Agred to a certain degree but then if the staff are trained already they can pass their knowledge on as needed. OO.org isn't that different to MSOffice for end users nor is Kmail that hard to transfer to. An office we kitted out is full of 40-50 year olds with one 17 year old and to date their support requirements have been minimal.
The cost of retraining users to use Linux apps instead of Windows equivalents is primarily born at the time the switch is made. Top up training will probably not cost any more than top up training for Windows.
All these Windows is cheaper than Linux studies neglect to mention annualy repeated licencing which will, over the years, bump the cost of the Microsoft option up by a very large percentage. After several years of re-licencing, MS will be more expensive.
Besides, the original Quote called for Open Source and Open Standards. While the need for Open Source is arguable the need for Open Standards is not. The installation and maintainence of publicly funded IT projects is carried by every taxpayer. Assuming MS goes down a path of excluding competitors with bastardised standards, tax payers who contributed to government IT projects will be excluded from using services they paid for. It is arguable that publicly funded bodies have a moral obligation to provide web services which are accessible to all taxpayers/citizens regardless of their choice of operating system, web browser, wordprocessor or whatever.
MS spent weeks denying it was a problem, admitting it was a problem, saying it was a problem but only a small one that no one need worry about, admitting it was worse than that, then finally after loads of BS releasing a patch.
I seem to remember I had a patched konqueror about 3 days after it was announced.
Was Gates' quote a statement, a manifesto or the result of a hallucinogenic mushroom in an omellette?
I know someone who mailed autodesk to find out if they have any plans to release a Linux version.
Answer was no basically so Autodesk have no reason to care if Linux lives or dies as they are betting on Windows for their income. I 'spose it saves them from having to do a port and they will no doubt be biased to MS in their media appearances.
Scientists today found evidence of a civilisation that once existed on a planet, third out from a sun in a far off part of the galaxy.
It's believed that the entire population was wiped out after a scientist (we think), Rob Enderle, recommended that because diversity of genetics made making drugs to cure cancer difficult, all humans (as they called themselves) should be made genetically identical to allow one cancer drug to cure everybody.
Within a day, scientists had developed the cancer drug and cancer was cured, worldwide, overnight. Unfortunately, the entire population was then wiped out by a single mutation of the common cold in the entirely predictable kind of way that anyone with half an ounce of common sense would have seen coming.
Commentators today stated that the kind of twisted logic that would allow this scenario to happen is generally caused by having your head stuffed too far up your own arse, or in extreme cases, up the arse of the CEO of a major corporation. The justification that it would make it easy for even the poorly trained doctors to cure cancer seems good at first but neglects to consider that it's really stupid.
Bound to happen I'm afraid. A virus has to be found before it can be fixed.
If a worm turns up that uses an unknown exploit or even one that can be patched but hasn't, it has the advantage. If it grabs 5 email addresses from the first copy of outlook it hits, it then infects 5, then 25........ until you very rapidly run to a large number of infections.
Until it's reported, caught, analysed and fixed they're all vulnerable
I've had that debate as well. It boils down to which is more secure?
Building 1: Layout map publicly available to peer review to by a worldwide group of security analysts and solution designers. Security guards at every point who treat everyone as a potential threat, checking ID, authorisation etc., locksmiths who can submit improvements and ideas to the techs in charge of the building, CCTV everywhere etc.
Building 2: Layout of building only available to employees of the architects office. Blind security guards with deaf dogs that have colds who treat everyone as friendly by default. Doors that are all opened with the same key and signposts everywhere showing you how to get anywhere in the building. Add to this, every other building built by the architects is exactly the same, uses the same keys etc.
From the outside, the second building looks more secure but the underlying security offered by keeping the layout hidden from outsiders is automatically lost once an intruder is inside. If the the front door is left unlocked by default....
In building 1, the contributions of experts and constant feedback from the security people tighten access as each weak point is spotted.
It's undeniable that people that don't like having to learn new things and certainly don't like to have to enter root passwords and get their hands dirty. I mean hell, the joke about getting your 7 year old kids to teach adults how to program the VCR is funny purely because so many people can relate to it.
While the workings of consumer electronics can be made transparent to end users, computers are a different entity all together.
My original point is based on the problem that a lot of IT decisions are made by non-technically minded management based on the effect it will have on the company accounts in the current financial year. How many IT people have put educated, well developed ideas forward and had them shot down not for technical reasons but because there's no money. At the same time, the CEO's getting a $/3 million bonus and a new Mercedes. How do you accurately calculate TCO? How much to include for the cost of having to pull in IT staff, on overtime, over the weekend in order to carry out disaster recovery when the latest virus wreaks havoc. What if a virus as prolific as SoBig.F started overwriting hard disk sectors that store drive geometry info forcing whole corporations to fix or replace every HDD in the company. Imagine the chaos. Is it luck that this hasn't happened? Is it on the cards? Who knows, but if it does happen I know the shit will really hit the fan.
All I'm saying is that if you can integrate other OS's into a business it would be a good insurance policy to do so. OK if you use AutoCAD you're more or less stuck with Windows on the desktop because as good as LinuxCAD or others may be there's too much built around AutoCAD for many people to use it as a drop in replacemnt. On the other hand if your servers are sharing files and printers, delivering e-mail and not a lot else, why the hell are you running Windows. Now that Opengroupware is out even Exchange (the holy grail) may be replaceable and there are Linux server solutions that will fulfill all the requirements of an awful lot of offices. In exchange you get a mail server that is immune to Windows viruses, loads of extra odds and sods that'd cost a fortune on Windows and an extra degree of seperation in the event of an attack.
Support will develop as Linux usage expands. Or why not use a MAC? Known company, good reputation and it ain't Windows giving you many of the benefits of Linux with Apple paid support. BSD, whatever, it's not the OS you use that makes the difference it's removing the uniformity of weaknesses that a network of 100% identical machines on a network gives you.
There really is enough room for more than one OS in the world and at the end of the day, how many SoBIG.F's will it take to cost business the price of supporting it.
i wonder what the commercial applications/implications of this are? any takers?
I suspect that the commercial implications are minimal at least for a year or three. For a start, a lot of IT decision makers, i.e. accountants and people who have been promoted from middle management with little technical ability will still swallow MS's bullshit. They will also buy Server 2003, optimistically believing that it will be cure all the problems of Server 2000 in the same way they believed 2000 would cure the problems of NT.
For an example cop this survey. It apparently shows that Europe's IT directors place consistency higher than security and reliability and the human tendency to submit to fear and one's own insecurity rather than to break ranks and try something new will lead a lot of people who have no real faith in their own abilites to stick with what they know, i.e. Windows, regardless of how shit it may be, how many viruses it catches, how many customer's credit card numbers get stolen etc.. They crave stability even if what they have is flawed, at least they know where the buttons are.
In all honesty, I don't see single OS networks as being a good idea regardless of what your using. There are millions of lines of code in a modern OS and it only takes one cock-up to open a crack through which it can be broken. A lesson in genetics suggests that diversity gives you the best hope of survival when under attack or it can at least slow the attacker as they, or their virus, try to find vulnerabilties in each system.The only way that will be achieved is by opening file formats so that all platforms can exchange data with 100% transparency. This will also create a truly free market causing companies to develop software based on quality, performance, security and reliabilty rather than how pretty the GUI is and how clever this years bunch of graduate marketing twats are. The obvious side effect is the breaking of MS's monopoly and the burgeoning of a new software market that will develop ports and alternatives to existing "industry standard" stuff like AutoCad. Proprietry software companies fear this the most as they will then have to wrestle with real competition.
I still think that Linux, BSD and Mac are inherently more secure and better coded than Windows though. I also suspect the rot is so deeply set into MS stuff (with a 20 year legacy of putty eye candy before security) that they will never sort it out without a ground up rewrite, somthing they will not do unless forced to.
Linux developers on the other hand have given a security a starring role since day one and even though there are bound to be flaws they're fixed in short time by developers who don't spend the first week denying a problem exists. It's free, it does what I need and it's users give a shit. What more can I ask for.
Either that or her muscles are strong enough to crush concrete.
More importantly what a fanatastic thing to have on your CV in the "Please list any experience you may have had that could be useful in this role" section.
This biog of analyst Joe Wilcox who produced the report for Jupiter Research:
As a senior analyst with Jupiter Research, Joe Wilcox largely focuses on Microsoft and illuminating the right strategies for efficiently deploying Microsoft products, smartly partnering with the software giant or competing more effectively with the fast-moving rival. Wilcox is part of Jupiter Research's Microsoft Monitor team. He is main contributor to the Microsoft Monitor Weblog, which, as a companion to the larger service, offers spot analysis on breaking Microsoft news or shifting strategies. Wilcox's Microsoft experience dates back to his work as a high-tech news reporter, where he honed skills for ferreting out the "real meaning" behind companies' product and business strategies. Most recently, he worked for CNET News.com, first as the reporter covering Compaq, Dell, Gateway, HP and IBM and later Microsoft. As the lead reporter covering Microsoft, Wilcox developed a reputation for to-the-point news analysis. He also took charge of CNET News.com's legal coverage, particularly Microsoft's government, European Union and private antitrust cases.
Given the close ties to MS suggested by the biog the report wasn't as rabidly anti OO.org as it could have been. What do you folks think?
If so, a Microsoft spokesperson did not show it when he gave a cool response about his company's faith in the free market -- a safe bet when that company owns over 90 percent of the market for desktop-productivity suites, according to Wilcox's research.
and
Hiser said that OpenOffice version 1.1, due this week, can translate Microsoft files with an accuracy of 90 percent. But anything less than 100 percent is not good enough, Wilcox noted.
So at the end of the day, why all the poncing around with Media Player and Explorer at the anti-trust trial. Bundling these two packages into Windows pales into insignificence in the MS monopoly when compared to the constantly changing and jealously guarded MSOffice file formats.
Until Microsoft is forced to compete on the quality and features of MS Office (neither of which are worth the price over OO.org) as opposed to locking everyone else out with convoluted file structures they will have a stranglehold on business.
Possibly dangerous giving links to such info 'cos of the DMCA which allows a fine of up to $500,000 and/or imprisonment for up to five years for publishing information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a system.
CCAGW are guilty of the same error as they seem to have missed some of what's been said:
Massachusetts has adopted a new policy favoring open-source. "The state will also give preference to open-source software, although it will continue to purchase proprietary products if they are found to be superior technologically or otherwise, Kriss said. He identified state Web servers, which currently run on Microsoft's Internet Information Services software, as a potential early candidate for retrofitting. "We're taking a serious look at Apache as a Web server," he said."
I still think that diversity is the best option with a blend of several different OS's providing a measure of protection against viruses and worms and hopefully slowing down hackers who will have to find different exploits for each OS. OK so you lose the ease of administering a single patch across a large network and need to employ people who understand I.T. rather than MCSE,s but that's better than losing you're whole infrastructure.
I suspect that many governments particularly France, Germany and China probably took the "with us or against us" stance of the Bush administration rather more seriously than they could have and see closed source software from the US as, potentially, the ultimate spyware. Even with MS's shared source idea there's plenty of room to put a few backdoors in that'd be very difficult to find.
That's not to say that Linux is guaranteed leak free but they will see it as being more under their control particularly when they can write their own distro. Whether there are any backdoors in Windows or not is irrelevant, Just the thought of the Dept. of Homeland Security being able to poke around a foreign governments files would be enough to tip the balance.
Slashdot Mirror
and Microsoft knows that the wider the distribution of the software, the faster it's going to spread all over the internet...
If they want to post the source as well I'm sure we can patch the security holes and make it reliable for them as well..
Is it only me or does Bush Bashing sound like a euphomism for rough sex.
Estate Agents, gotta be estate agents.
Agred to a certain degree but then if the staff are trained already they can pass their knowledge on as needed. OO.org isn't that different to MSOffice for end users nor is Kmail that hard to transfer to. An office we kitted out is full of 40-50 year olds with one 17 year old and to date their support requirements have been minimal.
The cost of retraining users to use Linux apps instead of Windows equivalents is primarily born at the time the switch is made. Top up training will probably not cost any more than top up training for Windows.
All these Windows is cheaper than Linux studies neglect to mention annualy repeated licencing which will, over the years, bump the cost of the Microsoft option up by a very large percentage. After several years of re-licencing, MS will be more expensive.
Besides, the original Quote called for Open Source and Open Standards. While the need for Open Source is arguable the need for Open Standards is not. The installation and maintainence of publicly funded IT projects is carried by every taxpayer. Assuming MS goes down a path of excluding competitors with bastardised standards, tax payers who contributed to government IT projects will be excluded from using services they paid for. It is arguable that publicly funded bodies have a moral obligation to provide web services which are accessible to all taxpayers/citizens regardless of their choice of operating system, web browser, wordprocessor or whatever.
Integrating Internet Explorer into Windows is monopolistic.
Integrating Media Player into Windows is monopolistic.
and integrating MS Office into Windows errr... isn't?
MS spent weeks denying it was a problem, admitting it was a problem, saying it was a problem but only a small one that no one need worry about, admitting it was worse than that, then finally after loads of BS releasing a patch.
I seem to remember I had a patched konqueror about 3 days after it was announced.
Was Gates' quote a statement, a manifesto or the result of a hallucinogenic mushroom in an omellette?
I know someone who mailed autodesk to find out if they have any plans to release a Linux version.
Answer was no basically so Autodesk have no reason to care if Linux lives or dies as they are betting on Windows for their income. I 'spose it saves them from having to do a port and they will no doubt be biased to MS in their media appearances.
I just copied a 64(ish)MB file from one folder to another (OpenOffice.org for windows -zip file) Took around 6 seconds.
I strongly suggest that your hard disk is fucked.
My Machine:
Athlon XP1800, Mandrake 9.1 512MB RAM. 2x40GB Maxtor 5200rpm drives
Scientists today found evidence of a civilisation that once existed on a planet, third out from a sun in a far off part of the galaxy.
It's believed that the entire population was wiped out after a scientist (we think), Rob Enderle, recommended that because diversity of genetics made making drugs to cure cancer difficult, all humans (as they called themselves) should be made genetically identical to allow one cancer drug to cure everybody.
Within a day, scientists had developed the cancer drug and cancer was cured, worldwide, overnight. Unfortunately, the entire population was then wiped out by a single mutation of the common cold in the entirely predictable kind of way that anyone with half an ounce of common sense would have seen coming.
Commentators today stated that the kind of twisted logic that would allow this scenario to happen is generally caused by having your head stuffed too far up your own arse, or in extreme cases, up the arse of the CEO of a major corporation. The justification that it would make it easy for even the poorly trained doctors to cure cancer seems good at first but neglects to consider that it's really stupid.
Check here for info on contesting patents.
The pow-wow website is still up and dated 1997 so you can still download it and check the features.
This is another example of Microsoft's long history of "innovation".
Errrr, couldn't agree more personally.
Bound to happen I'm afraid. A virus has to be found before it can be fixed.
If a worm turns up that uses an unknown exploit or even one that can be patched but hasn't, it has the advantage. If it grabs 5 email addresses from the first copy of outlook it hits, it then infects 5, then 25........ until you very rapidly run to a large number of infections.
Until it's reported, caught, analysed and fixed they're all vulnerable
He he.....
I've had that debate as well. It boils down to which is more secure?
Building 1: Layout map publicly available to peer review to by a worldwide group of security analysts and solution designers. Security guards at every point who treat everyone as a potential threat, checking ID, authorisation etc., locksmiths who can submit improvements and ideas to the techs in charge of the building, CCTV everywhere etc.
Building 2: Layout of building only available to employees of the architects office. Blind security guards with deaf dogs that have colds who treat everyone as friendly by default. Doors that are all opened with the same key and signposts everywhere showing you how to get anywhere in the building. Add to this, every other building built by the architects is exactly the same, uses the same keys etc.
From the outside, the second building looks more secure but the underlying security offered by keeping the layout hidden from outsiders is automatically lost once an intruder is inside. If the the front door is left unlocked by default....
In building 1, the contributions of experts and constant feedback from the security people tighten access as each weak point is spotted.
It's undeniable that people that don't like having to learn new things and certainly don't like to have to enter root passwords and get their hands dirty. I mean hell, the joke about getting your 7 year old kids to teach adults how to program the VCR is funny purely because so many people can relate to it.
While the workings of consumer electronics can be made transparent to end users, computers are a different entity all together.
My original point is based on the problem that a lot of IT decisions are made by non-technically minded management based on the effect it will have on the company accounts in the current financial year. How many IT people have put educated, well developed ideas forward and had them shot down not for technical reasons but because there's no money. At the same time, the CEO's getting a $/3 million bonus and a new Mercedes. How do you accurately calculate TCO? How much to include for the cost of having to pull in IT staff, on overtime, over the weekend in order to carry out disaster recovery when the latest virus wreaks havoc. What if a virus as prolific as SoBig.F started overwriting hard disk sectors that store drive geometry info forcing whole corporations to fix or replace every HDD in the company. Imagine the chaos. Is it luck that this hasn't happened? Is it on the cards? Who knows, but if it does happen I know the shit will really hit the fan.
All I'm saying is that if you can integrate other OS's into a business it would be a good insurance policy to do so. OK if you use AutoCAD you're more or less stuck with Windows on the desktop because as good as LinuxCAD or others may be there's too much built around AutoCAD for many people to use it as a drop in replacemnt.
On the other hand if your servers are sharing files and printers, delivering e-mail and not a lot else, why the hell are you running Windows. Now that Opengroupware is out even Exchange (the holy grail) may be replaceable and there are Linux server solutions that will fulfill all the requirements of an awful lot of offices. In exchange you get a mail server that is immune to Windows viruses, loads of extra odds and sods that'd cost a fortune on Windows and an extra degree of seperation in the event of an attack.
Support will develop as Linux usage expands. Or why not use a MAC? Known company, good reputation and it ain't Windows giving you many of the benefits of Linux with Apple paid support. BSD, whatever, it's not the OS you use that makes the difference it's removing the uniformity of weaknesses that a network of 100% identical machines on a network gives you.
There really is enough room for more than one OS in the world and at the end of the day, how many SoBIG.F's will it take to cost business the price of supporting it.
i wonder what the commercial applications/implications of this are? any takers?
I suspect that the commercial implications are minimal at least for a year or three. For a start, a lot of IT decision makers, i.e. accountants and people who have been promoted from middle management with little technical ability will still swallow MS's bullshit. They will also buy Server 2003, optimistically believing that it will be cure all the problems of Server 2000 in the same way they believed 2000 would cure the problems of NT.
For an example cop this survey. It apparently shows that Europe's IT directors place consistency higher than security and reliability and the human tendency to submit to fear and one's own insecurity rather than to break ranks and try something new will lead a lot of people who have no real faith in their own abilites to stick with what they know, i.e. Windows, regardless of how shit it may be, how many viruses it catches, how many customer's credit card numbers get stolen etc.. They crave stability even if what they have is flawed, at least they know where the buttons are.
In all honesty, I don't see single OS networks as being a good idea regardless of what your using. There are millions of lines of code in a modern OS and it only takes one cock-up to open a crack through which it can be broken. A lesson in genetics suggests that diversity gives you the best hope of survival when under attack or it can at least slow the attacker as they, or their virus, try to find vulnerabilties in each system.The only way that will be achieved is by opening file formats so that all platforms can exchange data with 100% transparency. This will also create a truly free market causing companies to develop software based on quality, performance, security and reliabilty rather than how pretty the GUI is and how clever this years bunch of graduate marketing twats are. The obvious side effect is the breaking of MS's monopoly and the burgeoning of a new software market that will develop ports and alternatives to existing "industry standard" stuff like AutoCad. Proprietry software companies fear this the most as they will then have to wrestle with real competition.
I still think that Linux, BSD and Mac are inherently more secure and better coded than Windows though. I also suspect the rot is so deeply set into MS stuff (with a 20 year legacy of putty eye candy before security) that they will never sort it out without a ground up rewrite, somthing they will not do unless forced to.
Linux developers on the other hand have given a security a starring role since day one and even though there are bound to be flaws they're fixed in short time by developers who don't spend the first week denying a problem exists. It's free, it does what I need and it's users give a shit. What more can I ask for.
(Do your own metallic voice)
Dalek 1: The dosctor is escaping. Stop him before he reaches the stairs
Dalek 2: Don't worry, in those heels he's got as much chance of getting up them as we have.
Top marks to Eddie - Bexhill's finest!
Either that or her muscles are strong enough to crush concrete.
More importantly what a fanatastic thing to have on your CV in the "Please list any experience you may have had that could be useful in this role" section.
Couldn't say it better myself. Go out, buy the radio series on BBC cassette/CD, get a few cans from the fridge and enjoy the whole experience.
When Trinity uses NMap, they haven't got a chance.
This biog of analyst Joe Wilcox who produced the report for Jupiter Research:
As a senior analyst with Jupiter Research, Joe Wilcox largely focuses on Microsoft and illuminating the right strategies for efficiently deploying Microsoft products, smartly partnering with the software giant or competing more effectively with the fast-moving rival. Wilcox is part of Jupiter Research's Microsoft Monitor team. He is main contributor to the Microsoft Monitor Weblog, which, as a companion to the larger service, offers spot analysis on breaking Microsoft news or shifting strategies. Wilcox's Microsoft experience dates back to his work as a high-tech news reporter, where he honed skills for ferreting out the "real meaning" behind companies' product and business strategies. Most recently, he worked for CNET News.com, first as the reporter covering Compaq, Dell, Gateway, HP and IBM and later Microsoft. As the lead reporter covering Microsoft, Wilcox developed a reputation for to-the-point news analysis. He also took charge of CNET News.com's legal coverage, particularly Microsoft's government, European Union and private antitrust cases.
Given the close ties to MS suggested by the biog the report wasn't as rabidly anti OO.org as it could have been. What do you folks think?
If so, a Microsoft spokesperson did not show it when he gave a cool response about his company's faith in the free market -- a safe bet when that company owns over 90 percent of the market for desktop-productivity suites, according to Wilcox's research.
and
Hiser said that OpenOffice version 1.1, due this week, can translate Microsoft files with an accuracy of 90 percent.
But anything less than 100 percent is not good enough, Wilcox noted.
So at the end of the day, why all the poncing around with Media Player and Explorer at the anti-trust trial. Bundling these two packages into Windows pales into insignificence in the MS monopoly when compared to the constantly changing and jealously guarded MSOffice file formats.
Until Microsoft is forced to compete on the quality and features of MS Office (neither of which are worth the price over OO.org) as opposed to locking everyone else out with convoluted file structures they will have a stranglehold on business.
Possibly dangerous giving links to such info 'cos of the DMCA which allows a fine of up to $500,000 and/or imprisonment for up to five years for publishing information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a system.
Expensive link
CCAGW are guilty of the same error as they seem to have missed some of what's been said:
Massachusetts has adopted a new policy favoring open-source. "The state will also give preference to open-source software, although it will continue to purchase proprietary products if they are found to be superior technologically or otherwise , Kriss said. He identified state Web servers, which currently run on Microsoft's Internet Information Services software, as a potential early candidate for retrofitting. "We're taking a serious look at Apache as a Web server," he said."
I still think that diversity is the best option with a blend of several different OS's providing a measure of protection against viruses and worms and hopefully slowing down hackers who will have to find different exploits for each OS. OK so you lose the ease of administering a single patch across a large network and need to employ people who understand I.T. rather than MCSE,s but that's better than losing you're whole infrastructure.
I suspect that many governments particularly France, Germany and China probably took the "with us or against us" stance of the Bush administration rather more seriously than they could have and see closed source software from the US as, potentially, the ultimate spyware. Even with MS's shared source idea there's plenty of room to put a few backdoors in that'd be very difficult to find.
That's not to say that Linux is guaranteed leak free but they will see it as being more under their control particularly when they can write their own distro.
Whether there are any backdoors in Windows or not is irrelevant, Just the thought of the Dept. of Homeland Security being able to poke around a foreign governments files would be enough to tip the balance.
It's a paranoid old world out there.