I wouldn't go so far as to say Linux/Unix users are switching in droves, but supplementing things with Apple equipment is certainly an appealing option.
I have been a long time Linux user, occasional Windows user. I recently purchased the one piece of Apple equipment that I felt was competitively priced, the iBook.
Desktops and Servers, hands down I'd go with Intel architecture with Linux, the price/performance kicks Apple's ass in all kinds of ways.
Now laptops are just about equal in terms of price, but the Apple laptop's have some damn good battery time and nice temperature, along with being pretty lightweight. The performance may not be stellar, but that is not the most important thing to me in a laptop role, I need the battery and the weight, so iBook was great.
On the software front, I wouldn't have considered an apple before OSX. Now the toss-up is between Linux/x86 and OSX. (Also have Gentoo on this iBook, but have come to realize that there really isn't any benefit of using it over OSX..).
With Linux, there is Wine and VMWare for decent performance for running the occasional Windows game/applictaion. VirtualPC isn't nearly as viable in this role. Aside from that, the commodity hardware prices in the x86 world are very tempting. For a desktop/server, hands down this is the option.
OSX has Quartz and some nice native apps/games (Blizzard, even many MS apps). It is a Unix and with fink can run many things that linux has in addition to native OSX apps. One thing I absolutely love with OSX that I first dealt with in a relatively pure form in ROX (http://rox.sf.net/) was application directories. Install/Uninstall is rarely a special case. Instead, just drag the directory over, and runtime generated files generally appear in a nice, self-contained directory in ~/Library. No central registry being mucked up, no mixing up files with hundreds of other applications dumping things in lib, bin, etc, just truly self-contained applications, beautiful... I just wish there was a good, free Virtual Desktop for native Cocoa apps (and don't even suggest Space.app, way way too limited. I'd like to have two windows of a single application exist on different workspaces, for example...)
USER-AGENT-PROFILE would be worthless. Websites already get the USER-AGENT and the relatively small few that care, know the capabilities based on that. Despite the increasing number of small devices being internet enabled, they tend to license a few, common browsing technologies from companies. In fact, the sites that would use this 'anti-theft' javascript crap would deny access if the header admitted straight out the browser won't do popups. The site doesn't care whether or not it is because a user cannot or the user doesn't want to, the important thing to the site is that the ad is not seen... Besides that, even if intended to display the core capabilities of the browser, you can bet mozilla/other browsers will fudge this for desired results (just like the USER-AGENT header).
'of course'? My first PC was an AMD 286/12.... I did own a Pentium 60 after getting burned on a Cyrix 486, and a Pentium 200 then... Then I went all AMD with the K6-2, and now an Athlon...
I thought the 486/33 was king about 92 or 93 maybe... I'm a bit fuzzy, but I remember the Pentium 60 was out about mid-94, and the DX2/66 was until then the holy grail, so it seems like 93 should have been about right for 486/33... I think about 90 I got a 286 and it was considered a decent performer at least...
The writeup makes you think they are sucking memories out of the brain and capturing them to disk. Simply not true. There is nothing at all revolutionary about what they are doing. They are basically designing a sort of journal or ultimate blog. Non-computer related experiences must be fed in and probably commented on (photos, etc). Some computer experiences may be captured automatically (this wasn't very clear, the article was more hype than substance), but nothing too difficult. The 'revolutionary' part they are claiming is the organization and search engine, and maybe some of the computer-auto-capture stuff (again, I can't tell if this is a claim or just an example..). This is not worthy of a Slashdot story, its just another blog...
Of course, that is assuming you are just treating the data as still frames, not taking advantage of using the similarities between frames to save space. Also, a great deal of time is spent sleeping, and unless you are recording dreams (which can be too abstract for video to record), that time can be cut, as well as blinking. Let's assume 1400 kbit/s (Mpeg4 coding looks acceptable to me at this rate for everything, on average would preserve more than you can remember at any rate...
Well forcing IE is stupid, plain and simple... But denying administrative privs on Windows desktop workstations is asking for an administrative headache. Too much about Windows requires Administrative priviliges to work correctly. While *theoretically* the platform could be used such that administrator priviliegs is not required, many programs won't operate correctly. Things want to stray from HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and such...
But, to be fair, humans are at a disadvantage in terms of how numbers are represented in our brains and how we take input. For example, have a handwritten piece of paper scanned, OCRed, and then perform math. We handle the 'hard part' of scanning, recognizing, and transferring the information via a convenient avenue for the computer/calculator to handle. Even general purpose computers are quite restricted and highly optimized to handle a small subset of things, while human brains are extremely general purpose, but not optimized for intense mathematical operations.
I personally think building is the way to go, but for the general public, I think a Linux based solution would be ideal. Cheap for the company, and with freevo and an lirc configuration, you can play pretty much anything you want (quicktime,realmedia,avis, even those damn vivos) and have them treated pretty much as equals. Never really have seen XP media center edition, but I'd bet it is WMP-centric and as such can't play Quicktime, RealMedia, or Vivo (shudder). Probably also refuses to play DivX and friends without going through hoops. Even if QuickTime Player and RealPlayer can be downloaded, the remote control would be less than ideal way to interface with the players...
I mean, if you already have a copy of Windows for some reason or another and a dedicated system, is there value in moving them to Linux? Will they come to appreciate any of the features Linux has to offer if their administrator (the father) hides all the differences from them? XP/2000 are relatively stable (about as stable as a kid would really need), and it is what the edutainment/games companies develop for. Sure you could rig something with magicdev and wine to do autorun stuff, but what is the gain?
Now there are many applications where Linux has some incredible advantage over Windows. Professional workstation use, server, power user desktop, multimedia playback (freevo/mplayer is very HTPC friendly...), but I'm not sure edutainment works in this area *if* you already have a licensed copy of Windows. There is no reason compelling you to upgrade to the latest and greatest MS, if Win98 worked fine, why buy XP? I think you'll find a lot of problems encountered during a three year old's use of a computer will happen regardless of the OS, and Wine will not likely meet your expectations as a full Windows replacement.
You can use free software with your Win98 (or XP, or 2000). OpenOffice doesn't require linux, and a lot of free applications now run under Windows.
1) It's MS. Unfortunately, that in and of itself given equal footing will typically cause many companies to ditch anyone else. They see the computer industry and don't want to end up on the losing end if MS does the same thing in the handheld market.
2) Palm's m68k platform quickly became underpowered after their release. Despite this clear fact, they kept going on it. Only recently with the release of their Tungsten handheld have they made strides toward a more powerful platform (ARM). It may already be too late, but this is the direction Palm has to take to even regain equal footing. That being said, among many managers especially the name Palm carries some weight and they will buy Palm brand PDAs while only comparing the specs to other Palm products...
Wouldn't work that way anyway. If there is no bank account number on the checks, any agency that cashes checks would just say 'not possible to cash this', and no fees incurred.
But judging from the topics in that book, they are aiming at saying 24 hours to being a sysadmin. Why would a user install their OS, for example, *especially* if it is a *nix....
Personally, I think the parent of your post is wrong, and the book is wrong as well.
Diving in brute force to solve problems and thinking after the dust has cleared you are a competent sysadmin is just stupid. I've run into some people who have kind-of taken this sort of approach to thinking about sysadmin learning. They come out of it with a decent set of memorized cookbook formulas for certain problems that are relatively common. Can handle low-level stuff fine, and can slap together a couple of cookbook style networks as well, in the design role. However, they frequently do not have the mindset to operate well outside of their cookbook of solutions. Things configured and standards set by such people rarely perfectly match the needs of the company, and obscure problems for which a cookbook solution is not possible or available can put them at a complete loss.
Of course, same goes for those who rely on books, and I guess to anyone who does it solely as a means to get money. To get a truly good sysadmin you have to find someone who not only has experience to demonstrate they can do most stuff, but also a certain style of thinking and a sincere interest in the field beyond being in it just for the cash..
Your resume requires a CD-R to back up? Must be a hell of lot of experience there....
Although I agree, I've personally purchased over 500 CDRs, and most remain blank and the few that have stuff have data. There is one CD made for my fiancee that is a compilation of her favorite tracks from a number of her CDs, but aside from that *legal* copy, hundreds of CDs they are using in their count don't matter.
I don't know many people who copy CDs anyway. The much bigger portion of the illicit activities is people ripping to mp3 and sharing. CDR sales in no way serve as a gauge of illegal copying...
That does not necessarily mean that it is legally enforcable. I could, for example, say that I require one dollar payment from anyone who reads this comment. Just because I said so, does not make it true. Even if a modern work, that short statement is not enforceable, as it implies no fair use allowances, so while by their statement an academic copy is forbidden, law disagrees.
There are a lot of cases where companies know very well what they can and cannot enforce, but will still at least do their best to make the customer *think* they have no rights. A prime example are the warnings on tapes/dvds that say no copy may be made under any circumstances. If you were dragged into court for making a copy for backup purposes and can prove you have the original and did not distribute copies, you would be let off, even though the warning would have you believe the FBI will bust in with guns drawn should you ever think so. You know those trucks with the bumber sticker "not liable for windshield damage"? They are indeed liable, the sticker has as much meaning as writing 'not liable for property damage, personal injury, or death' on a gun and using it to kill people.
The practice of taking companies legal statements , disclaimers, EULAs, and warnings as absolutely truthful has caused a great deal of misinformation among the public. The large percentage of the population that does not think they have a legal right to make personal copies of movies and music they own, for example. If their word was true, how are other publishing companies publishing those works without deals with Houghton Mifflin?
The only works that go into PG are works in the public domain. While publishers sell dead-tree copies still, they have no copyright over the original text contained within. (Which is why these works are typically available through multiple publishers.
Quite frankly, I'm not sure why 99.9% of the network administrators gravitate towards 192.168.1.0/24 as their private network address... Even I chose 192.168.123.0/24 as my network, so I'm partially guilty....
If it is going to always stay a private network, why not just use the full class B? If trying to plan for communications with other private networks in the class B range, why pick something so common?
I personally have started using 10.(random).(random).0/24 when setting up class C networks. When *really* limited use, I constrict it to/26 or so. This way the chances are low that any private network I want to set up a tunnel with will conflict with my address space...
Of course I have yet to see 172.16.0.0/12 used by anyone, it's just too damn weird. What's the point? Some routers can't even handle non class a/b/c addresses... But saying you used the class B and a half private network should earn points on some scale..
By that logic, you can't call current Macs 'Mac'. After all, the Mac platform was m68k. Now there's AGP, PCI, and all based around a PPC core. Nothing to do at all with the original, right?
If they tried to release Amiga based on the same platform it died on, it would be ridiculous. m68k never scaled far. It is even now being deemed too slow for handhelds, in favor of ARM...
Amiga in its day did great things with the hardware available, unbelievable things. Now they can do it again (hopefully) with a more advanced core architecture. I can't say I agree with the choice of PPC (beautiful architecture, but Motorola is not adequately supporting it and thus the only hope lies in IBMs work...). I mean Apple is bandaiding performance problems through SMP in all powermacs... PPC is a more efficient platform in terms of IPC, but the x86 world was overcome this through sheer brute force of clock speed...
Well, for one thing, the assumption is made that commercial vendors provide support willingly that is useful. I think in many cases (especially with technologies that are hard to change out of), vendors will take every opportunity they can to hang a customer out to dry. Often, the lifetime for support for software is very very shortlived, forcing upgrades. In other cases, the 'support' provided is little more than extortion. One product demanded my company pay a 300 dollar for one incident before they would even accept a bug report. Not even a request for help, but a one-way information exchange that enhances future products. In some cases (with the really high dollar packages), the software, while expensive, is little more than opening the door to huge consulting fees. One company I worked with sells software for about 750,000 dollars per site. On average, they said they pulled in more per site in consulting fees than the original purchase price of the software. This is an extreme example, but exemplifies that commercial products do not necessarily mean good support is available at reasonable costs.
A previous employer was using a commercial SMB provider for Solaris, rather than Samba. The product was licensed on a monthly fee and only allowed 3 connections on our license. This was not cheap and extremely annoying. I suggested a move to Samba to cut costs and get more functionality, and was denied. The reason given was that the package gave support. One day, a number of Windows systems could no longer connect. For the first time ever, we had a reason to contact support. I was on the phone, being passed from one person to the next, no person having any clue as to the problem. Finally, while on hold, I did a search through the samba mailing list and found out the cause of the problem and how to work around it client side. I then hung up, told management about my experience, and next week samba was in use and the licenses cancelled.
The fact is, if you have a decently strong IT department with some programming knowledge anyway, they can frequently, with the help of forums, mailing lists, and IRC, provide just as good or better support than the commercial vendors and fix problems as needed without the turnaround of commercial vendors. Maybe for smaller shops that deal with less expensive software, or with software that has rare support needs, but not a complete absence of a need, commercial can win. But for *any* software company, and medium to large other companies that need good IT anyway, open source is hard to beat..
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What do you mean? I use Chimera for web, iMail for mail, and for doc, I use openoffice....
I wouldn't go so far as to say Linux/Unix users are switching in droves, but supplementing things with Apple equipment is certainly an appealing option.
I have been a long time Linux user, occasional Windows user. I recently purchased the one piece of Apple equipment that I felt was competitively priced, the iBook.
Desktops and Servers, hands down I'd go with Intel architecture with Linux, the price/performance kicks Apple's ass in all kinds of ways.
Now laptops are just about equal in terms of price, but the Apple laptop's have some damn good battery time and nice temperature, along with being pretty lightweight. The performance may not be stellar, but that is not the most important thing to me in a laptop role, I need the battery and the weight, so iBook was great.
On the software front, I wouldn't have considered an apple before OSX. Now the toss-up is between Linux/x86 and OSX. (Also have Gentoo on this iBook, but have come to realize that there really isn't any benefit of using it over OSX..).
With Linux, there is Wine and VMWare for decent performance for running the occasional Windows game/applictaion. VirtualPC isn't nearly as viable in this role. Aside from that, the commodity hardware prices in the x86 world are very tempting. For a desktop/server, hands down this is the option.
OSX has Quartz and some nice native apps/games (Blizzard, even many MS apps). It is a Unix and with fink can run many things that linux has in addition to native OSX apps. One thing I absolutely love with OSX that I first dealt with in a relatively pure form in ROX (http://rox.sf.net/) was application directories. Install/Uninstall is rarely a special case. Instead, just drag the directory over, and runtime generated files generally appear in a nice, self-contained directory in ~/Library. No central registry being mucked up, no mixing up files with hundreds of other applications dumping things in lib, bin, etc, just truly self-contained applications, beautiful... I just wish there was a good, free Virtual Desktop for native Cocoa apps (and don't even suggest Space.app, way way too limited. I'd like to have two windows of a single application exist on different workspaces, for example...)
USER-AGENT-PROFILE would be worthless. Websites already get the USER-AGENT and the relatively small few that care, know the capabilities based on that. Despite the increasing number of small devices being internet enabled, they tend to license a few, common browsing technologies from companies. In fact, the sites that would use this 'anti-theft' javascript crap would deny access if the header admitted straight out the browser won't do popups. The site doesn't care whether or not it is because a user cannot or the user doesn't want to, the important thing to the site is that the ad is not seen... Besides that, even if intended to display the core capabilities of the browser, you can bet mozilla/other browsers will fudge this for desired results (just like the USER-AGENT header).
'of course'? My first PC was an AMD 286/12.... I did own a Pentium 60 after getting burned on a Cyrix 486, and a Pentium 200 then... Then I went all AMD with the K6-2, and now an Athlon...
I thought the 486/33 was king about 92 or 93 maybe... I'm a bit fuzzy, but I remember the Pentium 60 was out about mid-94, and the DX2/66 was until then the holy grail, so it seems like 93 should have been about right for 486/33... I think about 90 I got a 286 and it was considered a decent performer at least...
The writeup makes you think they are sucking memories out of the brain and capturing them to disk. Simply not true. There is nothing at all revolutionary about what they are doing. They are basically designing a sort of journal or ultimate blog. Non-computer related experiences must be fed in and probably commented on (photos, etc). Some computer experiences may be captured automatically (this wasn't very clear, the article was more hype than substance), but nothing too difficult. The 'revolutionary' part they are claiming is the organization and search engine, and maybe some of the computer-auto-capture stuff (again, I can't tell if this is a claim or just an example..). This is not worthy of a Slashdot story, its just another blog...
Of course, that is assuming you are just treating the data as still frames, not taking advantage of using the similarities between frames to save space. Also, a great deal of time is spent sleeping, and unless you are recording dreams (which can be too abstract for video to record), that time can be cut, as well as blinking. Let's assume 1400 kbit/s (Mpeg4 coding looks acceptable to me at this rate for everything, on average would preserve more than you can remember at any rate...
4 ,300,000kbit/yr
1400*60=100320kbit/min
*60=6,019,200 kbit/hour
*24=144,460,800kbit/day
*365.25=52,76
*60=3,165,858,000,000kbit
=~360 TB
So to record 60 years of concious, non-blinking time at 1400kbps, you just need 1024 disk arrays like I have at my house...
Well forcing IE is stupid, plain and simple... But denying administrative privs on Windows desktop workstations is asking for an administrative headache. Too much about Windows requires Administrative priviliges to work correctly. While *theoretically* the platform could be used such that administrator priviliegs is not required, many programs won't operate correctly. Things want to stray from HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and such...
But, to be fair, humans are at a disadvantage in terms of how numbers are represented in our brains and how we take input. For example, have a handwritten piece of paper scanned, OCRed, and then perform math. We handle the 'hard part' of scanning, recognizing, and transferring the information via a convenient avenue for the computer/calculator to handle. Even general purpose computers are quite restricted and highly optimized to handle a small subset of things, while human brains are extremely general purpose, but not optimized for intense mathematical operations.
Or George W. Bush....
I personally think building is the way to go, but for the general public, I think a Linux based solution would be ideal. Cheap for the company, and with freevo and an lirc configuration, you can play pretty much anything you want (quicktime,realmedia,avis, even those damn vivos) and have them treated pretty much as equals. Never really have seen XP media center edition, but I'd bet it is WMP-centric and as such can't play Quicktime, RealMedia, or Vivo (shudder). Probably also refuses to play DivX and friends without going through hoops. Even if QuickTime Player and RealPlayer can be downloaded, the remote control would be less than ideal way to interface with the players...
I mean, if you already have a copy of Windows for some reason or another and a dedicated system, is there value in moving them to Linux? Will they come to appreciate any of the features Linux has to offer if their administrator (the father) hides all the differences from them? XP/2000 are relatively stable (about as stable as a kid would really need), and it is what the edutainment/games companies develop for. Sure you could rig something with magicdev and wine to do autorun stuff, but what is the gain?
Now there are many applications where Linux has some incredible advantage over Windows. Professional workstation use, server, power user desktop, multimedia playback (freevo/mplayer is very HTPC friendly...), but I'm not sure edutainment works in this area *if* you already have a licensed copy of Windows. There is no reason compelling you to upgrade to the latest and greatest MS, if Win98 worked fine, why buy XP? I think you'll find a lot of problems encountered during a three year old's use of a computer will happen regardless of the OS, and Wine will not likely meet your expectations as a full Windows replacement.
You can use free software with your Win98 (or XP, or 2000). OpenOffice doesn't require linux, and a lot of free applications now run under Windows.
Two things:
1) It's MS. Unfortunately, that in and of itself given equal footing will typically cause many companies to ditch anyone else. They see the computer industry and don't want to end up on the losing end if MS does the same thing in the handheld market.
2) Palm's m68k platform quickly became underpowered after their release. Despite this clear fact, they kept going on it. Only recently with the release of their Tungsten handheld have they made strides toward a more powerful platform (ARM). It may already be too late, but this is the direction Palm has to take to even regain equal footing. That being said, among many managers especially the name Palm carries some weight and they will buy Palm brand PDAs while only comparing the specs to other Palm products...
They've done this naming scheme for a long long time. Internally, it always has a code name. XP was whistlet, NT4 was Chicago (I think), etc...
Wouldn't work that way anyway. If there is no bank account number on the checks, any agency that cashes checks would just say 'not possible to cash this', and no fees incurred.
But judging from the topics in that book, they are aiming at saying 24 hours to being a sysadmin. Why would a user install their OS, for example, *especially* if it is a *nix....
Personally, I think the parent of your post is wrong, and the book is wrong as well.
Diving in brute force to solve problems and thinking after the dust has cleared you are a competent sysadmin is just stupid. I've run into some people who have kind-of taken this sort of approach to thinking about sysadmin learning. They come out of it with a decent set of memorized cookbook formulas for certain problems that are relatively common. Can handle low-level stuff fine, and can slap together a couple of cookbook style networks as well, in the design role. However, they frequently do not have the mindset to operate well outside of their cookbook of solutions. Things configured and standards set by such people rarely perfectly match the needs of the company, and obscure problems for which a cookbook solution is not possible or available can put them at a complete loss.
Of course, same goes for those who rely on books, and I guess to anyone who does it solely as a means to get money. To get a truly good sysadmin you have to find someone who not only has experience to demonstrate they can do most stuff, but also a certain style of thinking and a sincere interest in the field beyond being in it just for the cash..
While the zip format is widely used, most places seem to equate .zip to WinZip, not PkWare.
Your resume requires a CD-R to back up? Must be a hell of lot of experience there....
Although I agree, I've personally purchased over 500 CDRs, and most remain blank and the few that have stuff have data. There is one CD made for my fiancee that is a compilation of her favorite tracks from a number of her CDs, but aside from that *legal* copy, hundreds of CDs they are using in their count don't matter.
I don't know many people who copy CDs anyway. The much bigger portion of the illicit activities is people ripping to mp3 and sharing. CDR sales in no way serve as a gauge of illegal copying...
That does not necessarily mean that it is legally enforcable. I could, for example, say that I require one dollar payment from anyone who reads this comment. Just because I said so, does not make it true. Even if a modern work, that short statement is not enforceable, as it implies no fair use allowances, so while by their statement an academic copy is forbidden, law disagrees.
There are a lot of cases where companies know very well what they can and cannot enforce, but will still at least do their best to make the customer *think* they have no rights. A prime example are the warnings on tapes/dvds that say no copy may be made under any circumstances. If you were dragged into court for making a copy for backup purposes and can prove you have the original and did not distribute copies, you would be let off, even though the warning would have you believe the FBI will bust in with guns drawn should you ever think so. You know those trucks with the bumber sticker "not liable for windshield damage"? They are indeed liable, the sticker has as much meaning as writing 'not liable for property damage, personal injury, or death' on a gun and using it to kill people.
The practice of taking companies legal statements , disclaimers, EULAs, and warnings as absolutely truthful has caused a great deal of misinformation among the public. The large percentage of the population that does not think they have a legal right to make personal copies of movies and music they own, for example. If their word was true, how are other publishing companies publishing those works without deals with Houghton Mifflin?
The only works that go into PG are works in the public domain. While publishers sell dead-tree copies still, they have no copyright over the original text contained within. (Which is why these works are typically available through multiple publishers.
If that was intended as a joke, it sucked.
/26 or so. This way the chances are low that any private network I want to set up a tunnel with will conflict with my address space...
If not, it is stupid.
The IP addresses that are reserved for private use are:
10.0.0.0/8 (10.x.x.x)
192.168.0.0/16 (192.*168*.x.x)
172.16.0.0/12 (172.16-31.x.x)
Quite frankly, I'm not sure why 99.9% of the network administrators gravitate towards 192.168.1.0/24 as their private network address... Even I chose 192.168.123.0/24 as my network, so I'm partially guilty....
If it is going to always stay a private network, why not just use the full class B? If trying to plan for communications with other private networks in the class B range, why pick something so common?
I personally have started using 10.(random).(random).0/24 when setting up class C networks. When *really* limited use, I constrict it to
Of course I have yet to see 172.16.0.0/12 used by anyone, it's just too damn weird. What's the point? Some routers can't even handle non class a/b/c addresses... But saying you used the class B and a half private network should earn points on some scale..
Just learn Japanese, all problems solved, raw Japanese...
Now I've got to try....
By that logic, you can't call current Macs 'Mac'. After all, the Mac platform was m68k. Now there's AGP, PCI, and all based around a PPC core. Nothing to do at all with the original, right?
If they tried to release Amiga based on the same platform it died on, it would be ridiculous. m68k never scaled far. It is even now being deemed too slow for handhelds, in favor of ARM...
Amiga in its day did great things with the hardware available, unbelievable things. Now they can do it again (hopefully) with a more advanced core architecture. I can't say I agree with the choice of PPC (beautiful architecture, but Motorola is not adequately supporting it and thus the only hope lies in IBMs work...). I mean Apple is bandaiding performance problems through SMP in all powermacs... PPC is a more efficient platform in terms of IPC, but the x86 world was overcome this through sheer brute force of clock speed...
Well, for one thing, the assumption is made that commercial vendors provide support willingly that is useful. I think in many cases (especially with technologies that are hard to change out of), vendors will take every opportunity they can to hang a customer out to dry. Often, the lifetime for support for software is very very shortlived, forcing upgrades. In other cases, the 'support' provided is little more than extortion. One product demanded my company pay a 300 dollar for one incident before they would even accept a bug report. Not even a request for help, but a one-way information exchange that enhances future products. In some cases (with the really high dollar packages), the software, while expensive, is little more than opening the door to huge consulting fees. One company I worked with sells software for about 750,000 dollars per site. On average, they said they pulled in more per site in consulting fees than the original purchase price of the software. This is an extreme example, but exemplifies that commercial products do not necessarily mean good support is available at reasonable costs.
A previous employer was using a commercial SMB provider for Solaris, rather than Samba. The product was licensed on a monthly fee and only allowed 3 connections on our license. This was not cheap and extremely annoying. I suggested a move to Samba to cut costs and get more functionality, and was denied. The reason given was that the package gave support. One day, a number of Windows systems could no longer connect. For the first time ever, we had a reason to contact support. I was on the phone, being passed from one person to the next, no person having any clue as to the problem. Finally, while on hold, I did a search through the samba mailing list and found out the cause of the problem and how to work around it client side. I then hung up, told management about my experience, and next week samba was in use and the licenses cancelled.
The fact is, if you have a decently strong IT department with some programming knowledge anyway, they can frequently, with the help of forums, mailing lists, and IRC, provide just as good or better support than the commercial vendors and fix problems as needed without the turnaround of commercial vendors. Maybe for smaller shops that deal with less expensive software, or with software that has rare support needs, but not a complete absence of a need, commercial can win. But for *any* software company, and medium to large other companies that need good IT anyway, open source is hard to beat..