Both Oracle and IBM would disagree with you that SQL Server BI isn't disruptive. They have both lost many accounts to it and see it as one of the big 3 now.
As for Windows 8 sales, that's not disruption, different issue. Windows 7 was released into a health PC market and was meant as a mainstream OS. Windows 8 is a transitional OS released into a very unhealthy and rapidly declining market.
The fact of the matter is MS once owned 85% of the mobile market too with Windows CE
When? If you mean phones Symbian and JavaVM had huge share. If you mean before that, Palm.
MS owned 90% of the market with IE. Windows was liked more and XP loyalists are still hear loving that OS and refusing to upgrade as it was perfection. Those my friend happened under Gates and were handed too Balmer.
Absolutely. Balmer was handed a desktop monopoly. And for that matter an office suite monopoly. High marketshare and mindshare but not a lot at the high end. Balmer has pushed Microsoft up market, lost share in less profitable or harder to serve markets and increased revenues (gross and net) tremendously.
He failed. Apple and Google are the new kings now.
You are thinking consumer. Netgear is not more successful than Cisco.
No time travel isn't the same thing. Flashback is a time stamp associated with tables and savable to other DR databases. Which allows the database to be recovered to a point in time or a query answered from a point in time. "What were the list of all location is Massachusetts yesterday".
> No transaction control in stored functions Sorry -- I don't understand this one: Is that a feature or a mis-feature?
You want to be able to tell the engine how to execute.
postgres has been getting better and better all the time. Just like MSSQL the percentage of databases which it can't handle keeps going down. DB2 and Oracle are being forced into narrower and narrower niches.
I don't agree. The complexity isn't bad for databases that are designed for that complexity. You don't go from expecting a dedicated staff of dozens to only having one guy.
Building an enterprise products division: SQL Server becoming very high end, Dynamics, Lync, SharePoint becoming a central component in many enterprise applications. That's Balmer's contribution and it is worth tens of billions per year.
Materialized views (and all the related magic) Flashback queries and flashback archives (they are really cool) Index only scans (can be a major performance boost) No transaction control in stored functions
Oracle handles queries that return 50k plus records far far better.
Oracle uses a statistical optimizer for execution plans in the engine. They are working through the 2nd generation of it to handle situations where they are lots of high frequency values
Temporary table undos
Oracle is really an excellent product for a database in which there will be DBA maintenance. If there aren't DBAs Oracle's complexity becomes a minus not a plus.
I was incidentally saying the opposite of how you took it that it would be better if the demonization of people like Snowden wasn't changing the opinion of Republican voters.
In terms of demonization of Republicans based on unfair attacks... Richard Mourdock. His position that God is directly responsible for human tragedy a theodicy is mainstream Christianity. He was successfully demonized for preaching something the overwhelming majority of Indiana at least in theory should believe in.
Another example might be Christine O'Donnell. Her legal claims regarding the separation clause not arriving from the 1st amendment, or even the 1st in light of the 14th is not a question of ignorance even though it was portrayed that way. The witch... nonsense from her appearances on Bill Maher were completely unfair. Which is not to say she was fit for office but the campaign against her met your criteria.
I'd say many of the attacks on Romney's opponents: Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were done this way. Romney not the democrats were responsible but still...
I think the campaign against Social Security Reform championed by GW Bush was based on 1/2 truths. Not that he didn't deserve it but...
If you mean at the time of Elop's announcement there were 0 MeeGo phones developed. The N9 was only finished so quickly because it became terminal and thus the politics reduced. MeeGo was fundamentally flawed in that opposite promises had been made to different groups.
I agree. Apple's handling of their switch from GCC to LLVM is a good example where they kept both for a while is a good example of how distributions could have handled this better.
Some distributions btw didn't switch.For example Knoppix went from KDE 3 to LXDE. On the other hand distributions like Fedora, Arch, Mandriva forks or Gentoo did the right thing in following the "latest and greatest". Their users expect that. Ubuntu was really the tricky case and they sort of did their own thing with Unity.
As far as Wayland... that's going to be very dicey. Wayland has an X11 built in so there is no good reason not to switch to Wayland. The big issue is going to be going with Wayland only compiled applications. I suspect for the Linux world that's going to happen mainly on applications where performance matters. But Gnome given their focus on touch (where latency really really matters) are going to have to be among those. So it wouldn't shock me if Gnome 4 or Gnome 5 is Wayland only.
Sawfish could be extended using a Lisp dialect. So now it's JavaScript.
That's the WM not the GUI.
Support for touch needs drivers and APIs. It doesn't need a complete change to the UI.
I suggest you think about that for a moment. How does a non-touch application respond to pinch, to overscroll. Buttons need to be larger. GUI refresh times need to be much much shorter. Yes it does need an entirely new UI.
On both KDE 4 and GNOME 3 the distributions have done a bad job of communicating with GUI designers on a rollout strategy. At the same time GUI designers have done a bad job being unambiguous enough in their communications to communicate effectively. Both projects suffered horribly for these mistakes and they won't likely be repeated but it would have been a lot better for everyone if they hadn't.
The big issue with GNOME is that RedHat understood the strategy and Ubuntu understood the strategy. But Ubuntu in particular didn't do a good job of managing it, mainly because as the migration to GNOME 3 was happening they were in a pissing contest with the GNOME devs and GNOME foundation.
The ability to modify where things appear like that is an example of the sorts of changes I was talking about. It isn't integrated for the sake of integrated, it is integrated because it is much easier to genuinely engage in design when you can lock things down. Your car would be much more complex if it optionally let you reverse the brake and acceleration pedal or drive from the right front seat. What you get from locking things down is a far better default design.
As for how configurable something should be over how designed it is a trade. Gnome has always been on the side of design in theory. Linux has always been on the side of configurability.
Gnome I think is going for a) strong defaults b) an expectation the defaults are in place c) the ability to alter defaults but those alterations become responsible with working with everyone else
You are a serial liar. "Mac sales are being crushed". That is sort of terminology is not used for a product on an annual cycle.
Mac Units: 2Q2013 3952k 2Q2012 4017k
1Q2013 4061k 1Q2013 4017k
Their sales on Macs are flat. There is no "more revenue from less units" nonsense. If you are reading Apple reports they quote year over year statistics and they do so for a very good reason, their products have 20% deviations between different quarters every year. That means nothing other than their products are cyclical. Pretending that's not the case and talking about quarter over quarter numbers is lying.
I like Gnome 3 and think they did the right thing in terms of the shift. That being said, Gnome developers were incredibly arrogant in 2011. To pick a fight with Canonical, the system for the majority of their users base, was insane. To do it at the same time they were bringing out a major update was incredibly destructive. It is hard to imagine how they could have handled this release worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Both Oracle and IBM would disagree with you that SQL Server BI isn't disruptive. They have both lost many accounts to it and see it as one of the big 3 now.
As for Windows 8 sales, that's not disruption, different issue. Windows 7 was released into a health PC market and was meant as a mainstream OS. Windows 8 is a transitional OS released into a very unhealthy and rapidly declining market.
When? If you mean phones Symbian and JavaVM had huge share. If you mean before that, Palm.
Absolutely. Balmer was handed a desktop monopoly. And for that matter an office suite monopoly. High marketshare and mindshare but not a lot at the high end. Balmer has pushed Microsoft up market, lost share in less profitable or harder to serve markets and increased revenues (gross and net) tremendously.
You are thinking consumer. Netgear is not more successful than Cisco.
The first amendment still applies. Though you should contact Oracle.
No time travel isn't the same thing. Flashback is a time stamp associated with tables and savable to other DR databases. Which allows the database to be recovered to a point in time or a query answered from a point in time. "What were the list of all location is Massachusetts yesterday".
You want to be able to tell the engine how to execute.
That isn't fast enough. Oracle can guarantee you that you can perform the operation in X seconds.
postgres has been getting better and better all the time. Just like MSSQL the percentage of databases which it can't handle keeps going down. DB2 and Oracle are being forced into narrower and narrower niches.
I don't agree. The complexity isn't bad for databases that are designed for that complexity. You don't go from expecting a dedicated staff of dozens to only having one guy.
SQLServer is disrupting data warehousing and BI. Windows 8 is disruptive. Fails or succeeds it is changing the course of PC development.
Building an enterprise products division: SQL Server becoming very high end, Dynamics, Lync, SharePoint becoming a central component in many enterprise applications. That's Balmer's contribution and it is worth tens of billions per year.
Materialized views (and all the related magic)
Flashback queries and flashback archives (they are really cool)
Index only scans (can be a major performance boost)
No transaction control in stored functions
Oracle handles queries that return 50k plus records far far better.
Oracle uses a statistical optimizer for execution plans in the engine. They are working through the 2nd generation of it to handle situations where they are lots of high frequency values
Temporary table undos
Oracle is really an excellent product for a database in which there will be DBA maintenance. If there aren't DBAs Oracle's complexity becomes a minus not a plus.
I was incidentally saying the opposite of how you took it that it would be better if the demonization of people like Snowden wasn't changing the opinion of Republican voters.
In terms of demonization of Republicans based on unfair attacks... Richard Mourdock. His position that God is directly responsible for human tragedy a theodicy is mainstream Christianity. He was successfully demonized for preaching something the overwhelming majority of Indiana at least in theory should believe in.
Another example might be Christine O'Donnell. Her legal claims regarding the separation clause not arriving from the 1st amendment, or even the 1st in light of the 14th is not a question of ignorance even though it was portrayed that way. The witch ... nonsense from her appearances on Bill Maher were completely unfair. Which is not to say she was fit for office but the campaign against her met your criteria.
I'd say many of the attacks on Romney's opponents: Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum were done this way. Romney not the democrats were responsible but still...
I think the campaign against Social Security Reform championed by GW Bush was based on 1/2 truths. Not that he didn't deserve it but...
GUI designers do give a shit. No one likes that kind of ferocious backlash. It isn't fun to work on something hard and get that kind of bad press.
No it would be better if it weren't working on Republicans as well.
If you mean at the time of Elop's announcement there were 0 MeeGo phones developed. The N9 was only finished so quickly because it became terminal and thus the politics reduced. MeeGo was fundamentally flawed in that opposite promises had been made to different groups.
Alex what they could have done was not had GNOME 3 as an option or had them as exclusive options.
I agree. Apple's handling of their switch from GCC to LLVM is a good example where they kept both for a while is a good example of how distributions could have handled this better.
Some distributions btw didn't switch.For example Knoppix went from KDE 3 to LXDE. On the other hand distributions like Fedora, Arch, Mandriva forks or Gentoo did the right thing in following the "latest and greatest". Their users expect that. Ubuntu was really the tricky case and they sort of did their own thing with Unity.
As far as Wayland... that's going to be very dicey. Wayland has an X11 built in so there is no good reason not to switch to Wayland. The big issue is going to be going with Wayland only compiled applications. I suspect for the Linux world that's going to happen mainly on applications where performance matters. But Gnome given their focus on touch (where latency really really matters) are going to have to be among those. So it wouldn't shock me if Gnome 4 or Gnome 5 is Wayland only.
That's the WM not the GUI.
I suggest you think about that for a moment. How does a non-touch application respond to pinch, to overscroll. Buttons need to be larger. GUI refresh times need to be much much shorter. Yes it does need an entirely new UI.
For the window manager yes. For the GUI no.
On both KDE 4 and GNOME 3 the distributions have done a bad job of communicating with GUI designers on a rollout strategy. At the same time GUI designers have done a bad job being unambiguous enough in their communications to communicate effectively. Both projects suffered horribly for these mistakes and they won't likely be repeated but it would have been a lot better for everyone if they hadn't.
The big issue with GNOME is that RedHat understood the strategy and Ubuntu understood the strategy. But Ubuntu in particular didn't do a good job of managing it, mainly because as the migration to GNOME 3 was happening they were in a pissing contest with the GNOME devs and GNOME foundation.
The ability to modify where things appear like that is an example of the sorts of changes I was talking about. It isn't integrated for the sake of integrated, it is integrated because it is much easier to genuinely engage in design when you can lock things down. Your car would be much more complex if it optionally let you reverse the brake and acceleration pedal or drive from the right front seat. What you get from locking things down is a far better default design.
As for how configurable something should be over how designed it is a trade. Gnome has always been on the side of design in theory. Linux has always been on the side of configurability.
Gnome I think is going for
a) strong defaults
b) an expectation the defaults are in place
c) the ability to alter defaults but those alterations become responsible with working with everyone else
which is very similar to Apple / OSX approach.
type and repeated:
2Q2013 3952k
2Q2012 4017k
2Q2011 3760k
You are a serial liar. "Mac sales are being crushed". That is sort of terminology is not used for a product on an annual cycle.
Mac Units:
2Q2013 3952k
2Q2012 4017k
1Q2013 4061k
1Q2013 4017k
Their sales on Macs are flat. There is no "more revenue from less units" nonsense. If you are reading Apple reports they quote year over year statistics and they do so for a very good reason, their products have 20% deviations between different quarters every year. That means nothing other than their products are cyclical. Pretending that's not the case and talking about quarter over quarter numbers is lying.
Why aren't you a KDE user?
I like Gnome 3 and think they did the right thing in terms of the shift. That being said, Gnome developers were incredibly arrogant in 2011. To pick a fight with Canonical, the system for the majority of their users base, was insane. To do it at the same time they were bringing out a major update was incredibly destructive. It is hard to imagine how they could have handled this release worse.
I didn't say they were false, I said there were highly misleading and not the way anyone does comparisons in a company with an annual sales cycle.