Please, I've tried Linux on the desktop, its no where close to 'being there' as an average user desktop OS. Especially if you're a gamer.
Who said anything about the "average user?" Linux won't need the "average" user for some time to come. Linux simply has to continue to hack off a few percentage points of "exceptional" users on a yearly basis and Microsoft is doomed. Bonus points are awared for government wins, as everyone has to deal with the government, and for educational or large institutional wins. Heck, "Linux" gets a boost everytime that some switches to Firefox or gives OpenOffice.org a spin. Even Mac OS/X wins tip the balance of power away from Microsoft, and Apple all of a sudden has a 12% share of the laptop market.
Here's the deal. The PC market is saturated, and Microsoft owns the whole thing. However, to keep it's stock price up Microsoft still has to find some way to grow. Microsoft would like investors to think that this growth is going to come from emerging businesses like the XBox or MSN, but both of those are posting losses (big losses in the case of the XBox). Combine this with a PC market that is shrinking (even by a bit) because customers are switching to Linux and/or Macs and Microsoft has a big problem.
That's what makes things like WGA such a dumb move. The "average" consumer has no choice but to live with Microsoft's blunder, but the "extraordinary" user has the ability to switch, and Microsoft needs everyone to stay with its platform. Actually, sticking with XP puts as much money in Microsoft's pocket as a switch to Linux does. Microsoft needs to convince people that Vista is the answer, and things like WGA make that much harder.
The reason that I don't cry when Microsoft loses a patent case is because Microsoft is one of the prime movers behind expanding America's broken patent system around the world. Besides, in recent years Microsoft has become very aggressive in its efforts to use its patents to generate huge amounts of licensing fees. In essence Microsoft wants to create a world in which large corporations, with large portfolios of patents to trade, are the only folks that can write software. Heck, Microsoft's most effective tool agains the encroachment of Free Software on its market has been to talk about "intellectual property" issues. When push comes to shove what Microsoft is really threatening is to use its patents against Free Software.
Microsoft is big enough and influential enough that if it got serious it could end the current patent madness almost single handedly. As long as Microsoft is part of the problem and not part of the solution then I sincerely hope that they reap the whirlwind they have sown. Not that it really matters what I think. Microsoft has billions of dollars in the bank and writes piles and piles of software. They are an ideal target for patent trolls. I'm sure that it has already occured to the bright people at Microsoft that its patent offensive has largely backfired. Microsoft is currently embroiled in over 30 patent lawsuits, many of which it has already lost. Free Software, on the other hand, continues to advance.
I suppose you are right. However, by the time Novell got around to purchasing SuSE SCO/Caldera didn't really have a Linux business. Besides, if you are going to pick a company and put money in its pocket you probably aren't going to pick a company that is shaking you down for cash. Novell didn't need the lawsuit to go away, it needed a Linux business that it could promote instead of Netware.
Yes, Caldera's strategy was stupid back in the day. Heck, both SuSE and Caldera had a better distribution than Red Hat, but Red Hat cornered the market by giving software away and selling services. However, you can always change your business model. SuSE did after Novell bought it. For years SuSE was essentially in the business of selling YaST.
Not to mention the fact that with both Caldera and Novell having common roots Caldera could easily have been the Linux company that Novell snapped up, had it not been for the fact that the two companies were already locked in litigation.
SCO is barely in business. This last quarter it had revenues of just over $7 million compared to revenues of over $9 million for the same quarter last year. Losses for the quarter topped $4 million or $0.22 per share. If it hadn't been for Sun and Microsoft paying some dubious "licensing fees" at the beginning of the case and a completely wacky PIPE deal set up by some Microsoft executives SCO would have been forced to close its doors years ago. No one is the slightest bit interested in SCO's UNIX business these days.
Interestingly enough, if Caldera hadn't changed its name to SCO and followed its current course it is very likely that it would be benefitting from the current pro-Linux climate. Linux companies are making money these days, and Caldera was well situated to profit from a Linux upturn.
I've witnessed my share of Free Software projects that fork over control issues, and it is never a pretty sight. Most projects never really recover. A fork of Debian would be especially problematic because quite a few Debian developers are the sort of license purists that would remove GFDL documentation from the distribution because it isn't free enough. So a splinter-Debian would not only have to come up with new infrastructure, a new name, new ftp sites, and all of the rest of the stuff that makes Debian GNU/Linux work, but it would also have to convince enough developers that the new splinter-Debian is the new "real" Debian.
Quite frankly, I lurk on the debian-devel and debian-legal lists and I don't think that there are enough people that care enough about including Sun's Java in non-free to make that happen. I think that it would be possible to create yet another splinter of Debian (a la Ubuntu) that borrows heavily from Debian and includes a few extra packages, but I would be very surprised if a splinter would ever become more than just another package repository that tracked stable and testing.
I am not entirely sure about that. Quite a few of the commercial distributions *still* are based around KDE, and SuSE was clearly enamoured with KDE before Novell purchased the distribution. There's no question that Gnome/GTK makes more sense now, but if it hadn't been for the QPL fracas that created Gnome then KDE could have become the defacto toolkit. At the very least QT would have gained more traction than it did.
The main point is that you simply can't afford to write off the hardcore Free Software community when you are creating a software license.
Gnome is a bit of a different beast. Sure, it was started by idealists and activists as a response to KDE, but it has been largely funded by pragmatist corporations that wanted a set of tools that would be Free Software but would allow for the creation and distribution of non-free software that used the toolkit. The pragmatists, in this case, wanted a way to develop commercial software for Linux that didn't involve paying TrollTech money.
If TrollTech would have GPLed QT before Gnome got off the ground then Gnome would never have happened. Once Gnome was available, however, corporate sponsors invariably chose it over the more restrictive KDE.
The primary difference between.NET and Java for Free Software hackers is that Mono is usable right now, while gcj and GNU Classpath is not. The Free Software crowd doesn't really care about standards, sure it tries to follow standards when they are applicable, but these folks primarily care about Free Software. Mono is unequivocably Free Software, and Mono is usable today. gcj and GNU Classpath are also Free Software, but they aren't nearly as usable as Mono. This set of facts leads lots of folks to fall into the "Java trap" which is basing Free Software on a proprietary platform.
Had Sun released a Free Software version of Java before Mono became popular there would be very little Free Software written in C#. However, thanks to Sun's short-sightedness lots of Free Software hackers are taking a look at the available platform choices and are choosing Mono over Java. Sun's own "Java Desktop" has more C# in it than Java. If one of your prerequisites for choosing a language platform is that the platform has to be Free Software then Mono is the clear winner. Unfortunately for Sun, the Free Software community is becoming a very important segment of the computer industry. A large portion of the software that makes Sun hardware a worthwhile purchase is Free Software. Sun should be doing everything in its power to make Java the best platform for Free Software development in the world. Instead Sun is trying to guarantee that it retains the upper hand in the Java world, even if that means that Java gets surpassed by other platforms.
Eclipse certainly isn't Java when it is running on GCJ on my Debian box. It certainly isn't Java when I use GCJ to compile Eclipse not to byte code but to an ELF binary. GCJ isn't Java, it's not even close to passing Sun's tests. So are the programs that run on GCJ, and that admittedly aren't 100% Pure Java to begin with truly Java programs. Sun would say no.
What's more the SWT toolkit is essentially the same thing that got Microsoft into trouble. It's an extension to pure Java that only runs on certain operating systems, and doesn't look or act the same on the various platforms. What's more it provides lots of hooks for the various platform-specific features that it uses. Pick up an Eclipse installation on a Linux box and transfer it to Windows and it isn't going to work.
The problem is that when most developers talk about Java they are talking about Java the programming language. To us it's just a tool. However, Sun talks about Java as a platform. Eclipse breaks the idea of Java as a platform completely.
You said I was "well behind the times", but I missed the part where you disagreed with anything I said.:)
uh... my bad. Sorry.
The important thing to remember is that the longer Sun takes to Free Java and the more time and effort get poured into the various Free Software Java replacements the less likely the Free Software community is to join Sun's efforts when Sun finally does capitulate and Free Java. In essence Sun is making the same mistake that TrollTech made with QT. If TrollTech would have released QT under a Free Software license before Gnome and GTK starting gaining momentum the Linux desktop battle would never have gotten off of the ground. QT would have won by default.
In some ways Sun has already missed the boat. For example, if Java would have been Free Software a few years back when Ximian was looking around for a replacement for developing Gnome components in C then Mono probably would not have been born, and it certainly wouldn't have taken off as it has in the Free Software community.
You are well behind the times my friend. IBM is currently helping the Apache Group's project Harmony. It's only a matter of time before Sun is Eclipsed, and Freeing Java is likely to be the only thing that maintains Sun's leadership in the Java field.
There are various Free Software Java-alikes, several of which are at a point where they have the potential to be competitive with Sun's Java. Eclipse, for example, already runs (and runs well) on a Free Software JVM. Sun (and Java) need the Free Software community. As evidence of this witness the fact that currently the Gnome desktop (that Sun repackages as its Java Desktop) depends on more software written in or extended in C# than it does on software written in Java. In point of fact, there is essentially no Java in Gnome.
Sun can either wait until the Free Software java-alikes (sponsored by the likes of IBM and Red Hat) are competitive with Java (tm) in which case Sun could very well become irrelevant, or Sun can Free its JVM and classpath now and maintain its current lead. Either way the pragmatic developer is likely to use the *best* version of Java (regardless as to whether or not it is actually Java, or whether it has added "features"), and the zealots are going to use the Free Software version of Java regardless of its technical merits. If the day comes when the non-Sun Free Software version is better than Sun's version then Sun's reign as Java king will be over for good. I personally think that such an ending is quite likely.
You don't need Sun's official Java to run Eclipse. Eclipse runs just fine using a Free Software JVM. Debian and Fedora both have packages where Eclipse is designed to run that way. Not that Eclipse is likely to run well on the sort of hardware that Negroponte is planning. Emacs, on the other hand, would run just fine on these machines. In fact, if you are willing to use SWT instead of Swing then you can create software that runs well on Free Software JVMs today. Just don't call what you are writing Java, because (like Eclipse) it isn't Java, but merely Java-esque. Part of the reason that Sun wants to retain control over Java is so that it can tell people what is Java (tm) and what is not Java (tm). Eclipse is not Java (tm).
As for loading Windows on these machines, that's clearly absurd. There simply isn't enough hardware to run anything remotely recent, and the Windows can't be modified to work around the obvious shortcomings of the hardware. Negroponte's goal with these computers is to create a software economy that can be met by folks in the third world. Free Software is clearly a quicker means to that end than anything Microsoft has to offer.
I agree that Sony is using the PS3 as a way to get Blu-Ray into consumer's hands. I just don't think that Blu-Ray is worth the risk to Sony's gaming division. $600 is a lot of money to pay for a gaming console, and if Sony doesn't sell a lot of these consoles then not only will Blu-Ray be a failure, but so will Sony's next gen console. You would think that Sony would have learned from Microsoft's expensive XBox fiasco. Microsoft lost billions on the original XBox by giving away hardware at less than cost. Now Sony is doing the same thing, except it has an even higher pricetag on the PS3.
Sony is essentially aiming their console at the part of the market that happily spends $700 on a video card for their custom PC gaming rig. However, even in PC gaming game companies do not write games that are only playable by folks with high end rigs. The hardcore gamer is simply not a large enough market to be viable.
If the potential royalties on Blu-Ray are truly high enough to make it worth this sort of a gamble then Blu-Ray is doomed anyhow. Blu-Ray has powerful enemies, and the hardware manufacturers do not want a format to win that has heavy royalties. Sony should have learned that lesson from the past as well.
This is a wave of sentiment going over the internet that is rather quite short sighted. First of all it goes without saying that it is given that the PS3 will garner enough developer support which in turn will show people why they should get a PS3.
I personally don't think that it goes without saying that the PS3 will garner the necessary developer support. Sure, there's lots of games that are slated to support the PS3 now, but if the PS3 doesn't sell well in the first 6 months then lots of games will likely pass on supporting the PS3. It's not like the PS3 is particularly easy to develop for...
As for the rest, even if the PS3 does look better on a standard TV it's not likely to look $200 better, and the Blu-Ray drive is really going to be interesting to those few souls that have HDTVs and are willing to pay a premium for movie content. Like I said in my original post raw performance is not the benchmark that matters. The reason why the PS2 continues to dominate game development is because it is in the most houses. If Sony can't get people to fork out money for the PS3 then it will fail.
You are assuming that HDTV is going to hit critical mass by 2008. You are also assuming that HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will become the preferred medium for movies in the next few years. Heck, it's far from certain that Blu-Ray won't become the next Betamax.
The fact of the matter is that Sony is using the PS3 in an attempt to drive the market towards HDTV and Blu-Ray because Sony sells HDTV sets and owns the Blu-Ray format. Worse, Sony is apparently willing to gamble its lead in the ridiculously profitable gaming industry on the off chance that it helps it maintain an edge in the electronics market where margins are razor thin.
Sure, the PS3 might be a value to consumers that already have a HDTV and $600 burning a hole in their pocket, and who happen to be looking for a gaming console combined with a Blu-Ray player, but that's a ridiculously small segment of the community compared to folks that simply want to play some games on an existing "normal" TV set, and are willing to spend $300-$400 on new hardware. While the PS3 might sound like a better deal when transported to a mythical HDTV/Blu-Ray future, the PS3 has to compete with the XBox360 and the Nintendo Wii today in a world where HDTVs are relatively rare and where no Blu-Ray content is available.
If the PS3 doesn't sell in today's marketplace then developers won't support it, and the PS3 will find a place in the gaming history books with the NeoGeo and the 3DO.
Mafia has higher profit margins than legitimate businesses do (at least I think so, since I don't think that mafiosos are stupid enough to risk their lives without some benefit they couldn't get without risking them). I guess we must thus conclude that laws are bad for businesses ability to compete, and repeal them all.
I think that it is safe to say that mafiosos put a different value on their personal freedom and are willing to take more risks than most people. They certainly have a different value system than your average person. I don't see what that has to do with abolishing laws, however. For example, the presence of laws is what makes the mafia's illegal activities more profitable. So your example doesn't really make sense. If we abolished the laws then there would be more competition and profits would drop dramatically.
Sure, it'll hurt a few people (okay, almost everyone, actually), but you can't put mere human beings over corporate profits. If you would, why, that would be COMMUNISM !
Let me give you a little clue. Investors are people too. In fact, in this day and age your future likely depends on the success of your investments. What's more, companies that have higher marginal costs in a competitive environment are generally forced out of business over the long run. Being laid off because a business has failed is essentially the worst case scenario for everyone in the business. That's just the facts of life. I believe that the best way to maximize my own remuneration is to simply demonstrate my usefulness to the company and to keep my options open. I believe that trying to organize with other technical workers in my case is counterproductive. After all, my sales pitch to potential employers is essentially that, while I may demand a small premium in pay over the "average" worker, I more than make up for it by being more capable than the average worker. I don't want what's "fair," I want what I am worth (which is more than what is merely fair).
You, of course, are free to believe whatever you want.
I'm not a big fan of unions either, but I must say that it's not always like the picture you've painted. My brother works as a unionized plumber. He's an apprentice and has several years to go before he'll become a "journeyman" like the rest of the people he works with. He has survived several rounds of layoffs because he's getting paid less, but works as hard as two of the journeymen. Seniority usually rules the day, but not always.
Heck, that's even worse. Why in the world should he be paid less if he does more. Now, I realize that it isn't entirely the union's fault that many areas have these sorts of "apprenticeship" laws, but the unions are certainly a large part of the reason why these laws haven't been revoked. There are plenty of ways to guarantee that someone has a minimum amount of experience without requiring that they work for less pay for years and years.
That's precisely the road that I don't want technology to go down.
Seniority plays no part in union negotiations about promotions or layoffs. Every union member is an equal. Ideally, the union would stay out of promotions, unless it could be documented that the promotion occurred because of reasons other than factors related to job performance. i.e. a good worker should get the promotion over a good schmoozer, unless schmoozing is critical to the job.
I have no idea how you could possibly quantify a "schmooze-factor," but basically you are arguing for the status quo, except I would have to pay union dues.
Well, if your company tries to cut your medical insurance in order to cut their costs, the union would step in. If your company tries to make you work overtime without booking it, the union would step in. If your company reduces your pay but increases executive pay, the union would step in. If your company is giving the boss' pet two raises a year but hard workers only get one, the union would step in.
You need to remember, I am a former Teamster. One factory that I worked in was gutted and the equipment was moved to Canada because the workers threatened to strike if health care costs went up. The company made what I considered a pretty good faith effort to make the union happy, but in the end the numbskulls in the union leadership opted for a strike that turned into everyone losing their job instead of simply having to pay slightly more for health insurance. All of the people that were happy with the new contract got shafted. Personally, I would just as soon that these sorts of decisions be left in my capable hands.
The union would not standardize wages. It would bargain in your stead, but not necessarily for strict salary equivalence. Because though you might imagine that you have the power to bargain on equal terms with a behemoth 100 billion dollar company, you actually have little barganing power. There's really just no comparison in power there. Heck, when my benefits and salary were set, I had absolutely no input into the matter. The small company I worked for was sold, and I woke up at a huge company. No opportunity to bargain. I'm not unhappy with the deal I got, but it just happened to me without my involvement.
This is essentially the status quo as well. Many companies have some sort of a salary tier system where pay increases are based on your present salary and the max salary for your tier. I had one boss who moved me to a different categorization simply because it meant that he could pay me more. The difference is that with a union involved I would have to pay dues, and some numbskull in the union would likely get involved when I wanted to move to a new classification.
No Gracias.
When it comes to mergers and acquisitions unions aren't going to make the difference. If your company is being acquired then the acquiring company is either A) interested in retaining the staff and infrastructure, or B) it isn't. If the acquiring company isn't interested in keeping you around then the union isn't going to help. If it is interested in keeping you around, then it will make sticking around worth your while. That's the simple truth of the matter.
The union wouldn't impede movement into management. When a union member is promoted to management, they just stop being a member of the union, that's all.
So, more status quo, except the union would start having to differentiate between "workers" and "management." If I am a team leader am I out of the union? What about if I am the Chief Technical Officer and still know the technology?
Sorry, I am not impressed. I just don't see how banding together helps me. Heck, the fact of the matter is that the other union members would represent my primary competition. I don't want them making decisions for me, and I don't want them bargaining for me. I certainly don't want to pay dues for the privilege of having someone else in
Exactly. I have yet to have a boss that I didn't think was worth whatever the heck they were paying him. If you can't respect your boss then you should be angling for his job.
OK, I'm game, how exactly would this new breed of union actually work, and why would I want to join? Are you telling me that seniority wouldn't play a part in getting a promotion or in determining who gets laid off? If that's the case how is being part of a union different than what we have today? Would the union standardize wages? Would it bargain in my stead?
I'm honestly curious. I figured that when people talked about unionizing IT they were talking about something along the lines of the Teamsters.
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Exactly. Instead of a small "get firefox" button on a few websites there would be a "dump internet explorer" landing page on every major website.
Who said anything about the "average user?" Linux won't need the "average" user for some time to come. Linux simply has to continue to hack off a few percentage points of "exceptional" users on a yearly basis and Microsoft is doomed. Bonus points are awared for government wins, as everyone has to deal with the government, and for educational or large institutional wins. Heck, "Linux" gets a boost everytime that some switches to Firefox or gives OpenOffice.org a spin. Even Mac OS/X wins tip the balance of power away from Microsoft, and Apple all of a sudden has a 12% share of the laptop market.
Here's the deal. The PC market is saturated, and Microsoft owns the whole thing. However, to keep it's stock price up Microsoft still has to find some way to grow. Microsoft would like investors to think that this growth is going to come from emerging businesses like the XBox or MSN, but both of those are posting losses (big losses in the case of the XBox). Combine this with a PC market that is shrinking (even by a bit) because customers are switching to Linux and/or Macs and Microsoft has a big problem.
That's what makes things like WGA such a dumb move. The "average" consumer has no choice but to live with Microsoft's blunder, but the "extraordinary" user has the ability to switch, and Microsoft needs everyone to stay with its platform. Actually, sticking with XP puts as much money in Microsoft's pocket as a switch to Linux does. Microsoft needs to convince people that Vista is the answer, and things like WGA make that much harder.
The reason that I don't cry when Microsoft loses a patent case is because Microsoft is one of the prime movers behind expanding America's broken patent system around the world. Besides, in recent years Microsoft has become very aggressive in its efforts to use its patents to generate huge amounts of licensing fees. In essence Microsoft wants to create a world in which large corporations, with large portfolios of patents to trade, are the only folks that can write software. Heck, Microsoft's most effective tool agains the encroachment of Free Software on its market has been to talk about "intellectual property" issues. When push comes to shove what Microsoft is really threatening is to use its patents against Free Software.
Microsoft is big enough and influential enough that if it got serious it could end the current patent madness almost single handedly. As long as Microsoft is part of the problem and not part of the solution then I sincerely hope that they reap the whirlwind they have sown. Not that it really matters what I think. Microsoft has billions of dollars in the bank and writes piles and piles of software. They are an ideal target for patent trolls. I'm sure that it has already occured to the bright people at Microsoft that its patent offensive has largely backfired. Microsoft is currently embroiled in over 30 patent lawsuits, many of which it has already lost. Free Software, on the other hand, continues to advance.
I suppose you are right. However, by the time Novell got around to purchasing SuSE SCO/Caldera didn't really have a Linux business. Besides, if you are going to pick a company and put money in its pocket you probably aren't going to pick a company that is shaking you down for cash. Novell didn't need the lawsuit to go away, it needed a Linux business that it could promote instead of Netware.
Yes, Caldera's strategy was stupid back in the day. Heck, both SuSE and Caldera had a better distribution than Red Hat, but Red Hat cornered the market by giving software away and selling services. However, you can always change your business model. SuSE did after Novell bought it. For years SuSE was essentially in the business of selling YaST.
Not to mention the fact that with both Caldera and Novell having common roots Caldera could easily have been the Linux company that Novell snapped up, had it not been for the fact that the two companies were already locked in litigation.
SCO is barely in business. This last quarter it had revenues of just over $7 million compared to revenues of over $9 million for the same quarter last year. Losses for the quarter topped $4 million or $0.22 per share. If it hadn't been for Sun and Microsoft paying some dubious "licensing fees" at the beginning of the case and a completely wacky PIPE deal set up by some Microsoft executives SCO would have been forced to close its doors years ago. No one is the slightest bit interested in SCO's UNIX business these days.
Interestingly enough, if Caldera hadn't changed its name to SCO and followed its current course it is very likely that it would be benefitting from the current pro-Linux climate. Linux companies are making money these days, and Caldera was well situated to profit from a Linux upturn.
I've witnessed my share of Free Software projects that fork over control issues, and it is never a pretty sight. Most projects never really recover. A fork of Debian would be especially problematic because quite a few Debian developers are the sort of license purists that would remove GFDL documentation from the distribution because it isn't free enough. So a splinter-Debian would not only have to come up with new infrastructure, a new name, new ftp sites, and all of the rest of the stuff that makes Debian GNU/Linux work, but it would also have to convince enough developers that the new splinter-Debian is the new "real" Debian.
Quite frankly, I lurk on the debian-devel and debian-legal lists and I don't think that there are enough people that care enough about including Sun's Java in non-free to make that happen. I think that it would be possible to create yet another splinter of Debian (a la Ubuntu) that borrows heavily from Debian and includes a few extra packages, but I would be very surprised if a splinter would ever become more than just another package repository that tracked stable and testing.
I am not entirely sure about that. Quite a few of the commercial distributions *still* are based around KDE, and SuSE was clearly enamoured with KDE before Novell purchased the distribution. There's no question that Gnome/GTK makes more sense now, but if it hadn't been for the QPL fracas that created Gnome then KDE could have become the defacto toolkit. At the very least QT would have gained more traction than it did.
The main point is that you simply can't afford to write off the hardcore Free Software community when you are creating a software license.
The short story is that whoever told you that was wrong.
Gnome is a bit of a different beast. Sure, it was started by idealists and activists as a response to KDE, but it has been largely funded by pragmatist corporations that wanted a set of tools that would be Free Software but would allow for the creation and distribution of non-free software that used the toolkit. The pragmatists, in this case, wanted a way to develop commercial software for Linux that didn't involve paying TrollTech money.
If TrollTech would have GPLed QT before Gnome got off the ground then Gnome would never have happened. Once Gnome was available, however, corporate sponsors invariably chose it over the more restrictive KDE.
The primary difference between .NET and Java for Free Software hackers is that Mono is usable right now, while gcj and GNU Classpath is not. The Free Software crowd doesn't really care about standards, sure it tries to follow standards when they are applicable, but these folks primarily care about Free Software. Mono is unequivocably Free Software, and Mono is usable today. gcj and GNU Classpath are also Free Software, but they aren't nearly as usable as Mono. This set of facts leads lots of folks to fall into the "Java trap" which is basing Free Software on a proprietary platform.
Had Sun released a Free Software version of Java before Mono became popular there would be very little Free Software written in C#. However, thanks to Sun's short-sightedness lots of Free Software hackers are taking a look at the available platform choices and are choosing Mono over Java. Sun's own "Java Desktop" has more C# in it than Java. If one of your prerequisites for choosing a language platform is that the platform has to be Free Software then Mono is the clear winner. Unfortunately for Sun, the Free Software community is becoming a very important segment of the computer industry. A large portion of the software that makes Sun hardware a worthwhile purchase is Free Software. Sun should be doing everything in its power to make Java the best platform for Free Software development in the world. Instead Sun is trying to guarantee that it retains the upper hand in the Java world, even if that means that Java gets surpassed by other platforms.
I am a huge fan of the FSF, but the more clothes their protestors wear the better life is for all of us.
This sunshine patriot wishes he had some modpoints.
Eclipse certainly isn't Java when it is running on GCJ on my Debian box. It certainly isn't Java when I use GCJ to compile Eclipse not to byte code but to an ELF binary. GCJ isn't Java, it's not even close to passing Sun's tests. So are the programs that run on GCJ, and that admittedly aren't 100% Pure Java to begin with truly Java programs. Sun would say no.
What's more the SWT toolkit is essentially the same thing that got Microsoft into trouble. It's an extension to pure Java that only runs on certain operating systems, and doesn't look or act the same on the various platforms. What's more it provides lots of hooks for the various platform-specific features that it uses. Pick up an Eclipse installation on a Linux box and transfer it to Windows and it isn't going to work.
The problem is that when most developers talk about Java they are talking about Java the programming language. To us it's just a tool. However, Sun talks about Java as a platform. Eclipse breaks the idea of Java as a platform completely.
uh... my bad. Sorry.
The important thing to remember is that the longer Sun takes to Free Java and the more time and effort get poured into the various Free Software Java replacements the less likely the Free Software community is to join Sun's efforts when Sun finally does capitulate and Free Java. In essence Sun is making the same mistake that TrollTech made with QT. If TrollTech would have released QT under a Free Software license before Gnome and GTK starting gaining momentum the Linux desktop battle would never have gotten off of the ground. QT would have won by default.
In some ways Sun has already missed the boat. For example, if Java would have been Free Software a few years back when Ximian was looking around for a replacement for developing Gnome components in C then Mono probably would not have been born, and it certainly wouldn't have taken off as it has in the Free Software community.
You are well behind the times my friend. IBM is currently helping the Apache Group's project Harmony. It's only a matter of time before Sun is Eclipsed, and Freeing Java is likely to be the only thing that maintains Sun's leadership in the Java field.
There are various Free Software Java-alikes, several of which are at a point where they have the potential to be competitive with Sun's Java. Eclipse, for example, already runs (and runs well) on a Free Software JVM. Sun (and Java) need the Free Software community. As evidence of this witness the fact that currently the Gnome desktop (that Sun repackages as its Java Desktop) depends on more software written in or extended in C# than it does on software written in Java. In point of fact, there is essentially no Java in Gnome.
Sun can either wait until the Free Software java-alikes (sponsored by the likes of IBM and Red Hat) are competitive with Java (tm) in which case Sun could very well become irrelevant, or Sun can Free its JVM and classpath now and maintain its current lead. Either way the pragmatic developer is likely to use the *best* version of Java (regardless as to whether or not it is actually Java, or whether it has added "features"), and the zealots are going to use the Free Software version of Java regardless of its technical merits. If the day comes when the non-Sun Free Software version is better than Sun's version then Sun's reign as Java king will be over for good. I personally think that such an ending is quite likely.
You don't need Sun's official Java to run Eclipse. Eclipse runs just fine using a Free Software JVM. Debian and Fedora both have packages where Eclipse is designed to run that way. Not that Eclipse is likely to run well on the sort of hardware that Negroponte is planning. Emacs, on the other hand, would run just fine on these machines. In fact, if you are willing to use SWT instead of Swing then you can create software that runs well on Free Software JVMs today. Just don't call what you are writing Java, because (like Eclipse) it isn't Java, but merely Java-esque. Part of the reason that Sun wants to retain control over Java is so that it can tell people what is Java (tm) and what is not Java (tm). Eclipse is not Java (tm).
As for loading Windows on these machines, that's clearly absurd. There simply isn't enough hardware to run anything remotely recent, and the Windows can't be modified to work around the obvious shortcomings of the hardware. Negroponte's goal with these computers is to create a software economy that can be met by folks in the third world. Free Software is clearly a quicker means to that end than anything Microsoft has to offer.
I agree that Sony is using the PS3 as a way to get Blu-Ray into consumer's hands. I just don't think that Blu-Ray is worth the risk to Sony's gaming division. $600 is a lot of money to pay for a gaming console, and if Sony doesn't sell a lot of these consoles then not only will Blu-Ray be a failure, but so will Sony's next gen console. You would think that Sony would have learned from Microsoft's expensive XBox fiasco. Microsoft lost billions on the original XBox by giving away hardware at less than cost. Now Sony is doing the same thing, except it has an even higher pricetag on the PS3.
Sony is essentially aiming their console at the part of the market that happily spends $700 on a video card for their custom PC gaming rig. However, even in PC gaming game companies do not write games that are only playable by folks with high end rigs. The hardcore gamer is simply not a large enough market to be viable.
If the potential royalties on Blu-Ray are truly high enough to make it worth this sort of a gamble then Blu-Ray is doomed anyhow. Blu-Ray has powerful enemies, and the hardware manufacturers do not want a format to win that has heavy royalties. Sony should have learned that lesson from the past as well.
I personally don't think that it goes without saying that the PS3 will garner the necessary developer support. Sure, there's lots of games that are slated to support the PS3 now, but if the PS3 doesn't sell well in the first 6 months then lots of games will likely pass on supporting the PS3. It's not like the PS3 is particularly easy to develop for...
As for the rest, even if the PS3 does look better on a standard TV it's not likely to look $200 better, and the Blu-Ray drive is really going to be interesting to those few souls that have HDTVs and are willing to pay a premium for movie content. Like I said in my original post raw performance is not the benchmark that matters. The reason why the PS2 continues to dominate game development is because it is in the most houses. If Sony can't get people to fork out money for the PS3 then it will fail.
You are assuming that HDTV is going to hit critical mass by 2008. You are also assuming that HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will become the preferred medium for movies in the next few years. Heck, it's far from certain that Blu-Ray won't become the next Betamax.
The fact of the matter is that Sony is using the PS3 in an attempt to drive the market towards HDTV and Blu-Ray because Sony sells HDTV sets and owns the Blu-Ray format. Worse, Sony is apparently willing to gamble its lead in the ridiculously profitable gaming industry on the off chance that it helps it maintain an edge in the electronics market where margins are razor thin.
Sure, the PS3 might be a value to consumers that already have a HDTV and $600 burning a hole in their pocket, and who happen to be looking for a gaming console combined with a Blu-Ray player, but that's a ridiculously small segment of the community compared to folks that simply want to play some games on an existing "normal" TV set, and are willing to spend $300-$400 on new hardware. While the PS3 might sound like a better deal when transported to a mythical HDTV/Blu-Ray future, the PS3 has to compete with the XBox360 and the Nintendo Wii today in a world where HDTVs are relatively rare and where no Blu-Ray content is available.
If the PS3 doesn't sell in today's marketplace then developers won't support it, and the PS3 will find a place in the gaming history books with the NeoGeo and the 3DO.
I think that it is safe to say that mafiosos put a different value on their personal freedom and are willing to take more risks than most people. They certainly have a different value system than your average person. I don't see what that has to do with abolishing laws, however. For example, the presence of laws is what makes the mafia's illegal activities more profitable. So your example doesn't really make sense. If we abolished the laws then there would be more competition and profits would drop dramatically.
Let me give you a little clue. Investors are people too. In fact, in this day and age your future likely depends on the success of your investments. What's more, companies that have higher marginal costs in a competitive environment are generally forced out of business over the long run. Being laid off because a business has failed is essentially the worst case scenario for everyone in the business. That's just the facts of life. I believe that the best way to maximize my own remuneration is to simply demonstrate my usefulness to the company and to keep my options open. I believe that trying to organize with other technical workers in my case is counterproductive. After all, my sales pitch to potential employers is essentially that, while I may demand a small premium in pay over the "average" worker, I more than make up for it by being more capable than the average worker. I don't want what's "fair," I want what I am worth (which is more than what is merely fair).
You, of course, are free to believe whatever you want.
Heck, that's even worse. Why in the world should he be paid less if he does more. Now, I realize that it isn't entirely the union's fault that many areas have these sorts of "apprenticeship" laws, but the unions are certainly a large part of the reason why these laws haven't been revoked. There are plenty of ways to guarantee that someone has a minimum amount of experience without requiring that they work for less pay for years and years.
That's precisely the road that I don't want technology to go down.
I have no idea how you could possibly quantify a "schmooze-factor," but basically you are arguing for the status quo, except I would have to pay union dues.
You need to remember, I am a former Teamster. One factory that I worked in was gutted and the equipment was moved to Canada because the workers threatened to strike if health care costs went up. The company made what I considered a pretty good faith effort to make the union happy, but in the end the numbskulls in the union leadership opted for a strike that turned into everyone losing their job instead of simply having to pay slightly more for health insurance. All of the people that were happy with the new contract got shafted. Personally, I would just as soon that these sorts of decisions be left in my capable hands.
This is essentially the status quo as well. Many companies have some sort of a salary tier system where pay increases are based on your present salary and the max salary for your tier. I had one boss who moved me to a different categorization simply because it meant that he could pay me more. The difference is that with a union involved I would have to pay dues, and some numbskull in the union would likely get involved when I wanted to move to a new classification.
No Gracias.
When it comes to mergers and acquisitions unions aren't going to make the difference. If your company is being acquired then the acquiring company is either A) interested in retaining the staff and infrastructure, or B) it isn't. If the acquiring company isn't interested in keeping you around then the union isn't going to help. If it is interested in keeping you around, then it will make sticking around worth your while. That's the simple truth of the matter.
So, more status quo, except the union would start having to differentiate between "workers" and "management." If I am a team leader am I out of the union? What about if I am the Chief Technical Officer and still know the technology?
Sorry, I am not impressed. I just don't see how banding together helps me. Heck, the fact of the matter is that the other union members would represent my primary competition. I don't want them making decisions for me, and I don't want them bargaining for me. I certainly don't want to pay dues for the privilege of having someone else in
Exactly. I have yet to have a boss that I didn't think was worth whatever the heck they were paying him. If you can't respect your boss then you should be angling for his job.
OK, I'm game, how exactly would this new breed of union actually work, and why would I want to join? Are you telling me that seniority wouldn't play a part in getting a promotion or in determining who gets laid off? If that's the case how is being part of a union different than what we have today? Would the union standardize wages? Would it bargain in my stead?
I'm honestly curious. I figured that when people talked about unionizing IT they were talking about something along the lines of the Teamsters.