That's why I think the real trend will be a combo of Wii and iPhone technology - a motion sensing pad. More Minority Report like but just move your hand close enough to the (touch) pad without touching it and it'll respond to the fingers' motion or electromagnetic change. Still may be a problem with gloves on.
Difficult to implement unless some better web design standards come into being. Once you "blink* on a porn site all hell may break loose, or you might get stuck in the same screen location forever. I can see a new kind of eye strain industrial injury developing. Then again, freeing up both hands might be nice...
I agree with some of what you guys are basically saying, if only software was easily comparable to a printed book or a pressed vinyl. Sure you do not need permission from copyright owner to use a product, but the product manufacturer protects its interest by having you agree to the EULA. Legalese is legalese. Once you clicked on Accept you are bound by it in spirit, whether the seller enforces it or not. There are software+data systems that restrict the number of concurrent users by its license term. Sure you can violate it if you want to, but your company is liable under the law (not illegal copying and distribution, 1 copy running on server, but more concurrent connection than EULA allows). Obviously we wouldn't be discussing this if Apple products suck, and to reach the success it has today (still 10% desktop minority), all without 3rd party licensees help, Apple has always defined the whole product as the combination of both hardware and software, and developed them together. Is there something wrong with that? Commoditize OS X will not upset MSFT's PC monopoly. All it will do is create more Vista end user experiences. Today we think of OS as completely separate from hardware, but what if Apple says enough and make it the only way to get OS X is buying it pre-bundled on a Mac hardware? And the only way to get updates is through some proof you already own a Mac? Do people want to see Apple lower the price on hardware but raise the price on the OS DVD sales? I get that the rising popularity of OS X is good for overall PC consumers, but what is wrong with a company saying that we rather you not buy OS X if you don't get a Mac? Is that so crazy? Psystar is not a victim, isn't really helping Apple customers, and isn't contributing to the development of OS X by ripping Apple off.
Hardware that you purchase and possess outright, you can do what you want with it. Proprietary software is the Intellectual Property of the IP owner. You are unfortunately only licensed to use it according to the EULA you must agree to BEFORE you use. If you do not agree, you do not get to use it. Think of it as a lease or a rental. Copyright protection exists so someone cannot take your creation and dictate to you how you should offer it as a product or make money on it without giving you a cut. This has larger ramification than just for Apple. Who should get to decide how you should sell your software, application, music, and writing? To twist this around, if you can argue a proprietary use term is unreasonable, what is stopping MSFT from copying everything from Linux and then close it by arguing the GPL terms are unreasonable? To protect Copyleft, unfortunately you must also protect Copyright. It's one thing to let authorized resellers also retail your product. Long time Apple fans know you can go online to a retailer like MacConnection, and get a Mac for a lot cheaper, without Psystar messing with the legality. If Psystar was installing AIX/HP-UX/SolarisSPARC on hardware it assembled without the explicit permission from IBM/HP/Sun and not sharing any profit with them, would anybody think Psystar's action should be permissible? (The sarcasm here, of course, is Why would you want AIX/HP-UX/Solaris on consumer boxes?)
Ballmer and his team of managers will never equal Gates. He needs it be known that a new boss is in charge, and will make his mark by throwing his... MSFT's weight around and maintain their dominance from pure business/corporate tactics, much like the matured GM, Ford, and GE, etc. (and look where they are).
Not to be overlooked is the more hard to get consumer statistics data that Yahoo keeps that others would love to analyze and gain from, much like the recent Viacom demand from Google. It's not just the search technology and user base they crave, but an incredible amount of strategic business data and insider know-how they lack.
Besides, what else does MSFT have to divert people's scrutiny yet stay in the news until they have the next Windows beta?
He heard Bill retired, and is hoping to take over after Ray fails with Ballmer... Maybe he had better friends there at MS or had left projects half way done he wants to finish... Maybe he is just a glutton for punishment... Who knows but himself internally. Most public announcements are excuses you BS to convince yourself you made the right decision.
Maybe the floundering of a single, free, desktop 'Linux' rising to the top for consumers and corporate to choose is due to the fact that you CAN play with either Fedora/SUSE/Ubuntu 2-3 times a year but never stick with one long enough to do anything useful? Comments on this page explains a LOT about what is dividing Linux as a community.
If the Patent Office can delete all Amazon claims with "1-Click", then they can show that they have this system first, so all Amazon claims to "1-Click" concepts are invalid. Done.
MSFT's next initiative: Source Open Software (SOS), to source all software technology from open source. By ISO submission time the word 'Source' will be dropped and it will simply be known as the Open Software Standard, at which time all lawsuit against MS shall be dismissed due to the fact that the 'OS' in Windows product line will no longer stand for 'operating system'... Hey Microsoft, pay me for the idea! I patented it...
I'd like to point out Apple may very well become the maker of the most popular UNIX powered smartphone. Not Nokia. Not Docomo. Not RIM. Not Palm. But Apple. If iPhones reach the same popularity as iPods, that will be more people using UNIX as a personal device platform than ever. And you know what? Those OS X consumers, including many like my artist friend or the business execs that have never opened up a terminal, don't even care. That is not a bad way to popularize UNIX and Linux. Really, until Nokia or Samsung have enough receipts to show people will actually sustain Android phone sales, OS X iPhone is the only thing that stands in the way of WinMo saturating the mobile market (God forbid) similar to their PC desktop proliferation. Will there be business software enough on Android to attract corporate IT to avoid the stigma associated with the iPhone?
Jobs is nothing if not smart and relentless. He is usually 3 moves ahead of his competitors and they don't even know it. Who knew a rare UNIX flavor eventually will power the resurrection of a computer company? MS gets stood up at the altar by Yahoo with a $40B dowry offering, and Apple spent a few mil to acquire PA Semi and threatens to push the whole mobile hardware competition up a notch (Google should hope people will jailbreak future iPhones to install Android and make it really shine). That is also a good thing for consumers.
You can call them control freaks. Pricey. Unoriginal. But Jobs is also a perfectionist freak with his products. That is also a good thing for users. When was the last time you've accused MS or other tech companies as overly perfectionist?
Lots of people are pronouncing the iPhone 3G as no big deal. Sure, look at it by itself, the iPhone may never surpass Blackberry shares, or sell as many units as Nokia handsets, but think about all the announcements together - the symbolic 3 legged stool. MobileMe+iPhone is the first step in giving people their personal cloud wherever they are in the most integrated matter (not simply a few apps or just a web browser entry form). Also I'm surprised not finding more discussions toward the next version of OS X with the sole aim at maximizing multi-core computing. Apple may not have as many engineers as MS, Google, or Intel, but I'm sure they are just as proud to want to be the ones that come up with the best future system. And all that raw power just for the desktop? For what, to run Adobe's bloated software faster? Hmmm, I wonder if the strategic move away from joining Google cloud is to eventually set up Apple's own server farms, powered by OS X, but keeping it mums for now just as Google is Apple-like secretive about its data centers technology. I know, I know, OS X Serve is supposedly dead. But so was the Newton. Think of all the computationally intensive media that needs to be served out in the decade ahead - movies, games, hi-def. Apple does not own any pipes (yet) but they sure can ensure the performance on both ends (throwing AppleTV in the mix). Maybe even host some of the content FOR the dreaded music and movie industry? Others may have one or two prongs but not the whole trifecta.
So the 3 prongs prop each other up. And did people who watched the keynote noticed that Vista runs best on a Mac? Apple is even going to host Exchange servers on Mobile Me. Forget Yahoo. Imagine if Apple and Microsoft put aside their differences and join forces on the business cloud. MS can provide Mac versions of all their business software. Apple platforms will run all the MS+nework apps and the cloud hosting MS servers. All of a sudden Google may have some real competition. Amazon? Get outta here. Of course that will never happen.
No I'm not A-fanboy. This musing is written on a PC in Google Docs. But yeah, I'm gonna get an iPhone 3G. I can even write it off for work since it's got VPN and GPS. Hell, just gassing up my truck and going for movies and fancy dinner and drinks would cost close to $200 nowadays.
Sure it's the software, but it's also the whole ecosystem, which Jobs likes to control to deliver a finer experience. Sure Google can offer so much more, but if somebody put Android on a crappy hardware with bad programming so it's experience sucks there's nothing Google can do about it. And who's going to install Adobe AIR on their WinMo or BB? Now Apple has basically become the first to hand you the whole cloud computing experience on a mobile phone.
Your point being...? So your experience added that it's not bad enough that there are tons of free cross-platform IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, etc. out there, but in other instances people can even use Visual Studio for free too (especially now with the express editions), so the competition for commercial IDEs just got even tougher. Only I think that that is not hurting Microsoft's position.
If you say 90% of programmers at MS use vi I'll take your word for it. In all the Windows IT shops I've worked in the IDE is VS for Win/.NET programming and Dreamweaver for non-ASP.NET web stuff. I've not worked in a Windows shop that switched from DW/VS to some other free IDE. As a faithful winvi32/vim user, when my job requires.NET programming, i'd say VS is still the most efficient tool, and I doubt any FOSS tool will replace it anytime soon when I don't have to pay for it. The majority of desktop developers are not even designated as IT personnel, and their preferred programming environ is VBA/Access.
We know 90% PC desktop is Windows, and it's hard to believe 90% programmers on Windows use vi to build non-Windows software. It's also hard to believe all the programmers on non-Windows platforms number greater than overall programmers using using or targeting Windows.
Does this case apply only to IDE tools? What other software tools are losing market from FOSS? Why not OS, graphics, music, and office s/w?
Perhaps as the 'Tool for Building Other Tools', IDE by nature matures and evolves fastest and got to a point where when you can *try* a hundred different ones for free nobody bothers to build a really good one anymore. Or, as the most personal gear a dev must live by, conditioning works too well to stem innovation once patterns set in. The Eclipse vs. NetBeans camps bears this out, and you'll usually have to pry Visual Studio or Dreamweaver from the dead, cold hands of devs that earn mortgages by them. They would rather *pay* for those IDEs than anything FOSS has to offer.
This is central to the MS dominance and FOSS struggle as native apps. Why do you think XCode is free? If a group with similar dedication as the Linux or Mozilla movement would create a Windows IDE that is better than VS, while including environments to build also *nix apps and next gen web apps IN Windows, perhaps Redmond will slowly loose its grip on the PC. But as long as millions of people keep using VS to keep building Windoze-only apps, Windoze will maintain its grip.
OEM such as Dell and HP has always relied on MS to tell them when to upgrade hardware and drivers, but all the time half listen and looking for cheap outs, ergo the Vista flop. They've long lost the ability to innovate or motivate on their own nor understand their users. Linux companies ought to beware of established OEM as partners when they come knocking looking for help on that next sale to bail them out. As soon Ballmer slip a 'We'll give you a Windows XZ for a nickel!', the same OEMs will drop Linux on a dime. And will the same vendor offer dedicated support to help novice users upgrade the ever-evolving OS 3 times a year? To ensure long term success and real Linux traction, whoever the Linux company is supplying the netbook OS must keep up the positive user experience for years, not months.
Couldn't agree more. Call it what it is - a Flash video. Did it only struck me that the fact that a browser company requires a 3rd party PLUG-IN to show off its new product instead of using a next generation web standard is just moronic? What's next, convert the Mozilla site to ColdFusion? While you're at it, why not just use AIR instead of FF? It's exactly pointless use of Flash like this that perpetuates that format that has begin to fall out of favor with more and more Windows and OS X users, but seems to be openly embraced and craved by Linux world.
This has nothing to do with Ruby or JavaScript. The business model behind.NET is to attract all developers to all use Windows (until I actually stumbles across a major site using Mono/Moonlight/RoR - they don't matter). So what if you use Ruby for Silverlight? You've just proved Silverlight is a greater platform than RoR. Once you start to program for Silverlight and.NET, why would you bother with Ruby? The divided opinions on Slashdot alone is music to MS's ears.
Every tech heavyweight tried to kill JavaScript - VBScript, JScript, ActionScript, Applet... I for one am glad there is one neutral language that not only survived but thrived on competition and grew with the Web over the decade, and isn't some 'standard' promoted from MS or Sun, nor is it simply a Cool Language du jour like Ruby. Wait til the next coo scripting language comes out and see if Ruby will outlast Tcl.
An elephant can bleed for 5 days and still does not die, and is one of nature's greatest creatures.
I'd like to see Nicholas come to my house and install XP Home on my XO with the 1GB hard drive plus all the right educational applications. Sorry, as a OLPC donator who gave one and got one to support a good cause, the recent development taken with the history of the foundation showed the management to be completely and totally inept. Negroponte had a good vision, and was influential in the trend for the ultra-low-end mini laptops, but he's no manager, businessman, salesman, technologist, and ultimately no real visionary, lost in his ever growing big head. Regrettably the hardware is solid, the overall design innovative, but the argument about OS is simply CHILDISH.
It's time for FOSS community to take over the project to help educate the children in developing countries without the fundamentalist control of its founder. It's time to scrap OLPC.
To the rest of us this is a LOL story, but lots of people around the globe still don't know Linux yet. Ready for MS/Novell to put the spin to paint themselves as the face of Linux to the developing world? MS-Novell knows that a rising powerful nation with 1/5 of entire planet population is the biggest user market they can pursue. MS will do anything to muscle in on the Linux action, maybe even including creating its own Linux brand (Windows 8?). OOXML is just a sampling. Still feel safe staying in the server market only, Redhat?
Scientific acceptance is simple, pretty like the Apache Foundation motto - Meritocracy in Action. Useful ideas or software GET USED. Intelligent Design, aka Creationism, is a nice theological idea, but not a testable scientific hypothesis. Whereas the Theory of Electro Magnetism has helped us built most of our modern technology, ID proponents so far have solved no real world problems of any practical value. You can use Genetic or Evolutionary Programming methodology to solve real problems. You cannot apply Intelligible Design pattern to help build that next generation chip or pursue the solution to the multi-core programming challenge.
Let see, at about 3 releases a year, currently at letter H, hopefully 5-6 years from now, before Ubuntu runs out of the alphabet, or before half of us compute on the clouds via a browser in a handheld, we won't have to talk about adoption of Linux on the common desktop anymore. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath, having waited so many years. Maybe what Linux needs is not an 'available for all hardware' attitude but a special hardware built for Linux that everybody likes. Let's see how well the UMPC trend fares for Linux.
...is what we need. Instead of the failed Wall Street scheme that has crashed the comic book as an art form and viable local industry in this country for the past 20 years. I can see it now - Iron Man's OS crash due to an XP virus so he had to upgrade to Vista.
The only thing US comic companies have left to hang onto are rehashing the old super heros created by long time comic greats whose vision are only possible in cinema with today's technology, or create bikini babes just for video games. No wonder real comic fans now favor Anime and Manga. How long can they keep milking these cliche story lines? Every super hero must have an equal but opposite villain, and the son/nephew/sister of villains always come back as villains and keep going on and on forever? Marvel and DC are just as out of fresh ideas as most of today's companies.
The Point, though Cisco isn't bragging it, is about control. What part of the network do you want to exert control on applications and data? Traditional concept of "the network as the computer" as proposed by Sun or Oracle puts the OS in charge, commoditizing servers, and requiring only dumb network switches and routers. This is about taking back the leverage and power companies like Cisco, 3Com, and Juniper felt they have given away. And this development finally begin to make each network device intelligent. Just a first step. More power and greater capabilities are sure to come embedded on each new generation of routers and switches.
For all the years Linux desktop market share struggle at 1-2%, we are finally seeing the flexibility of Linux take off in areas that will give Windows real trouble - in the low-cost laptops and directly on non-PC devices. While the Gartner boys may argue that Windows need to become more modular, the hardware makers are moving ahead already. Piece by piece they will take away the need to have an all encompassing OS like Windows that controls everything. If the network manages and controls the applications and data, and runs on VMs, then even a traditional OS is just a commodity application on the network. The modern OSs have commoditized servers. Now the h/w and VM makers are trying to commoditize the OS. Sure, Windows has the resources to respond. The relevance of Windows still lies in its 90% desktop software dominance, and parlaying that user dependency into the future of computing. When or whether that dominance will be slowly chipped away through these new developments in mobile and cloud computing advances, hard to say, but sure it's fun to watch all these tech companies fighting for a bigger stake in the ever changing new fields.
MS has the biggest Mac lab outside of Cupertino, and you can bet it has the biggest Linux lab outside of Novell/IBM/Redhat. How else does MS copy and steal the best ideas?
That is an interesting point. I've personally thought of using FastCGI but only as a temporary solution to wean off our internal legacy Perl apps. It is an optimistic proposition for MS, but whether it will be a success is questionable. There are lots of risks. 1) Most organizations I know that switched to Windows servers did so because they like the one single platform integration. 2) Many managers and Windows sys admins do not like to add open source solution into their tight MS back-end. 3) There is also the question whether Windows technology can actually handle the size of online business MS is aspiring to. 4) And if you're a developer and the entire.NET platform is already available to you, what is the incentive to move to PHP? 5) Let's say PHP on IIS actually caught on, there is still no reason for 90% of the ISP out there to abandon Apache since their OS are often *nix because it's cheaper (It's just their customers develop PHP apps at home on Windows). 6) Even if MS succeeds at promoting PHP into a even more popular platform, PHP/Ruby are open source, and MS will not be able to control them unless it offered its own version, and until it integrates into Visual Web Developer (free) to entice more users. 7) The ease and power of PHP/Ruby might actually entice Windows developers away from Visual Studio ($$) and.NET and cause the popularity of MS's native development platform to drop. Just my hypothesis.
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That's why I think the real trend will be a combo of Wii and iPhone technology - a motion sensing pad. More Minority Report like but just move your hand close enough to the (touch) pad without touching it and it'll respond to the fingers' motion or electromagnetic change. Still may be a problem with gloves on.
Difficult to implement unless some better web design standards come into being. Once you "blink* on a porn site all hell may break loose, or you might get stuck in the same screen location forever. I can see a new kind of eye strain industrial injury developing. Then again, freeing up both hands might be nice...
I agree with some of what you guys are basically saying, if only software was easily comparable to a printed book or a pressed vinyl. Sure you do not need permission from copyright owner to use a product, but the product manufacturer protects its interest by having you agree to the EULA. Legalese is legalese. Once you clicked on Accept you are bound by it in spirit, whether the seller enforces it or not. There are software+data systems that restrict the number of concurrent users by its license term. Sure you can violate it if you want to, but your company is liable under the law (not illegal copying and distribution, 1 copy running on server, but more concurrent connection than EULA allows). Obviously we wouldn't be discussing this if Apple products suck, and to reach the success it has today (still 10% desktop minority), all without 3rd party licensees help, Apple has always defined the whole product as the combination of both hardware and software, and developed them together. Is there something wrong with that? Commoditize OS X will not upset MSFT's PC monopoly. All it will do is create more Vista end user experiences. Today we think of OS as completely separate from hardware, but what if Apple says enough and make it the only way to get OS X is buying it pre-bundled on a Mac hardware? And the only way to get updates is through some proof you already own a Mac? Do people want to see Apple lower the price on hardware but raise the price on the OS DVD sales? I get that the rising popularity of OS X is good for overall PC consumers, but what is wrong with a company saying that we rather you not buy OS X if you don't get a Mac? Is that so crazy? Psystar is not a victim, isn't really helping Apple customers, and isn't contributing to the development of OS X by ripping Apple off.
Hardware that you purchase and possess outright, you can do what you want with it. Proprietary software is the Intellectual Property of the IP owner. You are unfortunately only licensed to use it according to the EULA you must agree to BEFORE you use. If you do not agree, you do not get to use it. Think of it as a lease or a rental. Copyright protection exists so someone cannot take your creation and dictate to you how you should offer it as a product or make money on it without giving you a cut. This has larger ramification than just for Apple. Who should get to decide how you should sell your software, application, music, and writing? To twist this around, if you can argue a proprietary use term is unreasonable, what is stopping MSFT from copying everything from Linux and then close it by arguing the GPL terms are unreasonable? To protect Copyleft, unfortunately you must also protect Copyright. It's one thing to let authorized resellers also retail your product. Long time Apple fans know you can go online to a retailer like MacConnection, and get a Mac for a lot cheaper, without Psystar messing with the legality. If Psystar was installing AIX/HP-UX/SolarisSPARC on hardware it assembled without the explicit permission from IBM/HP/Sun and not sharing any profit with them, would anybody think Psystar's action should be permissible? (The sarcasm here, of course, is Why would you want AIX/HP-UX/Solaris on consumer boxes?)
Ballmer and his team of managers will never equal Gates. He needs it be known that a new boss is in charge, and will make his mark by throwing his... MSFT's weight around and maintain their dominance from pure business/corporate tactics, much like the matured GM, Ford, and GE, etc. (and look where they are).
Not to be overlooked is the more hard to get consumer statistics data that Yahoo keeps that others would love to analyze and gain from, much like the recent Viacom demand from Google. It's not just the search technology and user base they crave, but an incredible amount of strategic business data and insider know-how they lack.
Besides, what else does MSFT have to divert people's scrutiny yet stay in the news until they have the next Windows beta?
...in the end Microsoft will have no one to blame.
He heard Bill retired, and is hoping to take over after Ray fails with Ballmer... Maybe he had better friends there at MS or had left projects half way done he wants to finish... Maybe he is just a glutton for punishment... Who knows but himself internally. Most public announcements are excuses you BS to convince yourself you made the right decision.
Maybe the floundering of a single, free, desktop 'Linux' rising to the top for consumers and corporate to choose is due to the fact that you CAN play with either Fedora/SUSE/Ubuntu 2-3 times a year but never stick with one long enough to do anything useful? Comments on this page explains a LOT about what is dividing Linux as a community.
If the Patent Office can delete all Amazon claims with "1-Click", then they can show that they have this system first, so all Amazon claims to "1-Click" concepts are invalid. Done.
MSFT's next initiative: Source Open Software (SOS), to source all software technology from open source. By ISO submission time the word 'Source' will be dropped and it will simply be known as the Open Software Standard, at which time all lawsuit against MS shall be dismissed due to the fact that the 'OS' in Windows product line will no longer stand for 'operating system'... Hey Microsoft, pay me for the idea! I patented it...
I'd like to point out Apple may very well become the maker of the most popular UNIX powered smartphone. Not Nokia. Not Docomo. Not RIM. Not Palm. But Apple. If iPhones reach the same popularity as iPods, that will be more people using UNIX as a personal device platform than ever. And you know what? Those OS X consumers, including many like my artist friend or the business execs that have never opened up a terminal, don't even care. That is not a bad way to popularize UNIX and Linux. Really, until Nokia or Samsung have enough receipts to show people will actually sustain Android phone sales, OS X iPhone is the only thing that stands in the way of WinMo saturating the mobile market (God forbid) similar to their PC desktop proliferation. Will there be business software enough on Android to attract corporate IT to avoid the stigma associated with the iPhone?
Jobs is nothing if not smart and relentless. He is usually 3 moves ahead of his competitors and they don't even know it. Who knew a rare UNIX flavor eventually will power the resurrection of a computer company? MS gets stood up at the altar by Yahoo with a $40B dowry offering, and Apple spent a few mil to acquire PA Semi and threatens to push the whole mobile hardware competition up a notch (Google should hope people will jailbreak future iPhones to install Android and make it really shine). That is also a good thing for consumers.
You can call them control freaks. Pricey. Unoriginal. But Jobs is also a perfectionist freak with his products. That is also a good thing for users. When was the last time you've accused MS or other tech companies as overly perfectionist?
Lots of people are pronouncing the iPhone 3G as no big deal. Sure, look at it by itself, the iPhone may never surpass Blackberry shares, or sell as many units as Nokia handsets, but think about all the announcements together - the symbolic 3 legged stool. MobileMe+iPhone is the first step in giving people their personal cloud wherever they are in the most integrated matter (not simply a few apps or just a web browser entry form). Also I'm surprised not finding more discussions toward the next version of OS X with the sole aim at maximizing multi-core computing. Apple may not have as many engineers as MS, Google, or Intel, but I'm sure they are just as proud to want to be the ones that come up with the best future system. And all that raw power just for the desktop? For what, to run Adobe's bloated software faster? Hmmm, I wonder if the strategic move away from joining Google cloud is to eventually set up Apple's own server farms, powered by OS X, but keeping it mums for now just as Google is Apple-like secretive about its data centers technology. I know, I know, OS X Serve is supposedly dead. But so was the Newton. Think of all the computationally intensive media that needs to be served out in the decade ahead - movies, games, hi-def. Apple does not own any pipes (yet) but they sure can ensure the performance on both ends (throwing AppleTV in the mix). Maybe even host some of the content FOR the dreaded music and movie industry? Others may have one or two prongs but not the whole trifecta.
So the 3 prongs prop each other up. And did people who watched the keynote noticed that Vista runs best on a Mac? Apple is even going to host Exchange servers on Mobile Me. Forget Yahoo. Imagine if Apple and Microsoft put aside their differences and join forces on the business cloud. MS can provide Mac versions of all their business software. Apple platforms will run all the MS+nework apps and the cloud hosting MS servers. All of a sudden Google may have some real competition. Amazon? Get outta here. Of course that will never happen.
No I'm not A-fanboy. This musing is written on a PC in Google Docs. But yeah, I'm gonna get an iPhone 3G. I can even write it off for work since it's got VPN and GPS. Hell, just gassing up my truck and going for movies and fancy dinner and drinks would cost close to $200 nowadays.
Sure it's the software, but it's also the whole ecosystem, which Jobs likes to control to deliver a finer experience. Sure Google can offer so much more, but if somebody put Android on a crappy hardware with bad programming so it's experience sucks there's nothing Google can do about it. And who's going to install Adobe AIR on their WinMo or BB? Now Apple has basically become the first to hand you the whole cloud computing experience on a mobile phone.
Your point being...? So your experience added that it's not bad enough that there are tons of free cross-platform IDEs like Eclipse, NetBeans, JDeveloper, etc. out there, but in other instances people can even use Visual Studio for free too (especially now with the express editions), so the competition for commercial IDEs just got even tougher. Only I think that that is not hurting Microsoft's position.
If you say 90% of programmers at MS use vi I'll take your word for it. In all the Windows IT shops I've worked in the IDE is VS for Win/.NET programming and Dreamweaver for non-ASP.NET web stuff. I've not worked in a Windows shop that switched from DW/VS to some other free IDE. As a faithful winvi32/vim user, when my job requires .NET programming, i'd say VS is still the most efficient tool, and I doubt any FOSS tool will replace it anytime soon when I don't have to pay for it. The majority of desktop developers are not even designated as IT personnel, and their preferred programming environ is VBA/Access.
We know 90% PC desktop is Windows, and it's hard to believe 90% programmers on Windows use vi to build non-Windows software. It's also hard to believe all the programmers on non-Windows platforms number greater than overall programmers using using or targeting Windows.
Does this case apply only to IDE tools? What other software tools are losing market from FOSS? Why not OS, graphics, music, and office s/w?
Perhaps as the 'Tool for Building Other Tools', IDE by nature matures and evolves fastest and got to a point where when you can *try* a hundred different ones for free nobody bothers to build a really good one anymore. Or, as the most personal gear a dev must live by, conditioning works too well to stem innovation once patterns set in. The Eclipse vs. NetBeans camps bears this out, and you'll usually have to pry Visual Studio or Dreamweaver from the dead, cold hands of devs that earn mortgages by them. They would rather *pay* for those IDEs than anything FOSS has to offer.
This is central to the MS dominance and FOSS struggle as native apps. Why do you think XCode is free? If a group with similar dedication as the Linux or Mozilla movement would create a Windows IDE that is better than VS, while including environments to build also *nix apps and next gen web apps IN Windows, perhaps Redmond will slowly loose its grip on the PC. But as long as millions of people keep using VS to keep building Windoze-only apps, Windoze will maintain its grip.
OEM such as Dell and HP has always relied on MS to tell them when to upgrade hardware and drivers, but all the time half listen and looking for cheap outs, ergo the Vista flop. They've long lost the ability to innovate or motivate on their own nor understand their users. Linux companies ought to beware of established OEM as partners when they come knocking looking for help on that next sale to bail them out. As soon Ballmer slip a 'We'll give you a Windows XZ for a nickel!', the same OEMs will drop Linux on a dime. And will the same vendor offer dedicated support to help novice users upgrade the ever-evolving OS 3 times a year? To ensure long term success and real Linux traction, whoever the Linux company is supplying the netbook OS must keep up the positive user experience for years, not months.
Couldn't agree more. Call it what it is - a Flash video. Did it only struck me that the fact that a browser company requires a 3rd party PLUG-IN to show off its new product instead of using a next generation web standard is just moronic? What's next, convert the Mozilla site to ColdFusion? While you're at it, why not just use AIR instead of FF? It's exactly pointless use of Flash like this that perpetuates that format that has begin to fall out of favor with more and more Windows and OS X users, but seems to be openly embraced and craved by Linux world.
This has nothing to do with Ruby or JavaScript. The business model behind .NET is to attract all developers to all use Windows (until I actually stumbles across a major site using Mono/Moonlight/RoR - they don't matter). So what if you use Ruby for Silverlight? You've just proved Silverlight is a greater platform than RoR. Once you start to program for Silverlight and .NET, why would you bother with Ruby? The divided opinions on Slashdot alone is music to MS's ears.
Every tech heavyweight tried to kill JavaScript - VBScript, JScript, ActionScript, Applet... I for one am glad there is one neutral language that not only survived but thrived on competition and grew with the Web over the decade, and isn't some 'standard' promoted from MS or Sun, nor is it simply a Cool Language du jour like Ruby. Wait til the next coo scripting language comes out and see if Ruby will outlast Tcl.
An elephant can bleed for 5 days and still does not die, and is one of nature's greatest creatures.
I'd like to see Nicholas come to my house and install XP Home on my XO with the 1GB hard drive plus all the right educational applications. Sorry, as a OLPC donator who gave one and got one to support a good cause, the recent development taken with the history of the foundation showed the management to be completely and totally inept. Negroponte had a good vision, and was influential in the trend for the ultra-low-end mini laptops, but he's no manager, businessman, salesman, technologist, and ultimately no real visionary, lost in his ever growing big head. Regrettably the hardware is solid, the overall design innovative, but the argument about OS is simply CHILDISH.
It's time for FOSS community to take over the project to help educate the children in developing countries without the fundamentalist control of its founder. It's time to scrap OLPC.
To the rest of us this is a LOL story, but lots of people around the globe still don't know Linux yet. Ready for MS/Novell to put the spin to paint themselves as the face of Linux to the developing world? MS-Novell knows that a rising powerful nation with 1/5 of entire planet population is the biggest user market they can pursue. MS will do anything to muscle in on the Linux action, maybe even including creating its own Linux brand (Windows 8?). OOXML is just a sampling. Still feel safe staying in the server market only, Redhat?
Scientific acceptance is simple, pretty like the Apache Foundation motto - Meritocracy in Action. Useful ideas or software GET USED. Intelligent Design, aka Creationism, is a nice theological idea, but not a testable scientific hypothesis. Whereas the Theory of Electro Magnetism has helped us built most of our modern technology, ID proponents so far have solved no real world problems of any practical value. You can use Genetic or Evolutionary Programming methodology to solve real problems. You cannot apply Intelligible Design pattern to help build that next generation chip or pursue the solution to the multi-core programming challenge.
Let see, at about 3 releases a year, currently at letter H, hopefully 5-6 years from now, before Ubuntu runs out of the alphabet, or before half of us compute on the clouds via a browser in a handheld, we won't have to talk about adoption of Linux on the common desktop anymore. I'm hopeful, but not holding my breath, having waited so many years. Maybe what Linux needs is not an 'available for all hardware' attitude but a special hardware built for Linux that everybody likes. Let's see how well the UMPC trend fares for Linux.
...is what we need. Instead of the failed Wall Street scheme that has crashed the comic book as an art form and viable local industry in this country for the past 20 years. I can see it now - Iron Man's OS crash due to an XP virus so he had to upgrade to Vista. The only thing US comic companies have left to hang onto are rehashing the old super heros created by long time comic greats whose vision are only possible in cinema with today's technology, or create bikini babes just for video games. No wonder real comic fans now favor Anime and Manga. How long can they keep milking these cliche story lines? Every super hero must have an equal but opposite villain, and the son/nephew/sister of villains always come back as villains and keep going on and on forever? Marvel and DC are just as out of fresh ideas as most of today's companies.
The Point, though Cisco isn't bragging it, is about control. What part of the network do you want to exert control on applications and data? Traditional concept of "the network as the computer" as proposed by Sun or Oracle puts the OS in charge, commoditizing servers, and requiring only dumb network switches and routers. This is about taking back the leverage and power companies like Cisco, 3Com, and Juniper felt they have given away. And this development finally begin to make each network device intelligent. Just a first step. More power and greater capabilities are sure to come embedded on each new generation of routers and switches. For all the years Linux desktop market share struggle at 1-2%, we are finally seeing the flexibility of Linux take off in areas that will give Windows real trouble - in the low-cost laptops and directly on non-PC devices. While the Gartner boys may argue that Windows need to become more modular, the hardware makers are moving ahead already. Piece by piece they will take away the need to have an all encompassing OS like Windows that controls everything. If the network manages and controls the applications and data, and runs on VMs, then even a traditional OS is just a commodity application on the network. The modern OSs have commoditized servers. Now the h/w and VM makers are trying to commoditize the OS. Sure, Windows has the resources to respond. The relevance of Windows still lies in its 90% desktop software dominance, and parlaying that user dependency into the future of computing. When or whether that dominance will be slowly chipped away through these new developments in mobile and cloud computing advances, hard to say, but sure it's fun to watch all these tech companies fighting for a bigger stake in the ever changing new fields.
MS has the biggest Mac lab outside of Cupertino, and you can bet it has the biggest Linux lab outside of Novell/IBM/Redhat. How else does MS copy and steal the best ideas?
That is an interesting point. I've personally thought of using FastCGI but only as a temporary solution to wean off our internal legacy Perl apps. It is an optimistic proposition for MS, but whether it will be a success is questionable. There are lots of risks. 1) Most organizations I know that switched to Windows servers did so because they like the one single platform integration. 2) Many managers and Windows sys admins do not like to add open source solution into their tight MS back-end. 3) There is also the question whether Windows technology can actually handle the size of online business MS is aspiring to. 4) And if you're a developer and the entire .NET platform is already available to you, what is the incentive to move to PHP? 5) Let's say PHP on IIS actually caught on, there is still no reason for 90% of the ISP out there to abandon Apache since their OS are often *nix because it's cheaper (It's just their customers develop PHP apps at home on Windows). 6) Even if MS succeeds at promoting PHP into a even more popular platform, PHP/Ruby are open source, and MS will not be able to control them unless it offered its own version, and until it integrates into Visual Web Developer (free) to entice more users. 7) The ease and power of PHP/Ruby might actually entice Windows developers away from Visual Studio ($$) and .NET and cause the popularity of MS's native development platform to drop. Just my hypothesis.