Yeah, just like linux is not directly competing with UNIX, and just like mySQL is no directly competing against Oracle. They still lose some sales, and some market share. Without market share you cannot have market dominance. Without market dominance you cannot dictate your terms.
Managers at those big companies think _only_ about market dominance.
Imagine if you will that Java is the precocious actor child of an old lady who's about to be evicted from her building. Now, the child is very popular, yet the old lady owes money to everybody from the landlord to the grocer. If she says she'll let the child go on his own and be free, her creditors will scream bloody murder because they were wrongly holding to the notion that the child actor would cash in someday and they would all get their dues plus interest.
Sun shareholders would crucify Sun's management if Java was let loose (BSD style). The creditors (shareholders) are hoping that somebody will acquire SUN for more than it's worth just said buyer could transfer Java's copyright to its own IP portfolio.
Ultimately, this is exactly what will happen. I don't trust MS, IBM, or anyone else (Sun included) to develop the Java codebase better than the open source community.
This is why Java will fail. It will cease to evolve quickly enough and will be passed by other, community-built languages.
So yes,.Net is not a threat to Java. Sun's management is a threat to Java.
As far as serious mainframe development, I would be very leery of discounting python, especially since enormous strides are being made in making it run near-C speed.
Of course, C is ultimately faster than Java, and might just be the ticket out.
You're right, profit is not king, at least not short-term profit. Long term profit, however, is where it's at.
Actually, the kiosk itself may not be solo operated. It may be like the photo processing center. Imagine you go to target/virgin megastore, or some other retailer: They have the pipe (t1+) to bring in the songs on demand, and enough hard drive space to keep 50,000+ tracks. They also have high quality burners, CD-printers, and paper printers (to print the artwork). You select your order at a kiosk (for listening), place your order, and go pick it up at the counter a few minutes later. The idea is that you could then have, say, 10 kiosks, which are just a PC in a plywood box with good headphones, and one processor, and you could keep it nice and busy.
I wonder if it would be possible to actually press the CDs rather than burn them on CDRs. This would increase the life of the CD, and thus the value of the CD.
> There is no evidence that Sun is going to disappear
It's bleeding cash and its business model is unsustainable. They are no longer competitive. Thank Michael Dell and Linus Torvalds for that. See Yahoo finance for the play by play. They lost 3.4 billion in june 2003 and have since lost an additional 1.1 billion. They have 4.9 billion in assets now (down from 8.2 billion in 2001) At this rate, they'll be a 2.5 billion company in 2 years, ripe for takeover.
> just becuase it is doing poorly now does not mean its doomed.
There's plenty of evidence that companies that do poorly generally get aquired of file for bankruptcy. Apple is an exception rather than a rule.
>Microsoft will not buy Sun. What would MS gain by this? Java. So they can kill it. It would be worth 2 billion for them if they could kill Java. They would sell more servers with.Net.
>the antitrust courts would never go for it.
If Sun is facing either bankruptcy or buyout, the antiturust courts would not stand in MS's way.
>As for Solaris being opensoured like Java, well thats just an erroneous statement since Java is not opensourced.
Exactly. So many people think it is, yet it isn't.
Sun is going to have to pull a fast one if it wants to be like Novell (and there's no guarantee tha Novell will make it.)
Profitable: Per CD sold, they are profitable. Of course. But they are selling less CDs.
If you have 2 options: Net $10M doing A and net $8M doing B, and you chose option B, even though you are $8M richer than before, you still lost $2M.
It's the difference between accounting and economic profit.
Music is a tradeable good. Tradeable goods follow the laws of the market.
Competitive pressure exists: I have 5 gigs of music. They are competing for my time. I want to listen to something new more than I want to listen to something I already have? I have 50+ hours of music already (plus a 5 foot high stack of CDs I haven't ripped yet). When I want to listen to something, I don't rush to the store to buy the latest and greatest. I launch winamp and scroll. If nothing catches my fancy, then I look in my CDs. If nothing there either, then I figure I'm depressed and I go get a book and sit down to read, or call a friend. I rarely if ever get the urge to go buy music at $16 bux a CD (or 9).
This is their competition: existing, already sold music.
Just like microsoft and office: people don't want to pay $399 to get new software since the old software is already bought (sunk cost) and does mostly the same.
Music is the same.
If people build their 2000 track music collection off p2p, then the music industry has a hard time enticing them to buy anything new at the store.
For me, the price has to be $4 or less or I won't even consider buying.
And it's not because I can't afford it, it's just that new music is not that valuable to me anymore, since I have so much music already.
(I plan to spend 30 on LOTR's ROTK, like I did the other two, since there's nothing like it out there. I'll even buy the original star wars trilogy DVD)
I haven't bought a music CD since Sting's "Desert Rose", and even then I was not extremely impressed.
So you think that Sun has done such a good job with Java that the only thing a bunch of hippie hackers could do would be to ruin it?
If I recall correctly, the most advanced technology in the world comes from the mind of hippie hackers, and I don't think Neil Armstrong would have walked on Luna if there had not been hippie hackers to help him get there.
Yeah, under strict control. My bum. Things under strict control stagnate and get all tangled in ret tape.
A good friend of mine is a music studio middle-manager and I bounced this idea off him:
Imagine if you could go to a web site, select some tracks from various artists, click on: burn and send, and the whole CD was burned on high quality disc, and custom jacket with lyrics made, and the whole thing shipped to the customer's house, including shipping, for 3.99 (yes, the whole CD).
He looked at me funny for a second and said: But we'd lose money! To which I replied: You're losing money now.
Then it dawned on him that millions of people would love that, because for the price, it's cheaper to order it that way than to download off your favorite p2p, listen for quality, burn it, and go to kinko's to photocopy the artwork.
I asked him what it would take for the studios to implement a system like that, and he replied, half jokingly: An Act of Congress.
Supply and demand are where it's at. The market laws apply to all industries and all countries for all commodities. What makes music industry execs think they're immune to it?
They should go jump off a tall bridge and see if they're immune to the laws of gravity.
I do ASP+javascript+CSS+(x)html programming and VB for a F500Corp with ADO and Access/MSSQL on IIS + win2k.
I also do python and postgres and mysql and php on debian (sarge), redhat (not so much these days) and xml-rpc. (consulting, some custom projects, including multipoint remote backup systems for media (can you say multigig uncompressible files?))
I can tell you I like the latter better of the genuine mindbending.
I don't even know where my asp book is, since I've grokked the language so well. However, it's still a complete waste of time, since I'll have to go.NET if I want to stay in MS-land. With Python, (I haven't got anywhere close to metaclassing), my investment is paying off quickly, and I don't have to worry about guido redoing the API to match the marketing-du-jour.
I'm also going to go take a look at the Twisted framework, and that's going to be another fun, if humbling, experience.
Actualy it's okay if they don't contribute code patches. I'd rather they pay for the salaries of programmers who are the ones who will release the patches on their own dime.
Companies, generally, do not "get" the organic process of improving open-source software.
Of course, when I tried to explain that calling Japan for 6 hours was more expensive than me gaming, I got the "What's your point" look.
Oh, and I cannot disturb her during that 6 hour conversation. Cannot! Under any circumstances.
However, when she is done, it does not matter that I am in the middle of a battlefield running from a cunning sniper trying to find a medic. Oh no! I am to disconnect immediately!
Does anyone know how or if it is even possible to hook up two computers (one Win2kserver, on linux (debian preferred)) with firewire800 via pci cards and have SMB shares on linux _and_ windows?
Does anyone have any idea about the throughput of such solutions?
The key would be to have a juicy server, and while said "bad guy" pokes around, you reverse the process and get all his information from his computer, then forward it to the authorities.
>On the other hand, IE -does- hold the upperhand, and web developers are always needing to maintain as much compatibility between browsers as possible...
Yes, to a point. The way I look at it is that designers and developers will aim for Moz/Opera paltform, and essentially backport to IE. This means some sites will look better in Moz/Opera (which they do already) than in IE.
>Do you often state opinions that are wholly contrary to the facts?
You are not at a conference. This is slushdat, where every AC is a pundit and we don't care about anything except getting the starbux chicky to smile.
As far as the environment, it's simple: adapt or die. It's been that way since the beginning of life.
As far as treaties with other countries: If the French are involved (I know: I am French by birth and by citizenship), then don't expect anything substantial to result.
For those who want to bash, I am also an American by birth and citizenship.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, just like linux is not directly competing with UNIX, and just like mySQL is no directly competing against Oracle. They still lose some sales, and some market share.
.Net is not a threat to Java. Sun's management is a threat to Java.
Without market share you cannot have market dominance. Without market dominance you cannot dictate your terms.
Managers at those big companies think _only_ about market dominance.
Imagine if you will that Java is the precocious actor child of an old lady who's about to be evicted from her building. Now, the child is very popular, yet the old lady owes money to everybody from the landlord to the grocer. If she says she'll let the child go on his own and be free, her creditors will scream bloody murder because they were wrongly holding to the notion that the child actor would cash in someday and they would all get their dues plus interest.
Sun shareholders would crucify Sun's management if Java was let loose (BSD style). The creditors (shareholders) are hoping that somebody will acquire SUN for more than it's worth just said buyer could transfer Java's copyright to its own IP portfolio.
Ultimately, this is exactly what will happen. I don't trust MS, IBM, or anyone else (Sun included) to develop the Java codebase better than the open source community.
This is why Java will fail. It will cease to evolve quickly enough and will be passed by other, community-built languages.
So yes,
As far as serious mainframe development, I would be very leery of discounting python, especially since enormous strides are being made in making it run near-C speed.
Of course, C is ultimately faster than Java, and might just be the ticket out.
I hear you.
You're right, profit is not king, at least not short-term profit. Long term profit, however, is where it's at.
Actually, the kiosk itself may not be solo operated. It may be like the photo processing center. Imagine you go to target/virgin megastore, or some other retailer: They have the pipe (t1+) to bring in the songs on demand, and enough hard drive space to keep 50,000+ tracks. They also have high quality burners, CD-printers, and paper printers (to print the artwork). You select your order at a kiosk (for listening), place your order, and go pick it up at the counter a few minutes later. The idea is that you could then have, say, 10 kiosks, which are just a PC in a plywood box with good headphones, and one processor, and you could keep it nice and busy.
I wonder if it would be possible to actually press the CDs rather than burn them on CDRs. This would increase the life of the CD, and thus the value of the CD.
Jonathan, is that you?
.Net.
>This ALL speculation with no facts at all.
So is the stock market.
> There is no evidence that Sun is going to disappear
It's bleeding cash and its business model is unsustainable. They are no longer competitive. Thank Michael Dell and Linus Torvalds for that.
See Yahoo finance for the play by play. They lost 3.4 billion in june 2003 and have since lost an additional 1.1 billion. They have 4.9 billion in assets now (down from 8.2 billion in 2001)
At this rate, they'll be a 2.5 billion company in 2 years, ripe for takeover.
> just becuase it is doing poorly now does not mean its doomed.
There's plenty of evidence that companies that do poorly generally get aquired of file for bankruptcy. Apple is an exception rather than a rule.
>Microsoft will not buy Sun. What would MS gain by this?
Java. So they can kill it.
It would be worth 2 billion for them if they could kill Java. They would sell more servers with
>the antitrust courts would never go for it.
If Sun is facing either bankruptcy or buyout, the antiturust courts would not stand in MS's way.
>As for Solaris being opensoured like Java, well thats just an erroneous statement since Java is not opensourced.
Exactly. So many people think it is, yet it isn't.
Sun is going to have to pull a fast one if it wants to be like Novell (and there's no guarantee tha Novell will make it.)
I think we all already know how to sample music without paying ;)
You write:
"The only reason I don't buy CD's based on what I find I like online is because they cost too much"
This is my point exactly. They are priced beyond what a large number of people are willing to pay.
Yeah, of course.
:)
I tried to give a simple explanation without going into too much jargonistic details.
Excellent. That store is not too close and not to far from where I live...
I also like the Virgin music store concept.
yeah, but that's because they had to license the music.
Profitable: Per CD sold, they are profitable. Of course. But they are selling less CDs.
If you have 2 options: Net $10M doing A and net $8M doing B, and you chose option B, even though you are $8M richer than before, you still lost $2M.
It's the difference between accounting and economic profit.
Music is a tradeable good. Tradeable goods follow the laws of the market.
Competitive pressure exists: I have 5 gigs of music. They are competing for my time. I want to listen to something new more than I want to listen to something I already have? I have 50+ hours of music already (plus a 5 foot high stack of CDs I haven't ripped yet). When I want to listen to something, I don't rush to the store to buy the latest and greatest. I launch winamp and scroll. If nothing catches my fancy, then I look in my CDs. If nothing there either, then I figure I'm depressed and I go get a book and sit down to read, or call a friend. I rarely if ever get the urge to go buy music at $16 bux a CD (or 9).
This is their competition: existing, already sold music.
Just like microsoft and office: people don't want to pay $399 to get new software since the old software is already bought (sunk cost) and does mostly the same.
Music is the same.
If people build their 2000 track music collection off p2p, then the music industry has a hard time enticing them to buy anything new at the store.
For me, the price has to be $4 or less or I won't even consider buying.
And it's not because I can't afford it, it's just that new music is not that valuable to me anymore, since I have so much music already.
(I plan to spend 30 on LOTR's ROTK, like I did the other two, since there's nothing like it out there. I'll even buy the original star wars trilogy DVD)
I haven't bought a music CD since Sting's "Desert Rose", and even then I was not extremely impressed.
I agree entirely with your post.
One should be able to do this kiosk-like, in a store. Or at a drive-through, or at a Starbux, a Border's, or while waiting in line at the bank.
Just like a photo booth.
Put in 3 dollars, select 12 tracks, wait 30 seconds, and voila! Your CD.
Yeah, except they're $10 per CD.
So you think that Sun has done such a good job with Java that the only thing a bunch of hippie hackers could do would be to ruin it?
If I recall correctly, the most advanced technology in the world comes from the mind of hippie hackers, and I don't think Neil Armstrong would have walked on Luna if there had not been hippie hackers to help him get there.
Yeah, under strict control. My bum. Things under strict control stagnate and get all tangled in ret tape.
Divide and conquer.
Excellent strategy.
What MS has to worry about is not SUN. Sun is going to disappear(probably absorbed by MSFT).
I don't think StarOffice would be as successful as it is if there weren't an OpenOffice.
What happens to OpenOffice if MS acquires Sun? (not now, but in 2007 after SUN has laid off half its staff and lost most of its reserves?)
What happens to Java for that matter?
And honestly, if Solaris is opensourced like Java is opensource, it's not going to mean much.
Exactly.
A good friend of mine is a music studio middle-manager and I bounced this idea off him:
Imagine if you could go to a web site, select some tracks from various artists, click on: burn and send, and the whole CD was burned on high quality disc, and custom jacket with lyrics made, and the whole thing shipped to the customer's house, including shipping, for 3.99 (yes, the whole CD).
He looked at me funny for a second and said: But we'd lose money!
To which I replied: You're losing money now.
Then it dawned on him that millions of people would love that, because for the price, it's cheaper to order it that way than to download off your favorite p2p, listen for quality, burn it, and go to kinko's to photocopy the artwork.
I asked him what it would take for the studios to implement a system like that, and he replied, half jokingly: An Act of Congress.
Supply and demand are where it's at. The market laws apply to all industries and all countries for all commodities. What makes music industry execs think they're immune to it?
They should go jump off a tall bridge and see if they're immune to the laws of gravity.
Actually, that was exactly my point.
.NET if I want to stay in MS-land.
I do ASP+javascript+CSS+(x)html programming and VB for a F500Corp with ADO and Access/MSSQL on IIS + win2k.
I also do python and postgres and mysql and php on debian (sarge), redhat (not so much these days) and xml-rpc. (consulting, some custom projects, including multipoint remote backup systems for media (can you say multigig uncompressible files?))
I can tell you I like the latter better of the genuine mindbending.
I don't even know where my asp book is, since I've grokked the language so well. However, it's still a complete waste of time, since I'll have to go
With Python, (I haven't got anywhere close to metaclassing), my investment is paying off quickly, and I don't have to worry about guido redoing the API to match the marketing-du-jour.
I'm also going to go take a look at the Twisted framework, and that's going to be another fun, if humbling, experience.
Oh, I'll check it out thanks.
It helps to attract real programming talent too:
.NET developer to work on Win 2003 and MSSQL/IIS.
Shop A: Pays $65K for a VB and ASP
Shop B: Pays $65K for Python developer to work on Debian with PostgreSQL/Apache.
Who do you think will get the better programmer?
Actualy it's okay if they don't contribute code patches. I'd rather they pay for the salaries of programmers who are the ones who will release the patches on their own dime.
Companies, generally, do not "get" the organic process of improving open-source software.
AMEN!!!
Of course, when I tried to explain that calling Japan for 6 hours was more expensive than me gaming, I got the "What's your point" look.
Oh, and I cannot disturb her during that 6 hour conversation. Cannot! Under any circumstances.
However, when she is done, it does not matter that I am in the middle of a battlefield running from a cunning sniper trying to find a medic. Oh no! I am to disconnect immediately!
This is why netcafes are a godsend.
I think that's good advice.
Does anyone know how or if it is even possible to hook up two computers (one Win2kserver, on linux (debian preferred)) with firewire800 via pci cards and have SMB shares on linux _and_ windows?
Does anyone have any idea about the throughput of such solutions?
Actually, their secret is investment in emerging technology. Throw billions of dollars at a problem, and it usually goes away.
What happens when you stop paying the monthly bill?
With the car, it's car theft, and a felony. And you can't really drive the car around because the next cop might pull you over.
With Cell phones, they got you, because your phone goes dead and you can't use it.
With cable boxes, same thing: Don't pay your bill and keep the box, whoo hoo! What? No TV? How dare they...
But a computer: reformat HD, install linux: and you can use it all you want, in the privacy of your home.
Of course, Sun is going to stop existing long before the $5B runs out so it's a moot point.
As far as Microsoft: they don't really have a stellar record with hardware.
I'd put my money on Dell personally.
I think that we are rife for wireless honeypots.
The key would be to have a juicy server, and while said "bad guy" pokes around, you reverse the process and get all his information from his computer, then forward it to the authorities.
>On the other hand, IE -does- hold the upperhand, and web developers are always needing to maintain as much compatibility between browsers as possible...
Yes, to a point. The way I look at it is that designers and developers will aim for Moz/Opera paltform, and essentially backport to IE. This means some sites will look better in Moz/Opera (which they do already) than in IE.
In droves, IE users are discovering that.
i would just say Excel
>Do you often state opinions that are wholly contrary to the facts?
You are not at a conference. This is slushdat, where every AC is a pundit and we don't care about anything except getting the starbux chicky to smile.
As far as the environment, it's simple: adapt or die. It's been that way since the beginning of life.
As far as treaties with other countries: If the French are involved (I know: I am French by birth and by citizenship), then don't expect anything substantial to result.
For those who want to bash, I am also an American by birth and citizenship.