"Put the employees first, the customers second and the shareholders last."
You sure it wasn't in Hebrew? I think they were supposed to read it backwards. Would make much more sense...
What's funny is that I am able to access Moffat's biography just fine on the IBM Website. It's from July 2008 though. I dunno if there was a newer version, but it's there nevertheless.
Rephrasing ESRB's notice: "The Internet can be a dangerous place". Rating online gaming experience equals them attempting to rate my ability to understand this statement. Which they can't do.
They're not lagging behind modern times, they're just flat-out telling us the truth: online interactions can't be rated.
One would laughingly dismiss the statement saying "Accessing Internet via Opera is always safe" or "Yahoo Messenger rating: TEEN". It would be careless, stupid and would take away all trust in the company making those statements. So they wisely stay away of moving sands.
Yeah, but some comments emphasize on this software as allowing non-tech people to create interesting images. Well, not for now. Unless there's a nice easy GUI attached. I know this is just "proof of concept", but the video says something about the "intuitive user interface". Hmm, maybe it's just me, but I am still to try one:)
I agree. Furthermore, if we stop thinking like slashdotters ("oh, the sheer simplicity of burning an ISO...") we end up realizing that there's a huge percentage of people out there who barely know which side up should the disc be inserted into the drive. And I don't mean to bully their lack of tech knowledge. They deserve having this option, and rest assured they won't install/upgrade the OS themselves. They'll call someone and ask them to do it.
Anyway, I would like for everyone to be able to opt out (download the OS or get the physical disc). Would make everything more fair.
I wonder who verifies those polls. Not related to the number of respondents but how are the questions being phrased/asked.
I would take those marketers to a turkish bazaar, where sellers grab you by hands and drag you to their stores, even if you just want to pass by to a meeting or something. Leave them there for a couple days and then check back with them. Maybe this would change their opinions...
Onboard GPUs don't have PhysX unless they belong to the list here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_gpus.html
Now don't get me wrong, I too think this is a shitty move, but I'd scream more for SLi Support on Intel Motherboards over this. IMO we're annoyed by the lesser evil here.
@techno-vampire: "How many Windows users do you know who can go a full day without rebooting their main desktop at least once?" - a lot, but none is Average Joe. Also, please keep in mind that Averag Joe turns his machine off when going to sleep or going out. So uptime doesn't really matter.
"there are 3D games written for Linux, such as OpenArena, and they work Just Fine" - of course there are, but I don't even dare comparing Windows gaming vs. Linux gaming in terms of games availability.
@walshy007: By Average joe I mean someone who installs a piece of software every now and then and knows how to install it (is able to go through that next/next/don't install this crappy ad/next/finish chain). 7 year old girls and 70 year old grandparents are not average joes, they're extremes, meaning they are people who need nothing more than write some text, check e-mail, visit websites and draw some flowers in Gimp (or MSPaint). Such extremes would do fine using any operating system, may it be *nix, Windows or Mac OS-based.
In the end, it only matters how you start; kids who started with Linux and were interested enough to get past the most basic usage now know a LOT more Linux than I do, but are pretty impaired while trying to configure TCP/IP or uninstall an application under Windows. Applies to the other side as well.
"Right now, I'm running Fedora 10, with 27 days up uptime"
Right now, I'm running Windows 7 on my main machine, with close to 85 days uptime. It might look like a pissing contest, but I'm merely pointing out that this "feature" has no meaning. Are we talking IT-savvy people or Average Joes as targets for the ad?
"Both of our boxes are crisp, responsive and unhindered either by malware or the band-aids needed to keep malware off of our systems."
I do have an antivirus installed on Windows machines, but they are still crisp, responsive and I can play great 3D Games on them too:). Again, the statement that an antivirus/antispyware solution makes your machine sluggish is... misleading to say the least. Yes, there are such solutions that plainly suck and take up lots of resources. But yet again, there are a lot which don't.
Now on to the ad:
Saying that Linux doesn't need any kind of virus protection is a VERY VERY dangerous statement. You always need ANY kind of protection you can get for your Operating System. "The number of malicious programsâ"including viruses, Trojans, and other threatsâ"specifically written for Linux has been on the increase in recent years and more than doubled during 2005 from 422 to 863" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware). I know that this number is very very small, but if it's above 0, you will need some sort of protection, for your own data's sake, unless you don't give a rat's ass.
Ultimately, ending on a funnier note:
Linux enthusiasts, 1993: "It sucks for the Average Joe, but wait till next year"
Linux enthusiasts, 2009: "It sucks for the Average Joe, but wait till next year"
That pretty much sums it up.
One fly in the ointment... At some point businesses will start to home-grow in India and China, and decide that those overpaid (formerly US) multinational executives are an unnecessary expense - and jettison them
It has been happening already. Maybe best known example is Wipro.
As always, Microsoft seems one step behind. It's not necesarily a bad thing (given they can learn from competition's mistakes instead of their own), but it would be a good idea to become proactive instead of reactive for a change. This century would be a good time to start.
"They'll play Spore and Civilization[...] and learn 3D modeling in Maya" - I can hear those kids talking to each other while building the Spore Ultimate Monster:
"Hey, Mark, look at this. I added an extended primitive to the hierarchical view and applied this r0xx0rz Blinn material with 75% specular lighting, and now it looks just like Samantha from the 7th".
I'll have such nightmares for the rest of my life.
Now seriously, it's a good thing, but remember it always takes two to tango; kids may be bright, but if the teaching method is boring and the teacher is a nerd like me, I fear their concentration will shift from learning something to mindless jumping around in Spore.
Now let me rephrase what the article says: "plot and graphics are not critical to the success of SOME video games". There. I added one word and it starts to make a lot more sense.
There are games and games, and also there are genres and genres. One study can't get an universal conclusion for ALL games (some tried but abandoned all hope after repeatedly getting 42 as the answer).
Now I didn't conduct any study, but as a personal opinion, I think that:
- For pure FPS games like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike, what matters is the "boom" experience. throw in countless killing methods and some big ass guns and you're through.
- For Single Player RPGs, whether they feature First Person, Third Person or isometric views, it's the background/story/immersion level that counts.
- For browser-based MMOs, their success heavily depends on speed. Any such game where it takes 5 seconds to get from one page/view to the next one is doomed.
- Client/Server MMOs are wanted if they fit YOU, the gamer. There is no specific gold-paved road to success here. Maybe, maybe it's the amount of metagaming available. ...and so on. There are lots of categories, and any study trying to get all under one umbrella will yield 42 as the ultimate answer:)
To conclude: Plot and graphics ARE critical to a game's success if it doesn't excel in other categories (see Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, The Witcher); but again, people won't give a shit about plot and graphics sometimes (see Earthworm Jim 2, Worms, OGame.org, Counterstrike).
I'm thinking of this switch from another point of view. Although it's difficult to calculate exactly, each software switch comes with a cost, and by that I don't mean costs for pushing this to employees' machines, but productivity costs associated with getting used to a different Office Suite.
- All those guys who were creating nice PPT presentations for customers now need to do it in some other way;
- All those guys who used to create nice pie charts in Excel now need to use another app to make them;
etc., etc.
The above come with a price tag attached. And consider 2 weeks worth of accommodation (and I am wildly optimistic by saying that), that's 2 weeks of salaries paid to those people during which they are unproductive. It might indirectly cost IBM more than the bunch of licensing costs that they were trying to save. And even whether IBM is an IT company, it surely holds a large amount of not-so-technical employees who will have a hard time adapting to Lotus Symphony.
I would take a wild guess and say that in the end it's costing IBM more to make the switch than not to make it. But then again, maybe those extra learning costs have somehow been accounted for and they're seen as hidden productivity costs that will go away eventually.
(I wonder whether it's all just a pissing contest between large companies from a high management's point of view...)
What I have seen missing in most Open Source apps in the design-to-release process is UAT. That's User Acceptance Testing. A lot of open-source apps do have the "by developers, for developers" look, that translates to awkward GUI, weird button locations, strange button titles and so on. In other words, it's as if nobody cared what users would think of the app while they use it. App makers should have this goal in mind while they develop and construct the app, but they often overlook this approach and concentrate on functionality.
Having a plethora of abilities/config options don't make an app desirable, as long as a regular user is dissatisfied with the application's look and feel.
However, I have seen and used a sum of closed source apps which also lack proper UAT. Maybe this is where higher management thinks cutting costs should come in. I think they're wrong but who am I to judge?
Now hold your horses for a bit. Windows's built-in filesharing is fine; depends how you use it to make it a lousy or good tool. As I said above as a direct reply to main comment, Total Commander would do the trick just fine. But if you really want to get nerdy, use FTP. Either case provides me as much speed as possible (limited by NIC's speed or if I use Gigabit, by HDD's writing speed), without fgoing the 31337 way and OpenSSH my way to avoid being considered stupid by someone on slashdot.org:)
Oh but I do understand statistics. And never in the discussed article is there a mention of these machines being randomly picked. By comparing numbers, I merely pointed out that no matter the size, if you have a closed or partly closed environment, you would end up having inconsistent or misleading statistics. So we kind of agree:)
Let's talk random samples. If all slashdotters would install a piece of monitoring software that would mine site usage statistics, the charts will likely point out Slashdot.org as one of the most visited website of all. The exo.performance.network tool is "a community-based monitoring tool" - therefore it's not a random sample. Wakoopa.com still doesn't offer a random sample, although much larger considering its user base (which again, doesn't really matter).
And yes, I understand your point, if you have a random sample of over 10,000 units, confidence is great. But what I am questioning here is: how do you make sure that's a random sample? Where's the borderline between "this IS a random sample" and "this is NOT a random sample"?
Jumping back to my company, if I would tell you that my tool monitors 170K+ machines from all around the world (which is true) but forget to mention that all those machines belong to the same company, would you trust my random sample? I bet you would.
Website's main page says "enables InfoWorld readers to monitor system, process, and network performance" - InfoWorld readers might have a lot more in common than employees from my company:) Then again, they may not. But none of us is SURE about either case.
Totally agree. And even whether it's 20K PCs, as the linked article says, I'd still not represent anything. Think about this: my company has 85000+ employees, and almost each of them have 2 machines (at least). Installing a reporting tool such as this on each machine will bring up wildly different results, reported by a much larger user base, and still would not be relevant at all. Why? because it's a closed environment, where necessities and limitations prevail. The charts look great, but their value is 0.
If they're going to offer the same kind of music that's pounding your ears on all the mainstream radio stations, it's going to be largely useless, no matter the price. If I tune to a mainstream radio using my cell phone and I get the same 10-15 songs over and over again, then why should I buy them online? On a more general idea, this applies to each and every online music store out there: if you don't have a large database of songs that cover underground as well as mainstream tastes, then, well, lots of people would stick to the old way.
Slashdot Mirror
"Put the employees first, the customers second and the shareholders last."
You sure it wasn't in Hebrew? I think they were supposed to read it backwards. Would make much more sense...
What's funny is that I am able to access Moffat's biography just fine on the IBM Website. It's from July 2008 though. I dunno if there was a newer version, but it's there nevertheless.
Rephrasing ESRB's notice: "The Internet can be a dangerous place". Rating online gaming experience equals them attempting to rate my ability to understand this statement. Which they can't do.
They're not lagging behind modern times, they're just flat-out telling us the truth: online interactions can't be rated.
One would laughingly dismiss the statement saying "Accessing Internet via Opera is always safe" or "Yahoo Messenger rating: TEEN". It would be careless, stupid and would take away all trust in the company making those statements. So they wisely stay away of moving sands.
Epic chairs, epic beds and heroic toilet bowls to name a few...
Yeah, but some comments emphasize on this software as allowing non-tech people to create interesting images. Well, not for now. Unless there's a nice easy GUI attached. I know this is just "proof of concept", but the video says something about the "intuitive user interface". Hmm, maybe it's just me, but I am still to try one :)
See, that's why they got their accounts hacked. I use 67890 on all my accounts so I'm sure they'll never get hacked :)
I agree. Furthermore, if we stop thinking like slashdotters ("oh, the sheer simplicity of burning an ISO...") we end up realizing that there's a huge percentage of people out there who barely know which side up should the disc be inserted into the drive. And I don't mean to bully their lack of tech knowledge. They deserve having this option, and rest assured they won't install/upgrade the OS themselves. They'll call someone and ask them to do it.
Anyway, I would like for everyone to be able to opt out (download the OS or get the physical disc). Would make everything more fair.
I wonder who verifies those polls. Not related to the number of respondents but how are the questions being phrased/asked.
I would take those marketers to a turkish bazaar, where sellers grab you by hands and drag you to their stores, even if you just want to pass by to a meeting or something. Leave them there for a couple days and then check back with them. Maybe this would change their opinions...
Onboard GPUs don't have PhysX unless they belong to the list here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_gpus.html
Now don't get me wrong, I too think this is a shitty move, but I'd scream more for SLi Support on Intel Motherboards over this. IMO we're annoyed by the lesser evil here.
Y'know, "stable" work gets me thinking of horses and a barn...
(Disclaimer: I work in IT as well...)
@techno-vampire: "How many Windows users do you know who can go a full day without rebooting their main desktop at least once?" - a lot, but none is Average Joe. Also, please keep in mind that Averag Joe turns his machine off when going to sleep or going out. So uptime doesn't really matter.
"there are 3D games written for Linux, such as OpenArena, and they work Just Fine" - of course there are, but I don't even dare comparing Windows gaming vs. Linux gaming in terms of games availability.
@walshy007: By Average joe I mean someone who installs a piece of software every now and then and knows how to install it (is able to go through that next/next/don't install this crappy ad/next/finish chain). 7 year old girls and 70 year old grandparents are not average joes, they're extremes, meaning they are people who need nothing more than write some text, check e-mail, visit websites and draw some flowers in Gimp (or MSPaint). Such extremes would do fine using any operating system, may it be *nix, Windows or Mac OS-based.
In the end, it only matters how you start; kids who started with Linux and were interested enough to get past the most basic usage now know a LOT more Linux than I do, but are pretty impaired while trying to configure TCP/IP or uninstall an application under Windows. Applies to the other side as well.
"Right now, I'm running Fedora 10, with 27 days up uptime" :). Again, the statement that an antivirus/antispyware solution makes your machine sluggish is... misleading to say the least. Yes, there are such solutions that plainly suck and take up lots of resources. But yet again, there are a lot which don't.
Right now, I'm running Windows 7 on my main machine, with close to 85 days uptime. It might look like a pissing contest, but I'm merely pointing out that this "feature" has no meaning. Are we talking IT-savvy people or Average Joes as targets for the ad?
"Both of our boxes are crisp, responsive and unhindered either by malware or the band-aids needed to keep malware off of our systems."
I do have an antivirus installed on Windows machines, but they are still crisp, responsive and I can play great 3D Games on them too
Now on to the ad:
Saying that Linux doesn't need any kind of virus protection is a VERY VERY dangerous statement. You always need ANY kind of protection you can get for your Operating System. "The number of malicious programsâ"including viruses, Trojans, and other threatsâ"specifically written for Linux has been on the increase in recent years and more than doubled during 2005 from 422 to 863" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware). I know that this number is very very small, but if it's above 0, you will need some sort of protection, for your own data's sake, unless you don't give a rat's ass.
Ultimately, ending on a funnier note:
Linux enthusiasts, 1993: "It sucks for the Average Joe, but wait till next year"
Linux enthusiasts, 2009: "It sucks for the Average Joe, but wait till next year"
That pretty much sums it up.
One fly in the ointment... At some point businesses will start to home-grow in India and China, and decide that those overpaid (formerly US) multinational executives are an unnecessary expense - and jettison them
It has been happening already. Maybe best known example is Wipro.
As always, Microsoft seems one step behind. It's not necesarily a bad thing (given they can learn from competition's mistakes instead of their own), but it would be a good idea to become proactive instead of reactive for a change. This century would be a good time to start.
I'm assuming all of the above, but it could as well be any.
"They'll play Spore and Civilization[...] and learn 3D modeling in Maya" - I can hear those kids talking to each other while building the Spore Ultimate Monster:
"Hey, Mark, look at this. I added an extended primitive to the hierarchical view and applied this r0xx0rz Blinn material with 75% specular lighting, and now it looks just like Samantha from the 7th".
I'll have such nightmares for the rest of my life.
Now seriously, it's a good thing, but remember it always takes two to tango; kids may be bright, but if the teaching method is boring and the teacher is a nerd like me, I fear their concentration will shift from learning something to mindless jumping around in Spore.
Now let me rephrase what the article says: "plot and graphics are not critical to the success of SOME video games". There. I added one word and it starts to make a lot more sense.
...and so on. There are lots of categories, and any study trying to get all under one umbrella will yield 42 as the ultimate answer :)
There are games and games, and also there are genres and genres. One study can't get an universal conclusion for ALL games (some tried but abandoned all hope after repeatedly getting 42 as the answer).
Now I didn't conduct any study, but as a personal opinion, I think that:
- For pure FPS games like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike, what matters is the "boom" experience. throw in countless killing methods and some big ass guns and you're through.
- For Single Player RPGs, whether they feature First Person, Third Person or isometric views, it's the background/story/immersion level that counts.
- For browser-based MMOs, their success heavily depends on speed. Any such game where it takes 5 seconds to get from one page/view to the next one is doomed.
- Client/Server MMOs are wanted if they fit YOU, the gamer. There is no specific gold-paved road to success here. Maybe, maybe it's the amount of metagaming available.
To conclude: Plot and graphics ARE critical to a game's success if it doesn't excel in other categories (see Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, The Witcher); but again, people won't give a shit about plot and graphics sometimes (see Earthworm Jim 2, Worms, OGame.org, Counterstrike).
I'm thinking of this switch from another point of view. Although it's difficult to calculate exactly, each software switch comes with a cost, and by that I don't mean costs for pushing this to employees' machines, but productivity costs associated with getting used to a different Office Suite.
- All those guys who were creating nice PPT presentations for customers now need to do it in some other way;
- All those guys who used to create nice pie charts in Excel now need to use another app to make them;
etc., etc.
The above come with a price tag attached. And consider 2 weeks worth of accommodation (and I am wildly optimistic by saying that), that's 2 weeks of salaries paid to those people during which they are unproductive. It might indirectly cost IBM more than the bunch of licensing costs that they were trying to save. And even whether IBM is an IT company, it surely holds a large amount of not-so-technical employees who will have a hard time adapting to Lotus Symphony.
I would take a wild guess and say that in the end it's costing IBM more to make the switch than not to make it. But then again, maybe those extra learning costs have somehow been accounted for and they're seen as hidden productivity costs that will go away eventually.
(I wonder whether it's all just a pissing contest between large companies from a high management's point of view...)
What I have seen missing in most Open Source apps in the design-to-release process is UAT. That's User Acceptance Testing. A lot of open-source apps do have the "by developers, for developers" look, that translates to awkward GUI, weird button locations, strange button titles and so on. In other words, it's as if nobody cared what users would think of the app while they use it. App makers should have this goal in mind while they develop and construct the app, but they often overlook this approach and concentrate on functionality.
Having a plethora of abilities/config options don't make an app desirable, as long as a regular user is dissatisfied with the application's look and feel.
However, I have seen and used a sum of closed source apps which also lack proper UAT. Maybe this is where higher management thinks cutting costs should come in. I think they're wrong but who am I to judge?
Seems Oracle is willing to spend more on almost any domain except own employees salaries. Not a wise approach if you ask me.
Now hold your horses for a bit. Windows's built-in filesharing is fine; depends how you use it to make it a lousy or good tool. As I said above as a direct reply to main comment, Total Commander would do the trick just fine. But if you really want to get nerdy, use FTP. Either case provides me as much speed as possible (limited by NIC's speed or if I use Gigabit, by HDD's writing speed), without fgoing the 31337 way and OpenSSH my way to avoid being considered stupid by someone on slashdot.org :)
Total Commander FTW.
:D
Oh but I do understand statistics. And never in the discussed article is there a mention of these machines being randomly picked. By comparing numbers, I merely pointed out that no matter the size, if you have a closed or partly closed environment, you would end up having inconsistent or misleading statistics. So we kind of agree :)
Let's talk random samples. If all slashdotters would install a piece of monitoring software that would mine site usage statistics, the charts will likely point out Slashdot.org as one of the most visited website of all. The exo.performance.network tool is "a community-based monitoring tool" - therefore it's not a random sample. Wakoopa.com still doesn't offer a random sample, although much larger considering its user base (which again, doesn't really matter).
And yes, I understand your point, if you have a random sample of over 10,000 units, confidence is great. But what I am questioning here is: how do you make sure that's a random sample? Where's the borderline between "this IS a random sample" and "this is NOT a random sample"?
Jumping back to my company, if I would tell you that my tool monitors 170K+ machines from all around the world (which is true) but forget to mention that all those machines belong to the same company, would you trust my random sample? I bet you would.
Website's main page says "enables InfoWorld readers to monitor system, process, and network performance" - InfoWorld readers might have a lot more in common than employees from my company :) Then again, they may not. But none of us is SURE about either case.
Totally agree. And even whether it's 20K PCs, as the linked article says, I'd still not represent anything. Think about this: my company has 85000+ employees, and almost each of them have 2 machines (at least). Installing a reporting tool such as this on each machine will bring up wildly different results, reported by a much larger user base, and still would not be relevant at all. Why? because it's a closed environment, where necessities and limitations prevail. The charts look great, but their value is 0.
If they're going to offer the same kind of music that's pounding your ears on all the mainstream radio stations, it's going to be largely useless, no matter the price. If I tune to a mainstream radio using my cell phone and I get the same 10-15 songs over and over again, then why should I buy them online? On a more general idea, this applies to each and every online music store out there: if you don't have a large database of songs that cover underground as well as mainstream tastes, then, well, lots of people would stick to the old way.