While most of what you say I wouldn't really argue with, I don't really consider the japanese bikes to have as much to do with Harley's problems as you suggest. If you compare a 60's or 70's japanese bike to an AMF era Harley, it is like comparing a sports car to a full sized luxury car. They are completely different markets. Harley fans don't care as much about crotch rocket performance, and until they bought out Buell, Harley didn't really try to compete much in that market. While there may have been a little bit of competition with Harley's touring bikes like the ElectraGlide from some of the high end japanese bikes built towards the latter part of the AMF era (like the GoldWing), for the most part the japanese didn't really try to compete in Harley's market (with V twin bikes like the Shadow and the Vulcan) until after the new evo bikes were already out. The fact that the competition from closer and closer lookalikes hasn't hurt Harley much is a pretty good indication that marketing matters. But Harley owners also don't really WANT a bike that is anything other than what a Harley is... They want something air cooled that goes 'blat blat, blat blat' at idle... The problems with Harley's designs is that they weren't really designed to be mass produced by less than highly skilled craftsmen, and the tooling wasn't set up for that either. I think that AMF could have gotten away with very minimal design changes had they been willing to invest in more and better tooling which would have reduced the need for as much skill and time in the manufacturing process. It is a credit to the current HD that they've been able to keep the Harley image, mystique, etc. I think though, that Harley buyers will tend to reject anything from HD other than V-twin air cooled bikes. From what I've seen the most convincing Harley clones/competitors actually come from other American companies like Victory. The Shadow, Vulcan, etc. are all way less expensive than HD, and they've mostly got the look down now, but a lot of people won't consider them because they are water cooled, and run too smooth (meaning they don't sound right). The thing that japanese bike fans complain about in HD's is exactly what HD fans want most of the time, believe it or not.
Sporting goods manufacturer AMF bought Harley-Davidson in the early 1980s and set about "saving money".
I believe it was actually the late 60's or early 70's when AMF (better known for golf carts and bowling supplies) bought Harley-Davidson. You are right about cost cutting being a problem during the AMF era, the other problem was AMF dramatically increased production without investing in more/better tooling, and so they had to cut the quality of the hand assembly and fitting work to make due. Many old time Harley-Davidson employees retired or quit during that time which further hurt the craftsmanship and quality. It was the upper management at Harley-Davidson that bought back the company though, not really the 'employees', at least not the line workers.
Since when does feature count matter? How many people use more than 10% of the features of their word processor? And what does MS Word have that OpenOffice Writer doesn't that anyone actually needs? I've used both, and I can't say I find anything lacking with OpenOffice. Really, what is missing in OpenOffice, let the OpenOffice developers know, and it probably won't be missing for very long. I never seem to get any kind of real answer on this question. I am pretty much convinced that the people who say that MS Word has a lot of functionality that other products don't haven't really ever used anything else.
Saddam used nerve gas against Kurds that lived inside the borders of Iraq, and who had been living there for years and years. While Saddam might not consider them "his people", it isn't the same as people who are citizens of another country. Your north-south analogy doesn't work, because technically (at least as far as the south was concerned), the north and south were two separate countries during the civil war. Your revolutionary war analogy is backwards. The British did consider the colonists to be British subjects during the war, and were fighting to keep it that way. While fighting against people who are trying to overthrow your government is understandable, using poison gas indiscriminately against unarmed women and children in addition to actual combatants is generally not considered very nice. A certain amount of collateral damage to civilians is an unfortunate reality in war, but things like nerve gas are such indiscriminate killers that they shouldn't be used in areas populated by civilians. In all reality, most people believe they shouldn't be used at all.
Perhaps some of the arguments used against Saddam are crap, but not the one you are complaining about.
But since GenX'ers are too apathetic to vote,
the boomers are going to continue to screw us
over
Well a lot of us who are (technically) Gen-X do
vote, however, even if all of us did, we still
couldn't outvote the boomers. They aren't called
that for a reason. There are a lot of them.
There aren't so many of us, you know, birth
control and smaller families during our generation
puts us at a demographic disadvantage (not
that I'm saying birth control and smaller
families aren't a good thing, of course). It is
also why Social Security is going to go bust
when all the boomers retire because there won't
be enough Gen-Xers to pay, and because the gov't
raided the "surplus" to make it look like they
were paying off the national debt. They won't
be able to raise social security taxes enough to
make it solvent without GenXers and younger
marching in mass on the capitol with torches and
pitchforks.
Think what you want, but don't think I'm the only person who thinks with their pocketbook. Most of us have limited budgets that we have to live within, so it is unavoidable to a certain extent. As long as electric cars and hybrids aren't cost effective, and don't adequately fill consumer's needs in terms of space and cargo capacity, they will never get past small niche market status. Unless eco nuts are going to try to legislate the conventional car out of the market (it has been tried), the only way for hybrids/electrics to beat conventional vehicles is to become a credible competitor, because there just doesn't appear to be enough people who are so idealistic that they are willing to pay a lot more money for an electric or hybrid vehicle just because of concern for the environment. And the tone and nature of the arguments made by the fringe of environmental activists is not going to convince many people to change their minds either.
Perhaps it isn't "nobody wants electric cars", but not enough people want them to make them economically feasable to produce, or at least not enough people are willing to pay what they really cost, and GM isn't willing to sell them at a loss (who can blame them). I personally don't want an electric car because I am unconvinced that they are really better for the environment. Unless your power comes from a truly clean source (and that means wind or solar, even hydro has environmental downsides because damming up rivers does affect the environment), then they aren't zero emissions, let alone zero environmental impact. Even ignoring tailpipe emissions, manufacturing and disposing of all those batteries isn't without environmental impact, since they generally contain hazardous chemicals and/or heavy metals.
Frankly though, I don't want an electric car because even with subsidies they don't make economic sense for me. For that matter even hybrids don't make economic sense, since according to my estimates you've got to drive something like a Prius about 180,000 miles before the gas savings make up the difference in price between it and the Echo. That completely ignores maintenance costs, and my guess is that the Echo will be far cheaper to maintain, making it unlikely that a Prius will ever be as cheap to operate as an Echo. And by the way, the Echo is a nicer car to drive. And for what its worth, little cars like the current hybrids don't really suit my needs very well, let alone completely, so they'd be at best a 2nd or third car in my household, and further limiting any supposed economic or environmental advantage. And electric cars are even less pracical for my needs than hybrids.
So quit trying to make GM out to be the bad guy. They built EV1's and lost money on every one of them. The eco nuts didn't put their money where their mouth was and buy enough of them to make it profitable.
I kinda doubt HP will be the largest for long. It looks like they are quickly losing ground in PC and server sales, especially to Dell. I personally thought from the first I heard of it that HP and Compaq were merging that it was not a good fit. Time will tell, but my prediction is that HP/Compaq will see their market share in x86 desktop and server machines shrink over the next year.
And unfortunately, perception is as important or maybe more important than reality when it comes to a lot of high level management decisions, and perception seems to be that Microsoft, through their ruthless manipulation of OEM contracts has the hardware vendors by the short hairs. This seems especially renewed since it appears that Microsoft has managed to buy their way out of any meaningful government sanctions in the antitrust case.
What we need is management (and directors and stockholders) that are interested in long-term profit. A company that has long-term profit-mindedness (which may make this quarter's numbers look bad), is a company that doesn't need creative accounting, and is good for the country and its shareholders. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we have the managers, directors, or stockholders with the brains and guts to do this any more.
I couldn't adree with this more. Short term thinking on the part of business is a plague. I've seen it too many times. I've seen companies shoot themselves in the foot in the name of short term profits and then have to work extra hard the next quarter because they are limping around with a wounded foot. Profits are a good thing, but they have to be sustainable over the long haul or they ultimately mean nothing. Hell, Enron made fantastic profits, or at least appeared to, for a while... but look at where they are now.
Buy their printers and boycott their PC's and servers maybe? Sounds from the article like most of the people who are responsible for Bruce's exit were ex-Compaq people, so it seems that it is the PC folks and not the printer folks that are primarily to blame. Makes it easier then too, because there are a lot more choices in PC and server products than printers, especially in the mid to upper range laser segment.
I had to use it when I was in college. I found its user interface to be absolutely wretched. Horrid abominations for editors like SOS, EDT and TPU. And the VMS mail client was absolutely bletcherous. A lot of the things other people liked like the versioning file system I found more of an annoyance, if I want version control I'll use something that lets me check things in and out when I want to.
After reading both articles, I think that Red Hat's arguments make more sense. Given that both points of view are obviously biased, and both are stated fairly well, my opinion is based on the points as presented. And FWIW, I use Mandrake on most of my boxes and have used SuSE and Caldera fairly extensively in the past. While I like a lot of things about SuSE, and liked Caldera's distro in the days I was using it (Network Desktop 1.0 to 1.3 distros), Red Hat certainly has had more of a history in allowing free downloads of their software and releasing their software as open source than either of those two. I've also not seen any credible allegations of anti-competitive or other illegal or unethical actions on Red Hat's part, so until I see otherwise I think it a bit unfair to compare them to Microsoft.
is there anything wrong with it not being open source.
That depends on your needs, motivations or opinions I guess.
I can understand the need/want to get off as cheap as possible. But, I think people need to realize there are expenses related to running a business. I personally would not be opposed to paying for a mail solution that had as many features as Exchange but worked on multiple platforms.
I'm not so idealistic either that I absolutely won't pay for software. I won't pay Microsoft for software, because I don't think they deserve my money, but I have and will pay money to those who I think are deserving of it.
That is a piece of the puzzle that is important enough in most companies that having a support contract, or at least a company to get ahold of would be a requirement for most.
I personally don't believe in support contracts. In general I think it is better and cheaper to pay only when you actually have a problem. I dislike dealing with companies that try to force you into paying for contracts by refusing to provide adequate service to those who don't have contracts or by charging ridiculous prices to people who prefer as-needed services.
Let it be based on open standards IMAP/LDAP/ and UCAP?? (universal calendar access protocol:) And close source the server.
The IETF standard for calendars is iCalendar, and is covered by RFC 2445.
I'd personally prefer to see a calendaring/scheduling system that wasn't so closely married to email and address book functionality... or at least that let me mix-and-match what I wanted to use for those. Allowing interface to alternate IMAP and LDAP clients and servers would certainly be a step in the right direction to me.
That way everybody and their mom can write a client or have tie-ins to different applications. And somebody can make enough money on the server to have a staff to support and extend the product. Just please don't go nuts like microsoft did on the pricing.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like that happen, but I'd really rather see something free and open source so that it could get included into Linux distros, for example. It would make it a lot easier to become popular if people could just choose to set it up like they do Apache, Samba, etc.
But if it is closed source for the server, please, please, please, no fscking client license fees, O.K.? If I have to pay, I'd much rather pay only a per-server license fee, or even a 'power unit' based server license fee (although I don't like those much either) than have to fsck around with damned client licenses. That isn't just based on price -- that is based on convenience.
At first I thought if there was an open source system that was compatible with Outlook that would do the trick, however HP offered a system that did just that, and even it didn't make a dent in Exchange's market.
Two things...
First, HP's product (now owned aparently by Samsung) wasn't really open source, although it did run on some open source platforms. It was certainly not free software.
Second, HP never really made much of an effort to try to sell their product. It sure looked like they were afraid of reprisals from Microsoft if it was too successful.
So I don't think we really know for sure what would happen if there were a free/open source calendar/messaging/groupware server that was compatible with Outlook clients... I personally think it would become quite popular, especially with small to mid sized businesses that would like to save some money in today's trying financial climate.
Actually many minicomputers in the late 70's up to the mid 80's used 12" and 14" hard drives as well as disk packs. I worked on VAXes (running 4.2 and 4.3BSD) in the mid 80's that were so equipped. And the disk packs we had were not 'flexible media', the platters in the packs were made out of aluminum that was around 1/8" thick. We took apart a lot of those things in the late 80's as they failed and those old machines were decommissioned. Those big platters made great wallhangings, especially the ones with huge gouges ground into them from head crashes.
Even if I was buying a Dell computer, why would I care? What advantage is there to buying a printer from the same place you order your computer from? Has Dell been selling HP printers less than what I could buy from any other mail order outlet? Less than what I could buy the same HP printer from Fry's (or wherever)?
How about two 70mph cars (slow for the highway around here) head on? That's 140mph effectively. Most cars don't hold up very well, to be sure, but tiny little tinfoil deathtrap econoboxes seem to hold up a lot worse than larger vehicles do.
Oh come on! Microsoft must be doing something right.
Just because they are financially successful doesn't mean it is a result of them 'doing something right'. I'd say it is as much a result of them 'doing something wrong' -- illegal or at least unethical that is.
Plenty of other companies did things right too, and still were never able to consistantly crush every opponent in their path. Why? Because while arguably most of Microsoft's dirty tricks are 'not something others aren't doing', it would be hard to point at any other company that has ever so consistantly used every dirty trick in the book all the time, even when they didn't need to.
The fact that billions of people use Microsoft products every day is a testament to that (flame all you want, but explain why Linux isn't on every desktop in the world).
How about Microsoft having a head start. How about them having huge piles of cash for marketing. And how about them using strongarm exclusionary contracts, agreements and tactics to force hardware vendors into paying per-processor licensing or preloading first MS-DOS and then Windows onto everything they sell? How about them using proprietary file formats, protocols and interfaces to make it difficult for people to make anything else play nicely with Microsoft products?
It isn't perfect, but neither is Linux; and Microsoft is certainly making an effort to improve.
I personally believe that Linux is improving faster than Windows.
In the specific case of Longhorn, they are actually attempting something pretty dangerous: betting everything (or a lot anyway) on a single product, that if unsuccessful will put them in serious trouble (they employ a ton of people and many many industries depend on them).
And I personally hope that this time, finally their bet will lose. It isn't healthy for so many people and industries to be dependant on a single company the way people are on Microsoft. Would anyone be happy with a world where you could only buy a GM car, or a world where you could only buy a Ford car? And if you wanted gasoline or oil or new tires, it was hard to buy them from anyone else but the auto maker if you wanted everything to work together? Even if you like one brand or another, having a choice is a good thing. Having competition is a good thing.
To pull off something of the magnitude of Longhorn, you need committment, loads of money, and most importantly a majority market share (otherwise you will most likely fail in getting all the other "satellite" technologies such as cellphones, tv, telephony, etc. to align).
Gag. I don't want cell phones, TV's, etc. to be that closely aligned. If too many things being dependant on a single company is bad now, how much worse will it be if they are allowed to spread their tentacles into every other electronic device marketplace? How much worse would it be if their next 'bet the company' product after that fails and takes them down?
I think ceejayoz summarised it pretty well: just because it's Microsoft doesn't automatically make it wrong/bad/evil.
Unfortunately, while it may not be automatic, most of what they do seems to be contaminated by their wrong/bad/evil motives by the time it actually hits the streets.
What's wrong with taking everyone's good ideas and implementing them into one product?
There would be nothing wrong with that if they were honest about it. But Microsoft likes to copy others and then claim it was their idea all along.
What is sort of amazing is that if they repeat it long enough people seem to start believing it. I've seen people who seriously believed that Bill Gates invented the microcomputer, invented BASIC, invented MS-DOS, invented the GUI, etc.
Which is why its too bad that Microsoft hasn't ever done much of it. I like to call what they do 'immovation'. Its 90% immitation. The 10% of innovation they do seems to be in dirty tricks and proprietarization.
Sure, a lot of open source is clones of other products as well, but in most cases at least the clones are faithful to the original. Microsoft tends to copy ideas poorly.
I can't say I recall ever hearing of the guy. I know a lot of techies, and I've not heard the name mentioned before. That being the case, does this guy really have such a big techie following? What genre is he even in? Must be something I don't listen to, or I'd have probably heard of him.
I have to say that I haven't been buying as many CDs lately as I was a couple of years ago. Reason why? Not because I'm copying them from friends or downloading software from the net... but because the bands I like haven't been putting out much, if any good albums lately. I've also built up a big enough collection over the years that I have back filled most of the old releases in my collection, so I am not buying as many back catalog releases lately either.
I've heard that 'P' stands for 'Propaganda'. Believe it or not, I've heard it from both people on the far left (who claim that NPR has become too influenced by large corporate sponsors and thus too conservative) and people on the far right (who claim that NPR is too closely affiliated with the government and thus too liberal).
Yea, I checked out HTML::Mason before I went with EmbPerl, however, I found EmbPerl to be slightly easier, more flexible and faster. EmbPerl works well even for small and simple stuff, not just big projects.
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While most of what you say I wouldn't really argue with, I don't really consider the japanese bikes to have as much to do with Harley's problems as you suggest. If you compare a 60's or 70's japanese bike to an AMF era Harley, it is like comparing a sports car to a full sized luxury car. They are completely different markets. Harley fans don't care as much about crotch rocket performance, and until they bought out Buell, Harley didn't really try to compete much in that market. While there may have been a little bit of competition with Harley's touring bikes like the ElectraGlide from some of the high end japanese bikes built towards the latter part of the AMF era (like the GoldWing), for the most part the japanese didn't really try to compete in Harley's market (with V twin bikes like the Shadow and the Vulcan) until after the new evo bikes were already out. The fact that the competition from closer and closer lookalikes hasn't hurt Harley much is a pretty good indication that marketing matters. But Harley owners also don't really WANT a bike that is anything other than what a Harley is... They want something air cooled that goes 'blat blat, blat blat' at idle... The problems with Harley's designs is that they weren't really designed to be mass produced by less than highly skilled craftsmen, and the tooling wasn't set up for that either. I think that AMF could have gotten away with very minimal design changes had they been willing to invest in more and better tooling which would have reduced the need for as much skill and time in the manufacturing process. It is a credit to the current HD that they've been able to keep the Harley image, mystique, etc. I think though, that Harley buyers will tend to reject anything from HD other than V-twin air cooled bikes. From what I've seen the most convincing Harley clones/competitors actually come from other American companies like Victory. The Shadow, Vulcan, etc. are all way less expensive than HD, and they've mostly got the look down now, but a lot of people won't consider them because they are water cooled, and run too smooth (meaning they don't sound right). The thing that japanese bike fans complain about in HD's is exactly what HD fans want most of the time, believe it or not.
Sporting goods manufacturer AMF bought Harley-Davidson in the early 1980s and set about "saving money".
I believe it was actually the late 60's or early 70's when AMF (better known for golf carts and bowling supplies) bought Harley-Davidson. You are right about cost cutting being a problem during the AMF era, the other problem was AMF dramatically increased production without investing in more/better tooling, and so they had to cut the quality of the hand assembly and fitting work to make due. Many old time Harley-Davidson employees retired or quit during that time which further hurt the craftsmanship and quality. It was the upper management at Harley-Davidson that bought back the company though, not really the 'employees', at least not the line workers.
the feature count of MS Word
Since when does feature count matter? How many people use more than 10% of the features of their word processor? And what does MS Word have that OpenOffice Writer doesn't that anyone actually needs? I've used both, and I can't say I find anything lacking with OpenOffice. Really, what is missing in OpenOffice, let the OpenOffice developers know, and it probably won't be missing for very long. I never seem to get any kind of real answer on this question. I am pretty much convinced that the people who say that MS Word has a lot of functionality that other products don't haven't really ever used anything else.
Saddam used nerve gas against Kurds that lived
inside the borders of Iraq, and who had been
living there for years and years. While Saddam
might not consider them "his people", it isn't
the same as people who are citizens of another
country. Your north-south analogy doesn't work,
because technically (at least as far as the
south was concerned), the north and south were
two separate countries during the civil war.
Your revolutionary war analogy is backwards. The
British did consider the colonists to be British
subjects during the war, and were fighting to
keep it that way. While fighting against people
who are trying to overthrow your government is
understandable, using poison gas indiscriminately
against unarmed women and children in addition
to actual combatants is generally not considered
very nice. A certain amount of collateral
damage to civilians is an unfortunate reality in
war, but things like nerve gas are such
indiscriminate killers that they shouldn't be
used in areas populated by civilians. In all
reality, most people believe they shouldn't be
used at all.
Perhaps some of the arguments used against Saddam
are crap, but not the one you are complaining
about.
But since GenX'ers are too apathetic to vote, the boomers are going to continue to screw us over
Well a lot of us who are (technically) Gen-X do vote, however, even if all of us did, we still couldn't outvote the boomers. They aren't called that for a reason. There are a lot of them. There aren't so many of us, you know, birth control and smaller families during our generation puts us at a demographic disadvantage (not that I'm saying birth control and smaller families aren't a good thing, of course). It is also why Social Security is going to go bust when all the boomers retire because there won't be enough Gen-Xers to pay, and because the gov't raided the "surplus" to make it look like they were paying off the national debt. They won't be able to raise social security taxes enough to make it solvent without GenXers and younger marching in mass on the capitol with torches and pitchforks.
Think what you want, but don't think I'm the only
person who thinks with their pocketbook. Most of
us have limited budgets that we have to live
within, so it is unavoidable to a certain extent.
As long as electric cars and hybrids aren't cost
effective, and don't adequately fill consumer's
needs in terms of space and cargo capacity, they
will never get past small niche market status.
Unless eco nuts are going to try to legislate the
conventional car out of the market (it has been
tried), the only way for hybrids/electrics to beat
conventional vehicles is to become a credible
competitor, because there just doesn't appear to
be enough people who are so idealistic that they
are willing to pay a lot more money for an
electric or hybrid vehicle just because of
concern for the environment. And the tone and
nature of the arguments made by the fringe of
environmental activists is not going to convince
many people to change their minds either.
Perhaps it isn't "nobody wants electric cars", but not enough people want them to make them economically feasable to produce, or at least not enough people are willing to pay what they really cost, and GM isn't willing to sell them at a loss (who can blame them). I personally don't want an electric car because I am unconvinced that they are really better for the environment. Unless your power comes from a truly clean source (and that means wind or solar, even hydro has environmental downsides because damming up rivers does affect the environment), then they aren't zero emissions, let alone zero environmental impact. Even ignoring tailpipe emissions, manufacturing and disposing of all those batteries isn't without environmental impact, since they generally contain hazardous chemicals and/or heavy metals.
Frankly though, I don't want an electric car because even with subsidies they don't make economic sense for me. For that matter even hybrids don't make economic sense, since according to my estimates you've got to drive something like a Prius about 180,000 miles before the gas savings make up the difference in price between it and the Echo. That completely ignores maintenance costs, and my guess is that the Echo will be far cheaper to maintain, making it unlikely that a Prius will ever be as cheap to operate as an Echo. And by the way, the Echo is a nicer car to drive. And for what its worth, little cars like the current hybrids don't really suit my needs very well, let alone completely, so they'd be at best a 2nd or third car in my household, and further limiting any supposed economic or environmental advantage. And electric cars are even less pracical for my needs than hybrids.
So quit trying to make GM out to be the bad guy. They built EV1's and lost money on every one of them. The eco nuts didn't put their money where their mouth was and buy enough of them to make it profitable.
I kinda doubt HP will be the largest for long. It looks like they are quickly losing ground in PC and server sales, especially to Dell. I personally thought from the first I heard of it that HP and Compaq were merging that it was not a good fit. Time will tell, but my prediction is that HP/Compaq will see their market share in x86 desktop and server machines shrink over the next year.
And unfortunately, perception is as important or maybe more important than reality when it comes to a lot of high level management decisions, and perception seems to be that Microsoft, through their ruthless manipulation of OEM contracts has the hardware vendors by the short hairs. This seems especially renewed since it appears that Microsoft has managed to buy their way out of any meaningful government sanctions in the antitrust case.
What we need is management (and directors and stockholders) that are interested in long-term profit. A company that has long-term profit-mindedness (which may make this quarter's numbers look bad), is a company that doesn't need creative accounting, and is good for the country and its shareholders. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we have the managers, directors, or stockholders with the brains and guts to do this any more.
I couldn't adree with this more. Short term thinking on the part of business is a plague. I've seen it too many times. I've seen companies shoot themselves in the foot in the name of short term profits and then have to work extra hard the next quarter because they are limping around with a wounded foot. Profits are a good thing, but they have to be sustainable over the long haul or they ultimately mean nothing. Hell, Enron made fantastic profits, or at least appeared to, for a while... but look at where they are now.
Buy their printers and boycott their PC's and servers maybe? Sounds from the article like most of the people who are responsible for Bruce's exit were ex-Compaq people, so it seems that it is the PC folks and not the printer folks that are primarily to blame. Makes it easier then too, because there are a lot more choices in PC and server products than printers, especially in the mid to upper range laser segment.
I had to use it when I was in college. I found its user interface to be absolutely wretched. Horrid abominations for editors like SOS, EDT and TPU. And the VMS mail client was absolutely bletcherous. A lot of the things other people liked like the versioning file system I found more of an annoyance, if I want version control I'll use something that lets me check things in and out when I want to.
After reading both articles, I think that Red Hat's arguments make more sense. Given that both points of view are obviously biased, and both are stated fairly well, my opinion is based on the points as presented. And FWIW, I use Mandrake on most of my boxes and have used SuSE and Caldera fairly extensively in the past. While I like a lot of things about SuSE, and liked Caldera's distro in the days I was using it (Network Desktop 1.0 to 1.3 distros), Red Hat certainly has had more of a history in allowing free downloads of their software and releasing their software as open source than either of those two. I've also not seen any credible allegations of anti-competitive or other illegal or unethical actions on Red Hat's part, so until I see otherwise I think it a bit unfair to compare them to Microsoft.
is there anything wrong with it not being open source.
:) And close source the server.
That depends on your needs, motivations or opinions I guess.
I can understand the need/want to get off as cheap as possible. But, I think people need to realize there are expenses related to running a business. I personally would not be opposed to paying for a mail solution that had as many features as Exchange but worked on multiple platforms.
I'm not so idealistic either that I absolutely won't pay for software. I won't pay Microsoft for software, because I don't think they deserve my money, but I have and will pay money to those who I think are deserving of it.
That is a piece of the puzzle that is important enough in most companies that having a support contract, or at least a company to get ahold of would be a requirement for most.
I personally don't believe in support contracts. In general I think it is better and cheaper to pay only when you actually have a problem. I dislike dealing with companies that try to force you into paying for contracts by refusing to provide adequate service to those who don't have contracts or by charging ridiculous prices to people who prefer as-needed services.
Let it be based on open standards IMAP/LDAP/ and UCAP?? (universal calendar access protocol
The IETF standard for calendars is iCalendar, and is covered by RFC 2445.
I'd personally prefer to see a calendaring/scheduling system that wasn't so closely married to email and address book functionality... or at least that let me mix-and-match what I wanted to use for those. Allowing interface to alternate IMAP and LDAP clients and servers would certainly be a step in the right direction to me.
That way everybody and their mom can write a client or have tie-ins to different applications. And somebody can make enough money on the server to have a staff to support and extend the product. Just please don't go nuts like microsoft did on the pricing.
I wouldn't mind seeing something like that happen, but I'd really rather see something free and open source so that it could get included into Linux distros, for example. It would make it a lot easier to become popular if people could just choose to set it up like they do Apache, Samba, etc.
But if it is closed source for the server, please, please, please, no fscking client license fees, O.K.? If I have to pay, I'd much rather pay only a per-server license fee, or even a 'power unit' based server license fee (although I don't like those much either) than have to fsck around with damned client licenses. That isn't just based on price -- that is based on convenience.
At first I thought if there was an open source system that was compatible with Outlook that would do the trick, however HP offered a system that did just that, and even it didn't make a dent in Exchange's market.
Two things...
First, HP's product (now owned aparently by Samsung) wasn't really open source, although it did run on some open source platforms. It was certainly not free software.
Second, HP never really made much of an effort to try to sell their product. It sure looked like they were afraid of reprisals from Microsoft if it was too successful.
So I don't think we really know for sure what would happen if there were a free/open source calendar/messaging/groupware server that was compatible with Outlook clients... I personally think it would become quite popular, especially with small to mid sized businesses that would like to save some money in today's trying financial climate.
Actually many minicomputers in the late 70's up to the mid 80's used 12" and 14" hard drives as well as disk packs. I worked on VAXes (running 4.2 and 4.3BSD) in the mid 80's that were so equipped. And the disk packs we had were not 'flexible media', the platters in the packs were made out of aluminum that was around 1/8" thick. We took apart a lot of those things in the late 80's as they failed and those old machines were decommissioned. Those big platters made great wallhangings, especially the ones with huge gouges ground into them from head crashes.
Even if I was buying a Dell computer, why would I care? What advantage is there to buying a printer from the same place you order your computer from? Has Dell been selling HP printers less than what I could buy from any other mail order outlet? Less than what I could buy the same HP printer from Fry's (or wherever)?
How about two 70mph cars (slow for the highway around here) head on? That's 140mph effectively. Most cars don't hold up very well, to be sure, but tiny little tinfoil deathtrap econoboxes seem to hold up a lot worse than larger vehicles do.
Oh come on! Microsoft must be doing something right.
Just because they are financially successful doesn't mean it is a result of them 'doing something right'. I'd say it is as much a result of them 'doing something wrong' -- illegal or at least unethical that is.
Plenty of other companies did things right too, and still were never able to consistantly crush every opponent in their path. Why? Because while arguably most of Microsoft's dirty tricks are 'not something others aren't doing', it would be hard to point at any other company that has ever so consistantly used every dirty trick in the book all the time, even when they didn't need to.
The fact that billions of people use Microsoft products every day is a testament to that (flame all you want, but explain why Linux isn't on every desktop in the world).
How about Microsoft having a head start. How about them having huge piles of cash for marketing. And how about them using strongarm exclusionary contracts, agreements and tactics to force hardware vendors into paying per-processor licensing or preloading first MS-DOS and then Windows onto everything they sell? How about them using proprietary file formats, protocols and interfaces to make it difficult for people to make anything else play nicely with Microsoft products?
It isn't perfect, but neither is Linux; and Microsoft is certainly making an effort to improve.
I personally believe that Linux is improving faster than Windows.
In the specific case of Longhorn, they are actually attempting something pretty dangerous: betting everything (or a lot anyway) on a single product, that if unsuccessful will put them in serious trouble (they employ a ton of people and many many industries depend on them).
And I personally hope that this time, finally their bet will lose. It isn't healthy for so many people and industries to be dependant on a single company the way people are on Microsoft. Would anyone be happy with a world where you could only buy a GM car, or a world where you could only buy a Ford car? And if you wanted gasoline or oil or new tires, it was hard to buy them from anyone else but the auto maker if you wanted everything to work together? Even if you like one brand or another, having a choice is a good thing. Having competition is a good thing.
To pull off something of the magnitude of Longhorn, you need committment, loads of money, and most importantly a majority market share (otherwise you will most likely fail in getting all the other "satellite" technologies such as cellphones, tv, telephony, etc. to align).
Gag. I don't want cell phones, TV's, etc. to be that closely aligned. If too many things being dependant on a single company is bad now, how much worse will it be if they are allowed to spread their tentacles into every other electronic device marketplace? How much worse would it be if their next 'bet the company' product after that fails and takes them down?
I think ceejayoz summarised it pretty well: just because it's Microsoft doesn't automatically make it wrong/bad/evil.
Unfortunately, while it may not be automatic, most of what they do seems to be contaminated by their wrong/bad/evil motives by the time it actually hits the streets.
Good point. Supposed industry experts have been saying Apple will be out of business in 6 months every 6 months since the late 70's.
Not that that's inherently a good or bad thing, but at least when Microsoft use someone's ideas, that someone has a chance of getting paid for it.
Not very often, and generally not very much if they do.
What's wrong with taking everyone's good ideas and implementing them into one product?
There would be nothing wrong with that if they were honest about it. But Microsoft likes to copy others and then claim it was their idea all along.
What is sort of amazing is that if they repeat it long enough people seem to start believing it. I've seen people who seriously believed that Bill Gates invented the microcomputer, invented BASIC, invented MS-DOS, invented the GUI, etc.
Innovation is not a bad thing
Which is why its too bad that Microsoft hasn't ever done much of it. I like to call what they do 'immovation'. Its 90% immitation. The 10% of innovation they do seems to be in dirty tricks and proprietarization.
Sure, a lot of open source is clones of other products as well, but in most cases at least the clones are faithful to the original. Microsoft tends to copy ideas poorly.
I can't say I recall ever hearing of the guy. I know a lot of techies, and I've not heard the name mentioned before. That being the case, does this guy really have such a big techie following? What genre is he even in? Must be something I don't listen to, or I'd have probably heard of him.
I have to say that I haven't been buying as many CDs lately as I was a couple of years ago. Reason why? Not because I'm copying them from friends or downloading software from the net... but because the bands I like haven't been putting out much, if any good albums lately. I've also built up a big enough collection over the years that I have back filled most of the old releases in my collection, so I am not buying as many back catalog releases lately either.
I've heard that 'P' stands for 'Propaganda'. Believe it or not, I've heard it from both people on the far left (who claim that NPR has become too influenced by large corporate sponsors and thus too conservative) and people on the far right (who claim that NPR is too closely affiliated with the government and thus too liberal).
Yea, I checked out HTML::Mason before I went with EmbPerl, however, I found EmbPerl to be slightly easier, more flexible and faster. EmbPerl works well even for small and simple stuff, not just big projects.