The premise behind the Turing award winning Alicebot seems to have the answer to the NLP, or lack thereof, obsticle to 'Star Trek' style, "Ask a question, get an answer" search engines. If you look at the code (yes, it's open source), all it really does is take whatever question you ask, and match your question to one that it already has the answer to. It appears to be "intelligent", because it's programmer correctly assumed the number of different questions people ask a Turing Machine is not quite as large one might assume (I believe it only holds a few thousand question-answer pairs). By using the same technique, anyone writing an article on the web could, using XML no doubt, create a list of questions that correspond to every sentence in the article. Then when you "ask" goggle a question, it uses the exact same Alicebot technique against the list of question it has cached from appropriately question-answer tagged articles to determine which question most closely resembles yours, and then spits back the corresponding answer. Even something that basic would really feel like talking to the Star Trek computer, just as Alicebot really seems pretty intelligent unless you try to get it to demonstrate deduction ("I like cherries. This cake is cherry flavoured. Do I like this cake?") or ask intentionally bizzare questions ("Why does my screen taste funny?" or "Did you hear that? Eh, never mind - it stopped now"). The bulk of the work Google would have to do would probably involve synthesizing a compound question (similiar to "search within these results") to deal with the fact that it would have multiple, and usually conflicting answers to the exact same question ("What stock should I buy?", "Where's the best p0rn site?", "Which religion is right?", "Who should I vote for?") so it could determine which "right" answer you wanted.
But just as Dr. Wallace figured out that it was easier to simulate intelligence by coming up with several thousand question-answer pairs than to actually write true NLP; my guess is that Google will figure out that it's easier to pick the "right" answer to give you by selling "sponsered answers" the way they did with sponsered search results.
Q: "So Computer, who's the sexiest man alive?" A: "Bill Gates, inventer of the world's most secure and reliable computer operating system, and the future Governer of California!".
Yeah, the future is going to be a lot more annoying than Mr. Rodenbury predicted. But check out www.Alicebot.org anyway. Maybe if you open source gurus do it before Google, you can keep things from getting too ridiculous.
"spiders can't be farmed (when you put them too close together, they eat each other)"
Spider farmers- what a bunch of quiters! I ran into the same problem when I was trying to farm lesbians, but did I give up? Nope, I just kept right on farming.
Or was it *filming*. I can't remember, college was so long ago, and of course, we'll drank a lot more back then...
Well, actually it was a minature pincher named "Loki" and I called it Loki-cam. I ran into the same issue with the batteries myself actually - and the problem you had was not that 12v remote control batteries don't last long enough - but they don't produce enough amps. I had to build very light battery packs for the camera (the dog weighs about 5 pounds), and for the receiver (we put the dog in a "dog parade" and wanted to be able to film things from it's perspective). The trick to replacing chords with battery packs is to look at the specs on the power adapter. The x-10 needs 12volts and about 300amps. You probably put the 12volts in parallel, giving you the same 12 volts, but twice the amps, only if you had put them in serial would you get 24 volts. As for me, I just bought a drumel (kind of a spinning router which you can easily cut and sand plastic with) and re-shaped the 4AA w/amp circuitry to be very light and fit smoothly on a dog harness, then shaved away unnecessary bits on the camera, attached the whole thing to a dog harness, stabilized it with electrical tape, and presto: a mobile camera rig which weighed less than 1 pound. For the reciever, I used 8 C batteries in serial (1.5 volts X 8 = 12volts and a LOT of amps), and then spliced the end of the original powerchord to the battery pak so we could freely walk around filming. The reciever RCA outs went to a regular video camera. If anyone really cares, I'll post the movies from the dog parade (it's hilarious) and from the NYU film student who then made a movie using the Loki-cam. I'm also happy to post pix of how it's put together and answer any questions for people doing it themselves. BTW, one thing those 12v remote batteries are great for is for making battery packs for those thinkgeek.com pc light strips. I made one for a orange-red one which I taped around the edge of my guitar - that's where I got the idea that it would be "easy" to build a wireless tiny dog camera.
If they essentially hacked a website to remove content that is illegal in their country, perhaps someone should remind the Pope that hacking is illegal in the US. In fact, doesn't it now carry a life sentence here? Because John Ashcroft sez, "hackers = terrorists". Opps. How does the Bu$h administration decide between "protecting the homeland" by jailing hackers, and mandatory religion when it's the church doing the hacking? Perhaps he should just eat another banana, and go back to ruin the US economy...
Who's with me? Everytime some jack@$$ tries to sue US for breaking laws in their country, let's sue them for breaking laws in ours. For starters, they're driving on the wrong side of the street - that's a 100 dollar fine here, buddy. And their using electricity, that's fifty hail mary's and a horse-whipping in the Amish communities of Pennsylvania. And after they've served their penalty, we pass them off to Saudi Arabia, who can sentence them to death because saying those Hail Mary's was blasphemous against Islam.
Seriously, there's is no way countries can both use an International electronic network, AND impose national laws on other people who use it. So we either have the "International Law of the Internet" (which just *ain't* gonna happen); or we have the "American Law which claims to be International Law of the Internet" (which hopefully won't, but still might happen); or whichever tiny little country on the planet decides to legalize internet gambling, porn, hacking information, and file swapping first - is going to generate 99.999% of it's GNP by hosting everyone else's websites.
So that's it. If countries are dumb enough to follow this line of thinking, I'm getting a lawyer, converting to Amish, and registering "www.InBelgiumYouCanDoAnything.com". And all Slashdot readers are formally invited to our IPO party.
We've got a TOTAL M$ office here. We're talking Win2K on all the servers and desktops, Exchange 5.5, SQL 7, ISA, Citrix, Visual Studio Apps (in VB) everywhere, integrated with VBA in Word documents, Office automation, nothing but MCSE's and MCSD's on staff. How ever do we get out of it?
Step one is become really comfy with Linux, you haven't already done so. Heck, get Linux for Dummies if you gotta; or people here can suggest some good newbie books.
Step 2, build a free workstation, load up Star Office and Netscape, and see how much of your old stuff will run.
Step 3, build a free server, and see how much of your old server functions you can get to run.
Step 4 - here's the sneaky part: After steps #1 - 3 you'll know what migrates and what doesn't. Instead of jumping through hoops to migrate everything - start phasing out everything which won't migrate anytime soon. Don't put any more work into other than keeping it reasonably alive. Or even purposely sabatoge it every week or so if you're pressed for time;-)
And instead of trying to find a Guinea Pig to run a whole Linux workstation - start installing cross platform applications on people's Windows workstations. A good start is to roll out Netscape or another email program "to protect the company against all those Outlook viruses". Then just keep introducing more and more cross platform apps on peoples desktops - not instead of, but in addition to M$Office. Make a point of sending around important documents which will open in these programs by default.
The idea of course is to slowly build up your users familiarity with apps which run on Linux, so that when you've weeded out all the stuff that can't be moved over - they'll barely notice it when you switch the underlying operating system. The main thing is to try it as soon as possible, so that you don't make more work for yourself by putting development time into projects or features which won't move over easily. Make sure you're staff *neglects* those things, while supporting the he11 out of the ones you can move over. Do the simplest ones first - if there's a really crucial Windows only feature you need - odds are there will be plenty of folks working on a way to migrate it to Linux while you're moving over the easy stuff. And figuring out what can be migrated on the servers, and what "isn't really needed anyway".
Naturally there are some things which aren't going to be ready to move to Linux by the time you are - but if you've played your cards right (oh it's just *such* an instable product - we can't seem to get it working right); your staff will have ceased relying on those products by the time you take them away for good.
And it never hurts to relay panic-mongering information about Windows security holes, privacy breaches, pending price increases, and BSA audit horror stories to the appropriate channels. Or to take on yourself to convert vital documents to formats only open software can read. Believe me, Microsoft wouldn't hesistate to do it you...
Oh wouldn't it be nice if Red Hat and Netscape release a Linux "assimilation" package, that would just convert a whole M$ network to Free Software through a nice little Tux Wizard interface? Mmmmm, I'll bet they could recoup their costs just by offering same day delivery of the discs to people on the BSA's mailing list.
It wasn't until I checked the fine details of our server log that I found out we'd been blocked by the RBL, and they made it clear how to remedy the situation of us being an open relay. Even if it turned out to be a serious pain (which it didn't) to remove ourselves from the list; it's still a heck of a lot better than what was going on before: namely that people were getting unsolicited porn promos, ostensibly from our investment bank.
As far as the part-of-the-problem/part-of-the-solution matter goes, there's no question in my mind the spam blacklists are part of the solution. ISP's can subscribe to any list they choose. If a list starts getting careless, ISP's stop using it. As far as "innocent" companies like yours and mine getting stuck on these lists for longer than we'd like - hey, we deserve it for behaving irresponsibly in the first place. It would be like if we were inadvertantly supporting some reprehensible regime with our regular business. Sure, we didn't mean to - but we did it and don't deserve to be instantly trusted again the second we stop. The strong reactions of anti-spam groups should make people like us, would rather not deal with the issue if we don't have to - realize that WE HAVE TO. And to the groups which do this intentionally, the lists hold force their ISPs to decide between enforcing their own AUPs, or lose all their decent customers. And we get all this without having to rely on the impartiality of a Bush/Ashcroft/Enron solution. What more could ya ask for?
Hey, how about this????
You know how M$ is doing the ol' "If you're not in compliance with your licenses - the SPA will fine you 245,000" scam? I know a lot of small and medium sized companies are paniking and actually buying those licenses soon. Why doesn't Caldera or Red Head run a promotion like this: If you believe your not in complience, and would have to spend over X amount of money per employee to get in complience - we'll come in a convert your whole company to free software for 1/2 the price! Take a big ass company like Chase - these guys have like 15,000 seats in one NY office alone. That's A LOT of money for Windows and Linux. If for half the price - and the peace of mind that they don't have to worry about an SPA raid - surely Red Hat could come up with a nice LAN install, hire some C++ guys to convert their crusty old proprietary apps, and give their IT staff a few weeks of training. And then, when they've pulled it off - Red Hat would be the first place they'd go to learn about what new goodies the Linux community had to offer (including even proprietary apps if that's what it took), ad-hoc training and support, new IT initiatives. And even if they didn't - the initial project alone would surely be profitable.
Do all the Linux companies even *offer* to send in a sales rep to determine how feasible it would be for them to convert a company to free software? I mean, hey - you send one little geek over there to see what software their using, describe what Linux equivelents there are (or how some good C++ programmers could convert and update their old apps), and point out how much money they'd save, year after year and year (not just on licenses - but in terms of NOT getting attacked by all those MS viruses). And if they groove to it - charge a few though for a more formal business analysis.
Is this being done? Or is it something that's been overlooked? Or is doing a Windows-to-Linux conversion such as herculean task that it's not a realistic option to pitch yet to anyone who isn't that stoked about having a mixed enviorment?
The DOJ didn't lose it's cajones - it lost it's ethics. When the Bu$h administration replaced the staff with people who care about fair business practices in the same way John Ashcroft "cares" about civil liberties. Micro$oft gave millions to the republicans, and just like the energy companies - are getting more than their moneys worth in return. If this bugs you:
-By speech and by example, form your opinions of politicians based on voting records - not on the ads and PR that corporations paid for.
-Help the hapless small companies out there, who can't afford Linux geniuses like yourself, to crawl out of Micro$oft's web while they still can. Write an article describing, step by step, how to replace just ONE M$ program with a third party program. It doesn't have to be Windows with Linux, or IIS with Apache - it could be Outbreak (I mean Outlook) with Netscape mail or Eudora still running off the same M$Exchange server. Don't know how to write such an article? Then help organize those who can. Buy the URL, "www.SwitchToLinux.com" and start soliciting submissions - until the site has steps to convert even the most hardcore Microsoft shop to pure free software. Too much for ya? Well, how about doing a Flash presentation of how to perform common tasks people know on Windoze on a Linux machine using GNOME or KDE?
And why, you may ask - haven't *I* done any of these lovely things? Well, mainly it's because the company I work for hired me to work on a VB program in development for 5 years (I've been here for 2) - and it hasn't left enough time for learning Linux to know how to convert the whole place (using Win NT, Win2k, MS Exchange, Proxy, SQL Server, IIS, NT Terminal Edition with Citrix, highly automated M$Office programs, VB, IE specific website, ect). Believe me, if switching us to Linux was in the realm of possibilities - I would LOVE to do it. But small companies barely have the resources to keep up with all the M$ crap, let alone do a full conversion to Linux. And big companies have to resources to do a conversion - but they don't have the resources to re-train everyone on all new programs. So as easy as it may seem right now to administer or use Linux - if the Linux community wants all the companies who care way more about selling their widgets than the frustations of their computer users or IT staff, and not at all about the utter nightmare which will occur if Micro$oft really *doesn't* have any real competition; you got to make administering and using Linux waaaaay easier. I'm talking AOL easy. I'm talking child-proof cap easy. I'm talking "even people who buy chia pets can figure it out faster than Windows" easy.
Sorry it has to be that way, but if you think Micro$oft is dumb enough to charge so much, or crash so often, or be so insecure, that it loses enough business to actually matter; well, you don't know Microsoft very well. The software is only as shoddy as it can be and still make a profit, the prices are as high, but ONLY as high as they can be and make a profit. And their anti-trust violations are only as bad as they can be and still make a profit (as opposed to getting away with it).
Make Linux so much easier to use that people start to switch, and Microsoft will improve Windows' stability. Make Linux able to communicate well with NT based Networks, and MS will make NT networks communicate well with Linux networks. Start to win on ROI, and MS will lower the price. They'll match you at every turn, and then lie, break the law, spread blatantly false rumours, sabatoge your software, and buy your best minds too.
But the battle is Linux's to lose. Because Free software was created by people who just wanted it work. It doesn't have the "but will it make the most money?" burden around it's neck... well, not as much anyway. But even questions of profit-oriented development aside, the open source factor should be enough to carry the day. Why, even if only one in a hundred engineers or programmers, who spend most of their time trying to sneak around the short comings in M$ products, had the opportunity of free software programmers and engineers to actually go in and just FIX the problem once and for all - by now Microsoft products would be the most stable and feature perfect in the universe. That's the advantage Free Software has - using it makes it better. But you've got to make it easier to use, so more people use it, hire more people to master it, so it gets better faster than the MS billions can out develop, market, and cheat it out of existence.
Just for the record though - I am willing to work with anyone who wants help from an MCSD/MCSE on how to convert the work held hostage by the evil wares from Redmond.
Slashdot Mirror
The premise behind the Turing award winning Alicebot seems to have the answer to the NLP, or lack thereof, obsticle to 'Star Trek' style, "Ask a question, get an answer" search engines. If you look at the code (yes, it's open source), all it really does is take whatever question you ask, and match your question to one that it already has the answer to. It appears to be "intelligent", because it's programmer correctly assumed the number of different questions people ask a Turing Machine is not quite as large one might assume (I believe it only holds a few thousand question-answer pairs). By using the same technique, anyone writing an article on the web could, using XML no doubt, create a list of questions that correspond to every sentence in the article. Then when you "ask" goggle a question, it uses the exact same Alicebot technique against the list of question it has cached from appropriately question-answer tagged articles to determine which question most closely resembles yours, and then spits back the corresponding answer. Even something that basic would really feel like talking to the Star Trek computer, just as Alicebot really seems pretty intelligent unless you try to get it to demonstrate deduction ("I like cherries. This cake is cherry flavoured. Do I like this cake?") or ask intentionally bizzare questions ("Why does my screen taste funny?" or "Did you hear that? Eh, never mind - it stopped now"). The bulk of the work Google would have to do would probably involve synthesizing a compound question (similiar to "search within these results") to deal with the fact that it would have multiple, and usually conflicting answers to the exact same question ("What stock should I buy?", "Where's the best p0rn site?", "Which religion is right?", "Who should I vote for?") so it could determine which "right" answer you wanted.
But just as Dr. Wallace figured out that it was easier to simulate intelligence by coming up with several thousand question-answer pairs than to actually write true NLP; my guess is that Google will figure out that it's easier to pick the "right" answer to give you by selling "sponsered answers" the way they did with sponsered search results.
Q: "So Computer, who's the sexiest man alive?"
A: "Bill Gates, inventer of the world's most secure and reliable computer operating system, and the future Governer of California!".
Yeah, the future is going to be a lot more annoying than Mr. Rodenbury predicted. But check out www.Alicebot.org anyway. Maybe if you open source gurus do it before Google, you can keep things from getting too ridiculous.
... they had ever finished development of their spin-off title, "GTE: Grand Theft Election".
Fortunately, the Project Leader left halfway through to take a job at Diebold.
"spiders can't be farmed (when you put them too close together, they eat each other)"
Spider farmers- what a bunch of quiters! I ran into the same problem when I was trying to farm lesbians, but did I give up? Nope, I just kept right on farming.
Or was it *filming*. I can't remember, college was so long ago, and of course, we'll drank a lot more back then...
Well, actually it was a minature pincher named "Loki" and I called it Loki-cam. I ran into the same issue with the batteries myself actually - and the problem you had was not that 12v remote control batteries don't last long enough - but they don't produce enough amps. I had to build very light battery packs for the camera (the dog weighs about 5 pounds), and for the receiver (we put the dog in a "dog parade" and wanted to be able to film things from it's perspective). The trick to replacing chords with battery packs is to look at the specs on the power adapter. The x-10 needs 12volts and about 300amps. You probably put the 12volts in parallel, giving you the same 12 volts, but twice the amps, only if you had put them in serial would you get 24 volts. As for me, I just bought a drumel (kind of a spinning router which you can easily cut and sand plastic with) and re-shaped the 4AA w/amp circuitry to be very light and fit smoothly on a dog harness, then shaved away unnecessary bits on the camera, attached the whole thing to a dog harness, stabilized it with electrical tape, and presto: a mobile camera rig which weighed less than 1 pound. For the reciever, I used 8 C batteries in serial (1.5 volts X 8 = 12volts and a LOT of amps), and then spliced the end of the original powerchord to the battery pak so we could freely walk around filming. The reciever RCA outs went to a regular video camera. If anyone really cares, I'll post the movies from the dog parade (it's hilarious) and from the NYU film student who then made a movie using the Loki-cam. I'm also happy to post pix of how it's put together and answer any questions for people doing it themselves. BTW, one thing those 12v remote batteries are great for is for making battery packs for those thinkgeek.com pc light strips. I made one for a orange-red one which I taped around the edge of my guitar - that's where I got the idea that it would be "easy" to build a wireless tiny dog camera.
If they essentially hacked a website to remove content that is illegal in their country, perhaps someone should remind the Pope that hacking is illegal in the US. In fact, doesn't it now carry a life sentence here? Because John Ashcroft sez, "hackers = terrorists". Opps. How does the Bu$h administration decide between "protecting the homeland" by jailing hackers, and mandatory religion when it's the church doing the hacking? Perhaps he should just eat another banana, and go back to ruin the US economy...
Who's with me? Everytime some jack@$$ tries to sue US for breaking laws in their country, let's sue them for breaking laws in ours. For starters, they're driving on the wrong side of the street - that's a 100 dollar fine here, buddy. And their using electricity, that's fifty hail mary's and a horse-whipping in the Amish communities of Pennsylvania. And after they've served their penalty, we pass them off to Saudi Arabia, who can sentence them to death because saying those Hail Mary's was blasphemous against Islam.
Seriously, there's is no way countries can both use an International electronic network, AND impose national laws on other people who use it. So we either have the "International Law of the Internet" (which just *ain't* gonna happen); or we have the "American Law which claims to be International Law of the Internet" (which hopefully won't, but still might happen); or whichever tiny little country on the planet decides to legalize internet gambling, porn, hacking information, and file swapping first - is going to generate 99.999% of it's GNP by hosting everyone else's websites.
So that's it. If countries are dumb enough to follow this line of thinking, I'm getting a lawyer, converting to Amish, and registering "www.InBelgiumYouCanDoAnything.com". And all Slashdot readers are formally invited to our IPO party.
We've got a TOTAL M$ office here. We're talking Win2K on all the servers and desktops, Exchange 5.5, SQL 7, ISA, Citrix, Visual Studio Apps (in VB) everywhere, integrated with VBA in Word documents, Office automation, nothing but MCSE's and MCSD's on staff. How ever do we get out of it?
;-)
Step one is become really comfy with Linux, you haven't already done so. Heck, get Linux for Dummies if you gotta; or people here can suggest some good newbie books.
Step 2, build a free workstation, load up Star Office and Netscape, and see how much of your old stuff will run.
Step 3, build a free server, and see how much of your old server functions you can get to run.
Step 4 - here's the sneaky part: After steps #1 - 3 you'll know what migrates and what doesn't. Instead of jumping through hoops to migrate everything - start phasing out everything which won't migrate anytime soon. Don't put any more work into other than keeping it reasonably alive. Or even purposely sabatoge it every week or so if you're pressed for time
And instead of trying to find a Guinea Pig to run a whole Linux workstation - start installing cross platform applications on people's Windows workstations. A good start is to roll out Netscape or another email program "to protect the company against all those Outlook viruses". Then just keep introducing more and more cross platform apps on peoples desktops - not instead of, but in addition to M$Office. Make a point of sending around important documents which will open in these programs by default.
The idea of course is to slowly build up your users familiarity with apps which run on Linux, so that when you've weeded out all the stuff that can't be moved over - they'll barely notice it when you switch the underlying operating system. The main thing is to try it as soon as possible, so that you don't make more work for yourself by putting development time into projects or features which won't move over easily. Make sure you're staff *neglects* those things, while supporting the he11 out of the ones you can move over. Do the simplest ones first - if there's a really crucial Windows only feature you need - odds are there will be plenty of folks working on a way to migrate it to Linux while you're moving over the easy stuff. And figuring out what can be migrated on the servers, and what "isn't really needed anyway".
Naturally there are some things which aren't going to be ready to move to Linux by the time you are - but if you've played your cards right (oh it's just *such* an instable product - we can't seem to get it working right); your staff will have ceased relying on those products by the time you take them away for good.
And it never hurts to relay panic-mongering information about Windows security holes, privacy breaches, pending price increases, and BSA audit horror stories to the appropriate channels. Or to take on yourself to convert vital documents to formats only open software can read. Believe me, Microsoft wouldn't hesistate to do it you...
Oh wouldn't it be nice if Red Hat and Netscape release a Linux "assimilation" package, that would just convert a whole M$ network to Free Software through a nice little Tux Wizard interface? Mmmmm, I'll bet they could recoup their costs just by offering same day delivery of the discs to people on the BSA's mailing list.
It wasn't until I checked the fine details of our server log that I found out we'd been blocked by the RBL, and they made it clear how to remedy the situation of us being an open relay. Even if it turned out to be a serious pain (which it didn't) to remove ourselves from the list; it's still a heck of a lot better than what was going on before: namely that people were getting unsolicited porn promos, ostensibly from our investment bank.
As far as the part-of-the-problem/part-of-the-solution matter goes, there's no question in my mind the spam blacklists are part of the solution. ISP's can subscribe to any list they choose. If a list starts getting careless, ISP's stop using it. As far as "innocent" companies like yours and mine getting stuck on these lists for longer than we'd like - hey, we deserve it for behaving irresponsibly in the first place. It would be like if we were inadvertantly supporting some reprehensible regime with our regular business. Sure, we didn't mean to - but we did it and don't deserve to be instantly trusted again the second we stop. The strong reactions of anti-spam groups should make people like us, would rather not deal with the issue if we don't have to - realize that WE HAVE TO. And to the groups which do this intentionally, the lists hold force their ISPs to decide between enforcing their own AUPs, or lose all their decent customers. And we get all this without having to rely on the impartiality of a Bush/Ashcroft/Enron solution. What more could ya ask for?
Hey, how about this????
You know how M$ is doing the ol' "If you're not in compliance with your licenses - the SPA will fine you 245,000" scam? I know a lot of small and medium sized companies are paniking and actually buying those licenses soon. Why doesn't Caldera or Red Head run a promotion like this: If you believe your not in complience, and would have to spend over X amount of money per employee to get in complience - we'll come in a convert your whole company to free software for 1/2 the price! Take a big ass company like Chase - these guys have like 15,000 seats in one NY office alone. That's A LOT of money for Windows and Linux. If for half the price - and the peace of mind that they don't have to worry about an SPA raid - surely Red Hat could come up with a nice LAN install, hire some C++ guys to convert their crusty old proprietary apps, and give their IT staff a few weeks of training. And then, when they've pulled it off - Red Hat would be the first place they'd go to learn about what new goodies the Linux community had to offer (including even proprietary apps if that's what it took), ad-hoc training and support, new IT initiatives. And even if they didn't - the initial project alone would surely be profitable.
Do all the Linux companies even *offer* to send in a sales rep to determine how feasible it would be for them to convert a company to free software? I mean, hey - you send one little geek over there to see what software their using, describe what Linux equivelents there are (or how some good C++ programmers could convert and update their old apps), and point out how much money they'd save, year after year and year (not just on licenses - but in terms of NOT getting attacked by all those MS viruses). And if they groove to it - charge a few though for a more formal business analysis.
Is this being done? Or is it something that's been overlooked? Or is doing a Windows-to-Linux conversion such as herculean task that it's not a realistic option to pitch yet to anyone who isn't that stoked about having a mixed enviorment?
The DOJ didn't lose it's cajones - it lost it's ethics. When the Bu$h administration replaced the staff with people who care about fair business practices in the same way John Ashcroft "cares" about civil liberties. Micro$oft gave millions to the republicans, and just like the energy companies - are getting more than their moneys worth in return. If this bugs you:
-By speech and by example, form your opinions of politicians based on voting records - not on the ads and PR that corporations paid for.
-Help the hapless small companies out there, who can't afford Linux geniuses like yourself, to crawl out of Micro$oft's web while they still can. Write an article describing, step by step, how to replace just ONE M$ program with a third party program. It doesn't have to be Windows with Linux, or IIS with Apache - it could be Outbreak (I mean Outlook) with Netscape mail or Eudora still running off the same M$Exchange server. Don't know how to write such an article? Then help organize those who can. Buy the URL, "www.SwitchToLinux.com" and start soliciting submissions - until the site has steps to convert even the most hardcore Microsoft shop to pure free software. Too much for ya? Well, how about doing a Flash presentation of how to perform common tasks people know on Windoze on a Linux machine using GNOME or KDE?
And why, you may ask - haven't *I* done any of these lovely things? Well, mainly it's because the company I work for hired me to work on a VB program in development for 5 years (I've been here for 2) - and it hasn't left enough time for learning Linux to know how to convert the whole place (using Win NT, Win2k, MS Exchange, Proxy, SQL Server, IIS, NT Terminal Edition with Citrix, highly automated M$Office programs, VB, IE specific website, ect). Believe me, if switching us to Linux was in the realm of possibilities - I would LOVE to do it. But small companies barely have the resources to keep up with all the M$ crap, let alone do a full conversion to Linux. And big companies have to resources to do a conversion - but they don't have the resources to re-train everyone on all new programs. So as easy as it may seem right now to administer or use Linux - if the Linux community wants all the companies who care way more about selling their widgets than the frustations of their computer users or IT staff, and not at all about the utter nightmare which will occur if Micro$oft really *doesn't* have any real competition; you got to make administering and using Linux waaaaay easier. I'm talking AOL easy. I'm talking child-proof cap easy. I'm talking "even people who buy chia pets can figure it out faster than Windows" easy.
Sorry it has to be that way, but if you think Micro$oft is dumb enough to charge so much, or crash so often, or be so insecure, that it loses enough business to actually matter; well, you don't know Microsoft very well. The software is only as shoddy as it can be and still make a profit, the prices are as high, but ONLY as high as they can be and make a profit. And their anti-trust violations are only as bad as they can be and still make a profit (as opposed to getting away with it).
Make Linux so much easier to use that people start to switch, and Microsoft will improve Windows' stability. Make Linux able to communicate well with NT based Networks, and MS will make NT networks communicate well with Linux networks. Start to win on ROI, and MS will lower the price. They'll match you at every turn, and then lie, break the law, spread blatantly false rumours, sabatoge your software, and buy your best minds too.
But the battle is Linux's to lose. Because Free software was created by people who just wanted it work. It doesn't have the "but will it make the most money?" burden around it's neck... well, not as much anyway. But even questions of profit-oriented development aside, the open source factor should be enough to carry the day. Why, even if only one in a hundred engineers or programmers, who spend most of their time trying to sneak around the short comings in M$ products, had the opportunity of free software programmers and engineers to actually go in and just FIX the problem once and for all - by now Microsoft products would be the most stable and feature perfect in the universe. That's the advantage Free Software has - using it makes it better. But you've got to make it easier to use, so more people use it, hire more people to master it, so it gets better faster than the MS billions can out develop, market, and cheat it out of existence.
Just for the record though - I am willing to work with anyone who wants help from an MCSD/MCSE on how to convert the work held hostage by the evil wares from Redmond.