Ok, lets say you have this script. You download your document from Google. You run your little string substitution Perl magic (we'll just forget about how you map the data to the fields in teh document or how you support various different input formats, such as a spreadsheet, for now)... then what? How do you print the results? Perl can't render a Google document to the printer. Do you then have to load your 100's of output files from your awesome perl script back into Google, one by one, for printing?
Mail merge is just one of many examples of where Google apps falls short.
I don't get your complaint against AbiWord. It works just fine for editing documents. Sure it doesn't import.doc super well, but if you're not using Word who cares? AbiWord loads almost instantly, is fairly smooth, and as a word processor is fairly feature rich. Has less doo-dahs and whatnots then Word, but honestly I question how much of that is actually used.
It only takes a couple people who DO use the extra doo-dahs to make MS Office a general requirement. Well, maybe not a "requirement" but certainly it is a lot easier to just get a site license than to buy individual copies for select users and then worry about document interchange issues.
Not only are the google versions of the tools not nearly feature complete, but they're over the internet. Thus guaranteed to be sucktastically slow (especially when a lot of people use it) and very likely insecure in the end (hint: gmail has already had a few goofs). I'm all for ditching Windows, but using online office tools is just short sighted. Within a year or two of the switch they'll be climbing back into bed with MS Office [no doubt].
Definitly within a year. Probably soon after the first secretary tries to do a mail merge or print some labels and they realize that Google apps are useless for all but the most trivial of office documents.
Still, how do you do basic stuff like mail merges w/ Google apps? How about non-trivial print control? I mean, last I checked, HTML is not a very good markup language when it comes to print layout. I bet printing labels will be a pain. I think users are going to really miss some of the power of desktop office suites. Even if it is only a few people in the office every once in a while. That can be enough to drive the adoption of something. That is pretty muych the reason people use MS Office int eh first place. There's always that one group of people who use some relatively advanced features of Office and suddenly everyone is running it because otherwise exchanging documents is a pain... more of a pain than buying a site license is.
But whatever, I'll believe it when I see it. The Linux part is doable, I think. But with OpenOffice. Google apps are an unnecessary handicap as far as functionality.
As far as object-relational modelling tools go, Apple had one of the first (and best) in the Enterprise Objects Framework. Core-Data (shipped with every Mac) is the direct descendent of that.
And yet hardly anyone is using it for business apps.
If you *must* use ODBC, there are plenty of ODBC clients around for OSX. I guess I'm just not really seeing what you're saying here - it seems to boil down to "you can't get Crystal Reports, so it's not as good".
Sorry, "Crystal Reports" is just what I think of when I think of when I think of business data reporting and management. Heck, I don't even know if it is used anymore. It was just an example. There are many more. What I am saying is (and I thought this was pretty obvious) is that Apple does not cater at all to business application developers. That doesn't mean writing a business app on OS X is impossible. It just means that the platform doesn't attract business application developers like Microsoft does. Do you disagree with this?
Because when I think of genuine perk, I think of something that is official. Like "if you take this job, you get this." Like it is in the contract. I get the impression that execs simply expect things like free laptops so they get it. I could be mistaken though. Maybe it is in their contracts. I'm not an exec and I've never read such a contract before. It just seems like an unspoken, unwritten rule.
Huh? How does the fact that MySQL is pre-installed (but not enabled) on OS X Server make it the "default" database for OS X
How else would you define default? it ships with it. Therefore it is the default. If yo uwant something else, you have to specifically install it.
and what does that have to do with using OS X as a development environment?
It doesn't necessarily. I'm just using as an indicator of Apple's target audience... which clearly isn't corporate america. Because corporate America wants all those snazzy reporting/development tools that Microsoft ships with SQL Server and sells as options. MySQL and Xcode don't even compare.
If you're running OS X Server and you don't need MySQL, just don't turn it on.
Well, DUH! I said MySQL was the default... not the only option.
The only database-related issue that would make using OS X as a dev environment inconvenient would be the need to run MS SQL Server locally.
...or any of the various reporting and database abstraction libraries only available on Windows that businesses use.
Just about any other database runs fine on OS X and there are several commercial ODBC vendors as well as a free option.
Sure, but have you actually tried to use Apple ODBC manager? It blows. Maybe you can technically get ODBC to work, but the point is the low level of attention it gets from Apple and the lack of business related development tools.
Then again, I'm not much of a business developer myself, so I could be missing something. I just know people who do.NET/SQL Server development who use tools which, as far as I know, have no equal on OS X.
Of course, I guess there is always Java, but man I hate Java desktop apps. Especially on the Mac.
Well, I don't think the issue is "bloat," per se. It is performance. I've usually heard it more as a joke than serious, but they say that developers should use slow machines so that they are encouraged to find ways to optimize the code for performance if only to keep themselves from going crazy. It never hurts to have some real motivation to go along with some vague "good programming practices" ideal.
The problem I see is that people think that all companies buy top-of-line PCs. A Decked-out MacBook Pro? I don't think so.
Execs. Not the peons. Executives do quite often get top-of-the-line laptops as a "perk."
If Apple brought their system prices down to that of the common beige box, then and only then could they hope to truly capture the corporate market at large. But, that would mean less profit per box. And, in the end, Apple doesn't seem to really be suffering, so why would they want to hamstring their bottom line? The last time I read about Apple's bottom line, it was very healthy.
It is a lot more complicated than price. The Mac Mini used to be pretty competitively priced with the low end Dell desktops. The real issue is software.
Thus, I does it really matter that Apple only has 5% (or whatever it is) of system sales?
True, Apple doesn't see to care. They don't NEED to capture corproate desktops... just saying if they WANTED to they'd hav to start by introducing real business features rather than catering to the niche professionals and home users. Maybe they're just biding their time... waiting for just the right moment to make a push for the desktop.
I think Apple could have some limited success. At my doctor's office, they run an "all Apple environment." I wanted to know what applications they were using but the secretary had no idea! All she knew was to click and type into the application.
It could work in some medical areas because their primary software is often just some text terminal into a medical database. The workstations are often more or less just dumb terminals.
I for one though, do not like Apple and its OSX as a platform and wonder why people say it's very good as a platform.
It is great for end users. Bad for (business) developers. I only say bad for developers because basic things like ODBC are really poorly implemented on OSX. And your default database is MySQL. Not that there is anything wrong with MySQL, per se. It is great for web stuff, but it doesn't have any of the Crystal Reports type things that many businesses require. Just about everything on the Mac is geared towards graphics and end-users.
That said, I'd much rather use and administrate Macs at work (small college) than PCs. Even if it does limit the business end of things. But maybe that is just me.
The flip side of that is that as commodity beigeboxes, Dell and Gateway do great in the corporate world, which is a space Apple has yet to penetrate to any large degree, because the customer doesn't fit their product space.
While I agree that Apple doesn't necessarily fit the generic corp desktop, I wonder if it might just be a matter of grabbing the executives who are always in the market for premium computing hardware. A decked out MacBook Pro is nothing to scoff at and it may just be a matter of getting execs to try them. It coudl cause a push for some companies to adopt cheap Macs on the desktop. Maybe if Apple can bring the price of the Mini back down. Ultimately, I think it simply comes down to breaking the Windows addiction. Paralells is great and all, but does it really make sense for companies to run BOTH OS X and Windows on each desktop? Because you know they're still going to be using some Windows/DOS app that they just can't get rid of..
It can't be any worse than that godawful "Blackboard" based system that they had before. I'm not really sure of its pedigree; it was either home-brew that interfaced with BB or it was some kind of abomination that BB managed to sell them. Either way, it blew.
Blackboard is one of those things that everyone (ok not *everyone*) uses and everyone also hates. I've never heard of anyone actually liking Blackboard. It just happens to occupy a comfy niche market with a feature set that is hard to ignore. They need more competition.
If I wasn't using gmail, I'd probably still be using mail.app
mail.app, as in that old program, or Apple Mail? I love Apple Mail. I use it to POP my Gmail account because I much prefer a desktop app, searching is much faster, and I can aggregate my various email accounts much better.
Your university might want to consider outsourcing to Google Mail...
POP is the very bare minimum. But in the case of Google Mail, it isn't good enough. I have a gmail account and barely ever use the web interface because I prefer Apple Mail. And I like to have all my email aggregated in one interface. Problem with POP (at least with Google) is that once I POP the mail from one machine, another doesn't get it (like work vs. home). Sure, it is still THERE because I have the "leave on server" option selected, but you can only POP it once as far as I can tell. Give me IMAP! I want access to all my folders!
Remember: A lot of colleges use webbased email. No IMAP or POP3 available.
Quite often the webemail itself uses IMAP. Like some modified version of squirellmail. Most colleges I've dealt with have IMAP and/or POP available if only because that is what their webmail uses to get your mail.
My college uses Exchange: it sucks.
Not only does it sucks, it is overkill. Think of the cluster of servers required and the swath of unused features. When one server running Postfix/Cyrus would probably do. My guess is that they just happened use use Exchange for staff/faculty and thought it would be easiest just to extend it to students. Have worked in a couple (admittedly small) colleges, I've found it best to keep staff and student systems largely separate. The needs and usage patterns are often quite different.
Oh, it can. Maybe not for "real", but there are toolkits that build entire "windows managers" in javascript. Works amazingly well.
People say things like that as if they'd never actually run a native desktop application with a real window manager before. I've used a couple of the "window manager" type browser toolkits, and there is nothing "amazing" about them other than the fact that someone was able to push Javascript and HTML so far beyond their reasonable limits. The only decent browser based, desktop-like GUIs i've ever used are done in Flash. And, well, you might as well just write Java applets at that point.
Now that depends where we stop the line of "web app". If we count it as HTML/CSS/Javascript/Whathaveyou, you're right. But there are things coming out to bridge the gap. For example, WPF/XAML, which is fairly amazing, though nothing a slashdotter would be interested in for obvious reasons. I'm sure there are cross platform equivalents in the work or already out.
Unfortunately, cross-platform in browsers means "lowest common denominator" which means "slow and clunky Javascript/HTML." Even outside of browsers, cross-platform usually means Java which, well, sucks on the desktop IMO. Generally speaking, there is no shortage of native applicaitons on my platform of choice (OS X), so i don't really care about the next browser based fad. Go ahead and write an image manipulation tool inside a browser if you think that is cool, it'll never be as good as Photoshop or even Gimp.
None of those are problems with web apps, they're problems with the decisions the companies made in developing said web apps.
Seriously, the same company that locks you into a specific version of IE would probably just lock you into a specific version of.NET. The end result would be the same. you need to be running Windows with a specific version of the VM (be it IE or.NET).
Yes, I often do use a web browser as a script GUI. A web browser changes a few HTML text strings into a pretty display.
If it is only a few lines, it probably isn't 'pretty.' It is probably just a plain, small form centered in an oversized browser window. Personally I find things like PerlTk to be much "prettier" if only because the window is taylored to the app. And also the box model of Tk is MUCH easier to work with than HTML/CSS. I find reliably placing elements on the screen with HTML/CSS to be a huge pain in the ass.... and I'm primarily a web developer!;-P
Quick web scripts are way easier than developing an application if only for the fact that you don't need to figure out how to use networking in whatever language you'd be working in. Plus, you don't need to "distribute" the application once it's done, and you don't need to provide updates to every user on your network who's using it: update your script, update the application.
What's funny though is that the example in the article was neither networked nor multiuser. Why not skip the CGI part even and just have commandline scripts to do certain things? I can't say I've ever really consider writing a simple, single-user one-off GUI application. Nor can I think of a time where I'd want a personal web server listening on a local IP/port.
Plus, developers think in program logic, not in program design. A web script let's the developer write their output in HTML, then go back in later and add some CSS for presentation once they've got the program actually working. I say, it's a good way to do things.
No, developers think in program design. *Programmers* things in program logic.:-)
Not to mention that a lot of web scripting languages are easier to use than full-blown application languages, and there are many packages that let you attach native GUIs to web scripts. There isn't a compelling argument not to go that route if your application a) uses networking, and b) is distributed over an intranet.
But if it doesn't do a or b (as in the article), Perl/Tk is probably simpler than even bothering with a web server. That is assuming that a GUI is even important at all.
We've hacked up users to fit our organization, but groups are left fairly untouched. We keep track of a lot of nonstock data in out LDAP tree. WGM sees the stuff, but doesn't mess with it. I think, in the end, we looked at if more as what does running it on OSX get us than the other way around. We're a heterogeneous shop though, had we been all OSX, we'd have run it on OSX.
You still haven't really addressed my original complaint about Open Directory... do you use a structure different then the default/Users and/Groups containers? I understand that you've added attributes and such. What I am talking about is a real hierarchical structure where you have different departments or branch offices in differnt parts of the tree. Like o=MyORG,ou=Houston and o=MyORG,ou=Chicago (with perhaps more granular breakdown within those containers) where all your servers and users would be in the appropriate container and each has it own admin user which has no rights to the other section of the tree (including servers)?
I've never worked with eDirectory, but can't ACLs do what you're describing? We have a tools set up that require people be members of a certain group in order to run by having ACLs on certain attributes and sections of the tree. What more does eDirectory do? (It'd probably be easier on eDirectory though)
The big difference with eDirectory is that "ACLs" apply to not just the directory itself, but the servers in the tree as well. There is a high level of integration between the directory and the servers. The directory becomes a holding place for all kinds of information and services. Also, a big feature for large companies is being able to partition the tree across WAN links so you don't have to do full replication. Also managing replicas and such is much more reliable and flexible with eDirectory. I've had nothing but trouble replicating Open Directory. Though I haven't really tried it with a generic OpenLDAP install.
Fortunately, I now work at a relatively small school where the virtually flat namespace of OpenDirectory/WGM is perfectly adequate. But this would not hve cut it at other places I have worked.
Well that comment just came out of nowhere, didn't it? How did we go from talking why people pirate to what makes people upgrade Windows? Assuming a person WANTS a certain version of windows, the most likely reasons they would pirate it are because it is cheaper and easier than buying it. That's all I'm saying. Who cares if you only just upgraded to XP last year and won't install your free copy of Vista.
Because 1) It is not intelligent, brute force was never needed to bypass Windows Activation before 2) It is not subtle enough, and an operation this size would put a big bullseye on whoever did it 3) It is not profitable, people that run those botnets do it for profit, not to "stick it to the man", or to piss off Microsoft.
I think originally people started botnets mostly for fun and to display hacking "prowess" and to DDoS people that piss them off (companies such as Microsoft, perhaps). It was only fairly recently that the kiddies found that they could use botnets to spread spam and malware for money. The problem now is that botnets now have a financial advantage and other users might seem like a waste of resources. But that doesn't mean they weren't originally started for other reasons.
The big problem with using a distributed cracking method is that, AFAIK, keys have to be unique. If there was a distributed cracking system, there would be no way to distribute one key to one person. Everyone would try to grab the same keys as they were produced.
Also, since Vista comes with 90% of all computers sold in the US, the fact that they don't have it already means they are building their own boxes instead of buying Dells. Guys that build their own don't pirate OS's because it is cheaper, they do it because it is there to be done. Like running apache on an Xbox...it has no practical value, but fun to try anyway, and play a little with it.
No, really, they do it because it is cheaper and easier than going to the store to buy it. I bet if you could legitimately download Vista for $1, most of such pirating would disappear. I know I wouldn't bother pirating unless I could just 'borrow' a copy on DVD from my employer with a valid key that didn't get checked against a master database for duplicates and cause problems for my employer. (was that a runon sentence?) This is exactly why I installed Windows Server 2k3 on my home computer instead of pirating XP and messing w/ its validation crap. I could get a copy of 2k3 from work that had a a good old fashion CD key and no other protection. But otherwise, it works just like XP. Cheaper and easier.
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Ok, lets say you have this script. You download your document from Google. You run your little string substitution Perl magic (we'll just forget about how you map the data to the fields in teh document or how you support various different input formats, such as a spreadsheet, for now)... then what? How do you print the results? Perl can't render a Google document to the printer. Do you then have to load your 100's of output files from your awesome perl script back into Google, one by one, for printing?
Mail merge is just one of many examples of where Google apps falls short.
-matthew
It only takes a couple people who DO use the extra doo-dahs to make MS Office a general requirement. Well, maybe not a "requirement" but certainly it is a lot easier to just get a site license than to buy individual copies for select users and then worry about document interchange issues.
-matthew
Definitly within a year. Probably soon after the first secretary tries to do a mail merge or print some labels and they realize that Google apps are useless for all but the most trivial of office documents.
-matthew
First of all, not matter what, you need to secure your desktops. Second, the documents themselves would be stored on a file server.
-matthew
Still, how do you do basic stuff like mail merges w/ Google apps? How about non-trivial print control? I mean, last I checked, HTML is not a very good markup language when it comes to print layout. I bet printing labels will be a pain. I think users are going to really miss some of the power of desktop office suites. Even if it is only a few people in the office every once in a while. That can be enough to drive the adoption of something. That is pretty muych the reason people use MS Office int eh first place. There's always that one group of people who use some relatively advanced features of Office and suddenly everyone is running it because otherwise exchanging documents is a pain... more of a pain than buying a site license is.
But whatever, I'll believe it when I see it. The Linux part is doable, I think. But with OpenOffice. Google apps are an unnecessary handicap as far as functionality.
-matthew
And yet hardly anyone is using it for business apps.
Sorry, "Crystal Reports" is just what I think of when I think of when I think of business data reporting and management. Heck, I don't even know if it is used anymore. It was just an example. There are many more. What I am saying is (and I thought this was pretty obvious) is that Apple does not cater at all to business application developers. That doesn't mean writing a business app on OS X is impossible. It just means that the platform doesn't attract business application developers like Microsoft does. Do you disagree with this?
-matthew
Because when I think of genuine perk, I think of something that is official. Like "if you take this job, you get this." Like it is in the contract. I get the impression that execs simply expect things like free laptops so they get it. I could be mistaken though. Maybe it is in their contracts. I'm not an exec and I've never read such a contract before. It just seems like an unspoken, unwritten rule.
-matthew
How else would you define default? it ships with it. Therefore it is the default. If yo uwant something else, you have to specifically install it.
It doesn't necessarily. I'm just using as an indicator of Apple's target audience... which clearly isn't corporate america. Because corporate America wants all those snazzy reporting/development tools that Microsoft ships with SQL Server and sells as options. MySQL and Xcode don't even compare.
Well, DUH! I said MySQL was the default... not the only option.
Sure, but have you actually tried to use Apple ODBC manager? It blows. Maybe you can technically get ODBC to work, but the point is the low level of attention it gets from Apple and the lack of business related development tools.
Then again, I'm not much of a business developer myself, so I could be missing something. I just know people who do
Of course, I guess there is always Java, but man I hate Java desktop apps. Especially on the Mac.
-matthew
Well, I don't think the issue is "bloat," per se. It is performance. I've usually heard it more as a joke than serious, but they say that developers should use slow machines so that they are encouraged to find ways to optimize the code for performance if only to keep themselves from going crazy. It never hurts to have some real motivation to go along with some vague "good programming practices" ideal.
-matthew
Execs. Not the peons. Executives do quite often get top-of-the-line laptops as a "perk."
It is a lot more complicated than price. The Mac Mini used to be pretty competitively priced with the low end Dell desktops. The real issue is software.
True, Apple doesn't see to care. They don't NEED to capture corproate desktops... just saying if they WANTED to they'd hav to start by introducing real business features rather than catering to the niche professionals and home users. Maybe they're just biding their time... waiting for just the right moment to make a push for the desktop.
-matthew
Yeah, i'm sure it is wonderful. *rolls eyes*
It could work in some medical areas because their primary software is often just some text terminal into a medical database. The workstations are often more or less just dumb terminals.
It is great for end users. Bad for (business) developers. I only say bad for developers because basic things like ODBC are really poorly implemented on OSX. And your default database is MySQL. Not that there is anything wrong with MySQL, per se. It is great for web stuff, but it doesn't have any of the Crystal Reports type things that many businesses require. Just about everything on the Mac is geared towards graphics and end-users.
That said, I'd much rather use and administrate Macs at work (small college) than PCs. Even if it does limit the business end of things. But maybe that is just me.
-matthew
While I agree that Apple doesn't necessarily fit the generic corp desktop, I wonder if it might just be a matter of grabbing the executives who are always in the market for premium computing hardware. A decked out MacBook Pro is nothing to scoff at and it may just be a matter of getting execs to try them. It coudl cause a push for some companies to adopt cheap Macs on the desktop. Maybe if Apple can bring the price of the Mini back down. Ultimately, I think it simply comes down to breaking the Windows addiction. Paralells is great and all, but does it really make sense for companies to run BOTH OS X and Windows on each desktop? Because you know they're still going to be using some Windows/DOS app that they just can't get rid of..
-matthew
Blackboard is one of those things that everyone (ok not *everyone*) uses and everyone also hates. I've never heard of anyone actually liking Blackboard. It just happens to occupy a comfy niche market with a feature set that is hard to ignore. They need more competition.
mail.app, as in that old program, or Apple Mail? I love Apple Mail. I use it to POP my Gmail account because I much prefer a desktop app, searching is much faster, and I can aggregate my various email accounts much better.
-matthew
-matthew
POP is the very bare minimum. But in the case of Google Mail, it isn't good enough. I have a gmail account and barely ever use the web interface because I prefer Apple Mail. And I like to have all my email aggregated in one interface. Problem with POP (at least with Google) is that once I POP the mail from one machine, another doesn't get it (like work vs. home). Sure, it is still THERE because I have the "leave on server" option selected, but you can only POP it once as far as I can tell. Give me IMAP! I want access to all my folders!
-matthew
Quite often the webemail itself uses IMAP. Like some modified version of squirellmail. Most colleges I've dealt with have IMAP and/or POP available if only because that is what their webmail uses to get your mail.
Not only does it sucks, it is overkill. Think of the cluster of servers required and the swath of unused features. When one server running Postfix/Cyrus would probably do. My guess is that they just happened use use Exchange for staff/faculty and thought it would be easiest just to extend it to students. Have worked in a couple (admittedly small) colleges, I've found it best to keep staff and student systems largely separate. The needs and usage patterns are often quite different.
-matthew
People say things like that as if they'd never actually run a native desktop application with a real window manager before. I've used a couple of the "window manager" type browser toolkits, and there is nothing "amazing" about them other than the fact that someone was able to push Javascript and HTML so far beyond their reasonable limits. The only decent browser based, desktop-like GUIs i've ever used are done in Flash. And, well, you might as well just write Java applets at that point.
Unfortunately, cross-platform in browsers means "lowest common denominator" which means "slow and clunky Javascript/HTML." Even outside of browsers, cross-platform usually means Java which, well, sucks on the desktop IMO. Generally speaking, there is no shortage of native applicaitons on my platform of choice (OS X), so i don't really care about the next browser based fad. Go ahead and write an image manipulation tool inside a browser if you think that is cool, it'll never be as good as Photoshop or even Gimp.
-matthew
Seriously, the same company that locks you into a specific version of IE would probably just lock you into a specific version of
-matthew
If it is only a few lines, it probably isn't 'pretty.' It is probably just a plain, small form centered in an oversized browser window. Personally I find things like PerlTk to be much "prettier" if only because the window is taylored to the app. And also the box model of Tk is MUCH easier to work with than HTML/CSS. I find reliably placing elements on the screen with HTML/CSS to be a huge pain in the ass.... and I'm primarily a web developer!
-matthew
What's funny though is that the example in the article was neither networked nor multiuser. Why not skip the CGI part even and just have commandline scripts to do certain things? I can't say I've ever really consider writing a simple, single-user one-off GUI application. Nor can I think of a time where I'd want a personal web server listening on a local IP/port.
No, developers think in program design. *Programmers* things in program logic.
But if it doesn't do a or b (as in the article), Perl/Tk is probably simpler than even bothering with a web server. That is assuming that a GUI is even important at all.
-matthew
You still haven't really addressed my original complaint about Open Directory... do you use a structure different then the default
The big difference with eDirectory is that "ACLs" apply to not just the directory itself, but the servers in the tree as well. There is a high level of integration between the directory and the servers. The directory becomes a holding place for all kinds of information and services. Also, a big feature for large companies is being able to partition the tree across WAN links so you don't have to do full replication. Also managing replicas and such is much more reliable and flexible with eDirectory. I've had nothing but trouble replicating Open Directory. Though I haven't really tried it with a generic OpenLDAP install.
Fortunately, I now work at a relatively small school where the virtually flat namespace of OpenDirectory/WGM is perfectly adequate. But this would not hve cut it at other places I have worked.
-matthew
Well that comment just came out of nowhere, didn't it? How did we go from talking why people pirate to what makes people upgrade Windows? Assuming a person WANTS a certain version of windows, the most likely reasons they would pirate it are because it is cheaper and easier than buying it. That's all I'm saying. Who cares if you only just upgraded to XP last year and won't install your free copy of Vista.
-matthew
I think originally people started botnets mostly for fun and to display hacking "prowess" and to DDoS people that piss them off (companies such as Microsoft, perhaps). It was only fairly recently that the kiddies found that they could use botnets to spread spam and malware for money. The problem now is that botnets now have a financial advantage and other users might seem like a waste of resources. But that doesn't mean they weren't originally started for other reasons.
The big problem with using a distributed cracking method is that, AFAIK, keys have to be unique. If there was a distributed cracking system, there would be no way to distribute one key to one person. Everyone would try to grab the same keys as they were produced.
-matthew
No, really, they do it because it is cheaper and easier than going to the store to buy it. I bet if you could legitimately download Vista for $1, most of such pirating would disappear. I know I wouldn't bother pirating unless I could just 'borrow' a copy on DVD from my employer with a valid key that didn't get checked against a master database for duplicates and cause problems for my employer. (was that a runon sentence?) This is exactly why I installed Windows Server 2k3 on my home computer instead of pirating XP and messing w/ its validation crap. I could get a copy of 2k3 from work that had a a good old fashion CD key and no other protection. But otherwise, it works just like XP. Cheaper and easier.
-matthew
Green plants MIGHT grow better if we didn't, you know, keep cutting them down to make parking lots and to feed cattle. ;-P
-matthew