I've had times where I could almost understand where Brady is coming from. I never wanted details on the person--I simply wanted to make sure that some rat-bastard spammer I just kicked off the forum wouldn't come back with a new user ID before I could even get the administration page closed.
This is a poor, half assed attempt to bash microsoft by the fanboys.
Yes, it is--but this is Slashdot. What did you expect?
However, when you have the marketing share that Microsoft has, you're in a difficult position. Unless what you release is perfect for each and every user that's out there, you're going to get complaints. There's nobody that Microsoft can point to and say "We need to emulate them" without disrupting their business model, and there's nobody that Microsoft can point to and say "Hey, we did better than so-and-so."
In that respect, when it comes to business and consumer desktops, Microsoft is in the same position that Ma Bell was in back in the 1970s--there is no alternative, so if anything goes wrong, you get the complaints.
Marketing translation: "Like any other release, there are occasional issues, but we're working to resolve those issues."
Real-world translation: "It's buggy bloatware, but it's our buggy bloatware, and if I catch you even thinking about another operating system I'll start throwing furniture again."
I really don't understand why any company needs to corrupt society as much as Microsoft does to maintain their position. Wouldn't it be cheaper to do provide a superior product honestly?
Cheaper? Probably not--and definitely not less effort. Putting more money and resources into product improvement is not how Microsoft got so big in the first place--they got this powerful by having an adequate product and aggressive marketing. And if "aggressive marketing" means playing dirty... well, Bill wasn't the first robber baron of industry, and I doubt he'll be the last.
Gewinn uber alles. (The grammar is probably wrong, but the sentiment is accurate.)
Is there that much similarity in writing for the two platforms? I know resources can potentially be reused between platforms, but I would have thought the differences were radical enough to make it a whole new code base.
I try to convince them that they should be pushing to have this data made open to everyone rather than allowing the data to be kept as a private resource for the use of a few
In a perfect world, that would be great--but this is not a perfect world, and there are plenty of people out there who would take that open data and use it for unethical purposes. Ask anyone who's responded to a 419 scam.
In short, they learned nothing. They are sorry for nothing. They're still looking to make some money somehow, but not for common shareholders or those they owe money to. They'd like not to be held responsible for any of the damage they've caused.
Others, Lord, others!
Let this my motto be:
Let me push and shove and trample
as long as it's for me!
Just out of curiosity... has anyone ever totaled up an estimated dollar-amount or dollar-equivalent for the damage SCO has causes?
And then you ask me to give it away? Fuck you. That's not "free", that's negative. Even to do music for the joy of it, money's gotta come from somewhere.
Hey, that's cool. If that's where you're at with your music, and you're comfortable with that, I'm behind you all the way.
But while that may be where you're at, that's not where everybody's at. In my case, I don't care about selling it after I'm done. I already have the tools I need (my compy, sound editing software, guitar and voice), so I'm not going to have to invest lots of money to record the thing. And the type of music I play doesn't need that kind of treatment (example 1, example 2, you have to register but it's free), so for me actual studio time would be a waste of time and money.
In the end, we both make music--whose music is "better" is not decided by who spent the most money to get the album out, but by what the audience thinks.
...the the idea that the Linux on the desktop has doubled in 2007 is absurd.
Not necessarily absurd--just count the number of Dell and HP computers that came shipped with Linux. I've no idea what the numbers are, but it's going to ping the stats. Then add how many people "converted," even if it's on a secondary box....
Because of the FUD they spread about Linux and open source software
You don't like FUD? Let's look at an example of "argument by FUD," shall we?
Because they pay a lot of money so people would use their "standards" instead of technically better standards
The accusation (a truthful accusation, I'll stipulate) that Microsoft pays a lot of money so people will use their standards is, in and of itself, a FUD argument. Everybody who is in the software development pays in one coin or another to try to get people to use their software. Even OSS folks pay in time and effort spent in coding, advertisement, outreach, and marketing--and if you don't think that an effective word-of-mouth campaign is expensive in terms of hours spent, try one sometime.
Secondly, "technically better standards" cannot be evaluated without some form of technical guidelines--and the biggest, most important "technical guideline" in the entire software industry is "Does my product sell to the customer?" Once that "technical standard" is achieved, everything else is gravy. Questions like "Is it industry standard?" or "Is the code elegant?" take a distant second place to saleability.
Because their web browser causes a lot of time and money to be wasted, simply because it supports so poorly the standards and yet is most used web browser.
The second most popular browser--Firefox 2.x, the browser I use--also poorly supports such standards... yet do you object to Firefox? Or are you simply doing a "It comes from Microsoft, so it must be EEEEE-VIL!!!!1!"
Because if Microsoft should vanish, the next operating system everyone is using would probably be based on open source....
Yep... and if my aunt should sprout testicles, she'd probably be my uncle.
Listen... I don't have a dog in the Microsoft/OSS fight. I'll use whatever comes along that fulfills my requirements, and I don't care if it comes from Redmond or from Finland or from the nethermost pit of hell. My big thing is this: until and unless the OSS community has a product that is the equal of the equivalent Microsoft product, then they need to stop bitching about Microsoft and get to work on their code.
Such products do exist--I already mentioned Apache, MySQL, and Firefox, and there are others. I use them, and I advocate for them. But stop bitching about Windows until and unless you come up with a better alternative. GNU/Linux is a great OS, but it's not better than Windows yet.
The "good product" for this market is an endless stream of application and OS upgrades that keeps them locked into these document formats while continually modifying them to force upgrades and a continuing revenue stream.
Welcome to the world of business, AC. The first rule, whether you're writing software in Redmond or selling drugs on the streetcorner, is "Figure out a way to get your customers to keep coming back."
All competitors are rabid. If you don't believe me, go watch the latest holy war between Gnome and KDE.
Their objective is to own computing from MP3 players to "big iron".
See above.
They intend to kill all competition by both legal and illegal/unethical means.
OSS is a competitor.
No, it's not. OSS is software that is written and assembled according to open-source principles and practices. But you cannot call less than one percent of desktop market share "competition." And why (for example) does Linux have less than 1% market share?
Because Microsoft is ready for prime-time. And a lot of OSS isn't.
There are OSS applications out there that are ready for prime-time. Apache, MySQL, and Mozilla Firefox are three examples I can think of that I use every day. OpenOffice is trying really hard, and they may make it someday. GNU/Linux is working on being ready. But until the apps and systems are ready to fight the big boys in the business world, it doesn't matter if the OSS community learns to "understand this and react is a cohesive way."
Until we, as a community, can make first rate software that beats Microsoft on quality, usability, and most importantly user friendliness, then we damn well deserve to be "second player."
Eh, good point on WinMe and Works. But XP is a solid platform for business and the average home user. Office for business--it's a must, and despite their best efforts OpenOffice still isn't in the same league. Server 2000--we still use it at work, and even though Active Directories is a kludge, it's one of the most commonly used kludges in the industry.
And they all work on a reliable enough basis for business to use, not because they're "innovative" or "spectacular," but because they're ubiquitous enough to be largely "invisible" to the end user. Most end users don't know how to decide which distro would work for them; most end users would be helpless if X choked on their soundcard. But the folks who run the businesses don't care, because they're hiring salespeople, and architects, and engineers, and... well, fill in that blank however you will, they're hiring people who's primary focus will be doing the actual job, not figuring out how to get their computer to cooperate.
And Vista is not an operating system. Vista is a digital hemmorhoid.:D
No, seriously. Don't get me wrong--I'm a Linux fan. I use Ubuntu on my home server, Debian on one box, Windows on another. But I don't understand why anyone would want to break Microsoft--after all, they make a good product for the market they intend to reach.
My concern is how many people will blindly use it who don't know better. How many of those people will be ones I have to deal with? How much information about me will they be storing on G that I won't have control over? What happens when the government gets power happy again and decides that since it's stored on a public server they should have transparent access to it?
And again... this differs from email how? We face this situation every single day, but I don't see anyone freaking when they get an email unless it's from some "foreign dignitary" with a Nigerian bank account.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had times where I could almost understand where Brady is coming from. I never wanted details on the person--I simply wanted to make sure that some rat-bastard spammer I just kicked off the forum wouldn't come back with a new user ID before I could even get the administration page closed.
Nah--they'll just go back to the "Making shit up" school of journalism."
I was hoping the article would say what kind of OS this crime server was running. It doesn't.
Forget the OS--I want to know what the IP address is. [evil grin]
Under normal circumstances I'd agree completely, but since ORF didn't show up at court, their odds of winning an appeal are slim to none.
Oh, in software developer, it's "Oh, shit--Marketing says release it now. We're toast!"
Yes, it is--but this is Slashdot. What did you expect?
However, when you have the marketing share that Microsoft has, you're in a difficult position. Unless what you release is perfect for each and every user that's out there, you're going to get complaints. There's nobody that Microsoft can point to and say "We need to emulate them" without disrupting their business model, and there's nobody that Microsoft can point to and say "Hey, we did better than so-and-so."
In that respect, when it comes to business and consumer desktops, Microsoft is in the same position that Ma Bell was in back in the 1970s--there is no alternative, so if anything goes wrong, you get the complaints.
Marketing translation: "Like any other release, there are occasional issues, but we're working to resolve those issues."
Real-world translation: "It's buggy bloatware, but it's our buggy bloatware, and if I catch you even thinking about another operating system I'll start throwing furniture again."
Hope that helps.
Cheaper? Probably not--and definitely not less effort. Putting more money and resources into product improvement is not how Microsoft got so big in the first place--they got this powerful by having an adequate product and aggressive marketing. And if "aggressive marketing" means playing dirty ... well, Bill wasn't the first robber baron of industry, and I doubt he'll be the last.
Gewinn uber alles. (The grammar is probably wrong, but the sentiment is accurate.)
Your post needs to be modded up. On-topic Shakespeare filk is always worth a smile. :D
In a perfect world, that would be great--but this is not a perfect world, and there are plenty of people out there who would take that open data and use it for unethical purposes. Ask anyone who's responded to a 419 scam.
Others, Lord, others!
Let this my motto be:
Let me push and shove and trample
as long as it's for me!
Just out of curiosity ... has anyone ever totaled up an estimated dollar-amount or dollar-equivalent for the damage SCO has causes?
....my seventy-two virgins?
Hey, that's cool. If that's where you're at with your music, and you're comfortable with that, I'm behind you all the way.
But while that may be where you're at, that's not where everybody's at. In my case, I don't care about selling it after I'm done. I already have the tools I need (my compy, sound editing software, guitar and voice), so I'm not going to have to invest lots of money to record the thing. And the type of music I play doesn't need that kind of treatment (example 1, example 2, you have to register but it's free), so for me actual studio time would be a waste of time and money.
In the end, we both make music--whose music is "better" is not decided by who spent the most money to get the album out, but by what the audience thinks.
Copyrights (and patents) should be non-transferable, and only available to the original artist (or inventor).
Not necessarily absurd--just count the number of Dell and HP computers that came shipped with Linux. I've no idea what the numbers are, but it's going to ping the stats. Then add how many people "converted," even if it's on a secondary box....
One desktop at a time is all it needs.
The accusation (a truthful accusation, I'll stipulate) that Microsoft pays a lot of money so people will use their standards is, in and of itself, a FUD argument. Everybody who is in the software development pays in one coin or another to try to get people to use their software. Even OSS folks pay in time and effort spent in coding, advertisement, outreach, and marketing--and if you don't think that an effective word-of-mouth campaign is expensive in terms of hours spent, try one sometime. Secondly, "technically better standards" cannot be evaluated without some form of technical guidelines--and the biggest, most important "technical guideline" in the entire software industry is "Does my product sell to the customer?" Once that "technical standard" is achieved, everything else is gravy. Questions like "Is it industry standard?" or "Is the code elegant?" take a distant second place to saleability.
The second most popular browser--Firefox 2.x, the browser I use--also poorly supports such standardsYep ... and if my aunt should sprout testicles, she'd probably be my uncle.
Listen ... I don't have a dog in the Microsoft/OSS fight. I'll use whatever comes along that fulfills my requirements, and I don't care if it comes from Redmond or from Finland or from the nethermost pit of hell. My big thing is this: until and unless the OSS community has a product that is the equal of the equivalent Microsoft product, then they need to stop bitching about Microsoft and get to work on their code.
Such products do exist--I already mentioned Apache, MySQL, and Firefox, and there are others. I use them, and I advocate for them. But stop bitching about Windows until and unless you come up with a better alternative. GNU/Linux is a great OS, but it's not better than Windows yet.
Welcome to the world of business, AC. The first rule, whether you're writing software in Redmond or selling drugs on the streetcorner, is "Figure out a way to get your customers to keep coming back."
Eh, good point on WinMe and Works. But XP is a solid platform for business and the average home user. Office for business--it's a must, and despite their best efforts OpenOffice still isn't in the same league. Server 2000--we still use it at work, and even though Active Directories is a kludge, it's one of the most commonly used kludges in the industry.
And they all work on a reliable enough basis for business to use, not because they're "innovative" or "spectacular," but because they're ubiquitous enough to be largely "invisible" to the end user. Most end users don't know how to decide which distro would work for them; most end users would be helpless if X choked on their soundcard. But the folks who run the businesses don't care, because they're hiring salespeople, and architects, and engineers, and ... well, fill in that blank however you will, they're hiring people who's primary focus will be doing the actual job, not figuring out how to get their computer to cooperate.
And Vista is not an operating system. Vista is a digital hemmorhoid. :D
Why would anyone want to?
No, seriously. Don't get me wrong--I'm a Linux fan. I use Ubuntu on my home server, Debian on one box, Windows on another. But I don't understand why anyone would want to break Microsoft--after all, they make a good product for the market they intend to reach.
My concern is how many people will blindly use it who don't know better. How many of those people will be ones I have to deal with? How much information about me will they be storing on G that I won't have control over? What happens when the government gets power happy again and decides that since it's stored on a public server they should have transparent access to it?
... this differs from email how? We face this situation every single day, but I don't see anyone freaking when they get an email unless it's from some "foreign dignitary" with a Nigerian bank account.
And again