So, what happened? The end of the cold war. Budget cuts.
The end of the Cold War coincided nicely with the entry of MS into the server market. As the budget cuts of the early 90s began, MS began marketing their server solutions to the military.
Another poster mentions COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) initiatives as a cause for the MS ascendancy in the military. Granted, but it's only a proximate cause. The COTS initiative was a cost-cutting move.
Remember: Good, fast, cheap: pick any two. You can't have all three.
Then the product dies. Software development is an iterative process. No software product is perfect, and it is a relatively simple matter to reverse engineer ANY software product and improve it (look at this on the timescale of human life rather than the next financial quarter).
If the product is ordersof magnitude better than anything else out there, then it may not be necessary to improve it. Merely sell/support it until the author is independently wealthy and then quit - why work when you can live off the interest? Most businesses/businessmen don't have this philosophy, though, and most software products ARE improved - that's the business plan. Produce something that works - barely - and sell the patches that make it work better. Thus Word 1.0, 2.0, 6.0 95, 97, 2000, XP, etc.
Imagine how much richer the Internet would be with a whole new set of opinions from Africans...Not everyone in Africa is starving, some live like "normal" people
Your prejudice is showing. That's right, folks, not EVERYONE in Africa thinks like a third-worlder...some of them think just like you and me! Imagine how much richer the world would be if we could communicate with "normal" people in Africa without actually having to see how funny-looking they are! (Oh, and for the humor impaired...</sarcasm>)
The Internet might just bring in commerce to end the starvation in Africa News flash...Africa can produce enough food to feed Africa. Governments who control the food supply can control the population.
What licensing code are you talking about? Do you refer to the "Licensing" service that every NT admin disables? Or perhaps you refer to the EULA code that runs once on install? Or are you perhaps talking without reference to reality?
And what is it about source code availability that makes binaries easier to copy and distribute? You seem to suggest that people will pirate software more when they have access to source code...
I'm guessing that the chances of an Escrow company waiting for one big score are just as good as some well respected ebay auctioneer.
Doubt it. One escrow company could easily handle hundreds or thousands of people doing hundreds of dollars in business each year. Do the math - there are potentially tens of millions of dollars involved. Companies that deal with that kind of money DON'T have bank accounts set up so that one individual can withdraw everything all at once and skip town.
I hesitate to rep to such an obvious troll...but here goes. Your key paragraph, the one one which your entire argument rests is this one:
Would it be cost-effective for Wal-Mart to go Open Source? Not likely. The turnover in staff at the home office alone, combined with training for new positions, etc, would cost millions, not to mention that they would have to literally double their server count at all of their 3,000+ stores. They would need to develop, test and deploy thousands of servers with the new software, hook them into the existing systems to take over various jobs, and then remove the existing servers. All of that for what, to save licensing fees? No, I don't think so.
This is perfectly valid in the extreme short term - say, a month, or a quarter, or maybe even a year. But do you REALLY think that WalMart is going to retain ALL of its existing systems for a period of five or ten years? Do you think the corporate heads are looking at the next quarter (a la Enron) or the next ten years (a la WalMart of the past)? I'd say the latter. That's why you're a troll: you assume that there will be NO changes in software, NO process improvements, NO training, NO turnover for the next several years. I'll grant you that next to such a pristine, unchangeable standard as perfection, open source doesn't look so good. But when you compare the implementation costs of going to Linux to the implementation costs of going to some other operating system (which *will* happen unless WalMart decides never to upgrade again), you see comparable costs.
Which is like saying that no one owns my neighborhood because 30 people own the property, the utilities own the poles, and the city owns the street. Or it's like saying that no one owns GE because 50,000 people own stock.
True, no single person owns it all, but all of it is privately owned, except for the bits that are owned by the govt, which in theory is owned by all the people.
Hmmm...the problem is that corporations are people, so we should pay for George Bush's presidential campaign. That's a non sequitur if I ever saw one. Try this on instead: the problem is that corporations are people...so take away their person hood. Continue to permit limited liability, but remove from corporations any rights intended to protect individuals from a tyrannical government. Are you an agent of a corporation? Then you must testify against the corp - no fifth amendment. Does OSHA want to look around your factory? They don't need a warrant. Did your corp break the law? Death penalty - we don't care if it's an unusual punishment. Is there a need to house the National Guard? We're taking your warehouse.
This would kill corporatism. Government corruption would take a different form, of course; the rich have always controlled government. However, it would take a while before they'd get an even keel, and in that time we might get some good done.
Did I say to complain to Bill? DID I? Then KWITCHERWHININ!:) You're completely correct that Bill won't care. However, my sales rep will care - 900 licenses is not small potatoes to him. Get enough people to care at his level and maybe you can get a regional sales manager to care, etc. etc. The alternative is to shut up and take it. It's the age-old gamble - if I do nothing, I'll get nothing. If I do something, I still might get nothing. But I might not...
Exactly; thus the little blurbs you often see in paperbacks that say something like "If you purchased this book without a cover, it is stolen property. It was reported to the publisher as destroyed and neither the publisher nor the author has received any payment for this copy of the book." Apparently, in the book trade, tearing the cover off a book and throwing it in the dumpster counts as destroyed.
If you've already deployed XP, sorry; this doesn't apply to you. If you haven't, I recommend that you point this clause out to your PHB. if you are the PHB, I recommend that you contact your local MS sales rep and let them know that you will not be considering an upgrade until this issue is resolved to your satisfaction.
In other words, if this bothers you, don't whine; just threaten not to buy the software. I guarantee you that my 900-user law firm will not be upgrading to XP this year as planned until this clause and any software that supports it are eliminated.
Dude. That's like replying "It's been a long time since 1st grade" when someone points out that 1+1=2. Some things you are not allowed to forget if you wish to remain a geek.:)
A good dictionary also serves a normative function
Have you ever studied how to write a dictionary?
You can't just accept any old spelling and usage of words on the net, or you wind up in Humpty Dumpty world where anyone is allowed to use and spell words however they choose No, but if you find that 99% of the population is spelling "enough" as "enuff", then maybe your dictionary is out of date.
After all, if anyone is allowed to define a new meaning and/or spelling for a word at will there is no point in collecting those spellings and meanings anymore as they are subject to arbitrary change NEWS FLASH! What you seem so afraid of is how language works.
- I am the baddest dude on the block
- That new car is the bomb
- Shutup! (synonyms: "Get out!" "You're kidding me!" "That is too good to be believed")
Granted, these are currently slang (ie used when speaking informally, and usually not written except as dialog) but that is how words start...
BTW, if people can't arbitrarily change the meaning of a word, then tell me how "computer" came to have its current definition as an electronic device. 75 years ago a computer was a person who performed computations.
Of course. Programmers don't work ankle- and elbow-deep in excrement on a daily basis. Programmers ($50/hr ones, anyway) don't respond immediately. Nor do they resolve situations that drive to the heart of our instinctive aversion to uncleanness.
Were they utterly stupid, or did you utterly misunderstand their requirements?
Did your beautiful initial structure (which you wouldn't have to maintain, report against, etc.) have the potential to cause problems down the road?
Most consultants I have dealt with were carpetbaggers. It's the nature of the job...you come in, you recommend the setup you've recommended for the last fifteen jobs, and you leave before the dust settles. Those on the job are left to deal with the consequences.
Consultants, like everyone else, fit a bell curve - some horrible, some incredible, and most about average. The average guy doesn't understand the implication of what everyone is doing. Over time, those of us on staff learn that a consultant might have some good ideas and suggestions, but generally DOES NOT and CAN NOT have the big picture. We have the fractal view, from the smallest detail to the largest project. The consultant sees only a single project. The consultant does not contain within his head all the interconnections and potentials for problems.
It's entirely possible that the people you dealt with simply weren't as smart as you are (and I'm completely serious). They saw what you suggested and didn't understand how to maintain it. Maintaining 7,000 trivial objects, on the other hand, is simple...just tedious and time consuming. It's good for people to know their limits. And don't go suggesting that maybe they should quit or the company should hire someone smarter - there's only so much talent to go around and it can't work everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
So, what happened?
The end of the cold war. Budget cuts.
The end of the Cold War coincided nicely with the entry of MS into the server market. As the budget cuts of the early 90s began, MS began marketing their server solutions to the military.
Another poster mentions COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) initiatives as a cause for the MS ascendancy in the military. Granted, but it's only a proximate cause. The COTS initiative was a cost-cutting move.
Remember: Good, fast, cheap: pick any two. You can't have all three.
+42, Funny. And sad but true - I've seen this mentality.
Then the product dies. Software development is an iterative process. No software product is perfect, and it is a relatively simple matter to reverse engineer ANY software product and improve it (look at this on the timescale of human life rather than the next financial quarter).
If the product is ordersof magnitude better than anything else out there, then it may not be necessary to improve it. Merely sell/support it until the author is independently wealthy and then quit - why work when you can live off the interest? Most businesses/businessmen don't have this philosophy, though, and most software products ARE improved - that's the business plan. Produce something that works - barely - and sell the patches that make it work better. Thus Word 1.0, 2.0, 6.0 95, 97, 2000, XP, etc.
Skeptic: But what does the turtle stand on?
True Believer: It's turtles all the way down!
Imagine how much richer the Internet would be with a whole new set of opinions from Africans...Not everyone in Africa is starving, some live like "normal" people
Your prejudice is showing. That's right, folks, not EVERYONE in Africa thinks like a third-worlder...some of them think just like you and me! Imagine how much richer the world would be if we could communicate with "normal" people in Africa without actually having to see how funny-looking they are! (Oh, and for the humor impaired...</sarcasm>)
The Internet might just bring in commerce to end the starvation in Africa
News flash...Africa can produce enough food to feed Africa. Governments who control the food supply can control the population.
No content based .TLDs...so they're doing away with .com (commercial content), .edu (educational content) and .mil (military content)?
What licensing code are you talking about? Do you refer to the "Licensing" service that every NT admin disables? Or perhaps you refer to the EULA code that runs once on install? Or are you perhaps talking without reference to reality?
And what is it about source code availability that makes binaries easier to copy and distribute? You seem to suggest that people will pirate software more when they have access to source code...
Let's flip this on its head...paying customers should have no karma cap.
Two words:
CODE RED. Kills default Windows 2000 installs.
I'll grant, though, that being born with a fatal disease is not the same as being DOA.
Yeah, I guess that whole Windows NT thing just appeared out of thin air. Or maybe it was in response to Linux 0.01...
Zero equals one for sufficiently large values of zero...
I'm guessing that the chances of an Escrow company waiting for one big score are just as good as some well respected ebay auctioneer.
Doubt it. One escrow company could easily handle hundreds or thousands of people doing hundreds of dollars in business each year. Do the math - there are potentially tens of millions of dollars involved. Companies that deal with that kind of money DON'T have bank accounts set up so that one individual can withdraw everything all at once and skip town.
In Basic Training, we called them the three-way lie:
They were not edible
They were not ready
They were not a full meal
I hesitate to rep to such an obvious troll...but here goes. Your key paragraph, the one one which your entire argument rests is this one:
Would it be cost-effective for Wal-Mart to go Open Source? Not likely. The turnover in staff at the home office alone, combined with training for new positions, etc, would cost millions, not to mention that they would have to literally double their server count at all of their 3,000+ stores. They would need to develop, test and deploy thousands of servers with the new software, hook them into the existing systems to take over various jobs, and then remove the existing servers. All of that for what, to save licensing fees? No, I don't think so.
This is perfectly valid in the extreme short term - say, a month, or a quarter, or maybe even a year. But do you REALLY think that WalMart is going to retain ALL of its existing systems for a period of five or ten years? Do you think the corporate heads are looking at the next quarter (a la Enron) or the next ten years (a la WalMart of the past)? I'd say the latter. That's why you're a troll: you assume that there will be NO changes in software, NO process improvements, NO training, NO turnover for the next several years. I'll grant you that next to such a pristine, unchangeable standard as perfection, open source doesn't look so good. But when you compare the implementation costs of going to Linux to the implementation costs of going to some other operating system (which *will* happen unless WalMart decides never to upgrade again), you see comparable costs.
Free hearts for everyone!
Boo! Boo!
Free hearts for some, tiny American flags for others!
Yay! Hooray!
(Don't blame me; I voted for Kodos.)
Which is like saying that no one owns my neighborhood because 30 people own the property, the utilities own the poles, and the city owns the street. Or it's like saying that no one owns GE because 50,000 people own stock.
True, no single person owns it all, but all of it is privately owned, except for the bits that are owned by the govt, which in theory is owned by all the people.
Hmmm...the problem is that corporations are people, so we should pay for George Bush's presidential campaign. That's a non sequitur if I ever saw one. Try this on instead: the problem is that corporations are people...so take away their person hood. Continue to permit limited liability, but remove from corporations any rights intended to protect individuals from a tyrannical government. Are you an agent of a corporation? Then you must testify against the corp - no fifth amendment. Does OSHA want to look around your factory? They don't need a warrant. Did your corp break the law? Death penalty - we don't care if it's an unusual punishment. Is there a need to house the National Guard? We're taking your warehouse.
This would kill corporatism. Government corruption would take a different form, of course; the rich have always controlled government. However, it would take a while before they'd get an even keel, and in that time we might get some good done.
Did I say to complain to Bill? DID I? Then KWITCHERWHININ! :) You're completely correct that Bill won't care. However, my sales rep will care - 900 licenses is not small potatoes to him. Get enough people to care at his level and maybe you can get a regional sales manager to care, etc. etc. The alternative is to shut up and take it. It's the age-old gamble - if I do nothing, I'll get nothing. If I do something, I still might get nothing. But I might not...
Exactly; thus the little blurbs you often see in paperbacks that say something like "If you purchased this book without a cover, it is stolen property. It was reported to the publisher as destroyed and neither the publisher nor the author has received any payment for this copy of the book." Apparently, in the book trade, tearing the cover off a book and throwing it in the dumpster counts as destroyed.
If you've already deployed XP, sorry; this doesn't apply to you. If you haven't, I recommend that you point this clause out to your PHB. if you are the PHB, I recommend that you contact your local MS sales rep and let them know that you will not be considering an upgrade until this issue is resolved to your satisfaction.
In other words, if this bothers you, don't whine; just threaten not to buy the software. I guarantee you that my 900-user law firm will not be upgrading to XP this year as planned until this clause and any software that supports it are eliminated.
Re-read that carefully...it's "most ABOUT average." Thank you for proving my point.
Dude. That's like replying "It's been a long time since 1st grade" when someone points out that 1+1=2. Some things you are not allowed to forget if you wish to remain a geek. :)
A good dictionary also serves a normative function
Have you ever studied how to write a dictionary?
You can't just accept any old spelling and usage of words on the net, or you wind up in Humpty Dumpty world where anyone is allowed to use and spell words however they choose
No, but if you find that 99% of the population is spelling "enough" as "enuff", then maybe your dictionary is out of date.
After all, if anyone is allowed to define a new meaning and/or spelling for a word at will there is no point in collecting those spellings and meanings anymore as they are subject to arbitrary change
NEWS FLASH! What you seem so afraid of is how language works.
- I am the baddest dude on the block
- That new car is the bomb
- Shutup! (synonyms: "Get out!" "You're kidding me!" "That is too good to be believed")
Granted, these are currently slang (ie used when speaking informally, and usually not written except as dialog) but that is how words start...
BTW, if people can't arbitrarily change the meaning of a word, then tell me how "computer" came to have its current definition as an electronic device. 75 years ago a computer was a person who performed computations.
Of course. Programmers don't work ankle- and elbow-deep in excrement on a daily basis. Programmers ($50/hr ones, anyway) don't respond immediately. Nor do they resolve situations that drive to the heart of our instinctive aversion to uncleanness.
Were they utterly stupid, or did you utterly misunderstand their requirements?
Did your beautiful initial structure (which you wouldn't have to maintain, report against, etc.) have the potential to cause problems down the road?
Most consultants I have dealt with were carpetbaggers. It's the nature of the job...you come in, you recommend the setup you've recommended for the last fifteen jobs, and you leave before the dust settles. Those on the job are left to deal with the consequences.
Consultants, like everyone else, fit a bell curve - some horrible, some incredible, and most about average. The average guy doesn't understand the implication of what everyone is doing. Over time, those of us on staff learn that a consultant might have some good ideas and suggestions, but generally DOES NOT and CAN NOT have the big picture. We have the fractal view, from the smallest detail to the largest project. The consultant sees only a single project. The consultant does not contain within his head all the interconnections and potentials for problems.
It's entirely possible that the people you dealt with simply weren't as smart as you are (and I'm completely serious). They saw what you suggested and didn't understand how to maintain it. Maintaining 7,000 trivial objects, on the other hand, is simple...just tedious and time consuming. It's good for people to know their limits. And don't go suggesting that maybe they should quit or the company should hire someone smarter - there's only so much talent to go around and it can't work everywhere.