Does this mean, for example, that Apple would have to have Microsoft review the source code for its Windows version of the Quicktime player? Would Oracle have to release its source?
It seems so rediculous that I can't see either one of those companies letting an outside party review thier source code. Particularly under a Microsoft-inspired initiative.
Despite the fact that the PPC 970 will be introduced at 1.8 GHz while the P4 is expected to be around 3GHz, the 970 will execute 8 instructions per cycle. I can't recall how many instructions per cycle the P4 executes but I believe it is far fewer than 8. Of the handful of articles I read about it, somebody said that the 970 would effectivly compete with a 4-6 GHz P4 as a result of the instructions per cycle efficiency of the chip.
Plus, it's gotta run cooler than a 6GHz P4 would. As a laptop owner, ignoring the superior performance potential of this chip, the cooling and power requirements alone would make me choose a 970 architecture over a Pentium.
You're living in some idealistic fantasy world. The Boomers ARE the ones in Congress. The Boomers spend thier money on political contributions Xers don't have enough to be relevant. The Boomers wield far for power, wealth and political influence than the GenXers. Politicians save thier own skins. Politicians follow the money and the power. The Boomers are the demographic that politicians pay attention to.
The Boomers created the mess with thier selfishness. I haven't seen any signs that the Boomers capacity for selfishness in going to reverse any time soon.
This is not going to change. I'll bet my paltry 401(k) on it.
Flawed assumptions by Boomers
on
Generation Wrecked
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The article mentioned that we should have all been set for life by the dot.com era. What kind of blinded logic is that? I guess all of the GenX social workers, construction laborers, accountants, bank tellers, etc. dropped everything and became programmers? I suppose the boomers temporarily filled in those positions until they came back? Newsflash. The majority of jobs are not tech jobs. The dot.com boom and bust had no direct affect to most of us.
However, many of us did go to college because it was a basic requirement to get a decent job. The Boomers got the same jobs without going to college. Here's the difference - we have to pay $50,000 up front to enter the job market where the Boomers got in for free. As a result, we can't save early enough for interest to compound and work in our favor. It used to be that parents paid for their child's college education but the Boomers have figured out that divorce works for them at the cost of their children's future irrevocably damaged. I am not knocking divorce. Some people genuinely need it. It is, however, a symptom of some sort of selfishness (i.e. adultery, substance abuse, gambling, spousal abuse, etc.) by making yourself feel good - however temporary - at the expense of others.
I'm a 33 year old GenXer with two kids. I have no credit card debt. My wife drives a '93 Lumina and I an '89 Civic. We have massive payments on student loans. We have a mortgage on a $60,000 condo. There was no freakin' way we could have saved $100,000 by now. She's a teacher and I'm a CAD technician. I am sick of people on this site telling us it's our fault we won't have enough for retirement. It's not. The rules have changed and we're trying to adapt to them the best we can.
Meanwhile the Boomers are threatening to break into the Social Security "lockbox". Our money, not theirs. Theirs is already guaranteed. Boomers aren't called the "Me" Generation for nothing.
Ach, I'm rambling and venting and none of it matters.
The only people worried about this are the ones that like skins on media players so you have no freaking clue where the minimize button is. They are also the ones that code web pages that change the color and style of your browser widgets for no apparent reason other that the fact that they can. They also bitch when companies like RedHat take the next step in unifying the desktop experience to help Linux move forward to greater acceptance.
A consistent UI is a good thing people.
Besides, why is everybody aping about how pretty Aqua is if all they want to do is change it and muck it up?
I've used AutoCAD extensively. Now I use MicroStation J. AutoCAD's is a better CAD program by far. J might compete with R12 or R13.
Remebering the days when I could use the keyboard as an input device with user-defined shortcuts no less. Not having to put up with constant screen regens and artifacts, not having crashes on a weekly basis - aaaaaah scads of Lisp routines and Bonus Tools. I could go on. Those were the days.
It's a quick overview of the Java IDE's available for OS X, namely IntelliJ's IDEA, Borland's JBuilder, Apple's Project Builder, the open source NetBeans/Sun's Forte, Eclipse from OTI and Jedit. The article was written in April so it may not be entirely current as to what's available but it should get you going.
The Mac without the Unix underpinnings would still be relegated as "toy" OS and its marketshare would be declining rather than climbing (or at least stagnating).
Unix gave the Mac credibility from some key market segments. It gave the Mac mindshare. If we chirped about OS 9 having preemtive multitasking, people would've said "about time" and rightly so. As it stands now, the Mac is now buzzword compliant and, more importantly, it has the time tested core of Unix and all of its familiar tools that scientists and sysadmins love.
If I recall correctly, the UK (particularly London) is one of the more popular places for middle eastern folk/islamic fundamentalists to live so, by using your logic, the UK funded, at least in part, the 9/11 attacks.
Sometimes I get so sick of hearing how terrible and oppressive the US is to the rest of the world.
That's all I know. Yes I know the intruction sets for the CPU's because those specs are what's important to me as a CAD technician. The optical drive isn't any more important to me than the floppy. It's how I load software and transfer files.
Let me just say first off that I'm not a Mac zealot. I fully recognize that for certain tasks, maybe even most tasks, x86 hardware is faster than Mac hardware. F U Motorola!;^).
Now that I've said that, I've got a Dell 530 MT workstation at work. It's a 1.5GHz P4 Xeon with 512 MB RAM and SCSI HD/DVD drives. Pretty nice machine, no doubt. At home I have a 667MHz/512 MB RAM PowerBook G4 laptop. It has a 5400 rpm ATA HD and an ATA CD-RW drive. Clearly not in the same class as my CAD station at work.
At work, I can rip a CD with CDex in about 16-18 minutes per disk using the SSE enabled Lame encoder. On my laptop at home, it takes less than 5 minutes to rip a CD with iTunes.
What gives? I know my Mac's got Altivec and all but shouldn't a Xeon with all that on-chip cache, SCSI interface and a clock speed and bus over twice as fast as my Mac at least be able to keep up? After that, I too began to question just how bad Intel's chips have become in the pursuit of clock speed.
There's a great article at Extreme Tech that discusses 802.11b insecurity and what you can do to make it secure enough to make it uninteresting to the casual bandwidth thief - particularly if there are enough wide open networks in the vicinity.
In a nutshell:
1. Enable WEP. Yes it can be hacked but it does add a barrier to entry that the casual wardriver won't bother with if there are other wide open networks around.
2. Change the default SSID. Don't change it to your company's name or your street address as it makes it easier to zero in on your location.
3. Disable "broadcast SSID" if your access point allows it. That way the SSID of the client must match the SSID of the access point. Having it enabled allows any SSID to be accepted.
4. Change the default password of your access point. Programs like NetStumbler display your access point MAC address which can then be used to determine what make and model your access point is. Once it's known what you've got, the default password may be easily known.
5. Control access via MAC addresses. Yes, MAC addresses can be spoofed but it requires an extra level of sophistication for the would-be bandwidth thief to get in.
6. Disable DHCP in your wireless router. Allow access via static IP's from your NIC's MAC addresses. Yes, IP addresses can be sniffed out but it's another barrier put up for the casual "drive by".
7. Change your IP subnet. If you're using a wireless router and you've disabled DHCP, change the default subnet addresses as well, otherwise it's easy to guess a valid IP address.
8. Move your access point away from windows. Move it to the center of your building to make the signal to the street that much weaker.
9. Buy access points with flashable firmware. Helps you keep up with changing security protocols rather than being stuck with the ones that came with the access point.
10. Some access point manufacturer's have non-standard security features. Orinoco access points are able to "close" thier networks by not broadcasting thier SSID. They also have additional (not 802.11b standard) authentication features such as RADIUS servers.
11. Use VPN. Virtual Private Networks add a level of encrytion and authentication to your network
Yes, these methods can all be easily circumvented to somebody that really wants to get in. As long as you try to make it a pain in the arse to get in, then the crushing masses of 802.11b networks out there that have zero barriers to entry make your little bubble a waste of time.
I see a small percentage of Xserve's making it into shops that already have Unix servers or a substantial base of Mac workstations. I don't see Apple making much headway into 100% Windows shops run by MCSE's.
People that have/allow Unix or Linux boxes in thier shops generally are more open to a wide range of technologies and have a good understanding of them.
MCSE's - oy vey. I've seen Macs running on their own separate networks because "they can't do Windows networking" or "Macs can't do DHCP" or "Macs can't ". Hell, there probably isn't a Mac user out there that hasn't heard "I hate Macs". Then you ask if they've ever used one and you get "No." Basically, if they don't know whether or not a Mac can do something or not, it's assumed they can't.
Unix sysadmins seem more open to other technology and generally better knowing how things like networks really function. MCSE's, on the other hand, know what button to push when happens and if that doesn't work, reboot. They don't really have a deep understanding of the underlying technology and generally don't keep up with computing trends. They know how to run a Windows network and "what else do I need to know, thank you" attitude.
Because of MCSE's, I just don't see Apple making inroads into the corporate server room anytime soon.
This is no Mac case. Apple wouldn't be caught dead releaseing something this pedestrian.
It's a beige box except it's not beige and it's covered in lucite. It is much nicer than standard issue cases coming out of PC manufacturers warehouses though.
Silly article and this coming from a longtime Mac user who has been on the web for 7 years and has a college degree.
In my opinion, college can make you smarter but you don't have to be smart to get a degree. Anybody that's gone to college knows this.
The reason Windows may not fare as well in a study like this is because of the crushing massess that run Windows. The intelligent ones in the Windows camp become marginalized.
Before the posts braying about how Linux/Unix is harder to use so it's users must be more intelligent start coming out remember that intelligence isn't limited to the ability to process and understand scientific/mathematic problems. There's artistic genius but how do you quanitfy something like that?
Besides, the grammar and spelling around here is so bad it sometimes makes my eyes water;o)
It's not FUD, it's fact. Pu-239 is being stored at Yucca Mountain. Yes, it gets used as fuel in reactors but today's inefficient reactors only burn 3% of the fuel - the other 97% is declared as spent and fit only for Yucca Mountain.
The current issue of National Geographic has a nice article on nuclear waste. I'd provide the link but for three times in a row, my Win2000 box here at work has bluescreened when I click on the link. Hmph.
Anyhow, I see people getting moderated up for saying that the 10000-year life span of the Yucca mountain facilities was determined by half-life.
Not true!
The 10000-year service life of the Yucca Mountain facilities was decided upon by the fact that there likely won't be a DOE to monitor the site or a government, as we know it, to control it. In a nutshell, "After 10000 years all bets are off" was the decision.
As a rule, a radioactive substance has to go through 10 half-lives to become harmless. The higher the radioactivity an element has the shorter its half-life. The converse is true as well. Plutonium has a half-life of 24000 years. 24000 x 10 = 240000 years before it becomes harmless. Uranium is less radioactive than plutonium (but still incredibly deadly) so it has a much greater half-life.
So really, for plutonium were looking at an additional 230000 years after the facilty might/will fail before its contents are harmless. Longer for the uranium.
Don't fool yourselves into thinking the facilty will be safe after its design life has expired. In fact, the Yucca Mountain facilty is only designed to last for 4.17% of the time period when the plutonium stored there will be deadly.
I guess if I were Microsoft I would want to be there to "gently reeducate" those IT guys that run MS shops but are considering Linux.
If I were an IT guy going to the show as a seeker of answers, I would see what Linux has to offer and ask people why I should switch my servers over - get their real life experiences from those that made the switch. If I were an MCSE, possibly investigate how much I'll have to learn to make the switch.
If I saw the Microsoft booth, I'd then want to ask MS why I shouldn't switch my servers over to Linux and then weigh the pros and cons in the days/weeks/months after the show, probably do a little more investigation. If the booth isn't there, I might not ever ask MS what the cons would be to making the switch.
The booth might be there to spread FUD/pro-MS information to those on the fence about considering Linux for their servers or recommending Linux to their bosses.
Plus it doesn't hurt when some kid is mooning your booth while you're talking to one of these on-the-fence guys so you can say "You're gonna trust your company's servers to these kids?"
I'll never understand why people think Apple sucks or is dead or should be dead if they don't change the face of computing every two years. Why not point this harsh look at innovation (or lack thereof) at Dell. The biggest thing Dell has done recently is change their case from beige to black. Did they develop an OS? No. Did they develop the hardware? No. The only thing they've developed is the case and they plug off-the-shelf components into it. Whoopee. What about Microsoft? They've got 42 billion in the bank yet nary a mention of their responsibility to innovate and change the industry.
Dvorak is the guy that asks his son why he didn't get an A+ when the kid brings home an A.
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Does this mean, for example, that Apple would have to have Microsoft review the source code for its Windows version of the Quicktime player? Would Oracle have to release its source?
It seems so rediculous that I can't see either one of those companies letting an outside party review thier source code. Particularly under a Microsoft-inspired initiative.
Despite the fact that the PPC 970 will be introduced at 1.8 GHz while the P4 is expected to be around 3GHz, the 970 will execute 8 instructions per cycle. I can't recall how many instructions per cycle the P4 executes but I believe it is far fewer than 8. Of the handful of articles I read about it, somebody said that the 970 would effectivly compete with a 4-6 GHz P4 as a result of the instructions per cycle efficiency of the chip.
Plus, it's gotta run cooler than a 6GHz P4 would. As a laptop owner, ignoring the superior performance potential of this chip, the cooling and power requirements alone would make me choose a 970 architecture over a Pentium.
Get a clue.
You're living in some idealistic fantasy world. The Boomers ARE the ones in Congress. The Boomers spend thier money on political contributions Xers don't have enough to be relevant. The Boomers wield far for power, wealth and political influence than the GenXers. Politicians save thier own skins. Politicians follow the money and the power. The Boomers are the demographic that politicians pay attention to.
The Boomers created the mess with thier selfishness. I haven't seen any signs that the Boomers capacity for selfishness in going to reverse any time soon.
This is not going to change. I'll bet my paltry 401(k) on it.
The article mentioned that we should have all been set for life by the dot.com era. What kind of blinded logic is that? I guess all of the GenX social workers, construction laborers, accountants, bank tellers, etc. dropped everything and became programmers? I suppose the boomers temporarily filled in those positions until they came back? Newsflash. The majority of jobs are not tech jobs. The dot.com boom and bust had no direct affect to most of us.
However, many of us did go to college because it was a basic requirement to get a decent job. The Boomers got the same jobs without going to college. Here's the difference - we have to pay $50,000 up front to enter the job market where the Boomers got in for free. As a result, we can't save early enough for interest to compound and work in our favor. It used to be that parents paid for their child's college education but the Boomers have figured out that divorce works for them at the cost of their children's future irrevocably damaged. I am not knocking divorce. Some people genuinely need it. It is, however, a symptom of some sort of selfishness (i.e. adultery, substance abuse, gambling, spousal abuse, etc.) by making yourself feel good - however temporary - at the expense of others.
I'm a 33 year old GenXer with two kids. I have no credit card debt. My wife drives a '93 Lumina and I an '89 Civic. We have massive payments on student loans. We have a mortgage on a $60,000 condo. There was no freakin' way we could have saved $100,000 by now. She's a teacher and I'm a CAD technician. I am sick of people on this site telling us it's our fault we won't have enough for retirement. It's not. The rules have changed and we're trying to adapt to them the best we can.
Meanwhile the Boomers are threatening to break into the Social Security "lockbox". Our money, not theirs. Theirs is already guaranteed. Boomers aren't called the "Me" Generation for nothing.
Ach, I'm rambling and venting and none of it matters.
The only people worried about this are the ones that like skins on media players so you have no freaking clue where the minimize button is. They are also the ones that code web pages that change the color and style of your browser widgets for no apparent reason other that the fact that they can. They also bitch when companies like RedHat take the next step in unifying the desktop experience to help Linux move forward to greater acceptance.
A consistent UI is a good thing people.
Besides, why is everybody aping about how pretty Aqua is if all they want to do is change it and muck it up?
I've used AutoCAD extensively. Now I use MicroStation J. AutoCAD's is a better CAD program by far. J might compete with R12 or R13.
Remebering the days when I could use the keyboard as an input device with user-defined shortcuts no less. Not having to put up with constant screen regens and artifacts, not having crashes on a weekly basis - aaaaaah scads of Lisp routines and Bonus Tools. I could go on. Those were the days.
Perhaps Linux is bankrupt in a sense but one thing is for certain, Linux is not morally bankrupt. Be honest, can you say the same Steve?
Check out the O'Reilly Network here:
6 /o sx_java.html
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/04/1
It's a quick overview of the Java IDE's available for OS X, namely IntelliJ's IDEA, Borland's JBuilder, Apple's Project Builder, the open source NetBeans/Sun's Forte, Eclipse from OTI and Jedit. The article was written in April so it may not be entirely current as to what's available but it should get you going.
The Mac without the Unix underpinnings would still be relegated as "toy" OS and its marketshare would be declining rather than climbing (or at least stagnating).
Unix gave the Mac credibility from some key market segments. It gave the Mac mindshare. If we chirped about OS 9 having preemtive multitasking, people would've said "about time" and rightly so. As it stands now, the Mac is now buzzword compliant and, more importantly, it has the time tested core of Unix and all of its familiar tools that scientists and sysadmins love.
One was an uncontrollable natural disaster.
The other was a deliberate act of evil and hatred formed and nurtured in the hearts and minds of our fellow men.
There's a difference. If you don't get it, then no amount of explaining will help.
If I recall correctly, the UK (particularly London) is one of the more popular places for middle eastern folk/islamic fundamentalists to live so, by using your logic, the UK funded, at least in part, the 9/11 attacks.
Sometimes I get so sick of hearing how terrible and oppressive the US is to the rest of the world.
My PB CD-RW = 8x
Dell DVD = 16x
That's all I know. Yes I know the intruction sets for the CPU's because those specs are what's important to me as a CAD technician. The optical drive isn't any more important to me than the floppy. It's how I load software and transfer files.
Let me just say first off that I'm not a Mac zealot. I fully recognize that for certain tasks, maybe even most tasks, x86 hardware is faster than Mac hardware. F U Motorola! ;^).
Now that I've said that, I've got a Dell 530 MT workstation at work. It's a 1.5GHz P4 Xeon with 512 MB RAM and SCSI HD/DVD drives. Pretty nice machine, no doubt. At home I have a 667MHz/512 MB RAM PowerBook G4 laptop. It has a 5400 rpm ATA HD and an ATA CD-RW drive. Clearly not in the same class as my CAD station at work.
At work, I can rip a CD with CDex in about 16-18 minutes per disk using the SSE enabled Lame encoder. On my laptop at home, it takes less than 5 minutes to rip a CD with iTunes.
What gives? I know my Mac's got Altivec and all but shouldn't a Xeon with all that on-chip cache, SCSI interface and a clock speed and bus over twice as fast as my Mac at least be able to keep up? After that, I too began to question just how bad Intel's chips have become in the pursuit of clock speed.
There's a great article at Extreme Tech that discusses 802.11b insecurity and what you can do to make it secure enough to make it uninteresting to the casual bandwidth thief - particularly if there are enough wide open networks in the vicinity.
In a nutshell:
1. Enable WEP. Yes it can be hacked but it does add a barrier to entry that the casual wardriver won't bother with if there are other wide open networks around.
2. Change the default SSID. Don't change it to your company's name or your street address as it makes it easier to zero in on your location.
3. Disable "broadcast SSID" if your access point allows it. That way the SSID of the client must match the SSID of the access point. Having it enabled allows any SSID to be accepted.
4. Change the default password of your access point. Programs like NetStumbler display your access point MAC address which can then be used to determine what make and model your access point is. Once it's known what you've got, the default password may be easily known.
5. Control access via MAC addresses. Yes, MAC addresses can be spoofed but it requires an extra level of sophistication for the would-be bandwidth thief to get in.
6. Disable DHCP in your wireless router. Allow access via static IP's from your NIC's MAC addresses. Yes, IP addresses can be sniffed out but it's another barrier put up for the casual "drive by".
7. Change your IP subnet. If you're using a wireless router and you've disabled DHCP, change the default subnet addresses as well, otherwise it's easy to guess a valid IP address.
8. Move your access point away from windows. Move it to the center of your building to make the signal to the street that much weaker.
9. Buy access points with flashable firmware. Helps you keep up with changing security protocols rather than being stuck with the ones that came with the access point.
10. Some access point manufacturer's have non-standard security features. Orinoco access points are able to "close" thier networks by not broadcasting thier SSID. They also have additional (not 802.11b standard) authentication features such as RADIUS servers.
11. Use VPN. Virtual Private Networks add a level of encrytion and authentication to your network
Yes, these methods can all be easily circumvented to somebody that really wants to get in. As long as you try to make it a pain in the arse to get in, then the crushing masses of 802.11b networks out there that have zero barriers to entry make your little bubble a waste of time.
10.1 was code-named Puma so you can't necessarily infer that because it has a code name that it will be a pay for release.
I don't think Apple is so stupid as to release full upgrades on a 4 or five month release schedule.
I see a small percentage of Xserve's making it into shops that already have Unix servers or a substantial base of Mac workstations. I don't see Apple making much headway into 100% Windows shops run by MCSE's.
People that have/allow Unix or Linux boxes in thier shops generally are more open to a wide range of technologies and have a good understanding of them.
MCSE's - oy vey. I've seen Macs running on their own separate networks because "they can't do Windows networking" or "Macs can't do DHCP" or "Macs can't ". Hell, there probably isn't a Mac user out there that hasn't heard "I hate Macs". Then you ask if they've ever used one and you get "No." Basically, if they don't know whether or not a Mac can do something or not, it's assumed they can't.
Unix sysadmins seem more open to other technology and generally better knowing how things like networks really function. MCSE's, on the other hand, know what button to push when happens and if that doesn't work, reboot. They don't really have a deep understanding of the underlying technology and generally don't keep up with computing trends. They know how to run a Windows network and "what else do I need to know, thank you" attitude.
Because of MCSE's, I just don't see Apple making inroads into the corporate server room anytime soon.
I think I see a trend forming here. The 16:10 "Golden Ratio" iMac screen and the $100 per year "Golden Shower" .Mac services.
This is no Mac case. Apple wouldn't be caught dead releaseing something this pedestrian.
It's a beige box except it's not beige and it's covered in lucite. It is much nicer than standard issue cases coming out of PC manufacturers warehouses though.
PC case, yes. Mac case,no.
Silly article and this coming from a longtime Mac user who has been on the web for 7 years and has a college degree.
In my opinion, college can make you smarter but you don't have to be smart to get a degree. Anybody that's gone to college knows this.
The reason Windows may not fare as well in a study like this is because of the crushing massess that run Windows. The intelligent ones in the Windows camp become marginalized.
Before the posts braying about how Linux/Unix is harder to use so it's users must be more intelligent start coming out remember that intelligence isn't limited to the ability to process and understand scientific/mathematic problems. There's artistic genius but how do you quanitfy something like that?
Besides, the grammar and spelling around here is so bad it sometimes makes my eyes water ;o)
Current issue of National Geographic. Written by a former military man like yourself.
Admittedly, having no first hand experience with reactors myself, I have researched the subject in my college years and find it a fascinating field.
I assume NatGeo is a respectable enough source to have checked the facts before publishing the article.
It's not FUD, it's fact. Pu-239 is being stored at Yucca Mountain. Yes, it gets used as fuel in reactors but today's inefficient reactors only burn 3% of the fuel - the other 97% is declared as spent and fit only for Yucca Mountain.
Your ignorance doesn't make it my FUD.
The current issue of National Geographic has a nice article on nuclear waste. I'd provide the link but for three times in a row, my Win2000 box here at work has bluescreened when I click on the link. Hmph.
Anyhow, I see people getting moderated up for saying that the 10000-year life span of the Yucca mountain facilities was determined by half-life.
Not true!
The 10000-year service life of the Yucca Mountain facilities was decided upon by the fact that there likely won't be a DOE to monitor the site or a government, as we know it, to control it. In a nutshell, "After 10000 years all bets are off" was the decision.
As a rule, a radioactive substance has to go through 10 half-lives to become harmless. The higher the radioactivity an element has the shorter its half-life. The converse is true as well. Plutonium has a half-life of 24000 years. 24000 x 10 = 240000 years before it becomes harmless. Uranium is less radioactive than plutonium (but still incredibly deadly) so it has a much greater half-life.
So really, for plutonium were looking at an additional 230000 years after the facilty might/will fail before its contents are harmless. Longer for the uranium.
Don't fool yourselves into thinking the facilty will be safe after its design life has expired. In fact, the Yucca Mountain facilty is only designed to last for 4.17% of the time period when the plutonium stored there will be deadly.
Is it me or sometime soon are we going to have to plug our computers into the 220 socket where the washing machine used to be?
;o)
Besides, who needs clean clothes when your getting 200 fps
I guess if I were Microsoft I would want to be there to "gently reeducate" those IT guys that run MS shops but are considering Linux.
If I were an IT guy going to the show as a seeker of answers, I would see what Linux has to offer and ask people why I should switch my servers over - get their real life experiences from those that made the switch. If I were an MCSE, possibly investigate how much I'll have to learn to make the switch.
If I saw the Microsoft booth, I'd then want to ask MS why I shouldn't switch my servers over to Linux and then weigh the pros and cons in the days/weeks/months after the show, probably do a little more investigation. If the booth isn't there, I might not ever ask MS what the cons would be to making the switch.
The booth might be there to spread FUD/pro-MS information to those on the fence about considering Linux for their servers or recommending Linux to their bosses.
Plus it doesn't hurt when some kid is mooning your booth while you're talking to one of these on-the-fence guys so you can say "You're gonna trust your company's servers to these kids?"
I'll never understand why people think Apple sucks or is dead or should be dead if they don't change the face of computing every two years. Why not point this harsh look at innovation (or lack thereof) at Dell. The biggest thing Dell has done recently is change their case from beige to black. Did they develop an OS? No. Did they develop the hardware? No. The only thing they've developed is the case and they plug off-the-shelf components into it. Whoopee. What about Microsoft? They've got 42 billion in the bank yet nary a mention of their responsibility to innovate and change the industry.
Dvorak is the guy that asks his son why he didn't get an A+ when the kid brings home an A.