If people like you dominate the open source world then Microsoft will continue to be No.1.
Number one at what? Quality? No. Managability? No. Consistency? No. Security? No. Stability? No. Raw number of features? Perhaps. Unneccessary bloat? Certainly. Unfairly obtained market share? Yes, but the market is changing.
The world is catching up with Microsoft. They will be "number one" only a short while more, because lawsuits and emerging competition will eat them up.
I mean, how hard is it to unplug your cable modem and throw a packet sniffer on the network to see what the OS is sending out?
Well, if M$ gets their way with DRM hardware, you will see stuff but never know what it is. They want to make it impossible for you to know what is being "phoned home". Microsoft makes it appear they are acting on behalf of consumers, when they are really just acting for themselves. They use their products as a means for gaining obscene amounts of personal wealth and power. They have no other motive.
Are you trying to tell me you can freely move your adress book from any mail client under Linux to any other? While I'm sure you could find some examples where this is true, it is certainly not guaranteed. If each program uses their only proprietary format, you certainly can't do it. How does Linux help you in this respect?
It is basically trivial to move e-mail between different clients in UNIX/Linux. Why? Standard plain-text file formats based on SMTP. Yup, all my e-mail is just concatenated into one long easily read text file that moves seamlessly between Emacs, Pine, etc. Also, all I have to do to organize my e-mail into folders is to create new files next to the existing one. I can even cut and paste directly if I want to, or I can use regular expressions in Emacs VM to do it all for me. Flexibility is simply not a problem.
This is a common problem with Linux advocates. You say something like that as if everyone should know it.
That's because it took only 15 seconds to learn. The home directory is a central concept in UNIX multi-user environments. Here's a quick tutorial for finding your personal stuff: `cd; ls -a` (or toggle the hidden visible flag in your favorite GUI file manager).
Does this quote in the article seem unusual to anyone?
...[Microsoft] is expected to report a net profit of about $10 billion and revenues of $28.25 billion.
I don't know a great deal about business, but how many companies as big as Microsoft get 1/3 of revenue as profit? That, along with the 40 or so billion in the bank, makes it seem unethical for them to not pay dividends back to their shareholders. Do any other big companies horde their wealth like this?
Ahhh...this is a very incriminating Word document. ...this digital photo of the screen needs to go to the press!
This has been said repeatedly, but they just don't get it: the only way to prevent the "analog hole" is to use wide-scale brain conditioning on the humans, so they feel terrible pain when thinking of side-stepping Microsoft's plans.
The argument that MS could possibly be a small fraction of the entity it is today -- well, it's just plain lame.
It isn't "lame", because my argument is that using another company's success as the basis for your own success is just plain risky. Could Microsoft--or any company--be here today but not here tomorrow? Sure, recent history (Enron, Global Crossing, the dot-bombs, etc.) makes this clear. Microsoft is not immune to the discoveries of corruption (Enron) nor to the market forces (dot-bombs) that can make a company fall.
As far as Java/J2EE goes, it is less risky than.NET, because Sun doesn't have total control over it. Sun's competitors are some of Sun's biggest licensing customers, and there are fewer single points of failure with Java than.NET.
And who said that just because you use.NET your application won't be portable.
Microsoft. It is extremely unlikely that.NET will be any different than prior Microsoft-imposed standards, unless there is a radical turnover of Microsoft's management.
As much as you'd like to think that C/C++ will just transfer from one environment to the other, most good apps require some sort of reworking to take advantage of OS-specific APIs for more than just GUI stuff. I've been doing x-platform development for a while now and C++ makes it easier, but it's not the panacea that you seem to think it is.
I never claimed C++ is a panacea but said that it can allow much less rework when used well (i.e., good C/C++ environments are common, good.NET environments are not). OS-specifics should be contained, so that the rework isn't such that it kills your product. Qt can be a great tool to this end.
.NET simply makes it easier to write the MS-specific portions of you app.
This could be one legitimate use of.NET, where it is peripheral to the rest of your application. Again, my point was about controlling risk..NET is simply inappropriate as the "framework" of an application. It should not be the development tool.
Dozens of hardware platforms? Oh, you mean Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium III Coppermine, Pentium III Xeon, Pentium IV, etc.
Office XP is extremely proprietary; name one component of it that isn't developed and controlled by Microsoft. Conversely, OpenOffice.org is not proprietary; it is released under the GPL and isn't even controlled by Sun.
In the PC world, if it is good, it ends up on the machines, if it is bad, it leaves.
Correction: In the PC world, if Microsoft deems it good, Microsoft buys it, if Microsoft deems it bad, Microsoft crushes it. At best, Microsoft will opt not to buy something but will lead it on until it is good enough to buy and/or then crush.
I need something that will let me run a quality office suite, a standard development environment and all the latest games but not cost me an arm and a leg. The only rational choice for any of those things is a PC running Windows XP.
Don't you mean something providing an office suite with arguably good quality and a proprietary development environment but does cost you an arm and a leg?
It's easier today than ever to use a Mac in a Windows world and to share information. This is true partly because the Internet and e-mail don't distinguish between computing platforms.
Oh boy, does Microsoft hate statements like this:)
....NET is simply the best tool out there for development....
This is true only if you do not care about risk..NET is ruled by Microsoft; what happens when Microsoft is 1% of what it is today? Don't argue back with those "Microsoft is God and is immortal" type arguments, since Microsoft is a company like any other.
If you work on an application that is really important to your company's long-term health, and you want your company to be successful regardless of Microsoft's success, then.NET is simply the worst development tool out there. A well-designed C or C++ application (i.e., modular UI) provides much better risk mitigation, since mature C and C++ environments exist on nearly every available platform. If one platform folds, much of your application should port to an new one trivially, and the rework will likely be in the user interface (a smaller task that dumping a.NET application and starting from scratch).
I have never even thought of support from Microsoft as much of an option. Am I missing something?
I think it really depends on what amount of risk you associate with time lost trying to figure it out yourself.
For example, I have been working in a proprietary development environment (high-end CAD), where the total cost of my software is probably $40,000 (just one seat!). The API documentation is sketchy at times, and our contract is definitely time-constrained. So, is it best for me to burn $100/hour of the contract to figure stuff out, or should I call up our support line and get an expert's answer quickly? In my case, the our software vendor is pretty good, and the support is well worth it.
The same is true for some super-high-end server installations. I believe Sun sells a support option, where Sun actively monitors your servers. If something goes wrong, they know before you do, and begin figuring out a resolution! Is it possible to beat this? Again, a lot is at stake, here.
I don't have experience with M$ support, so I'll stop talking, now.
Okay. I really wasn't aware of this history behind the word; my exposure to hillbillies has mainly been through mediocre TV shows (thus the notion of it being a popular sterotype and not an ethnic slur).
was there any open-source equivalent to Access in, say, 1993? I think not. There isn't one today
Well, open source databases have been around a long time. PostgreSQL has its roots in the late 1980's, for example. Also, the reason there isn't an open source equivalent to Access, is that open source developers quickly realized that Access is pretty much a joke and went to work on real RDBMS systems like PostgreSQL.
Re:Us techies know how to deal with it ...
on
Version Fatigue
·
· Score: 1
Actually, if you sort on max uptime, you see that 49 of the top 50 uptimes run some variant of UNIX. There is one entry for Windows 2000, but its average is only nine days.
Rambus should be a rallying cry, and it should be the pilot case for testing the resurrection of the corporate death penalty.
What do you mean by "resurrection"? Anyway, how does one kill a corporation? You can't shoot it or behead it, since corporations are really networks of corrupt humans. If a corporate brand becomes useless, the humans would regroup under another brand (think shady marketing companie whose name changes every two weeks because they keep spoiling their name).
Wintel: a few years across a very small part of their market.
Companies like Sun and SGI will be able to use arguments about maturity and experience for a while, because the arguments are simply true. However, after a few more years, the 64-bit market will become very interesting with lots of competition from Intel, as long as Itanium doesn't become the Itanic. Personally, I really want companies like Sun and SGI to be successful (their hardware is awesome), but I fear that commoditization of 64-bit computers will take its toll.
What first-order things will traditional 64-bit computer makers compete on? 64-bit address space? No. Raw CPU speed? Probably not.
Instead, they will have to find new ways to differentiate themselves. For example, Sun continues to integrate more reliability and availability features into their servers. Unfortunately, it is harder to communicate to the "masses" that such features even exist, because the "masses" are still stuck on the first-order things: speed and address space. Eventually, I think the 64-bit market will become like today's 32-bit market with 64-bit "Cheap Crap"-brand wintel servers dominating over more worthwhile, but more expensive, 64-bit servers from Sun, et. al.
How is "hillbilly" ethnic in nature? It isn't, because it is a popular stereotype that doesn't apply to any specific group of people (if you disagree, please find where the hillbillies live and point them out). You should have argued that I inappropriately used a stereotype, instead of trying to make this more than it is.
Point is (there is a point) that there is a lot of horrible stuff in life and books.
And there always will be. However, I prefer the optimistic point of view that a peaceful civilization really is possible, and the Lion King just doesn't seem to fit well with this goal (did Simba feel bad at the end of the movie?).
While the Lion King was technically very well done, I still find it disturbing that all our kids were basically exposed to a brutal story of murder and murderous revenge. The story of the Lion King is really quite awful (e.g., "yes, Little Tommy, Simba did just push that other lion off of a cliff to kill him."). I guess this sort of "hillbilly justice" is what Disney wants our kids to learn.
In all seriousness, what you save in open source software you usually lose in support costs.
This is only true if your staff's only experience is with M$ Windows.
Moving between UNIX and Linux really isn't difficult, because you tend to think in terms of DNS, NFS, Sendmail, etc., not UNIX vs. Linux. The relatively small differences between UNIX and Linux are generally quickly resolved with the `man` command. Taking notes along the way helps, too.
And why does having an MCSE make a person qualified to solve networking problems? A properly designed network includes no Microsoft products (allowing only for the occasional Windows desktop).
If this statistic is accurate, it would be interesting if there are any studies linking soft drink consumption in Mexico with diabetes and obesity in Mexico. 462 bottles per year means over 300 extra and non-nutritional calories per day, which also can indicate malnutrition or obesity and is certainly not a good thing.
Hmmm...the malls I've been to make it look like manatees are making a solid comeback. While it is a fact that the USA is getting fatter, it is also a fact that another segment of the population is getting fitter, causing a fitness gulf. From what I've seen, however, the USA is getting fatter than fitter, on average. Perhaps your mall is near a Miami or L.A. beach, where only "hot chicks" are allowed, or perhaps all those chicks are 10 years old and haven't had a chance to get fat, yet?
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If people like you dominate the open source world then Microsoft will continue to be No.1.
Number one at what? Quality? No. Managability? No. Consistency? No. Security? No. Stability? No. Raw number of features? Perhaps. Unneccessary bloat? Certainly. Unfairly obtained market share? Yes, but the market is changing.
The world is catching up with Microsoft. They will be "number one" only a short while more, because lawsuits and emerging competition will eat them up.
I mean, how hard is it to unplug your cable modem and throw a packet sniffer on the network to see what the OS is sending out?
Well, if M$ gets their way with DRM hardware, you will see stuff but never know what it is. They want to make it impossible for you to know what is being "phoned home". Microsoft makes it appear they are acting on behalf of consumers, when they are really just acting for themselves. They use their products as a means for gaining obscene amounts of personal wealth and power. They have no other motive.
Are you trying to tell me you can freely move your adress book from any mail client under Linux to any other? While I'm sure you could find some examples where this is true, it is certainly not guaranteed. If each program uses their only proprietary format, you certainly can't do it. How does Linux help you in this respect?
It is basically trivial to move e-mail between different clients in UNIX/Linux. Why? Standard plain-text file formats based on SMTP. Yup, all my e-mail is just concatenated into one long easily read text file that moves seamlessly between Emacs, Pine, etc. Also, all I have to do to organize my e-mail into folders is to create new files next to the existing one. I can even cut and paste directly if I want to, or I can use regular expressions in Emacs VM to do it all for me. Flexibility is simply not a problem.
This is a common problem with Linux advocates. You say something like that as if everyone should know it.
That's because it took only 15 seconds to learn. The home directory is a central concept in UNIX multi-user environments. Here's a quick tutorial for finding your personal stuff: `cd; ls -a` (or toggle the hidden visible flag in your favorite GUI file manager).
Does this quote in the article seem unusual to anyone?
...[Microsoft] is expected to report a net profit of about $10 billion and revenues of $28.25 billion.
I don't know a great deal about business, but how many companies as big as Microsoft get 1/3 of revenue as profit? That, along with the 40 or so billion in the bank, makes it seem unethical for them to not pay dividends back to their shareholders. Do any other big companies horde their wealth like this?
I suppose they'll have to ban film cameras...
And photo paper, since I suppose it is possible to develop it just by pressing it against the screen (crude, but no camera necessary).
Ahhh...this is a very incriminating Word document. ...this digital photo of the screen needs to go to the press!
This has been said repeatedly, but they just don't get it: the only way to prevent the "analog hole" is to use wide-scale brain conditioning on the humans, so they feel terrible pain when thinking of side-stepping Microsoft's plans.
The argument that MS could possibly be a small fraction of the entity it is today -- well, it's just plain lame.
.NET, because Sun doesn't have total control over it. Sun's competitors are some of Sun's biggest licensing customers, and there are fewer single points of failure with Java than .NET.
.NET your application won't be portable.
.NET will be any different than prior Microsoft-imposed standards, unless there is a radical turnover of Microsoft's management.
.NET environments are not). OS-specifics should be contained, so that the rework isn't such that it kills your product. Qt can be a great tool to this end.
.NET simply makes it easier to write the MS-specific portions of you app.
.NET, where it is peripheral to the rest of your application. Again, my point was about controlling risk. .NET is simply inappropriate as the "framework" of an application. It should not be the development tool.
It isn't "lame", because my argument is that using another company's success as the basis for your own success is just plain risky. Could Microsoft--or any company--be here today but not here tomorrow? Sure, recent history (Enron, Global Crossing, the dot-bombs, etc.) makes this clear. Microsoft is not immune to the discoveries of corruption (Enron) nor to the market forces (dot-bombs) that can make a company fall.
As far as Java/J2EE goes, it is less risky than
And who said that just because you use
Microsoft. It is extremely unlikely that
As much as you'd like to think that C/C++ will just transfer from one environment to the other, most good apps require some sort of reworking to take advantage of OS-specific APIs for more than just GUI stuff. I've been doing x-platform development for a while now and C++ makes it easier, but it's not the panacea that you seem to think it is.
I never claimed C++ is a panacea but said that it can allow much less rework when used well (i.e., good C/C++ environments are common, good
This could be one legitimate use of
Dozens of hardware platforms? Oh, you mean Pentium, Pentium MMX, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium III Coppermine, Pentium III Xeon, Pentium IV, etc.
Office XP is extremely proprietary; name one component of it that isn't developed and controlled by Microsoft. Conversely, OpenOffice.org is not proprietary; it is released under the GPL and isn't even controlled by Sun.
In the PC world, if it is good, it ends up on the machines, if it is bad, it leaves.
Correction: In the PC world, if Microsoft deems it good, Microsoft buys it, if Microsoft deems it bad, Microsoft crushes it. At best, Microsoft will opt not to buy something but will lead it on until it is good enough to buy and/or then crush.
Outlook is proprietary poop (shit that ain't free).
I need something that will let me run a quality office suite, a standard development environment and all the latest games but not cost me an arm and a leg. The only rational choice for any of those things is a PC running Windows XP.
Don't you mean something providing an office suite with arguably good quality and a proprietary development environment but does cost you an arm and a leg?
From Mr. Mossberg's WSJ article:
:)
It's easier today than ever to use a Mac in a Windows world and to share information. This is true partly because the Internet and e-mail don't distinguish between computing platforms.
Oh boy, does Microsoft hate statements like this
... .NET is simply the best tool out there for development....
.NET is ruled by Microsoft; what happens when Microsoft is 1% of what it is today? Don't argue back with those "Microsoft is God and is immortal" type arguments, since Microsoft is a company like any other.
.NET is simply the worst development tool out there. A well-designed C or C++ application (i.e., modular UI) provides much better risk mitigation, since mature C and C++ environments exist on nearly every available platform. If one platform folds, much of your application should port to an new one trivially, and the rework will likely be in the user interface (a smaller task that dumping a .NET application and starting from scratch).
This is true only if you do not care about risk.
If you work on an application that is really important to your company's long-term health, and you want your company to be successful regardless of Microsoft's success, then
I have never even thought of support from Microsoft as much of an option. Am I missing something?
I think it really depends on what amount of risk you associate with time lost trying to figure it out yourself.
For example, I have been working in a proprietary development environment (high-end CAD), where the total cost of my software is probably $40,000 (just one seat!). The API documentation is sketchy at times, and our contract is definitely time-constrained. So, is it best for me to burn $100/hour of the contract to figure stuff out, or should I call up our support line and get an expert's answer quickly? In my case, the our software vendor is pretty good, and the support is well worth it.
The same is true for some super-high-end server installations. I believe Sun sells a support option, where Sun actively monitors your servers. If something goes wrong, they know before you do, and begin figuring out a resolution! Is it possible to beat this? Again, a lot is at stake, here.
I don't have experience with M$ support, so I'll stop talking, now.
Okay. I really wasn't aware of this history behind the word; my exposure to hillbillies has mainly been through mediocre TV shows (thus the notion of it being a popular sterotype and not an ethnic slur).
was there any open-source equivalent to Access in, say, 1993? I think not. There isn't one today
Well, open source databases have been around a long time. PostgreSQL has its roots in the late 1980's, for example. Also, the reason there isn't an open source equivalent to Access, is that open source developers quickly realized that Access is pretty much a joke and went to work on real RDBMS systems like PostgreSQL.
Actually, if you sort on max uptime, you see that 49 of the top 50 uptimes run some variant of UNIX. There is one entry for Windows 2000, but its average is only nine days.
Rambus should be a rallying cry, and it should be the pilot case for testing the resurrection of the corporate death penalty.
What do you mean by "resurrection"? Anyway, how does one kill a corporation? You can't shoot it or behead it, since corporations are really networks of corrupt humans. If a corporate brand becomes useless, the humans would regroup under another brand (think shady marketing companie whose name changes every two weeks because they keep spoiling their name).
UNIX: about a decade across their whole market.
Wintel: a few years across a very small part of their market.
Companies like Sun and SGI will be able to use arguments about maturity and experience for a while, because the arguments are simply true. However, after a few more years, the 64-bit market will become very interesting with lots of competition from Intel, as long as Itanium doesn't become the Itanic. Personally, I really want companies like Sun and SGI to be successful (their hardware is awesome), but I fear that commoditization of 64-bit computers will take its toll.
What first-order things will traditional 64-bit computer makers compete on? 64-bit address space? No. Raw CPU speed? Probably not.
Instead, they will have to find new ways to differentiate themselves. For example, Sun continues to integrate more reliability and availability features into their servers. Unfortunately, it is harder to communicate to the "masses" that such features even exist, because the "masses" are still stuck on the first-order things: speed and address space. Eventually, I think the 64-bit market will become like today's 32-bit market with 64-bit "Cheap Crap"-brand wintel servers dominating over more worthwhile, but more expensive, 64-bit servers from Sun, et. al.
How is "hillbilly" ethnic in nature? It isn't, because it is a popular stereotype that doesn't apply to any specific group of people (if you disagree, please find where the hillbillies live and point them out). You should have argued that I inappropriately used a stereotype, instead of trying to make this more than it is.
Point is (there is a point) that there is a lot of horrible stuff in life and books.
And there always will be. However, I prefer the optimistic point of view that a peaceful civilization really is possible, and the Lion King just doesn't seem to fit well with this goal (did Simba feel bad at the end of the movie?).
I have found this to be very effective.
...Lion King, which was a pretty good flick IMHO.
While the Lion King was technically very well done, I still find it disturbing that all our kids were basically exposed to a brutal story of murder and murderous revenge. The story of the Lion King is really quite awful (e.g., "yes, Little Tommy, Simba did just push that other lion off of a cliff to kill him."). I guess this sort of "hillbilly justice" is what Disney wants our kids to learn.
In all seriousness, what you save in open source software you usually lose in support costs.
This is only true if your staff's only experience is with M$ Windows.
Moving between UNIX and Linux really isn't difficult, because you tend to think in terms of DNS, NFS, Sendmail, etc., not UNIX vs. Linux. The relatively small differences between UNIX and Linux are generally quickly resolved with the `man` command. Taking notes along the way helps, too.
And why does having an MCSE make a person qualified to solve networking problems? A properly designed network includes no Microsoft products (allowing only for the occasional Windows desktop).
If this statistic is accurate, it would be interesting if there are any studies linking soft drink consumption in Mexico with diabetes and obesity in Mexico. 462 bottles per year means over 300 extra and non-nutritional calories per day, which also can indicate malnutrition or obesity and is certainly not a good thing.
Hmmm...the malls I've been to make it look like manatees are making a solid comeback. While it is a fact that the USA is getting fatter, it is also a fact that another segment of the population is getting fitter, causing a fitness gulf. From what I've seen, however, the USA is getting fatter than fitter, on average. Perhaps your mall is near a Miami or L.A. beach, where only "hot chicks" are allowed, or perhaps all those chicks are 10 years old and haven't had a chance to get fat, yet?