1. Servers 2. Corporate/government desktops 3. Mom/Grandma home users 4. Power users/Gamers
My take:
1. Will be taken over by Linux 2. Some will be taken over. Many will need Photoshop or some other app. 3. Most will need apps. 4. Need apps.
I have used all Windows versions since 1.0 (yes!) and many Linux versions since RedHat 5.0. Onthe desktop. But I keep returning to Windows - I can run all my apps. Did I mention taht I can run all my apps?
Chicken and egg: when the DOJ failed to break up MS I sighed, and knew Linux desktop would never be big.
>>Against guerillas, a fortress is good protection
No, it is not. Against stpuid armies it is. Guerillas just walk pas the wall pretending to be peasants. Think Green Line. Think Viet Cong. Hamas. Etc.
As for the argument "You have to be lucky always, we only have to be lucky once" - that is often heard but is shows a total lack of simple maths. It is mathematically unsound if you do not take the probabilities into account. "Once lucky at 0.00000000001% chance" is a lot LESS likely than "1000 times lucky at 99% chance".
I have had some experience in the last few years with cars that are highly electronic. Mercedes Benz, and now the new Land Rover.
Anecdotal not not: invariably, these cars fail a lot, and invariably, it's the electronic systems. My car needs a reset every now and then - computers. I have owned around 18 cars so far and the more electronic they get, the more they fail.
That is anecdotal and one person's experience - plus "waht I read in the paper". I am a scientist by inclination and training, so would love real data. You refer to some: J.D. Powers.
JD Powers is often referred to but never quoted. Their reports are secret I believe - can you point to their *actual* statistics? I (and many others I bet) would be very grateful.
This is what still makes NASA great... the engineers' attitude. I (also an engineer) would shrug (or cry, or yell in anger) and assume I had lost it. NASA, meanwhile, says
"The rover team spent more than a week designing and conducting tests under simulated Mars conditions on Earth before choosing the best way for Opportunity to drive out of the dune."
The best way! Even assuming they have more than one way to free the rover, and never assuming failure. Hats off, wven if they do fail. These guys would make great airline pilots too.
Easy to be admitted to Canada? When you actually READ that link, you will see there's no easy about it. Officers have to refer you to a board which they only do if you meet specific requirements and which they will NOT do if you meet other requirements (danger to security, criminal, already refused, and many others). None of these are a formality. In fact you will not even be allowed onto the plane to Canada in most countries without going through pre-inspection.
I am an engineer who moved to Canada 10 years ago from a wealthy European country. I have degrees, money, health, the language, everything I need inclduding a Cnadaina wife and two Canadian kids - and yet it took me a year and a half of laborious paperfilling to be allowed in. Believe me, refugees do NOT have an easier time of it.
Well, maybe as an engineer as well as a senior manager and a CTO, I can add my two cents' worth.
First, a survey based on data "as reported by development project managers" is suspect to a high degree. Obviously their view will differ from that of the senior manager and from the actual developer. SO I will put little stock in that survey.
But the question is valid: why does it always fail?
Personally, I see a mixture of the following:
Management lack of technical knowledge, or "How can you ask someone to manage a development project when that person is the sort of person who does not even know how Excel works?" This leads, of course, to wildly unrealistic expectations: which is the prime cause of failure. The emperor has no clothes and spending 100k on Siebel will not make your company suddenly efficient!
Developer lack of discipline - a real biggie. "We do not need to write specs, that does not apply to us: we need to design it as we go", how often have I heard that, as well as "Hey, even MS is always late so we're not doing badly only being 6 months late". There's also Blaming Others: "if you had not asked us to also fill in time sheets/come to a company meeting/etc we'd have been on time".
Developer lack of business understanding. The world is complex and guess what, it ain't ideal. Success in business is about being somewhat less inefficient than the competitor. It's not about being left alone for six months in a clean environment without intrusion.
Lack of specs (which leads to mission creep immediately), or overanalysed specs: both of these kill a a project quickly.
Lack of process around implementation and testing. Sorry - you do need progress reports, test sequences, checklists, code reviews, etc.
I am not ranking them in importance, will leave that to others!
"Actually as a Canadian I see a problem with this. The problem is that if everyone in Canada is allowed to watch/listen to the US content then our local radio/tv stations will be obliterated."
As a Canadian I have a problem with that. "If we allow people to watch US content"... what, since when do we live in Cuba or North Korea? I can determine for myself what to watch, thanks. Don;t need a government to tell me what I am allowed to watch.
Sorry, you make the same error as so many/. folks with unsubstantiated beliefs. Unless/until the kernel and applications go through formal auditing and have had literally millions of users pounding away and thousands of script kiddies attacking, then DON'T for an instance think that Linux provides more security. Read some of the unbiased, respectable papers on the topic. You are very, very much mis-informed
The OS is solid: I have seen no papers countering this. Further, I and my company have run Linux on servers and workstations since 1998, and uptime is "infinite" - they are very very solid. On the client PC's, multitasking is much more solid than even under Windows XP. The OS is open, making it more solid too, since issues can be addressed more easily.
Security is better than Windows: but it is, and not just becuase hardly anyone writes viruses and worms for it. You are missing a main benefit os OSS: that it is open. Issues are addressed more rapidly than by MS.
I think Marcel's books are inspiring and I buy and read them, and act on them. Recommended!
Having said that, my company is a good example of Marcel's target. We are small (100 people in 4 countries) and techie (we have competent and motivated Linux techs, managed by me, a CTO who likes Linux). And yet we have not rolled out large numbers of Linux desktops.
Why not?
1 - User resistance. Cries and shouts from users and "We do not have time for that now" from techs. I think this is a simple one to overcome and that is my task - management needed.
2 - Apps. Our accountants use Quickbooks. Graphics guys use Photoshop. And so on. This is the real killer.
The OS is solid, Security is great - better than Windows. The only problem is that while 90% of the apps are fine - OpenOffice is perfect; media players can be installed and they work - the remaining 10% are showstoppers for 80% of the people.
Take me as a typical business example. Look at my laptop. Follow me from A to Z: My apps are:
- Various Canon digital photo apps for my 20D camera. Digial Photo Professional and the CR2 reader. No alternative: I need a Windows PC.
- CorelDraw - I guess I could find an OSS alternative... not as good but just about doable.
- iPod software: perhaps there are OSS alternatives but if so I doubt they are very good, and in any case they will need much time to get them working.
- Mozilla: OK in LInux too
- OpenOffice: same!
- Nero: alternatives available
- PGP: same
- Photoshop: no alternative at all. Photoshop is not available under Linux and nothing else comes close in the photography world.
- Quicktime: I imagine I can read Quicktime files in Linux, probably; no big deal anyway really.
- Ixdirect CRM: can run under Wine if we put our minds to it.
- MSN messenger: alternatives and clients available in Linux.
- Realplayer: can I play Real media in Linux? No idea but I imagine perhaps so?
- Outlook Express; no problem.
So, Photoshop (please do not suggest Gimp comes even remotely close!) and the Canon software and maybe the iPod software - that is all - but all that is a real showstopper. As long as there is no Photoshop for Linux I will not move my laptop.
And 80% of my company have some such killer app that runs only on Linux.
That's where we are. If the US court had shown some balls and forced MS to spilt OS from apps, by now we would have had Office for Linux and hence also all the other apps for Linux. Since they had no such balls, we will be in this limbo-land for years to come. Pity.
I wil get on and move the 20% (e.,g. helpdesk staff, shipping staff), anyway...
"The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy"
Huh? By whom? By Americans. Just like the German system is 'known' as being the most stable etc etc by Germans, the Finnish system is 'known' as being the most stable etc etc by Finns, etc.
Sorry, but I stop reading at that point. Anyone who says something like that needs to do a bit of research. Objectively, how do you mention stability? By lives lost in wars? Civil wars waged? People in prison as a percentage of the population? The relationship between percentage of votes cast and actual representation? Freedom ensconced in the constitution? Hanging or pregnant Chads? And by those citeria, are you still the most stable? And then following on, are you "known" to be the most stable? By whom? By the Chinese? By young Arabs? By the French?
I could go on but I am getting tired trying to bridge a gap of this magnitude...
"Consumers should demand what they do of other utilities," says Kip McClanahan, CEO of security firm Tipping Point. "When I pay my water bill, I expect my water to be drinkable out of the tap. Today, when you pay your Internet bill, the data you get is not consumable."
Seems to me this is off the mark, and it typifies what is wrong with our telecom-oriented providers, as they too believe this all too often.
The provider provides a connection. He does not provide content. ISDN was a gigantic failure because telco's thought they had to provide content, rather than just a reliable connection.
If I want content, I will buy an AOL subscription. Otherwise, what I expect is not clean water but a reliable liquid movement mechanism. You don't call it a pipe for nothing. The liquid that comes out will be determined by me, not by the provider of pipes!
Oh, we have the same in Canada. The government of Canada can try people without even the defendant or his councel hearing the evidence, when national security is deemed to be at stake. Defense is then of course impossible (since you do not even know exactly what you are accused of). Kafka and Orwell could not have done it better in their wildest dreams.
And this is in Canada, the USA and the UK! 9/11 killed thousands of people but it seems to me that the harm it did to our freedoms is immeasurably greater.
You say "by comparison, the U.S. airport screening process is VERY streamlined and efficient".
Maybe. But in my view, also very paranoid, rude, and unnecessary. And as for efficient: nowhere else the long security lineups that you see at SFO, say. I travel frequently, worldwide (this year alone, to Hong Kong, London, Amsterdam, Canada, USA, Thailand, and soon again to New Zealand, Australia), so I see screening all over the place. Nowhere is it as silly and strict as in the US.
I remember the time that taking off shoes and belts (all the time, both, in my case, in the USA, and never in other countries) was for criminals. I remember the time that "police state" was considered a BAD thing.
Terrorism has always been around - for centuries. Seems to me that only the US and its politicians react by turning the place into a police state, thus giving the terrorists exactly what they want. Personally I think we should stand up and refuse to be intimidated.
Here's what we have acieved: Entering and leaving Libya or Saudi Arabia (I have done both) is now less intimidating than entering or leaving the USA (fingerprints anyone? Photographs?).
Is that the world we want? A sad indictment: I'd really rather enter and leave Libya than the US. And I am a middle-aged, greay, white business guy in a suit.
To set that on my Windows XP PC, I have to set advanced properties of the WEP. Once I have found that, I have to select whether I need a key for either "Data encryption (WEP enabled)" or "Network authentication (shared mode)". Huh? Once I have selected the right one or two of those, I have to enter e network key - no hint as to how many bits, how many characters, etc. Then I have to selec a "Key Index (advanced)" value and THEN I have to select whether this key is provided for me automatically. Are you still with me?
This is all incredibly convolited - and that's out-of-the-box XP. No way my neighbour would be able to handle this.
Sure, sure, but it seems to me that "security" is not simple. Some have said some of this already:
Some (like me) leave access points open to share. I believe this should be encouraged.
But they do this carefully: I check logs. And I check traffic. And I watch if someone parks in my driveway with a laptop. And it's not easy to view my LAN while logged in (though browsing the web is easy).
Open (unpatched MS) wired PC's are much easier to work on (no car in driveway) if you want to hack illegally. And there are many more open MS PC's in the world than WAP's, and they are ALL reachable to you right now, using the Internet - no wardrive needed.
WEP security is a hassle (I can never even remember the port or password - and I know how it works. My neighbour does not even know he can access his WAP using a browser - let alone understands WEP.)
Stories about illegal users sending spam or browsing child porn through open WAP's are usually made up - more rumour than fact.
Some older access points do not support WEP, or not properly, so some users have no choice.
Most WAP's (inluding mine) only broadcast a few metres outside, making illegal use very difficult indeed. My neighbour can use mine when his cable goes down, just as I can use his when mie goes down (different subnets!) - but we have to move to right beside our walls before it works...
Seems to me there are no simple black and white best codes of practice.
>> Can someone answer the following: >> Why aren't WAPs shipped with encryption >> turned on by default?
Because the power of WiFi is that it is easy to use. My neighbour could not possibly use it if it wasn't.
WEP is complicated. You need to be able to shell in (sometimes even to a port other than 80) from within the LAN. Then you need to know an admin ID/password. Then you need to know what on earth hex/ascii/etc mean, and 56/128/etc bits (and how the security ranslates to a number of characters). Then you need to set it all up using complex menus, and then you need to figure out how to set up all PC's (which call it something else).
By this time we would have lost the typical buyer, oh, 5 times over. That is why it is shipped open by default - the support would cost a fortune, otherwise. WEP is way too complex in its consumer implementation.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that your market segments sound real:
1. Servers
2. Corporate/government desktops
3. Mom/Grandma home users
4. Power users/Gamers
My take:
1. Will be taken over by Linux
2. Some will be taken over. Many will need Photoshop or some other app.
3. Most will need apps.
4. Need apps.
I have used all Windows versions since 1.0 (yes!) and many Linux versions since RedHat 5.0. Onthe desktop. But I keep returning to Windows - I can run all my apps. Did I mention taht I can run all my apps?
Chicken and egg: when the DOJ failed to break up MS I sighed, and knew Linux desktop would never be big.
My 0.02
Umm... you appear to mistake "I know nothing about this" with "it is irrelevant".
I think that you will find that whichever way you look at it, no western country is irrelevant. Clearly this is relevant on many levels.
>>Against guerillas, a fortress is good protection
No, it is not. Against stpuid armies it is. Guerillas just walk pas the wall pretending to be peasants. Think Green Line. Think Viet Cong. Hamas. Etc.
As for the argument "You have to be lucky always, we only have to be lucky once" - that is often heard but is shows a total lack of simple maths. It is mathematically unsound if you do not take the probabilities into account. "Once lucky at 0.00000000001% chance" is a lot LESS likely than "1000 times lucky at 99% chance".
I have had some experience in the last few years with cars that are highly electronic. Mercedes Benz, and now the new Land Rover.
Anecdotal not not: invariably, these cars fail a lot, and invariably, it's the electronic systems. My car needs a reset every now and then - computers. I have owned around 18 cars so far and the more electronic they get, the more they fail.
That is anecdotal and one person's experience - plus "waht I read in the paper". I am a scientist by inclination and training, so would love real data. You refer to some: J.D. Powers.
JD Powers is often referred to but never quoted. Their reports are secret I believe - can you point to their *actual* statistics? I (and many others I bet) would be very grateful.
This is what still makes NASA great... the engineers' attitude. I (also an engineer) would shrug (or cry, or yell in anger) and assume I had lost it. NASA, meanwhile, says
"The rover team spent more than a week designing and conducting tests under simulated Mars conditions on Earth before choosing the best way for Opportunity to drive out of the dune."
The best way! Even assuming they have more than one way to free the rover, and never assuming failure. Hats off, wven if they do fail. These guys would make great airline pilots too.
As far as I am aware, Adobe had not paid - they used a widely used public domain (OSS) piece of decoder software instead.
Easy to be admitted to Canada? When you actually READ that link, you will see there's no easy about it. Officers have to refer you to a board which they only do if you meet specific requirements and which they will NOT do if you meet other requirements (danger to security, criminal, already refused, and many others). None of these are a formality. In fact you will not even be allowed onto the plane to Canada in most countries without going through pre-inspection.
I am an engineer who moved to Canada 10 years ago from a wealthy European country. I have degrees, money, health, the language, everything I need inclduding a Cnadaina wife and two Canadian kids - and yet it took me a year and a half of laborious paperfilling to be allowed in. Believe me, refugees do NOT have an easier time of it.
Indeed - not disagreeing (I don't mean about the sane bit - I mean about tackling the problem from both ends. :-)
First, a survey based on data "as reported by development project managers" is suspect to a high degree. Obviously their view will differ from that of the senior manager and from the actual developer. SO I will put little stock in that survey.
But the question is valid: why does it always fail?
Personally, I see a mixture of the following:
I am not ranking them in importance, will leave that to others!
Mike
"Actually as a Canadian I see a problem with this. The problem is that if everyone in Canada is allowed to watch/listen to the US content then our local radio/tv stations will be obliterated."
As a Canadian I have a problem with that. "If we allow people to watch US content"... what, since when do we live in Cuba or North Korea? I can determine for myself what to watch, thanks. Don;t need a government to tell me what I am allowed to watch.
Michael
- The OS is solid: I have seen no papers countering this. Further, I and my company have run Linux on servers and workstations since 1998, and uptime is "infinite" - they are very very solid. On the client PC's, multitasking is much more solid than even under Windows XP. The OS is open, making it more solid too, since issues can be addressed more easily.
- Security is better than Windows: but it is, and not just becuase hardly anyone writes viruses and worms for it. You are missing a main benefit os OSS: that it is open. Issues are addressed more rapidly than by MS.
I stand by what I said. MichaelHi
We are a business with 100 employees worldwide. Agree it is difficult.
What is making you say "no way" for your business? A small business ought to get uite far - what is holding it up? Bookkeeping apps maybe?
Mike
I think Marcel's books are inspiring and I buy and read them, and act on them. Recommended!
Having said that, my company is a good example of Marcel's target. We are small (100 people in 4 countries) and techie (we have competent and motivated Linux techs, managed by me, a CTO who likes Linux). And yet we have not rolled out large numbers of Linux desktops.
Why not?
1 - User resistance. Cries and shouts from users and "We do not have time for that now" from techs. I think this is a simple one to overcome and that is my task - management needed.
2 - Apps. Our accountants use Quickbooks. Graphics guys use Photoshop. And so on. This is the real killer.
The OS is solid, Security is great - better than Windows. The only problem is that while 90% of the apps are fine - OpenOffice is perfect; media players can be installed and they work - the remaining 10% are showstoppers for 80% of the people.
Take me as a typical business example. Look at my laptop. Follow me from A to Z: My apps are:
- Various Canon digital photo apps for my 20D camera. Digial Photo Professional and the CR2 reader. No alternative: I need a Windows PC.
- CorelDraw - I guess I could find an OSS alternative... not as good but just about doable.
- iPod software: perhaps there are OSS alternatives but if so I doubt they are very good, and in any case they will need much time to get them working.
- Mozilla: OK in LInux too
- OpenOffice: same!
- Nero: alternatives available
- PGP: same
- Photoshop: no alternative at all. Photoshop is not available under Linux and nothing else comes close in the photography world.
- Quicktime: I imagine I can read Quicktime files in Linux, probably; no big deal anyway really.
- Ixdirect CRM: can run under Wine if we put our minds to it.
- MSN messenger: alternatives and clients available in Linux.
- Realplayer: can I play Real media in Linux? No idea but I imagine perhaps so?
- Outlook Express; no problem.
So, Photoshop (please do not suggest Gimp comes even remotely close!) and the Canon software and maybe the iPod software - that is all - but all that is a real showstopper. As long as there is no Photoshop for Linux I will not move my laptop.
And 80% of my company have some such killer app that runs only on Linux.
That's where we are. If the US court had shown some balls and forced MS to spilt OS from apps, by now we would have had Office for Linux and hence also all the other apps for Linux. Since they had no such balls, we will be in this limbo-land for years to come. Pity.
I wil get on and move the 20% (e.,g. helpdesk staff, shipping staff), anyway...
Michael
"The United States is known as being the world's most stable democracy"
Huh? By whom? By Americans. Just like the German system is 'known' as being the most stable etc etc by Germans, the Finnish system is 'known' as being the most stable etc etc by Finns, etc.
Sorry, but I stop reading at that point. Anyone who says something like that needs to do a bit of research. Objectively, how do you mention stability? By lives lost in wars? Civil wars waged? People in prison as a percentage of the population? The relationship between percentage of votes cast and actual representation? Freedom ensconced in the constitution? Hanging or pregnant Chads? And by those citeria, are you still the most stable? And then following on, are you "known" to be the most stable? By whom? By the Chinese? By young Arabs? By the French?
I could go on but I am getting tired trying to bridge a gap of this magnitude...
Exactly, which is why it is now disabled by default. They listened, only a few years late.
No longer true: after applying SP2, Outlook express by default does NOT show email images.
Michael
Then I stand corrected. As a Dutch Canadian I owuld not be surprised.
A "Hogeschool" is a university-level school, certainly at BSc/MSc level. "HTS" is the technical-type scho that you are referring to.
Seems to me this is off the mark, and it typifies what is wrong with our telecom-oriented providers, as they too believe this all too often.
The provider provides a connection. He does not provide content. ISDN was a gigantic failure because telco's thought they had to provide content, rather than just a reliable connection.
If I want content, I will buy an AOL subscription. Otherwise, what I expect is not clean water but a reliable liquid movement mechanism. You don't call it a pipe for nothing. The liquid that comes out will be determined by me, not by the provider of pipes!
MW
Oh, we have the same in Canada. The government of Canada can try people without even the defendant or his councel hearing the evidence, when national security is deemed to be at stake. Defense is then of course impossible (since you do not even know exactly what you are accused of). Kafka and Orwell could not have done it better in their wildest dreams.
And this is in Canada, the USA and the UK! 9/11 killed thousands of people but it seems to me that the harm it did to our freedoms is immeasurably greater.
MW
You say "by comparison, the U.S. airport screening process is VERY streamlined and efficient".
Maybe. But in my view, also very paranoid, rude, and unnecessary. And as for efficient: nowhere else the long security lineups that you see at SFO, say. I travel frequently, worldwide (this year alone, to Hong Kong, London, Amsterdam, Canada, USA, Thailand, and soon again to New Zealand, Australia), so I see screening all over the place. Nowhere is it as silly and strict as in the US.
I remember the time that taking off shoes and belts (all the time, both, in my case, in the USA, and never in other countries) was for criminals. I remember the time that "police state" was considered a BAD thing.
Terrorism has always been around - for centuries. Seems to me that only the US and its politicians react by turning the place into a police state, thus giving the terrorists exactly what they want. Personally I think we should stand up and refuse to be intimidated.
Here's what we have acieved: Entering and leaving Libya or Saudi Arabia (I have done both) is now less intimidating than entering or leaving the USA (fingerprints anyone? Photographs?).
Is that the world we want? A sad indictment: I'd really rather enter and leave Libya than the US. And I am a middle-aged, greay, white business guy in a suit.
Oh and all that is in the "Associtaion" tab. Right, that's r e a l l y intuitive...!
If the industry can make this work in a simple manner, it SHOULD be a cinch. But right now, it seems to me that it is way too convoluted.
>>>That doesnt seem to complicated to me
But it does to me.
To set that on my Windows XP PC, I have to set advanced properties of the WEP. Once I have found that, I have to select whether I need a key for either "Data encryption (WEP enabled)" or "Network authentication (shared mode)". Huh? Once I have selected the right one or two of those, I have to enter e network key - no hint as to how many bits, how many characters, etc. Then I have to selec a "Key Index (advanced)" value and THEN I have to select whether this key is provided for me automatically. Are you still with me?
This is all incredibly convolited - and that's out-of-the-box XP. No way my neighbour would be able to handle this.
- Some (like me) leave access points open to share. I believe this should be encouraged.
- But they do this carefully: I check logs. And I check traffic. And I watch if someone parks in my driveway with a laptop. And it's not easy to view my LAN while logged in (though browsing the web is easy).
- Open (unpatched MS) wired PC's are much easier to work on (no car in driveway) if you want to hack illegally. And there are many more open MS PC's in the world than WAP's, and they are ALL reachable to you right now, using the Internet - no wardrive needed.
- WEP security is a hassle (I can never even remember the port or password - and I know how it works. My neighbour does not even know he can access his WAP using a browser - let alone understands WEP.)
- Stories about illegal users sending spam or browsing child porn through open WAP's are usually made up - more rumour than fact.
- Some older access points do not support WEP, or not properly, so some users have no choice.
- Most WAP's (inluding mine) only broadcast a few metres outside, making illegal use very difficult indeed. My neighbour can use mine when his cable goes down, just as I can use his when mie goes down (different subnets!) - but we have to move to right beside our walls before it works...
Seems to me there are no simple black and white best codes of practice.Michael
>> Can someone answer the following:
>> Why aren't WAPs shipped with encryption
>> turned on by default?
Because the power of WiFi is that it is easy to use. My neighbour could not possibly use it if it wasn't.
WEP is complicated. You need to be able to shell in (sometimes even to a port other than 80) from within the LAN. Then you need to know an admin ID/password. Then you need to know what on earth hex/ascii/etc mean, and 56/128/etc bits (and how the security ranslates to a number of characters). Then you need to set it all up using complex menus, and then you need to figure out how to set up all PC's (which call it something else).
By this time we would have lost the typical buyer, oh, 5 times over. That is why it is shipped open by default - the support would cost a fortune, otherwise. WEP is way too complex in its consumer implementation.
Michael