"Its 10 years later. The issue of application lock in was not nearly so well understood then, that's really a PC phenomena so its not surprising that people not using PCs wouldn't have seen it"
I think it's a matter of arrogance. A prudent CEO would do his homework before attempting to compete in a new market. In any case, Sun's strategy was rather thin if it was entirely based on IT departments' desire to make their jobs easier. It sounds more like wishful thinking than a real strategy.
Simple or not the strategy was flawed from the start. You have to offer an alternative that meets the needs of the customers you want to convert. Telling those customers in effect that they shouldn't need what you won't give them isn't going to work. The primary advantage of the PC OS in my view isn't user installed software but compatiblity with applications your staff already knows how to use.
I didn't actually quote Scott, but he did in fact say what I described. The fact that you heard about another of his many rants on MS doesn't mean the one I referred to didn't happen.
In any case, the question is how could Sun improve its bottom line by mocking MS without actually having a competitive product to offer as an alternative?
"JAG wasn't the first, and it wasn't the last ill-conceived attempt by Sun to win the desktop war with Microsoft, and McNealy has never been called to account for all the money he wasted on that war -- a war that already a conspicuous victory for Microsoft long before Sun even got involved."
You've got that right. I never understood how Sun was going to make any money from the MS war (other than the antitrust settlement).
Consider Java. Has Sun recovered all the money spent on it? By its very nature it couldn't directly help Sun sell workstations since it was intended to be platform-independent. The only thing that makes sense to me is the idea that they hoped it would be so ubiquitous that they could make millions selling proprietary Java acceleration hardware (They did start development of such hardware).
Then there's McNealy's weird approach to competing. At one point he publicly derided the concept of word processors and Powerpoint type applications. He told the press that he forbid his employees from using them and gave them each a white board and markers. It's as if he had wanted to go into the facial tissue business by telling the press that he wasn't going to allow his employees to use Kleenex and gave them all handkerchiefs.
Then a few years later he buys Open Office and suddenly office applications are no longer a waste of time.
"It's pretty funny to see the UNIX-hating, Intel-hating Mac zealots of the world to have converted within a couple of years into pro-UNIX, pro-Intel zealots that talk like Apple invented UNIX and the x86."
Are you sure its not just UNIX fans' imagination that Mac zealots have become pro-UNIX? It seems to me that Mac zealots like whatever Apple makes, they don't care much about the underlying technology as long as the user experience is good. I seriously doubt that long-time Mac users are getting excited about the OSX command line interface.
"Professionals (true pros) will always find good jobs no matter where they live."
I think you should just go ahead and define a "true pro" as someone who can always find a job wherever they live. A circular argument is better than none at all.
"Have you considered having a career at McDonalds?"
We love to make fun of burger-flippers, but on the average they accomplished more on a daily basis than the average programmer did during the Internet boom.
"So you could go into engineering or if you want to be someones bitch, go into business"
Hate to break it to you when you're about to graduate but engineers are the business guys bitches. In a few years your business major friends (the ones that mostly partied during college) will be making more money than you. Be nice to them, you may need their help to keep employed down the road.
"The perception, right or wrong, is that technology has undergone such fundamental changes with the advent of the Internet that older workers cannot possibly adapt to such changes."
I don't think the Internet made changes to technology that are any more fundamental than all the other changes in the last 20 years. The technology that emerges when you come of age always seems to be more important than those of the past. After you have the experience of seeing muliple waves of change you realize that these changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary.
I really don't understand why anyone would believe that older programmers who have typically created applications using multiple computer languages on multiple platforms in multiple domains would be unable to make the transition from non-Internet to Internet based applications. It's just a new set of requirements to implement: business as usual.
"So, basically, no-one should take any notice of anything MS discloses about future products because they are not "promises"?"
If you say so. I didn't.
"One common trick in an argument is to mis-represent your opponents' position then argue against that -- it's called a strawman. Look back in the history of this thread and you will see that you introduced the word "promised"
If you look at the top of the thread, you'll read the following: "Heck I am still waiting for MS to give us what they promised us in Windows 95" So, no I didn't build a strawman. I assume you just made an honest mistake.
"Did I say that? No. WinFS is just one example of something that MS disclosed plans for and then did not deliver. Again, you are merely attempting a weak strawman (see above)."
Did you miss the part where I said "I'm not sure what plans, deficiencies, or fixes you are referring to.."? That means I didn't put words in your mouth. Another honest mistake?
"I think that your lack of denial and attempt at misdirection shows strong evidence that you do in fact work for MS."
Well, if you're a programmer I hope your programming logic is better then what you display here. "lack of denial" is not clear evidence of anything.
Nor did I attempt any misdirection, I was just mocking your rather diluted presumption that I might be invested in MS in some way. It was as if you wanted to accuse me of working for MS but lacking any evidence of it you kept watering it down until it could apply to practically anyone.
In any case, this "you must work for them" argument is a fallacious one and usually surfaces when the party making the charge is unable to support his position with a serious argument.
Most people who read the link would understand that MS couldn't market to laptop users at the time without marketing to Win9x users as well.
Remember the original point of this thread was your agreement with MightyMartian that Windows 2000 didn't live up to expectations and the reason you gave was that only Windows NT users had expectations because they were the only ones marketed to for Windows 2000. My link proved this was not true because MS was marketing to laptop users almost all of which were running non-NT Windows. It doesn't matter that the marketing was focused on laptops more than Win9x, the fact is that Win9x users had expectations about Windows 2000 just as Windows NT users did.
I note that neither you nor MightyMartian provided any evidence supporting the claim that Windows NT users found Windows 2000 didn't meet their expectations, but I gave you guys a free pass on that one.
"Nice try yourself. You can't throw around the old and tired 90% figure as the existing userbase for Win2k upgrades, and then when called upon the fact that Win2k was marketed at a fraction of that market (the corporate accounts), suddenly come up with mobile use. Because, quite frankly, that was (especially in 2000) also but a mere fraction of that '90%'."
I never presented laptop OS use to support my 10%/90% sarcastic comment. You threw down a challenge and I met that challenge by citing MS marketing of Windows 2000 to Win9x users (that happened in this case to be laptop users). When you said "one link", apparently you didn't mean it. I'm not your Google monkey, find the rest of the evidence yourself.
"Win2k was marketed at corporate use (a fact I don't see you denying). Corporate use was majority NT4, which, if you actually have any enterprise IT experience, you would have known."
You still seem to be trying to change the argument from Win9x vs. NT4 to home vs. corporate. As far as your belief that the number one OS at corporations at the time Windows 2000 was released was NT4 is concerned: it doesn't prove that you don't have any enterprise IT experience, but it's a good indicator that you don't know what you're talking about.
"But I don't expect facts to sway you."
If you truly believe that, please ignore my posts. I don't want to waste your time or mine.
I'm sure that you'd agree that the vast majority of laptop users were not running Windows NT. If you ever actually ran NT on a laptop (as I have) you'd also realize that laptop NT users were very pleased with Windows 2000 when they upgraded.
I'm sure I could find additional links, but the dare was for one.
"Are you trying to re-write history here? Or just playing semantics with the word "promised". Microsoft disclosed plans for a OSes with features such as WinFS. Where is it?"
"Plans" are not "promises". There's a reason why there are two words instead of one: they have different meanings.
One common trick in an argument is to use an emotionally charged word incorrectly and then, when called on it, try to morph it into a more appropriate one. Simply saying that "MS had planned to include WinFS in Longhorn and then decided to drop it" doesn't have the impact of saying "MS promised WinFs in Longhorn and broke its promise".
"How many people did not buy alternatives because MS disclosed plans to fix deficiencies yet did not deliver these fixes (or delivered them very, very late)."
I'm not sure what plans, deficiencies, or fixes you are referring to, but I doubt that anyone held off switching from Windows to Linux simply because Longhorn was supposed to include WinFS.
"I guess you work for MS, or are heavily invested in MS somehow (not neccessarily financially)."
I guess you work for a MS competitor or are heavily invested in a MS competitor somehow (not neccessarily financially). Is there anybody on Slashdot that isn't invested in one OS or another? Even if I were Bill and you were Linus, it wouldn't make our arguments any more or less logical.
"From an administrative and programming (depending on what you are doing) POV, Linux/UNIX is simple. On the commandline you get a group of simple tools that can be chained and scripted together. No complex protocols or library stacks to link programs together, just a simple pipe that passes raw text/binary."
One way of defining shell scripting is "programming for administrators". Last time I checked, real programming was a bit more complicated than piping shell commands together.
"Since Windows 2000 was explicitly not marketed as an upgrade for Win9x users, I think he means the expectations of NT4 users"
I'm sure that MS had a meeting in which the question was asked "Should we market Windows 2000 to non-NT4 users?" Somebody answered "No, why should we market 90% of our customers when we can market to 10% of them. No let's explicitly not market Windows 2000 as an upgrade to Win9x.
Wow. So now MS can be blamed for not delivering features in one OS that they didn't actually promise for another OS that never really existed in the first place.
"Even Windows 2000, while one of the better MS operating systems, still didn't live up to expectations."
What expectations are you talking about? For those who were upgrading from any Win3x, Win9x, or WinME, it was a great upgrade because a buggy application couldn't kill other applications or crash the OS.
One of MS-bashers standard modus operandi is to pretend that MS's premliminary features list is somehow a "promise" and then bash MS for "breaking" it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Its 10 years later. The issue of application lock in was not nearly so well understood then, that's really a PC phenomena so its not surprising that people not using PCs wouldn't have seen it"
I think it's a matter of arrogance. A prudent CEO would do his homework before attempting to compete in a new market. In any case, Sun's strategy was rather thin if it was entirely based on IT departments' desire to make their jobs easier. It sounds more like wishful thinking than a real strategy.
"If that is 'failing', I would be interested in your definition of 'succeeding'"
Given that Sun is a business, "succeeding" would mean earning a healthy profit on all the money invested in creating and promoting Java.
Simple or not the strategy was flawed from the start. You have to offer an alternative that meets the needs of the customers you want to convert. Telling those customers in effect that they shouldn't need what you won't give them isn't going to work. The primary advantage of the PC OS in my view isn't user installed software but compatiblity with applications your staff already knows how to use.
I didn't actually quote Scott, but he did in fact say what I described. The fact that you heard about another of his many rants on MS doesn't mean the one I referred to didn't happen.
In any case, the question is how could Sun improve its bottom line by mocking MS without actually having a competitive product to offer as an alternative?
"JAG wasn't the first, and it wasn't the last ill-conceived attempt by Sun to win the desktop war with Microsoft, and McNealy has never been called to account for all the money he wasted on that war -- a war that already a conspicuous victory for Microsoft long before Sun even got involved."
You've got that right. I never understood how Sun was going to make any money from the MS war (other than the antitrust settlement).
Consider Java. Has Sun recovered all the money spent on it? By its very nature it couldn't directly help Sun sell workstations since it was intended to be platform-independent. The only thing that makes sense to me is the idea that they hoped it would be so ubiquitous that they could make millions selling proprietary Java acceleration hardware (They did start development of such hardware).
Then there's McNealy's weird approach to competing. At one point he publicly derided the concept of word processors and Powerpoint type applications. He told the press that he forbid his employees from using them and gave them each a white board and markers. It's as if he had wanted to go into the facial tissue business by telling the press that he wasn't going to allow his employees to use Kleenex and gave them all handkerchiefs.
Then a few years later he buys Open Office and suddenly office applications are no longer a waste of time.
"It's pretty funny to see the UNIX-hating, Intel-hating Mac zealots of the world to have converted within a couple of years into pro-UNIX, pro-Intel zealots that talk like Apple invented UNIX and the x86."
Are you sure its not just UNIX fans' imagination that Mac zealots have become pro-UNIX? It seems to me that Mac zealots like whatever Apple makes, they don't care much about the underlying technology as long as the user experience is good. I seriously doubt that long-time Mac users are getting excited about the OSX command line interface.
"Professionals (true pros) will always find good jobs no matter where they live."
I think you should just go ahead and define a "true pro" as someone who can always find a job wherever they live. A circular argument is better than none at all.
"Have you considered having a career at McDonalds?"
We love to make fun of burger-flippers, but on the average they accomplished more on a daily basis than the average programmer did during the Internet boom.
I'm sorry if it sounded like I was putting words in your mouth.
"So you could go into engineering or if you want to be someones bitch, go into business"
Hate to break it to you when you're about to graduate but engineers are the business guys bitches. In a few years your business major friends (the ones that mostly partied during college) will be making more money than you. Be nice to them, you may need their help to keep employed down the road.
"The perception, right or wrong, is that technology has undergone such fundamental changes with the advent of the Internet that older workers cannot possibly adapt to such changes."
I don't think the Internet made changes to technology that are any more fundamental than all the other changes in the last 20 years. The technology that emerges when you come of age always seems to be more important than those of the past. After you have the experience of seeing muliple waves of change you realize that these changes are evolutionary, not revolutionary.
I really don't understand why anyone would believe that older programmers who have typically created applications using multiple computer languages on multiple platforms in multiple domains would be unable to make the transition from non-Internet to Internet based applications. It's just a new set of requirements to implement: business as usual.
Didn't they do they same thing at the opening credits of the "Cheers" TV show?
"The fact is, is that IT and Computer Science follow a cycle."
Yes, the cycle is: they offer less money than you want and you take it anyway.
But don't tell the interviewer that AJAX is a language if you want to get the job.
"So, basically, no-one should take any notice of anything MS discloses about future products because they are not "promises"?"
.."? That means I didn't put words in your mouth. Another honest mistake?
If you say so. I didn't.
"One common trick in an argument is to mis-represent your opponents' position then argue against that -- it's called a strawman. Look back in the history of this thread and you will see that you introduced the word "promised"
If you look at the top of the thread, you'll read the following:
"Heck I am still waiting for MS to give us what they promised us in Windows 95"
So, no I didn't build a strawman. I assume you just made an honest mistake.
"Did I say that? No. WinFS is just one example of something that MS disclosed plans for and then did not deliver. Again, you are merely attempting a weak strawman (see above)."
Did you miss the part where I said "I'm not sure what plans, deficiencies, or fixes you are referring to
"I think that your lack of denial and attempt at misdirection shows strong evidence that you do in fact work for MS."
Well, if you're a programmer I hope your programming logic is better then what you display here. "lack of denial" is not clear evidence of anything.
Nor did I attempt any misdirection, I was just mocking your rather diluted presumption that I might be invested in MS in some way. It was as if you wanted to accuse me of working for MS but lacking any evidence of it you kept watering it down until it could apply to practically anyone.
In any case, this "you must work for them" argument is a fallacious one and usually surfaces when the party making the charge is unable to support his position with a serious argument.
Most people who read the link would understand that MS couldn't market to laptop users at the time without marketing to Win9x users as well.
Remember the original point of this thread was your agreement with MightyMartian that Windows 2000 didn't live up to expectations and the reason you gave was that only Windows NT users had expectations because they were the only ones marketed to for Windows 2000. My link proved this was not true because MS was marketing to laptop users almost all of which were running non-NT Windows. It doesn't matter that the marketing was focused on laptops more than Win9x, the fact is that Win9x users had expectations about Windows 2000 just as Windows NT users did.
I note that neither you nor MightyMartian provided any evidence supporting the claim that Windows NT users found Windows 2000 didn't meet their expectations, but I gave you guys a free pass on that one.
"Nice try yourself. You can't throw around the old and tired 90% figure as the existing userbase for Win2k upgrades, and then when called upon the fact that Win2k was marketed at a fraction of that market (the corporate accounts), suddenly come up with mobile use. Because, quite frankly, that was (especially in 2000) also but a mere fraction of that '90%'."
I never presented laptop OS use to support my 10%/90% sarcastic comment. You threw down a challenge and I met that challenge by citing MS marketing of Windows 2000 to Win9x users (that happened in this case to be laptop users). When you said "one link", apparently you didn't mean it. I'm not your Google monkey, find the rest of the evidence yourself.
"Win2k was marketed at corporate use (a fact I don't see you denying). Corporate use was majority NT4, which, if you actually have any enterprise IT experience, you would have known."
You still seem to be trying to change the argument from Win9x vs. NT4 to home vs. corporate. As far as your belief that the number one OS at corporations at the time Windows 2000 was released was NT4 is concerned: it doesn't prove that you don't have any enterprise IT experience, but it's a good indicator that you don't know what you're talking about.
"But I don't expect facts to sway you."
If you truly believe that, please ignore my posts. I don't want to waste your time or mine.
"Give me one link to show that Win2k was marketed by MS at the home market of Win9x users. One link. I dare you."
n ov00/11-14w2k.mspx
Nice try. We weren't talking about the "home market", we were talking about Win9x vs. NT. Here's a link to a MS press release that talks about how great Windows 2000 is for laptop use: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/
I'm sure that you'd agree that the vast majority of laptop users were not running Windows NT. If you ever actually ran NT on a laptop (as I have) you'd also realize that laptop NT users were very pleased with Windows 2000 when they upgraded.
I'm sure I could find additional links, but the dare was for one.
"Are you trying to re-write history here? Or just playing semantics with the word "promised". Microsoft disclosed plans for a OSes with features such as WinFS. Where is it?"
"Plans" are not "promises". There's a reason why there are two words instead of one: they have different meanings.
One common trick in an argument is to use an emotionally charged word incorrectly and then, when called on it, try to morph it into a more appropriate one. Simply saying that "MS had planned to include WinFS in Longhorn and then decided to drop it" doesn't have the impact of saying "MS promised WinFs in Longhorn and broke its promise".
"How many people did not buy alternatives because MS disclosed plans to fix deficiencies yet did not deliver these fixes (or delivered them very, very late)."
I'm not sure what plans, deficiencies, or fixes you are referring to, but I doubt that anyone held off switching from Windows to Linux simply because Longhorn was supposed to include WinFS.
"I guess you work for MS, or are heavily invested in MS somehow (not neccessarily financially)."
I guess you work for a MS competitor or are heavily invested in a MS competitor somehow (not neccessarily financially). Is there anybody on Slashdot that isn't invested in one OS or another? Even if I were Bill and you were Linus, it wouldn't make our arguments any more or less logical.
"From an administrative and programming (depending on what you are doing) POV, Linux/UNIX is simple. On the commandline you get a group of simple tools that can be chained and scripted together. No complex protocols or library stacks to link programs together, just a simple pipe that passes raw text/binary."
One way of defining shell scripting is "programming for administrators". Last time I checked, real programming was a bit more complicated than piping shell commands together.
"Since Windows 2000 was explicitly not marketed as an upgrade for Win9x users, I think he means the expectations of NT4 users"
I'm sure that MS had a meeting in which the question was asked "Should we market Windows 2000 to non-NT4 users?" Somebody answered "No, why should we market 90% of our customers when we can market to 10% of them. No let's explicitly not market Windows 2000 as an upgrade to Win9x.
"Are you implying that Microsoft inovates?"
I think MS has fooled a lot of people (including you) into thinking that innovation is the same as creation.
Does MS innovate? Absolutely.
Does MS create? That's the real question.
Wow. So now MS can be blamed for not delivering features in one OS that they didn't actually promise for another OS that never really existed in the first place.
You can say all lot of good things about UNIX/Linux, but "simple" is not one of them.
"Even Windows 2000, while one of the better MS operating systems, still didn't live up to expectations."
What expectations are you talking about? For those who were upgrading from any Win3x, Win9x, or WinME, it was a great upgrade because a buggy application couldn't kill other applications or crash the OS.
One of MS-bashers standard modus operandi is to pretend that MS's premliminary features list is somehow a "promise" and then bash MS for "breaking" it.