I'd say Sun won the battle, but lost the war. Taking MS to task for making a Windows-optimized version of Java resulted in a big payday for Sun, but killed Java's chances on the Windows desktop.
"Okay, let's see how off-track we can pull this by totally ignoring previous posts!"
You already did that when you claimed that FireFox was written from scratch when a previous poster (not me) had already mentioned its heritage. In fact, that's the only reason that FireFox is in this thread about AOL and Netscape.
"We could say that Halo and Grand Theft Auto weren't written from scratch because they depended on DirectX and OpenGL libraries."
Come on. If you can show that FireFox merely linked to some libraries within Communicator then your analogy to DirectX and OpenGl would make sense. If the Communicator code wasn't designed as a library or if FireFox actually modified it than it doesn't make sense.
Anyway, its clear that no facts are going to change your conclusions.
I don't understand why you think it's impossible to stop or slow down pirates but it isn't impossible to get honest customers to buy the same content over and over.
In any case, if honest customers are those that have never made a copy of a CD or downloaded content illegally, then there are so few of these folks that the content providers have to charge them multiple times just to stay in business.
According to Wikipedia, Mozilla Firefox is a fork of the Navigator component of the Mozilla Application Suite which in turn is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator.
So if Wikipedia is correct, Firefox is not a open source browser written from scratch but one derived from the code released by Netscape.
So the question still remains whether an open source browser written from scratch would have been just as effective as those derived from Netscape code(including Firefox).
Netscape releasing their code may have discouraged open source developers from creating their own browser from scratch, so the bottom-line question is whether Netscape opening their code base helped or hindered the OSS movement.
"True, but at least they released their code into the wild before folding. Remember, without Netscape, there'd be no Mozilla and hence, no Firefox."
Yes, that was a kind of scorched-earth approach on Netscape's part.
Given the long delay between the release of Netscape's code and the appearence of the first Mozilla release, one wonders if an open source browser written from scratch might have been just as effective.
Wait a second. AOL made a huge profit on Netscape courtesy of the US Government's case against MS. Only in America can you make yourself rich by selling a company whose only market value is its potential to be found a victim of unfair competition.
Netscape was a one-hit-wonder that folded as soon as a real competitor showed up.
"Servers, pre-configured PCs for IT departments, and consumer PCs."
These don't appear to conform to your description of tailored systems.
"These are all pretty generic, but a home entertainment PC is no less generic. It's just less flexible than a PC, and has a simpler interface, and a huge hard drive."
I'm not sure what you are referring to. The entertainment PCs I seen appear to be a superset of normal PCs, not a subset.
"Now you're being dishonest here. Nowhere did he say only two of his employees were able to buy property, he said that two young ("barely 21") employees (i.e. still in college) bought a place by combining resources."
I made the assumption that he was presenting his best argument about his employees. If there were actually 10 employees that were able to buy property (of various ages) that would be a far more compelling argument than the fact that 2 of them were 21. Do you realize that it's illegal for a bank to discriminate against adults on the basis of age?
On the other hand, you're making the assumption that these two employees were able to buy property because of the wealth they acquired through their job although he didn't actually claim that. Perhaps they had considerable help from their parents.
The point is that we don't really know enough of the details to determine if his employees are well compensated or not. Since he is the one making the claims, however, it's his burden of proof.
"As this continues, the underlying machine required on your desk shifts from being a PC to something more like a dumb terminal."
The problem with your theory (that's been argued for many years) is that the economies of scale favor the PC over a dumber platform. If you want to be competitive in price, all you can do is start with a PC platform without including standard devices like hard disks. It turns out that the price difference between a real PC and a dumb PC isn't great enough to compensate for being unable to run PC software (for most people).
"For them, why not a Linux solution, ready to roll with that sort of software installed?"
This is an entirely different argument than what you started with. In this case you're advocating using a standard PC with Linux instead of Windows.
In any case, you still haven't addressed my orginal point. How does the rise of Google fit into Dell's business?
"People *do* gather around a laptop to watch movies in bed, btw"
Ah, bed-laptop convergence. People find novel ways to use products, but is there really any new market oportunities there?
"I mean the kind convergence where, instead of specially engineered hardware, you use the generic PC as the platform, and install specific hardware and software to make the box into a tailored product."
I'm glad you defined what you meant since that's not the standard definition.
"I mean the kind convergence where, instead of specially engineered hardware, you use the generic PC as the platform, and install specific hardware and software to make the box into a tailored product."
This kind of thing has been going on for at least a decade.
"That's Dell territory."
Well, it is in the sense that Dell sells PCs. What kind of tailored products does Dell make?
"The problem is not that it is hard to find a job in the computer industry, it is that there arent enough competent people."
Clearly the difficulty in finding a job and the difficulty in finding people you want to hire are entirely different problems, so your sentence doesn't make much sense.
In my experience programmers believe that competent people can always find jobs and that they are (of course) competent themselves. Then they some day they get laid off and have difficulty finding work. Then they must either conclude that they aren't competent after all, or their basic assumptions are wrong.
Don't forget about the value of unfilled positions. Companies sometimes have the same job open for years (usually with a long list of requirements ending with "0-2 years experience" i.e. cheap). Then the corporations can claim that they must outsource or use H1B workers because of all the positions they can't fill.
"The holes in this model are filled when you realize that my goal is to make money, and while making money I want my employees to learn how to run their own businesses so that they can make MORE money. Why be a slave for 40 years when you can be a millionaire by 40?"
Out of all your employees only two were able to buy property but only after they combined their resources. With an impressive track record like that, it's only a matter of time before they become millionaires like you aspire to be.
They can get good tips if they work with a good honest waitress.
In any case, a guy who wants to pay less than minimum wage will probably give minimal bonuses or will structure the goals in such a way to con his workers into believing they will get a bonus but find some excuse not to pay it when the work is completed.
Convergence has been the "next big thing" for about a decade. It's never going to happen.
There are no technological barriers, they're all ergonomic. A group of people don't want to gather 'round a keyboard to watch a movie, and nobody wants to create documents with a keyboard on their lap and the "monitor" across the room.
"Dell now realizes that it is not necessarily as advantageous as it once was to partner with MS on everything. With the rise of online companies such as Google, the MS stranglehold is loosening."
Do you think that Dell plans to switch to Google's PC operating system or Google's microprocessors or Google's motherboards? Otherwise it's hard to see how Google would be relevent in any way to Dell's PC business.
"Forcing the users to properly educate themselves before being allowed a connection seems harsh - but fair. For one thing that means more business to IT technicians who can charge users for services rendered to properly configure their computers. And with that comes the opportunity of spreading open source software, so no, personally I dont really see a problem."
Fair to who? IT technicians and open source advocates? They must represent at least.001% of Internet users.
And there were a number of studios that dragged their feet and didn't release any movies for DVD in the first 2-3 years after it was introduced. The studio that owned Titanic probably lost millions by delaying its availability on DVD. Ditto George Lucas. Think about how much money he would have made if he had released Star Wars on DVD the Christmas before Episode I instead of waiting until after that suckfest Episode II.
I agree. Successful media transitions for consumer content are usually based on significant changes in form-factor or durability, not simply on quality.
"Somebody seems to be sensitive about the Windows UI, you don't suppose the Windows developers are spending way too much time on slashdot?"
Let's try a test. Write a post that says the Linux is much better than Windows. If your overall moderation is "flame bait" or "troll" then Windows fans are spending way too much time on Slashdot. If it's "interesting" or "insightful" than it's Unix or Apple fans that are spending too much time here.
"Members came from all walks of life, united only by a penchant for something new and cool, and a chance to place a bet on the impossible notion of world domination by an operating system hacked together by a ragtag bunch of students on the Internet."
This would be quite impressive if the OS in question was actually designed from the ground up by the students and represented a significant advance in OS technology. Instead, they took the position that a decades old OS was the ultimate that could be achieved and proceeded to clone it.
If someday a group of students actually created a new OS that blew all the existing ones away, THAT would be cool.
"it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system."
IBM will support OSS including Linux as long as the PR value exceeds any investment and not a second longer. Since they lost leadership of PC development, IBM has never met idea or consortium that they didn't like, but in the end their participation has little impact on the adoption of the technology involved.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say Sun won the battle, but lost the war. Taking MS to task for making a Windows-optimized version of Java resulted in a big payday for Sun, but killed Java's chances on the Windows desktop.
"Okay, let's see how off-track we can pull this by totally ignoring previous posts!"
You already did that when you claimed that FireFox was written from scratch when a previous poster (not me) had already mentioned its heritage. In fact, that's the only reason that FireFox is in this thread about AOL and Netscape.
"We could say that Halo and Grand Theft Auto weren't written from scratch because they depended on DirectX and OpenGL libraries."
Come on. If you can show that FireFox merely linked to some libraries within Communicator then your analogy to DirectX and OpenGl would make sense. If the Communicator code wasn't designed as a library or if FireFox actually modified it than it doesn't make sense.
Anyway, its clear that no facts are going to change your conclusions.
I don't understand why you think it's impossible to stop or slow down pirates but it isn't impossible to get honest customers to buy the same content over and over.
In any case, if honest customers are those that have never made a copy of a CD or downloaded content illegally, then there are so few of these folks that the content providers have to charge them multiple times just to stay in business.
"A 25 year old programmer is usually more productive than a 65 year old programmer."
Sure, just ask any 25 year old programmer and he'll confirm it.
I have no idea how much code was reused, but the meaning of the term "from scratch" is quite clear and FF doesn't qualify.
"That's what Firefox is."
According to Wikipedia, Mozilla Firefox is a fork of the Navigator component of the Mozilla Application Suite which in turn is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator.
So if Wikipedia is correct, Firefox is not a open source browser written from scratch but one derived from the code released by Netscape.
So the question still remains whether an open source browser written from scratch would have been just as effective as those derived from Netscape code(including Firefox).
Netscape releasing their code may have discouraged open source developers from creating their own browser from scratch, so the bottom-line question is whether Netscape opening their code base helped or hindered the OSS movement.
"True, but at least they released their code into the wild before folding. Remember, without Netscape, there'd be no Mozilla and hence, no Firefox."
Yes, that was a kind of scorched-earth approach on Netscape's part.
Given the long delay between the release of Netscape's code and the appearence of the first Mozilla release, one wonders if an open source browser written from scratch might have been just as effective.
Wait a second. AOL made a huge profit on Netscape courtesy of the US Government's case against MS. Only in America can you make yourself rich by selling a company whose only market value is its potential to be found a victim of unfair competition.
Netscape was a one-hit-wonder that folded as soon as a real competitor showed up.
"Servers, pre-configured PCs for IT departments, and consumer PCs."
These don't appear to conform to your description of tailored systems.
"These are all pretty generic, but a home entertainment PC is no less generic. It's just less flexible than a PC, and has a simpler interface, and a huge hard drive."
I'm not sure what you are referring to. The entertainment PCs I seen appear to be a superset of normal PCs, not a subset.
"Now you're being dishonest here. Nowhere did he say only two of his employees were able to buy property, he said that two young ("barely 21") employees (i.e. still in college) bought a place by combining resources."
I made the assumption that he was presenting his best argument about his employees. If there were actually 10 employees that were able to buy property (of various ages) that would be a far more compelling argument than the fact that 2 of them were 21. Do you realize that it's illegal for a bank to discriminate against adults on the basis of age?
On the other hand, you're making the assumption that these two employees were able to buy property because of the wealth they acquired through their job although he didn't actually claim that. Perhaps they had considerable help from their parents.
The point is that we don't really know enough of the details to determine if his employees are well compensated or not. Since he is the one making the claims, however, it's his burden of proof.
"As this continues, the underlying machine required on your desk shifts from being a PC to something more like a dumb terminal."
The problem with your theory (that's been argued for many years) is that the economies of scale favor the PC over a dumber platform. If you want to be competitive in price, all you can do is start with a PC platform without including standard devices like hard disks. It turns out that the price difference between a real PC and a dumb PC isn't great enough to compensate for being unable to run PC software (for most people).
"For them, why not a Linux solution, ready to roll with that sort of software installed?"
This is an entirely different argument than what you started with. In this case you're advocating using a standard PC with Linux instead of Windows.
In any case, you still haven't addressed my orginal point. How does the rise of Google fit into Dell's business?
"People *do* gather around a laptop to watch movies in bed, btw"
Ah, bed-laptop convergence. People find novel ways to use products, but is there really any new market oportunities there?
"I mean the kind convergence where, instead of specially engineered hardware, you use the generic PC as the platform, and install specific hardware and software to make the box into a tailored product."
I'm glad you defined what you meant since that's not the standard definition.
"I mean the kind convergence where, instead of specially engineered hardware, you use the generic PC as the platform, and install specific hardware and software to make the box into a tailored product."
This kind of thing has been going on for at least a decade.
"That's Dell territory."
Well, it is in the sense that Dell sells PCs. What kind of tailored products does Dell make?
"The problem is not that it is hard to find a job in the computer industry, it is that there arent enough competent people."
Clearly the difficulty in finding a job and the difficulty in finding people you want to hire are entirely different problems, so your sentence doesn't make much sense.
In my experience programmers believe that competent people can always find jobs and that they are (of course) competent themselves. Then they some day they get laid off and have difficulty finding work. Then they must either conclude that they aren't competent after all, or their basic assumptions are wrong.
Don't forget about the value of unfilled positions. Companies sometimes have the same job open for years (usually with a long list of requirements ending with "0-2 years experience" i.e. cheap). Then the corporations can claim that they must outsource or use H1B workers because of all the positions they can't fill.
"The holes in this model are filled when you realize that my goal is to make money, and while making money I want my employees to learn how to run their own businesses so that they can make MORE money. Why be a slave for 40 years when you can be a millionaire by 40?"
Out of all your employees only two were able to buy property but only after they combined their resources. With an impressive track record like that, it's only a matter of time before they become millionaires like you aspire to be.
They can get good tips if they work with a good honest waitress.
In any case, a guy who wants to pay less than minimum wage will probably give minimal bonuses or will structure the goals in such a way to con his workers into believing they will get a bonus but find some excuse not to pay it when the work is completed.
Convergence has been the "next big thing" for about a decade. It's never going to happen.
There are no technological barriers, they're all ergonomic. A group of people don't want to gather 'round a keyboard to watch a movie, and nobody wants to create documents with a keyboard on their lap and the "monitor" across the room.
"Dell now realizes that it is not necessarily as advantageous as it once was to partner with MS on everything. With the rise of online companies such as Google, the MS stranglehold is loosening."
Do you think that Dell plans to switch to Google's PC operating system or Google's microprocessors or Google's motherboards? Otherwise it's hard to see how Google would be relevent in any way to Dell's PC business.
"Forcing the users to properly educate themselves before being allowed a connection seems harsh - but fair. For one thing that means more business to IT technicians who can charge users for services rendered to properly configure their computers. And with that comes the opportunity of spreading open source software, so no, personally I dont really see a problem."
.001% of Internet users.
Fair to who? IT technicians and open source advocates? They must represent at least
And there were a number of studios that dragged their feet and didn't release any movies for DVD in the first 2-3 years after it was introduced. The studio that owned Titanic probably lost millions by delaying its availability on DVD. Ditto George Lucas. Think about how much money he would have made if he had released Star Wars on DVD the Christmas before Episode I instead of waiting until after that suckfest Episode II.
I agree. Successful media transitions for consumer content are usually based on significant changes in form-factor or durability, not simply on quality.
"Somebody seems to be sensitive about the Windows UI, you don't suppose the Windows developers are spending way too much time on slashdot?"
Let's try a test. Write a post that says the Linux is much better than Windows. If your overall moderation is "flame bait" or "troll" then Windows fans are spending way too much time on Slashdot. If it's "interesting" or "insightful" than it's Unix or Apple fans that are spending too much time here.
Yes, there are aspects of Unix that are directly related to the limitations of late 60's early 70's technology.
If Ritchie and Thompson invented Unix today, it would no doubt be a better OS than it currently is.
"Members came from all walks of life, united only by a penchant for something new and cool, and a chance to place a bet on the impossible notion of world domination by an operating system hacked together by a ragtag bunch of students on the Internet."
This would be quite impressive if the OS in question was actually designed from the ground up by the students and represented a significant advance in OS technology. Instead, they took the position that a decades old OS was the ultimate that could be achieved and proceeded to clone it.
If someday a group of students actually created a new OS that blew all the existing ones away, THAT would be cool.
"it also represents some shift in emphasis by IBM from Linux back to its mature Unix operating system."
IBM will support OSS including Linux as long as the PR value exceeds any investment and not a second longer. Since they lost leadership of PC development, IBM has never met idea or consortium that they didn't like, but in the end their participation has little impact on the adoption of the technology involved.