You say the marketing is effective? You may want to read my other post about doing the math. Linspire is essentially a dead distro. And I think Novell/Suse is soon to follow. On the other hand, the real heavyweights in Linux: Redhat, Ubuntu, and Debian; want nothing to do with msft scams, er . . . I mean secretive patent protection deals.
Lemmesee, Linux makes up about one half of one percent of desktop systems. The top 20 Linux distros probably account for about 99% of all Linux desktop installs. Linuxspire is ranked as the 56th most popular Linux distro on distrowatch.
I figure that means there are about four Linspire installations world-wide.
But, I guess it's the PR stunts that really matter.
Speaking of which, there is now a Linux distro called "Vista." Maybe Linux "Vista" will get all kinds of press as well.
Seriously, not only did msft not invent the internet, msft still doesn't even "get" the internet. Bill Gates once predicted that the internet would be rejected in favor of services like AOL.
Darl did not do "what he believes is right in the face of opposition." That is just the PR spin, i.e. brazen lie. Darl is just a small-time redneck scammer. The entire scox thing is just another msft mis-information stunt.
As I understand it "Geek Squad" and the like are ran by major computer retail chains. Do those chains encourage the techs to recommend hardware upgrades that are not really needed.
Possibly, for unrelated reasons, I think Novell may have to also fork Samba. Novell may also have to fork other f/oss packages.
Novell wants proprietary, not commodity, products. Novell wants to jump on the f/oss thing, but Novell still wants the vendor-lock thing as well. Novell wants their f/oss offering to be different.
It seems to me that there are a few companies that want the community to develop the company's software product for free. Then they want to make some realitively minor changes, and own the community's work.
I'm a huge corporation. I decide to file a law suit against you for no good reason. You can either settle, and leave yourself nearly bankrupt, or you can fight and certainly go bankrupt - not to mention spending the next ten year in court. BTW: unless you have about $100 million you don't need, you can forget about suing me back.
That is all perfectly legal. So it would be cool with you, right? Nothing unfair, or unethical, about it, correct? The USA "justice" system is designed to allow this kind of massive abuse.
The analogy I provided is very similar to the way msft, bsa, riaa, and the mpaa, operate. And this msft/novl deal is designed to fully exploit the borked US system.
This has to do with sneaky under-handed deals, defying the spirit of the GPL, stealing the work of volunteers, and assisting msft with their illegal activities.
Novell joining msft to clearly defy the intent and spirit of the GPL is your idea of "marketing" ? At best, and mean at the very best, this sneaky deal is borderline legal.
Now that scox is as good as dead, I guess msft needs another bitch company to continue msft's FUD campaign.
Msft has made it very clear that they intend to attack Linux from a legalities angle. Msft had alluded to that even before the scox scam. It's a good strategy for msft, after all msft can put Linux out of business. The scox-scam was a great FUD bargain for msft, but that scam is waning.
There are a suspicious number of strongly pro-novell posts on slashdot. Essentially, the posts re-state the novell party line: "this is all interoperability" and "why on earth would you be suspicious of this deal?" and "slashdotters are just too negative about msft to be objective."
Why be suspicious?
1) Msft's history: msft does not do interoperability. Msft wants to own the standard. Monopolizing the standards is central to msft's very successful business model. Msft's recent shenanigans with OOXML, and defiance of the EC, and the scox-scam, reveal msft's true motives and tactics.
2) Miguel de Icaza is sneaky little msft worshipping turd.
3) Why all the secrecy? Why not spell out these supposed patent violations? Why not spell out the terms of the deal? Why not specify exactly what they mean by interoperability?
4) This deal has too much in common with the scox-scam. During the scox-scam, both scox and sun boasted having the only *legal* version of Linux. Sound familiar? And msft behind all three companies, what a coincidence.
Novell advocates keep saying that it's about interoperability, but that makes no sense, if msft wants to interoperate, what's stopping them? Why do they need this sneaky deal?
novell advocates keep saying that it's about interoperability, but that makes no sense, if msft wants to interoperate, what's stopping them? Why do they need this sneaky deal? BTW: if msft wants to interoperate then why all the OOXML BS?
And if it's about patents, then what's the big secret about which specific patents?
"bring the software giant to its knees" ? Please, save the drama for your Mama.
I dislike msft as much as anybody, but I think a company with $30B in the bank, and over 90% of the desktop market can afford a misfire, or two.
As much as I would love to see msft fail, it will take a lot more than an OS that is only semi-successful. Since msft essentially owns the desktop, and controls the standards, I don't we'll see msft brought to it's knees anytime soon.
Mac zealots should try spending some time in the real world.
They get laid off instead, while their jobs go to Indians working for $5/hour. I have eight years of college, degrees in math, comp sci, and business, half a dozen certs, 28 years of professional experience, have held a top-secret clearance; and I'm doing crappy contract work.
Having a university education does not *prevent* you from getting a higher earning job. But, in IT, it means almost nothing. I have degrees in math, comp sci, and bus admin. I consider my formal education to be the worst investment I have ever made. I could have been gaining valuable experience, instead I wasted my time and money geting worthless diplomas. It is not at all uncommon for those with no formal education to earn more than I do.
If you want to go the formal education route, get a degree for something that *requires* a degree: engineer, accountant, lawyer, doctor, etc. Otherwise, don't bother.
Education has very little to with IT work. It's all about experience. Take a look at the job ads if you don't believe me.
BTW: a CCIE usually earn over $100K, which is more than college educated professionals earn.
You think an education in engineering is going to get you a CIO job? Pfft. CIOs know less about technology than the average helpdesk drone. CIOs usually have an MBA. CIOs need to know finance.
You should train for years, work like a slave, get shit pay, and like it! You should smile, and sing praises to your employer - especially while he has you train the offshore workers who will replace your ungrateful ass.
I did an informal survey a few months back, and here is what I found (based on job ads). From what I see, $90K is way over at the high end, no typical at all. Of course, I did not figure in the salries of CIOs, because I do not consider executives as I.T. workers.
Denver is a fair sized city (two million people) and not an especially cheap place to live.
From what I can see, an average I.T. salary is more like $60K, not $90K. That is probably still better than Europe. It may be because it's even easier to outsource jobs in Europe than in the USA. In the long run, the I.T. field is screwed for everybody, except 3rd world countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to guess who actually runs Linux systems?
You say the marketing is effective? You may want to read my other post about doing the math. Linspire is essentially a dead distro. And I think Novell/Suse is soon to follow. On the other hand, the real heavyweights in Linux: Redhat, Ubuntu, and Debian; want nothing to do with msft scams, er . . . I mean secretive patent protection deals.
How does Linspire get so much press?
Lemmesee, Linux makes up about one half of one percent of desktop systems. The top 20 Linux distros probably account for about 99% of all Linux desktop installs. Linuxspire is ranked as the 56th most popular Linux distro on distrowatch.
I figure that means there are about four Linspire installations world-wide.
But, I guess it's the PR stunts that really matter.
Speaking of which, there is now a Linux distro called "Vista." Maybe Linux "Vista" will get all kinds of press as well.
Al Gore did.
Seriously, not only did msft not invent the internet, msft still doesn't even "get" the internet. Bill Gates once predicted that the internet would be rejected in favor of services like AOL.
My yahoo email will receive anything from hotmail. I always figured that yahoo was filtering. Maybe it's because hotmail won't send to yahoo?
Scox was doomed before the scam - that was 5 years ago. Since then, scox execs have pocketed millions of the msft arranged financing.
Darl did not do "what he believes is right in the face of opposition." That is just the PR spin, i.e. brazen lie. Darl is just a small-time redneck scammer. The entire scox thing is just another msft mis-information stunt.
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1297.08.html
http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1297.08.html
Or so I would assume. I know I go back to earlier apps or whatever with debian.
That is one thing that I always hated about windows, once you "upgrade" there is no turning back.
As I understand it "Geek Squad" and the like are ran by major computer retail chains. Do those chains encourage the techs to recommend hardware upgrades that are not really needed.
Possibly, for unrelated reasons, I think Novell may have to also fork Samba. Novell may also have to fork other f/oss packages.
Novell wants proprietary, not commodity, products. Novell wants to jump on the f/oss thing, but Novell still wants the vendor-lock thing as well. Novell wants their f/oss offering to be different.
It seems to me that there are a few companies that want the community to develop the company's software product for free. Then they want to make some realitively minor changes, and own the community's work.
I'm a huge corporation. I decide to file a law suit against you for no good reason. You can either settle, and leave yourself nearly bankrupt, or you can fight and certainly go bankrupt - not to mention spending the next ten year in court. BTW: unless you have about $100 million you don't need, you can forget about suing me back.
That is all perfectly legal. So it would be cool with you, right? Nothing unfair, or unethical, about it, correct? The USA "justice" system is designed to allow this kind of massive abuse.
The analogy I provided is very similar to the way msft, bsa, riaa, and the mpaa, operate. And this msft/novl deal is designed to fully exploit the borked US system.
This has to do with sneaky under-handed deals, defying the spirit of the GPL, stealing the work of volunteers, and assisting msft with their illegal activities.
Novell joining msft to clearly defy the intent and spirit of the GPL is your idea of "marketing" ? At best, and mean at the very best, this sneaky deal is borderline legal.
and, of course, education is more expensive.
From what I have seen, companies used to offer education benefits all the time. Now, it is unusual.
Now that scox is as good as dead, I guess msft needs another bitch company to continue msft's FUD campaign.
Msft has made it very clear that they intend to attack Linux from a legalities angle. Msft had alluded to that even before the scox scam. It's a good strategy for msft, after all msft can put Linux out of business. The scox-scam was a great FUD bargain for msft, but that scam is waning.
There are a suspicious number of strongly pro-novell posts on slashdot. Essentially, the posts re-state the novell party line: "this is all interoperability" and "why on earth would you be suspicious of this deal?" and "slashdotters are just too negative about msft to be objective."
Why be suspicious?
1) Msft's history: msft does not do interoperability. Msft wants to own the standard. Monopolizing the standards is central to msft's very successful business model. Msft's recent shenanigans with OOXML, and defiance of the EC, and the scox-scam, reveal msft's true motives and tactics.
2) Miguel de Icaza is sneaky little msft worshipping turd.
3) Why all the secrecy? Why not spell out these supposed patent violations? Why not spell out the terms of the deal? Why not specify exactly what they mean by interoperability?
4) This deal has too much in common with the scox-scam. During the scox-scam, both scox and sun boasted having the only *legal* version of Linux. Sound familiar? And msft behind all three companies, what a coincidence.
Novell advocates keep saying that it's about interoperability, but that makes no sense, if msft wants to interoperate, what's stopping them? Why do they need this sneaky deal?
The entire thing does not smell right.
novell advocates keep saying that it's about interoperability, but that makes no sense, if msft wants to interoperate, what's stopping them? Why do they need this sneaky deal? BTW: if msft wants to interoperate then why all the OOXML BS?
And if it's about patents, then what's the big secret about which specific patents?
"bring the software giant to its knees" ? Please, save the drama for your Mama.
I dislike msft as much as anybody, but I think a company with $30B in the bank, and over 90% of the desktop market can afford a misfire, or two.
As much as I would love to see msft fail, it will take a lot more than an OS that is only semi-successful. Since msft essentially owns the desktop, and controls the standards, I don't we'll see msft brought to it's knees anytime soon.
Mac zealots should try spending some time in the real world.
They get laid off instead, while their jobs go to Indians working for $5/hour. I have eight years of college, degrees in math, comp sci, and business, half a dozen certs, 28 years of professional experience, have held a top-secret clearance; and I'm doing crappy contract work.
Having a university education does not *prevent* you from getting a higher earning job. But, in IT, it means almost nothing. I have degrees in math, comp sci, and bus admin. I consider my formal education to be the worst investment I have ever made. I could have been gaining valuable experience, instead I wasted my time and money geting worthless diplomas. It is not at all uncommon for those with no formal education to earn more than I do.
If you want to go the formal education route, get a degree for something that *requires* a degree: engineer, accountant, lawyer, doctor, etc. Otherwise, don't bother.
Pesonally, I don't consider an "C" level exective to be an "I.T. worker."
Education has very little to with IT work. It's all about experience. Take a look at the job ads if you don't believe me.
BTW: a CCIE usually earn over $100K, which is more than college educated professionals earn.
You think an education in engineering is going to get you a CIO job? Pfft. CIOs know less about technology than the average helpdesk drone. CIOs usually have an MBA. CIOs need to know finance.
You should train for years, work like a slave, get shit pay, and like it! You should smile, and sing praises to your employer - especially while he has you train the offshore workers who will replace your ungrateful ass.
I did an informal survey a few months back, and here is what I found (based on job ads). From what I see, $90K is way over at the high end, no typical at all. Of course, I did not figure in the salries of CIOs, because I do not consider executives as I.T. workers.
1. DATABASE ADMIN : $35 - $62/hour
2. MANAGEMENT : $30 - $55/hour
3. SAP : $50 - $73/hour
4. SECURITY : $25 - $46/hour
5. TECH/HELPDESK : $15 - $19/hour
6. UNIX/LINUX ADMINS: $35 - $50/hour
7. UNSKILLED LABOR : $8 - $16/hour
8. WEB DEVELOPMENT : $20 - $40/hour
9. WINDOWS ADMINS: $20 - $40/hour
http://it-careers.pbwiki.com/Informal_Denver_Area_Salary_Survey#DATABASEADMIN$35$62/hour
Denver is a fair sized city (two million people) and not an especially cheap place to live.
From what I can see, an average I.T. salary is more like $60K, not $90K. That is probably still better than Europe. It may be because it's even easier to outsource jobs in Europe than in the USA. In the long run, the I.T. field is screwed for everybody, except 3rd world countries.
Something I put together myself.
http://it-careers.pbwiki.com/Informal_Denver_Area_Salary_Survey