It's also interesting to think what would have happened if Apple had pursued cloning for the Apple II line - which was always more flexible and expandable than the Mac.
Apple managed to shut down all Apple II clones in the market. They won. And by doing so... they lost the microcomputer market. Keep in mind that they heavily influenced if not started the consumer / business microcomputer market.
IBM was unable to maintain control of their platform. IBM's lost was the market's gain.
I'm not so sure it would have been an overall advantage for Apple to have lost control of their platform. But it might (just might - there's still the issue of the IBM name) have made today's landscape look a bit more interesting.
As Pogue discusses, one thing you common to most OS zealots is that they don't know what they're talking about. I've heard so many people say, "Iduno, I'm really good with computers, but when I sit down at a (PC|Macintosh), I just don't know where to go to do anything."
I would suggest that this is one of the ingredients for zealotry. We all have our favorite tools. And given those tools, we can do Wondrous Things. When you're deprived of those tools, it's like being expected to build a fine cabinet with a 2x4, hammer, and screwdriver.
Little wonder people get a bit excited about the whole selection of tools thing. Especially when they perceive there's an entire sub-industry (marketing) trying to influence whether those prized tools are available or not.
These shrill, obnoxious people, I think, turned a lot of people against the Mac, because, as a PC user the basic idea is that PC users are idiots, and buying a Mac is like validating all that BS.
I don't know anyone who's ever claimed to pick a favorite platform just to stick it to another platform's fans. Sure - people get offended or puzzled by zealotry. But who puts down chunks of cash just to upset that know-it-all fat kid?
I never went down the Mac road because I liked the commodity hardware direction happening with the IBM PC compatible crowd. And I think you'll find that is the same reason that Macs ended up in a niche market.
And the whole "lets worship a corporation as a god, who can do no wrong" is pretty obnoxious these days as well.
Great point. Keep in mind that, as others have pointed out, this should be applied to anywhere there is a coroporation (and even where corporations aren't directly involved). No specific platform or technology has a monopoly on zealotry (whether you call it that or not). And nobody is beyond criticism.
I've seen pop-unders and ups on Firefox on rare occasion. But I poked around Snopes for a bit and didn't manage to find one.
Maybe AdBlock is doing an exceptional good job (note that I am allowing some of the ads - but few Flash based banners)?
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs?
on
McVoy Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm. Excellent point.
I suppose it'd be an issue of how important a said platform was to your company and your respective company's financial ability. If you've got the funds, you may end up having developers on staff that are dedicated (to some degree or another) to that platform's development. That allows for less ramp-up time and introduces a greater voice in the development direction.
Of course, this is probably prohibitive to small businesses. Unless they happen to have the talent on staff already, they'd be much more likely to make due with what's coming down the pipe from other's work.
Come to think of it... this sounds rather simular to how the proprietary OTS software market is today.:)
Re:So, you programmers ready to give up your jobs?
on
McVoy Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
But at the same time... if that web server has an issue or needs functionality, fixing it or contributing to the introduction of new features can be done on company time. It is in the interest of your employer... and the employers of your OSS co-developers.
With proprietary software, if it doesn't have a feature you want, you might be able to submit a request, but usually, you just have to suck it up and deal. With open-source software, you can pay someone - usually the creator - to implement any features you need on top of their (presumably) mature codebase.
I would suggest an extention to this. First, a quick story:
Our environment underwent a major architecture change a couple years ago. Our previous vendor was failing us. Their product didn't scale to our requirements. And the vendor was unresponsive despite the considerable support contract fees we paid annually. I honestly believe they thought we were stuck since they had been, up to this point, the leaders in the market.
So we changed to a new vendor and a new product. This induced a considerable cost to do so. But in the end, we ended up with a MUCH better product with a vendor who, while not cheap, actually produced custom code to support our environment and have even merged that code back in to their main branch (apparently we weren't the only ones needing these changes).
So it IS certainly possible to get a good vendor and good support. But at what cost?
If our architecture had been based on Open Source, we could have taken our current working branch and shopped around for more responsive support. Our origional vendor would have had some additional motivation knowing that we could do this. And if we ended up with a new vendor, it is very possible the changes we needed could have been put in place without the additional pain of uprooting the old architecture and replacing it with something completely new.
Check out what Microsoft Research is doing, plus I don't see you complaining about "copying" when OSS does it.
You're missing the point. It's entities like Microsoft that like to toss around the term "innovate" as a kind of proof against legal entanglements, criticism, and competition. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that everyone innovates to some degree and everyone works off other's ideas. Even Microsoft.
Don't expect OSS to get all wound up about "innovation" and copying. It's not an issue for that camp.
And, frankly, I have to wonder exactly who it's an issue for... and more importantly, why.
FOr example, in my life, there are very few books that I have read in digital format that I have bought to have as a hard copy.
And just how many books is that, exactly? I have over two dozen books in both hardcopy and electronic formats. Some are technical books. The larger percentage is fictional. In some cases, I hunted down an OCR'd version after buying the hardcopy (even hard cover in some cases). In others, I went and picked up a hard copy after having read the digital copy.
By far, the most books I've never purchased are hard copy books.
You see - there's these places that allow you to go, pick a book off the shelf and sit back in comfort to read it. Not the library. The bookstore. Since this practice has lead me to discover that numerous books just aren't worth the asking price to me, by all means... we should look at limiting the practice of having book stores. After all, they *will* interefere with sales.
Forget the number of books I've bought either because I wanted a book and I like the store or have decided that, after having read a portion of the book, it was worth the asking price.
And that's how you play Budget. Everything can be done given the funding. Failure to fund means cutting back. If the powers that be who control the budget really want to avoid it... they cough up more funding. If not - hey.. you did what you could do.
This might be a good time to mention Ear Marking. When Congress passes a budget for NASA, it is not a lumb sum handed over to NASA to do with how they please. Within that sum is smaller chunks of budget that are Ear Marked for certain Pork - failure to comply with the Ear Mark means that budget is lost.
I ran in to an example of this recently. NASA has been reviewing a certain class of software for deployment throughout the Agency. They are doing this with funding provided for that specific area. However, that funding has an Ear Mark. NASA must include a specific vendor's product in their evaluation and if they do not select that product, are required to provide the vendor with a detailed report as to why the product was not selected. This will eventually lead to considerable time (and thus expense) spent to bennefit a commercial, private entity thanks to some Congressman's Pork. In any other case, there would be accusations of kick-backs and reports filed with Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. But this is simply normal business for NASA.
Nowadays pirates are characters in cartoons and adventure films for the family with very little resemblance to actual pirates. Quite a few are anti-heroes (ie. on the bad side, but still "cool") or in some way redeem themselves, and not least of which act a lot less brutal and more honorable than the real thing.
OK. So why use the term "pirate"? Why would content industry representatives classify illegal activity as having something to do with adventure movies and anti-heroes? Are you trying to suggest that the MPAA is suggesting copying the latest Star Wars is exciting and heroic?
The Star Wars marketing was rather interesting this time around. CNN ran all the usual Star Wars news segments ("look at those wacky fans") and some less-usual ones ("everything you need to know to get up to speed on Star Wars lingo"). Discovery Channel dipped in to the pot with Science of Star Wars and their Animal Planet special on Star Wars fauna and their earthly inspirations.
Me, myself... I got two bags of M&Ms. Jedi Mix and Darth mix. I put them in two seperate bowls. Then I mixed them. Stunning Jedi battles did not ensue.
It is a shame that they allow these agencies to recieve funding or for their IS / IT departments to still have jobs.
There's several issues here.
First - the money tends to be tight in government IT. This leads to some impact on hardware but a much, much larger impact on personnel. Government IT shops just don't pay what they should. So you either end up with a staff of the best you could afford (but far from the best) and / or a select few dedicated, really good people who are vastly over-worked.
Secondly - the US Government is the ultimate beuocracy. It rarely resembles a meritocracy in any shape or form. Civil Servents tend to end up in IT positions for any other reason than technical competance. Consequently, IT contracts tend to be fairly inconsistant when it comes to technical performance (although the metrics will always show otherwise).
Finally - this is a security issue. IT shops are concerned about making widgets work, not making them secure. When the pressure is one due to limited funds and limited competance, IT will err on the side of functionality; they'll get a widget running. That tends to tip against the inverse relationship with security.
Having said that... the one thing that I like about that statement is the fact that the Gov't beurocracy lives and dies by its budget. Your group is only as powerfull as your budget makes you. Fat budgets display and bestow power. So affecting an organization's budget is guaranteed to get their attention. The trick would be to do it in a manner that doesn't simply make the problem worse.
One final comment - the US Government just isn't good with Infosec. There are notable exceptions. But as a whole, they make a soft target. Any kiddie who bosts about tagging a.gov is simply showing stupidity. The US Government is not strong in Infosec - but they fully know how to operate Law. Note that the recent stories about arrests and investigations connected with Cisco IOS code leaks didn't happen because of Cisco - they happened because the individual(s) involved also compromised a considerable number of Government systems.
Yeah, it's wrong, but you don't see people getting all fired up about a journalist finding out where some musician (say) lives and taking a few photos.
Dvorak mentioned the photos. He failed to mention the phone numbers and addresses that went with those photos.
But in the Linux world, this kind of activity seems to be taken as conclusive proof that evil Microsoft is attempting to assassinate its opponents.
Care to point to the big discussion about how Microsoft was all behind this? I missed it. I did see some comments about possible connections to SCO and their simular attempts to discredit PJ's work through direct, personal attacks. But by far, I saw much more discussion about MOG taking things too far. Yet Dvorak's attention seems to be on the small, fringe conversation. Wonder why.
Will businesses really care? Will IT managers even be aware of this whole incident? Are they interested in every little squabble within the development team(s) at their proprietary vendors?
Sun never made anyone use it's undocumented classes. It's blatantly obvious when a programmer is using them from the "import sun.xyz.abc", so flame the programmer, not Sun.
When did Microsoft force programmers to use their proprietary extensions to Java? Yet Sun jumped on that. And rightfully so.
Well - according to Microsoft's own press about the viral nature of the GPL, yes... yes, they would. The whole thing. Sweeping like a plague of licensing locusts. First its Windows... then Office... IIS... Exchange... DirectX falls in there somewhere and next thing you know, the xbox. Nothing will be safe.
Granted - it didn't happen with Services For Unix. But hey. Let's not freak out the PR guys, eh?
Others have already touched on the subject of lock-in and its obvious economic advantage. But another reason for this strategy is simply control.
Microsoft always talks about a long-term vision for computing. It's a lot easier to bring about that vision when you directly control the components used to bring about that vision. And that means controlling the implementation of protocols as well as setting defacto standards.
I couldn't see it being in Microsoft's interest to simply hand something as widely used and therefore important as web browsing over the a third party.
Train tracks, especially unprotected tracks in rual contryside, are easy to sabotage, and with grimmer results than network failure, but such incidents are rare.
Train tracks in rural areas aren't immediately accessable by thousands of faceless attackers from a diverse geographic popluation.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple managed to shut down all Apple II clones in the market. They won. And by doing so... they lost the microcomputer market. Keep in mind that they heavily influenced if not started the consumer / business microcomputer market.
IBM was unable to maintain control of their platform. IBM's lost was the market's gain.
I'm not so sure it would have been an overall advantage for Apple to have lost control of their platform. But it might (just might - there's still the issue of the IBM name) have made today's landscape look a bit more interesting.
I would suggest that this is one of the ingredients for zealotry. We all have our favorite tools. And given those tools, we can do Wondrous Things. When you're deprived of those tools, it's like being expected to build a fine cabinet with a 2x4, hammer, and screwdriver.
Little wonder people get a bit excited about the whole selection of tools thing. Especially when they perceive there's an entire sub-industry (marketing) trying to influence whether those prized tools are available or not.
I don't know anyone who's ever claimed to pick a favorite platform just to stick it to another platform's fans. Sure - people get offended or puzzled by zealotry. But who puts down chunks of cash just to upset that know-it-all fat kid?
I never went down the Mac road because I liked the commodity hardware direction happening with the IBM PC compatible crowd. And I think you'll find that is the same reason that Macs ended up in a niche market.
Great point. Keep in mind that, as others have pointed out, this should be applied to anywhere there is a coroporation (and even where corporations aren't directly involved). No specific platform or technology has a monopoly on zealotry (whether you call it that or not). And nobody is beyond criticism.
I've seen pop-unders and ups on Firefox on rare occasion. But I poked around Snopes for a bit and didn't manage to find one.
Maybe AdBlock is doing an exceptional good job (note that I am allowing some of the ads - but few Flash based banners)?
Hmmm. Excellent point.
:)
I suppose it'd be an issue of how important a said platform was to your company and your respective company's financial ability. If you've got the funds, you may end up having developers on staff that are dedicated (to some degree or another) to that platform's development. That allows for less ramp-up time and introduces a greater voice in the development direction.
Of course, this is probably prohibitive to small businesses. Unless they happen to have the talent on staff already, they'd be much more likely to make due with what's coming down the pipe from other's work.
Come to think of it... this sounds rather simular to how the proprietary OTS software market is today.
But at the same time... if that web server has an issue or needs functionality, fixing it or contributing to the introduction of new features can be done on company time. It is in the interest of your employer... and the employers of your OSS co-developers.
I would suggest an extention to this. First, a quick story:
Our environment underwent a major architecture change a couple years ago. Our previous vendor was failing us. Their product didn't scale to our requirements. And the vendor was unresponsive despite the considerable support contract fees we paid annually. I honestly believe they thought we were stuck since they had been, up to this point, the leaders in the market.
So we changed to a new vendor and a new product. This induced a considerable cost to do so. But in the end, we ended up with a MUCH better product with a vendor who, while not cheap, actually produced custom code to support our environment and have even merged that code back in to their main branch (apparently we weren't the only ones needing these changes).
So it IS certainly possible to get a good vendor and good support. But at what cost?
If our architecture had been based on Open Source, we could have taken our current working branch and shopped around for more responsive support. Our origional vendor would have had some additional motivation knowing that we could do this. And if we ended up with a new vendor, it is very possible the changes we needed could have been put in place without the additional pain of uprooting the old architecture and replacing it with something completely new.
You're missing the point. It's entities like Microsoft that like to toss around the term "innovate" as a kind of proof against legal entanglements, criticism, and competition. Meanwhile, they ignore the fact that everyone innovates to some degree and everyone works off other's ideas. Even Microsoft.
Don't expect OSS to get all wound up about "innovation" and copying. It's not an issue for that camp.
And, frankly, I have to wonder exactly who it's an issue for... and more importantly, why.
And just how many books is that, exactly? I have over two dozen books in both hardcopy and electronic formats. Some are technical books. The larger percentage is fictional. In some cases, I hunted down an OCR'd version after buying the hardcopy (even hard cover in some cases). In others, I went and picked up a hard copy after having read the digital copy.
By far, the most books I've never purchased are hard copy books.
You see - there's these places that allow you to go, pick a book off the shelf and sit back in comfort to read it. Not the library. The bookstore. Since this practice has lead me to discover that numerous books just aren't worth the asking price to me, by all means... we should look at limiting the practice of having book stores. After all, they *will* interefere with sales.
Forget the number of books I've bought either because I wanted a book and I like the store or have decided that, after having read a portion of the book, it was worth the asking price.
Apparently they've got a lot of pull.
Dude. You're chipping away at the very foundations of Hollywood! Stop now... or People Magazine will sue you for their lost profits.
And that's how you play Budget. Everything can be done given the funding. Failure to fund means cutting back. If the powers that be who control the budget really want to avoid it... they cough up more funding. If not - hey.. you did what you could do.
This might be a good time to mention Ear Marking. When Congress passes a budget for NASA, it is not a lumb sum handed over to NASA to do with how they please. Within that sum is smaller chunks of budget that are Ear Marked for certain Pork - failure to comply with the Ear Mark means that budget is lost.
I ran in to an example of this recently. NASA has been reviewing a certain class of software for deployment throughout the Agency. They are doing this with funding provided for that specific area. However, that funding has an Ear Mark. NASA must include a specific vendor's product in their evaluation and if they do not select that product, are required to provide the vendor with a detailed report as to why the product was not selected. This will eventually lead to considerable time (and thus expense) spent to bennefit a commercial, private entity thanks to some Congressman's Pork. In any other case, there would be accusations of kick-backs and reports filed with Fraud, Waste, and Abuse. But this is simply normal business for NASA.
OK. So why use the term "pirate"? Why would content industry representatives classify illegal activity as having something to do with adventure movies and anti-heroes? Are you trying to suggest that the MPAA is suggesting copying the latest Star Wars is exciting and heroic?
Where in that quote does it say "theifs using BitTorrent"?
The Star Wars marketing was rather interesting this time around. CNN ran all the usual Star Wars news segments ("look at those wacky fans") and some less-usual ones ("everything you need to know to get up to speed on Star Wars lingo"). Discovery Channel dipped in to the pot with Science of Star Wars and their Animal Planet special on Star Wars fauna and their earthly inspirations.
Me, myself... I got two bags of M&Ms. Jedi Mix and Darth mix. I put them in two seperate bowls. Then I mixed them. Stunning Jedi battles did not ensue.
There's several issues here.
First - the money tends to be tight in government IT. This leads to some impact on hardware but a much, much larger impact on personnel. Government IT shops just don't pay what they should. So you either end up with a staff of the best you could afford (but far from the best) and / or a select few dedicated, really good people who are vastly over-worked.
Secondly - the US Government is the ultimate beuocracy. It rarely resembles a meritocracy in any shape or form. Civil Servents tend to end up in IT positions for any other reason than technical competance. Consequently, IT contracts tend to be fairly inconsistant when it comes to technical performance (although the metrics will always show otherwise).
Finally - this is a security issue. IT shops are concerned about making widgets work, not making them secure. When the pressure is one due to limited funds and limited competance, IT will err on the side of functionality; they'll get a widget running. That tends to tip against the inverse relationship with security.
Having said that... the one thing that I like about that statement is the fact that the Gov't beurocracy lives and dies by its budget. Your group is only as powerfull as your budget makes you. Fat budgets display and bestow power. So affecting an organization's budget is guaranteed to get their attention. The trick would be to do it in a manner that doesn't simply make the problem worse.
One final comment - the US Government just isn't good with Infosec. There are notable exceptions. But as a whole, they make a soft target. Any kiddie who bosts about tagging a
You know, the only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they're too damn greedy.
-- Herbert Hoover
Dvorak mentioned the photos. He failed to mention the phone numbers and addresses that went with those photos.
Care to point to the big discussion about how Microsoft was all behind this? I missed it. I did see some comments about possible connections to SCO and their simular attempts to discredit PJ's work through direct, personal attacks. But by far, I saw much more discussion about MOG taking things too far. Yet Dvorak's attention seems to be on the small, fringe conversation. Wonder why.
Will businesses really care? Will IT managers even be aware of this whole incident? Are they interested in every little squabble within the development team(s) at their proprietary vendors?
It's all noise at the "higher level" view.
When did Microsoft force programmers to use their proprietary extensions to Java? Yet Sun jumped on that. And rightfully so.
It's funny because it's true.
Well - according to Microsoft's own press about the viral nature of the GPL, yes... yes, they would. The whole thing. Sweeping like a plague of licensing locusts. First its Windows... then Office... IIS... Exchange... DirectX falls in there somewhere and next thing you know, the xbox. Nothing will be safe.
Granted - it didn't happen with Services For Unix. But hey. Let's not freak out the PR guys, eh?
I can understand that. I mean, the furniture is probably quite sensitive to manners. You wouldn't want to upset it.
Others have already touched on the subject of lock-in and its obvious economic advantage. But another reason for this strategy is simply control.
Microsoft always talks about a long-term vision for computing. It's a lot easier to bring about that vision when you directly control the components used to bring about that vision. And that means controlling the implementation of protocols as well as setting defacto standards.
I couldn't see it being in Microsoft's interest to simply hand something as widely used and therefore important as web browsing over the a third party.
Train tracks in rural areas aren't immediately accessable by thousands of faceless attackers from a diverse geographic popluation.