Oracle Linux works better as a threat than reality
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Oracle Linux?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Larry likes to expand Oracle's reach by purchasing competitors. Consider the world of ERP, where he bought Peoplesoft and JD Edwards. It makes little sense for Oracle to build their own distro to compete head-on with Red Hat. It makes a lot more sense to threaten to build a Linux distro in the hopes of driving down RHAT shares, thus facilitating a takeover. Larry wanted to buy JBOSS, but Red Hat beat him to it. If he buys Red Hat, he gets JBOSS as well. And all of Red Hat's customers. Buying Red Hat would make Oracle the #1 Linux company overnight.
Besides, if Oracle tries to build their own distro, market it via their existing sales channels, and support it via their existing system, Oracle Linux will truly suck. The pricing will be outrageous, the sales process will be the "car dealership" model, and the support will be the offshore model that is not all that great. Oracle makes a great product, but they are their own worst enemy sometimes.
If I were Larry, I would create a great deal of hype about doing my own Linux distro, to soften up the price of Red Hat in anticpiation of a takeover.
Back in the day, Digital wanted to compete on hardware vs. Intel. They figured they could sell VMS (and perhaps Unix) as upgrades over NT, so long as the customer bought Alpha-based hardware from Digital. Robert Palmer was the CEO. He came from the chip manufacturing division, and he saw the ability to sieze the CPU market with superior technology. Letting Microsoft conquer the low-end market was part of the plan. The theory at the time was that Digital made money selling hardware -- the OS was just part of the hardware sales pitch. As a result, they were perfectly content to help Microsoft get into the game.
After all, the real enemy was Intel. And Intel's main attraction was the dumb and cheap OS that ran on "PC clone" hardware. Digital wanted to be just as dumb and cheap, with an upgrade path that Intel lacked. Such was the plan, and Microsoft had a role to play. Nobody (at Digital) realized that the people who bought the "dumb and cheap" OS would be willing to accept the limitations. Today, a generation of IT people is satisfied with NT/XP -- accepting the limitations that were unacceptable 20 years ago.
Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of NT, you can see the missing pieces. Certain key parts of VMS never made it to NT because Microsoft didn't hire Digital people from those groups. Consider the VMS job queueing system vs. the NT/XP job queueing system. Oh wait, there isn't one! Scripting languages -- DCL vs. MS-DOS batch language. Then we have clustering, where Microsoft has yet to catch up with Digital's 1984 technology.
But it was not a totally one-sided comparison. Microsoft beat Digital's print drivers, price, and third-party developer market share. I would rate security as a toss-up (both were vulnerable to all kinds of mischief). Ditto for Internet support (an afterthought for both). Even so, when all things are considered, NT is a poor knockoff of VMS.
Microsoft wins this battle, so there must be something really important about the areas where they beat Digital. If the past is any indication of the future, the key factors in building an OS are price, commodity hardware, and third-party developer market share. That's really all Microsoft had over Digital. Guess who leads in all of those areas today?
I have to agree, at least to the extent that my overseas travel matches your opinion. I have yet to see anti-Americanism in Europe or Asia. Surely it must exist at some level, but I think you have to go and look for it in order to find it. If you look for anything (racism, poverty, disease, crime, unemployment) -- it's all out there somewhere.
So my theory is that journalists go looking for this stuff, find it, and then proceed to tell us that what they found is typical and representative of the world as a whole. Total BS. I am reminded of the Cold War, when the USSR propaganda press would shoot all kinds of documentaries in the most impoverished parts of the US they could find, so they could tell Soviet citizens that living in the US was worse than living in the Soviet Union. I understand how the Soviet journalists were forced to support the government point of view, but who is forcing the supposedly free press to spew all of this crap? What is their motivation?
* MSFT negotiates one-time flat fee to music industry to let I-tunes customers use the content they already bought on the new player/service.
* Similar to X-box, product is priced at a discount to build market share and hopefully capture revenue on content distribution
* Product is locked-down against non-MS software, to ensure the revenue stream is not disrupted by rogue software
* Lock-down is less than perfect. Hey, it's an MS product.
* Hackers buy the players, and run Linux on it. Just like they did with Ipod.
* Wifi hardware means a whole new frontier of peer-to-peer filesharing, after the MS DRM is vaporized.
* People buy LOTS of MS music players when they realize what is possible with a nifty download
* Music industry angry with MSFT for enabling a massive, untrackable, unstoppable, wireless P2P network.
The one missing piece of the puzzle is a wifi music player. Hackers can't create hardware and put in the hands of millions of people. Along comes the unlikely hero... Microsoft!
And I thought they would never create a product that customers would really want. HA!
If he recreates the entire 2004 ALCS playoffs vs. the Yankees. To make this daunting task a little easier, we would settle for games 4,5,6, and 7.
Buckner's error in 1986 was just management stupidity, the guy was in the lineup for his bat, not his glove. Since that time, many teams have gone so far as to have a defensive specialist first basement who is on the roster for the sole purpose of playing the field late in the game.
"TCP/IP stack? What! With the OS? That's anti competitive! Your stopping all those other good hard-working folks from selling their own protocol stack! Your putting them out of business! You big nasty evil corporation!"
In ancient times, we had exactly that. Digital sold their VMS operating system with a proprietary DECnet stack. They released a TCP/IP stack for VMS as a layered product called UCX. Competitors such as TGV offered more stable/functional products for the same purpose. Eventually, DEC bundled UCX into VMS, causing the scenario that you describe. At one point or another, Digital included various capabilities in VMS that might look like monopolistic bundling today. Nobody knows if there would have been antitrust implications because DEC sold off most of the layered products during their unsuccessful struggle to stay afloat.
To a lesser extent, Microsoft did the same thing. But they did it early enough so that the only casualty was Trumpet Winsock.
Full disclosure: I own a small number of NOVL and RHAT shares.
Compared to Novell, I think it would be more practical for Oracle to acquire Ubuntu or Mandriva. If I owned ORCL I would rather see them get into Linux by purchasing a Linux-only company.
NOVL has alot of legacy stuff that is of no value to ORCL (although it throws off enough revenue to give them some breathing room while they figure out how to operate as an open source company). RHAT has been relatively successful in monetizing Linux, but the share price includes alot of future expectations. I own both of these and would benefit nicely if ORCL buys either one. But I doubt they will.
Canonical Ltd. looks like they are privately held and might be a relatively easy buy. On the other hand, they seem quite serious about keeping Ubuntu "free as in beer". Mandriva is more of a conventional company. They are publicly traded, and they sell nothing other than Linux and related services. Although they try to avoid giving away the product, Mandriva never crossed the dreaded "Caldera line". As a result, they have a viable product (a Red Hat derivative that could use some work) and their name is unblemished.
I know about the X series. When all is said and done, I need the performance more than I need to save on heat and weight, so I have the right computer. I want something more rugged than average, and I'll tolerate some heat/weight to get there. The X series is alot more expensive, for a machine that is less likely to tolerate abuse. My laptop leads a pretty cushy life 95% of the time, but when I pack it up for an around-the-world trip anything can happen.
The point is that the recent Thinkpads are not killing the competition like they used to on utility and durability. For example, the Ultrabay slot in the docking station is no longer compatible with the Ultrabay slot on the computer itself. In general, the latching connector on the docking station is a downgrade from prior models. Beyond that, my new T43 does not look like it would tolerate some of the abuse that my T21 did.
I don't know if I should blame IBM or Lenovo -- the situation exists either way.
I'm not sure if the issue is Lenovo or IBM, but the problem is more than just consumer perception. Our experience with T series was very good. After years of service, I retired my T21 and replaced it with a T43. It works, but there are minor "fit and finish" issues that make me wonder if it will hold up as well as my old T21. As others have said, the Thinkpads have the reputation of being sturdier than the average notebook. I'm not so sure that is true anymore.
The Lenovo vs IBM issue may have little to do with the actual problem. Consumers want faster CPUS and bigger displays jammed into progressively thinner/lighter computers. My T43 is really big, runs really hot, battery life is not so good, the docking station connection is finicky, and it would weigh a ton if not for the slim/flimsy parts that replaced the beefy components of the T21. I really like my computer, but it's more or less on par with competitors' offerings and therefore not worth a premium price.
After years of buying Thinkpads, we are back to Dell because of price/performance. The old Dells were no match for the old Thinkpads, but I'm having a tough time making the case to buy Thinkpads now. Sometimes we still buy Thinkpads, but only when we get substantial discounts.
Kirk: "I found this ancient artifact in the Federation Museum of Vaporware. What do you think it is?"
Spock: "It appears to be a prototype for something known as a 'Community PC'. If memory serves, it was part of an ill-fated attempt by manufacturers and content providers to support higher prices and perpetuate certain legacy technologies."
Kirk: "Why didn't they just put some Linux PCs into a library and let it go at that?"
Spock: "Ultimately, the library was deemed superior to the Community PC. Logic would have ended this experiment sooner, but marketing sometimes defies logic."
Kirk: "Ah yes, I remember that's how the Federation got stuck the the Excelsior."
The thought never entered my mind until I read your post. In the US, 5% inflation is considered moderate by historical standards. Anything over 10% is considered high. I remember the 1970's, when 16% inflation was very disruptive. Outside the US and parts of Europe, inflation can be alot more volatile. Start pumping lots of cash into India (or anywhere else), and hyper inflation will soon follow. Other than cost reduction, there is no other benefit from offshoring. Therefore, once the incentive evaporates, we should see much less of it.
1. As others have suggested, Google could impose their own extortion fees on the telcos. As Capt. Kirk said in Star Trek IV, "Double dumb-ass on you!". This would be kind of sleazy, but they might create a fee structure that targets only one of the telcos, just as a demonstration of power. Making Google an ISP-paid "service" is not really any different than the cable channels who charge the cable operators (instead of the subscriber). Note to telcos: "Be careful of what you wish for..." Not that I really want them to do this; the threat works best if it never has to be carried out.
2. Google has TONS of cash. They could actually BUY one of the telcos and compete directly.
3. Alternatively, they could buy lots of dark fiber (or start running their own).
Google has $8B in assets with no long-term debt; there is almost nothing they can't do. If anyone can squash the dumb idea of paying telcos fees over-and-above what should be an all-inclusive use of the Internet, it's Google.
Health hazard or health drink? What to do? The answer is simple. Find studies that support your pre-determined point of view and use those to guide the decision. I like coffee very much. Caffeine addiction is not a problem so long as I can find at least one study that proves how healthy my coffee habit is.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming, "TCO analysis for the enterprise"
I suppose there COULD be a problem with patent infringement. But the same holds true for any product. For the moment, it looks like Blackberry has more trouble with patents than the entire OSS world combined. I am not a lawyer, but somehow I suspect most of the patent infringement action (if it ever happens) will be against the authors of software, not the customers. Given the distributed/international nature of OSS development, patent enforcement might be futile. In some ways, it would be like the IRS trying to get Osama bin Laden indicted for tax evasion -- lotsa luck. I'll admit it's an unpredictable situation, but the closed-source alternative is not an automatic solution.
Then we have copyright infringment. Take any organization with more than a handful of PCs, and you have a fulltime job of license management. The more closed-source applications you have, the more license terms you can be noncompliant with. Users download and install all kinds of things they shouldn't. I doubt there is a single corporation in America that could get through a BSA audit unscathed.
Now, time for simple evaulation of the risks. Total number of BSA audits and total "fines" assessed for copyright infringement vs. total number of software patent lawsuits against OSS end users and damages paid to settle those cases. Both closed source and open source have been around for quite a while, so there should be plenty of real data to give the hypesters a day off. Based on ACTUAL PAYOUTS, which is the bigger risk? You decide.
One day, the SCO execs were watching "Under Siege" as they waited to start one of their quarterly conference calls. As their quest for revenue reached a new level of desperation, they had an idea: Steal a battleship and then auction off the nuclear weapons on E-bay. But a number of problems emerged, the top 10 of which are shown here:
10. There are no battleships left in US Navy service 9. Even if they found a battleship, existance of nukes on board is not guaranteed. SCO execs fearful of coming up empty handed again 8. Finding a battleship in Utah would not be easy 7. Need MS to front the money for a road trip to the west coast 6. Fear of SCO marketing execs causing an explosion while demonstrating the technology 5. Terrorist interest fizzled when they learned that in order to buy the nukes they would have to accept a bundle of SCOsource licenses 4. Navy not buying SCO's "We own all your boats" claim 3. Consultant Tommy Lee Jones was not available 2. Sales dept. is too busy preparing "Herbal Viagra" and Nigerian scams for cell phone victims 1. Not sure what to do about the newest cafeteria worker at SCO headquarters -- the guy looks mysteriously like Steven Segal
If this CEO was meeting his profit objectives, the degree issue would never be an issue. RS is in big trouble, and the CEO must go. If he had a degree, he would still be gone. Having worked for RS in high school (back in the 1980's), I am surprised only that the company lasted this long. In my opinion, they are the Dilbert PHBs of retail (and that is NOT an easy prize to win!).
We were in the process of replacing our beloved VAXstations with high-end (60 MHz!) Pentium PCs running Windows 3.1. One of the big wigs was walking through the data center, and noticed a programmer playing Solotaire. He asks, "What is she doing?". A co-worker in the neighboring cube notices the situation and defuses the crisis by spewing a load of BS: "She's doing mouse calibration; they have you use this program, so the pointer on the screen can be aligned with the roller ball inside the mouse. It only takes a few minutes and it lines up the pointer for you."
Google Pack is a good start, but it's just a fraction of what is really out there. They seem to be testing their own web-based replacement for the Windows "Add/Remove programs" section of the control panel.
A very common misconception of Windows users is that the MUST buy MS Office to work with the Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files that they might receive from other people. The average person only uses bare-minimum functionality of these products. When you teach a person about OO, you are probably saving them about $300.
"And as far as Martha Stewart goes... The fact that it hasn't dropped to the penny range means that 'the market' sees the company rebounding. Does that make the market ineffecient, simply because you disagree with it?
Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm betting "yes". Time will tell.
Perhaps there is some confusion about accuracy and efficiency. Call it whatever you like, the market makes mistakes. Individual companies can be overpriced or underpriced. Some stocks are hyped by the media, brokers, or the financial analyst industry. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes manipulation. When a stock goes down, most people hold on in the hope of a recovery -- no matter what the odds of recovery may be. Consider any company that goes bankrupt. There will always be shareholders who stay on the deck of the Titanic, hoping that the crew will somehow keep the ship afloat. Pretty soon, the lifeboats are all gone and the investment becomes fish food. How efficient is that? Why didn't the doomed company drop off the face of the earth when the bad news hit?
When you consider all of the factors that motivate investors to trade stocks, it's hard to say the market is efficient.
To have a truly efficient market, all CFOs would need to be equally skilled in making honest/accurate forecasts, and all investors would need to be equally skilled in reading the results. Then we have the real world, where neither of these is true. No matter what the smartest investors believe, there is a whole lot of "dumb" money out there.
I'm not convinced that an efficient market is desirable. If it were, then prices would track exactly with company results, as expectations are either met or missed. All prices would reflect all known facts, so the opportunity to make (or lose) money would be dimished. The only real payoff would be dividends, so our investment decisions would be based on that. Any company that can't pay a dividend would be pretty much screwed. At that point, we might as well play the bond market.
I am willing to say that the market is in pursuit of efficiency, although the path by which we get there consists of investors looking for inefficiencies and cashing in on them.
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Larry likes to expand Oracle's reach by purchasing competitors. Consider the world of ERP, where he bought Peoplesoft and JD Edwards. It makes little sense for Oracle to build their own distro to compete head-on with Red Hat. It makes a lot more sense to threaten to build a Linux distro in the hopes of driving down RHAT shares, thus facilitating a takeover. Larry wanted to buy JBOSS, but Red Hat beat him to it. If he buys Red Hat, he gets JBOSS as well. And all of Red Hat's customers. Buying Red Hat would make Oracle the #1 Linux company overnight.
Besides, if Oracle tries to build their own distro, market it via their existing sales channels, and support it via their existing system, Oracle Linux will truly suck. The pricing will be outrageous, the sales process will be the "car dealership" model, and the support will be the offshore model that is not all that great. Oracle makes a great product, but they are their own worst enemy sometimes.
If I were Larry, I would create a great deal of hype about doing my own Linux distro, to soften up the price of Red Hat in anticpiation of a takeover.
Back in the day, Digital wanted to compete on hardware vs. Intel. They figured they could sell VMS (and perhaps Unix) as upgrades over NT, so long as the customer bought Alpha-based hardware from Digital. Robert Palmer was the CEO. He came from the chip manufacturing division, and he saw the ability to sieze the CPU market with superior technology. Letting Microsoft conquer the low-end market was part of the plan. The theory at the time was that Digital made money selling hardware -- the OS was just part of the hardware sales pitch. As a result, they were perfectly content to help Microsoft get into the game.
After all, the real enemy was Intel. And Intel's main attraction was the dumb and cheap OS that ran on "PC clone" hardware. Digital wanted to be just as dumb and cheap, with an upgrade path that Intel lacked. Such was the plan, and Microsoft had a role to play. Nobody (at Digital) realized that the people who bought the "dumb and cheap" OS would be willing to accept the limitations. Today, a generation of IT people is satisfied with NT/XP -- accepting the limitations that were unacceptable 20 years ago.
Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of NT, you can see the missing pieces. Certain key parts of VMS never made it to NT because Microsoft didn't hire Digital people from those groups. Consider the VMS job queueing system vs. the NT/XP job queueing system. Oh wait, there isn't one! Scripting languages -- DCL vs. MS-DOS batch language. Then we have clustering, where Microsoft has yet to catch up with Digital's 1984 technology.
But it was not a totally one-sided comparison. Microsoft beat Digital's print drivers, price, and third-party developer market share. I would rate security as a toss-up (both were vulnerable to all kinds of mischief). Ditto for Internet support (an afterthought for both). Even so, when all things are considered, NT is a poor knockoff of VMS.
Microsoft wins this battle, so there must be something really important about the areas where they beat Digital. If the past is any indication of the future, the key factors in building an OS are price, commodity hardware, and third-party developer market share. That's really all Microsoft had over Digital. Guess who leads in all of those areas today?
Where did eDonkey GET $30M to pay RIAA? Or is this a hyped-up announcement of a "settlement" that is never really collected?
I have to agree, at least to the extent that my overseas travel matches your opinion. I have yet to see anti-Americanism in Europe or Asia. Surely it must exist at some level, but I think you have to go and look for it in order to find it. If you look for anything (racism, poverty, disease, crime, unemployment) -- it's all out there somewhere.
So my theory is that journalists go looking for this stuff, find it, and then proceed to tell us that what they found is typical and representative of the world as a whole. Total BS. I am reminded of the Cold War, when the USSR propaganda press would shoot all kinds of documentaries in the most impoverished parts of the US they could find, so they could tell Soviet citizens that living in the US was worse than living in the Soviet Union. I understand how the Soviet journalists were forced to support the government point of view, but who is forcing the supposedly free press to spew all of this crap? What is their motivation?
Here is the MS nightmare scenario...
* MSFT negotiates one-time flat fee to music industry to let I-tunes customers use the content they already bought on the new player/service.
* Similar to X-box, product is priced at a discount to build market share and hopefully capture revenue on content distribution
* Product is locked-down against non-MS software, to ensure the revenue stream is not disrupted by rogue software
* Lock-down is less than perfect. Hey, it's an MS product.
* Hackers buy the players, and run Linux on it. Just like they did with Ipod.
* Wifi hardware means a whole new frontier of peer-to-peer filesharing, after the MS DRM is vaporized.
* People buy LOTS of MS music players when they realize what is possible with a nifty download
* Music industry angry with MSFT for enabling a massive, untrackable, unstoppable, wireless P2P network.
The one missing piece of the puzzle is a wifi music player. Hackers can't create hardware and put in the hands of millions of people. Along comes the unlikely hero... Microsoft!
And I thought they would never create a product that customers would really want. HA!
Actually, the defensive first baseman was Dave Stapleton. He was a late inning first base replacement in games 1, 2, and 5.
If he recreates the entire 2004 ALCS playoffs vs. the Yankees. To make this daunting task a little easier, we would settle for games 4,5,6, and 7.
Buckner's error in 1986 was just management stupidity, the guy was in the lineup for his bat, not his glove. Since that time, many teams have gone so far as to have a defensive specialist first basement who is on the roster for the sole purpose of playing the field late in the game.
"TCP/IP stack? What! With the OS? That's anti competitive! Your stopping all those other good hard-working folks from selling their own protocol stack! Your putting them out of business! You big nasty evil corporation!"
In ancient times, we had exactly that. Digital sold their VMS operating system with a proprietary DECnet stack. They released a TCP/IP stack for VMS as a layered product called UCX. Competitors such as TGV offered more stable/functional products for the same purpose. Eventually, DEC bundled UCX into VMS, causing the scenario that you describe. At one point or another, Digital included various capabilities in VMS that might look like monopolistic bundling today. Nobody knows if there would have been antitrust implications because DEC sold off most of the layered products during their unsuccessful struggle to stay afloat.
To a lesser extent, Microsoft did the same thing. But they did it early enough so that the only casualty was Trumpet Winsock.
Full disclosure: I own a small number of NOVL and RHAT shares.
Compared to Novell, I think it would be more practical for Oracle to acquire Ubuntu or Mandriva. If I owned ORCL I would rather see them get into Linux by purchasing a Linux-only company.
NOVL has alot of legacy stuff that is of no value to ORCL (although it throws off enough revenue to give them some breathing room while they figure out how to operate as an open source company). RHAT has been relatively successful in monetizing Linux, but the share price includes alot of future expectations. I own both of these and would benefit nicely if ORCL buys either one. But I doubt they will.
Canonical Ltd. looks like they are privately held and might be a relatively easy buy. On the other hand, they seem quite serious about keeping Ubuntu "free as in beer". Mandriva is more of a conventional company. They are publicly traded, and they sell nothing other than Linux and related services. Although they try to avoid giving away the product, Mandriva never crossed the dreaded "Caldera line". As a result, they have a viable product (a Red Hat derivative that could use some work) and their name is unblemished.
I know about the X series. When all is said and done, I need the performance more than I need to save on heat and weight, so I have the right computer. I want something more rugged than average, and I'll tolerate some heat/weight to get there. The X series is alot more expensive, for a machine that is less likely to tolerate abuse. My laptop leads a pretty cushy life 95% of the time, but when I pack it up for an around-the-world trip anything can happen.
The point is that the recent Thinkpads are not killing the competition like they used to on utility and durability. For example, the Ultrabay slot in the docking station is no longer compatible with the Ultrabay slot on the computer itself. In general, the latching connector on the docking station is a downgrade from prior models. Beyond that, my new T43 does not look like it would tolerate some of the abuse that my T21 did.
I don't know if I should blame IBM or Lenovo -- the situation exists either way.
I'm not sure if the issue is Lenovo or IBM, but the problem is more than just consumer perception. Our experience with T series was very good. After years of service, I retired my T21 and replaced it with a T43. It works, but there are minor "fit and finish" issues that make me wonder if it will hold up as well as my old T21. As others have said, the Thinkpads have the reputation of being sturdier than the average notebook. I'm not so sure that is true anymore.
The Lenovo vs IBM issue may have little to do with the actual problem. Consumers want faster CPUS and bigger displays jammed into progressively thinner/lighter computers. My T43 is really big, runs really hot, battery life is not so good, the docking station connection is finicky, and it would weigh a ton if not for the slim/flimsy parts that replaced the beefy components of the T21. I really like my computer, but it's more or less on par with competitors' offerings and therefore not worth a premium price.
After years of buying Thinkpads, we are back to Dell because of price/performance. The old Dells were no match for the old Thinkpads, but I'm having a tough time making the case to buy Thinkpads now. Sometimes we still buy Thinkpads, but only when we get substantial discounts.
Kirk: "I found this ancient artifact in the Federation Museum of Vaporware. What do you think it is?"
Spock: "It appears to be a prototype for something known as a 'Community PC'. If memory serves, it was part of an ill-fated attempt by manufacturers and content providers to support higher prices and perpetuate certain legacy technologies."
Kirk: "Why didn't they just put some Linux PCs into a library and let it go at that?"
Spock: "Ultimately, the library was deemed superior to the Community PC. Logic would have ended this experiment sooner, but marketing sometimes defies logic."
Kirk: "Ah yes, I remember that's how the Federation got stuck the the Excelsior."
Spock: "Indeed."
The thought never entered my mind until I read your post. In the US, 5% inflation is considered moderate by historical standards. Anything over 10% is considered high. I remember the 1970's, when 16% inflation was very disruptive. Outside the US and parts of Europe, inflation can be alot more volatile. Start pumping lots of cash into India (or anywhere else), and hyper inflation will soon follow. Other than cost reduction, there is no other benefit from offshoring. Therefore, once the incentive evaporates, we should see much less of it.
1. As others have suggested, Google could impose their own extortion fees on the telcos. As Capt. Kirk said in Star Trek IV, "Double dumb-ass on you!". This would be kind of sleazy, but they might create a fee structure that targets only one of the telcos, just as a demonstration of power. Making Google an ISP-paid "service" is not really any different than the cable channels who charge the cable operators (instead of the subscriber). Note to telcos: "Be careful of what you wish for..." Not that I really want them to do this; the threat works best if it never has to be carried out.
2. Google has TONS of cash. They could actually BUY one of the telcos and compete directly.
3. Alternatively, they could buy lots of dark fiber (or start running their own).
Google has $8B in assets with no long-term debt; there is almost nothing they can't do. If anyone can squash the dumb idea of paying telcos fees over-and-above what should be an all-inclusive use of the Internet, it's Google.
Health hazard or health drink? What to do? The answer is simple. Find studies that support your pre-determined point of view and use those to guide the decision. I like coffee very much. Caffeine addiction is not a problem so long as I can find at least one study that proves how healthy my coffee habit is.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming, "TCO analysis for the enterprise"
I suppose there COULD be a problem with patent infringement. But the same holds true for any product. For the moment, it looks like Blackberry has more trouble with patents than the entire OSS world combined. I am not a lawyer, but somehow I suspect most of the patent infringement action (if it ever happens) will be against the authors of software, not the customers. Given the distributed/international nature of OSS development, patent enforcement might be futile. In some ways, it would be like the IRS trying to get Osama bin Laden indicted for tax evasion -- lotsa luck. I'll admit it's an unpredictable situation, but the closed-source alternative is not an automatic solution.
Then we have copyright infringment. Take any organization with more than a handful of PCs, and you have a fulltime job of license management. The more closed-source applications you have, the more license terms you can be noncompliant with. Users download and install all kinds of things they shouldn't. I doubt there is a single corporation in America that could get through a BSA audit unscathed.
Now, time for simple evaulation of the risks. Total number of BSA audits and total "fines" assessed for copyright infringement vs. total number of software patent lawsuits against OSS end users and damages paid to settle those cases. Both closed source and open source have been around for quite a while, so there should be plenty of real data to give the hypesters a day off. Based on ACTUAL PAYOUTS, which is the bigger risk? You decide.
This is fiction. I made it up. Honest.
One day, the SCO execs were watching "Under Siege" as they waited to start one of their quarterly conference calls. As their quest for revenue reached a new level of desperation, they had an idea: Steal a battleship and then auction off the nuclear weapons on E-bay. But a number of problems emerged, the top 10 of which are shown here:
10. There are no battleships left in US Navy service
9. Even if they found a battleship, existance of nukes on board is not guaranteed. SCO execs fearful of coming up empty handed again
8. Finding a battleship in Utah would not be easy
7. Need MS to front the money for a road trip to the west coast
6. Fear of SCO marketing execs causing an explosion while demonstrating the technology
5. Terrorist interest fizzled when they learned that in order to buy the nukes they would have to accept a bundle of SCOsource licenses
4. Navy not buying SCO's "We own all your boats" claim
3. Consultant Tommy Lee Jones was not available
2. Sales dept. is too busy preparing "Herbal Viagra" and Nigerian scams for cell phone victims
1. Not sure what to do about the newest cafeteria worker at SCO headquarters -- the guy looks mysteriously like Steven Segal
Maybe the Canadians can get their pharmacies to fill prescriptions for US customers and accept payment in blank CDs!
"Is it possible to host a datacentre out at sea?"
Sure. Take a look at Sealand
If this CEO was meeting his profit objectives, the degree issue would never be an issue. RS is in big trouble, and the CEO must go. If he had a degree, he would still be gone. Having worked for RS in high school (back in the 1980's), I am surprised only that the company lasted this long. In my opinion, they are the Dilbert PHBs of retail (and that is NOT an easy prize to win!).
We were in the process of replacing our beloved VAXstations with high-end (60 MHz!) Pentium PCs running Windows 3.1. One of the big wigs was walking through the data center, and noticed a programmer playing Solotaire. He asks, "What is she doing?". A co-worker in the neighboring cube notices the situation and defuses the crisis by spewing a load of BS: "She's doing mouse calibration; they have you use this program, so the pointer on the screen can be aligned with the roller ball inside the mouse. It only takes a few minutes and it lines up the pointer for you."
Now that's news.
Google Pack is a good start, but it's just a fraction of what is really out there. They seem to be testing their own web-based replacement for the Windows "Add/Remove programs" section of the control panel.
A very common misconception of Windows users is that the MUST buy MS Office to work with the Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files that they might receive from other people. The average person only uses bare-minimum functionality of these products. When you teach a person about OO, you are probably saving them about $300.
"By my continued presence here, am I enabling this disfunctional management model?" Let the answer be your guide.
Sounds to me like these folks need some "schoolin'", and they ain't gonna get it if the smart kid at the next desk is doing their homework for them.
"And as far as Martha Stewart goes ... The fact that it hasn't dropped to the penny range means that 'the market' sees the company rebounding. Does that make the market ineffecient, simply because you disagree with it?
Maybe yes, maybe no. I'm betting "yes". Time will tell.
Perhaps there is some confusion about accuracy and efficiency. Call it whatever you like, the market makes mistakes. Individual companies can be overpriced or underpriced. Some stocks are hyped by the media, brokers, or the financial analyst industry. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes manipulation. When a stock goes down, most people hold on in the hope of a recovery -- no matter what the odds of recovery may be. Consider any company that goes bankrupt. There will always be shareholders who stay on the deck of the Titanic, hoping that the crew will somehow keep the ship afloat. Pretty soon, the lifeboats are all gone and the investment becomes fish food. How efficient is that? Why didn't the doomed company drop off the face of the earth when the bad news hit?
When you consider all of the factors that motivate investors to trade stocks, it's hard to say the market is efficient.
To have a truly efficient market, all CFOs would need to be equally skilled in making honest/accurate forecasts, and all investors would need to be equally skilled in reading the results. Then we have the real world, where neither of these is true. No matter what the smartest investors believe, there is a whole lot of "dumb" money out there.
I'm not convinced that an efficient market is desirable. If it were, then prices would track exactly with company results, as expectations are either met or missed. All prices would reflect all known facts, so the opportunity to make (or lose) money would be dimished. The only real payoff would be dividends, so our investment decisions would be based on that. Any company that can't pay a dividend would be pretty much screwed. At that point, we might as well play the bond market.
I am willing to say that the market is in pursuit of efficiency, although the path by which we get there consists of investors looking for inefficiencies and cashing in on them.