Administration is certainly not a breeze for Linux. Sure as a server you set it up once and walk away with the exception of patching but it has its issues.
For example Firefox's history and back and forward functionality accidently got disabled in my Ubuntu installation. Why? I wanted to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 just like everyone else and it was a pain in the butt. Ubuntu doesn't support 3.5. I had to use the multiverse to install firefox (try explaining this to Grandma) and it turns out synaptics installed both side by side instead of an upgrade, which in return screwed each other's sql-lite databases. I can start Firefox 3.1 or 3.5 but their profiles are disabled. Uninstallation doesn't work and I have to re-install or delete and recreate my user account.
With Windows you see a message box "Gee want to upgrade to 3.5 click here!". Simple as that
Add other apps that require a different sound server or package to work and you have a nightmare. Read the reviews on KDE 4.x here on slashdot? THey are terrible because most Linux users use Ubuntu and Kubuntu does not even have a wifi connection manager. Grandma does not need to install this herself through the unsupported multiverse. She just wants to turn it on and click.
Windows just works as a desktop. Point and click. Its not the pile of garbage err half the pile of garbage it once was. If your machine gets infected just re-image it. Linux/Unix rootkits and infections are on the rise too as hackers like phishing with real servers.
Windows is very intuitive you just point and click and it comes already setup. WIth Vista and Windows7 you just type in the name of the program or document without even using the mouse. Unix could use this.
Also MS Office is the reason most people wont leave.
My laptop I use dual boots between the two operating systems but for the reasons described above I use Vista regularly.
Linux used to be ahead on the desktop during the Windows 9.x days of unpredictability but its behind.
Linux is better as a server to administer but it surely is not as a desktop.
I had a professor in college who used to hate the ribbons until she really learned them and then felt it made her more productive.
Basically if you hit the +alt key the ribbon will show numbers and you can use the ribbons with short hotkeys much like Vi or Emacs without large menus popping up and obstructing your view. I know you can do this with the classical menu system but the ribbon shows you visually which thing to type as its numbered and your selected cells or text wont be burried by menus.
You can do things in Excel 2007 faster than Excel 2003 once you get the hang of it. With Vista you can also use the Windows key and just type the app or doc you need in addition to 2007.
Most users hate it because they resist change. Once you learn the ribbons with the shortcut keys it feels more natural and intuitive with a laptop with a touchpad. I am not saying its the best thing since canned beer but I am getting used to to it and like it.
The workers at MS who get canned because they become an Indian company will sure come to Olympia with pitchforks and will vote all the incumbants out. A company with lots of employees who are depenent on it to survive are quite powerful and to me this sounds reasonable. Lobbying however is a different ball game and needs to be banned.
If I buy a copy of Windows Vista here in Alaska why should Microsoft get tax revenue for the license? The transaction didn't occur in that state. MS does pay for taxes for each American worker, space, and other transactions that take place in Washington.
Going to a different state such as Delaware is taught first day in college at any business school. Delaware even has its own court system to favor employers let alone tax breaks.
The problem is these illegals ( rrr undocumented) workers are consuming alot more tax money than they put in which is bankrupting states like California. Especially if the tax payers are paying for each baby and hospitalization costing tens of thousands each.
The problem is poor people do not have that much money to consume and most money is just transfered to their home countries and is not taxed nor re-invested.
They make so little money that they can't be taxed. Sales taxes are part of the problem as I agree they are regressive... I dislike income taxes too as they encourage CEO's and investors to move out of states to cheaper places.
This recession was caused by overspending. I heard on NPR a month ago that Americans have more storage unit space than all of San Fransisco as we keep consuming and consuming with zero savings.
The economy is responding now by encouraging consumers to save which will build the banks back up so they can re-invest. Long term savings are good as lines of credit are life lines for any business owner and this money comes from savings. Right now the recovery is based on people saving and investing.
Part of the problem stems from HR requiring years of experience such as 7 years of xp in vs 2008 (yes I actually saw that) with no idea about transferable skills from different languages or platforms (Solaris is not SCO Unix or Linux in their eyes) etc.
I suppose if you are a manager try to do the hiring yourself without HR doing the AD on Dice.
The reason I stipulate #1 is not for being patriotic but it has to do with laws and legal requirements.
If the data is on a server in Madagascar or India what recourse do I have if its stolen? How can I make a legal agreement with employees in that country?
Nigeria and Russia are scary places with citizens known to steal identities of Americans. It seems negligent for that reason to outsource to these lawless countries.
You can do #1 and hire Americans but I do agree with you the outsourcer will want alot more money understandably.
Its not Apple who is doing the locking down. Its the phone carriers. Apple is basically forced if they ever want to enter the market to play by AT&Ts sandbox rules or make their own park.
I heard in Europe its a different story and you can actually buy one phone and use it on several networks and there are no ridiculous contracts.
Windows powered phones are the same as the phone companies make money charging $3.00 for a ringtone and do not want an inch of competition. I heard you can hack some of the windows smartphone in order to run your own apps but this is ridiculous.
MacOSX is not that locked and Apple owns the whole platform. Until we have some real telecom competition and new anti trust laws this will be the norm for awhile.
Well its a good thing Microsoft has no history of DRM and forcing hardware makers to incorporate it in their drivers to be Vista certified or anything.
MS is just as bad software wise with lockin and would love to drm and force digital signing of all apps like a cell phone if they could. Not to mention Windows sucks and always had.
We need to get rid of this mentality that we need a single monopolist to set standards and own all of the market. Its the old 1980s mentality of IBM which created the monopoly for MS.
Consumers want choices and we will have several platform players always. Business users may prefer one but I chose Apple to set milestones for other players. They innovate and make supperior products. MS scares me and I do not want a return to the 1990s where the whole industry followed whats best suited for MS and their products sucked and they didn't care because MS didn't need too. I almost gave up hope that a competitor to WinCE would ever come and it looks like several are available now... THANK GOD.
Its normal for companies to remotely manage servers. It costs time and money to leavce the office for a clients site.
If the information is critical then you need to stipulate that only employees at outsourcer are: 1. Americans 2. Have credit score of 650 or better 3. Have no criminal background 4. Outsourcer agrees to pay costs of lawsuits from stolen property.
#4 is a big one and many might just refuse such a contract. I am waiting for an interview from an outsourcer who wants a thorough credit check and criminal background. THe client is a mortgage firm and I would be working at the site and in the office of outsourcer but its what the mortage company requires.
VT is a HUGE security risk that malware writers exploit and can write rootkits for. Its disabled on my desktops for good reason. HP also disables it.
Most I.T. departments request VT to be disabled and I was not aware that Windows7 used the hypervisor to run XP (makes sense). I will add its possible to reflash the bios to support using it but I would not recommend it. In this day and age and I am shocked at the amount of malware out there and how easy it is to get infected. Its like the wild west and most users do not know about security and will click on things that look like Windows pop ups or read email from trusted sources that have links for browse by infections. These are Sony's customers not to mention after the bad press with the rootkit fiasco Sony probably overeacted by making there laptops they way they are.
With VT you can not remove the malware without a complete wipe as its undetectable by any anti virus package and its as scary as the lojack bug that runs at the bios level and can't be disabled.
There is no real use of VT anyway since cores are now dual.
"This also raises an interesting legal question - can a "platform" lock-out non-platform apps? For instance, imagine the fallout if Microsoft released a "patch" which removed all copies of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera from user's machines. They are just a "duplication of functionality" found within IE, right"
DOS aint done until Lotus wont run.
Look what happened with Windows 3.11 when running Caldera Dr DOS
However, the private sector hires and when the ink is red and the profit/loss spreadsheets the accountants first knee jerk reaction is to implement a hiring freeze and lay off workers. This then amplifies.
If the cost to hire, low interest rates, and tax cuts go down then the profits will increase. When this happens the HR and accoutants lift hte hiring freeze and people have jobs again.
I guess I have to agree wiht the republicans on this. We outsource jobs because of tax breaks, no health insurance, and head taxes are much much lower. Its not salary. If we keep taxes high then the bean counters will want to outsource our jobs to more business friendly countries.
They can't even run a simple website without spending tens of millions of dollars and this is the same government that bankrupted social security. How many people would someone need to hire for $18,000,000 to run a simple website?
Now they want to put our great grandchildren further in debt by a second stimulus?
I admitted I voted for Obama because I assumed he would balance the budget like Clinton. In addition, I figured anyone could be more fiscally responsible than Bush and Hannity and Rush's fanatic complaints about him being a big spending liberal would be way off. I was proven wrong. Instead I have another idea if you want to help the economy. Cut government spending. After we have lower interest rates from less panicy government bond holders we will have a revenue increase and once books are balanced the need to hire again will return. If no one wants something a big check wont help the economy. The market needs to fix it and the government needs to help the market rather than prohibit it by making them pay for socialistic recovery schemes.
This needs to be challenged and ruled upon by a court.
Part of the problem is that lawyers quote other court cases to judges as facts even if no official ruling on one of the particular controversial arguments are included. The santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad is quoted as a fact that corporations truly are people even though the judge did not agree or disagree with the statement. Also lawyers and judges should not have the power to misinterpret reality. If a judge rules the sky is green is it really green? The law would say yes but reality would say no. Judicial activism is part of the problem as judges should only interpret laws and not makeup new ones or stretch an existing law to be a new one just by his or her own opinion on it.
I am no lawyer but I was taught that owners are shielded with corporations if I remember properly from my finance and accounting classes. This is why owners are willing to pay double taxation for owning a corporation rather than a partnership or sole proprietor.
If corporations are people then they need to be punished when breaking the law. Instead they are treated as persons for bribery.. cough campaign contributions.. but when they break the law then they are corporations and not people.
The courts need to do something about this soon and the current climate in Washington today might be it. People are still really angry at AIG and are sick and tired of corruption and massive deficit spending from Washington.
"2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech."
Riiigghht. So if a police man pulls me over for drunk driving and I just happen to practice my free speech by giving him a free dinner and a wealthy country club membership as well as his bosses boss (precinct captain) a campaign contribution for re-election then its perfectly legal?
More than likely, a judge would throw me in jail for bribery so fast I would not even have time to get my checkbook out.
I am a private citizen with full constitutional rights. Why doe corporations be treated better than myself? After all like the example above I would get thrown in prison but corporations do this all the time and its simply business as usual.
I am not disagreeing with your view that this is how the courts interpret things but its hypocritical and it needs to end.
Look up Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad?
Corporations are people according to the courts. That is a big problem all into itself, and is a perfect example of how delusional lawyers are in that they make their own reality by restating what reality is. This is why judicial activism is bad as the court has no power to make something up and call it law.
Because Apple wants to create a monopoly with file formats. Supporting Theora would lower barriers to entry for competitors running on Windows to compete with them.
If no browser will support the codecs then webmasters wont use html 5 and stick with html4. When IE owned a significant marketshare a couple of years ago the web evolution slowed down to a halt. Firefox can't adopt H.264 because its patented and Firefox can be shutdown if a lawsuit over infringement takes place.
And Firefox does not have a significant enough marketshare for developers to care about Ogg Vorbis/Theora. Besides all the professional tools do not support it so it wont ever be used. It wont ever be used because professional tools do not support. Its a catch-22 just like Microsoft Windows and Office. You can't ever leave the platform.
If silverlight and flash work on 95% of the market why switch?
Business users love obsolete software because its cheaper and what is the ROI for upgrading. Not to mention a larger IT staff is needed to support upgrades.
W2k and Office 2k live on and will continue to live for years to come.
Most users do not want to upgrade their computers as long as they work.
Open source evolves too quickly for users to be comfortable with. Until businesses ditch their proprietary obsolete software open source will never see the light of day.
Alot of things moved out of the kernel (Operating system) and were moved into software emulation and user-space. In addition, DRM scrambles and re-arranges the data constantly and this slows it down as well.
This is why you can't adjust the bass and trebble with Vista but can with the same hardware in XP. Access to the hardware is limited.
Java has the problem of doing things its own way in its own environment. For example no cleartype fonts for X make netbeans painful and horrible looking running it on Linux. No integrated KDE or gnome support because of swing and other issues make it hard to write easy code. Also overiding objects with the super statement is difficult... at least for me with doing g and paint.
Anyway database access, debuggers, and threading make it scale well on a server. It runs well from a 1 to a 32 cpu system.
Also google apis are written mostly in Java if you want to do things like add google map support for your website and other things. Hibernate and spring are java based too which is nice. I believe there is a.net port of hibernate coming into maturity but I do not know if its finished yet.
For these reasons Java is still ahead of.NET for web server development..NET actually does not suck and you can make great win32 applications with it. Linq and other things being ported may make it better for server development. Like the other poster mentioned platform independence is nice as MS has been known to change licensing fees to loansharking levels for SQL Server and IIS if you add clustering and unlimited seats. With Java if Oracle does that garbage I can simply switch from solaris to Linux and use postgresql or sysbase. No platform entrapment.
If you do not like the mean bad old boss or I.T. department mendling on the systems you use at work then buy your own computer.
Sorry RMS but work is not freedom. Its just a paycheck as you no longer own your time in exchange for money to live.
If you are in charge of a system where other people at work need access to it and you are *paid* to keep it up then what are you supposed to do? Restrictions at work make sense as they are not being paid to play with their computers but to work.
I think you can tell RMS is out of touch with reality. Administrators need complete control in order to lower TCO and keep productivity. I want the file server to just work in the office where is my power to enforce this?
Slashdot Mirror
Administration is certainly not a breeze for Linux. Sure as a server you set it up once and walk away with the exception of patching but it has its issues.
For example Firefox's history and back and forward functionality accidently got disabled in my Ubuntu installation. Why? I wanted to upgrade to Firefox 3.5 just like everyone else and it was a pain in the butt. Ubuntu doesn't support 3.5. I had to use the multiverse to install firefox (try explaining this to Grandma) and it turns out synaptics installed both side by side instead of an upgrade, which in return screwed each other's sql-lite databases. I can start Firefox 3.1 or 3.5 but their profiles are disabled. Uninstallation doesn't work and I have to re-install or delete and recreate my user account.
With Windows you see a message box "Gee want to upgrade to 3.5 click here!". Simple as that
Add other apps that require a different sound server or package to work and you have a nightmare. Read the reviews on KDE 4.x here on slashdot? THey are terrible because most Linux users use Ubuntu and Kubuntu does not even have a wifi connection manager. Grandma does not need to install this herself through the unsupported multiverse. She just wants to turn it on and click.
Windows just works as a desktop. Point and click. Its not the pile of garbage err half the pile of garbage it once was. If your machine gets infected just re-image it. Linux/Unix rootkits and infections are on the rise too as hackers like phishing with real servers.
Windows is very intuitive you just point and click and it comes already setup. WIth Vista and Windows7 you just type in the name of the program or document without even using the mouse. Unix could use this.
Also MS Office is the reason most people wont leave.
My laptop I use dual boots between the two operating systems but for the reasons described above I use Vista regularly.
Linux used to be ahead on the desktop during the Windows 9.x days of unpredictability but its behind.
Linux is better as a server to administer but it surely is not as a desktop.
I had a professor in college who used to hate the ribbons until she really learned them and then felt it made her more productive.
Basically if you hit the +alt key the ribbon will show numbers and you can use the ribbons with short hotkeys much like Vi or Emacs without large menus popping up and obstructing your view. I know you can do this with the classical menu system but the ribbon shows you visually which thing to type as its numbered and your selected cells or text wont be burried by menus.
You can do things in Excel 2007 faster than Excel 2003 once you get the hang of it. With Vista you can also use the Windows key and just type the app or doc you need in addition to 2007.
Most users hate it because they resist change. Once you learn the ribbons with the shortcut keys it feels more natural and intuitive with a laptop with a touchpad. I am not saying its the best thing since canned beer but I am getting used to to it and like it.
The workers at MS who get canned because they become an Indian company will sure come to Olympia with pitchforks and will vote all the incumbants out. A company with lots of employees who are depenent on it to survive are quite powerful and to me this sounds reasonable. Lobbying however is a different ball game and needs to be banned.
If I buy a copy of Windows Vista here in Alaska why should Microsoft get tax revenue for the license? The transaction didn't occur in that state. MS does pay for taxes for each American worker, space, and other transactions that take place in Washington.
Going to a different state such as Delaware is taught first day in college at any business school. Delaware even has its own court system to favor employers let alone tax breaks.
The problem is these illegals ( rrr undocumented) workers are consuming alot more tax money than they put in which is bankrupting states like California. Especially if the tax payers are paying for each baby and hospitalization costing tens of thousands each.
The problem is poor people do not have that much money to consume and most money is just transfered to their home countries and is not taxed nor re-invested.
They make so little money that they can't be taxed. Sales taxes are part of the problem as I agree they are regressive ... I dislike income taxes too as they encourage CEO's and investors to move out of states to cheaper places.
This recession was caused by overspending. I heard on NPR a month ago that Americans have more storage unit space than all of San Fransisco as we keep consuming and consuming with zero savings.
The economy is responding now by encouraging consumers to save which will build the banks back up so they can re-invest. Long term savings are good as lines of credit are life lines for any business owner and this money comes from savings. Right now the recovery is based on people saving and investing.
Part of the problem stems from HR requiring years of experience such as 7 years of xp in vs 2008 (yes I actually saw that) with no idea about transferable skills from different languages or platforms (Solaris is not SCO Unix or Linux in their eyes) etc.
I suppose if you are a manager try to do the hiring yourself without HR doing the AD on Dice.
The reason I stipulate #1 is not for being patriotic but it has to do with laws and legal requirements.
If the data is on a server in Madagascar or India what recourse do I have if its stolen? How can I make a legal agreement with employees in that country?
Nigeria and Russia are scary places with citizens known to steal identities of Americans. It seems negligent for that reason to outsource to these lawless countries.
You can do #1 and hire Americans but I do agree with you the outsourcer will want alot more money understandably.
Its not Apple who is doing the locking down. Its the phone carriers. Apple is basically forced if they ever want to enter the market to play by AT&Ts sandbox rules or make their own park.
I heard in Europe its a different story and you can actually buy one phone and use it on several networks and there are no ridiculous contracts.
Windows powered phones are the same as the phone companies make money charging $3.00 for a ringtone and do not want an inch of competition. I heard you can hack some of the windows smartphone in order to run your own apps but this is ridiculous.
MacOSX is not that locked and Apple owns the whole platform. Until we have some real telecom competition and new anti trust laws this will be the norm for awhile.
Well its a good thing Microsoft has no history of DRM and forcing hardware makers to incorporate it in their drivers to be Vista certified or anything.
MS is just as bad software wise with lockin and would love to drm and force digital signing of all apps like a cell phone if they could. Not to mention Windows sucks and always had.
We need to get rid of this mentality that we need a single monopolist to set standards and own all of the market. Its the old 1980s mentality of IBM which created the monopoly for MS.
Consumers want choices and we will have several platform players always. Business users may prefer one but I chose Apple to set milestones for other players. They innovate and make supperior products. MS scares me and I do not want a return to the 1990s where the whole industry followed whats best suited for MS and their products sucked and they didn't care because MS didn't need too. I almost gave up hope that a competitor to WinCE would ever come and it looks like several are available now ... THANK GOD.
Its normal for companies to remotely manage servers. It costs time and money to leavce the office for a clients site.
If the information is critical then you need to stipulate that only employees at outsourcer are:
1. Americans
2. Have credit score of 650 or better
3. Have no criminal background
4. Outsourcer agrees to pay costs of lawsuits from stolen property.
#4 is a big one and many might just refuse such a contract. I am waiting for an interview from an outsourcer who wants a thorough credit check and criminal background. THe client is a mortgage firm and I would be working at the site and in the office of outsourcer but its what the mortage company requires.
VT is a HUGE security risk that malware writers exploit and can write rootkits for. Its disabled on my desktops for good reason. HP also disables it.
Most I.T. departments request VT to be disabled and I was not aware that Windows7 used the hypervisor to run XP (makes sense). I will add its possible to reflash the bios to support using it but I would not recommend it. In this day and age and I am shocked at the amount of malware out there and how easy it is to get infected. Its like the wild west and most users do not know about security and will click on things that look like Windows pop ups or read email from trusted sources that have links for browse by infections. These are Sony's customers not to mention after the bad press with the rootkit fiasco Sony probably overeacted by making there laptops they way they are.
With VT you can not remove the malware without a complete wipe as its undetectable by any anti virus package and its as scary as the lojack bug that runs at the bios level and can't be disabled.
There is no real use of VT anyway since cores are now dual.
"This also raises an interesting legal question - can a "platform" lock-out non-platform apps? For instance, imagine the fallout if Microsoft released a "patch" which removed all copies of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera from user's machines. They are just a "duplication of functionality" found within IE, right"
DOS aint done until Lotus wont run.
Look what happened with Windows 3.11 when running Caldera Dr DOS
Well I hate inequality as the next guy.
However, the private sector hires and when the ink is red and the profit/loss spreadsheets the accountants first knee jerk reaction is to implement a hiring freeze and lay off workers. This then amplifies.
If the cost to hire, low interest rates, and tax cuts go down then the profits will increase. When this happens the HR and accoutants lift hte hiring freeze and people have jobs again.
I guess I have to agree wiht the republicans on this. We outsource jobs because of tax breaks, no health insurance, and head taxes are much much lower. Its not salary. If we keep taxes high then the bean counters will want to outsource our jobs to more business friendly countries.
They can't even run a simple website without spending tens of millions of dollars and this is the same government that bankrupted social security. How many people would someone need to hire for $18,000,000 to run a simple website?
Now they want to put our great grandchildren further in debt by a second stimulus?
I admitted I voted for Obama because I assumed he would balance the budget like Clinton. In addition, I figured anyone could be more fiscally responsible than Bush and Hannity and Rush's fanatic complaints about him being a big spending liberal would be way off. I was proven wrong. Instead I have another idea if you want to help the economy. Cut government spending. After we have lower interest rates from less panicy government bond holders we will have a revenue increase and once books are balanced the need to hire again will return. If no one wants something a big check wont help the economy. The market needs to fix it and the government needs to help the market rather than prohibit it by making them pay for socialistic recovery schemes.
This needs to be challenged and ruled upon by a court.
Part of the problem is that lawyers quote other court cases to judges as facts even if no official ruling on one of the particular controversial arguments are included. The santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad is quoted as a fact that corporations truly are people even though the judge did not agree or disagree with the statement. Also lawyers and judges should not have the power to misinterpret reality. If a judge rules the sky is green is it really green? The law would say yes but reality would say no. Judicial activism is part of the problem as judges should only interpret laws and not makeup new ones or stretch an existing law to be a new one just by his or her own opinion on it.
I am no lawyer but I was taught that owners are shielded with corporations if I remember properly from my finance and accounting classes. This is why owners are willing to pay double taxation for owning a corporation rather than a partnership or sole proprietor.
If corporations are people then they need to be punished when breaking the law. Instead they are treated as persons for bribery .. cough campaign contributions.. but when they break the law then they are corporations and not people.
The courts need to do something about this soon and the current climate in Washington today might be it. People are still really angry at AIG and are sick and tired of corruption and massive deficit spending from Washington.
"2) Money as free speech: the notion that campaign donations are a form of constitutionally protected speech."
Riiigghht. So if a police man pulls me over for drunk driving and I just happen to practice my free speech by giving him a free dinner and a wealthy country club membership as well as his bosses boss (precinct captain) a campaign contribution for re-election then its perfectly legal?
More than likely, a judge would throw me in jail for bribery so fast I would not even have time to get my checkbook out.
I am a private citizen with full constitutional rights. Why doe corporations be treated better than myself? After all like the example above I would get thrown in prison but corporations do this all the time and its simply business as usual.
I am not disagreeing with your view that this is how the courts interpret things but its hypocritical and it needs to end.
Look up Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad?
Corporations are people according to the courts. That is a big problem all into itself, and is a perfect example of how delusional lawyers are in that they make their own reality by restating what reality is. This is why judicial activism is bad as the court has no power to make something up and call it law.
Because Apple wants to create a monopoly with file formats. Supporting Theora would lower barriers to entry for competitors running on Windows to compete with them.
If no browser will support the codecs then webmasters wont use html 5 and stick with html4. When IE owned a significant marketshare a couple of years ago the web evolution slowed down to a halt. Firefox can't adopt H.264 because its patented and Firefox can be shutdown if a lawsuit over infringement takes place.
And Firefox does not have a significant enough marketshare for developers to care about Ogg Vorbis/Theora. Besides all the professional tools do not support it so it wont ever be used. It wont ever be used because professional tools do not support. Its a catch-22 just like Microsoft Windows and Office. You can't ever leave the platform.
If silverlight and flash work on 95% of the market why switch?
I find jus tthe opposite true.
Business users love obsolete software because its cheaper and what is the ROI for upgrading. Not to mention a larger IT staff is needed to support upgrades.
W2k and Office 2k live on and will continue to live for years to come.
Most users do not want to upgrade their computers as long as they work.
Open source evolves too quickly for users to be comfortable with. Until businesses ditch their proprietary obsolete software open source will never see the light of day.
Alot of things moved out of the kernel (Operating system) and were moved into software emulation and user-space. In addition, DRM scrambles and re-arranges the data constantly and this slows it down as well.
This is why you can't adjust the bass and trebble with Vista but can with the same hardware in XP. Access to the hardware is limited.
Java has the problem of doing things its own way in its own environment. For example no cleartype fonts for X make netbeans painful and horrible looking running it on Linux. No integrated KDE or gnome support because of swing and other issues make it hard to write easy code. Also overiding objects with the super statement is difficult ... at least for me with doing g and paint.
Anyway database access, debuggers, and threading make it scale well on a server. It runs well from a 1 to a 32 cpu system.
Also google apis are written mostly in Java if you want to do things like add google map support for your website and other things. Hibernate and spring are java based too which is nice. I believe there is a .net port of hibernate coming into maturity but I do not know if its finished yet.
For these reasons Java is still ahead of .NET for web server development. .NET actually does not suck and you can make great win32 applications with it. Linq and other things being ported may make it better for server development. Like the other poster mentioned platform independence is nice as MS has been known to change licensing fees to loansharking levels for SQL Server and IIS if you add clustering and unlimited seats. With Java if Oracle does that garbage I can simply switch from solaris to Linux and use postgresql or sysbase. No platform entrapment.
If you do not like the mean bad old boss or I.T. department mendling on the systems you use at work then buy your own computer.
Sorry RMS but work is not freedom. Its just a paycheck as you no longer own your time in exchange for money to live.
If you are in charge of a system where other people at work need access to it and you are *paid* to keep it up then what are you supposed to do? Restrictions at work make sense as they are not being paid to play with their computers but to work.
I think you can tell RMS is out of touch with reality. Administrators need complete control in order to lower TCO and keep productivity. I want the file server to just work in the office where is my power to enforce this?