OK, so probably nobody really cares what I think. But I'll state my views anyway. Feel free to criticize the heck out of what I say, but please be purposeful.
The reduction was attributed primarily to Amazon's "migration to a Linux-based technology platform that utilizes a less-costly technology infrastructure, as well as general price reductions for data and telecommunication services due to market overcapacity," according to the filing.
My concern here is in finding out how much of that savings can be attributed to the switch to Linux and how much can be attributed to reduction in data and telecomm services? Real data here would be interesting, but it's probably just not available.
Thirdly, in many cases companies don't have to pay extra licensing fees for the computers that connect to Linux servers. And finally, Linux is often used on inexpensive Intel computers, sometimes generic "white box" machines and sometimes older computers seeing a second life.
This is a real hidden gotcha, and in many cases a tremendous potential for cost savings. If only companies would truly look at this item before investing. Servers with "per seat" licensing can really escalate costs, especially for a business like Amazon. You think that by buying one program, your costs are over and you're done with it. But as your customer base goes up, you have to start paying additional licensing fees. Budgeting for this kind of stuff is difficult at best. Microsoft is certainly guilty of this, but they are joined by other powerhouses such as Oracle. To their credit, many of these large companies offer some sort of "enterprise" deal, but it usually has a whopping price tag associated with it. In my opinion, it's much more fair to sell by the server. If I want to try to cram 2000 users onto a single server, it's my responsibility to deal with the resulting problems.
But there are hidden costs to Linux, Microsoft argues. "I think a lot of customers are lured by the apparent low price of Linux," said Doug Miller, director of competitive strategy for Microsoft's Windows division. "They don't have a real issue with Linux, but it ends up costing them in the long run."
With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said. "That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."
Oh yeah, I've written soooo much Operating system code since I started using Linux. The last update I did (over a year ago), I didn't even feel a single urge to recompile the kernel. And what's this about managing software updates and security packages? Exactly WHAT does Microsoft do for me that I don't get with RedHat's up2date or Debian's apt-get? Software packages conflicting with each other? What does Microsoft offer to take care of this problem? I've certainly had it enough times in the past with Windows software that I could have used some help. Boy, those two paragraphs are the biggest bunch of baloney I've seen in a while -- and I was in Germany for six months!
While Red Hat offers some of those services, it's difficult to ensure that software packages updated frequently by hundreds of people around the globe work well together, Miller said.
Really? I don't think I've EVER downloaded a single package from RedHat that didn't work just fine with all of the other install packages from RedHat. Anybody else had any problems with that? I guarantee you that RedHat does at LEAST as much testing as Microsoft. Let me remind you of NT 4.0 SP 6....
Among those forces: the coming version 6 of Sun Microsystems' StarOffice package of office software, which many believe will be a more capable product than the bulky current version and thus a more credible alternative to Microsoft's Office; burdensome Microsoft licensing fees during a time of economic austerity; and the overall price tag of Windows and Office.
OK, I'm not sure that I can agree that StarOffice is or will be more capable than MS Office, but with the current economic times, the price is certainly much more attractive. And if you look at what most people actually use an Office Suite for, you'll find that almost all of them will more than have their needs met with Star Office 6.0.
The study concluded that Linux applications could provide solid alternatives to nearly every Windows application, with the possible exception of the scheduling and e-mail integration of Microsoft Outlook.
And a nice WYSIWYG, comprehensive web-design suite like, say, Dreamweaver, would be a nice addition to Linux. Anybody try out IBM's WebSphere Home Page Builder for Linux yet? Scheduling and e-mail integration is one thing I wish OpenOffice (OS version of StarOffice) hadn't dropped from their focus. Even though there are some nice e-mail and scheduling programs, it would be nice to have tighter integration with my other office software.
"Staying in compliance with licenses is something a lot of companies are scared of right now. It's more difficult, and the ramifications of being out of compliance are becoming more and more onerous," Robinson said. "As of the last year or so, Microsoft has been going after companies where they've gotten tip-offs or had other suspicions."
This is another big one. I heard a radio advertisement this morning offering to help companies get in compliance during the grace period. They through out all those scary numbers like $150,000 per violation. You absolutely know you've got a problem when agencies can actually derive their entire revenue base from helping people manage the complicated licensing issues that Microsoft has created. This whole thing is exactly what prompted me to switch to Star Office on ALL of my computers. I had licenses for the versions of MS Office I was using, but I didn't know what scheme they would think of next.
"We are a commercial software vendor. That's how we earn revenue," Miller responded. "Our goal is to be properly compensated by customers for our software."
And to make additional money off of existing customers by "clarifying" the terms of the license to them and forcing them to upgrade and pay additional licensing costs when they don't want to....
I agree with the inverse position, but also agree that no real argument was presented, so allow me to present one.
Negroponte stated that people would not be satisfied with a jump from between 56Kbps and 100Kbps to 300 or 400Kbps. I don't think he considered some of the business drivers behind these higher speeds. It's not just a matter of downloading in 1/3 or 1/4 of the time. Obviously, if downloads are only 2 or 3 seconds for a handheld (at between 56 and 100 Kbps), 1/4 of that isn't particularly interesting. But what the higher speed does allow is the use of more sophisticated and better-looking web applications -- something businesses will really be interested in. Now you're talking about going from somewhere between 12 and 20 second page load times to 3 or 4 seconds. This difference is much more apparent. I've worked heavily on Mobile development projects, and I know that despite all the warnings us developers gave about how slow CDPD is, management still pushed for a better looking, heavier interface to our applications. The result: 15 second page load times instead of our target of less than 5 seconds. The consequence: A lot less usage that we'd like. It's just too slow.
Let's also apply this to the consumer "broadband" market. How many people out there had 128Kbps ISDN? Come on. Raise your hands. How many of you drooled over low-end DSL at 400Kbps, even at double the price? How many of you were extremely angry when you found out you were too far from a CO to get it? I know that describes me. I bet I'm not alone. It's not apparent to me why the same situation wouldn't apply to wireless.
Before I close, here's another point from the article that I'd like to debate:
Some people might argue that it'll come in a year or two years (don't think the Japanese have it, that's not 3G).
Why isn't what the Japanese have 3G? I mean, he didn't even have to give a technical explanation. Even a statement that it didn't meet the criteria of 3G as defined in xxx would have been more helpful. As it stands, it appears that it just doesn't meet his personal expectations of 3G. I'm sure there's documentation out there to back it up (I hope so for his sake), but it's his job to provide it. I'm not going to go looking for it.
I wanted to sue, but I didn't have any documentation
I might be wrong, but I don't think that you can use it as evidence in court unless you notified them at the beginning of the conversation that it was being recorded. Chances are, they wouldn't given you the nasty "No!" if they thought they were being recorded.
My only exception to stwilwebm's comment above is the phrase "quite possibly". IMNSHO, "not bloody likely" is the correct adverbial phrase.
Actually, it's highly likely. Winston Churchill did it during WWII with his radio announcements. They contained a predefined trigger to coordinate the release of toops during certain battle arrangements.
Let's all stop and think about this for a meaning. I wish to send an important secret message to my evil henchmen on another continent. Do I send an encrypted letter? Do I send a human messenger by plane to carry the message? Do I phone them and use secret phrases with hidden meanings to convey the message to them?
All of these are immediately noticeable if you are under surveillance. It's best to use something that is "not quite what it seems" as a method of communication.
hope that the corporate minions of the Great Satan will transmit your message, complete, clear (no poorly translated voice-overs, if you please) and in a timely fashion.
Actually, a voice over won't matter. If they use the same basic imagery when translated to English, the message would still be clear. It has been noted that Bin Laden frequently uses interesting combinations of imagery in his words during the few public releases he has. As far as timely release? Come on. Our news hounds are constantly striving to be the first to release such things. I would say that Osama could absolutely count on it being delivered almost immediately.
The most clever way to plan during a "war" is to act with utter simplicity.
Actually, if you read the blurb on every CD I've looked at, you are specificly prohibited from "unauthorized lending".
Yeah, I vaguely remember reading that one time and thinking that they couldn't be serious. It's really just another reason to stop buying "commercial" music altogether, and turn to artists who represent themselves and are actually more interested in having people appreciate their music than in earning the maximum amount of money off of it.
I still can't get past the fact that it's legal for the local CD store to buy & sell used CDs. The owner (I used to work for the place) makes an incredible amount of money by purchasing used CDs at $4 (tops) and selling them for $8. He keeps *all* the profit, not one penny goes back to the artists, the record labels, or the RIAA. So here's how it goes: it's illegal for me to *share* my CDs but it's legal for him to *sell* them ? Dylan described it best: "Money doesn't talk, it swears".
Ah, but there is truly a difference between selling and sharing. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong in what follows.
If you buy a CD, then rip some of the songs into MP3's to listen to on your computer, you are just abiding by "fair use" (let's leave out DMCA for the moment). If you then trade your MP3's with another person, you are still retaining a copy of the music. Because of this, somebody who would have otherwise had to pay for the CD will now have the music they wanted at no charge. This (according to RIAA) eats into their profits and "harms" them. Thus, it is piracy.
If, on the other hand, you sell your CD to a reseller because you are done with it, you are selling all rights to use of that music back. That means that the MP3's on your hard drive must also be destroyed, as they are no longer covered by "fair use." Now somebody else purchases that CD, and the rights to listen to and use that music are transferred to them. As long as you've complied by erasing any copies of the CD or its music that you possess, there is still only one person in possession of the single copy of the music that was originally sold. That way, you aren't really eating into the bottom line of the publisher.
That's the theory anyway. Not that I believe any of this holds true in practice. I'm sure almost nobody sells back their CD's without at least keeping a copy on cassette tape....
You already state that there is quite a bit of competition in the Java market, so obviously with Microsoft including this old outdated JVM it stifles the ability for that market to move forward.
Not really. By including even an outdated JVM, they support at least Java 1.1 applets. Many people get nervous when their computer offers to "automatically" install functionality. So on WinXP, when the browser asks if they want to install a JVM, they may answer no. That means that web sites using Java will not work properly, so they will choose other web sites. In the end, this has the effect of convincing developers to use something else for their sites. But you also have to remember that the original reports of WinXP not including a JVM made no mention of an automatic installation on the first attempt to run an applet. In that scenario, many many users would have been turned away from sites with Java applets.
I'm sorry, but the original poster was correct. Your argument is horribly inconsistent and flawed. If it is evil for Microsoft to include Internet Explorer, it is equally as evil to include a JVM.
Actually, the original poster wasn't so much making a statement as asking a question. But it is your argument, my friend, that is most unbelievably flawed. You conveniently glance over the fact that Internet Explorer is a Microsoft Product, whereas the JVM is a Microsoft implementation of a competitor's product that would ultimately aid the competitor. Your own logic is flawed because you are making the assumption that the consequences of both of these situations is equal.
And I hereby declare that bundling lilo into RedHat is evil because it kills competition in the boot manager market. RedHat's purpose is obviously to damage the market that System Commander operates within, without providing them adequate compensation.
And this very statement here proves that you don't understand the situation at all. RedHat doesn't even have a monopoly on Linux distributions. You, like many others, forget that Microsoft has a monopoly in desktop operating systems. Period. This changes all of the rules. We absolutely do have a right to say what we think should and should not be included in the Microsoft Windows distribution because of that monopoly. (Actually, we have a right to SAY whatever we want, but you get my drift).
Not a broadband failure at all, just another BS "Portal" biting the big Kishko.
And that's a topic that probably deserves it's own Slashdot submission. Just what does it take these days to make a portal profitable. The "Old regime" was entirely based on revenu from advertisements. That almost looked like it was going to work until all of the dot bombs (who were the big source of advertisements) exploded. Under that scenario, though, Excite was probably only losing a little money. Lots of portals are trying new things, but does anybody really know what it'll take to ensure profitability?
Re:Initial reactions
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J#
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· Score: 5, Interesting
How can it be evil for MS to INCLUDE a browser / media player / etc in XP, viciously anticompetitive and so forth,...
and...
simultaneously evil for MS to EXCLUDE a JVM in XP?
Actually, there's a pretty simple answer to this. Both of these actions kill competition.
Microsoft owns the browser, media player, etc that it bundles with XP, so they can eliminate competition by including them and making them impossible or extremely difficult to remove. The problem is that most people will not know enough or be motivated enough to switch to a competing product. So, since Microsoft owns the OS, they can be reasonably certain that people will use their integrated browser, media player, etc. By doing this, they can also be reasonably certain that companies who develop content for these products will be inclined to purchase Microsoft products to aid in the development of that content.
Java is a slightly different story. Microsoft does not own the Java technology. They have to play ball with Sun in order to use it. They have to follow Sun's rules. But more importantly, there is quite a bit of competition for Java development environments. Supplying a JDK or JVM with their OS does not in any way motivate developers to use their development environment, unless they can add proprietary extensions or other changes to the language to make their development products attractive. They attempted this with J++ and have been told they can't. So, since they can't make any money from J++, they decide to develop their own environments and languages, and bundle THOSE with their OS instead of Java. That effectively kills competition by sending a message to developers: "Do you want your application to run without hassle on 95% of desktop systems? Use.NET."
Try and remember that these tactics are only questionable because Microsoft has a MONOPOLY. That is the defining factor. Otherwise, they'd be considered good business practices. If Microsoft had only 30% of the desktop market, bundling the browser, media player,.NET technology and other things with XP would only help them to be certain that most of that 30% would be using their technology and their tools. They would be forced to make their tools operate on other desktop environments in order to increase market share. This would put them on an even playing field with their competitors. However, since they currently dominate the desktop market, the game is way too easy for them. Tricks like inclusion / exclusion just help cement their monopoly in other areas of the market. It is illegal to use a monopoly in one market segment to stifle competition and increase market share in other segments. Both of these tricks accomplish this. You really have to look at the end results.
Hey, I don't know about you, but I do my best thinking on the hopper.
BTW, I think my Nick' is appropo for this topic.
Not aerodynamics
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Hopefully some of the aerodynamic technology can be applied to commercially available vehicles (cars, maybe?).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I honestly don't think that there are tremendous gains in automobile aerodynamics on the horizon. Automobile manufacturers can already greatly increase the aerodynamics of their product, but only at a sacrifice to ergodynamics and practicality. The future for more efficient automobiles lies mostly in the development of smaller and more efficient power conversion (IE the engines) and the development of alternative fuel sources. Besides, the featured cycle looked to have the same lines as a Ford Probe concept car from over a decade ago, so I don't think there's much to be learned here. On the other hand, I think it's absolutely cool that cycle riders can achieve true highway speeds, even if they have to be in incredible shape and practically dislocate their shoulders to fit into the vehicles.
BTW, anybody know of any large capacity, reasonably fast, inexpensive backup solutions that work with Linux? My old TRAVAN tape drive is hopelessly outdated with respect to my storage capacity, and I really need to replace it with something that doesn't require me to keep swapping tapes during a long backup.
It's there, but it's way way way way way too slow. ActiveSync seems to grab USB by the neck and drag it to almost a complete stop. After all, how long should 32MB take to back up or restore over USB? Certainly not the HOURS it currently takes. Anybody know if ActiveSync 3.5 is any better on this? Anybody know of a backup/restore program that goes around ActiveSync?
Second, some Senior VP or other has to come down to the computer room...find things lacking and then kick ass and take names because IT screwed up or slacked off.
Many times, that Senior VP can write his own name down because he refused to provide the budget that IT said it needed in order to maintain an secure and functioning environment. The "budget games" that most corporations play are absolutely idiotic. The IT department now has to intentionally inflate its budget estimate so that when the VP asks them to slim it down, they can at least afford a modicum of what they need to in order to stay running. If companies would invest properly and wisely in their IT resources, they'd probably find that "emergency money" needs would drop by more than the original investment.
As a result the salaries are inflated and this has attracted the unskilled and incompetent get-rich-quick crowd. This is almost certainly the REAL reason for the incompetently and poorly administered boxen out there.
To add to your comments, it's also all about TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and the amount of money that a company is willing to spend on resources. With the rash of virus attacks lately, it's more than one full-time job to keep track of security updates and keep the server farm updated. The suits have a really hard time dedicated whole persons to one single task like this, so usually an admin is running around like chicken without a head trying to get those hotfixes done along with all of the other tasks that management seems to feel are more important.
If we go back to Gartner's original article, they never said "Apache is more secure than IIS" or anything like that. They simply indicated that right now, IIS is being exploited more than Apache and other rivals. Total Cost of Ownership can probably be reduced by considering an alternative to IIS because your admins won't be spending all of their time trying to keep one step ahead of the virus writers. Maybe in the future, people will try harder to break into Apache and it will become a bigger liability than IIS. But right now, that isn't the case.
You can't count the Internation Direct Dial code because it's not really part of the phone number. But the country code counts. Based on that, my number while in Germany was 12 digits.
And as soon as they remove the statute of limitations for DMCA violations, we can exhume the bodies of those that invented the rotary-dial mechanism and prosecute them too for inventing a circumvention device for touch-tone dialing tunes.
Launches in seconds, takes up scant amounts of ram, hasn't crashed yet. It's going to be a tough one to beat...
Hmmm. I bet you buy things that are "only sold on TV" all the time. Microsoft Office preloads itself at boot time. This is an extremely annoying issue on my laptop, as I don't enjoy waiting forever for my startup to finish. If your method of checking how much RAM it uses was to wait to check RAM after startup, then load an Office application and check RAM again, you missed the boat. Since most of Office is already loaded after boot time, it's probably taking up TONS of RAM. Let's see. With nothing running at ALL on my computer, we're normally at 121 MB. Hmmm...
Maybe Sun can try a new slogan. "Don't install Microsoft's Office XP, and the REST of your applications will run faster."
I'm just honestly interested in where that figure comes from.
Let's start with one possible source: Overtime Pay. I don't know about the business cited, but I know that here our admins are completely busy with project work. We are always upgrading and changing system configurations to meet project needs. If our servers get a virus, they either have to change their project deadlines (which could be really really bad), or they have to work overtime to fix it. That would be at 1.5 times the pay for each hour each person puts in.
Here's another piece of the pie. I'm a developer. I have a list of projects I'm working on. I depend on the development systems being up and running so I can get my work done. There are very few other things I can do when the servers I use aren't working. Now if the virus takes out our servers, and you add up downtime before we could get the admins to look at it, and downtime while they figured out what was wrong with it, and downtime while they fixed it, and downtime while I made sure my PC wasn't impacted, it can get quite large. During that time, I'm being paid to do nothing remotely related to my job role. If they want my projects completed on time, they now have to hire a consultant to help with the work.
One more cost that I can immediately think of: somebody in IT to send out notification of the problem and come up with a good way of explaining to people who've been infected how to fix their PC's. Remember, these people have daily tasks too. If they spend time working on other things, they have to work overtime and get paid for it. Many times, it might be late hours helping to disinfect PC's for users who just don't know enough about them to do the job themselves.
Even though it seems kinda stupid to include estimates of people's downtime in the cost, you really have to do it. Anybody who isn't doing their normal job and getting paid for it is wasting money. The work doesn't go away. It just either takes longer to get it done, or you have to hire more people to accomplish it in the same time frame.
I think it's time we rebel against this UCITA crap, and start demanding some security in our software products.
I agree with that it's time to rebel against UCITA, but I don't think that'll help this situation too much. If we can lay aside (for the moment) Microsoft's negligence, you'll see that there's a much larger problem. For all of these virus attacks, people should have fixed their machines within 48 hours and the attack would be over. But instead, there are still machines pounding away weeks after initial infection. The single biggest problem is the lack of knowledge. People are running web servers and other vulnerable services who have absolutely no idea how to handle security. They don't even know they are infected. Let's assume that everybody agrees that Linux has less security holes than Windows. Yet we all know that if you install an out-of-the-box Linux server with all the services turned on and humming along, then connect it to cable modem or DSL, you have just provided a public computing resource. This rarely happens because few people running Linux are likely to do something that stupid. The key here is user knowledge. With "always on" connections coming into greater and greater use, people really need to learn a bit more about their computer security. If they have no need for a web server on Windows 2000 Professional, they should know how to turn it off. Now, if only there were a fair way to ensure that everybody using the 'net had such knowledge.... Oh well.
That's not possible... any significantly large company that was going to change something like that would need an obscene amount of time
Not completely true, although I almost agree with you. If they assume that their intranet is safe (a dangerous assumption), they can just replace external web servers. For many companies (even large ones), those external servers are probably just serving up static pages. Switching to Apache or something else wouldn't be too bad. Now on the other hand, getting management approval to do something like this will probably take most of that "year and a half" that you cited.:)
Windows NT is so easy to administer that you don't even have to bother showing up for work on Friday!
I only wish that were true. I just used loaded all of the latest patches for Windows 2000 on Microsoft's Web Site, then ran the aforementioned utility (hfnetchk) and it still lists 9 patches as "not installed." Oh well. Hopefully, those 9 patches are for services that I don't have installed on my machine.
The DSL industry must charge more for their services.
Do you feel that the cable industry is also charging too little for their services? If not, DSL is probably in big trouble. While each technology has its advantages and disadvantages, I don't think there's really enough of a difference to justify big changes in price. Right now (in my area), cable modem with equivalent performance to DSL costs almost exactly the same amount.
Slashdot Mirror
The reduction was attributed primarily to Amazon's "migration to a Linux-based technology platform that utilizes a less-costly technology infrastructure, as well as general price reductions for data and telecommunication services due to market overcapacity," according to the filing.
My concern here is in finding out how much of that savings can be attributed to the switch to Linux and how much can be attributed to reduction in data and telecomm services? Real data here would be interesting, but it's probably just not available.
Thirdly, in many cases companies don't have to pay extra licensing fees for the computers that connect to Linux servers. And finally, Linux is often used on inexpensive Intel computers, sometimes generic "white box" machines and sometimes older computers seeing a second life.
This is a real hidden gotcha, and in many cases a tremendous potential for cost savings. If only companies would truly look at this item before investing. Servers with "per seat" licensing can really escalate costs, especially for a business like Amazon. You think that by buying one program, your costs are over and you're done with it. But as your customer base goes up, you have to start paying additional licensing fees. Budgeting for this kind of stuff is difficult at best. Microsoft is certainly guilty of this, but they are joined by other powerhouses such as Oracle. To their credit, many of these large companies offer some sort of "enterprise" deal, but it usually has a whopping price tag associated with it. In my opinion, it's much more fair to sell by the server. If I want to try to cram 2000 users onto a single server, it's my responsibility to deal with the resulting problems.
But there are hidden costs to Linux, Microsoft argues. "I think a lot of customers are lured by the apparent low price of Linux," said Doug Miller, director of competitive strategy for Microsoft's Windows division. "They don't have a real issue with Linux, but it ends up costing them in the long run."
With Linux, customers "end up being in the operating systems business," managing software updates and security patches while making sure the multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other," Miller said. "That's the job of a software vendor like Microsoft."
Oh yeah, I've written soooo much Operating system code since I started using Linux. The last update I did (over a year ago), I didn't even feel a single urge to recompile the kernel. And what's this about managing software updates and security packages? Exactly WHAT does Microsoft do for me that I don't get with RedHat's up2date or Debian's apt-get? Software packages conflicting with each other? What does Microsoft offer to take care of this problem? I've certainly had it enough times in the past with Windows software that I could have used some help. Boy, those two paragraphs are the biggest bunch of baloney I've seen in a while -- and I was in Germany for six months!
While Red Hat offers some of those services, it's difficult to ensure that software packages updated frequently by hundreds of people around the globe work well together, Miller said.
Really? I don't think I've EVER downloaded a single package from RedHat that didn't work just fine with all of the other install packages from RedHat. Anybody else had any problems with that? I guarantee you that RedHat does at LEAST as much testing as Microsoft. Let me remind you of NT 4.0 SP 6....
Among those forces: the coming version 6 of Sun Microsystems' StarOffice package of office software, which many believe will be a more capable product than the bulky current version and thus a more credible alternative to Microsoft's Office; burdensome Microsoft licensing fees during a time of economic austerity; and the overall price tag of Windows and Office.
OK, I'm not sure that I can agree that StarOffice is or will be more capable than MS Office, but with the current economic times, the price is certainly much more attractive. And if you look at what most people actually use an Office Suite for, you'll find that almost all of them will more than have their needs met with Star Office 6.0.
The study concluded that Linux applications could provide solid alternatives to nearly every Windows application, with the possible exception of the scheduling and e-mail integration of Microsoft Outlook.
And a nice WYSIWYG, comprehensive web-design suite like, say, Dreamweaver, would be a nice addition to Linux. Anybody try out IBM's WebSphere Home Page Builder for Linux yet? Scheduling and e-mail integration is one thing I wish OpenOffice (OS version of StarOffice) hadn't dropped from their focus. Even though there are some nice e-mail and scheduling programs, it would be nice to have tighter integration with my other office software.
"Staying in compliance with licenses is something a lot of companies are scared of right now. It's more difficult, and the ramifications of being out of compliance are becoming more and more onerous," Robinson said. "As of the last year or so, Microsoft has been going after companies where they've gotten tip-offs or had other suspicions."
This is another big one. I heard a radio advertisement this morning offering to help companies get in compliance during the grace period. They through out all those scary numbers like $150,000 per violation. You absolutely know you've got a problem when agencies can actually derive their entire revenue base from helping people manage the complicated licensing issues that Microsoft has created. This whole thing is exactly what prompted me to switch to Star Office on ALL of my computers. I had licenses for the versions of MS Office I was using, but I didn't know what scheme they would think of next.
"We are a commercial software vendor. That's how we earn revenue," Miller responded. "Our goal is to be properly compensated by customers for our software."
And to make additional money off of existing customers by "clarifying" the terms of the license to them and forcing them to upgrade and pay additional licensing costs when they don't want to....
I agree with the inverse position, but also agree that no real argument was presented, so allow me to present one.
Negroponte stated that people would not be satisfied with a jump from between 56Kbps and 100Kbps to 300 or 400Kbps. I don't think he considered some of the business drivers behind these higher speeds. It's not just a matter of downloading in 1/3 or 1/4 of the time. Obviously, if downloads are only 2 or 3 seconds for a handheld (at between 56 and 100 Kbps), 1/4 of that isn't particularly interesting. But what the higher speed does allow is the use of more sophisticated and better-looking web applications -- something businesses will really be interested in. Now you're talking about going from somewhere between 12 and 20 second page load times to 3 or 4 seconds. This difference is much more apparent. I've worked heavily on Mobile development projects, and I know that despite all the warnings us developers gave about how slow CDPD is, management still pushed for a better looking, heavier interface to our applications. The result: 15 second page load times instead of our target of less than 5 seconds. The consequence: A lot less usage that we'd like. It's just too slow.
Let's also apply this to the consumer "broadband" market. How many people out there had 128Kbps ISDN? Come on. Raise your hands. How many of you drooled over low-end DSL at 400Kbps, even at double the price? How many of you were extremely angry when you found out you were too far from a CO to get it? I know that describes me. I bet I'm not alone. It's not apparent to me why the same situation wouldn't apply to wireless.
Before I close, here's another point from the article that I'd like to debate:
Some people might argue that it'll come in a year or two years (don't think the Japanese have it, that's not 3G).
Why isn't what the Japanese have 3G? I mean, he didn't even have to give a technical explanation. Even a statement that it didn't meet the criteria of 3G as defined in xxx would have been more helpful. As it stands, it appears that it just doesn't meet his personal expectations of 3G. I'm sure there's documentation out there to back it up (I hope so for his sake), but it's his job to provide it. I'm not going to go looking for it.
I might be wrong, but I don't think that you can use it as evidence in court unless you notified them at the beginning of the conversation that it was being recorded. Chances are, they wouldn't given you the nasty "No!" if they thought they were being recorded.
Actually, it's highly likely. Winston Churchill did it during WWII with his radio announcements. They contained a predefined trigger to coordinate the release of toops during certain battle arrangements.
Let's all stop and think about this for a meaning. I wish to send an important secret message to my evil henchmen on another continent. Do I send an encrypted letter? Do I send a human messenger by plane to carry the message? Do I phone them and use secret phrases with hidden meanings to convey the message to them?
All of these are immediately noticeable if you are under surveillance. It's best to use something that is "not quite what it seems" as a method of communication.
hope that the corporate minions of the Great Satan will transmit your message, complete, clear (no poorly translated voice-overs, if you please) and in a timely fashion.
Actually, a voice over won't matter. If they use the same basic imagery when translated to English, the message would still be clear. It has been noted that Bin Laden frequently uses interesting combinations of imagery in his words during the few public releases he has. As far as timely release? Come on. Our news hounds are constantly striving to be the first to release such things. I would say that Osama could absolutely count on it being delivered almost immediately.
The most clever way to plan during a "war" is to act with utter simplicity.
Yeah, I vaguely remember reading that one time and thinking that they couldn't be serious. It's really just another reason to stop buying "commercial" music altogether, and turn to artists who represent themselves and are actually more interested in having people appreciate their music than in earning the maximum amount of money off of it.
Ah, but there is truly a difference between selling and sharing. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong in what follows.
If you buy a CD, then rip some of the songs into MP3's to listen to on your computer, you are just abiding by "fair use" (let's leave out DMCA for the moment). If you then trade your MP3's with another person, you are still retaining a copy of the music. Because of this, somebody who would have otherwise had to pay for the CD will now have the music they wanted at no charge. This (according to RIAA) eats into their profits and "harms" them. Thus, it is piracy.
If, on the other hand, you sell your CD to a reseller because you are done with it, you are selling all rights to use of that music back. That means that the MP3's on your hard drive must also be destroyed, as they are no longer covered by "fair use." Now somebody else purchases that CD, and the rights to listen to and use that music are transferred to them. As long as you've complied by erasing any copies of the CD or its music that you possess, there is still only one person in possession of the single copy of the music that was originally sold. That way, you aren't really eating into the bottom line of the publisher.
That's the theory anyway. Not that I believe any of this holds true in practice. I'm sure almost nobody sells back their CD's without at least keeping a copy on cassette tape....
Kind of like Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 6? SP 6a came out for a reason, you know.
Not really. By including even an outdated JVM, they support at least Java 1.1 applets. Many people get nervous when their computer offers to "automatically" install functionality. So on WinXP, when the browser asks if they want to install a JVM, they may answer no. That means that web sites using Java will not work properly, so they will choose other web sites. In the end, this has the effect of convincing developers to use something else for their sites. But you also have to remember that the original reports of WinXP not including a JVM made no mention of an automatic installation on the first attempt to run an applet. In that scenario, many many users would have been turned away from sites with Java applets.
I'm sorry, but the original poster was correct. Your argument is horribly inconsistent and flawed. If it is evil for Microsoft to include Internet Explorer, it is equally as evil to include a JVM.
Actually, the original poster wasn't so much making a statement as asking a question. But it is your argument, my friend, that is most unbelievably flawed. You conveniently glance over the fact that Internet Explorer is a Microsoft Product, whereas the JVM is a Microsoft implementation of a competitor's product that would ultimately aid the competitor. Your own logic is flawed because you are making the assumption that the consequences of both of these situations is equal.
And I hereby declare that bundling lilo into RedHat is evil because it kills competition in the boot manager market. RedHat's purpose is obviously to damage the market that System Commander operates within, without providing them adequate compensation.
And this very statement here proves that you don't understand the situation at all. RedHat doesn't even have a monopoly on Linux distributions. You, like many others, forget that Microsoft has a monopoly in desktop operating systems. Period. This changes all of the rules. We absolutely do have a right to say what we think should and should not be included in the Microsoft Windows distribution because of that monopoly. (Actually, we have a right to SAY whatever we want, but you get my drift).
And that's a topic that probably deserves it's own Slashdot submission. Just what does it take these days to make a portal profitable. The "Old regime" was entirely based on revenu from advertisements. That almost looked like it was going to work until all of the dot bombs (who were the big source of advertisements) exploded. Under that scenario, though, Excite was probably only losing a little money. Lots of portals are trying new things, but does anybody really know what it'll take to ensure profitability?
and...
simultaneously evil for MS to EXCLUDE a JVM in XP?
Actually, there's a pretty simple answer to this. Both of these actions kill competition.
Microsoft owns the browser, media player, etc that it bundles with XP, so they can eliminate competition by including them and making them impossible or extremely difficult to remove. The problem is that most people will not know enough or be motivated enough to switch to a competing product. So, since Microsoft owns the OS, they can be reasonably certain that people will use their integrated browser, media player, etc. By doing this, they can also be reasonably certain that companies who develop content for these products will be inclined to purchase Microsoft products to aid in the development of that content.
Java is a slightly different story. Microsoft does not own the Java technology. They have to play ball with Sun in order to use it. They have to follow Sun's rules. But more importantly, there is quite a bit of competition for Java development environments. Supplying a JDK or JVM with their OS does not in any way motivate developers to use their development environment, unless they can add proprietary extensions or other changes to the language to make their development products attractive. They attempted this with J++ and have been told they can't. So, since they can't make any money from J++, they decide to develop their own environments and languages, and bundle THOSE with their OS instead of Java. That effectively kills competition by sending a message to developers: "Do you want your application to run without hassle on 95% of desktop systems? Use .NET."
Try and remember that these tactics are only questionable because Microsoft has a MONOPOLY. That is the defining factor. Otherwise, they'd be considered good business practices. If Microsoft had only 30% of the desktop market, bundling the browser, media player, .NET technology and other things with XP would only help them to be certain that most of that 30% would be using their technology and their tools. They would be forced to make their tools operate on other desktop environments in order to increase market share. This would put them on an even playing field with their competitors. However, since they currently dominate the desktop market, the game is way too easy for them. Tricks like inclusion / exclusion just help cement their monopoly in other areas of the market. It is illegal to use a monopoly in one market segment to stifle competition and increase market share in other segments. Both of these tricks accomplish this. You really have to look at the end results.
BTW, I think my Nick' is appropo for this topic.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I honestly don't think that there are tremendous gains in automobile aerodynamics on the horizon. Automobile manufacturers can already greatly increase the aerodynamics of their product, but only at a sacrifice to ergodynamics and practicality. The future for more efficient automobiles lies mostly in the development of smaller and more efficient power conversion (IE the engines) and the development of alternative fuel sources. Besides, the featured cycle looked to have the same lines as a Ford Probe concept car from over a decade ago, so I don't think there's much to be learned here. On the other hand, I think it's absolutely cool that cycle riders can achieve true highway speeds, even if they have to be in incredible shape and practically dislocate their shoulders to fit into the vehicles.
BTW, anybody know of any large capacity, reasonably fast, inexpensive backup solutions that work with Linux? My old TRAVAN tape drive is hopelessly outdated with respect to my storage capacity, and I really need to replace it with something that doesn't require me to keep swapping tapes during a long backup.
It's there, but it's way way way way way too slow. ActiveSync seems to grab USB by the neck and drag it to almost a complete stop. After all, how long should 32MB take to back up or restore over USB? Certainly not the HOURS it currently takes. Anybody know if ActiveSync 3.5 is any better on this? Anybody know of a backup/restore program that goes around ActiveSync?
Many times, that Senior VP can write his own name down because he refused to provide the budget that IT said it needed in order to maintain an secure and functioning environment. The "budget games" that most corporations play are absolutely idiotic. The IT department now has to intentionally inflate its budget estimate so that when the VP asks them to slim it down, they can at least afford a modicum of what they need to in order to stay running. If companies would invest properly and wisely in their IT resources, they'd probably find that "emergency money" needs would drop by more than the original investment.
To add to your comments, it's also all about TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and the amount of money that a company is willing to spend on resources. With the rash of virus attacks lately, it's more than one full-time job to keep track of security updates and keep the server farm updated. The suits have a really hard time dedicated whole persons to one single task like this, so usually an admin is running around like chicken without a head trying to get those hotfixes done along with all of the other tasks that management seems to feel are more important.
If we go back to Gartner's original article, they never said "Apache is more secure than IIS" or anything like that. They simply indicated that right now, IIS is being exploited more than Apache and other rivals. Total Cost of Ownership can probably be reduced by considering an alternative to IIS because your admins won't be spending all of their time trying to keep one step ahead of the virus writers. Maybe in the future, people will try harder to break into Apache and it will become a bigger liability than IIS. But right now, that isn't the case.
You can't count the Internation Direct Dial code because it's not really part of the phone number. But the country code counts. Based on that, my number while in Germany was 12 digits.
And as soon as they remove the statute of limitations for DMCA violations, we can exhume the bodies of those that invented the rotary-dial mechanism and prosecute them too for inventing a circumvention device for touch-tone dialing tunes.
Hmmm. I bet you buy things that are "only sold on TV" all the time. Microsoft Office preloads itself at boot time. This is an extremely annoying issue on my laptop, as I don't enjoy waiting forever for my startup to finish. If your method of checking how much RAM it uses was to wait to check RAM after startup, then load an Office application and check RAM again, you missed the boat. Since most of Office is already loaded after boot time, it's probably taking up TONS of RAM. Let's see. With nothing running at ALL on my computer, we're normally at 121 MB. Hmmm...
Maybe Sun can try a new slogan. "Don't install Microsoft's Office XP, and the REST of your applications will run faster."
Now in order to reboot Windows, all you have to do is flash your computer the bird.
Let's start with one possible source: Overtime Pay. I don't know about the business cited, but I know that here our admins are completely busy with project work. We are always upgrading and changing system configurations to meet project needs. If our servers get a virus, they either have to change their project deadlines (which could be really really bad), or they have to work overtime to fix it. That would be at 1.5 times the pay for each hour each person puts in.
Here's another piece of the pie. I'm a developer. I have a list of projects I'm working on. I depend on the development systems being up and running so I can get my work done. There are very few other things I can do when the servers I use aren't working. Now if the virus takes out our servers, and you add up downtime before we could get the admins to look at it, and downtime while they figured out what was wrong with it, and downtime while they fixed it, and downtime while I made sure my PC wasn't impacted, it can get quite large. During that time, I'm being paid to do nothing remotely related to my job role. If they want my projects completed on time, they now have to hire a consultant to help with the work.
One more cost that I can immediately think of: somebody in IT to send out notification of the problem and come up with a good way of explaining to people who've been infected how to fix their PC's. Remember, these people have daily tasks too. If they spend time working on other things, they have to work overtime and get paid for it. Many times, it might be late hours helping to disinfect PC's for users who just don't know enough about them to do the job themselves.
Even though it seems kinda stupid to include estimates of people's downtime in the cost, you really have to do it. Anybody who isn't doing their normal job and getting paid for it is wasting money. The work doesn't go away. It just either takes longer to get it done, or you have to hire more people to accomplish it in the same time frame.
I agree with that it's time to rebel against UCITA, but I don't think that'll help this situation too much. If we can lay aside (for the moment) Microsoft's negligence, you'll see that there's a much larger problem. For all of these virus attacks, people should have fixed their machines within 48 hours and the attack would be over. But instead, there are still machines pounding away weeks after initial infection. The single biggest problem is the lack of knowledge. People are running web servers and other vulnerable services who have absolutely no idea how to handle security. They don't even know they are infected. Let's assume that everybody agrees that Linux has less security holes than Windows. Yet we all know that if you install an out-of-the-box Linux server with all the services turned on and humming along, then connect it to cable modem or DSL, you have just provided a public computing resource. This rarely happens because few people running Linux are likely to do something that stupid. The key here is user knowledge. With "always on" connections coming into greater and greater use, people really need to learn a bit more about their computer security. If they have no need for a web server on Windows 2000 Professional, they should know how to turn it off. Now, if only there were a fair way to ensure that everybody using the 'net had such knowledge.... Oh well.
Not completely true, although I almost agree with you. If they assume that their intranet is safe (a dangerous assumption), they can just replace external web servers. For many companies (even large ones), those external servers are probably just serving up static pages. Switching to Apache or something else wouldn't be too bad. Now on the other hand, getting management approval to do something like this will probably take most of that "year and a half" that you cited.
I only wish that were true. I just used loaded all of the latest patches for Windows 2000 on Microsoft's Web Site, then ran the aforementioned utility (hfnetchk) and it still lists 9 patches as "not installed." Oh well. Hopefully, those 9 patches are for services that I don't have installed on my machine.
Do you feel that the cable industry is also charging too little for their services? If not, DSL is probably in big trouble. While each technology has its advantages and disadvantages, I don't think there's really enough of a difference to justify big changes in price. Right now (in my area), cable modem with equivalent performance to DSL costs almost exactly the same amount.