Re:Speaking of poor efforts...
on
IT, Be Free!
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· Score: 1
"I like IBM because instead of using their enormous financial weight to beat down and oppress the open source movement (like other businesses) they are adapting and changing and trying to find ways to allow this model to be profitable."
IBM isn't opressing the open source movement because it doesn't threaten its business. If IBM's revenue depended almost entirely on software sales as does MS's, then they'd be fighting it too.
"Even if the modern car was exactly the same as the very first one, you can't make it for free. Software on the other hand only needs to be built once."
I guess you're assuming no maintenance or added functionality when you say "built once". Beyond that, it's not economically feasible to sell all software 0 or 1 times. Software development requires labor and equipment just like cars do.
If an army of volunteers wanted to donate their time, equipment, and materials to build cars, cars could be "free as in beer" too.
If you're going to claim that there are facts that don't support the conclusion, it would be helpful if you actually stated the conclusion and the facts that don't support it.
Re:Speaking of poor efforts...
on
IT, Be Free!
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"What other companies haven't appreciated perhaps is their long view, which is that in the end, it hurt more than it helped them."
It's not IBM's long view, it's IBM's current view. When it was to their advantage to be closed, they were closed. Now that they can't benefit as much from being closed, they support open standards (although they haven't given up much of their mountain of IP).
Should they find in the future that they can make more money being closed, they will be. It's not philosophy, it's not religion, it's business.
Re:"open standard" are a waste of time
on
IT, Be Free!
·
· Score: 1
"IBM's support of open standards indicates their desire to compete in an improved playing field and their belief in their own competence to successfully compete in that same field."
IBM's support of open standards is motivated by the fact that they haven't been able to compete on the basis of original ideas in a long time. By making software a commodity, they hope that their large size will make them the dominant vendor.
"All that he wants is that people who own computers know what's going on inside a BIOS, just like every geek wants to know what's happening inside the kernel s/he's using."
Or perhaps every geek wants to know about minority currents in integrated transistors. It's not possible for any single person (geek or otherwise) to understand every technology involved in computers. Not every geek wants to know what's going on inside a BIOS, there's only so much time.
Yes, the most important secret function that MS hid from WordPerfect Corp was the DontCrashWhenEditingADocumentInWindows() call.
Seriously, WordPerfect Corp publically stated that they really didn't want to support Windows but did so reluctantly because their customers wanted it.
Their entire philosophy on editing was completly in opposition to a GUI. One of their stated advantages in their pre-windows versions was that the screen was uncluttered by things like menus (yes they added them toward the end, but the default was to hide them). Given that philosphy, it's not surprising that they didn't convert their market dominance to Windows.
And don't get me started on WordPerfect printer fonts.
"In essence, they provided overly simplified development platforms that allow complete idiots to develop code that works on Windows, and Windows only. Many of the people developing applications in Visual Basic, etc. have no business doing so, as they lack the fundamental skillsets required (processes, best practices, etc)."
Actually, they have a lot of business doing so. Millions and Millions of dollars of business over the years. The fact that they (allegedly) don't follow best practices (which there is no consensus on anyway) is irrelevant.
"Any developer who does NOT develop an application to be portable between platforms, in this day and age, isn't worth the powder it would take to blow them to kingdom come."
Some customers want portability while other couldn't care less. Any developer or business that spends extra time and money on portability without regard to customer requirements will not be able to compete with those that keep focused on their customer's needs rather than their own software philosophy.
Customers are often dumb, but ignore them at your peril.
Well, a lot of average users do buy software at a store whether they want to or not. But I don't think that was the grandparent's main point. The point was that if current Linux users won't buy closed source software, then nobody will make any for Linux.
Since the average user buys most of their software from closed source companies, the lack of closed source titles for Linux will inhibit Linux's growth.
In this case, it does. The protections built into a licensed player are part of the economics of the sale of the content. They could have increased the cost of the content as an alternative, but they decided to offer cheap and protected content instead. I believe most consumers would prefer the cheap option.
These companies are attempting to solve customer-specific problems with generic code. Guess what? It doesn't work.
Their customers would be better off buying COTS software for their generic needs and creating or contracting for custom systems for their unique needs.
And yet Nintendo got away with a lot of legal protections that everyone previously believed were illegal. Surely Atari, Mattel, and Coleco would have lasted a lot longer if they could have controlled the release of games.
In the old days, anyone could write a console game as long as they knew how without having to negotiate with the console maker. I suspect that was part of the reason so many people started writing games for the PC.
"Most who lived through it would argue that the crash of 1984 marked the end of the classic video game period. The introduction of the NES marked the beginning of the modern video game period."
As a classic game programmer myself, I'm painfully aware of the 1984 crash, but I was giving the parent the benefit of the doubt.
"I love the NES and most of the other systems from that time period, but I admit that many of the games that were made then are for historitcal interest only. (Deadly Towers, anyone?)"
There were no other viable game systems during the glory days of NES. The introduction of the NES marked the end of the classic video game period.
The problem is that many word processors profess to be MS Word compatible but really aren't. I do agree that competing word processors should concentrate on being better then Word rather than being compatible.
I crashed openoffice the very first time I tried to open a large Word document so I wouldn't bother to use it as cheaper Word clone.
"One often (usually) finds C embedded within C++ programs"
Not in my experience. Perhaps you mean that some people write portions of their applications in C++ in non-object-oriented style. Just because a scrap of C++ code could be compiled by C compiler, doesn't mean it's C code. Some lines of C++ code could be compiled for Java too.
Slashdot Mirror
"I like IBM because instead of using their enormous financial weight to beat down and oppress the open source movement (like other businesses) they are adapting and changing and trying to find ways to allow this model to be profitable."
IBM isn't opressing the open source movement because it doesn't threaten its business. If IBM's revenue depended almost entirely on software sales as does MS's, then they'd be fighting it too.
"Even if the modern car was exactly the same as the very first one, you can't make it for free. Software on the other hand only needs to be built once."
I guess you're assuming no maintenance or added functionality when you say "built once". Beyond that, it's not economically feasible to sell all software 0 or 1 times. Software development requires labor and equipment just like cars do.
If an army of volunteers wanted to donate their time, equipment, and materials to build cars, cars could be "free as in beer" too.
If you're going to claim that there are facts that don't support the conclusion, it would be helpful if you actually stated the conclusion and the facts that don't support it.
"What other companies haven't appreciated perhaps is their long view, which is that in the end, it hurt more than it helped them."
It's not IBM's long view, it's IBM's current view. When it was to their advantage to be closed, they were closed. Now that they can't benefit as much from being closed, they support open standards (although they haven't given up much of their mountain of IP).
Should they find in the future that they can make more money being closed, they will be. It's not philosophy, it's not religion, it's business.
"IBM's support of open standards indicates their desire to compete in an improved playing field and their belief in their own competence to successfully compete in that same field."
IBM's support of open standards is motivated by the fact that they haven't been able to compete on the basis of original ideas in a long time. By making software a commodity, they hope that their large size will make them the dominant vendor.
"All that he wants is that people who own computers know what's going on inside a BIOS, just like every geek wants to know what's happening inside the kernel s/he's using."
Or perhaps every geek wants to know about minority currents in integrated transistors. It's not possible for any single person (geek or otherwise) to understand every technology involved in computers. Not every geek wants to know what's going on inside a BIOS, there's only so much time.
Yes, the most important secret function that MS hid from WordPerfect Corp was the DontCrashWhenEditingADocumentInWindows() call.
Seriously, WordPerfect Corp publically stated that they really didn't want to support Windows but did so reluctantly because their customers wanted it.
Their entire philosophy on editing was completly in opposition to a GUI. One of their stated advantages in their pre-windows versions was that the screen was uncluttered by things like menus (yes they added them toward the end, but the default was to hide them). Given that philosphy, it's not surprising that they didn't convert their market dominance to Windows.
And don't get me started on WordPerfect printer fonts.
"In essence, they provided overly simplified development platforms that allow complete idiots to develop code that works on Windows, and Windows only. Many of the people developing applications in Visual Basic, etc. have no business doing so, as they lack the fundamental skillsets required (processes, best practices, etc)."
Actually, they have a lot of business doing so. Millions and Millions of dollars of business over the years. The fact that they (allegedly) don't follow best practices (which there is no consensus on anyway) is irrelevant.
"Any developer who does NOT develop an application to be portable between platforms, in this day and age, isn't worth the powder it would take to blow them to kingdom come."
Some customers want portability while other couldn't care less. Any developer or business that spends extra time and money on portability without regard to customer requirements will not be able to compete with those that keep focused on their customer's needs rather than their own software philosophy.
Customers are often dumb, but ignore them at your peril.
No, but they do ascend!
Given the fact that the 8088 can only address 1MB and the ROM BIOS, Video Memory etc, require some of that address space, 640K is about right.
Well, a lot of average users do buy software at a store whether they want to or not. But I don't think that was the grandparent's main point. The point was that if current Linux users won't buy closed source software, then nobody will make any for Linux.
Since the average user buys most of their software from closed source companies, the lack of closed source titles for Linux will inhibit Linux's growth.
In this case, it does. The protections built into a licensed player are part of the economics of the sale of the content. They could have increased the cost of the content as an alternative, but they decided to offer cheap and protected content instead. I believe most consumers would prefer the cheap option.
These companies are attempting to solve customer-specific problems with generic code. Guess what? It doesn't work.
Their customers would be better off buying COTS software for their generic needs and creating or contracting for custom systems for their unique needs.
"I've had lengthy discussions with a number of different 'Softies about this ... Everyone there thinks the way Gates wants them to."
How did you get from "a number" to "everyone". Perhaps you should go boundry-check your code.
"Do they have daily beatings or something?"
Yes. Checkout www.slashdot.org.
Good analogy with AOL. After all, users don't have to do anything special like sign up for it. Oh wait..
Seriously, there are fewer steps required to use Mozilla or Opera then AOL.
And yet Nintendo got away with a lot of legal protections that everyone previously believed were illegal. Surely Atari, Mattel, and Coleco would have lasted a lot longer if they could have controlled the release of games.
In the old days, anyone could write a console game as long as they knew how without having to negotiate with the console maker. I suspect that was part of the reason so many people started writing games for the PC.
"Most who lived through it would argue that the crash of 1984 marked the end of the classic video game period. The introduction of the NES marked the beginning of the modern video game period."
As a classic game programmer myself, I'm painfully aware of the 1984 crash, but I was giving the parent the benefit of the doubt.
Given that Win 3.11 didn't support the internet out-of-the-box, 1% still sounds reasonable to me.
99% of Windows 3.11 machines have never been connected to the Internet, so I don't think we'd know if there were any security holes.
"I love the NES and most of the other systems from that time period, but I admit that many of the games that were made then are for historitcal interest only. (Deadly Towers, anyone?)"
There were no other viable game systems during the glory days of NES. The introduction of the NES marked the end of the classic video game period.
How did the word "profit" end up in the summary?Perhaps the Slashdot editors should start RTFA.
Any how many of those 5 Linux word processors does Word claim to support?
The problem is that many word processors profess to be MS Word compatible but really aren't. I do agree that competing word processors should concentrate on being better then Word rather than being compatible.
I crashed openoffice the very first time I tried to open a large Word document so I wouldn't bother to use it as cheaper Word clone.
"One often (usually) finds C embedded within C++ programs"
Not in my experience. Perhaps you mean that some people write portions of their applications in C++ in non-object-oriented style. Just because a scrap of C++ code could be compiled by C compiler, doesn't mean it's C code. Some lines of C++ code could be compiled for Java too.