I'll be the first person to agree that ACLs are better than Unix's protection scheme. The only problem with NT's protection scheme is that you can't use it. Little known products like Microsoft Office need all sorts of rights, like the right to write in C:\Windows. Yeah, if you know what you're doing, you can mostly lock down an NT box (leaving only a few gaping security holes absolutely required by the applications), but most people _don't_. Yeah, Unix's protection scheme could be signifigantly improved, but at least it's used.
6) I like the weasling on the C-2 security ratings. Last I heard, NT only got C-2 by disabling the networking. And 4.0 wasn't certified for years- so long the guy who was originally suing them was threatening to take them to court. Oh, and C-2 doesn't mean that much- the only lower rating is D (no security at all, ala DOS). Some versions of Unix can even hit B levels of security (there's a version of HP-UX that does this, IIRC). The only reason Linux hasn't gotten C-2 is simply that no one has walked it through the paperwork (i.e. for the same reason it's not "Unix").
7) Um, NT doesn't support PnP either. My experience has been that Linux has support for more hardware than NT. And is gaining on 98 (especially since 98 seems to be dropping support for older hardware). And hardware support is mainly done by the hardware vendors, not by Microsoft- Linux is starting to pick up support from the hardware vendors. For instance, I'm willing to bet that Linux will be native (and 64-bit, but that's cheating) on Merced before Windows will...
8) Funny, I'm using Linux on the desktop even I type this (at work, even). For my work Windows would be _less_ effective. But I'm willing to agree that I'm a special case. "Easier to administrate" is a tricky concept- administrating one Windows box (or one Mac) is easier than administrating one Linux/Unix box, agreed. But administrating 500 Linux/Unix boxes is signifigantly easier than administrating 500 Windows boxes. Things which make life _more_ difficult in the single-box (like using text-files for configuration) suddenly change to be helps in the 500-box situation (for example, letting you write scripts to automatically reconfigure all those systems).
Once you start ignoring administration costs, I'd pit Gnome/Enlightenment for user friendliness against anything Windows has to offer. Especially considering there is no user interface rule that Microsoft themselves don't violate (for example, the DDK viewers don't even have menu bars, just tool bars).
And the question is not "how many applications are on a given OS", but "are the applications you need on the given OS?"
Arguing that justice should not be dispensed because of it's effect on the stock price is silly- you're arguing that justice should _never_ be dispensed against a company, in effect declaring companies above the law.
Besides, Microsoft's stock price is due for readjustment anyways- it's P/E of 65 is like 3x higher than the stock market average. It'll be worse when it actually happens- the stock market _always_ overcorrects. Can you see MSFT selling at $15 a share? You may...
This philosophy was widely espoused a century or so ago, very widely. It lead to the robber barons and the great depression. And our current set of laws and goverment interventions to prevent a recurrance.
It sounds neat, in theory. In practice it has been shown not to work.
Intel realizes this, I think. But on the other hand, the clock is ticking on the life expectancy of _every_ 32-bit chip. If you average desktop system being sold today has 128M of memory today, and that number is doubling every 18 months, then in 4 more doubling, or 6 years, the average desktop system will have 2 gig of ram. Already it's not unusual to see large servers with 10's of gig of ram, and high-end workstations with multiple gigs of ram. Intel is the _only_ desktop & server chip manufacturer still selling only 32-bit chips.
The 386 was released in 1986 IIRC. It wasn't until 1995 that Microsoft managed to release a broadly-accepted 32-bit OS. And the situation doesn't look any better today. But Intel can't wait ten years for Microsoft to get it's act together. This explains Intel's sudden support for Linux- it's one operating system that Intel can assure itself will be running on Merced (if you want something done right...). Intel already has had experience with the GCC compiler (remember pgcc), and once GCC is ported, even Linus agrees that porting Linux is easy.
Much more likely is the theory that Microsoft bought Softway simply to bury the technology. Microsoft has a vested intrest in making sure that cross-platform development remains very difficult (to keep all the software, and thus all the users, on Windows). And certainly promoting the Unix API as _the_ cross-platform API is Microsoft's worst nightmare.
As to hiring talent for 64-bit Windows, why did Microsoft throw a hissy fit over Compaq's dropping NT-on-Alpha, and not simply hire the entire Compaq/Dec group to continue doing what they were already doing? Here you have a group of people already familiar with a 64-bit architecture _and_ the internals of NT, and in sudden need of a new job. It's possible that Microsoft was just being childish, but more likely they aren't looking for outside help.
As for Microsoft being immune from competition, I think the book "Megatrends" said it best- "There is no divine right of inherited markets any more than there is the divine right of kings". The book was talking about Railroads, but the lessons apply.
There is of course, Mozilla and Xul. Also, I think AbiWord uses XML, or an XML subset, for it's (future?) configuration file.
The whole libc5/glibc2 transition took orders of magnitude longer than it should have, thanks to the foot dragging efforts of slackware among others (Hiyah, Caldera!).
Why is this important? The next time you hear some Berst wannabe complaining about incompatibilities amongst the distributions, this is one of the big things they're talking about. Programs compiled against libc5 won't run if only glibc2 is installed, and vice versa.
I'm not suggesting that distributions jump on every bandwagon that comes along, but how many years ago was development on libc5 stopped in favor of glibc2?
This is why I support a Linux Standard Base.
Why is it that having a dozen vendors shipping products which are only mostly compatible is worse than a single vendor shipping a product utterly unlike anything else? I'll grant you that a dozen vendors being only mostly compatible isn't as good as a dozen vendors being completely compatible, but that wasn't the choice.
No, the "Windows Invasion" had nothing to do with Unix's balkanization (nor would a lack of balkanization have aborted it). Instead it was a consequence of IBM granting Microsoft a monopoly on the PC OS market- a decision no one in the Unix world had any effect over. The Unix Balkanization problem was raised after the fact as an excuse ("it's not Microsoft's fault- really!").
If Balkanization is a problem, then Windows has it as well (NT/2K, 95/98, and CE being three _different_ and only mostly compatible OSs). And thus is primed for a (un-Balkanizable) Linux invasion...
You're being too generous, I think. If you want to know when someone accesses your website, why not just turn on logging in the webserver? I'll grant that knowing someone is scanning you is helpfull- but that doesn't keep the hacker out of the website, does it? It's kind of like saying that if you have security cameras, you don't need locks on your doors.
First off, the author misunderstands what is meant by STO. It does not mean Security through secrecy. All security depends upon a secret- be it the factorization of a composite, a secret key or password or passphrase, or the combination of a safe. The fundamental security is how difficult is it for an attacker to guess that secret.
So, the logic goes, make it more difficult for the attacker to know what secret they need to guess. Hide the security algorithm from them. Does the safe require a combination, a key, a palm print, or some combination?
The problem is that, by obscuring the implementation, weakness that can signifigantly reduce the amount of secret key the attacker needs to guess are hidden ("Um, it's a bad idea to put the door hinges on the outside of the safe. I don't bother picking the lock- I pop the hinges and simply remove the door.").
And this is the advantage open-source has. It's peer review limits the existance of such backdoors. And fixed faster when they are found.
Do not think for a moment that restricting access to the source code makes it less likely such vulnerabilities will be found. The "black hats" (be they the evil hackers or the evil NSA) always seem to have enough time to reverse engineer the software from the binary. The "white hats" generally have better things to do with their time. By making it harder for the legitimate people to look for security holes, you are simply making it more likely that the people finding the security holes will exploit them, and not announce them. By making it illegal to reverse engineer the products, you're gaurenteeing this.
If you don't beleive me, I recommend Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography".
I find it humorous that the exact same behavior (focusing corporate effort on taking out a competitor) that is so exemplary in Bill Gates is so quixotic for Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison. Would someone please explain to me how what Microsoft did to Digital Research or Netscape is any different from what Sun and Oracle want to do to Microsoft?
h tml). If you insist on seeing everything Oracle or Sun does as an attack on Microsoft, they've racked up an impressive string of failures (which reinforces the assumption that they're obsessed with taking on Bill- else why would they keep making such doomed attempts?). If, on the other hand, you look at them as attempts to please their customers...
McNealy and Ellison want to take one Gates for the same reason Dillinger robbed banks- "That's where the money is." Why is it considered irrational to look at the richest man in history and go "gee, I'd like a peice of that action"?
And lastly, I think the amount of time Ellison/McNealy spend on taking on Gates is vastly overrated. Even such proposals as RawIron (which is tangential to Oracle's anti-Microsoft thrust if anything is, considering the OS they're talking about replacing is _Solaris_) was seen as yet another bungled attempt to take on Microsoft (see http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_2878.
It's a fact of life: an overstressed, tired programmer makes stupid glaring mistakes and then can't see them. Very quickly, the programmer is doing more harm than good- i.e. they're introducing more bugs than they're fixing. Working eighty hours a week is _less_ productive than working fourty, in terms of working debugged functionality.
No, I don't have a study to back me up, only about 200 years of experience sitting around the thanksgiving table all agreeing on this.
There are two problems, I think. One is the myth of the programmer as a teenager with no life who has nothing better to do with his (ever notice how the archtype programmer is always male?) time than sit and code. The other is that, as programming teams get larger, and ever increasing amount of time is spend communicating rather than programming (see Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man Month"). I've known of programmers who had fifty hours of meetings per week- they were already ten hours into overtime and hadn't done anything yet.
The solution is for us to not put up with that cr*p. It's easy for programmers to find new jobs (especially if you live in SanFran or Boston, where you can't hardly swing a cat without whacking three tech companies). Also, employeers need to recognize that overworking their employees is dumb.
This is not to say that occasional periods of OT are not part of the job- they are. It is the pattern of regular massive OT that is destructive and stupid.
I sat down the other day and counted- there are at least 5 radio stations in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area on which you can hear Alanis Morriset (KS95, KQRS92, Cities-97, Zone-105, and now Point-104). This is good if you happen to be Alanis Morriset. If you're not, it just makes it that much harder for your music to be heard.
:) to gain any sort of national radio exposure.
Note that I'm not picking on Alanis here- I'm just using her as an example. The playlists of pretty much all radio stations is limited to a small handfull of national bands the music industry backs, and maybe a local artist or two. It's hard for a small band like Six Mile Bridge (http://www.loosegoose.com/) (plug plug
This is where MP-3s will come in. Consider for the moment the advantage of a small band releasing some of it's tracks for free- and go "if you like this, come buy our CD/MP-3/Cassettes!". Open-source music as loss-leader for the musicians.
The bands who do this won't make as much money as Alanis or Madonna- but it'll make it easier for them to garner a national following and sell to a slightly smaller percentage of a much larger market. Which would mean the difference between the musicians being able to make a comfortable living doing what they want to do, rather than having to flip burgers to pay the rent.
Oh, and more real choice in our music selection, rather than just what radio dial position we want to listen to Alanis on.
It's wise to be wary of Microsoft, and I'm always in favor of improving Linux, Apache, or any other free/open software. But I don't think there's cause for panic.
First off, W2K isn't that frightening- especially after Jesse Berst has all but declared it DOA. W2K won't solve any of the fundamental problems- mainly stability and cost- which are driving people away from NT and towards Linux.
Second, Microsoft _can't_ afford to simply give everything away. Gates' billions are irrelevent. They're mainly paper billions, based on the inflated price of MS stock. And MS's stock is inflated because they have been growing their sales at 20% per annum for years, and people are betting they will continue to grow their sales, and grow into their stock price.
There are two ways Microsoft can keep this rate of growth- one, they can find and conquer billions of dollars a year in new markets (tricky, even for Microsoft), or they can simply force their customers to disgorge more money for the same products.
Either way, however, you don't dare give something away for free that you used to sell- this is just ups the amount you have to grow everything else. Which is why I don't think they'll give away IIS for free.
Third, there is already a "cool new feature" in IIS/Explorer- it's called "ActiveX". And no one, outside of Microsoft, uses it. Because the fundamental reason to have a web page is for people to look at it- why deny 10%, or 25%, or 50% of your potiential eyeballs simply to use CoolNewFeature?
My, what deep pockets they have...
Yes, boys and girls, it's there.
This issue came up recently on the linux kernel mailing list. And many of the same arguments that are being used here to try and limit the flamming were used there as well- and my opinion remains the same.
Anyone who is looking for an excuse not to use linux, or to advise other people not to use linux, will find one. It doesn't matter if Pope John Paul the Second nominates Linus Torvalds for Sainthood- the decision has already been made. The accusations don't even have to be true- look at Bob Metcalf's recent article.
Anyone who looks at the issue honestly won't be swayed (either way) by flamming, or by profanity in the kernel (are you _sure_ there's no profanity in the source of NT?).
First off, bridge building doesn't change all that much. The basic structure and design of the highway bridge over the creek on I-80 is more or less the same one the romans knew.
Second, certification is no measure of competence, it is simply a measure of how well they take a test. For example, simply because you pass the bar or get a license does not automatically make you a good lawyer or doctor. So- how do we know if a lawyer or doctor is qualified to continue practicing? Peer review- which (while welcomed by the open-source community) is against the fundamental principal of proprietary software. Do you really think Microsoft will open it's code simply to allow us to judge the competancy of their programmers?
Third, and most important, it's trying to solve the wrong problem. At least as many software problems are the fault of the software managers as it is the software writers. Impossible deadlines, being forced to used an unworkable technology, a constantly changing set of requirements, etc. I'd recommend a read of the book "Antipatterns" for a sample of the ways Management can screw up a project (there are also examples of how the writers can screw it up).
The solution is nowhere near as simple as this- no more than we can stop violence in our highschools by simply banning doom. Instead, a completely different approach to software is needed. One in which quality is prized above all else, in which the code is peer-reviewed and not released before it's ready (and I don't care when the salesperson promised the customer it'll ship- he shouldn't have been promising that anyways!). One like open source software.
I like the assumption that Windows has some localization advantage over Linux- considering it's lead developer isn't a native english speak (he does speak english fluently, but it's _not_ his native language!). Not to mention a huge developer precesnce from Germany (SuSE, Star Division) and a growing Pacific contingent (Pacific Hightech).
The next thing to remember is that the threshold to spend on luxury goods (including computers) is relative to the local economy, not an absolute. How much does a home cost? A home in small town Iowa, for example, costs a heck of a lot less than a home in San Fransico, or New York. Most of the cost of an item is _labor_- in areas where labor is cheaper, cost of living is cheaper. Supply and demand.
What would they want a computer for? Perhaps they want to join the 21st Century with the rest of us, and plug into the international dialog. Or is the internet and computing only the purview of the very rich?
As for electricity, most of the major cities on the planet have it. No, the Kalahari bushmen don't, but there are a lot people who do. Note that my estimate is based off the assumption that only about 1 person in 4 is economically well off enough to even consider buying a computer, and about 50% of those who could, would. And that the price of the computer would rule out _by_ _necessity_ a Microsoft operating system.
The cold, hard facts are that Microsoft has killed this market because it cannot afford the margins Microsoft wants to maintain. You can't charge $100 for an OS an expect to sell it to someone for which that represents two weeks salary. Why do you think software piracy is so rife in China and other third world countries? Because for most of the customers, it's a choice of pirating the software, or not using it at all.
On the other hand, huge profits await the first company to do this. Consider- if each machine makes $10 profit (a mere 5%, a fairly thin margin) times 100 million machines is a billion dollars.
Consider: the "middle class" of this planet- probably numbering a billion people or more- are the people in developing third world countries earning about $3,000 USD/year. These people constitute a _huge_ market for computers and OSs- if the package costs $200 or less. That is about the equivelent of a $30K/yr person buying a $2K computer. Purchasing the standard $2,000 computer for these people would be like purchasing a $20K computer on a $30K salary.
The problem is that Microsoft is uninterested in this market- why? Because they want to charge $200 for the OS alone, sans computer. You need an OS that can sell for $10, or better yet $5 per copy, which runs well on a variariety of low-end hardware (ARM chips, low-end PPCs, 68Ks, 486's, whatever you can get on the super-cheap) and small memory foot prints, with internationalization capability, but with a decent user interface.
Linux fits this bill with flying colors. 80% of that 750 million people will probably be people who've never owned a computer before- and who aren't living in America or Europe.
Everything I've said here also applies to BSD, BTW.
...that the corporate shrink-wrap licenses have _also_ never been seriously challenged in a court of law by a well-heeled and motivated opponent.
Microsoft is standing on just as spindly a set of legal legs as is Linux...
As to High School: Been there, done that. To all you outcasts and misfits and loners: hang on. Give the football stars and cheerleaders their day in the sun- yours is comming. Pity the people whose _best_ years are high school- for them, from here on out it's all down hill. Your best days are still comming.
Trust me on this. I've walked your path.
...only last time it was D&D that was driving Kids to violence and suicide. Anyone here remember the 60 Minutes episode?
My conclusions from the last time around remain: what drives kids to do these deeds is not rock music or D&D or Video Games, but broken and abusive homes. Unfortunately, such a conclusion doesn't give rise to pat answers or simple solutions, while blaming it on rock and roll/video games/D&D/the internet/whatever does (just ban the offending source of ideas, and viola- problem solved in time to go to commercial).
Having finally gotten through slashdot effect and seen the article, I have some comments.
First off, I'd recommend a course in logic. If you assume both A and not A, _anything_ can be proven with perfect logic. And yet, in the same sentence, he says Windows has a monopoly and Windows does not have a monopoly. From this starting point I can prove that cheddar is better than swiss, with perfect logic.
Next, if literacy is in such flower, why is requiring literacy to use a computer a bad thing? The reason is- as Stephenson was trying to point out- that literacy is in flower only among a _subset_ of our society. He admits the command line is a better tool for some jobs than the GUI- so what is the problem with using the right tool for the job? Because that would require _learning_- reading documentation (possibly as much as several books- dear me!) and learning an arcane syntax! That's much too difficult!
And don't give me that "I don't have time to learn" argument. Using the right tool for the job saves time in the long run. This is like arguing, while discussing taking a hundred mile trip, that it'd take longer to learn to drive than it would to walk the hundred miles. Therefor, it's not worth it to learn to drive. For a single hundred-mile trip, this logic probably applies. But on the _second_ hundred mile trip... Besides- who needs to take hundred mile trips anyways? Most people never travel much farther than 20 miles from their place of birth- being able to do a hundred mile trip in 90 minutes is therefor not all that important, right?
Third- the metaphor is not the reality, the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal, and MICROSOFT IS NOT A WHIRLPOOL. It's a company. Monopolies can, and have, been broken up to the benefit of the competition and the customers. I offer as proof Standard Oil and AT&T.
My experience has been that there are at least as many pro-Windows flaming advocates as there are pro-Linux flaming advocates. So why don't the pro-Windows idiots hurt Windows the way pro-Linux idiots hurt Linux?
Because, in the alternate dimension where ZD resides (the dimension where benchmarks are never rigged and never lie) these pro-Windows flaming idiots don't exist. Instead, all we have is rational, calm dialog from intelligent Microsoft spokesmen and physcotic anti-social diatribes from the Linux lunatic fringe.
_Anyone_ who demands that _everyone_ in a group of several dozen, let alone several million, be calm and rational in all situations is living in a dream world.
There is at least one other alternative interpretation to "living in a dream world" to explain this discrepency- that certain journalists are looking for anything they can use as an excuse to advise people not to use Linux.
Oh sorry, am I flaming? Or simply calling things as I see them, and thereby saying things other people don't want me to say? It all depends upon what spin you want to put on it...