OK, so I walk around my place of work and on everyone's desk is this GIGANTIC Dell or HP minitower system with 3-4 slots, 250W Power Supply, on-board video/sound/ethernet, the works.
For 99% of these machines, nobody is ever going to open them up and stick a card in there. Most of them won't even have their memory or disk upgraded. It's not even economic to pay the techs to do hardware work -- cheaper to toss it and buy a new one if something breaks. They are just big, gigantic, over-engineered wastes of space and power.
Gone are the days when a compact case meant cheap substandard components. Maybe businesses will figure out that huge-assed computer != good computer. Buying this stuff is irrational, and won't last for ever in the corporate purchasing mindset. The future is iPaq-like desktops that maybe have 1 mini-PCI slot at most. We just have to get over the idea that a PC looks like a PC first.
As opposed to WordPerfect which used a random number generator to decide which F-keys and modifers would be used. (Menus?) To this day, it's astounding that a program ever got popular even though it had to ship with little colored dots you could put on your keyboard to help figure out the commands.
(WordStar had a very logical command set and on-screen menus. Word for Mac 4.x and 5.x were very nice, slim GUI word processors that have all of the document formatting functionality of the current versions of Word.) --
Thank for the info. I've also heard that they are dumping Java applet support -- if so, they are probably willing to break NS plug-ins too. (Only affects QuickTime on my system.) --
You'd hit a larger target market if you used Mozilla's "Install This Plug-in" feature, which is pretty much just like ActiveX except without the crypto sigs.
The nice thing is since Mozilla is nice friendly open source tech, it will be easier to socially engineer them into installing as root.
On the other hand, it would probably easier to put up "PornSlurper 2000.001" on Freshmeat and just put rm -rf / in the makefile. --
US Copyright law allows you to run software providing you have legally obtained a copy of it.
...it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner...
W2K costs $300 and ME costs $200 (retail, but I imagine the OEM prices have a similar gap). Most OEM vendors will foist the cheapest shit possible onto the home user, and ME fits the bill. Thus ME is a "home" OS. Well, that makes sense to Microsoft, anyway.
Not that there is any good reason for that distinction. The hardware requirements aren't all that different, and the back-compatibility concerns that lead to the creation of Win9x in the first place have mostly been obliterated.
(Note that I agree about the XP Romper Room UI. I also agree that if that is what it takes to get NT on the desktop, so be it.)
Just wondering what solution you found to run server -side JavaScript pages on Unix. I assume it's Chillisoft, but with Netscape's open source implementation, it would be cool if there was a more integrated solution with Apache.
Also want to plug JavaScript a bit -- it's a very nice OO scripting language for complex projects, even under ASP. Unfortunately it gets a bad rap due to it's client-side popup windows association. --
Just want to agree that there's a certain Slashdot -> Trade Journalist -> IT Customer -> Microsoft (or other vendor) circle in place that is effective. (Hell, I was quoted once as "one Slashdot poster" once in ZDNet. Whoop.)
The key bit there is the journalist. I see Slashdotters making hay about lots of important things, but only certain issues (Smart Tags or content protected disks for example) bubble through. Others, like DVD content protection or the DMCA are noops in the computer journalism world.
When we get down to the issue of Microsoft's actual pricing schedule, Slashdot is not the place to go. OGG SAY MICRO$OFT BAD AND GATES SMELL FUNNY AND LINUX COSTS NOTHING is the attitude here, not detailed understanding of the price breakdowns and what it actually means to a business' bottom line.
One thing to note is that if MS sees Linux as a serious competitor, raising prices isn't the obvious response. Either MS doesn't think there will be serious compitition in their core markets for the next couple years, or they are ceading the low end of the market. But that's a little too subtle. --
By "clone shops", I of course really meant "small local consulting companies" or integrators. The question remains how these folks are going to beef up their Linux skills so that they can offer these services, and who exactly is going to "target" them as a sales channel.
Traditional software companies like MS or Novell see them as partners and salespeople, while on the other hand, most Linux businesses are in competition with these guys after all. --
Actually, when Gates was running Microsoft, their attitude was very much "Go ahead and copy our stuff, we'll probably get our money out of you eventually". Both Windows and MS Office gained popularity in corporate environements "unofficially" at first, meaning that nobody was exactly checking licence holograms for the first few years.
It's been since Ballmer took ever that Microsoft has seriously started anti-piracy efforts. (Having XP-like product registration was certainly possible years and years ago, but they are only doing it now, for example.) Probably a smart move because the facts are that profits are declining, they've saturated the market, and there's very few reasonable alternatives. --
Small companies are a great potential market for Linux. However, these are the folks that don't have skilled system administrators sitting around, and the secondary support market for Linux is *way* too thin at this point to provide help for the small guys.
I can see a future where you walk into the corner clone shop, buy a Linux server and sign up for a remote support plan and forget about it. Quick, cheap, easy, and painless for the small business owner. However, right now the Corner Clone guys have all sorts of Microsoft comp seminars and trainings, products specifically designed for the small biz market (don't tell me about that IBM POS with Lotus Domino) and probably 0 in-house Unix skills. (Note that both Novell and Microsoft put much effort into their "dealer network" when they were on the way up. RedHat or someone could do the same, but where's the money?) --
You are right, there's no indication that the COM bridge will become part of the standard JDK.
Ximian's roots aren't just in Open Source, but in Free Software, so I can understand why they wouldn't work on anything related to Java so long as Sun owns the spec...
The Unix community has traditionally built two plus of everything, which does lead to a certain strength through diversity, although it generally has lead to market confusion and stalemate. Meanwhile, Microsoft's position as a dominating single vendor means they can provide a very unified solution, even if it is not as "open" as what the Unix guys have. If Ximian does chose 'third way' between Java and.NET, I'm afraid it will do more to splitner the Unix/Java community than it will do anything to the MS solution.
Seeing that there are 'free software' implementaitons of Java and lots of GPL code available which surrounds the Java platform, it would be a shame if that was given up for a quixotic attempt to imitate Microsoft. --
Another bit of corporate backlash Microsoft got was the spamvertised 'active' desktop that shipped with IE4. IT Managers were not happy with MS selling 'their' desktop space to Disney, etc, especially if it meant that users would be distracted from work. MS had to release special corporate versions of IE4 and Win98 that had the adverts disabled.
Note that Slashdot can make as much noise as they want and it's not going to affect Microsoft at all. It's really the big corporate customers and the OEMs that have the pull. --
FYI, JDK 1.4 will include a COM bridge on Windows.
Very good point about the authenticators. However, I'd expect Sun to attempt to match Microsoft almost feature-for-feature, including remote authentication.
With all due respect to the Ximian folks, I hope they don't undertake an effort to rebuild.NET/Java from the ground up. It would be much better if they joined the large ranks of open source developers working on projects surrounding the Java platform, for example by working on better Java integration with Gnome.
(While I can understand the distrust of Sun, it seems that Open Source works best when drawing from the larger base of the entire Unix community, including the commercial guys. Or in other words, the only organization that could succeed with a Java clone is Microsoft. And, heck, Sun might be closer to GPLing Java than we think.) --
This discussion of Disney etc cartoons always gets me a little confused. In my understanding, the copyright on what you call "Mickey Mouse" is actually the copyright on the first cartoon that Mickey appeared in. If and when that goes into the public domain, it means nothing other than TV stations can rebroadcast that cartoon for free.
Meanwhile, Mickey Mouse(tm) is a trademark for the Disney Corporation, no? If so, it effectively prevents Pepsi from digitally altering "Steamboat Willie" so that Mickey is drinking a Pepsi and telling us how delicious it is.
Note that we don't have to wait until 2025 to figure out -- several old Popeye and Superman cartoons have gone into PD apparently and are legally for sale on VHS down at the dollar store for $1 a tape. I assume that does not mean that the character of Superman is public domain or that you can start your own chain of Popeye's Fried Fondue resturants.
This is all pretty much out of my ass -- please straighten me out if I got it wrong.
Microsoft is going the standards route because they are the underdog in this fight and they know there's some divisions in the Java camp over Sun's approach to standards. Standards or no, the Java development process is probably more open. An ECMA rubber-stamp is just that, a marketing feature point.
Furthermore, while in the abstract.NET is platform independant and standardized, in the real world it will heavily rely on COM and proprietary Microsoft components. Having a portable or a reverse engineered runtime doesn't do one a bit of good if you can't run applications that use ASP.NET objects or ADO.NET database access. (You'll note that these bits are open to competing vendors in the Sun world.) --
Just want to say that I fully agree with your points, especially the one about most software being either internal or vertical market.
You are correct that this market will probably never embrace open soure, at least not in the GNU sense (although the GPL seems rooted in an older era of more vertical computing). However, as you point out, there's an enormous amount of infrastructure these products ride on, and *that* is where Open Source can make the greatest impact, and that is why open platforms (such as a potential reverse engineered.NET) are so important.
I don't see OSS ever producing a Photoshop or a MS Word unless someone like Sun or IBM comes in and pays for it. I do see them continuing to produce a lot of fine infrastructure - Linux, Samba, Apache, Postgres and so on. The companies providing the vertical solutions become the benifactors and they can pass the savings on directly to their customers. --
Fat chance -- it took Microsoft 10 years to write Exchange and it shows in the "design". I doubt their protocol is even documented fully internally. It would probably be a hellava lot easier to write a Outlook plug-in to your back-end of choice.
Not to mention that nobody's even reverse-engineered Microsoft-err-Open Group RPC yet. Need to do that before you can even start with the application stuff like Exchange. --
I routinely fight with Java and Mozilla, probably because I actuall have to use Java for some other things.
Here's what works (on Windows) -- Use add/remove programs to remove all JRE and JDK installations and then delete all the empty directories.
Don't use Mozilla's means for installing Java. Instead, install the latest JDK (err, J2SDK) which now includes plug-in support from java.sun.com. The JRE works also, but having multiple Java installs seems to confuse Mozilla.
Re-install Mozilla. Fix all your classpaths and anything else you need for other java apps. --
You can fix this by enabling the Search button and using it instead of "Go" (or the enter key).
I agree that getting dumped at the NS search page is confusing, but what you were doing wasn't "searching", but instead requesting a "keyword" lookup. --
IBM was required to openly hardware licence patents at a reasonable price. I'm not sure if this came out of the US or the European anti-trust actions, but it was the result of the 'plug-compatible' wars of the 70s.
The key bit about this is that it made PC clones possible. IBM had ISA and VGA and so on patented, but was forced to sell the specs to their competitors. --
Before Andover bought Slashdot and Freshmeat, they were really a piddling little company. I think their premier site was the broken link-haven of "Dave's Shareware". They did have Roblimo working there, I think, and obviously some netop and banner network experience.
The key bit is that Andover had some access to capital, bought up some Linux community sites, and IIRC *almost immedately* sold out to VA.
VA dumped tons of additional capital into the web business. The rest of OSDN, including linux.com, NewsForge, and SourceForge were all created solely by VA, and Andover was really just the middleman for slashdot and freshmeat. Tough to give them too much credit for VA's business move towards Linux web community sites. --
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so I walk around my place of work and on everyone's desk is this GIGANTIC Dell or HP minitower system with 3-4 slots, 250W Power Supply, on-board video/sound/ethernet, the works.
For 99% of these machines, nobody is ever going to open them up and stick a card in there. Most of them won't even have their memory or disk upgraded. It's not even economic to pay the techs to do hardware work -- cheaper to toss it and buy a new one if something breaks. They are just big, gigantic, over-engineered wastes of space and power.
Gone are the days when a compact case meant cheap substandard components. Maybe businesses will figure out that huge-assed computer != good computer. Buying this stuff is irrational, and won't last for ever in the corporate purchasing mindset. The future is iPaq-like desktops that maybe have 1 mini-PCI slot at most. We just have to get over the idea that a PC looks like a PC first.
--
Thanks for making the point that ActiveX controls and Netscape Plugins are virtually the same thing.
Accessibility:
ActiveX - full ability to integrate with the HTML tree and expose rich accessibility functionality for all users
Plug-Ins - not much
Isn't this what "LiveConnect" is for?
--
As opposed to WordPerfect which used a random number generator to decide which F-keys and modifers would be used. (Menus?) To this day, it's astounding that a program ever got popular even though it had to ship with little colored dots you could put on your keyboard to help figure out the commands.
(WordStar had a very logical command set and on-screen menus. Word for Mac 4.x and 5.x were very nice, slim GUI word processors that have all of the document formatting functionality of the current versions of Word.)
--
Thank for the info. I've also heard that they are dumping Java applet support -- if so, they are probably willing to break NS plug-ins too. (Only affects QuickTime on my system.)
--
"Other than Quicktime, not that many internet sites actually use ActiveX controls"
QuickTime is not an ActiveX control -- it's a Netscape-compatible plug-in that is supported by IE.
BTW, I heard that IE6 has dropped the NS-plugin interface. Any beta testers willing to confirm or deny?
--
You'd hit a larger target market if you used Mozilla's "Install This Plug-in" feature, which is pretty much just like ActiveX except without the crypto sigs.
.001" on Freshmeat and just put rm -rf / in the makefile.
The nice thing is since Mozilla is nice friendly open source tech, it will be easier to socially engineer them into installing as root.
On the other hand, it would probably easier to put up "PornSlurper 2000
--
US Copyright law allows you to run software providing you have legally obtained a copy of it.
...it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a computer program to make or authorize the making of another copy or adaptation of that computer program provided:
(1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no other manner...
--
W2K costs $300 and ME costs $200 (retail, but I imagine the OEM prices have a similar gap). Most OEM vendors will foist the cheapest shit possible onto the home user, and ME fits the bill. Thus ME is a "home" OS. Well, that makes sense to Microsoft, anyway.
Not that there is any good reason for that distinction. The hardware requirements aren't all that different, and the back-compatibility concerns that lead to the creation of Win9x in the first place have mostly been obliterated.
(Note that I agree about the XP Romper Room UI. I also agree that if that is what it takes to get NT on the desktop, so be it.)
--
Just wondering what solution you found to run server -side JavaScript pages on Unix. I assume it's Chillisoft, but with Netscape's open source implementation, it would be cool if there was a more integrated solution with Apache.
Also want to plug JavaScript a bit -- it's a very nice OO scripting language for complex projects, even under ASP. Unfortunately it gets a bad rap due to it's client-side popup windows association.
--
Just want to agree that there's a certain Slashdot -> Trade Journalist -> IT Customer -> Microsoft (or other vendor) circle in place that is effective. (Hell, I was quoted once as "one Slashdot poster" once in ZDNet. Whoop.)
The key bit there is the journalist. I see Slashdotters making hay about lots of important things, but only certain issues (Smart Tags or content protected disks for example) bubble through. Others, like DVD content protection or the DMCA are noops in the computer journalism world.
When we get down to the issue of Microsoft's actual pricing schedule, Slashdot is not the place to go. OGG SAY MICRO$OFT BAD AND GATES SMELL FUNNY AND LINUX COSTS NOTHING is the attitude here, not detailed understanding of the price breakdowns and what it actually means to a business' bottom line.
One thing to note is that if MS sees Linux as a serious competitor, raising prices isn't the obvious response. Either MS doesn't think there will be serious compitition in their core markets for the next couple years, or they are ceading the low end of the market. But that's a little too subtle.
--
By "clone shops", I of course really meant "small local consulting companies" or integrators. The question remains how these folks are going to beef up their Linux skills so that they can offer these services, and who exactly is going to "target" them as a sales channel.
Traditional software companies like MS or Novell see them as partners and salespeople, while on the other hand, most Linux businesses are in competition with these guys after all.
--
Actually, when Gates was running Microsoft, their attitude was very much "Go ahead and copy our stuff, we'll probably get our money out of you eventually". Both Windows and MS Office gained popularity in corporate environements "unofficially" at first, meaning that nobody was exactly checking licence holograms for the first few years.
It's been since Ballmer took ever that Microsoft has seriously started anti-piracy efforts. (Having XP-like product registration was certainly possible years and years ago, but they are only doing it now, for example.) Probably a smart move because the facts are that profits are declining, they've saturated the market, and there's very few reasonable alternatives.
--
Small companies are a great potential market for Linux. However, these are the folks that don't have skilled system administrators sitting around, and the secondary support market for Linux is *way* too thin at this point to provide help for the small guys.
I can see a future where you walk into the corner clone shop, buy a Linux server and sign up for a remote support plan and forget about it. Quick, cheap, easy, and painless for the small business owner. However, right now the Corner Clone guys have all sorts of Microsoft comp seminars and trainings, products specifically designed for the small biz market (don't tell me about that IBM POS with Lotus Domino) and probably 0 in-house Unix skills. (Note that both Novell and Microsoft put much effort into their "dealer network" when they were on the way up. RedHat or someone could do the same, but where's the money?)
--
You are right, there's no indication that the COM bridge will become part of the standard JDK.
...
.NET, I'm afraid it will do more to splitner the Unix/Java community than it will do anything to the MS solution.
Ximian's roots aren't just in Open Source, but in Free Software, so I can understand why they wouldn't work on anything related to Java so long as Sun owns the spec
The Unix community has traditionally built two plus of everything, which does lead to a certain strength through diversity, although it generally has lead to market confusion and stalemate. Meanwhile, Microsoft's position as a dominating single vendor means they can provide a very unified solution, even if it is not as "open" as what the Unix guys have. If Ximian does chose 'third way' between Java and
Seeing that there are 'free software' implementaitons of Java and lots of GPL code available which surrounds the Java platform, it would be a shame if that was given up for a quixotic attempt to imitate Microsoft.
--
Another bit of corporate backlash Microsoft got was the spamvertised 'active' desktop that shipped with IE4. IT Managers were not happy with MS selling 'their' desktop space to Disney, etc, especially if it meant that users would be distracted from work. MS had to release special corporate versions of IE4 and Win98 that had the adverts disabled.
Note that Slashdot can make as much noise as they want and it's not going to affect Microsoft at all. It's really the big corporate customers and the OEMs that have the pull.
--
FYI, JDK 1.4 will include a COM bridge on Windows.
.NET/Java from the ground up. It would be much better if they joined the large ranks of open source developers working on projects surrounding the Java platform, for example by working on better Java integration with Gnome.
Very good point about the authenticators. However, I'd expect Sun to attempt to match Microsoft almost feature-for-feature, including remote authentication.
With all due respect to the Ximian folks, I hope they don't undertake an effort to rebuild
(While I can understand the distrust of Sun, it seems that Open Source works best when drawing from the larger base of the entire Unix community, including the commercial guys. Or in other words, the only organization that could succeed with a Java clone is Microsoft. And, heck, Sun might be closer to GPLing Java than we think.)
--
This discussion of Disney etc cartoons always gets me a little confused. In my understanding, the copyright on what you call "Mickey Mouse" is actually the copyright on the first cartoon that Mickey appeared in. If and when that goes into the public domain, it means nothing other than TV stations can rebroadcast that cartoon for free.
Meanwhile, Mickey Mouse(tm) is a trademark for the Disney Corporation, no? If so, it effectively prevents Pepsi from digitally altering "Steamboat Willie" so that Mickey is drinking a Pepsi and telling us how delicious it is.
Note that we don't have to wait until 2025 to figure out -- several old Popeye and Superman cartoons have gone into PD apparently and are legally for sale on VHS down at the dollar store for $1 a tape. I assume that does not mean that the character of Superman is public domain or that you can start your own chain of Popeye's Fried Fondue resturants.
This is all pretty much out of my ass -- please straighten me out if I got it wrong.
--
Microsoft is going the standards route because they are the underdog in this fight and they know there's some divisions in the Java camp over Sun's approach to standards. Standards or no, the Java development process is probably more open. An ECMA rubber-stamp is just that, a marketing feature point.
.NET is platform independant and standardized, in the real world it will heavily rely on COM and proprietary Microsoft components. Having a portable or a reverse engineered runtime doesn't do one a bit of good if you can't run applications that use ASP.NET objects or ADO.NET database access. (You'll note that these bits are open to competing vendors in the Sun world.)
Furthermore, while in the abstract
--
Just want to say that I fully agree with your points, especially the one about most software being either internal or vertical market.
.NET) are so important.
You are correct that this market will probably never embrace open soure, at least not in the GNU sense (although the GPL seems rooted in an older era of more vertical computing). However, as you point out, there's an enormous amount of infrastructure these products ride on, and *that* is where Open Source can make the greatest impact, and that is why open platforms (such as a potential reverse engineered
I don't see OSS ever producing a Photoshop or a MS Word unless someone like Sun or IBM comes in and pays for it. I do see them continuing to produce a lot of fine infrastructure - Linux, Samba, Apache, Postgres and so on. The companies providing the vertical solutions become the benifactors and they can pass the savings on directly to their customers.
--
Fat chance -- it took Microsoft 10 years to write Exchange and it shows in the "design". I doubt their protocol is even documented fully internally. It would probably be a hellava lot easier to write a Outlook plug-in to your back-end of choice.
Not to mention that nobody's even reverse-engineered Microsoft-err-Open Group RPC yet. Need to do that before you can even start with the application stuff like Exchange.
--
I routinely fight with Java and Mozilla, probably because I actuall have to use Java for some other things.
Here's what works (on Windows) -- Use add/remove programs to remove all JRE and JDK installations and then delete all the empty directories.
Don't use Mozilla's means for installing Java. Instead, install the latest JDK (err, J2SDK) which now includes plug-in support from java.sun.com. The JRE works also, but having multiple Java installs seems to confuse Mozilla.
Re-install Mozilla. Fix all your classpaths and anything else you need for other java apps.
--
You can fix this by enabling the Search button and using it instead of "Go" (or the enter key).
I agree that getting dumped at the NS search page is confusing, but what you were doing wasn't "searching", but instead requesting a "keyword" lookup.
--
I wish that tin over 2400 bps was the minimum client for Usenet. Unfortunately, the tradition of hardwrapped text dates back to teletypes.
--
IBM was required to openly hardware licence patents at a reasonable price. I'm not sure if this came out of the US or the European anti-trust actions, but it was the result of the 'plug-compatible' wars of the 70s.
The key bit about this is that it made PC clones possible. IBM had ISA and VGA and so on patented, but was forced to sell the specs to their competitors.
--
Before Andover bought Slashdot and Freshmeat, they were really a piddling little company. I think their premier site was the broken link-haven of "Dave's Shareware". They did have Roblimo working there, I think, and obviously some netop and banner network experience.
The key bit is that Andover had some access to capital, bought up some Linux community sites, and IIRC *almost immedately* sold out to VA.
VA dumped tons of additional capital into the web business. The rest of OSDN, including linux.com, NewsForge, and SourceForge were all created solely by VA, and Andover was really just the middleman for slashdot and freshmeat. Tough to give them too much credit for VA's business move towards Linux web community sites.
--