Didn't you read the story, or merely not understand it?
OpenOffice gives them:
Better compatibility versus the various.doc versions
Better compatibility in Windows-land (it runs on Win98, the newest Office doesn't
Better compatibility outside Windows-land (they can run it on a Linux terminal server without even having to think about CALs)
They already made the switch. The have the Terminal server infrastructure in place. A switch to the Windows-way of doing it (fat bloated clients) would not only cost more hardware-wise, it would also mean setting up a completely new infrastructure which means retraining and a lot of work.
Even if they can get MS Office for free, why should they use it?
The reason they used OO is because the terminal server is a lot cheaper than upgrading all workstations, not the MSO licensing fee.
It's OO's FLEXIBILITY that sold it, not the lack of license fees. (Although those are a nice side effect...)
We have over a dozen servers all running Windows, talking to each other, running programs built for them.
We have 10+ years of expertise (well, 4 people with at least 6 year each)
Actually if you need 4 people to run "over a dozen servers" (sounds like in the ballpark of 15 or so) it won't be you to make the switch, it will be a smaller, more competitive company which will eat your lunch.
Actually that is exactly what happened to many IIS-based webhosters: Microsoft got many to offer IIS-based hosting (and IIS marketshare ballooned to over 30%), but after a few years they either went bankrupt or stopped offering webhosting. Only very few switched to Apache.
Anything remotely resembling an exploit (whether found in the wild or in a research lab) is lauded as the next reason in the series of reasons why IE is the devil's handmaiden
Oh yeah?
Which IE-bug WITHOUT CAUSING ANY DAMAGE made it to the slashdot frontpage... TWICE?
Firefox bugs get on the front page when they are exploitable in theory (this exploit here also worked only for a couple of hours because Mozilla's servers have been modified so Firefox is redirected to a non-whitelist site) while IE bugs get on the front page only when they cause serious mass infections.
What disgusts me the most about Microsoft is they have so much potential and so many resources, yet they squander it and believe their own hype.
No, the don't believe their own hype.
They just realize that:
Web development doesn't need MSDN
Web based apps don't need a Windows server
Web based apps often run on any browser and can be adapted to do so without many problems if they don't.
So, web development is Microsoft's worst enemy as it removes the lock-in Microsoft currently has in corporations (a hell of a lot of apps which would have been developed as Win32-apps 10 years ago are now develped as Web apps)
Therefore, the better browsers are, the worse it is for Microsoft.
Yes, the only reason MS built IE was to kill Netscape. After Netscape was dead, IE became a liability because the better IE (or any other browser) is, the more attractive web development becomes compared to pure-Microsoft Win32 development.
I don't know whether you do any business programming, but the momentum behind C# and.NET is just massive. There are on the order of terabytes and terabytes of code that have been [or are being] written for that platform.
So Microsoft keeps telling me.
But where is all that stuff?
What important software is written in C#?
Windows? Linux? MS Office? Apache? Autocad? Photoshop?... Nope, no C# in sight.
So where is it? All I've heard so far is a few ASP.NET websites and a few demos like calculators, etc. Nothing really impressive and nothing really important.
Well I guess Wallace and friends won't set him/her/it free, also they won't keep him/her/it in the cage, so I guess it will share the same fate as Zed.
If it were commercial apps you were right, however OO being free-as-in-beer changes a lot of things:
For example if you are a teacher at a school you can either:
Force the kids to pirate MS Office
Let the kids download OO for free
While lots of teachers will continue to do the former, many will do the latter because OO is also much more compatible and runs everywhere including older versions of Windows.
So it will take some time, but OO will make big inroads.
Most of their patents are completely bogus and would never hold up in court. It's more a marketing-tool to make MSFT more attractive to investors and to grow the cross-licensing portfolio than anything else.
The court case would take a lot of time and in that time (at least a year) the OASIS group could just put out non-infringing v2 of the format - The userbase of the OASIS v1 format is not yet large enough that it would really matter.
Novell, IBM, Sun, etc. could countersue and Microsoft has much, much more to lose. Not just money.
I don't think stuffing lots of features into firefox is what would make IE users switch.
Wrong, at least as supported formats are concerned the more Firefox can display and render, the better.
Because that's a real "killer"-feature in the pure sense of the word. If you have a majority of Firefox users on your website (and many websites already have, for example heise.de or arstechnica.com, probably slashdot too) you can put some Firefox-only goodies online (like SVG or transparent PNGs, etc.)
And that will cause the remaining IE-users to switch.
I dunno, a net profit of 2.56 billion that is almost double the amount for the same period last year is hardly the kiss of death on a company.
First of all the "double amount" is merely a result of having paid more in fines last year and not real business.
Then you have to see the big picture:
Yes, indeed if you have an attention span of 15 minutes and just look at the numbers, yes it looks great.
But if you look at the bigger picture it's the first time they missed their own projections for a long time (maybe even ever), they had to cut their R&D budget from 3 billion to 1.5 billion, they cut employee benefits etc.
So essentially Microsoft had already have to use quite some tricks to keep the earnings in line and they don't have much room for tricks left. They won't be able to get another 1.5 billion out of R&D (they can't reduce R&D to nothing).
Big empires don't stumble overnight. The roman empire showed signs of decadence and decay over 100 years before the fall.
We don't want courts or legislation dictating how we provide our content.
So you want the courts and legislation to keep out of the way and just let everybody copy everthing as they please?
Please keep in mind that all that copyright-stuff is upheld by - and only by - courts and legislation. Some people even argue that copyright is a rather late invention by those institutions, AFAIK there was no copyright about 300 years ago and earlier.
Therefore, OF COURSE they will have a say in the matter.
Exactly.
This is just part of the cost of running Windows. Any serious TCO-analysis should include the cost to purchase, install and update anti-virus software on Windows.
If they decided to release dividends periodically, it would still be a decent buy, because they make so much damn money.
You are a funny guy.
Yes, they make "so much damn money", they have sold even more damn stock.
MS has a capitalization of about 300 Billion and they make a profit of about 10 Billion/year or about 3%.
That means, even if they shell out ALL their profit as dividends, you merely get 3%/year of your investment, which doesn't make it a decent buy at all.
Sure we would have it. The Apollo-Program took about 10 years and they started from scratch (IIRC 9 years from beginning to first moon landing), so in 24 years we could do much, much more than that. With the know-how of Russia it would be even easier.
And it isn't really that "difficult", there is absolutely no new technology needed either (but of course it won't hurt).
To build a colony on Moon or Mars you just need lots of stuff to build it, which merely means we just need more of what we already have. (More and bigger rockets)
You certainly can build a colony purely with 1960's technology.
Just imagine what you could load on 10 Saturn-V rockets. If you are serious, you don't need a ticket back to earth so you can easily build greenhouses, habitats and a lot more.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, it's copyright violation, not theft.
Huh?
Didn't you read the story, or merely not understand it?
OpenOffice gives them:
Even if they can get MS Office for free, why should they use it?
The reason they used OO is because the terminal server is a lot cheaper than upgrading all workstations, not the MSO licensing fee.
It's OO's FLEXIBILITY that sold it, not the lack of license fees. (Although those are a nice side effect...)
Actually if you need 4 people to run "over a dozen servers" (sounds like in the ballpark of 15 or so) it won't be you to make the switch, it will be a smaller, more competitive company which will eat your lunch.
Actually that is exactly what happened to many IIS-based webhosters: Microsoft got many to offer IIS-based hosting (and IIS marketshare ballooned to over 30%), but after a few years they either went bankrupt or stopped offering webhosting. Only very few switched to Apache.
I also think that the single most important problem of Linux and FOSS in general is not technical, it's not usability, it's [b]marketing[/b].
Just look at Firefox, currently the only FOSS desktop product ever which is marketed well.
Yes, I think the PS is the yardstick here because only a small minority has an XBox or Gamecube
At the time of the PS2-launch, the majority.
(Of course now, nearing the end of the PS2-lifetime almost nobody)
Oh yeah?
Which IE-bug WITHOUT CAUSING ANY DAMAGE made it to the slashdot frontpage... TWICE?
Firefox bugs get on the front page when they are exploitable in theory (this exploit here also worked only for a couple of hours because Mozilla's servers have been modified so Firefox is redirected to a non-whitelist site) while IE bugs get on the front page only when they cause serious mass infections.
No, the don't believe their own hype.
They just realize that:
So, web development is Microsoft's worst enemy as it removes the lock-in Microsoft currently has in corporations (a hell of a lot of apps which would have been developed as Win32-apps 10 years ago are now develped as Web apps)
Therefore, the better browsers are, the worse it is for Microsoft.
Yes, the only reason MS built IE was to kill Netscape. After Netscape was dead, IE became a liability because the better IE (or any other browser) is, the more attractive web development becomes compared to pure-Microsoft Win32 development.
Of course he puts KDE (which was started 1996) in the "other GUIs from the 80s" section so that it doesn't show up in the "modern" GUI section.
So Microsoft keeps telling me.
But where is all that stuff?
What important software is written in C#?
Windows? Linux? MS Office? Apache? Autocad? Photoshop? ... Nope, no C# in sight.
So where is it? All I've heard so far is a few ASP.NET websites and a few demos like calculators, etc. Nothing really impressive and nothing really important.
So what are you talking about?
Well I guess Wallace and friends won't set him/her/it free, also they won't keep him/her/it in the cage, so I guess it will share the same fate as Zed.
For example if you are a teacher at a school you can either:
While lots of teachers will continue to do the former, many will do the latter because OO is also much more compatible and runs everywhere including older versions of Windows.
So it will take some time, but OO will make big inroads.
Wrong, at least as supported formats are concerned the more Firefox can display and render, the better.
Because that's a real "killer"-feature in the pure sense of the word. If you have a majority of Firefox users on your website (and many websites already have, for example heise.de or arstechnica.com, probably slashdot too) you can put some Firefox-only goodies online (like SVG or transparent PNGs, etc.)
And that will cause the remaining IE-users to switch.
First of all the "double amount" is merely a result of having paid more in fines last year and not real business.
Then you have to see the big picture:
Yes, indeed if you have an attention span of 15 minutes and just look at the numbers, yes it looks great.
But if you look at the bigger picture it's the first time they missed their own projections for a long time (maybe even ever), they had to cut their R&D budget from 3 billion to 1.5 billion, they cut employee benefits etc.
So essentially Microsoft had already have to use quite some tricks to keep the earnings in line and they don't have much room for tricks left. They won't be able to get another 1.5 billion out of R&D (they can't reduce R&D to nothing).
Big empires don't stumble overnight. The roman empire showed signs of decadence and decay over 100 years before the fall.
Apparently?
You just set the record of the most naive slashdot-comment.
Ever.
So no more copyrights?
So you want the courts and legislation to keep out of the way and just let everybody copy everthing as they please?
Please keep in mind that all that copyright-stuff is upheld by - and only by - courts and legislation. Some people even argue that copyright is a rather late invention by those institutions, AFAIK there was no copyright about 300 years ago and earlier.
Therefore, OF COURSE they will have a say in the matter.
Exactly. This is just part of the cost of running Windows. Any serious TCO-analysis should include the cost to purchase, install and update anti-virus software on Windows.
You are a funny guy.
Yes, they make "so much damn money", they have sold even more damn stock.
MS has a capitalization of about 300 Billion and they make a profit of about 10 Billion /year or about 3%.
That means, even if they shell out ALL their profit as dividends, you merely get 3%/year of your investment, which doesn't make it a decent buy at all.
That only depends on what the definition of "big" is.
For example our moon was formed during a collision with a Mars-sized object.
Therefore it's just a line over the equator and not a surface.
And it isn't really that "difficult", there is absolutely no new technology needed either (but of course it won't hurt).
To build a colony on Moon or Mars you just need lots of stuff to build it, which merely means we just need more of what we already have. (More and bigger rockets)
You certainly can build a colony purely with 1960's technology.
Just imagine what you could load on 10 Saturn-V rockets. If you are serious, you don't need a ticket back to earth so you can easily build greenhouses, habitats and a lot more.
Yeah, but we have to remind the PHBs how they are being screwed over - and that's exactly what the article is about.