What? In the midwest starting sysadmins make $40K? I wish.
Yep, around here they do. In Chicago they make more, but the cost of living is closer to east coast levels. The cost of living around here is probably fairly similar to Madison.
I work for a univeristy
Here is your mistake. Universities pay poorly. It is very difficult to make decent money in a college town due to the glut of people who will work for dirt. I used to work for a university (about 30 miles from where I live now), about 10 years ago, I then lived for a short time in the SF bay area, when I came back to the midwest I moved to a larger non-university town where I basically doubled what I was making at the University. In the past 10 years I have tripled my income as one would expect with experience.
(UW Madison to be precise - the biggest in the state and one of the Big 10 in the US)
A friend of mine who lives in Milwaukee makes considerably higher than that as a sysadmin with similar years of experience to yours. I should ask him what entry level people are making where he works.
The university though is the most chill work environment you could possibly have - access to equipment and knowledge like you wouldn't believe, and comes with an amazing benefits package that is topped by few private companies.
The benefits at universities are only good if they will give you a full time job. When I worked for a university, I worked full time hours, but wasn't considered full time, and I got no benefits at all. In fact that had a lot to do with my decision to get the hell out of there.
I've worked at small, mid sized and currently work for a large (Fortune 100 sized) company. Access to equipment and knowledge is good at a university, but don't knock the private sector until you've tried it.
A friend of mine still works as a sysadmin at the same university I used to work for. He has been there for over 10 years now, and he makes only about 1/2 what I do. I've tried to get him to move down here, because I could easily find a job for him making considerably more than what he gets now, but he won't budge. Its kinda sad, because he has a degree in Com Sci with a 3.9 something GPA. I never finished college, and I make twice the money.
I suppose you could find that type of work environment in smaller cutting-edge geek-shops where they know how to take care of us types... but those are in short supply here in the mid-west.
Not around here they aren't. Lots of opportunities here in that sort of shop. Lots of opportunities in general, as unemployment around here is currently at record low levels (like 2.5% or something). I recently turned down a C/C++ programmer job that paid in the 60's.
I think you'd find the situation similar in other midwestern cities like Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, etc.
You are getting screwed. Starting sysadmins here in the midwest (a moderate to low cost of living area) are getting at least $40k. Experienced sysadmins are getting $50k-$65k. Sysadmin managers are getting $60-$75k.
Given what you are doing, you should be making at least double what you currently are.
Well, that is still better than it dying entirely. At any rate it may become aparent pretty quickly which fork(s) is/are viable. And I don't know how this is much different than MP3 players, of which there are a whole bunch of floating around.
After looking at this thread, it struck me that it is sort of ironic that this move by the motion picture industry (trying to intimidate people to get rid of the DeCSS code) has actually caused the code to be mirrored to more FTP sites and will probably lead to more people being curious about the code and looking at (and potentially working on) it.
SCO has had an x86 UNIX for years, and currently has two offerings, their traditional (OpenDesktop/OpenServer) and UnixWare (aquired from Novell/AT&T). Sun has been shipping Solaris on x86 for quite some time as well, and also still has Interactive UNIX (although they aren't actively marketing it anymore).
Unfortunately for the poor sods in drafting and engineering departments, too often the decisions on hardware/software are made by clueless PHB types.
many of our customers are actually moving from unix to nt (cost).
Actually, most of the people I know of that are considering or have made that move did so more because of software availability. The perception is that most of the CAD software vendors are only interested in supporting Windows. I know that perception doesn't necessarily match reality when it comes to companies like PTC and Bentley, but companies like AutoDesk definitely have pushed that message to the people who make the buying decisions.
When it comes to cost, it is also mainly a perception issue. Commercial *nix is mainly only more expensive if you compare specialized workstation hardware to generic commodity PCs. Commercial *nixes on x86 hardware are similar in cost to NT (Windows 95/98 are really not very suitable for CAD usage), and Linux on the same hardware is cheaper than even Windows 9x.
If they want one responsible party, they should pick a distribution vendor and sign up with them. Sure, a lot of people on Slashdot get pissed when a package is (often more or less just labeled as) specific to say, Red Hat, but it is better than not having the software available at all.
Ok, I've heard several references to "fat Microsoft shareholders". I hold Microsoft stock and am not fat.
The word 'Fat' has more than one meaning. In the context you are using it in, it does not appear to be used to indicate that a particular person is obese, but rather that they are rich.
Also, the reference is used in a derogatory manner. Are you implying that being "fat" means you are evil or less of a human being or something?
At any rate, this whole comment comes out of left field, and has nothing to do with the message you are replying to. If you look at my posting, you will not find the word 'fat' anywhere in it. If you check my posting history you would also find me arguing that one should not take personal appearance as a sign of character in other threads, so your personal attack on me seems both out of place and unfounded.
I've also heard several references to "this can only be done by monopolistic resources". Things can be done by resources - whether or not those are obtained through monopolies is immaterial.
The point is that if a company didn't have a more or less guaranteed monopoly income stream in other markets with which to subsidize for a long time entry into other markets, they would not be able to afford to make such speculative investments. Basically, shareholders wouldn't put up with it unless the assumption is there that a company like Microsoft will eventually be able to leverage their monopoly power in one market to eventually squeeze out competition in other markets.
Are most of you people so blinded by your hatred that you will fling any epithet that comes to mind randomly in a sentence to make a point?
Are you so blinded by your love of Microsoft that you will apologize for anything they do? Just because you don't seem to have a large enough view to see how things are interrelated doesn't mean that other people are 'randomly' throwing in arguments.
Ditto with Judge Jackson's "Finding of Facts". While I don't argue any of the "facts", the language he used suggests a person as un-opinionated and unbaised as Ken Starr
Well, I don't think that is a valid comparision at all, but even giving you the benefit of the doubt you could say that perhaps, like Ken Starr, after dealing with an evasive, arrogant and sometimes outright untruthful defendant for so long, it was difficult for Judge Jackson not to be opinionated and biased. I also don't think you can definitively prove that either one of these people started out completely biased and opinionated, especially Judge Jackson. Ken Starr was essentially the prosecutor, so the fact that he was trying to get Clinton meant he was doing his job to a certain extent. It appears that in Judge Jackson's view that the government's case against Microsoft was just much more credible than Microsoft's defense. You can throw personal attacks at the judge all you want, but I don't see how that materially changes the reality of the situation.
AT&T got busted up, and in its place are a few strong baby Bells that have a monopoly over their respective areas with no hope of them leaving.
That isn't really quite true, or is just a part of the picture. The failing of the AT&T breakup, if any, seems to be that it didn't go far enough, as you pointed out, in regards to the RBOCs. Long distance service has been much more competitive and consumers have definitely benefitted there. However, the situation in local service is now changing as CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) are entering the market. You should start to see local service improve and prices drop once the CLECs and AT&T (through their cable business) start to build their own competitive infrastructure.
People are trying to cashing on the hope that whatever's left of Microsoft will still be a profitable company.
It would probably be more profitable in smaller pieces, actually. If for no other reason than the individual peices would be less likely to keep speculatively entering further and further into divergent businesses that are unprofitable. Only a huge company that can use monopoly proceeds to subsidize unprofitable speculative ventures would be able to afford to lose money the way some of Microsoft's companies have (MSN, Slate, etc) until they can figure out a way to lock in enough customers to squeeze out competition in that market as well.
But how do they _grow_ that what makes a difference.
Well, the options I got in 1996 doubled and I cashed them in a little over a year later. Since then I've gotten two more batches of options, and the company's stock is up over $10 a share over the option price on the 1998 batch and more than that on the 1997 batch.
So I really can't say I have anything to complain about when it comes to the growth rate of my options, and it's not like I work for a startup company. Frankly I'm kinda tired of hearing all of the smugness from the Microdrones. If they think they are getting some kind of great deal there then fine, but I haven't seen anything to change my mind.
You've forgotten that Microsoft isn't the only company that gives them. I'm sitting on a fairly substantial amount of them in the company I work for as well.
Even considering stock options, I still don't think that people who do similar work to what I do at Microsoft are really paid all that much better than I am.
I think you are seeing things from a different perspective.
Undoubtedly. You make some good points, but on the whole I mostly disagree. That is fine, people are entitled to their own opinions.
First of all, in terms of OS/2 usage while there were very few individuals using it, unlike Linux...
That is very true.
There were many companies using it, unlike Linux.
That I would dispute. That may have been true in the early days of Linux, but Linux has much more of a foothold into the commercial world than even the companies themselves know. While you are right that few companies use it as their 'official' desktop, a lot of people are using it 'under the table', and like the early days of the Mac, many people have snuck it into the workplace. Furthermore the number of large companies that have accepted Linux into official roles is increasing.
Yes, Linux has been built up from a grass roots effort, which is exactly similar to Team OS/2 not having commercial support.
Not that similar at all. While TeamOS/2 may not have been officially supported, they were supporting an OS that did have commercial support from the beginning. Linux started out with absolutely no commercial support.
So in reality there had been a lot of OS/2 support up until 1996 or so.
Around here, OS/2 was effectively dead way before that, and I live in a town that has a tradition of being 'true blue'. OS/2 was a walking corpse around here by 1992 or 1993. OS/2 was doomed by two things, first the fact that most people saw it as somehow tied to the PS/2, which was a complete flop. Secondly, once Microsoft pulled out of OS/2 all of the clone vendors were afraid to support oS/2 because it was perceived as being more in IBM's interest for them to do so than theirs.
users liked the UI better.
Most users had no clue, because they never even looked at OS/2.
The resulting zealotry does not lend well because it creates an illusion of false support for a product.
I don't think that there is any illusion happening with respect to support for Linux. If anything, the support is larger than what is visible on the surface.
Market share illusions are bad, companies prefer to deal with reality.
Well, I don't necessarily buy that. Companies often seem to prefer advertising hype in large trade journals and from salespeople making deals on the golf course and offering free gifts.
At any rate, Linux was firmly rooted in reality before the hype started.
Oh please. Bill Gates is a lot of things, but I wouldn't say he is a geek. Personally, I'd say he is a megalomanical @$$hole.
If current or past poster-boys Linux Torvalds or Mark Andreesen acted that way in front of a camera, they would be praised for being authentic.
I don't know about that. They would certainly be skewered by the mainstream press, which seems to fawn over Gates primarily just because he is incredibly rich and powerful.
This forum is, needless to say, full of hypocritical jerks looking for any way to pry a knife into Microsoft
As opposed to other forums which are full of hypocritical jerks looking for a way to apologize for Microsoft. If it seems like a lot of people don't like Microsoft, you should wonder why. Microsoft only have themselves to blame.
If only they had changed the CP/M convention of using the slash '/' for a command line parameter marker into dash '-' like UNIX instead of reversing the directory seperator character to backslash '\'. It just squicks the hell out of me every time I see backslashes in a path.
It means that Microsoft hasn't succeeded in dumbing down the market enough for 'Bob' to be a success. It means that 'Bob' will be back if Bill gets his way.
Sadly, the biggest disservice that Microsoft has done for the computer industry is that they have set expectations at such an abysmally low level. People expect to be able to get away with being totally mindless and not learning anything. People don't expect a quality product.
every large company acts like this. it's called BUSINESS
The old 'everyone does it, it must be O.K. argument. Well, sorry, it doesn't wash. Not only is it not true that every large company uses the same unethical practices as Microsoft does (especially few consistantly use all of them at once the way Microsoft does), but it is far more damaging when a company with monopolistic market share levels does it. The company I work for is one of the three largest in its business and one of the 100 largest companies in the world. We control only about 7 or 8 percent of our market. The top five companies in our industry control only about 30 percent of the market. Their is NO WAY we could do, let alone get away with the kind of things that Microsoft has been up to. Our company makes a big point about acting ethically because we need to be a company that our business partners and customers can trust. If you are a business partner of Microsoft, you can look to history to say it is highly likely they will double cross you sooner or later. If you are a Microsoft customer, you are even worse off.
Microsoft is large enough they DON'T NEED to be relentlessly ruthless all of the time, yet they keep doing it. They haven't needed to resort to unethical and/or illegal practices for years, but it seems like they just can't break out of their old habits.
While the judge's opinion is good news, it is too early to celebrate and become complacent. We haven't seen the judge's recommendations for remedy yet, let alone gone thruogh all of the inevitable appeals.
We must remain vigilamt, we must not let down our guards. We must keep opposing Microsoft and their unethical tactics, or they will be back and worse than ever.
No, he founded Digital Research. Ken Olsen founded DEC.
And then turned away IBM when they were looking for an OS?
Well, that is sorta the subject of some speculation. One of the other stories was just that he was out of town and couldn't be reached, and Bill Gates was able to persuade IBM not to wait for CP/M (he was already going to be supplying them with a BASIC interpreter for their ROM image), and that he could deliver a workalike (so he bought QD-DOS from Seattle Computing).
Bill Gates' worth goes up no less than 20 fold what it is now!
I really don't care how much money Bill Gates has.
What *can* we do about Microsoft to make it less powerful?
What a breakup would do is to make it so that we could see competition in individual markets. We wouldn't see the product tying, and the use of monopoly power in one market to make entry into other markets. Smaller 'baby Bills' wouldn't have nearly the ability to enter every market under the sun and lose money there until they can achieve a market presence (like MSN, Slate, etc.). All of those money losing ventures that the current Microsoft keeps funding may eventually turn things around and be able to push out their competitors unless they are forced to be answerable to the bottom line of a smaller company.
And guess what? After the media finally realized that there was no real interest in OS/2, it was mostly fake interest from zealots packing ballot boxes.
You can't look at OS/2's failure as an indication of what will happen in the future. Unlike what I saw with OS/2, I've personally seen a lot of real interest in Linux and open source. I know a lot more people actually using Linux than I ever knew of people playing around with OS/2. Heck, I know about as many people who actually use *BSD as I knew people who used OS/2.
What really got the press to stop reporting on OS/2 was when Microsoft switched all of their efforts away from it and towards Windows. IBM just didn't do a very good job of promoting OS/2 after that. Unfortunately, the OS/2 zealots (like TeamOS/2) got a little carried away trying to overcompensate. On the other hand Linux is mostly a grass-roots effort, and has been since day one. There is a lot of commercial interest in it now, but that is both recent and secondary to the grass roots effort.
That is not true for all of us. I live out in the boondocks, and I have a choice of using the RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) or a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) for local phone service. I have had the choice of several dozen long distance carriers for quite some time.
The breakup of AT&T has been good for most consumers, although it has taken far too long to get competition in the local exchange markets.
IIS, ASP, DCOM, COM, general development are all interesting at a minimum
Not interested, no thanks. I'll take Apache, PHP and CORBA thanks.
If you dont like Microsoft products *dont use them*,
The problem is that Microsoft goes out of their way to make contracts with the PC vendors that make it difficult for us to buy a PC without buying their products. If I don't want to use their products, I shouldn't have to pay for them. Microsoft also goes out of their way to make their products not play nicely with other products, which makes it difficult for those of us that use other products to work with people who use Microsoft's products.
its not your job to silence them.
Microsoft has enough money to get their message out in virtually every forum they want. Linux and open source mainly only have people like us. Even with the recent commercial interest in Linux, the resources they can and have put towards promoting Linux and open source pale in comparison to Microsoft's multibillion dollar advertising budget.
If they suck, they will be gone soon enough.
The problem is that when a very large company like Microsoft uses unethical practices they can stay around an awfully long time even if they suck because they can buy out, or 'cut off the air supply' of any smaller competitor that might come along.
Microsoft is a product of capitalism, built upon a framework designed by our government
Microsoft is a perversion of capitolism. The judge has said that what Microsoft has been up to does NOT fit within the framework designed by our government.
If you have a problem with Microsoft, then you must have one with gas companies too.
Uh, yea, actually I do. I wish I could choose the supplier of electricity and natural gas, but I can't because the company has been granted a legal and regulated monopoly by the city I live in.
What about all of the worlds other capitalistic empires - do you even care about them?
What other capitolistic empires are you talking about, please give some examples. Now show me soem evidence that any of them are engaging in the kind of systematic unethical practices that Microsoft does, and I will be happy to stand against them.
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What? In the midwest starting sysadmins make $40K? I wish.
Yep, around here they do. In Chicago they make more, but the cost of living is closer to east coast levels. The cost of living around here is probably fairly similar to Madison.
I work for a univeristy
Here is your mistake. Universities pay poorly. It is very difficult to make decent money in a college town due to the glut of people who will work for dirt. I used to work for a university (about 30 miles from where I live now), about 10 years ago, I then lived for a short time in the SF bay area, when I came back to the midwest I moved to a larger non-university town where I basically doubled what I was making at the University. In the past 10 years I have tripled my income as one would expect with experience.
(UW Madison to be precise - the biggest in the state and one of the Big 10 in the US)
A friend of mine who lives in Milwaukee makes considerably higher than that as a sysadmin with similar years of experience to yours. I should ask him what entry level people are making where he works.
The university though is the most chill work environment you could possibly have - access to equipment and knowledge like you wouldn't believe, and comes with an amazing benefits package that is topped by few private companies.
The benefits at universities are only good if they will give you a full time job. When I worked for a university, I worked full time hours, but wasn't considered full time, and I got no benefits at all. In fact that had a lot to do with my decision to get the hell out of there.
I've worked at small, mid sized and currently work for a large (Fortune 100 sized) company. Access to equipment and knowledge is good at a university, but don't knock the private sector until you've tried it.
A friend of mine still works as a sysadmin at the same university I used to work for. He has been there for over 10 years now, and he makes only about 1/2 what I do. I've tried to get him to move down here, because I could easily find a job for him making considerably more than what he gets now, but he won't budge. Its kinda sad, because he has a degree in Com Sci with a 3.9 something GPA. I never finished college, and I make twice the money.
I suppose you could find that type of work environment in smaller cutting-edge geek-shops where they know how to take care of us types... but those are in short supply here in the mid-west.
Not around here they aren't. Lots of opportunities here in that sort of shop. Lots of opportunities in general, as unemployment around here is currently at record low levels (like 2.5% or something). I recently turned down a C/C++ programmer job that paid in the 60's.
I think you'd find the situation similar in other midwestern cities like Minneapolis, Kansas City, Omaha, etc.
You are getting screwed. Starting sysadmins here in the midwest (a moderate to low cost of living area) are getting at least $40k. Experienced sysadmins are getting $50k-$65k. Sysadmin managers are getting $60-$75k.
Given what you are doing, you should be making at least double what you currently are.
Well, that is still better than it dying entirely. At any rate it may become aparent pretty quickly which fork(s) is/are viable. And I don't know how this is much different than MP3 players, of which there are a whole bunch of floating around.
After looking at this thread, it struck me that it is sort of ironic that this move by the motion picture industry (trying to intimidate people to get rid of the DeCSS code) has actually caused the code to be mirrored to more FTP sites and will probably lead to more people being curious about the code and looking at (and potentially working on) it.
SCO has had an x86 UNIX for years, and currently has two offerings, their traditional (OpenDesktop/OpenServer) and UnixWare (aquired from Novell/AT&T). Sun has been shipping Solaris on x86 for quite some time as well, and also still has Interactive UNIX (although they aren't actively marketing it anymore).
Unfortunately for the poor sods in drafting and engineering departments, too often the decisions on hardware/software are made by clueless PHB types.
many of our customers are actually moving from unix to nt (cost).
Actually, most of the people I know of that are considering or have made that move did so more because of software availability. The perception is that most of the CAD software vendors are only interested in supporting Windows. I know that perception doesn't necessarily match reality when it comes to companies like PTC and Bentley, but companies like AutoDesk definitely have pushed that message to the people who make the buying decisions.
When it comes to cost, it is also mainly a perception issue. Commercial *nix is mainly only more expensive if you compare specialized workstation hardware to generic commodity PCs. Commercial *nixes on x86 hardware are similar in cost to NT (Windows 95/98 are really not very suitable for CAD usage), and Linux on the same hardware is cheaper than even Windows 9x.
If they want one responsible party, they should pick a distribution vendor and sign up with them. Sure, a lot of people on Slashdot get pissed when a package is (often more or less just labeled as) specific to say, Red Hat, but it is better than not having the software available at all.
I have a grand time posting as an AC on Slashdot.
I read that as 'I enjoy being a troll'.
Anything I can do to make these Linux loonies
As opposed to Windows loonies.
look even further like Loonies, I will do. It's great sport, making stirring up a bunch of zealots and using them to discredit Linux.
That is a pretty transparent technique, and one by which you discredit yourself more than you help your cause.
Ok, I've heard several references to "fat Microsoft shareholders". I hold Microsoft stock and am not fat.
The word 'Fat' has more than one meaning. In the context you are using it in, it does not appear to be used to indicate that a particular person is obese, but rather that they are rich.
Also, the reference is used in a derogatory manner. Are you implying that being "fat" means you are evil or less of a human being or something?
At any rate, this whole comment comes out of left field, and has nothing to do with the message you are replying to. If you look at my posting, you will not find the word 'fat' anywhere in it. If you check my posting history you would also find me arguing that one should not take personal appearance as a sign of character in other threads, so your personal attack on me seems both out of place and unfounded.
I've also heard several references to "this can only be done by monopolistic resources". Things can be done by resources - whether or not those are obtained through monopolies is immaterial.
The point is that if a company didn't have a more or less guaranteed monopoly income stream in other markets with which to subsidize for a long time entry into other markets, they would not be able to afford to make such speculative investments. Basically, shareholders wouldn't put up with it unless the assumption is there that a company like Microsoft will eventually be able to leverage their monopoly power in one market to eventually squeeze out competition in other markets.
Are most of you people so blinded by your hatred that you will fling any epithet that comes to mind randomly in a sentence to make a point?
Are you so blinded by your love of Microsoft that you will apologize for anything they do? Just because you don't seem to have a large enough view to see how things are interrelated doesn't mean that other people are 'randomly' throwing in arguments.
Ditto with Judge Jackson's "Finding of Facts". While I don't argue any of the "facts", the language he used suggests a person as un-opinionated and unbaised as Ken Starr
Well, I don't think that is a valid comparision at all, but even giving you the benefit of the doubt you could say that perhaps, like Ken Starr, after dealing with an evasive, arrogant and sometimes outright untruthful defendant for so long, it was difficult for Judge Jackson not to be opinionated and biased. I also don't think you can definitively prove that either one of these people started out completely biased and opinionated, especially Judge Jackson. Ken Starr was essentially the prosecutor, so the fact that he was trying to get Clinton meant he was doing his job to a certain extent. It appears that in Judge Jackson's view that the government's case against Microsoft was just much more credible than Microsoft's defense. You can throw personal attacks at the judge all you want, but I don't see how that materially changes the reality of the situation.
AT&T got busted up, and in its place are a few strong baby Bells that have a monopoly over their respective areas with no hope of them leaving.
That isn't really quite true, or is just a part of the picture. The failing of the AT&T breakup, if any, seems to be that it didn't go far enough, as you pointed out, in regards to the RBOCs. Long distance service has been much more competitive and consumers have definitely benefitted there. However, the situation in local service is now changing as CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers) are entering the market. You should start to see local service improve and prices drop once the CLECs and AT&T (through their cable business) start to build their own competitive infrastructure.
People are trying to cashing on the hope that whatever's left of Microsoft will still be a profitable company.
It would probably be more profitable in smaller pieces, actually. If for no other reason than the individual peices would be less likely to keep speculatively entering further and further into divergent businesses that are unprofitable. Only a huge company that can use monopoly proceeds to subsidize unprofitable speculative ventures would be able to afford to lose money the way some of Microsoft's companies have (MSN, Slate, etc) until they can figure out a way to lock in enough customers to squeeze out competition in that market as well.
But how do they _grow_ that what makes a difference.
Well, the options I got in 1996 doubled and I cashed them in a little over a year later. Since then I've gotten two more batches of options, and the company's stock is up over $10 a share over the option price on the 1998 batch and more than that on the 1997 batch.
So I really can't say I have anything to complain about when it comes to the growth rate of my options, and it's not like I work for a startup company. Frankly I'm kinda tired of hearing all of the smugness from the Microdrones. If they think they are getting some kind of great deal there then fine, but I haven't seen anything to change my mind.
You've forgotten that Microsoft isn't the only company that gives them. I'm sitting on a fairly substantial amount of them in the company I work for as well.
Even considering stock options, I still don't think that people who do similar work to what I do at Microsoft are really paid all that much better than I am.
I think you are seeing things from a different perspective.
Undoubtedly. You make some good points, but on the whole I mostly disagree. That is fine, people are entitled to their own opinions.
First of all, in terms of OS/2 usage while there were very few individuals using it, unlike Linux...
That is very true.
There were many companies using it, unlike Linux.
That I would dispute. That may have been true in the early days of Linux, but Linux has much more of a foothold into the commercial world than even the companies themselves know. While you are right that few companies use it as their 'official' desktop, a lot of people are using it 'under the table', and like the early days of the Mac, many people have snuck it into the workplace. Furthermore the number of large companies that have accepted Linux into official roles is increasing.
Yes, Linux has been built up from a grass roots effort, which is exactly similar to Team OS/2 not having commercial support.
Not that similar at all. While TeamOS/2 may not have been officially supported, they were supporting an OS that did have commercial support from the beginning. Linux started out with absolutely no commercial support.
So in reality there had been a lot of OS/2 support up until 1996 or so.
Around here, OS/2 was effectively dead way before that, and I live in a town that has a tradition of being 'true blue'. OS/2 was a walking corpse around here by 1992 or 1993. OS/2 was doomed by two things, first the fact that most people saw it as somehow tied to the PS/2, which was a complete flop. Secondly, once Microsoft pulled out of OS/2 all of the clone vendors were afraid to support oS/2 because it was perceived as being more in IBM's interest for them to do so than theirs.
users liked the UI better.
Most users had no clue, because they never even looked at OS/2.
The resulting zealotry does not lend well because it creates an illusion of false support for a product.
I don't think that there is any illusion happening with respect to support for Linux. If anything, the support is larger than what is visible on the surface.
Market share illusions are bad, companies prefer to deal with reality.
Well, I don't necessarily buy that. Companies often seem to prefer advertising hype in large trade journals and from salespeople making deals on the golf course and offering free gifts.
At any rate, Linux was firmly rooted in reality before the hype started.
Bill Gates is a geek.
Oh please. Bill Gates is a lot of things, but I wouldn't say he is a geek. Personally, I'd say he is a megalomanical @$$hole.
If current or past poster-boys Linux Torvalds or Mark Andreesen acted that way in front of a camera, they would be praised for being authentic.
I don't know about that. They would certainly be skewered by the mainstream press, which seems to fawn over Gates primarily just because he is incredibly rich and powerful.
This forum is, needless to say, full of hypocritical jerks looking for any way to pry a knife into Microsoft
As opposed to other forums which are full of hypocritical jerks looking for a way to apologize for Microsoft. If it seems like a lot of people don't like Microsoft, you should wonder why. Microsoft only have themselves to blame.
No, but they did make some pretty sizeable contributions to the DNC (Democratic Party) over the past few years.
If only they had changed the CP/M convention of using the slash '/' for a command line parameter marker into dash '-' like UNIX instead of reversing the directory seperator character to backslash '\'. It just squicks the hell out of me every time I see backslashes in a path.
It means that Microsoft hasn't succeeded in dumbing down the market enough for 'Bob' to be a success. It means that 'Bob' will be back if Bill gets his way.
Sadly, the biggest disservice that Microsoft has done for the computer industry is that they have set expectations at such an abysmally low level. People expect to be able to get away with being totally mindless and not learning anything. People don't expect a quality product.
every large company acts like this. it's called BUSINESS
The old 'everyone does it, it must be O.K. argument. Well, sorry, it doesn't wash. Not only is it not true that every large company uses the same unethical practices as Microsoft does (especially few consistantly use all of them at once the way Microsoft does), but it is far more damaging when a company with monopolistic market share levels does it. The company I work for is one of the three largest in its business and one of the 100 largest companies in the world. We control only about 7 or 8 percent of our market. The top five companies in our industry control only about 30 percent of the market. Their is NO WAY we could do, let alone get away with the kind of things that Microsoft has been up to. Our company makes a big point about acting ethically because we need to be a company that our business partners and customers can trust. If you are a business partner of Microsoft, you can look to history to say it is highly likely they will double cross you sooner or later. If you are a Microsoft customer, you are even worse off.
Microsoft is large enough they DON'T NEED to be relentlessly ruthless all of the time, yet they keep doing it. They haven't needed to resort to unethical and/or illegal practices for years, but it seems like they just can't break out of their old habits.
Because you just died.
While the judge's opinion is good news, it is too early to celebrate and become complacent. We haven't seen the judge's recommendations for remedy yet, let alone gone thruogh all of the inevitable appeals.
We must remain vigilamt, we must not let down our guards. We must keep opposing Microsoft and their unethical tactics, or they will be back and worse than ever.
but didn't Kildall found DEC
No, he founded Digital Research. Ken Olsen founded DEC.
And then turned away IBM when they were looking for an OS?
Well, that is sorta the subject of some speculation. One of the other stories was just that he was out of town and couldn't be reached, and Bill Gates was able to persuade IBM not to wait for CP/M (he was already going to be supplying them with a BASIC interpreter for their ROM image), and that he could deliver a workalike (so he bought QD-DOS from Seattle Computing).
Heck, the stock of Microsoft's competitors (Sun, Corel, IBM, Red Hat, etc) may go up as a result of this.
Bill Gates' worth goes up no less than 20 fold what it is now!
I really don't care how much money Bill Gates has.
What *can* we do about Microsoft to make it less powerful?
What a breakup would do is to make it so that we could see competition in individual markets. We wouldn't see the product tying, and the use of monopoly power in one market to make entry into other markets. Smaller 'baby Bills' wouldn't have nearly the ability to enter every market under the sun and lose money there until they can achieve a market presence (like MSN, Slate, etc.). All of those money losing ventures that the current Microsoft keeps funding may eventually turn things around and be able to push out their competitors unless they are forced to be answerable to the bottom line of a smaller company.
And guess what? After the media finally realized that there was no real interest in OS/2, it was mostly fake interest from zealots packing ballot boxes.
You can't look at OS/2's failure as an indication of what will happen in the future. Unlike what I saw with OS/2, I've personally seen a lot of real interest in Linux and open source. I know a lot more people actually using Linux than I ever knew of people playing around with OS/2. Heck, I know about as many people who actually use *BSD as I knew people who used OS/2.
What really got the press to stop reporting on OS/2 was when Microsoft switched all of their efforts away from it and towards Windows. IBM just didn't do a very good job of promoting OS/2 after that. Unfortunately, the OS/2 zealots (like TeamOS/2) got a little carried away trying to overcompensate. On the other hand Linux is mostly a grass-roots effort, and has been since day one. There is a lot of commercial interest in it now, but that is both recent and secondary to the grass roots effort.
we have a dozen companies and no choices.
That is not true for all of us. I live out in the boondocks, and I have a choice of using the RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company) or a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) for local phone service. I have had the choice of several dozen long distance carriers for quite some time.
The breakup of AT&T has been good for most consumers, although it has taken far too long to get competition in the local exchange markets.
IIS, ASP, DCOM, COM, general development are all interesting at a minimum
Not interested, no thanks. I'll take Apache, PHP and CORBA thanks.
If you dont like Microsoft products *dont use them*,
The problem is that Microsoft goes out of their way to make contracts with the PC vendors that make it difficult for us to buy a PC without buying their products. If I don't want to use their products, I shouldn't have to pay for them.
Microsoft also goes out of their way to make their products not play nicely with other products, which makes it difficult for those of us that use other products to work with people who use Microsoft's products.
its not your job to silence them.
Microsoft has enough money to get their message out in virtually every forum they want. Linux and open source mainly only have people like us. Even with the recent commercial interest in Linux, the resources they can and have put towards promoting Linux and open source pale in comparison to Microsoft's multibillion dollar advertising budget.
If they suck, they will be gone soon enough.
The problem is that when a very large company like Microsoft uses unethical practices they can stay around an awfully long time even if they suck because they can buy out, or 'cut off the air supply' of any smaller competitor that might come along.
Microsoft is a product of capitalism, built upon a framework designed by our government
Microsoft is a perversion of capitolism. The judge has said that what Microsoft has been up to does NOT fit within the framework designed by our government.
If you have a problem with Microsoft, then you must have one with gas companies too.
Uh, yea, actually I do. I wish I could choose the supplier of electricity and natural gas, but I can't because the company has been granted a legal and regulated monopoly by the city I live in.
What about all of the worlds other capitalistic empires - do you even care about them?
What other capitolistic empires are you talking about, please give some examples. Now show me soem evidence that any of them are engaging in the kind of systematic unethical practices that Microsoft does, and I will be happy to stand against them.