More importantly the Chinese who don't share will find themselves increasingly maintaining patched versions of software that are incompatible with the main branch (and therefore much more expensive to maintain).
Heck, I made some modifications to a GPLed project at one point, and I thought it was too much of a hassle to share. Next thing I knew the software package in question had changed enough that my patches no longer applied cleanly, one of the libraries that my software relied on adopted a new API. To make matters even worse the old version of the library was very tricky to compile by hand.
In short, the next thing I knew it was almost impossible to upgrade the boxes that this software was installed on. If I had shared my work might very well have become part of the mainstream distribution. New installations would have been as easy as installing the RPMs off of the CD.
The Chinese might have enough people working on Linux that they don't need to collaborate with the rest of the world, but my guess is that they would be far better off collaborating with the rest of us than trying to do everything themselves.
Are you seriously proposing that security vendors should blackmail software companies? I can imagine that now:
Hey Microsoft, we have found a remotely accessbile buffer exploit in Windows 2000. For a small fee we will even tell you how it works. For a somewhat larger fee we will not announce this to the world until you have a fix. And for the island of Puerto Rico we won't use it immediately to hack into your 10 largest customers and steal their financial data.
Full disclosure is the only response that makes any sense at all. The end users should be able to decide for themselves if they should risk their information with unpatched software.
X Windows has allowed you to cut and paste between applications served up
from different machines for years. I can launch applications from the machine
down the block that display on my desk, and I can then cut and paste between
these applications and the local applications without any problems. This only
seems amazing because you don't use X Windows. Mix in a little SSH, and it is
even secure.
As a practical matter, however, I can't imagine that being able to access
applications running on several computers is really that much of an advantage
over being able to access files on another machine. For example, I don't fire
up Emacs on my webserver and then cut and paste between the Emacs on my
webserver and the Emacs instance on my desk. Instead I simply edit the file
remotely either via FTP, WebDAV, NFS, SMB, SSH, or some other protocol (Emacs
rocks).
The fact of the matter is that I don't want to use someone else's
applications. I want to use my applications, customized to my preferences, to
read and edit their files. Microsoft makes their money on the desktop, and so
their vidison is desktop-centric. They don't want to paint a picture
of a future where anonymous fileservers stashed in a closet somewhere do all of
the real work.
Microsoft has seen enough market shifts to know what happens if you allow a lower priced competitor to set up shop in your market niche. They have competed against Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Novell, and now commercial UNIX by being "good enough" and less expensive. If Linux is allowed to grow its marketshare then Microsoft is going to have serious long-term problems, and they know it. With every new version of their software their customers are going to compare the cost of upgrading against switching to Linux. And Linux is going to be more feature-competitive with every release. When I first started using Linux in 1995 it had almost no applications that weren't development tools available for it. Now there are Free Software equivalents for almost all server side software (and lots of commercial server software as well), and Linux is even a credible desktop.
UNIX was ripe for the picking. Microsoft has been going to businesses for years and telling them that they could replace their expensive UNIX servers with Intel based servers, and their message has been pretty well received. I know lots of places that were primarily UNIX shops that have been switching to Windows because Windows was "good enough" at a lower price.
Now, along comes Linux, which also runs on inexpensive commodity x86 hardware. Even worse, it is basically a drop in replacement for UNIX. Migrating from UNIX to Linux is easy, and your staff needs very little retraining. All of a sudden the UNIX to Windows migrations have stopped, and instead they have become a flood of UNIX to Linux migrations. While this is devastating to Sun, it is also bad news for Microsoft. All of a sudden Windows is having a much harder time getting server sales. UNIX shops, generally speaking, are looking at Linux first, and they are liking what they see. Once you have shifted to Linux there is very little chance that you will ever use Windows on the server. Microsoft's ace-in-the-hole has always been the fact that they ran on commodity x86 hardware, but Linux has stolen this advantage and is "free" as well.
Without the built-in growth market Microsoft has to find other ways to keep their revenues up. Their new licensing plan is just another example of how Linux is affecting their game plan. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the better Linux looks.
Spot on! I have found that most of the people that think their boss is a moron are simply poor communicators. If it is so clear to you that the idea is a poor one, then it should be fairly easy to explain to your boss why it is a poor idea.
On the other hand, there is a good chance that you are the one that needs a clue. For example, let's imagine that IT in your company has had its budget cut and their choices are to either share hardware between the two projects or close your project down. In that case, your GFAR is actually saving you your job.
It is a little tiring to work with so many computer specialists that think they are some kind of super hero because they know how to code a for loop or have memorized the command-line flags for tar.
Then the trick would be to not put Linux on the desktop, but instead put an X terminal on the desktop. You end up with a handful of Linux servers and a pile of X terminals that are either working or in the trash.
Laptop users are tricky, but heck, just leave most of them on Windows for now. Once you stop administering individual desktop machines you can't help but win.
Re:Yes, we expect ADMINS to edit config files.
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The problem with that assumption is that many admins, after having mastered the initial shock of dealing with text files, find that they actually prefer them. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes GUIs can be handy, but text files are easily version controlled, easily commented, and they make remote administration a heck of a lot easier. Not too mention that with text files you can simply copy and paste to configure new systems, and you can script changes with your favorite text-based tools.
When I first started using Linux, I used the GUIs for everything, but now I never bother with GUIs, and I know that I am not the only admin that feels that way.
Uh, Microsoft was dominant on the PC long before there was Linux. However, every year Linux use grows. So far this growth has been moderate on the desktop, but it will continue to grow just like it has on the server side.
Microsoft has always been bigger than Linux, and yet Linux continues to progress at an amazing pace. And since Microsoft can't buy Linux out, nor can they bankrupt Linux, they can't use their standard tactics. Total World Domination:) is only a matter of time, and Linux has plenty of that to spare.
Microsoft and the rest of the commercial software vendors have been questioning Linux's value for years now, and it hasn't stopped Linux from growing by leaps and bounds. Microsoft problem with Linux is that it costs next to nothing to evaluate Free Software, and in many cases Free Software does as good or a better job than commercial software. Microsoft can pretend that this isn't the case, and can advertise in glossy magazines all day long. At the end of the day Linux simply has too much positive "word of mouth" advertising to be ignored.
People tend to think that Microsoft has gained its market share through marketing, but that really isn't the case. Microsoft has gained their marketshare by providing software that was "good enough" at a lower price than their competitors. Linux is gaining ground because it has become the value leader, and Microsoft will lose long term unless they can A) lower their prices so that they are price competitive, or B) raise the bar so that Linux remains "not quite good enough."
It's not illegal for you to customize your XBox, but that doesn't mean that MS should make it easy. I don't like the fact that Microsoft refers to this as "increasing the security of the XBox," but I can see why they use that term over "decreasing the usability."
However, the XBox is no longer really that good a deal as a generic X86 box. You can get hardware from Walmart.com for $200, and they even pre-install Linux on the machine.
There isn't really a reason to buy an XBox, unless of course you absolutely have to play Halo.
Not that HP has much choice in the matter at this point. After all, it's not like HP has an application server of their own that they could sell you. It seems somewhat ironic to me that HP has not one but two UNIXes, VMS, and who knows what else, and no development strategy going forward other than to spend money advertising for Microsoft (and Dell). Sometimes I wonder if HP wouldn't be better off to simply stick with printers.
If there is one thing that HP should have learned by now is that the only way to win in the PC race is to let someone else do all of the front-runner testing and advertising. When it comes to actually purchasing.NET systems most folks are going to do so primarily on price, and Dell is going to win handily there (especially since they let HP spend the money on advertising).
The problem with Unions in this case is that there is always someone else willing to take their shot a fame without the safety net. So while you are on strike trying to get a decent contract and benefits seven other bands are begging to sign up for the deal you are turning down. No one is going to become famous as a truck driver, so negotiations boil down to pay and benefits. A successful music star, on the other hand, literally has the world at their feet (Money for nothing and the chicks for free). There are lots of folks willing to take a risk to hit the big time like that.
The other benefit to Zope is that it supports all kinds of cool technologies out of the box. For example, I love the fact that all of my business logic is available via XML-RPC to other applications. I also like the fact that I can add content via FTP, HTTP-Put, WebDav, or via XML-RPC methods that I write myself.
RedHat has been handing these guys their hats for years now, and they still don't get it. It's the developers and the systems administrators that get Linux in the door, and likewise it is the developers and systems administrators that end up picking the distribution that gets deployed when the suits finally get the go-ahead. This is actually good news for distributions like SuSE, or Connectivain that if management makes the decision you can bet that they are going with RedHat, because they are perceived as the front-runner.
SuSE, SCO, Turbo, and Connectiva have to have made this connection by this point. After all, SuSE and SCO have had distributions that were as good or better than RedHat since the earliest days of RedHat's existence. Yet RedHat consistently has grown their market share and nabbed the big customers while the rest have struggled. The reason for RedHat's success is simple, they release their code under the GPL, and they actively court developers and systems administrators. Not that RedHat is neglecting CIOs. I am sure they are schmoozing the heck out of those guys too, but they realize that Freedom is an important selling point for Linux.
Think about it for a moment. As a developer or systems administrator which distribution would you rather deploy? Would you deply the distribution with FTP access to their emerging beta version or the distribution that requires you to sign an NDA before they will send you the binary-only CD? The choice for anyone that has ever banged his head against some piece of black-box software is obvious. Even CIOs are starting to get this.
There's a pile of New Yorkers with fancy television sets that already think DRM is a bad thing. Just watch, DRM is going to make Hollywood very unpopular, and it's going to cost them money in the long run.
Generally speaking any company with the kind of revenue and profit margin that Microsoft has is going to seem pretty healthy. However, Microsoft is somewhat different than most companies. The reason for this is the amount of money that Microsoft and their own employees have invested in their own stock. For example, if Microsoft had to expense their stock options, then they would actually be losing money. What's making the difference is that Microsoft has been able to keep their numbers positive enough that the investment community is more than happy enough to keep the price of Microsoft stock up. Microsoft then uses their stock options to pay their employees. Since this doesn't cost Microsoft any money (on paper anyway), they come away smelling like a rose. Every once in a while they announce a big stock buy back (usually when their stock is a little soft) and things are good.
This is part of the reason that Microsoft isn't paying dividends right now. They know that the second that they start acting like an established business and not a high growth start up that investors will start treating them more like Sears and less like the high flier that they always have been. In the long run this would be good for Microsoft's business, but it would clobber their stock price in the short run, and since most Microsoftees are heavily invested in Microsoft stock that is not an option that they are likely to take lightly.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft could destroy Linux if they were focused on business goals and not on the stock price. Instead of raising prices on corporate customers they could be lowering them. The fact of the matter is that no one really wants to switch. Switching is hard and costs money. However, the savings possible with Linux (especially on the server side) are simply too great to be ignored. Instead of lowering their prices and hanging onto these customers Microsoft is raising their prices on corporate customers. Once again the problem is that Microsoft has structured their whole business around their stock price, and eventually that is going to bite them.
This is not even mentioning the real threat to Microsoft's business either. The real threat is that individuals and companies will start using less expensive office suites. Both HP and Dell are now bundling PerfectOffice, and OpenOffice is looking pretty good. Switching to Linux is hard, switching to PerfectOffice or OpenOffice is much easier, and it saves far more money.
Yes, the boiling water crack was probably over the top. The problem with these people still stems more from corruption than it does from any technical problem. More to the point as long as the politicians in these areas are corrupt there is little that you can do in the long term to fix things. Corrupt politicians will always find a way to siphon off funds, appropriate donated food and goods, etc. If you build a water purifier they will make sure that only their friends benefit from the clean water. If the corruption disappeared in these countries then these people would even be employable. The/. folks frown on overseas "sweatshops," but I can guarantee you that the folks working in the sweatshops can afford to boil their water. And over time these economies become more and more modern providing more and better opportunities for people. The problem is that currently it is too risky to build factories in the poorest of the world's nations because the politicians will simply expropriate your investment and steal your hard work.
Now, about the IMF. When I talk about "foreign investment" I am not talking about the IMF/World Bank. The World Bank is almost certainly part of the problem as they allow corrupt politicians to borrow in their country's name. Real businessmen would never loan these crooks money as they know that they are just planning on running the tab up on their countrymen. I am talking about the type of individual investment that comes when a country cleans up its act enough so that it is safe to do business in a country. The best example that I can think of is Chile under Pinochet. Don't get me wrong, Pinochet's methods weren't something I approve of, but there is no questioning the fact that he made a serious dent in the amount of corruption in Chile, and that was very good for the Chilean economy. The money that came into Chile to build the new businesses wasn't from the IMF. The money came from foreign and Chilean investors that realized that Chile was now a good place to do business. Factories were built, mines expanded, the agricultural business was geared for export, etc. In the end it made a huge difference for the Chilean people. They went from one of the poorest nations in the late 60's early 70's to the powerhouse of South America.
As geeks it is easy to see poverty as a technical problems, but the fact of the matter is that it is generally more of a social or ethical problem.
I hate to break it to you hpavc, but there already is a pretty good water purification system available to villagers. Perhaps you have heard of it, it's called distillation. Heck, simply boiling the water would be good enough in most cases, or the addition of a little chlorine. Even the poorest of the poor can afford to boil water. And we already produce more than enough food, too.
You see, for the most part the problems of poverty have very little to do with moral problems like corruption. If there are people starving in Africa you can bet it is because someone in power there wants them to starve. Chances are good that they are working behind the scenes to get the donated food diverted to someone else too.
I used to feel the same way you do, but then I spent some time in Peru, and I learned that Peru's problems stem from the fact that the people in power want to keep the people poor and uneducated so that they are easier to control.
The only way to get out of this vicious cycle is the way that Chile has. Root out the corruption. Once you have cleaned up your government, getting investors to give you money isn't much of a problem.
No, just wait until the OEMs announce the Paladium machines and have a firesale on their old equipment. That'll be the time to buy unencumbered hardware. Hopefully the OEMS won't realize that they are firesaling their valuable systems until it is too late to jack up the prices.
My guess is that Paladium is going to be the mother of all backfires. People aren't likely to take the idea of Hollywood having control over their PC lightly.
Well, not totally bogus. Processor speed is useful when decoding compressed multimedia files. I know that one of the reasons that upgraded was so that my oggs would skip less. Any tech knows the bottleneck is the network connection (especially if you are behind a modem), but having a faster computer doesn't exactly hurt.
The point is that at least Intel was advertising something that people actually wanted. Which of Intel's customers want Hollywood to be able to control whether they can listen to the songs on their computer? None, that's how many, and yet that's the direction that Intel is going.
You are absolutely correct in what Microsoft should do faced with the growing competition from Linux, OpenOffice, and the rest. Microsoft should drastically reduce their prices, cotton up to OEMs like Dell, and generally do a better job of pleasing their customers.
However, if you think that this is what is actually happening, then you are smoking crack. I completely agree with you about the question of stability. For the most part Microsoft's newest OSes are stable enough, especially for the desktop.
Your belief that Microsoft is lowering prices, however, is completely false. The vast majority of home users stick with whatever OS (and software) their computer came with. There never really was an upgrade market for home users. Corporate users, on the other hand, are finding that Microsoft is pushing them inexorably towards software leasing. That way Microsoft gets paid no matter if they write new software or not. The new corporate licensing schemes are far more expensive than their predecessors for all but the most gung-ho bleeding edge Microsoft users.
The reality of the situation is that Microsoft has got to keep growing their business or their stock price is going to head even further south, and they are going to have to do so without being able to grow their market share. For years Microsoft's server revenues have grown at the expense of Novell and commercial UNIX, but Linux has finally cut them off. Further gains in the server market are going to be much smaller than in the past. Microsoft also can't count on too much growth in the desktop software. The first world countries are saturated, and the second and third world countries have massive piracy rates or are looking seriously at Linux. No matter what happens those folks aren't going to pay Microsoft prices for software any time soon. And don't even get me started on the XBox or any of the other businesses that Microsoft is dabbling in.
So where is Microsoft going to get the growth that they need to keep their stock prices up? They are going to get it by squeezing the customers they already have. The new licensing plans are just the beginning. You see, Microsoft management and employees simply have too much of their money tied up in Microsoft stock. If growth and revenues flatten out then their stock price will suffer.
I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your piece. The race is no longer about stability. The battle now is between Microsoft's more familiar (and more consistent) GUI and their wide array of applications against Linux's price and flexibility. I just happen to think that Microsoft is going to turn up the burner a bit on price, at least for corporate users.
Yes, they are getting closer. That's at least better than %WINDIR%\profile, it's still not/home though. I literally can tar up my home directory move it to a new machine and be done. Because I don't have permission to write anywhere else (well/tmp) I can rest assured that I have all of my info too.
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More importantly the Chinese who don't share will find themselves increasingly maintaining patched versions of software that are incompatible with the main branch (and therefore much more expensive to maintain).
Heck, I made some modifications to a GPLed project at one point, and I thought it was too much of a hassle to share. Next thing I knew the software package in question had changed enough that my patches no longer applied cleanly, one of the libraries that my software relied on adopted a new API. To make matters even worse the old version of the library was very tricky to compile by hand.
In short, the next thing I knew it was almost impossible to upgrade the boxes that this software was installed on. If I had shared my work might very well have become part of the mainstream distribution. New installations would have been as easy as installing the RPMs off of the CD.
The Chinese might have enough people working on Linux that they don't need to collaborate with the rest of the world, but my guess is that they would be far better off collaborating with the rest of us than trying to do everything themselves.
Are you seriously proposing that security vendors should blackmail software companies? I can imagine that now:
Full disclosure is the only response that makes any sense at all. The end users should be able to decide for themselves if they should risk their information with unpatched software.
X Windows has allowed you to cut and paste between applications served up from different machines for years. I can launch applications from the machine down the block that display on my desk, and I can then cut and paste between these applications and the local applications without any problems. This only seems amazing because you don't use X Windows. Mix in a little SSH, and it is even secure.
As a practical matter, however, I can't imagine that being able to access applications running on several computers is really that much of an advantage over being able to access files on another machine. For example, I don't fire up Emacs on my webserver and then cut and paste between the Emacs on my webserver and the Emacs instance on my desk. Instead I simply edit the file remotely either via FTP, WebDAV, NFS, SMB, SSH, or some other protocol (Emacs rocks).
The fact of the matter is that I don't want to use someone else's applications. I want to use my applications, customized to my preferences, to read and edit their files. Microsoft makes their money on the desktop, and so their vidison is desktop-centric. They don't want to paint a picture of a future where anonymous fileservers stashed in a closet somewhere do all of the real work.
Microsoft has seen enough market shifts to know what happens if you allow a lower priced competitor to set up shop in your market niche. They have competed against Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Novell, and now commercial UNIX by being "good enough" and less expensive. If Linux is allowed to grow its marketshare then Microsoft is going to have serious long-term problems, and they know it. With every new version of their software their customers are going to compare the cost of upgrading against switching to Linux. And Linux is going to be more feature-competitive with every release. When I first started using Linux in 1995 it had almost no applications that weren't development tools available for it. Now there are Free Software equivalents for almost all server side software (and lots of commercial server software as well), and Linux is even a credible desktop.
With viper Emacs finally has a decent text editor! Emacs goodness plus vi keystrokes is a beautiful thing.
UNIX was ripe for the picking. Microsoft has been going to businesses for years and telling them that they could replace their expensive UNIX servers with Intel based servers, and their message has been pretty well received. I know lots of places that were primarily UNIX shops that have been switching to Windows because Windows was "good enough" at a lower price.
Now, along comes Linux, which also runs on inexpensive commodity x86 hardware. Even worse, it is basically a drop in replacement for UNIX. Migrating from UNIX to Linux is easy, and your staff needs very little retraining. All of a sudden the UNIX to Windows migrations have stopped, and instead they have become a flood of UNIX to Linux migrations. While this is devastating to Sun, it is also bad news for Microsoft. All of a sudden Windows is having a much harder time getting server sales. UNIX shops, generally speaking, are looking at Linux first, and they are liking what they see. Once you have shifted to Linux there is very little chance that you will ever use Windows on the server. Microsoft's ace-in-the-hole has always been the fact that they ran on commodity x86 hardware, but Linux has stolen this advantage and is "free" as well.
Without the built-in growth market Microsoft has to find other ways to keep their revenues up. Their new licensing plan is just another example of how Linux is affecting their game plan. The harder Microsoft squeezes their customers the better Linux looks.
Spot on! I have found that most of the people that think their boss is a moron are simply poor communicators. If it is so clear to you that the idea is a poor one, then it should be fairly easy to explain to your boss why it is a poor idea.
On the other hand, there is a good chance that you are the one that needs a clue. For example, let's imagine that IT in your company has had its budget cut and their choices are to either share hardware between the two projects or close your project down. In that case, your GFAR is actually saving you your job.
It is a little tiring to work with so many computer specialists that think they are some kind of super hero because they know how to code a for loop or have memorized the command-line flags for tar.
Ouch, that was hilarious. Not only was it entertaining, but it was educational as well. Five stars!
Oh, and thanks for Vorbis. Ogg makes me happy.
Then the trick would be to not put Linux on the desktop, but instead put an X terminal on the desktop. You end up with a handful of Linux servers and a pile of X terminals that are either working or in the trash.
Laptop users are tricky, but heck, just leave most of them on Windows for now. Once you stop administering individual desktop machines you can't help but win.
The problem with that assumption is that many admins, after having mastered the initial shock of dealing with text files, find that they actually prefer them. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes GUIs can be handy, but text files are easily version controlled, easily commented, and they make remote administration a heck of a lot easier. Not too mention that with text files you can simply copy and paste to configure new systems, and you can script changes with your favorite text-based tools.
When I first started using Linux, I used the GUIs for everything, but now I never bother with GUIs, and I know that I am not the only admin that feels that way.
Uh, Microsoft was dominant on the PC long before there was Linux. However, every year Linux use grows. So far this growth has been moderate on the desktop, but it will continue to grow just like it has on the server side.
Microsoft has always been bigger than Linux, and yet Linux continues to progress at an amazing pace. And since Microsoft can't buy Linux out, nor can they bankrupt Linux, they can't use their standard tactics. Total World Domination :) is only a matter of time, and Linux has plenty of that to spare.
Microsoft and the rest of the commercial software vendors have been questioning Linux's value for years now, and it hasn't stopped Linux from growing by leaps and bounds. Microsoft problem with Linux is that it costs next to nothing to evaluate Free Software, and in many cases Free Software does as good or a better job than commercial software. Microsoft can pretend that this isn't the case, and can advertise in glossy magazines all day long. At the end of the day Linux simply has too much positive "word of mouth" advertising to be ignored.
People tend to think that Microsoft has gained its market share through marketing, but that really isn't the case. Microsoft has gained their marketshare by providing software that was "good enough" at a lower price than their competitors. Linux is gaining ground because it has become the value leader, and Microsoft will lose long term unless they can A) lower their prices so that they are price competitive, or B) raise the bar so that Linux remains "not quite good enough."
It's not illegal for you to customize your XBox, but that doesn't mean that MS should make it easy. I don't like the fact that Microsoft refers to this as "increasing the security of the XBox," but I can see why they use that term over "decreasing the usability."
However, the XBox is no longer really that good a deal as a generic X86 box. You can get hardware from Walmart.com for $200, and they even pre-install Linux on the machine.
There isn't really a reason to buy an XBox, unless of course you absolutely have to play Halo.
Not that HP has much choice in the matter at this point. After all, it's not like HP has an application server of their own that they could sell you. It seems somewhat ironic to me that HP has not one but two UNIXes, VMS, and who knows what else, and no development strategy going forward other than to spend money advertising for Microsoft (and Dell). Sometimes I wonder if HP wouldn't be better off to simply stick with printers.
If there is one thing that HP should have learned by now is that the only way to win in the PC race is to let someone else do all of the front-runner testing and advertising. When it comes to actually purchasing .NET systems most folks are going to do so primarily on price, and Dell is going to win handily there (especially since they let HP spend the money on advertising).
The problem with Unions in this case is that there is always someone else willing to take their shot a fame without the safety net. So while you are on strike trying to get a decent contract and benefits seven other bands are begging to sign up for the deal you are turning down. No one is going to become famous as a truck driver, so negotiations boil down to pay and benefits. A successful music star, on the other hand, literally has the world at their feet (Money for nothing and the chicks for free). There are lots of folks willing to take a risk to hit the big time like that.
The other benefit to Zope is that it supports all kinds of cool technologies out of the box. For example, I love the fact that all of my business logic is available via XML-RPC to other applications. I also like the fact that I can add content via FTP, HTTP-Put, WebDav, or via XML-RPC methods that I write myself.
RedHat has been handing these guys their hats for years now, and they still don't get it. It's the developers and the systems administrators that get Linux in the door, and likewise it is the developers and systems administrators that end up picking the distribution that gets deployed when the suits finally get the go-ahead. This is actually good news for distributions like SuSE, or Connectivain that if management makes the decision you can bet that they are going with RedHat, because they are perceived as the front-runner.
SuSE, SCO, Turbo, and Connectiva have to have made this connection by this point. After all, SuSE and SCO have had distributions that were as good or better than RedHat since the earliest days of RedHat's existence. Yet RedHat consistently has grown their market share and nabbed the big customers while the rest have struggled. The reason for RedHat's success is simple, they release their code under the GPL, and they actively court developers and systems administrators. Not that RedHat is neglecting CIOs. I am sure they are schmoozing the heck out of those guys too, but they realize that Freedom is an important selling point for Linux.
Think about it for a moment. As a developer or systems administrator which distribution would you rather deploy? Would you deply the distribution with FTP access to their emerging beta version or the distribution that requires you to sign an NDA before they will send you the binary-only CD? The choice for anyone that has ever banged his head against some piece of black-box software is obvious. Even CIOs are starting to get this.
There's a pile of New Yorkers with fancy television sets that already think DRM is a bad thing. Just watch, DRM is going to make Hollywood very unpopular, and it's going to cost them money in the long run.
Generally speaking any company with the kind of revenue and profit margin that Microsoft has is going to seem pretty healthy. However, Microsoft is somewhat different than most companies. The reason for this is the amount of money that Microsoft and their own employees have invested in their own stock. For example, if Microsoft had to expense their stock options, then they would actually be losing money. What's making the difference is that Microsoft has been able to keep their numbers positive enough that the investment community is more than happy enough to keep the price of Microsoft stock up. Microsoft then uses their stock options to pay their employees. Since this doesn't cost Microsoft any money (on paper anyway), they come away smelling like a rose. Every once in a while they announce a big stock buy back (usually when their stock is a little soft) and things are good.
This is part of the reason that Microsoft isn't paying dividends right now. They know that the second that they start acting like an established business and not a high growth start up that investors will start treating them more like Sears and less like the high flier that they always have been. In the long run this would be good for Microsoft's business, but it would clobber their stock price in the short run, and since most Microsoftees are heavily invested in Microsoft stock that is not an option that they are likely to take lightly.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft could destroy Linux if they were focused on business goals and not on the stock price. Instead of raising prices on corporate customers they could be lowering them. The fact of the matter is that no one really wants to switch. Switching is hard and costs money. However, the savings possible with Linux (especially on the server side) are simply too great to be ignored. Instead of lowering their prices and hanging onto these customers Microsoft is raising their prices on corporate customers. Once again the problem is that Microsoft has structured their whole business around their stock price, and eventually that is going to bite them.
This is not even mentioning the real threat to Microsoft's business either. The real threat is that individuals and companies will start using less expensive office suites. Both HP and Dell are now bundling PerfectOffice, and OpenOffice is looking pretty good. Switching to Linux is hard, switching to PerfectOffice or OpenOffice is much easier, and it saves far more money.
Yes, the boiling water crack was probably over the top. The problem with these people still stems more from corruption than it does from any technical problem. More to the point as long as the politicians in these areas are corrupt there is little that you can do in the long term to fix things. Corrupt politicians will always find a way to siphon off funds, appropriate donated food and goods, etc. If you build a water purifier they will make sure that only their friends benefit from the clean water. If the corruption disappeared in these countries then these people would even be employable. The /. folks frown on overseas "sweatshops," but I can guarantee you that the folks working in the sweatshops can afford to boil their water. And over time these economies become more and more modern providing more and better opportunities for people. The problem is that currently it is too risky to build factories in the poorest of the world's nations because the politicians will simply expropriate your investment and steal your hard work.
Now, about the IMF. When I talk about "foreign investment" I am not talking about the IMF/World Bank. The World Bank is almost certainly part of the problem as they allow corrupt politicians to borrow in their country's name. Real businessmen would never loan these crooks money as they know that they are just planning on running the tab up on their countrymen. I am talking about the type of individual investment that comes when a country cleans up its act enough so that it is safe to do business in a country. The best example that I can think of is Chile under Pinochet. Don't get me wrong, Pinochet's methods weren't something I approve of, but there is no questioning the fact that he made a serious dent in the amount of corruption in Chile, and that was very good for the Chilean economy. The money that came into Chile to build the new businesses wasn't from the IMF. The money came from foreign and Chilean investors that realized that Chile was now a good place to do business. Factories were built, mines expanded, the agricultural business was geared for export, etc. In the end it made a huge difference for the Chilean people. They went from one of the poorest nations in the late 60's early 70's to the powerhouse of South America.
As geeks it is easy to see poverty as a technical problems, but the fact of the matter is that it is generally more of a social or ethical problem.
I hate to break it to you hpavc, but there already is a pretty good water purification system available to villagers. Perhaps you have heard of it, it's called distillation. Heck, simply boiling the water would be good enough in most cases, or the addition of a little chlorine. Even the poorest of the poor can afford to boil water. And we already produce more than enough food, too.
You see, for the most part the problems of poverty have very little to do with moral problems like corruption. If there are people starving in Africa you can bet it is because someone in power there wants them to starve. Chances are good that they are working behind the scenes to get the donated food diverted to someone else too.
I used to feel the same way you do, but then I spent some time in Peru, and I learned that Peru's problems stem from the fact that the people in power want to keep the people poor and uneducated so that they are easier to control.
The only way to get out of this vicious cycle is the way that Chile has. Root out the corruption. Once you have cleaned up your government, getting investors to give you money isn't much of a problem.
No, just wait until the OEMs announce the Paladium machines and have a firesale on their old equipment. That'll be the time to buy unencumbered hardware. Hopefully the OEMS won't realize that they are firesaling their valuable systems until it is too late to jack up the prices.
My guess is that Paladium is going to be the mother of all backfires. People aren't likely to take the idea of Hollywood having control over their PC lightly.
Well, not totally bogus. Processor speed is useful when decoding compressed multimedia files. I know that one of the reasons that upgraded was so that my oggs would skip less. Any tech knows the bottleneck is the network connection (especially if you are behind a modem), but having a faster computer doesn't exactly hurt.
The point is that at least Intel was advertising something that people actually wanted. Which of Intel's customers want Hollywood to be able to control whether they can listen to the songs on their computer? None, that's how many, and yet that's the direction that Intel is going.
You are absolutely correct in what Microsoft should do faced with the growing competition from Linux, OpenOffice, and the rest. Microsoft should drastically reduce their prices, cotton up to OEMs like Dell, and generally do a better job of pleasing their customers.
However, if you think that this is what is actually happening, then you are smoking crack. I completely agree with you about the question of stability. For the most part Microsoft's newest OSes are stable enough, especially for the desktop.
Your belief that Microsoft is lowering prices, however, is completely false. The vast majority of home users stick with whatever OS (and software) their computer came with. There never really was an upgrade market for home users. Corporate users, on the other hand, are finding that Microsoft is pushing them inexorably towards software leasing. That way Microsoft gets paid no matter if they write new software or not. The new corporate licensing schemes are far more expensive than their predecessors for all but the most gung-ho bleeding edge Microsoft users.
The reality of the situation is that Microsoft has got to keep growing their business or their stock price is going to head even further south, and they are going to have to do so without being able to grow their market share. For years Microsoft's server revenues have grown at the expense of Novell and commercial UNIX, but Linux has finally cut them off. Further gains in the server market are going to be much smaller than in the past. Microsoft also can't count on too much growth in the desktop software. The first world countries are saturated, and the second and third world countries have massive piracy rates or are looking seriously at Linux. No matter what happens those folks aren't going to pay Microsoft prices for software any time soon. And don't even get me started on the XBox or any of the other businesses that Microsoft is dabbling in.
So where is Microsoft going to get the growth that they need to keep their stock prices up? They are going to get it by squeezing the customers they already have. The new licensing plans are just the beginning. You see, Microsoft management and employees simply have too much of their money tied up in Microsoft stock. If growth and revenues flatten out then their stock price will suffer.
I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your piece. The race is no longer about stability. The battle now is between Microsoft's more familiar (and more consistent) GUI and their wide array of applications against Linux's price and flexibility. I just happen to think that Microsoft is going to turn up the burner a bit on price, at least for corporate users.
Yes, they are getting closer. That's at least better than %WINDIR%\profile, it's still not /home though. I literally can tar up my home directory move it to a new machine and be done. Because I don't have permission to write anywhere else (well /tmp) I can rest assured that I have all of my info too.