The chart you link to is pretend to support the article. They don't have the divisions right - there is no "Office" division at MS. Even though they don't have it right, it still supports my argument - it shows Server and Tools doing more business than Windows. The "Business" division includes Office (with Project and Visio) and the ERP products - Dynamics and CRM. Here is a better breakdown of revenue by division.
My point was, Windows and Office do not represent anywhere near 95% of revenue, as the post I was responding to claimed. If you tease all these data sources, it looks like Server and Tools and the ERP/CRM portion of "Business" division represnts over a third of MS revenue.
I get your sentiment, but you're just pulling numbers out of the sky now. Microsoft makes a huge chunk of cash from Server, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, etc and the associated CALs for those products. They are also becoming a force in the small to mid-size ERP world with Dynamics. And you can't swing a dead cat without hitting another MS CRM installation.
As anyone that does anything near corporate IT shops knows, Microsoft's presence in the back office is not a "hobby."
You would think it is obvious but I have had the debate a few times recently with Slashdot-type people about what Google really is. It is a fascinating discussion.
If I am in an airport using my netbook with Chrome OS and the Chrome browser, checking gmail and Google Docs, and I log into Facebook on my Android phone (I use an iPhone, but play along), there will come a day when an ad will pop up, "hey bazonic, like that cougar in the blue dress sitting across the aisle from you? she works in technology too, a DB guru to be exact. wanna start a chat?" I look up and she's on her Android phone too.
Google will drive the Minority Report-type world were are entering. There will be a ton of useful things that come from that world. It's spooky to be sure, but it's going to interesting to watch.
Chrome is Google's bid to change the browser market to make it a better platform for their core business, web applications.
Web applications are not their core business. Everything Google does - search, mobile data centers, Android, IPTV, Chrome, and yes, web apps, are all funnels and compliments to the thing that drives their cashflow - advertising. Everything they do is an effort to get a specific, targeted ad in front of your eyeballs. They do a lot of cool projects and experimenting, and from that other things will grow, but it all comes back to ads.
Aside from pointing out the flaws in your analogy, and the fact a patch was released four months before this exploit arrived, I think you are overlooking the massive systemic benefits of homogeny.
One could argue that computing and the Internet would not be as ubiquitous as they are today without having had a defacto standard. There is an even stronger argument at the cost savings to businesses and governments in not having to train and retrain new employees on how to use numerous computer systems.
And as far as "companies getting taken offline," there is no excuse for leaving production systems unpatched for four months. Microsoft could not make it easier to apply security updates unless they came onsite and installed them for you. That's not as much a convicted monopolist issue as it is shoddy, lazy network management.
Totally. This is reason we need sensible regulations. History shows us that when humans are left to their own devices and money is involved, we cannot be trusted. Greed must recognized and factored into our systems of checks and balances, and not just in the finacial industry, but any place money and power are involved.
I'm not talking about the CIA or the NSA, or even my ISP. A potential employer, or anyone for that matter, cannot find me on Facebook by searching my real name. That is all I'm trying to prevent. Someone who knows what I look like and knows my friends and family could easily triangulate my identity. Those are not the people from whom I'm trying to protect my privacy.
Would a human that knows what I look like be able to match my account to my real identity? Absolutely. Would a marketer who has been sold the FB database be able to? No. Like I said, they can know a great deal about my pseudonym, but tying that data to my real identity would currently be impossible without a human (one that knows what I look like) getting involved.
This is precisely the reason my gf and I use pseudonyms on Facebook that are linked to throw away email accounts. My friends and family in meatspace know my handle, and that's all I really want on my friend list. Facebook can still gather a lot of data about me, but it cannot be connected to my real identity. My big fear was having potential employers or clients getting a peek behind the curtain into my real world, and that just can't happen.
I wonder how many bright 18 year olds will have political or high end corporate careers derailed because of data indiscretions as a youth. I'm glad this wasn't around when I was kid because all my youthful stupidity would have been captured forever.
That was my first thought too - the poor bastards who are managing institutions with hundreds of servers are going to have to migrate, test, tweak/rewrite all their apps in less than six months? IT Confucius say: technology timelines handed down by government are doomed to fail.
This is good advice and the first post that actually adresses the OP's question.
I would add that a good remote control setup is important for those times when a shortcut gets accidentally renamed or a menu gets dragged off an app. I also highly recommend formatting with a clean install of Windows and not an OEM version. Dell, HP, Sony, et. al. all have tons of "helper ware" that just seems to get in the way and cause confusion.
Probably safe to assume a new hole was found in something windows-ish and is making the rounds...
Yep. It's called "users." If I had a dollar for every time a relative or friend downloaded free animated smileys or a free game that completely compromised their system, I'd be able to, well, buy an iPod Shuffle. "Why is my system running so slow?" And that's just the stuff they invited into their machines.
It seems to me that the youth of our (US) society respond best to that which is instant. Instead of having him spend two hours trying to compile something that will return Hello world!, start him out with web languages, where he will be able to see the results, and modifications immediately. By learning some interface coding (HTML, JavaScript, PHP, etc) he will open doors that could lead to a number of places.
He may become fascinated with web infrastructure, or databases, or routing, or security, or more complex programming. Working the web would also allow him to persue other passions - for expamle, installing and configuring an OSS CMS, then tweaking the interface for a local skateboard park or chess club or whatever. Social networking web tools might be a fun place for a kid to start hacking.
The key is to keep it simple and instantly rewarding in the beginning. And what will give a kid more cred with his buddies - building an app that figures out phone charges across time zones (exercise 2, after Hello world! in my 101 class) in C++ or really pimping out his MySpace page? Had I started with C++ I would not have gone much further. But that's me. Some of y'all are crazy that way.
A 3G version will eliminate one of the reasons I don't own one. I would love an iPhone, but the things that hold me back now are: 1) AT&T and 2) not being able to play nice with Exchange. Our company uses AT&T for our BBs and it is horrendous in our major metropolitan area. And not having corporate messaging on my phone is just not an option.
Let the iPhone talk to Exchange and we'd see 10M in sales very quickly. Of course it's all part of the Apple plan. They'll release to corporations when sales are really slow.
Well, I do have major issues, but I don't think that's what you meant.
I can take 5 minutes, or 5 hours to read the electricity bill, if I had to. The problem is, which you seemed to miss in my post, our building gets one bill for electricity. Inside that building we have a dozen heavy printing presses, cardboard crusher, electric lift trucks that get charged nightly, lights, security system, etc. etc., and yes, a data center.
It's all on one bill. How the fuck am I suppposed to tell how much the DC is using by looking at the bill? We'd have to rewire and split our bill. That would take more than five minutes. That is what I don't have time for. Especially for some voluntary government survey.
but what's wrong with reading the electric bill for the place?
That would work well for DCs that are self contained. Most of the DCs I've been in are part of a campus or a building that is all on the same grid, so determining what is being used just by the DC would be a project.
Thus far, only 54 data centers have signed up, which suggests that few data center operators are eager to tell the government exactly how much energy they are using.
I don't know about you, but our business, and I would venture to guess many US businesses, are understaffed and over worked. If someone came to me asking for this data, I'd have to tell them to take a number and get in line behind the 4,397 other projects that are in my queue. The tinfoil hat guys might not want to share it because of privacy, and I get that, but for us it would really be a time issue.
I agree completely with the Section/Category madness in Joomla. I always just create one section (container) and put categories in there, which allows for more freedom. Version 1.5 was supposed to do away with this and reorganize everything, but I haven't worked with it yet.
Having said that, if you can get through understanding how that works, Joomla does indeed rock the free world. In addition to numerous themes, it is not hard to create your own if you know a little CSS, and php. Used to be back in the day you could spot Joomla sites a mile away, they just had that template look. There are now a lot of gorgeous, boutique-looking sites that are running on Joomla and you can't tell.
If I could reliably get MySQL talking to my ERP system's MS SQL, I would be building our entire web infrastructure at work around Joomla.
I'd like to see an airtight argument that practical powered armor is, net, more effective than an ROV
I think the question becomes, "what is practical powered armor?"
As it stands, ROV is useful in a limited roles. They have performed well in the air, and we're getting closer to ground vehicles, but on the human-level, there are situations where it is just not practical.
Going house to house, room to room in urban operations requires going over a large number of different surfaces; stairs, jumping fences, crawl spaces, etc. Same with a jungle operation. The current ROVs, which run on tracks, just don't have this capability. Assuming we could make a humanoid ROV, I would agree with you. The operator would wear an apparatus that would essentially put him/her in the ROV with sight, sounds, and pressure feedback (if I put more weight on this floorboard, I will fall through). By the time we can do all that we'll probably be talking about neural implants for the operators or semi-autonomus, self-aware AI ROVs.
"Open source is like a rising tide. You either float with it or drown."
That's a great sound bite, but in reality, the big money-making technology is closed. Google, while being a great OSS advocate, will never open source what truly makes them money - their search algorithm. Apple, Adobe, SAP, Symantech, MS, etc, are not going to open their cash cows any time soon and are floating just fine.
OSS is not going away, but to say you have to open or drown is hyperbole. There is room, and reason, for both.
This is so true. Not until WiMax (insert competing technology here) is online nation-wide and radio is IP-based will Internet radio be viable. I'm thinking most media will delivered over IP (in your car or portable player) some day, which will actually help the little guys. It will look a lot like Podcasting, but will be live - we'll have millions of stations to choose from and not be beholden to Clear Channel, et al.
I currently have Sirius and love it on my ~1 hour commute, but it is a pain in the ass when at home and unusable at work as I have an inside office. The content is great, but the delivery mechanism is the bottleneck. I think Google is going to make it all better (by lighting the wireless lamp) as they want AdSense on IP TV and radio, but that's another topic.
If I buy a Ford without an anti-theft system and my car gets stolen, is that Ford's fault?
I get your analogy but don't quite agree with it. MS provides bug fixes for free (you can certainly question the timeliness/quality of those fixes). My experience has been that if you have Windows up to date, don't click on anything stupid in your inbox, and don't crawl around in the underbelly of the web clicking "Ok" to every Free Poker! pop-up and free smiley face ad, you'll be fine.
Comparing MS AV software to warranty auto work is not accurate. The hotfixes and patches for the OS are their warranty work. AV software is more like getting an after-market alarm system/lojack installed in your car. You could argue that the manufacturer should have included it with the car, but faulting them for selling it at all is misplaced, IMHO.
Get the political support you need from the top and then start to implement.
IT Confucius say: implement now, apologize later. They will thank you for it in the end. All this talk of getting approval is appropriate, but if something unapproved and potentially dangerous is inhabiting my network, it gets shut down. I'll ask questions (or ask for approval) later.
I am so sick of the financial ass pounding I take from MS, I keep thinking about how to get Linux into my office. A firewall/gateway? Sure. A Web server, absolutely. But in an accounting firm, we have no choices for our audit, depreciation, tax and practice management software. They only come in Windows flavor.
We use Citrix Metaframe, which works awesome over skinny pipes and on crappy hardware. AFAIK, there in no ICA client for Linux. Had the judge made one simple order...open the ICA client source (or port it)...I could keep a couple 2K servers and run Linux on all the desktops and still use our Win32 apps that we have to use. I think we'd see Linux sprouting up on office desktops everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Once we have e-IDs and the children are protected, the next logical step is to hold elections online.
Nothing could go wrong with that.
The chart you link to is pretend to support the article. They don't have the divisions right - there is no "Office" division at MS. Even though they don't have it right, it still supports my argument - it shows Server and Tools doing more business than Windows. The "Business" division includes Office (with Project and Visio) and the ERP products - Dynamics and CRM. Here is a better breakdown of revenue by division.
My point was, Windows and Office do not represent anywhere near 95% of revenue, as the post I was responding to claimed. If you tease all these data sources, it looks like Server and Tools and the ERP/CRM portion of "Business" division represnts over a third of MS revenue.
Wow.
I get your sentiment, but you're just pulling numbers out of the sky now. Microsoft makes a huge chunk of cash from Server, SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, etc and the associated CALs for those products. They are also becoming a force in the small to mid-size ERP world with Dynamics. And you can't swing a dead cat without hitting another MS CRM installation.
As anyone that does anything near corporate IT shops knows, Microsoft's presence in the back office is not a "hobby."
You would think it is obvious but I have had the debate a few times recently with Slashdot-type people about what Google really is. It is a fascinating discussion.
If I am in an airport using my netbook with Chrome OS and the Chrome browser, checking gmail and Google Docs, and I log into Facebook on my Android phone (I use an iPhone, but play along), there will come a day when an ad will pop up, "hey bazonic, like that cougar in the blue dress sitting across the aisle from you? she works in technology too, a DB guru to be exact. wanna start a chat?" I look up and she's on her Android phone too.
Google will drive the Minority Report-type world were are entering. There will be a ton of useful things that come from that world. It's spooky to be sure, but it's going to interesting to watch.
Chrome is Google's bid to change the browser market to make it a better platform for their core business, web applications.
Web applications are not their core business. Everything Google does - search, mobile data centers, Android, IPTV, Chrome, and yes, web apps, are all funnels and compliments to the thing that drives their cashflow - advertising. Everything they do is an effort to get a specific, targeted ad in front of your eyeballs. They do a lot of cool projects and experimenting, and from that other things will grow, but it all comes back to ads.
Aside from pointing out the flaws in your analogy, and the fact a patch was released four months before this exploit arrived, I think you are overlooking the massive systemic benefits of homogeny.
One could argue that computing and the Internet would not be as ubiquitous as they are today without having had a defacto standard. There is an even stronger argument at the cost savings to businesses and governments in not having to train and retrain new employees on how to use numerous computer systems.
And as far as "companies getting taken offline," there is no excuse for leaving production systems unpatched for four months. Microsoft could not make it easier to apply security updates unless they came onsite and installed them for you. That's not as much a convicted monopolist issue as it is shoddy, lazy network management.
Totally. This is reason we need sensible regulations. History shows us that when humans are left to their own devices and money is involved, we cannot be trusted. Greed must recognized and factored into our systems of checks and balances, and not just in the finacial industry, but any place money and power are involved.
I think you missed the spirit of my post.
I'm not talking about the CIA or the NSA, or even my ISP. A potential employer, or anyone for that matter, cannot find me on Facebook by searching my real name. That is all I'm trying to prevent. Someone who knows what I look like and knows my friends and family could easily triangulate my identity. Those are not the people from whom I'm trying to protect my privacy.
Would a human that knows what I look like be able to match my account to my real identity? Absolutely. Would a marketer who has been sold the FB database be able to? No. Like I said, they can know a great deal about my pseudonym, but tying that data to my real identity would currently be impossible without a human (one that knows what I look like) getting involved.
This is precisely the reason my gf and I use pseudonyms on Facebook that are linked to throw away email accounts. My friends and family in meatspace know my handle, and that's all I really want on my friend list. Facebook can still gather a lot of data about me, but it cannot be connected to my real identity. My big fear was having potential employers or clients getting a peek behind the curtain into my real world, and that just can't happen.
I wonder how many bright 18 year olds will have political or high end corporate careers derailed because of data indiscretions as a youth. I'm glad this wasn't around when I was kid because all my youthful stupidity would have been captured forever.
That was my first thought too - the poor bastards who are managing institutions with hundreds of servers are going to have to migrate, test, tweak/rewrite all their apps in less than six months? IT Confucius say: technology timelines handed down by government are doomed to fail.
Great intent, but this isn't going to be pretty.
This is good advice and the first post that actually adresses the OP's question.
I would add that a good remote control setup is important for those times when a shortcut gets accidentally renamed or a menu gets dragged off an app. I also highly recommend formatting with a clean install of Windows and not an OEM version. Dell, HP, Sony, et. al. all have tons of "helper ware" that just seems to get in the way and cause confusion.
Yep. It's called "users." If I had a dollar for every time a relative or friend downloaded free animated smileys or a free game that completely compromised their system, I'd be able to, well, buy an iPod Shuffle. "Why is my system running so slow?" And that's just the stuff they invited into their machines.
It seems to me that the youth of our (US) society respond best to that which is instant. Instead of having him spend two hours trying to compile something that will return Hello world!, start him out with web languages, where he will be able to see the results, and modifications immediately. By learning some interface coding (HTML, JavaScript, PHP, etc) he will open doors that could lead to a number of places.
He may become fascinated with web infrastructure, or databases, or routing, or security, or more complex programming. Working the web would also allow him to persue other passions - for expamle, installing and configuring an OSS CMS, then tweaking the interface for a local skateboard park or chess club or whatever. Social networking web tools might be a fun place for a kid to start hacking.
The key is to keep it simple and instantly rewarding in the beginning. And what will give a kid more cred with his buddies - building an app that figures out phone charges across time zones (exercise 2, after Hello world! in my 101 class) in C++ or really pimping out his MySpace page? Had I started with C++ I would not have gone much further. But that's me. Some of y'all are crazy that way.
... and email the files to yourself. We'll see what "unlimited" really means.
I kid, I kid. I'm guessing that would violate the terms, and even with a thick pipe at home, it would take a long time to upload that much data.
RAID and DVD are good suggestions as many have pointed out. Creating a second set of DVDs to store offsite is probably good policy too.
Funny because it's true.
A 3G version will eliminate one of the reasons I don't own one. I would love an iPhone, but the things that hold me back now are: 1) AT&T and 2) not being able to play nice with Exchange. Our company uses AT&T for our BBs and it is horrendous in our major metropolitan area. And not having corporate messaging on my phone is just not an option.
Let the iPhone talk to Exchange and we'd see 10M in sales very quickly. Of course it's all part of the Apple plan. They'll release to corporations when sales are really slow.
Well, I do have major issues, but I don't think that's what you meant.
I can take 5 minutes, or 5 hours to read the electricity bill, if I had to. The problem is, which you seemed to miss in my post, our building gets one bill for electricity. Inside that building we have a dozen heavy printing presses, cardboard crusher, electric lift trucks that get charged nightly, lights, security system, etc. etc., and yes, a data center.
It's all on one bill. How the fuck am I suppposed to tell how much the DC is using by looking at the bill? We'd have to rewire and split our bill. That would take more than five minutes. That is what I don't have time for. Especially for some voluntary government survey.
That would work well for DCs that are self contained. Most of the DCs I've been in are part of a campus or a building that is all on the same grid, so determining what is being used just by the DC would be a project.
I don't know about you, but our business, and I would venture to guess many US businesses, are understaffed and over worked. If someone came to me asking for this data, I'd have to tell them to take a number and get in line behind the 4,397 other projects that are in my queue. The tinfoil hat guys might not want to share it because of privacy, and I get that, but for us it would really be a time issue.
I agree completely with the Section/Category madness in Joomla. I always just create one section (container) and put categories in there, which allows for more freedom. Version 1.5 was supposed to do away with this and reorganize everything, but I haven't worked with it yet.
Having said that, if you can get through understanding how that works, Joomla does indeed rock the free world. In addition to numerous themes, it is not hard to create your own if you know a little CSS, and php. Used to be back in the day you could spot Joomla sites a mile away, they just had that template look. There are now a lot of gorgeous, boutique-looking sites that are running on Joomla and you can't tell.
If I could reliably get MySQL talking to my ERP system's MS SQL, I would be building our entire web infrastructure at work around Joomla.
>> It's really difficult to claim anything can be faster than keyboard
I take it you are not a user of Photoshop (insert favorite image/video editing software here).
I think the question becomes, "what is practical powered armor?"
As it stands, ROV is useful in a limited roles. They have performed well in the air, and we're getting closer to ground vehicles, but on the human-level, there are situations where it is just not practical.
Going house to house, room to room in urban operations requires going over a large number of different surfaces; stairs, jumping fences, crawl spaces, etc. Same with a jungle operation. The current ROVs, which run on tracks, just don't have this capability. Assuming we could make a humanoid ROV, I would agree with you. The operator would wear an apparatus that would essentially put him/her in the ROV with sight, sounds, and pressure feedback (if I put more weight on this floorboard, I will fall through). By the time we can do all that we'll probably be talking about neural implants for the operators or semi-autonomus, self-aware AI ROVs.
That's a great sound bite, but in reality, the big money-making technology is closed. Google, while being a great OSS advocate, will never open source what truly makes them money - their search algorithm. Apple, Adobe, SAP, Symantech, MS, etc, are not going to open their cash cows any time soon and are floating just fine.
OSS is not going away, but to say you have to open or drown is hyperbole. There is room, and reason, for both.
This is so true. Not until WiMax (insert competing technology here) is online nation-wide and radio is IP-based will Internet radio be viable. I'm thinking most media will delivered over IP (in your car or portable player) some day, which will actually help the little guys. It will look a lot like Podcasting, but will be live - we'll have millions of stations to choose from and not be beholden to Clear Channel, et al.
I currently have Sirius and love it on my ~1 hour commute, but it is a pain in the ass when at home and unusable at work as I have an inside office. The content is great, but the delivery mechanism is the bottleneck. I think Google is going to make it all better (by lighting the wireless lamp) as they want AdSense on IP TV and radio, but that's another topic.
If I buy a Ford without an anti-theft system and my car gets stolen, is that Ford's fault?
I get your analogy but don't quite agree with it. MS provides bug fixes for free (you can certainly question the timeliness/quality of those fixes). My experience has been that if you have Windows up to date, don't click on anything stupid in your inbox, and don't crawl around in the underbelly of the web clicking "Ok" to every Free Poker! pop-up and free smiley face ad, you'll be fine.
Comparing MS AV software to warranty auto work is not accurate. The hotfixes and patches for the OS are their warranty work. AV software is more like getting an after-market alarm system/lojack installed in your car. You could argue that the manufacturer should have included it with the car, but faulting them for selling it at all is misplaced, IMHO.
Get the political support you need from the top and then start to implement.
IT Confucius say: implement now, apologize later. They will thank you for it in the end. All this talk of getting approval is appropriate, but if something unapproved and potentially dangerous is inhabiting my network, it gets shut down. I'll ask questions (or ask for approval) later.
I am so sick of the financial ass pounding I take from MS, I keep thinking about how to get Linux into my office. A firewall/gateway? Sure. A Web server, absolutely. But in an accounting firm, we have no choices for our audit, depreciation, tax and practice management software. They only come in Windows flavor.
We use Citrix Metaframe, which works awesome over skinny pipes and on crappy hardware. AFAIK, there in no ICA client for Linux. Had the judge made one simple order...open the ICA client source (or port it)...I could keep a couple 2K servers and run Linux on all the desktops and still use our Win32 apps that we have to use. I think we'd see Linux sprouting up on office desktops everywhere.