"Not in this case. These pricing models will be on a much larger scale. Try $10,000 for the first 10k chips, etc. This will one won't be quick to the home user (intel will still be realeasing some"
I hear what you are saying about home power requirements, and I tend to agree (although SimCity 3000 might just need that Merced;-)). But consider that 10k chips * $10k/chip = $100 m. My understanding is that a chip like Merced costs Intel $1-3 billion (US terminology) all found. So $100 million won't go very far to pay off that loan - and the bulk of the sales still have to come from the workstation side.
Just my 0.02.
sPh
Intel's pricing model doesn't work that way...
on
Troubles with Merced
·
· Score: 1
"Too many web sites (especially gamer sites, for some reason), don't seem to understand that Merced isn't for the average user. When it comes out, and at the very least for a few years following, it will be an ENTERPRISE level chip. This means 1) expensive as hell 2) used in"
Intel's pricing model doesn't work that way. True, with every new chip Intel announces "this is for servers only". And the first few thousand chips do go into servers. But the server market isn't anywhere near large enough to pay back the cost of developing that chip, so within a few months workstations are released, first by one of the larger clone makers, then by Gateway 2000, and finally by Compaq.
And Intel absolutely depends on these workstation sales to drive their learning curve/price reduction model. Otherwise they couldn't earn a return on the chip or keep AMD etc. at bay. Set up a spreadsheet and play around with some pricing models (first 10k chips at $2000, next 100k at $750, and so on). The arithmetic is quite simple and inoxerable.
So look for the first Merced (McKinley?) workstation about three months after the first server is released.
A lot of good arguments here - I wish I had time to continue the discussion. An annoying thing on my to-do list called "work" keeps getting in the way.
Boiled down in a few unreflective seconds, though, I am suggesting that two overall themes deserve some thought:
* What were the conditions (infrastructural conditions, if you will) that allowed the GNU tools and the FSF to develop? Did hidden subsidies play a role in a way that some of the "official history" fails to discuss? If so, why does the offical history not discuss those points?
* Is there really a sharp distinction between "free speech" and "free beer"? RMS says so, and "free speech not free beer" has become an argument-ender along the lines of "defensive" (throw it into the argument first, and the other side is assumed to have lost by definition). But it's not so clear to me. Just as an example (and an unfair one, as I am not going to discuss in detail), in the examples given in the post to which this is attached, it would appear to me that the free _beer_ aspects are different, but the free _speech_ aspects are very similar.
As I said, sorry I can't write more. This is one of the most engaging discussions I have seen in a long time.
"Isn't that all the more reason why the software, once it's written, should be freely distributed - at the very least within the US?"
That's certainly a valid line of argument, although I suspect there will be a few counter-arguments:-).
However, I was trying to open up a somewhat different line of discussion. It just seems to me that the various histories and write-ups of GNU and FSF make the assumption that the original GNU tools appeared out of nowhere, with no antecedents, no support framework of infastructure, tools, etc., no souce of funding, etc. An act of spontaneous generation, as it were.
Whereas in reality the "AI Lab culture" was heavily subsidized by the DoD, and the buildings, computers, grad student salaries, overhead charges, and so on came from the U.S. taxpayer in the first place. And primarily from projects dedicated to finding better ways of killing people, although I realize that line of argument is very controversial and somewhat at cross-purposes to my point.
So it isn't quite as easy to create "free" things (whether free speech or free beer, although I have a hard time following RMS' argument on that one also) as RMS and FSF would have one believe. Invisible sources of funding always make life seem easy.
I do consider the GPL a work of genius, for what my opinion is worth (much less than 0.02 USD I am sure), and RMS' ideas very worthy of discussion. But this subtopic seems to get a free ride.
"To help everyone understand this, I have made it a habit of calling my system a Linux-based GNU-system, in short a GNU/Linux system. This is not because I only use GNU-utilities, it is because I use programs that are part of the GNU system"
Shouldn't that be a Thompson-Ritchie/GNU/Linux system? Or a von Neumann/Thomson-Ritchie/GNU/Linux system? A Hopper/Thomson(many other names/GNU/gcc? Very little in the world of computing is really, absolutely new. Where do we draw the line at claiming seminal credit via naming conventions?
"In his ideal world, all software is free software and sharing your code with your neighbor is standard practice. RMS lived in this world for some time when he was active around the AI lab on MIT."
Without dissing or flaming, I would like to gently point out that both MIT and the AI Lab have received massive subsidies from the US Government over the years, particularly the DoD. So, much of that "free" (as in "free beer") software really was paid for by the US taxpayer. And there were many taxpayers who objected strongly to some aspects of that taxation, such as DoD funding during the Vietnam war.
This isn't a trivial issue in the story of GNU, but I have yet to see it discussed in any great depth.
"I like the suggestion that people who accumulate scores above a certain threshold should automagically become a moderator because that lets the system call attention to people who have been posting Thoughtful Comments."
A few things to consider:
* Good writers are not always (or often) good editors. The skills and temperments required for the two tasks are usually different and not often found in the same person. Lester del Ray was an exception, but most writers who try editing fail.
* Those who are busy writing good, thoughtful posts have probably used up so much of their discretionary time that they won't be able to put much thought into moderating. And vice versa. 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, write about it. Those who can't write, edit.' Seriously, I have a lot of respect for teachers, writers, and editors, but most people don't have _that_ much free time.
Not rejecting/flaming your idea; just offering a few points to ponder.
As a famous writer once said, "if I had had more time I would have written less". I typically read posts in flat mode rather than threaded. I pulled out a quote from your message and used it to illustrate my response to several posts elsewhere in the topic as well as yours. That wasn't fair to you, nor did it make my points entirely clear. Sorry for any confusion, although I still think my overall theme is correct.
"But in every other way Linux already has everything a small site would want from Netware. Not only that but the the number of vendors offerring pre-installed Linux is growing fast - how does it compare to the number with pre-installed netware.
All we need is directory services to compete with NDS and who will need Netware anywhere? I believe this is where LDAP should come in but I don't know much about that or the status of free LDAP software."
A few points:
* Novell has many strengths in the large, corporate network world. Things like DOS-aware login scripts, Win95-aware client software, and the inheritance approach to access permissions make life easier for the corporate admin and were not available until recently in the *nix world (if they are available even today).
* Many of these advantages can only be appreciated in a well-engineered Netware network. However, there are very few well-designed, well engineered systems out there. A poorly engineered Netware system will indeed be confusing and difficult to use (at least it will still run reliably, if clunkily).
If your only experience with Netware is taking over a badly designed system for a few days, or in a class, then your impression will be similar to that of an NT person working with Linux for the first time. The differences/disadvantages will be obvious, the strengths/advantages will be hidden.
* Saying "when system x gets something like NDS" ignores the fact that it has taken Novell 6 years of very hard work to get NDS to where it is today. No one else is even close (Banyan being basically dead at this point). NDS is Novell's ace in the hole and a product that is very difficult for M$ and others to compete with.
As before, if you are not familiar with NDS, please do a little research before you flame.
"Microsoft still has the OEM's nuts in a blender; all they need to do is hit "frappe" and it's all over. I don't think that Gateway or Micron could survive having their license prices for Windows jacked up."
Hard to disagree with that.
OTOH, Microsoft might be in for some interesting discussions with its licensees in the next few months. From what I could read in theregister and the WSJ, several of those vendors had "most favored nation" clauses in their Windows9x contracts, such that no other vendor should have been able to get a lower price. Given that most of the hard data is still under seal, it still appears that Microsoft may have violated some of those agreements, promising several vendors a different, "lowest" price.
Unlike the antitrust lawsuit, this would be quite easy to demonstrate in court, and compensatory damages easy to figure. If a Dell or Gateway hits Microsoft with a breach of contract suit for $1b or so, M$ could find itself in real trouble.
"basicly he said that they can track sales but not how much they make from the sales on their computers...... YEAH RIGHT"
I hate to sound as if I am defending M$, but for a large corporation, tracking profitability by product line, by customer, etc. doesn't sound easy and in fact is not easy at all. Try working on a large ERP project sometime - there are cases out there where the ERP implementation took a few years, but the promised profitability analysis system wasn't finished for a decade, if ever.
For just one quick example, where would you charge the costs for the trial? To the Windows 95 group? The Windows 98 group? The IE group? The company as a whole? Some allocation? Why? And that's only one of the millions of classification and allocation decisions that have to me made to determine profitability.
On this one, I would be inclined to believe what was said at the trial.
After thinking about this overnight, it occured to me that there are actually some fairly strong parallels between RMS and Tesla. Both were "mad genius" types who came up with several true innovations [a genius by definition being a person who has _two_ original ideas]. Both had their work picked up and extended in a commercial direction by others of less genius but more business sense (Westinghouse, Linus).
Tesla in the end was destroyed when he tried to continue extending his underlying principles in a direction that was either (a) not in accordance with physical reality (90% probability) or (b) too advanced for its time (10% probability).
Trying to simplify for an OT thread. I worked for an old-line Edison company (not ConEd though) for 11 years. I have ~200 books about the history and structure of the utility industry in my library. So I have some knowledge whereof I speak, but just abstracting a little.
The complete history is somewhat more complex. Telsa and Westinghouse certainly did push AC over DC, to the eventual benefit of everyone. But after Edison lost that fight, he did switch his companies over to working in the AC world (ever heard of a small company called General Electric?) and _continued_ to push the term "Edison Service".
But he didn't quit either because he lost the first round, or because others used terminology he didn't like.
Far back in the depths of time, three people invented the hammer, chisel, and dovetail joint. Call them Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Is every piece of furniture built since that time called an Alpha-Beta-Gamma/sideboard, or an Alpha-Beta-Gamma/dresser?
Someone first developed the concept of a high level language compiler. In many versions of computing history I have read, that person was Grace Hopper. Are all high level languages called Hopper/Cobol, Hopper/C, Hopper/Gnu/gcc?
Thomas Edison certainly tried to force the world to call electricity "Edison Electricty", and was roundly rebuffed. Did he stop working on developing electrical distribution equipment when he met that rebuff?
So please explain to me why Linux _should_ be called GNU/Linux. Exactly, and referring to the above examples. Because, although I have tremendous respect for RMS, FSF, and the GPL, I really must be missing something here about the name thing.
The funny thing is, Michael Kinsley was one of the more independent pundits when he worked in Washington (DC, that is). Some good original thinking and not much bowing to conventional wisdom. And he promised to maintain that attitude when he left TNR for Microsoft.
But that sure isn't how it has seemed the last six months or so. Slate's coverage of the MS trial is a joke thoughout the world of political journalism. I wonder what happened?
Note: I don't think this is what is actually happening. But I do think it is a possibility.
Keep in mind that although Microsoft has created numerous paper millionaires and a few billionaires, many of them cannot realize that wealth. If billg decides he wants to buy his own space shuttle, or New Zealand, he can't. The moment he tries to sell half his stock (say $20 billion), the value of that stock would drop though the floor.
But if he (and other big holders) was _forced_ to sell 50% of this stock by the feds, that's a different matter. Can't be helped. Not his fault. The two resulting companies are just as good as the old M$ - just smaller. No need to panic.
So it is possible that there are people at MS who desire a breakup, whether or not they acknowledge it even to themselves.
At least when I worked for a regulated utility (not telecom admittedly), our charter of service included an obligation to serve. Not an obligation to serve based on certain historical usage patterns that tended to maximize our profit: just a plain old obligation to serve. If usage patterns changed (and they did), we also had the obligation to figure out how to meet the new pattern and still make a profit. If we could convince the regulatory body that a rate increase was justified to handle that, great. If not - belt tightening time.
Also, if a telco make the "changing usage pattern" argument, it also opens itself up to the "what is your profit margin on T1 service today as compared to 10 years ago" question. Oddly enough no one at the Baby Bells seems real anxious to take on that question.
IMHO, part of what is happening in the trial is due to the general level of contempt that high tech people (not to say West Coast high tech people [or Northwest Coast]) feel for government in general and Washington DC in particular. Let's face it: Microsoft hires a lot of _very_ smart people. They never expected that they might encounter people as smart as they are, and possibly sneakier, in DC. My guess would be that Microsoft's lawyers tried to prepare the witnesses for what was going to happen, and were rejected. I just can't imagine that someone in the Microsoft executive suite could ever believe that he could be out-thought on technical issues by a lawyer; an IBM lawyer in particular.
Then there is the issue of internal belief systems. I have come to believe that Microsoft insiders in many cases truely do not know how their products actually work in the real world, or how their company is perceived outside Redmond. I continue to maintain that the botched videotape was just an extreme example of DLL hell, and the Microsoft people couldn't bring themselves to believe that it could happen to them and proceeded to 'patch' things a little. Just what they do every day of the week, and look where it has gotten them...
Finally, keep in mind that in the end the trial bears some relationship to the law and the legal definitions of things like "monopoly" and "coercion". The judge may be laughing his head off at the Microsoft witnesses. He may come to believe that Microsoft set out to fsck Netscape. But that doesn't mean he (or the appeals court) will necessarily rule that there is any violation of the law that the government can/should take notice of. The daily spectacle isn't the whole story.
Now, I doubt that Microsoft is actually pursuing a strategy of releasing damaging evidence and saying , "Look - with all our monopoly power, that is the worst we could do. Just what the rest of the industry does when it has the chance", as some have suggested. Devious, but too dangerous.
Still, I do have to wonder about those bonuses for the Microsoft legal team. Does Bill ever take stock options away?
I would think anywhere from $500/hr to $1500/hr for a lawyer at that level. $250/hr would be the absolute low end. Almost as much as a good sendmail administrator charges.
Unfortunately, the 1.2 tb/s connection filled solid within minutes of being hooked up. Further research found that all the engineers at Siemens were trying to use it to access Slashdot.
sPh
Sooner or later, apps always have to be rebuilt
on
Microsoft-Compaq-BeOS
·
· Score: 1
Not defending M$ or Win2000 here, but if systems undergo significant change sooner or later applications have to be rebuilt. It isn't reasonable to condemn an OS for lack of progress (e.g. Win95 built on a DOS foundation), then also condemn the new system (Win2000, assuming it ever sees the light of day) for making changes which break compatibility with the old system. Upward compatibility is nice, but if the price of significant progress is recompiling/recoding, soorner or later that's the way it will have to be.
I find it interesting that in blasting this article (which I agree is full of poor arguements and _very_ poor statistics),/.'ers have chosen to totally ignore Netware. In another context that might be considered FUD, don't you think?
Here is my totally unscientific guess on server market share:
Boxes installed 1 - Netware 2 - *nix (including Linux) 2a - Sun 2b - Linux 3 - NT 4 - AS/400 5 - IBM mainframe
Bits served - internal networks 1 - IBM mainframe 2 - Netware 3 - AS/400 4 - *nix (Sun probably first) 3 vs. 4 could certainly be argued 5 - NT
Bits served - external networks (Internet) 1 - *nix 1a - Sun (by far) 1b - other *nix including Linux 2 - unknown? Could be NT, IBM mainframe, or other.
Server market share This one is tricky. By boxes, by bits served, by $$ value of systems sold? If I take out 5 Netware servers and replace them with 20 NT boxes, what does that do to the market share of each? If I replace the 20 NT boxes with 2 Linux machines, again what does that do to market share?
By installed base or growth rate? I would guess that Novell has by far the largest installed base, but the lowest current growth rate. Linux - high growth rate, but that doesn't mean much if your initial installed base is small.
Finally, 1997, 1998, or 1999 base/growth rate? Novell lost market share and installed base in 1997, bleeding like a stuck pig. I don't think that process continued at the same rate in 1998, or will continue in 1999 based on discussions with peers.
No answers here, just some observations and questions. But don't forget other platforms, most notably Netware and AS/400.
then, at the funding sources for MIT in the 1970's-early 1980's. That is, all sources of funding for the total budget, including grants and overhead levy/allocation. The institution where FSF and GNU got their start. Something RMS doesn't seem to talk about very much.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not in this case. These pricing models will be on a much larger scale. Try $10,000 for the first 10k chips, etc. This will one won't be quick to the home user (intel will still be realeasing some"
;-)). But consider that 10k chips * $10k/chip = $100 m. My understanding is that a chip like Merced costs Intel $1-3 billion (US terminology) all found. So $100 million won't go very far to pay off that loan - and the bulk of the sales still have to come from the workstation side.
I hear what you are saying about home power requirements, and I tend to agree (although SimCity 3000 might just need that Merced
Just my 0.02.
sPh
"Too many web sites (especially gamer sites, for some reason), don't seem to understand that Merced isn't for the average user. When it comes out, and at the very least for a few years following, it will be an ENTERPRISE level chip. This means 1) expensive as hell 2) used in"
/price reduction model. Otherwise they couldn't earn a return on the chip or keep AMD etc. at bay. Set up a spreadsheet and play around with some pricing models (first 10k chips at $2000, next 100k at $750, and so on). The arithmetic is quite simple and inoxerable.
Intel's pricing model doesn't work that way. True, with every new chip Intel announces "this is for servers only". And the first few thousand chips do go into servers. But the server market isn't anywhere near large enough to pay back the cost of developing that chip, so within a few months workstations are released, first by one of the larger clone makers, then by Gateway 2000, and finally by Compaq.
And Intel absolutely depends on these workstation sales to drive their learning curve
So look for the first Merced (McKinley?) workstation about three months after the first server is released.
sPh
submersing the nanomachines in deturium-rich polywater.
sPh
A lot of good arguments here - I wish I had time to continue the discussion. An annoying thing on my to-do list called "work" keeps getting in the way.
Boiled down in a few unreflective seconds, though, I am suggesting that two overall themes deserve some thought:
* What were the conditions (infrastructural conditions, if you will) that allowed the GNU tools and the FSF to develop? Did hidden subsidies play a role in a way that some of the "official history" fails to discuss? If so, why does the offical history not discuss those points?
* Is there really a sharp distinction between "free speech" and "free beer"? RMS says so, and "free speech not free beer" has become an argument-ender along the lines of "defensive" (throw it into the argument first, and the other side is assumed to have lost by definition). But it's not so clear to me. Just as an example (and an unfair one, as I am not going to discuss in detail), in the examples given in the post to which this is attached, it would appear to me that the free _beer_ aspects are different, but the free _speech_ aspects are very similar.
As I said, sorry I can't write more. This is one of the most engaging discussions I have seen in a long time.
sPh
"Isn't that all the more reason why the software, once it's written, should be freely distributed - at the very least within the US?"
:-).
That's certainly a valid line of argument, although I suspect there will be a few counter-arguments
However, I was trying to open up a somewhat different line of discussion. It just seems to me that the various histories and write-ups of GNU and FSF make the assumption that the original GNU tools appeared out of nowhere, with no antecedents, no support framework of infastructure, tools, etc., no souce of funding, etc. An act of spontaneous generation, as it were.
Whereas in reality the "AI Lab culture" was heavily subsidized by the DoD, and the buildings, computers, grad student salaries, overhead charges, and so on came from the U.S. taxpayer in the first place. And primarily from projects dedicated to finding better ways of killing people, although I realize that line of argument is very controversial and somewhat at cross-purposes to my point.
So it isn't quite as easy to create "free" things (whether free speech or free beer, although I have a hard time following RMS' argument on that one also) as RMS and FSF would have one believe. Invisible sources of funding always make life seem easy.
I do consider the GPL a work of genius, for what my opinion is worth (much less than 0.02 USD I am sure), and RMS' ideas very worthy of discussion. But this subtopic seems to get a free ride.
sPh
"To help everyone understand this, I have made it a habit of calling my system a Linux-based GNU-system, in short a GNU/Linux system. This is not because I only use GNU-utilities, it is because I use programs that are part of the GNU system"
Shouldn't that be a Thompson-Ritchie/GNU/Linux system? Or a von Neumann/Thomson-Ritchie/GNU/Linux system? A Hopper/Thomson(many other names/GNU/gcc? Very little in the world of computing is really, absolutely new. Where do we draw the line at claiming seminal credit via naming conventions?
sPh
"In his ideal world, all software is free software and sharing your code with your neighbor is standard practice. RMS lived in this world for some time when he was active around the AI lab on MIT."
Without dissing or flaming, I would like to gently point out that both MIT and the AI Lab have received massive subsidies from the US Government over the years, particularly the DoD. So, much of that "free" (as in "free beer") software really was paid for by the US taxpayer. And there were many taxpayers who objected strongly to some aspects of that taxation, such as DoD funding during the Vietnam war.
This isn't a trivial issue in the story of GNU, but I have yet to see it discussed in any great depth.
sPh
"I like the suggestion that people who accumulate scores above a certain threshold should automagically become a moderator because that lets the system call attention to people who have been posting Thoughtful Comments."
A few things to consider:
* Good writers are not always (or often) good editors. The skills and temperments required for the two tasks are usually different and not often found in the same person. Lester del Ray was an exception, but most writers who try editing fail.
* Those who are busy writing good, thoughtful posts have probably used up so much of their discretionary time that they won't be able to put much thought into moderating. And vice versa. 'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, write about it. Those who can't write, edit.' Seriously, I have a lot of respect for teachers, writers, and editors, but most people don't have _that_ much free time.
Not rejecting/flaming your idea; just offering a few points to ponder.
sPh
As a famous writer once said, "if I had had more time I would have written less". I typically read posts in flat mode rather than threaded. I pulled out a quote from your message and used it to illustrate my response to several posts elsewhere in the topic as well as yours. That wasn't fair to you, nor did it make my points entirely clear. Sorry for any confusion, although I still think my overall theme is correct.
sPh
"But in every other way Linux already has everything a small site would want from Netware. Not only that but the the number of vendors offerring pre-installed Linux is growing fast - how does it compare to the number with pre-installed netware.
All we need is directory services to compete with NDS and who will need Netware anywhere? I believe this is where LDAP should come in but I don't know much about that or the status of free LDAP software."
A few points:
* Novell has many strengths in the large, corporate network world. Things like DOS-aware login scripts, Win95-aware client software, and the inheritance approach to access permissions make life easier for the corporate admin and were not available until recently in the *nix world (if they are available even today).
* Many of these advantages can only be appreciated in a well-engineered Netware network. However, there are very few well-designed, well engineered systems out there. A poorly engineered Netware system will indeed be confusing and difficult to use (at least it will still run reliably, if clunkily).
If your only experience with Netware is taking over a badly designed system for a few days, or in a class, then your impression will be similar to that of an NT person working with Linux for the first time. The differences/disadvantages will be obvious, the strengths/advantages will be hidden.
* Saying "when system x gets something like NDS" ignores the fact that it has taken Novell 6 years of very hard work to get NDS to where it is today. No one else is even close (Banyan being basically dead at this point). NDS is Novell's ace in the hole and a product that is very difficult for M$ and others to compete with.
As before, if you are not familiar with NDS, please do a little research before you flame.
sPh
"Microsoft still has the OEM's nuts in a blender; all they need to do is hit "frappe" and it's all over. I don't think that Gateway or Micron could survive having their license prices for Windows jacked up."
Hard to disagree with that.
OTOH, Microsoft might be in for some interesting discussions with its licensees in the next few months. From what I could read in theregister and the WSJ, several of those vendors had "most favored nation" clauses in their Windows9x contracts, such that no other vendor should have been able to get a lower price. Given that most of the hard data is still under seal, it still appears that Microsoft may have violated some of those agreements, promising several vendors a different, "lowest" price.
Unlike the antitrust lawsuit, this would be quite easy to demonstrate in court, and compensatory damages easy to figure. If a Dell or Gateway hits Microsoft with a breach of contract suit for $1b or so, M$ could find itself in real trouble.
sPh
"basicly he said that they can track sales but not how much they make from the sales on their computers...... YEAH RIGHT"
I hate to sound as if I am defending M$, but for a large corporation, tracking profitability by product line, by customer, etc. doesn't sound easy and in fact is not easy at all. Try working on a large ERP project sometime - there are cases out there where the ERP implementation took a few years, but the promised profitability analysis system wasn't finished for a decade, if ever.
For just one quick example, where would you charge the costs for the trial? To the Windows 95 group? The Windows 98 group? The IE group? The company as a whole? Some allocation? Why? And that's only one of the millions of classification and allocation decisions that have to me made to determine profitability.
On this one, I would be inclined to believe what was said at the trial.
sPh
After thinking about this overnight, it occured to me that there are actually some fairly strong parallels between RMS and Tesla. Both were "mad genius" types who came up with several true innovations [a genius by definition being a person who has _two_ original ideas]. Both had their work picked up and extended in a commercial direction by others of less genius but more business sense (Westinghouse, Linus).
Tesla in the end was destroyed when he tried to continue extending his underlying principles in a direction that was either (a) not in accordance with physical reality (90% probability) or (b) too advanced for its time (10% probability).
Where will RMS end up, I wonder?
sPh
Trying to simplify for an OT thread. I worked for an old-line Edison company (not ConEd though) for 11 years. I have ~200 books about the history and structure of the utility industry in my library. So I have some knowledge whereof I speak, but just abstracting a little.
sPh
The complete history is somewhat more complex. Telsa and Westinghouse certainly did push AC over DC, to the eventual benefit of everyone. But after Edison lost that fight, he did switch his companies over to working in the AC world (ever heard of a small company called General Electric?) and _continued_ to push the term "Edison Service".
But he didn't quit either because he lost the first round, or because others used terminology he didn't like.
sPh
Far back in the depths of time, three people invented the hammer, chisel, and dovetail joint. Call them Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. Is every piece of furniture built since that time called an Alpha-Beta-Gamma/sideboard, or an Alpha-Beta-Gamma/dresser?
Someone first developed the concept of a high level language compiler. In many versions of computing history I have read, that person was Grace Hopper. Are all high level languages called Hopper/Cobol, Hopper/C, Hopper/Gnu/gcc?
Thomas Edison certainly tried to force the world to call electricity "Edison Electricty", and was roundly rebuffed. Did he stop working on developing electrical distribution equipment when he met that rebuff?
So please explain to me why Linux _should_ be called GNU/Linux. Exactly, and referring to the above examples. Because, although I have tremendous respect for RMS, FSF, and the GPL, I really must be missing something here about the name thing.
sPh
The funny thing is, Michael Kinsley was one of the more independent pundits when he worked in Washington (DC, that is). Some good original thinking and not much bowing to conventional wisdom. And he promised to maintain that attitude when he left TNR for Microsoft.
But that sure isn't how it has seemed the last six months or so. Slate's coverage of the MS trial is a joke thoughout the world of political journalism. I wonder what happened?
sPh
Note: I don't think this is what is actually happening. But I do think it is a possibility.
Keep in mind that although Microsoft has created numerous paper millionaires and a few billionaires, many of them cannot realize that wealth. If billg decides he wants to buy his own space shuttle, or New Zealand, he can't. The moment he tries to sell half his stock (say $20 billion), the value of that stock would drop though the floor.
But if he (and other big holders) was _forced_ to sell 50% of this stock by the feds, that's a different matter. Can't be helped. Not his fault. The two resulting companies are just as good as the old M$ - just smaller. No need to panic.
So it is possible that there are people at MS who desire a breakup, whether or not they acknowledge it even to themselves.
sPh
At least when I worked for a regulated utility (not telecom admittedly), our charter of service included an obligation to serve. Not an obligation to serve based on certain historical usage patterns that tended to maximize our profit: just a plain old obligation to serve. If usage patterns changed (and they did), we also had the obligation to figure out how to meet the new pattern and still make a profit. If we could convince the regulatory body that a rate increase was justified to handle that, great. If not - belt tightening time.
Also, if a telco make the "changing usage pattern" argument, it also opens itself up to the "what is your profit margin on T1 service today as compared to 10 years ago" question. Oddly enough no one at the Baby Bells seems real anxious to take on that question.
sPh
IMHO, part of what is happening in the trial is due to the general level of contempt that high tech people (not to say West Coast high tech people [or Northwest Coast]) feel for government in general and Washington DC in particular. Let's face it: Microsoft hires a lot of _very_ smart people. They never expected that they might encounter people as smart as they are, and possibly sneakier, in DC. My guess would be that Microsoft's lawyers tried to prepare the witnesses for what was going to happen, and were rejected. I just can't imagine that someone in the Microsoft executive suite could ever believe that he could be out-thought on technical issues by a lawyer; an IBM lawyer in particular.
Then there is the issue of internal belief systems. I have come to believe that Microsoft insiders in many cases truely do not know how their products actually work in the real world, or how their company is perceived outside Redmond. I continue to maintain that the botched videotape was just an extreme example of DLL hell, and the Microsoft people couldn't bring themselves to believe that it could happen to them and proceeded to 'patch' things a little. Just what they do every day of the week, and look where it has gotten them...
Finally, keep in mind that in the end the trial bears some relationship to the law and the legal definitions of things like "monopoly" and "coercion". The judge may be laughing his head off at the Microsoft witnesses. He may come to believe that Microsoft set out to fsck Netscape. But that doesn't mean he (or the appeals court) will necessarily rule that there is any violation of the law that the government can/should take notice of. The daily spectacle isn't the whole story.
Now, I doubt that Microsoft is actually pursuing a strategy of releasing damaging evidence and saying , "Look - with all our monopoly power, that is the worst we could do. Just what the rest of the industry does when it has the chance", as some have suggested. Devious, but too dangerous.
Still, I do have to wonder about those bonuses for the Microsoft legal team. Does Bill ever take stock options away?
sPh
I would think anywhere from $500/hr to $1500/hr for a lawyer at that level. $250/hr would be the absolute low end. Almost as much as a good sendmail administrator charges.
sPh
Unfortunately, the 1.2 tb/s connection filled solid within minutes of being hooked up. Further research found that all the engineers at Siemens were trying to use it to access Slashdot.
sPh
Not defending M$ or Win2000 here, but if systems undergo significant change sooner or later applications have to be rebuilt. It isn't reasonable to condemn an OS for lack of progress (e.g. Win95 built on a DOS foundation), then also condemn the new system (Win2000, assuming it ever sees the light of day) for making changes which break compatibility with the old system. Upward compatibility is nice, but if the price of significant progress is recompiling/recoding, soorner or later that's the way it will have to be.
sPh
I find it interesting that in blasting this article (which I agree is full of poor arguements and _very_ poor statistics), /.'ers have chosen to totally ignore Netware. In another context that might be considered FUD, don't you think?
Here is my totally unscientific guess on server market share:
Boxes installed
1 - Netware
2 - *nix (including Linux)
2a - Sun
2b - Linux
3 - NT
4 - AS/400
5 - IBM mainframe
Bits served - internal networks
1 - IBM mainframe
2 - Netware
3 - AS/400
4 - *nix (Sun probably first)
3 vs. 4 could certainly be argued
5 - NT
Bits served - external networks (Internet)
1 - *nix
1a - Sun (by far)
1b - other *nix including Linux
2 - unknown? Could be NT, IBM mainframe, or other.
Server market share
This one is tricky. By boxes, by bits served, by $$ value of systems sold? If I take out 5 Netware servers and replace them with 20 NT boxes, what does that do to the market share of each? If I replace the 20 NT boxes with 2 Linux machines, again what does that do to market share?
By installed base or growth rate? I would guess that Novell has by far the largest installed base, but the lowest current growth rate. Linux - high growth rate, but that doesn't mean much if your initial installed base is small.
Finally, 1997, 1998, or 1999 base/growth rate? Novell lost market share and installed base in 1997, bleeding like a stuck pig. I don't think that process continued at the same rate in 1998, or will continue in 1999 based on discussions with peers.
No answers here, just some observations and questions. But don't forget other platforms, most notably Netware and AS/400.
sPh
then, at the funding sources for MIT in the 1970's-early 1980's. That is, all sources of funding for the total budget, including grants and overhead levy/allocation. The institution where FSF and GNU got their start. Something RMS doesn't seem to talk about very much.
sPh