He could actually be simply someone like me; someone who uses Linux/BSD but still sees that there is a great deal that is NOT good about it and a great deal that Windows/MacOS still have over linux (ouch, that's going to hurt my Karma). He might just be using a humorous "linux sucks" forum to get his point across.
With all that having been said, I still vote for "hypocrite" with my $5 of pay-pal cash:P -Jer
Actually, just briefly reviewing the site, I would recommend that EVERY SINGLE linux developer spend some time there.
Many of the complaints listed are the same complaints I have, and the same complaints of anyone that I've exposed to linux. It would be nice if the list of "why linux sucks" was done in a more easily followed manner, but the raw language of it tends to help get the point across.
Oh, and my first computer was a Tandy TRS-80 with the analog tape system...I still have it, although I haven't had it out of it's box in nearly 2 years.
"DSL service is flexible enough to grow with the skills and interests of our users."
I couldn't tell you what this means. Sounds pretty inane to me.
"DSL is as reliable as your phone."
I live in an upstairs flat. That means, one family lives downstairs and I live upstairs. I have Ameritech DSL, they have Media One Cable. I current (for the past 5 months) have had better than 93% uptime. My downstairs neighbor has had just over 61% (61.224%). At least here, DSL has been dramatically more reliable than cable. The only time it's been down is when, amusingly enough, my phone service was down as well, due to a storm.
"DSL speed... stays consistent, as opposed to the shared systems used by cable companies where speed may decrease as more users sign up."
Again, with the same test-bed as above, my service gives me a constant speed as a rule. I've not yet seen a slowdown. Downstairs, when they first signed up, they never had a speed problem. Now, they get much slower downloads since more people have signed up. Additionally, Friday at 8:00 PM, they might as well be on a modem. The traffic is nearly at a HALT. *shrug* I dunno if it's true in all places, but both here in Detroit and in Upstate NY it happens to be.
"Cable modem services often do not support a wide variety of Internet applications."
I have two takes on this. Both Media One Cable and Road Runner Cable support (i.e. provide support) for a very limited number of programs. Specifically they'll support Internet Explorer (5.0, but not any other version, even upgrades), Windows 95 and Windows 98 (not NT, not 2000, not Linux, NOTHING else). If you're running Netscape, they won't help you. If you're having trouble figuring out how to telnet, you're out of luck. Having trouble with a firewall, you're out of luck.
The other side is, there are applications that they don't support, in that, both Road Runner and Media One will discontinue your account for running a server. When I inquired about running servers with my sales rep., he specified that servers were no problem. When I asked about it while speaking to technical support, they replied as if it were the most unintelligent question in the world when they said "yeah, run all of the servers you want, it's your bandwidth". Review of the terms and conditions also mentions that servers are allowed.
I'm not necessarily defending their marketing crap, I'm just trying to explain.
Doing a brief search on two law databases shows that in the most obvious cases of this nature, the company doing the reading won their case 17 times to every 1 that they lost. It sounds like your "top rated law firm" should do some more research. -Jer
I am so friggin tired of this argument. Censorship is not exclusively a government activity.
Lets hop on the ol' dictionary and find:
censorship Function: noun the institution, system, or practice of censoring
censor Function: transitive verb to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
I presume that the reason for suppressing wireless phone communications is because they're considered objectionable, therefore the action of doing so would be censorship. Would it be justifiable censorship? I personally don't think so, but then, I'm not for technology and laws that are used to impose civilty and polite practices.
If you're going to lob out a smart-assed, smarmy answer, make it the right one.
So by that logic, if you speak on a cell phone while driving, even hands free, you should be punished. You should also be punished for speaking to a passenger, after all, it's distracting. You should be punished for changing CDs or radio stations, it's distracting. You should be punished for LISTENING to the radio and singing along to the song, it's dangerous.
Interestingly enough, I've yet to see one study that showed a causative effect between speaking on a hands-free cell phone and accidents. Most simply show that accidents happen with some degree of increased frequency in cases where cell phones are in use. Sadly, these people tend to be the same people that aren't paying very much attention to the road to start with. Two seperate studies have served to discredit the two most commonly accepted studies to date. They simply reviewed the driving record of the accident having participants and found, lo and behold, over 70% (in each case) had MORE THAN TWO prior accidents.
Thank you very much, but lets not use laws to govern every facet of my behavior. -Jer
I see no way Mirabillis can enforce this without major changes in thier practices
Major changes like deleting accounts listed as younger than 13? Not a difficult feat. Hell, 1 minute of coding, 1 minute of testing, 2 minutes of repair (if you're me, and screw up alot), and you're done. Major changes? I think not. -Jer
Imagine if pay-per-view was only 10 cents? Take an average long-ish 2 hour movie, if you watched movies non-stop for a month, you'll average about $30, less than most utility bills and DSL fees. Would you do it?
But you have to consider, in this case, you're downloading the file anyways. The "utility" cost of xDSL, Cable ISPs, or good ol' fashioned modems will be there in any case. The only variable left is, do you download the cracked version that's just as readily available (presumeably) or download the uncracked version and pay for it.
Normally, I'd think this is just an unethical way of getting around laws, and for that reason should be squashed somehow. Normally, that is...
I can't count the number of times I've told people who complain about various freedoms allowed here, "If you don't like the freedoms and laws afforded by our Constitution, feel free to go to another country or hell, make your own damn country." Well, they've done just that. More power to them if it works, and I wonder which aggressive nation will be the first to attempt to take them over. -Jer
Well, you've now officially proven that you've never been solely responsible for any major IT purchases for a company larger than about 10 people; otherwise you'd understand what ROI and TCO actually include, by definition.
If the initial investment to atain the licence to use the software (and deploy it accross [sic] as many desktops as you please) is zero, how can you track a return?
Well, you seem to understand the most obvious part of the initial investment, but how about the cost of going out and deploying the software? The training? The lost productivity while the user base learns new software? The annoyed customers that aren't recieving files in the same format? Amazingly, all of the above have cost...hence the investment part. Try again.
I would put forth that at least half the training of a user base is on your particular business data and general computer training. That is to say, you've already payed for (while using the closed source solution), most of the training for the user base.
Huh??? I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds alot like you're discounting user training because they've had computer training before or because it's in the budget? Let me tell you, it will require more than the average annual training budget to instruct users in a completely new OS and Office suite. That's going to be a part of both the "I" in ROI and the TCO itself. Let us not forget real loss in productivity while users rebel, learn, and generally can't do business quite as usual for a while.
This investment will not be lost, in fact it will be complimented as users learn to migrate their skills set to the new platform (something that any HR director will apreciate when trying to hang on to people in a tight labor market).
No, the investment put into training users on both Windows and MS Office will be essentially forsaken when you take away the programs on which this training is useful in order to give them something cheaper. Adding to an employee's resume doesn't exactly add value to their current job, it just adds value to their job hunting efforts.
The other thing most often overlooked is the effect of the internet on the user base.
Given, of course, the assumption that a great many of your employees are A) Internet users and B) relatively heavy Internet users. If the above aren't true, then the Internet has little effect on their ability/willingness to learn new things as related to computers. That's a relatively hefty assumption considering the low percentage of employed people who use the Internet more than infrequently.
If you couple the above with a long view on TCO and all the licencing fees saved as a business scales larger and larger, you can look forward to the day when 10 years from now, when the business has grown to thousands of people, you'll be deploying thousands of licences for free instead of taking a meeting with a microsoft rep to negotiate yet another overpriced licence.
Again, if you're willing to make a great number of assumptions and overlook a great many truths, your synopsis is fairly accurate. In reality, although in the long term benefits could be very great, you can't overlook short-term losses, which could include an alienated user base, loss of productivity, loss of customers, expenditures in the realms of training and employee retention, and finally the loss of cash in roll-out and deployment costs. These are very real, and make the first 2-3 years very unlikely to produce much of an ROI, if any, and make the first 2-3 years' TCO fairly high.
Please, don't take away from this that I prefer MS products (untrue), that I don't think this can be done (untrue), but that we need to have a realistic view of the situation to start with.
Management sees a few strong reasons for remaining a Microsoft based office, among which are:
They've invested a great deal of money training existing employees on MS Office and Win95/NT.
Many, many offices in the US use MS Office and Win95/NT, reducing training costs for newly hired employees.
They've got MS Office and Win95/NT on their desktops at the moment (which they've invested a great deal of money in.
Here's the rub: It's an endless cycle. If you count on the fact that you've already trained your employees, it makes little sense EVER to change to a new platform, even if it's very similar to what they're using now. If you rely on the fact that you don't want to destroy your investment in MS products by switching already, you'll never make that switch either. If you count on the fact that new employees are MS Office savvy, then you have to wait for the majority of other companies to make the switch before it makes sense for you. Sadly, many other companies are waiting based on the same skewed premise. If everyone waits for the "other guys" to change, can it ever change?
That's the single biggest hurdle I see for a non-MS office to overcome, and why MS will remain a strong part of American business for a good few years yet. -Jer
You wouldn't expect their meat-like burgers to contain discarded hypodermic needles, either.
If they were in the recipe, I would. Part of the composition of good coffee is heat. You make coffee by (essentially) mixing coffee flavored beans with HOT water. *gasp* Those bastards.
When I lived with my parents and I, upon placing hot food in my mouth, gasping, spitting it back out, and commenting on it's temperature, used to impart this wisdom unto me:
It's funny, putting it in the oven tends to do that to food.
And you buy Darwin-defying stupidity hook, line, and sinker. First, no evidence was presented that the coffee was exceptionally hot (exceptionally being relative to the normal temperature of coffee.)
I put my coffee in the friggin CUP HOLDER nowhere near my crotch. I have too much respect for my penis to place it in hot fluids or near enough to them that it could suffer potential damage. If you buy coffee, and it's cold, you'd send it back for hot coffee. It stands to reason that, if you spill your hot coffee on your lap and burn yourself, you should probably order iced tea next time or something. It's people like you that allowed this ditzy chick to win her case and make money from her idiocy. Sad...very sad. -Jer
As a consequence, your freedom to be an idiot comes into direct conflict with my freedom not to pay for the consequences of your stupidity...
I think it's particularly interesting to note that insurance costs didn't go down after seatbelt laws came into affect. They've gone steadily up since the beginning of insurance. Amazing how much money I'm saving you, eh? Medical costs haven't gone down since the price of cigarettes have gone up...shocking how much it's saving, eh? The government shouldn't have the ability to limit the ways I can kill myself, so long as I'm only affecting myself.
On a side note... a simple "no seat belt, no paying the claim" clause in insurance would take care of the insurance costs...and a simple "you bring the condition on yourself by smoking, we don't pay as much" clause in medical insurance would take care of those costs as well. Let's try not to be so naive as to believe that the reason is anything better than dastardly. -Jer
I've lived in three states during my adult life (I use the term adult loosely), and I've seen pretty much the opposite. Because I'm in my mid-20's, I'm not taken seriously at a new job site right away. It usually takes about a month or two for senior management to understand that I do know what I'm talking about and that I'm experienced and capable of running medium to small IT departments.
By the same token, I tend to work in non-computer companies (i.e. marketing firms, industrial manufacturing, etc), so it's a different world. Perhaps it's not regional, but dependent upon the industry you're in.
The logic is very real. Your rebuttal hinges on the concept that NT networks require more machines and more NT admins. That's not necessarily the case. If a Linux guru costs 70k (cheap in this area, they're generally more expensive) and an NT guru costs 55k, and you need one of each, then the labor is higher in cost by a margin of 15k per annum. Additionally, if you re-read the original post, you'll note that I'm not citing labor costs as the reason, but a contributing factor.
Last I checked the MS EULA had the same statement the GPL does, "This product is not warranteed for fitness for any particular purpose", blah blah blah. Sure you could BUY support but then you are in the same boat anyway.
EULA notwithstanding, MS solutions still give the "warm fuzzy feeling" to executive staff that they generally require. There's a long standing company to sue in the event "Bad Things(tm)" happen. How long has Red Hat been around? VA Linux? Any takers? The EULA is not a catch-all, "Thou shalt not sue" agreement, contrary to popular belief, and a number of companies have lost suits to that affect. Frankly, the contracting software suit results shock me, since they're directly opposed to most previous findings.
I'm sure, converting to a Linux based solution is a good "fit" for some companies, but for a great many, it's just not.
As a result of the user base already having basic computer skills, the cost in additional migration training to a new platform is less than the cost of the original training.
That's true, but that's still an additional cost. I've considered bringing a linux solution to the desktop for the smallish company I work for, and it just doesn't make sense. The gains would be relatively minimal in most respects, and look what the negatives would be:
Training Costs: Our users have learned a great deal about how to perform their tasks using Windows and MS Office. The cost of training the users on a new interface with new software would be large and difficult to justify.
Employee Happiness: Our users are Luddites. They're just about as technophobic as you could imagine. Many would be extremely unhappy about such a drastic change.
Support: Suddenly, we don't have the level of support that we once had. We don't have The comfort level of a company the size of MS standing behind the product.
Support, Part Deux: At least in this area, people highly capable in Linux or BSD are few and far between. Additionally, they're EXPENSIVE! We can hire competent desktop support people for 2/3 the cost of a competent Linux desktop support person. That adds up.
Rollout expense: The cost of doing a corporate wide rollout to a COMPLETELY new platform is astounding. Add to this base cost, the cost of translating all of our documents to a new format, and you have an ugly recipe. Also, much of our work is done via VBA links and macros, that aren't easily portable to the new platform.
The way I grok it, it just wouldn't make any level of sense for our company.
On the FIRST DAY of deployment, the TCO is zarro, nada, zippo.
Wrong. Your definition of TCO is incorrect. It's Total Cost of Ownership. What you're stating is the Current cost of ownership is zero. The TCO is going to be rather large.
Contrary to popular belief, Linux or BSD experts are harder to find than MS experts. They're also more expensive. That increases TCO. Your average users as a rule have seen Windows. They've seen Office. They haven't seen Linux, Afterstep, or StarOffice. That means training. That means decreased productivity. That means unhappy employees that might leave to find work somewhere with "normal" software.
Oracle has a warranty and extensive support. Does MySQL or the other free or inexpensive solutions? How scalable are these solutions? These are considerations to make when calculating TCO.
No, currently, the TCO for a "mainstream" solution is significantly lower than a "free" solution.
I've not doubt that someone representing Metallica read through the various posts relating to the topic here on Slashdot. If so, they'd have to see that's there is a rather overwhelming "bad Metallica" vibe. It'd probably be bad PR to play the interview game here.
Of course, it's possible that they learned from the live chat, which did little to improve public perception of Metallica's intentions.
Now, the real question is, can Metallica be held responsible for mislabelling these users as "pirates"? -Jer
Okay, here's a stupid question about the worm thing:
When I'm explaining the potential issues surrounding these worms to less technically inclined people, they always seem rather complacent. They aren't concerned because no worm, thus far, has done serious damage. At least nothing catastrophic.
I try to explain that the worms could be programmed to do things that are so much worse. The inevitable question I get is "Then why haven't they done it?". How do you respond to that? I don't KNOW why we've gotten so lucky so far. As they've said in the article, there are a number of things that could be done to make life more difficult, such as deleting things of importance (how about.doc,.xls,.dll, and.exe files), and changing the subject line at random.
Here's the stupid question: Why? Why haven't we seen a truly malicious version of one of these yet? Any ideas?
I've done this as well. I've managed to sneak a Mandrake box in to run out database, and now that we're collecting and presenting the data on the net, I"m setting up a mandrake/apache server. Management doesn't check, and I don't tell them. My concern is, ultimately, could this be something that would get me fired. I would assume, since I'm setting up working solutions for minimal cash, they'd love it...but in business you never know.
At any rate, if we all did this with just one or two mission critical apps, even management would begin to understand that some open source software is BETTER than their high priced bretheren. -Jer
Slashdot Mirror
He could actually be simply someone like me; someone who uses Linux/BSD but still sees that there is a great deal that is NOT good about it and a great deal that Windows/MacOS still have over linux (ouch, that's going to hurt my Karma). He might just be using a humorous "linux sucks" forum to get his point across.
:P
With all that having been said, I still vote for "hypocrite" with my $5 of pay-pal cash
-Jer
Actually, just briefly reviewing the site, I would recommend that EVERY SINGLE linux developer spend some time there.
Many of the complaints listed are the same complaints I have, and the same complaints of anyone that I've exposed to linux. It would be nice if the list of "why linux sucks" was done in a more easily followed manner, but the raw language of it tends to help get the point across.
Oh, and my first computer was a Tandy TRS-80 with the analog tape system...I still have it, although I haven't had it out of it's box in nearly 2 years.
-Jer
"DSL service is flexible enough to grow with the skills and interests of our users."
I couldn't tell you what this means. Sounds pretty inane to me.
"DSL is as reliable as your phone."
I live in an upstairs flat. That means, one family lives downstairs and I live upstairs. I have Ameritech DSL, they have Media One Cable. I current (for the past 5 months) have had better than 93% uptime. My downstairs neighbor has had just over 61% (61.224%). At least here, DSL has been dramatically more reliable than cable. The only time it's been down is when, amusingly enough, my phone service was down as well, due to a storm.
"DSL speed ... stays consistent, as opposed to the shared systems used by cable companies where speed may decrease as more users sign up."
Again, with the same test-bed as above, my service gives me a constant speed as a rule. I've not yet seen a slowdown. Downstairs, when they first signed up, they never had a speed problem. Now, they get much slower downloads since more people have signed up. Additionally, Friday at 8:00 PM, they might as well be on a modem. The traffic is nearly at a HALT. *shrug* I dunno if it's true in all places, but both here in Detroit and in Upstate NY it happens to be.
"Cable modem services often do not support a wide variety of Internet applications."
I have two takes on this. Both Media One Cable and Road Runner Cable support (i.e. provide support) for a very limited number of programs. Specifically they'll support Internet Explorer (5.0, but not any other version, even upgrades), Windows 95 and Windows 98 (not NT, not 2000, not Linux, NOTHING else). If you're running Netscape, they won't help you. If you're having trouble figuring out how to telnet, you're out of luck. Having trouble with a firewall, you're out of luck.
The other side is, there are applications that they don't support, in that, both Road Runner and Media One will discontinue your account for running a server. When I inquired about running servers with my sales rep., he specified that servers were no problem. When I asked about it while speaking to technical support, they replied as if it were the most unintelligent question in the world when they said "yeah, run all of the servers you want, it's your bandwidth". Review of the terms and conditions also mentions that servers are allowed.
I'm not necessarily defending their marketing crap, I'm just trying to explain.
-Jer
Doing a brief search on two law databases shows that in the most obvious cases of this nature, the company doing the reading won their case 17 times to every 1 that they lost. It sounds like your "top rated law firm" should do some more research.
-Jer
The entire thread revolved around making laws/technological policies to enforce politeness. Back up and re-read it.
-Jer
I am so friggin tired of this argument. Censorship is not exclusively a government activity.
Lets hop on the ol' dictionary and find:
I presume that the reason for suppressing wireless phone communications is because they're considered objectionable, therefore the action of doing so would be censorship. Would it be justifiable censorship? I personally don't think so, but then, I'm not for technology and laws that are used to impose civilty and polite practices.
If you're going to lob out a smart-assed, smarmy answer, make it the right one.
-Jer
So by that logic, if you speak on a cell phone while driving, even hands free, you should be punished. You should also be punished for speaking to a passenger, after all, it's distracting. You should be punished for changing CDs or radio stations, it's distracting. You should be punished for LISTENING to the radio and singing along to the song, it's dangerous.
Interestingly enough, I've yet to see one study that showed a causative effect between speaking on a hands-free cell phone and accidents. Most simply show that accidents happen with some degree of increased frequency in cases where cell phones are in use. Sadly, these people tend to be the same people that aren't paying very much attention to the road to start with. Two seperate studies have served to discredit the two most commonly accepted studies to date. They simply reviewed the driving record of the accident having participants and found, lo and behold, over 70% (in each case) had MORE THAN TWO prior accidents.
Thank you very much, but lets not use laws to govern every facet of my behavior.
-Jer
I see no way Mirabillis can enforce this without major changes in thier practices
Major changes like deleting accounts listed as younger than 13? Not a difficult feat. Hell, 1 minute of coding, 1 minute of testing, 2 minutes of repair (if you're me, and screw up alot), and you're done. Major changes? I think not.
-Jer
Imagine if pay-per-view was only 10 cents? Take an average long-ish 2 hour movie, if you watched movies non-stop for a month, you'll average about $30, less than most utility bills and DSL fees. Would you do it?
But you have to consider, in this case, you're downloading the file anyways. The "utility" cost of xDSL, Cable ISPs, or good ol' fashioned modems will be there in any case. The only variable left is, do you download the cracked version that's just as readily available (presumeably) or download the uncracked version and pay for it.
-Jer
I'm torn...
Normally, I'd think this is just an unethical way of getting around laws, and for that reason should be squashed somehow. Normally, that is...
I can't count the number of times I've told people who complain about various freedoms allowed here, "If you don't like the freedoms and laws afforded by our Constitution, feel free to go to another country or hell, make your own damn country." Well, they've done just that. More power to them if it works, and I wonder which aggressive nation will be the first to attempt to take them over.
-Jer
LinuxOne ... Linux Laundry Soap ... similar names. Just a thought.
-Jer
Well, you've now officially proven that you've never been solely responsible for any major IT purchases for a company larger than about 10 people; otherwise you'd understand what ROI and TCO actually include, by definition.
If the initial investment to atain the licence to use the software (and deploy it accross [sic] as many desktops as you please) is zero, how can you track a return?
Well, you seem to understand the most obvious part of the initial investment, but how about the cost of going out and deploying the software? The training? The lost productivity while the user base learns new software? The annoyed customers that aren't recieving files in the same format? Amazingly, all of the above have cost...hence the investment part. Try again.
I would put forth that at least half the training of a user base is on your particular business data and general computer training. That is to say, you've already payed for (while using the closed source solution), most of the training for the user base.
Huh??? I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here, but it sounds alot like you're discounting user training because they've had computer training before or because it's in the budget? Let me tell you, it will require more than the average annual training budget to instruct users in a completely new OS and Office suite. That's going to be a part of both the "I" in ROI and the TCO itself. Let us not forget real loss in productivity while users rebel, learn, and generally can't do business quite as usual for a while.
This investment will not be lost, in fact it will be complimented as users learn to migrate their skills set to the new platform (something that any HR director will apreciate when trying to hang on to people in a tight labor market).
No, the investment put into training users on both Windows and MS Office will be essentially forsaken when you take away the programs on which this training is useful in order to give them something cheaper. Adding to an employee's resume doesn't exactly add value to their current job, it just adds value to their job hunting efforts.
The other thing most often overlooked is the effect of the internet on the user base.
Given, of course, the assumption that a great many of your employees are A) Internet users and B) relatively heavy Internet users. If the above aren't true, then the Internet has little effect on their ability/willingness to learn new things as related to computers. That's a relatively hefty assumption considering the low percentage of employed people who use the Internet more than infrequently.
If you couple the above with a long view on TCO and all the licencing fees saved as a business scales larger and larger, you can look forward to the day when 10 years from now, when the business has grown to thousands of people, you'll be deploying thousands of licences for free instead of taking a meeting with a microsoft rep to negotiate yet another overpriced licence.
Again, if you're willing to make a great number of assumptions and overlook a great many truths, your synopsis is fairly accurate. In reality, although in the long term benefits could be very great, you can't overlook short-term losses, which could include an alienated user base, loss of productivity, loss of customers, expenditures in the realms of training and employee retention, and finally the loss of cash in roll-out and deployment costs. These are very real, and make the first 2-3 years very unlikely to produce much of an ROI, if any, and make the first 2-3 years' TCO fairly high.
Please, don't take away from this that I prefer MS products (untrue), that I don't think this can be done (untrue), but that we need to have a realistic view of the situation to start with.
Let the -1 moderation begin! :P
-Jer
Management sees a few strong reasons for remaining a Microsoft based office, among which are:
Here's the rub: It's an endless cycle. If you count on the fact that you've already trained your employees, it makes little sense EVER to change to a new platform, even if it's very similar to what they're using now. If you rely on the fact that you don't want to destroy your investment in MS products by switching already, you'll never make that switch either. If you count on the fact that new employees are MS Office savvy, then you have to wait for the majority of other companies to make the switch before it makes sense for you. Sadly, many other companies are waiting based on the same skewed premise. If everyone waits for the "other guys" to change, can it ever change?
That's the single biggest hurdle I see for a non-MS office to overcome, and why MS will remain a strong part of American business for a good few years yet.
-Jer
If they were in the recipe, I would. Part of the composition of good coffee is heat. You make coffee by (essentially) mixing coffee flavored beans with HOT water. *gasp* Those bastards.
When I lived with my parents and I, upon placing hot food in my mouth, gasping, spitting it back out, and commenting on it's temperature, used to impart this wisdom unto me:
-Jer
And you buy Darwin-defying stupidity hook, line, and sinker. First, no evidence was presented that the coffee was exceptionally hot (exceptionally being relative to the normal temperature of coffee.)
I put my coffee in the friggin CUP HOLDER nowhere near my crotch. I have too much respect for my penis to place it in hot fluids or near enough to them that it could suffer potential damage. If you buy coffee, and it's cold, you'd send it back for hot coffee. It stands to reason that, if you spill your hot coffee on your lap and burn yourself, you should probably order iced tea next time or something. It's people like you that allowed this ditzy chick to win her case and make money from her idiocy. Sad...very sad.
-Jer
Hrmm, sounds like the bottom line talking, eh?
As a consequence, your freedom to be an idiot comes into direct conflict with my freedom not to pay for the consequences of your stupidity...
I think it's particularly interesting to note that insurance costs didn't go down after seatbelt laws came into affect. They've gone steadily up since the beginning of insurance. Amazing how much money I'm saving you, eh? Medical costs haven't gone down since the price of cigarettes have gone up...shocking how much it's saving, eh? The government shouldn't have the ability to limit the ways I can kill myself, so long as I'm only affecting myself.
On a side note... a simple "no seat belt, no paying the claim" clause in insurance would take care of the insurance costs...and a simple "you bring the condition on yourself by smoking, we don't pay as much" clause in medical insurance would take care of those costs as well. Let's try not to be so naive as to believe that the reason is anything better than dastardly.
-Jer
I've lived in three states during my adult life (I use the term adult loosely), and I've seen pretty much the opposite. Because I'm in my mid-20's, I'm not taken seriously at a new job site right away. It usually takes about a month or two for senior management to understand that I do know what I'm talking about and that I'm experienced and capable of running medium to small IT departments.
By the same token, I tend to work in non-computer companies (i.e. marketing firms, industrial manufacturing, etc), so it's a different world. Perhaps it's not regional, but dependent upon the industry you're in.
-Jer
The logic is very real. Your rebuttal hinges on the concept that NT networks require more machines and more NT admins. That's not necessarily the case. If a Linux guru costs 70k (cheap in this area, they're generally more expensive) and an NT guru costs 55k, and you need one of each, then the labor is higher in cost by a margin of 15k per annum. Additionally, if you re-read the original post, you'll note that I'm not citing labor costs as the reason, but a contributing factor.
-Jer
Last I checked the MS EULA had the same statement the GPL does, "This product is not warranteed for fitness for any particular purpose", blah blah blah. Sure you could BUY support but then you are in the same boat anyway.
EULA notwithstanding, MS solutions still give the "warm fuzzy feeling" to executive staff that they generally require. There's a long standing company to sue in the event "Bad Things(tm)" happen. How long has Red Hat been around? VA Linux? Any takers? The EULA is not a catch-all, "Thou shalt not sue" agreement, contrary to popular belief, and a number of companies have lost suits to that affect. Frankly, the contracting software suit results shock me, since they're directly opposed to most previous findings.
I'm sure, converting to a Linux based solution is a good "fit" for some companies, but for a great many, it's just not.
-Jer
As a result of the user base already having basic computer skills, the cost in additional migration training to a new platform is less than the cost of the original training.
That's true, but that's still an additional cost. I've considered bringing a linux solution to the desktop for the smallish company I work for, and it just doesn't make sense. The gains would be relatively minimal in most respects, and look what the negatives would be:
-Jer
On the FIRST DAY of deployment, the TCO is zarro, nada, zippo.
Wrong. Your definition of TCO is incorrect. It's Total Cost of Ownership. What you're stating is the Current cost of ownership is zero. The TCO is going to be rather large.
Contrary to popular belief, Linux or BSD experts are harder to find than MS experts. They're also more expensive. That increases TCO. Your average users as a rule have seen Windows. They've seen Office. They haven't seen Linux, Afterstep, or StarOffice. That means training. That means decreased productivity. That means unhappy employees that might leave to find work somewhere with "normal" software.
Oracle has a warranty and extensive support. Does MySQL or the other free or inexpensive solutions? How scalable are these solutions? These are considerations to make when calculating TCO.
No, currently, the TCO for a "mainstream" solution is significantly lower than a "free" solution.
-Jer
I've not doubt that someone representing Metallica read through the various posts relating to the topic here on Slashdot. If so, they'd have to see that's there is a rather overwhelming "bad Metallica" vibe. It'd probably be bad PR to play the interview game here.
Of course, it's possible that they learned from the live chat, which did little to improve public perception of Metallica's intentions.
Now, the real question is, can Metallica be held responsible for mislabelling these users as "pirates"?
-Jer
July 1995 Playgirl magazine. They pay like CRAP! And yes, I'm guessing it's about as rare. :)
-Jer
Okay, here's a stupid question about the worm thing:
When I'm explaining the potential issues surrounding these worms to less technically inclined people, they always seem rather complacent. They aren't concerned because no worm, thus far, has done serious damage. At least nothing catastrophic.
I try to explain that the worms could be programmed to do things that are so much worse. The inevitable question I get is "Then why haven't they done it?". How do you respond to that? I don't KNOW why we've gotten so lucky so far. As they've said in the article, there are a number of things that could be done to make life more difficult, such as deleting things of importance (how about .doc, .xls, .dll, and .exe files), and changing the subject line at random.
Here's the stupid question: Why? Why haven't we seen a truly malicious version of one of these yet? Any ideas?
-Jer
I've done this as well. I've managed to sneak a Mandrake box in to run out database, and now that we're collecting and presenting the data on the net, I"m setting up a mandrake/apache server. Management doesn't check, and I don't tell them. My concern is, ultimately, could this be something that would get me fired. I would assume, since I'm setting up working solutions for minimal cash, they'd love it...but in business you never know.
At any rate, if we all did this with just one or two mission critical apps, even management would begin to understand that some open source software is BETTER than their high priced bretheren.
-Jer