Lighten up, Francis. I Sing the Body Electronic is a pretty good book, and it's not really pro-Microsoft. It's journalism about the people who work at the bottom of the Microsoft food chain. If anything, it suggests that Microsoft's successes are largely accidental.
Does that mean he's right about Linux? Of course not. He's totally wrong. But the fact that he wrote a book with the word "Microsoft" in the title doesn't make him anybody's patsy but his own.
The problem with software reuse isn't really that we have the don't have a technical framework...it's the hacker's "I-can-do-it-better-myself" syndrome. Lots of stuff gets rewritten from scratch not because its not good enough in the first place, but because of one-upsman-ship. I've done it myself. I still do it, despite myself.
Technical rationalizations (it should have used this architecture! It doesn't support this protocol! The license isn't quite what I want!) are, well, rationalizations. No operating system can patch the programmer's emotions or personality.
This isn't a rhetorical question: how much do you think you're saving by using Linux?
My first reaction was:
2500 * 100 = $25,000 for system software, plus
2500 * 200 = $75,000 for an "office suite" equals
$75,000, which seems like a lot of money....until I compare it to the cost of a tech support salary. You could probably hire one and a half or two people for that money, which doesn't sound like enough to support the transition of 2500 users to Linux.
Again, it's not a rhetorical question. I assume you've found some more savings somewhere, but I also assume you're still thinking about it, or you wouldn't be asking for advice.
A contract's a contract, but I find it hard to believe that the client managed to get past www.razorfish.com, which seems like an ugly, stoopid, and not-browser-friendly calling card. I just looked at it with iCab, and the top frame was nothing but dead air. A gray rectangle turned out to be an improvement over the frenetic animation, but I doubt what I saw the first time was what the "designer" intended.
Of course, razorfish gets clients using lunch with hotties, rather than its web site. Still...
HTML was a success because web browsers politely ignore tags that they don't understand, not because HTML itself is well thought out. Web browsers' laissez-faire approach to non-standard tags (and mistakes, which are practically the same thing) lowered the bar so that secretaries and middle managers were suddenly "programmers"...which is why the web caught on, which is what is now paying our bills. Mine, anyway. So I don't mind if there are a few cornball tags that I'm free not to use.
"New media" content developers don't own the delivery apparatus any more than the old media reporters do. A large new media company can always take its football and play elsewhere if it (or its sponsors) don't care for the content that reporters provide. Sure, you can create your own site, it's hard to create a wide reader base without competing against better-funded sites with marketing and editorial staffs.
Journalism is (at least) partly about distilling information, fact-checking and prioritizing information. Collabarative/networked approaches may be good a democratizing the prioritizing part (which is good!) but not so good at distilling and fact-checking.
Every sector--including very-old-school manufactoring and retailing, as well as new media--looks to save money, and the easiest way to do that is replace experienced workers (who get paid a lot) with young, fresh, iconoclasts (who don't get paid nearly as much.) Ask your parents and grandparents...there's nothing "new media" or even "new" about it.
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Does that mean he's right about Linux? Of course not. He's totally wrong. But the fact that he wrote a book with the word "Microsoft" in the title doesn't make him anybody's patsy but his own.
Technical rationalizations (it should have used this architecture! It doesn't support this protocol! The license isn't quite what I want!) are, well, rationalizations. No operating system can patch the programmer's emotions or personality.
My first reaction was:
2500 * 100 = $25,000 for system software, plus
2500 * 200 = $75,000 for an "office suite" equals
$75,000, which seems like a lot of money....until I compare it to the cost of a tech support salary. You could probably hire one and a half or two people for that money, which doesn't sound like enough to support the transition of 2500 users to Linux.
Again, it's not a rhetorical question. I assume you've found some more savings somewhere, but I also assume you're still thinking about it, or you wouldn't be asking for advice.
Of course, razorfish gets clients using lunch with hotties, rather than its web site. Still...
HTML was a success because web browsers politely ignore tags that they don't understand, not because HTML itself is well thought out. Web browsers' laissez-faire approach to non-standard tags (and mistakes, which are practically the same thing) lowered the bar so that secretaries and middle managers were suddenly "programmers"...which is why the web caught on, which is what is now paying our bills. Mine, anyway. So I don't mind if there are a few cornball tags that I'm free not to use.
Journalism is (at least) partly about distilling information, fact-checking and prioritizing information. Collabarative/networked approaches may be good a democratizing the prioritizing part (which is good!) but not so good at distilling and fact-checking.
Every sector--including very-old-school manufactoring and retailing, as well as new media--looks to save money, and the easiest way to do that is replace experienced workers (who get paid a lot) with young, fresh, iconoclasts (who don't get paid nearly as much.) Ask your parents and grandparents...there's nothing "new media" or even "new" about it.