I think that Alan Kay was way ahead of his time - getting kids to program. I think much like the spreadsheet revolutionized office work by allowing dynamic analysis of data the next big language will be one that is simple enough to allow average office workers to speed up and automate their own work. Abstraction is key.
VBA is being used currently for a lot of that work - but it is truly horrible. Wharton has started teaching its MBA students Python.
1) Grammar checker in OpenOffice - for all the Non native English speakers
2) A Mail and calendar application that is integrated. Yes Mozilla is partially integrated - but the Mozilla Calendar doesn't work properly. Currently it is crippled and needs some work. It should support ITIP, read emailed Outlook events, and ftp for calendar entries (not just webdav).
2) Integrated GNUe small business accounting software to be released (and work). Eventually all small businesses want to use the addressbook from their accounting software.
4) OpenOffice needs to be more accessible to programmers. It is difficult for developers to get started and contribute to this project as it is so large and complex.
5) OpenOffice to start quicker in linux like the Ximian Hack but faster.
6) A Lotus Approach/MS Access/FileMaker Pro replacement
7) Prettier icons. Compare kwrite to oo write. The icons are much prettier - and that stuff sells.
Another groupware project - cool!
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 5, Informative
There are two definitions of groupware in the industry. The Microsoft one: groupware consists of email with some additional productivity: Calendar, Mail, and basic forms(which are hardly ever used). And the IBM Lotus one: groupware consists of database forms for routing and document management and email.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is more than a trillion dollars per year. Operations costs far exceed capital costs. Hardware and software are minor parts of the total cost of ownership. -- microsoft software is cheap so you should keep buying it. Even if administering it is expensive.
Megaservices like Yahoo!, Google,et all have relatively low operations staff costs. -- Open source if managed properly doesn't need many people. But this formula can't be applied to the propreitary software shit you buy.
Most applications do not benefit from megaservice economies of scale --Most microsoft products. We will still take our chunk of flesh no matter what.
Outsourcing has often proved to be a shell game - moving costs from one place to another. --having a third party vendor manage your Microsoft software for you isn't going to save you much.
Web services reduce the costs of publishing and receiving information. --But you will need a huge support staff to manage it plus lots of licenses. (see above)
Most Web and data processing applications are network or state intensive and are not economically viable as mobile applications. --especially once the MS licensing is thrown in.
I was just having a conversation with a friend about this. The only areas in software Microsoft didn't have a product are Autocad, High End Photo processing (Photoshop) and Anti-virus, (plus some veritical industry apps).
Moving from windows to linux development you are confronted with a myriad of options. QT vs GTK+? Which language should I use: c/c++/java/perl/tcl/python/ruby or javascript? Should I use a commercial/proprietary layout/rad tool (QT or Kylix) or an open source one? What about Mozilla? My background was primarily in programming Visual Basic and Lotus Notes(Basic, Java, c/c++ api). Where should I start?
You are right there will/would be unforeseen problems.
I was actually refering to the fact that Canada is an oil exporter. Alberta, NWT, and NF will lobby against it. The canadian economy benefits from people creating excess CO2.
Also many people believe that a warmer canada isn't bad as they don't understand all the science behind it.
1) Canada is a lot bigger than any of the other countries signing. (transport is the largest source of polutants). 2) Canada is a lot colder 3) Canada has a lot more trees and seaweed per capita than other countries ( more credits). 4) Canada benefits more than other countries from global warming
We WANT some C02 - just not the amount that cars give off and all the other crap they produce. The earth's atmosphere now contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % argon and much less than 1% carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all the coal, oil and trees on the earth it would almost hit 2%( heard this on quirks and quarks).
And since the major requirements of photosynthesis are sunlight, water and Carbon Dioxide green plants, mainly in the ocean, use light from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, fixing the carbon in plants. Even though decay of these plants uses up some of this oxygen it's believed that over a very long period the oxygen gradually increased to its present levels at the expense of the CO2. But 600 milion years ago the earth's atmosphere must have contained a lot of carbon dioxide. The percentage by volume of CO2 could have been as high as 20 % because the 1:1 chemical ratio for O2/CO2 is also the volume ratio.
Personally I think shifting taxes onto polluters isn't a bad thing. North Americans could tighten their belts a bit and easily have a 6% reduction. People love their SUVs and cheap electricity from coal.
DirXML - the company I consult with spent $2 Million trying to implement it. Crashes constantly. They are probably going to scrap it and stick with OpenLDAP and ActiveDirectory.
NLM - This nightmare has taken forever to go away. ABEND is the name of the game. Add some TN3270 gateways and you are ready for a big headache.
IPX/SPX - fairly fast on local area networks, but way to chatty. Why didn't they do "open" to start with.
Netware Client (Windows). - Has never been seamless. Whether you were loading drivers from autoexec.bat or the latest client. Ironically Microsoft's client, while lacking features is easier to tame.
It is hard to believe Novell was once king of the hill - much like Cisco now. Man did they ever blow it. Tapping into the marketing hype around Linux isn't going to save them. The nail in the coffin is the Microsoft Select licensing plan + Active Directory. Get customers to pay for their access, whether they like it or not and tie authentication closely into windows so there is no choice. Instead of taking pot shots at Linux they should be grabbing the linux life preserver like every one else is. Kill their children and make a kick ass migration tool to Linux.
In this account B. Gates welcomes Chinese software theft publicly.
'Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy.
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though.
As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect
sometime in the next decade."' http://news.com.com/2100-1023-212942.html?legacy=c net
That could answer any questions about the motivation "the world's richest
man" might have, wouldn't you think so?
In this account B. Gates welcomes Chinese software theft publicly.
'Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy. "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."'
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-212942.html?legacy =c net
That could answer any questions about the motivation "the world's richest man" might have, wouldn't you think so?
As it is happening 92% with pirated software - what does that say about software's role in economic development? Go out and pirate - 75-cent copies of XP and Office for everyone! Perhaps developing countries should mandate piracy?
Bill Gates and Steve Balmer are smart men. Why aren't they and Microsoft forcing the software piracy issue like they have done in Taiwan? Presumably they are not doing it out of goodwill. If they did we would see large write-offs on the donations in the MS Annual Report.
The real driver is that Microsoft wants to get market share to lock-in the market. In ten years time when China is far wealthier their lawyers will come calling - much like they have done in Taiwan. Despite China's "one china" policy - Microsoft obviously has a three-china intellectual property protection policy (HK, Taiwan, & Mainland).
This smacks of illegal dumping. Dump your product on the country to effectively eliminate the chance of any local competition appearing and shut out your competitors. Once the country can afford to pay the $1000 a user MS Office + MS CAL + MS XP fees send in the lawyers. The switching costs at that point will be too high and they will be forced to pay. This is exactly what Microsoft did in Taiwan - supposedly a part of China.
What should developing countries do? Sue Microsoft for dumping. How can the company be held accountable for the actions of other people selling pirated products? In Canada recently, Tobacco Companies were held accountable for allowing smuggled tobacco to be illegally dumped from the US. Microsoft is playing an equally sinister game. It is obvious that Microsoft will in the long gain from piracy in China, much like a company illegally dumping products below cost can profit in the long term.
Software piracy is the number one problem for Linux and Open Source software in developing countries and something must be done about it.
There must be (at least) 4 of everything in Linux:
We need an MTA! Sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim
We need an windowing platform! GNOME, QT, XFCE, BlackBox
We need a journalizing file system! EXT3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS
We need a browser! Mozilla, Konqueror, links, Galeon
We need an RDBMS! Postgresql, Mysql, Firebird, SAP-DB
We need email with a gui! Mozilla, Evolution, Kmail, Chandler
In fact I would say that until there are at least 4 major projects none of them are that good. In fact once there are 4 major generally at least 2 of them are outstanding.
However there are still projects that need work.
We need groupware! We need small business accounting!
Code reuse is a great thing. But - some projects are crap code - some developers like only certain languages - some projects are too complex to join part time - some projects are miss-managed - and some projects are poorly marketed.
And for them - thats great - let those projects that die lay in waiting to hopefully be reused in another project.
A larger problem that I see is we need to increase the number of contributors to open source projects. Get more inhouse developers working on projects, get more smart high school & university students burning the midnight oil. We need to get more open source developers from India & China. We need people with passion and ideas.
The issue is getting them aware, making employers aware of the benefits of hiring people who work on such projects, making it easier to contribute part time, and making easier ramp up for beginner/internmediate developers.
It should be very clear and very easy to get involved - even on a minor scale.
The main thing to focus on is value added. If most of your code is reused open source stuff you don't need to worry as much.
From an article I wrote: http://xminc.com/linux/hottest_it_skills.h tml
Focus on Value Add
Value-add is mostly common sense - but common sense many IT professionals miss as their vision is clouded by technical details. How can you add the most value to your customer ? i.e. " What is my current/future customer/employer's biggest problem - and what can I do to fix it most efficiently and effectively in the long term ?".
Try to learn skills in areas that are "must have's" - a litmus test is " If the service was unavailable for 1-7 days could the company continue to function like normal ? ".
Many people focus on the value add marketed by vendors. For example a major corporation I know was thinking of moving their desktops from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. The true value add in this case is questionable. In general it is wise to question all claims from vendors for materials particluarly if they include the terms "legacy" and "upgrade".
Skills with Open Source software immediately make you of value. You can implement a File server for 500 users for only the cost of the hardware and consulting time ? A firewall/proxy server on a reused server ? Cost to the client = Nothing + Cost of your labor = a real win.
For programmers it is good to focus on learning environments that allow you to more rapidly produce useful quality code. Open source gives you access to tons of tested libraries that can speed your development time. Using dynamically typed and interpreted programming languages such as Python, Perl or LISP will reduce the number of lines of code you have to write and debug, and speed the code-compile-debug cycle, which can cut the cost of development(1).
Open Source tools give you access to the guts of the application - which allow you add more value to the customer. In tradional proprietary software solutions such as MS SQL Server if you have problems you need to pay a lot of money to call the vendor to get access to some hidden debug parameters that you can then apply to the application. You then try to interpret the debugging information, submit it to the vendor and then wait for a patch. This is much like trying to fix a car when you can't open the hood. Save the $20,000 part of the service contract and do it yourself. Often times this takes a mixture of system administration and programming talent.
Recognize most people adapt very slowly and typically resist technological change. For example replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office on 1,000 desktops may sound great in terms of reducing total cost of ownership. However, the truth is that the amount of time for retraining and resistance from the user community would probably make this project fail. Lock-in to proprietary systems is the athema to value-add.
Try to understand the economics of technlogical change(2), understand how to do a business proposal, and how to sell software projects. If you do - you are more likely to get " what you love " accepted as a corporate solution. Typically with sales of software solutions you sell to the business decision makers - not necessarily IT. Get the product or solution in their hands so they can evalgalize it and make sure you sell at multiple levels in the organization - have multiple people "going to bat " for you and your solution.
Avoid monoplies if possible. Software vendors can reduce the value add of the "total solution" that you are working on by arbitrarily changing licensing agreements and increasing prices. By using open standard or open source software that is not controlled by one company you ensure that you solution will have longer term value. Open software generally has a longer staying power than propretary solutions. Witness the staying power of ANSI C programming environment or the X86 hardware platform(3).
Different operating systems allow you to add different amounts of
The biggest problem is that she is using the wrong criteria for desktop analysis. And as other posters have mentioned the review is full of personal bias.
She uses The Look and Feel, Usability, Consistency, Integration, Flexibility, Speed, Stability and Bugs, Technology, Programming Framework.
What about Security? Leaving this out for me draws question to validity the whole analysis.
What about Value? ($$ vs what you get) And lock-in.
What about Hardware Support? Gnome runs on many platforms unsupported by Windows etc.
Specific problems:
Programming Framework - This has to be the most misinformed section. There are dozens of apis that work in Linux. Both gnome and kde can use XML to define layouts. What about wxWindows, FOX, PyQt, wXRuby, Java?
There are so may interfaces for programming I think the majority of programmers if they have worked with both would prefer the flexability, code availability and cost of GTK and secondly QT.
The Look and Feel
"I don't like keramik" -Ok change it -different distros change them
Which distros did you look at Xandros? Lindows? Mandrake 9.1?
"Gnome widgets are plain" -so fix them
Usability
"problem I have with KDE is its extreme bloat." -pick a distro without it - knoppix
Consistency
She talks about applications not desktop. If this is truly a desktop review than no applications would be mentioned.
Integration
She doesn't want to have to open a terminal app. Well she doesn't to edit a configuration file. The registry is much more confusing the configuration files as there is no space for comments.
"no GUI on configuring printers/scanners/other hardware" -mandrake -knoppix both have one
Damn eastern european women are taking all the porn jobs!!
They are 19, perfect bodies and will take it from both ends for only $50. Whats a porn star to do in the globalized economy!?
Re:Will this allow us to run Windows stuff nativel
on
Programming With WineLib
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Its only usefully for porting software. You can create links and icons for each of your software - this works but takes some setup on your part. Or alternatively you can use vmware. (Win4Lin doesn't support DirectX very well). I haven't played with WineX - but that may also be a solution.
I installed Linux 2 times and damn it - kazaa doesn't have any decent software I can pirate.
When linux can run, out of the box, every pirated softwate without fuss, I might go back. And before you flame me, realize that I probably represent an absurd percentage of the windows crowd, who couldnt care less about their OS as long as its free, they just want their stuff from kazaa to run.
According to the survey of 104 companies in North America, the cost advantage of dumb people over smart ones for the four types of work ranges from 11 percent to 22 percent over a five-year period.
Smart people demonstrated a cost advantage over dumbies in only one category-- web surfing.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that Alan Kay was way ahead of his time - getting kids to program. I think much like the spreadsheet revolutionized office work by allowing dynamic analysis of data the next big language will be one that is simple enough to allow average office workers to speed up and automate their own work. Abstraction is key.
= 6543
VBA is being used currently for a lot of that work - but it is truly horrible. Wharton has started teaching its MBA students Python.
Check out what Paul Graham has to say about programming languages in 100 years (basically they won't change much).
http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html
And Artima had a discussion on this topic, "After Java and C# - what is next?". http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread
Check out guido's reponse to that exact question. Unit Test - "Everything"....
Anthony
1) Grammar checker in OpenOffice - for all the Non native English speakers
2) A Mail and calendar application that is integrated. Yes Mozilla is partially integrated - but the Mozilla Calendar doesn't work properly.
Currently it is crippled and needs some work. It should support ITIP, read emailed Outlook events, and ftp for calendar entries (not just webdav).
2) Integrated GNUe small business accounting software to be released (and work). Eventually all small businesses want to use the addressbook from their accounting software.
4) OpenOffice needs to be more accessible to programmers. It is difficult for developers to get started and contribute to this project as it is so large and complex.
5) OpenOffice to start quicker in linux like the Ximian Hack but faster.
6) A Lotus Approach/MS Access/FileMaker Pro replacement
7) Prettier icons. Compare kwrite to oo write. The icons are much prettier - and that stuff sells.
There are two definitions of groupware in the industry. The Microsoft one: groupware consists of email with some additional productivity: Calendar, Mail, and basic forms(which are hardly ever used). And the IBM Lotus one: groupware consists of database forms for routing and document management and email.
Competing with the Outlook definition:
OS foundations Chandler (Calendar focused)
Mozilla Mail (+calendar proj)
Evolution
Open Groupware
kmail/KGroupware
And from the Lotus Perspective:
www.phpgroupware.org
zope
OpenACS
And Lotus Domino which runs on Linux. The client works fine in wine or crossover - but is not officially supported.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is more than a trillion dollars per year.
Operations costs far exceed capital costs. Hardware and software are minor parts of the total cost of ownership.
-- microsoft software is cheap so you should keep buying it. Even if administering it is expensive.
Megaservices like Yahoo!, Google,et all have relatively low operations staff costs.
-- Open source if managed properly doesn't need many people. But this formula can't be applied to the propreitary software shit you buy.
Most applications do not benefit from megaservice economies of scale
--Most microsoft products. We will still take our chunk of flesh no matter what.
Outsourcing has often proved to be a shell game - moving costs from one place to another.
--having a third party vendor manage your Microsoft software for you isn't going to save you much.
Web services reduce the costs of publishing and receiving information.
--But you will need a huge support staff to manage it plus lots of licenses. (see above)
Most Web and data processing applications are network or state intensive and are not economically viable as mobile applications.
--especially once the MS licensing is thrown in.
I was just having a conversation with a friend about this. The only areas in software Microsoft didn't have a product are Autocad, High End Photo processing (Photoshop) and Anti-virus, (plus some veritical industry apps).
One more category now gone.
Anthony
No big companies pay list price for IBM stuff. Larger customers get a 20-40% discount.
Dell also discounts off list prices.
Anthony
Check out a quick faq I wrote http://www.xminc.com/linux/wxpython.html. I would check out kylix from borland or wxWindows.
Moving from windows to linux development you are confronted with a myriad of options. QT vs GTK+? Which language should I use: c/c++/java/perl/tcl/python/ruby or javascript? Should I use a commercial/proprietary layout/rad tool (QT or Kylix) or an open source one? What about Mozilla? My background was primarily in programming Visual Basic and Lotus Notes(Basic, Java, c/c++ api). Where should I start?
You are right there will/would be unforeseen problems.
I was actually refering to the fact that Canada is an oil exporter. Alberta, NWT, and NF will lobby against it. The canadian economy benefits from people creating excess CO2.
Also many people believe that a warmer canada isn't bad as they don't understand all the science behind it.
1) Canada is a lot bigger than any of the other countries signing. (transport is the largest source of polutants).
2) Canada is a lot colder
3) Canada has a lot more trees and seaweed per capita than other countries ( more credits).
4) Canada benefits more than other countries from global warming
We WANT some C02 - just not the amount that cars give off and all the other crap they produce. The earth's atmosphere now contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1 % argon and much less than 1% carbon dioxide. If we were to burn all the coal, oil and trees on the earth it would almost hit 2%( heard this on quirks and quarks).
And since the major requirements of photosynthesis are sunlight, water and Carbon Dioxide green plants, mainly in the ocean, use light from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen, fixing the carbon in plants. Even though decay of these plants uses up some of this oxygen it's believed that over a very long period the oxygen gradually increased to its present levels at the expense of the CO2. But 600 milion years ago the earth's atmosphere must have contained a lot of carbon dioxide. The percentage by volume of CO2 could have been as high as 20 % because the 1:1 chemical ratio for O2/CO2 is also the volume ratio.
Personally I think shifting taxes onto polluters isn't a bad thing. North Americans could tighten their belts a bit and easily have a 6% reduction.
People love their SUVs and cheap electricity from coal.
DirXML - the company I consult with spent $2 Million trying to implement it. Crashes constantly. They are probably going to scrap it and stick with OpenLDAP and ActiveDirectory.
NLM - This nightmare has taken forever to go away. ABEND is the name of the game. Add some TN3270 gateways and you are ready for a big headache.
IPX/SPX - fairly fast on local area networks, but way to chatty. Why didn't they do "open" to start with.
Netware Client (Windows). - Has never been seamless. Whether you were loading drivers from autoexec.bat or the latest client. Ironically Microsoft's client, while lacking features is easier to tame.
It is hard to believe Novell was once king of the hill - much like Cisco now. Man did they ever blow it. Tapping into the marketing hype around Linux isn't going to save them. The nail in the coffin is the Microsoft Select licensing plan + Active Directory. Get customers to pay for their access, whether they like it or not and tie authentication closely into windows so there is no choice. Instead of taking pot shots at Linux they should be grabbing the linux life preserver like every one else is. Kill their children and make a kick ass migration tool to Linux.
In this account B. Gates welcomes Chinese software theft publicly. 'Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy. "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."'c net
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-212942.html?legacy=
That could answer any questions about the motivation "the world's richest man" might have, wouldn't you think so?
In this account B. Gates welcomes Chinese software theft publicly.
y =c net
'Gates shed some light on his own hard-nosed business philosophy.
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but
people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though.
As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll
get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect
sometime in the next decade."'
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-212942.html?legac
That could answer any questions about the motivation "the world's richest
man" might have, wouldn't you think so?
Bill Gates loves to talk about the economic transformation that is happening in China. - "China is just in a league of its own and it's like no one else is paying attention" . I wonder does it bug him that the transformation is happening mostly on pirated software?
As it is happening 92% with pirated software - what does that say about software's role in economic development? Go out and pirate - 75-cent copies of XP and Office for everyone! Perhaps developing countries should mandate piracy?
Bill Gates and Steve Balmer are smart men. Why aren't they and Microsoft forcing the software piracy issue like they have done in Taiwan? Presumably they are not doing it out of goodwill. If they did we would see large write-offs on the donations in the MS Annual Report.
The real driver is that Microsoft wants to get market share to lock-in the market. In ten years time when China is far wealthier their lawyers will come calling - much like they have done in Taiwan. Despite China's "one china" policy - Microsoft obviously has a three-china intellectual property protection policy (HK, Taiwan, & Mainland).
This smacks of illegal dumping. Dump your product on the country to effectively eliminate the chance of any local competition appearing and shut out your competitors. Once the country can afford to pay the $1000 a user MS Office + MS CAL + MS XP fees send in the lawyers. The switching costs at that point will be too high and they will be forced to pay. This is exactly what Microsoft did in Taiwan - supposedly a part of China.
What should developing countries do? Sue Microsoft for dumping. How can the company be held accountable for the actions of other people selling pirated products? In Canada recently, Tobacco Companies were held accountable for allowing smuggled tobacco to be illegally dumped from the US. Microsoft is playing an equally sinister game. It is obvious that Microsoft will in the long gain from piracy in China, much like a company illegally dumping products below cost can profit in the long term.
Software piracy is the number one problem for Linux and Open Source software in developing countries and something must be done about it.
Complete Article
There must be (at least) 4 of everything in Linux:
We need an MTA!
Sendmail, qmail, postfix, exim
We need an windowing platform!
GNOME, QT, XFCE, BlackBox
We need a journalizing file system!
EXT3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS
We need a browser!
Mozilla, Konqueror, links, Galeon
We need an RDBMS!
Postgresql, Mysql, Firebird, SAP-DB
We need email with a gui!
Mozilla, Evolution, Kmail, Chandler
In fact I would say that until there are at least 4 major projects none of them are that good.
In fact once there are 4 major generally at least 2 of them are outstanding.
However there are still projects that need work.
We need groupware!
We need small business accounting!
Code reuse is a great thing. But
- some projects are crap code
- some developers like only certain languages
- some projects are too complex to join part time
- some projects are miss-managed
- and some projects are poorly marketed.
And for them - thats great - let those projects that die lay in waiting to hopefully be reused in another project.
A larger problem that I see is we need to increase the number of contributors to open source projects. Get more inhouse developers working on projects, get more smart high school & university students burning the midnight oil. We need to get more open source developers from India & China. We need people with passion and ideas.
The issue is getting them aware, making employers aware of the benefits of hiring people who work on such projects, making it easier to contribute part time, and making easier ramp up for beginner/internmediate developers.
It should be very clear and very easy to get involved - even on a minor scale.
The main thing to focus on is value added. If most of your code is reused open source stuff you don't need to worry as much.
From an article I wrote:
http://xminc.com/linux/hottest_it_skills.h tml
Focus on Value Add
Value-add is mostly common sense - but common sense many IT professionals miss as their vision is clouded by technical details. How can you add the most value to your customer ? i.e. " What is my current/future customer/employer's biggest problem - and what can I do to fix it most efficiently and effectively in the long term ?".
Try to learn skills in areas that are "must have's" - a litmus test is " If the service was unavailable for 1-7 days could the company continue to function like normal ? ".
Many people focus on the value add marketed by vendors. For example a major corporation I know was thinking of moving their desktops from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. The true value add in this case is questionable. In general it is wise to question all claims from vendors for materials particluarly if they include the terms "legacy" and "upgrade".
Skills with Open Source software immediately make you of value. You can implement a File server for 500 users for only the cost of the hardware and consulting time ? A firewall/proxy server on a reused server ? Cost to the client = Nothing + Cost of your labor = a real win.
For programmers it is good to focus on learning environments that allow you to more rapidly produce useful quality code. Open source gives you access to tons of tested libraries that can speed your development time. Using dynamically typed and interpreted programming languages such as Python, Perl or LISP will reduce the number of lines of code you have to write and debug, and speed the code-compile-debug cycle, which can cut the cost of development(1).
Open Source tools give you access to the guts of the application - which allow you add more value to the customer. In tradional proprietary software solutions such as MS SQL Server if you have problems you need to pay a lot of money to call the vendor to get access to some hidden debug parameters that you can then apply to the application. You then try to interpret the debugging information, submit it to the vendor and then wait for a patch. This is much like trying to fix a car when you can't open the hood. Save the $20,000 part of the service contract and do it yourself. Often times this takes a mixture of system administration and programming talent.
Recognize most people adapt very slowly and typically resist technological change. For example replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office on 1,000 desktops may sound great in terms of reducing total cost of ownership. However, the truth is that the amount of time for retraining and resistance from the user community would probably make this project fail. Lock-in to proprietary systems is the athema to value-add.
Try to understand the economics of technlogical change(2), understand how to do a business proposal, and how to sell software projects. If you do - you are more likely to get " what you love " accepted as a corporate solution. Typically with sales of software solutions you sell to the business decision makers - not necessarily IT. Get the product or solution in their hands so they can evalgalize it and make sure you sell at multiple levels in the organization - have multiple people "going to bat " for you and your solution.
Avoid monoplies if possible. Software vendors can reduce the value add of the "total solution" that you are working on by arbitrarily changing licensing agreements and increasing prices. By using open standard or open source software that is not controlled by one company you ensure that you solution will have longer term value. Open software generally has a longer staying power than propretary solutions. Witness the staying power of ANSI C programming environment or the X86 hardware platform(3).
Different operating systems allow you to add different amounts of
And the new one looks great
http://www.dynamism.com/zaurus/index.shtml
Also the 1.8 lb sony and a couple of other japanese vendors offer similar tiny laptops. You might get a better deal on ebay.
It may not fit your criteria but sony has some 2.xlb laptops/ review/0, 12070,562439,00.html
http://www.zdnet.com/supercenter/stories
Lindows is selling an $800 2lb+ laptop which gets good reviews
http://www.lindows.com/
The biggest problem is that she is using the wrong criteria for desktop analysis. And as other posters have mentioned the review is full of personal bias.
She uses The Look and Feel, Usability, Consistency, Integration, Flexibility, Speed, Stability and Bugs, Technology, Programming Framework.
What about Security? Leaving this out for me draws question to validity the whole analysis.
What about Value? ($$ vs what you get)
And lock-in.
What about Hardware Support?
Gnome runs on many platforms unsupported by Windows etc.
Specific problems:
Programming Framework
- This has to be the most misinformed section. There are dozens of apis that work in Linux. Both gnome and kde can use XML to define layouts.
What about wxWindows, FOX, PyQt, wXRuby, Java?
There are so may interfaces for programming I think the majority of programmers if they have worked with both would prefer the flexability, code availability and cost of GTK and secondly QT.
The Look and Feel
"I don't like keramik"
-Ok change it
-different distros change them
Which distros did you look at Xandros? Lindows? Mandrake 9.1?
"Gnome widgets are plain"
-so fix them
Usability
"problem I have with KDE is its extreme bloat."
-pick a distro without it - knoppix
Consistency
She talks about applications not desktop. If this is truly a desktop review than no applications
would be mentioned.
Integration
She doesn't want to have to open a terminal app. Well she doesn't to edit a configuration
file. The registry is much more confusing the configuration files
as there is no space for comments.
"no GUI on configuring printers/scanners/other hardware"
-mandrake
-knoppix both have one
Damn eastern european women are taking all the porn jobs!!
They are 19, perfect bodies and will take it from both ends for only $50. Whats a porn star to do in the globalized economy!?
Its only usefully for porting software. You can create links and icons for each of your software - this works but takes some setup on your part. Or alternatively you can use vmware. (Win4Lin doesn't support DirectX very well). I haven't played with WineX - but that may also be a solution.
Wouldn't web design be so much easier if everyone just used Word? Forms, macros, print preview.
This is what I tell people who design only for IE.
Who cares about standards? Obviously idiots don't.
I installed Linux 2 times and damn it - kazaa doesn't have any decent software I can pirate.
When linux can run, out of the box, every pirated softwate without fuss, I might go back. And before you flame me, realize that I probably represent an absurd percentage of the windows crowd, who couldnt care less about their OS as long as its free, they just want their stuff from kazaa to run.
According to the survey of 104 companies in North America, the cost advantage of dumb people over smart ones for the four types of work ranges from 11 percent to 22 percent over a five-year period.
Smart people demonstrated a cost advantage over dumbies in only one category-- web surfing.