My facts are straight. You are correct about Microsoft gaining some marketshare, but it's growth rate is almost flat. Now what NOS do you think is taking up that slack in medium and small business sector?
Linux is gaining huge grounds in the traditional Unix market, but that overall market share is small. So when they take a few % from the Windows market (or what that market would have been if Linux didn't exist) it makes a huge difference in overall marketshare.
It's kind of like this. Would you want 1% of a billion dollars or 10% of a 50 thoughsand?
I forgot one thing (besides ending my bold tag!), and that is what we went with.
We went with RedHat Enterprise $800 version on our database servers and we are going to go with RedHat 9.x on the rest of our servers. We will then have to upgrade those servers every year or so and plan on no real support with them, but RedHat kind of left us no option.
I will say that we just got in our dual 1.8GH Opteron and it ROCKS!!! I don't have much to test it with yet, but I will say it launches GNOME/Xwindows in around 3 seconds! I realize that this ins't much of a benchmark, but I don't have much loaded on it yet, and hope to get more on it next week. I can't wait to get Oracle on the thing. Oracle just released a version for the Opteron a few weeks ago.
I first want to say that I think Redhat is insane with their new pricing. I understand that they want to make money, but they need to make some serious changes to their current model.
Next, what you said about email support only isn't true for the Enterprise version. You get to call them, and their support is good.
I am in the exact same boat as the guy who posted this, and considered SuSE and RedHat. Here is how it broke down for me. I also need to run Oracle...
RedHat $350 / server without phone support or upgrade protection, but you get up2date for a year, and some basic (email) install support. In my opinion it makes no sense to buy this version, given that 3.x of their product will be out this year, and that version will offer things like LVM install built in (and a lot of other things), and you would be forced to buy that version for $350.
$800 / server with "Normal business hours support" and upgrade protection for one year. This version is limited to 2 processors and 4 GIG of memory. RedHat had more expensive options but these two covered my company needs.
SuSE $700 / server per processor. Support included. Also Opteron support.
With both products the cost seems to be for support and you will need to pay them EVERY year some amount of money. I would put that amount down, but my belief is that it will change given market demand. Also it must be noted that neither one allows you to load a copy of it on a "test" or "development" box! You must plunk down the $350-$800 again!
What I wish RedHat would do is allow you to download the Enterprise edition and install it on as many machines as you want for a nominal price. Say like $300 / processor. (NOTE don't limit processors/RAM ect) but pay for Up2date and then offer a support packs. Specifically they need to offer like 10 calls to them for $5,000. Novell and Microsoft currently offer agreements like this and it works well. They could then offer a pack of 50 for a discount and so on...
When I approched RedHat about this they seem to believe that their competition is Sun and even with this pricing they are still cheaper than Sun, so it makes sense to them. I don't agree with this! They may take away 10% of Suns business, but they WERE taking away more than 1% of Microsofts business, and the fact is that 1% of Microsoft's share is a heck of a lot more than 10% of Suns.
Now one last point in favor of RedHat. Oracle DB Standard Edition charges $15k/cpu + support + maintanence. That comes to around $22k/processor then you have to pay support + maintanence EVERY year. That comes to around $5k EVERY year to Oracle. If your company can handle that, then throwing RedHat a bone every year shouldn't be too bad. It just seems extra bad because it use to be near free.
Also, DB2, Websphere and other IBM apps have the same requirements as Oracle in regards to Linux distros, so it appears that the "big business" has kinda dictated what RedHat and SuSE will do.
That might be. But look at Java applets vs ActiveX controls. Java Applets are all over the place and they perform very well. They had security designed up front, and you have to play in the "sandbox". Now the abomination that is ActiveX.... that is another story altogether.
So using your analogy, there should be a lot more holes found in Java apps than ActiveX controls, but there isn't.
Good points, but my overall point is that there would be more around than what there currently is.
As for developers, I would argue that Microsoft has the lions share of the developer community and most of those seem to love Microsoft. So it doesn't seem out of reason to assume that some of them would try and hack other systems.
I don't agree that most of these contain anti-Microsoft messages either. Most seem to contain crap. The core issue is that Microsoft has ignored security at the cost of features while most of the competition hasn't and for the longest time I.T. consulting companies have ignored this as well. Now they should be held particaly responsible.
Lets compare Applets to ActiveX. Java Applets were far more prevelant than ActiveX controls, but Sun took security seriously and Microsoft didn't. ActiveX is an abomination at best and Applets, although a pain are still usefull.
Ahhh but which one of the MANY patches are you talking about? My point is that there are MANY 800+k patches that come out every few weeks or so.
I am not saying it doesn't make sense to appy patches, but to say that it is ZERO time and effort is incorrect, or that this is just ONE tiny 800k patch! This constant patching and testing must be factored in when working with Microsoft systems. This intern raises the Total Cost of Ownership of the system. Something that Microsoft doesn't want anyone to know about and EVERYONE seems to be ignoring i.e. GARTNER!
So every month when you have to load a couple of more 800k patches on most of your workstations and servers (and reboot them mind you), and some guy running NetWare or Linux doesn't have to remember this discussion. I know people that have NetWare systems that have been up running for over 5 years. Some of our Linux boxes have ran for around a year before I chose to reboot them.
Ok, using your analogy, for every 1 "critical" security update on Linux, Solaris, NetWare, and OSX there should be 10-20 for Windows. Well from my experience this isn't the case for two reasons. One those companies apprear to put resources in to security at the design level. Look at ActiveX vs Java for example, or NetWare's security vs What NT had at the 3.x and 4.x level. The second reason (focusing on RedHat) is that you mentioned RedHat 6.2. Hmmm lets see... RedHat has had 7.0, 7.1, 7.2,7.3,8.0 and 9.0 since then. I belive that since 7.1 they have installed a personal firewall by default. So even IF such a service as FTP or Telnet (not installed by default mind you) had an issue, your DESKTOP system would not have an issue. Microsoft on the other hand still has MAJOR security issues with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP!
Ok, use my car analogy again. What if GM kept having you call them once every other week or so just to get updates. Then when you car shut down again because of some hacker, GM then told you that you should have got the latest update. How do you think that would fly? Now add that you neighbor that drives a Ford doesn't have to mess with this at all.
People still sue the automotive industry AFTER a car has been recalled for a defective part.
If this was a one time thing, or heck a two or three time thing it would not be that big of a deal, but these "critical" patches are so common that it is getting ridiculous.
My other point still holds true. I have to spend time EVERY week making sure our Windows boxes keep up to date. How often do "critical" patches come out for NetWare, Apple, Sun, AIX, OS/390, SGI, and Linux? Yet companies like Gartner NEVER factor that in to the total cost of ownership with Windows. If they start (and I hope some of them read this!) then the cost of admining a Windows system will go up considerably.
By they way, you don't just load "critical" patches on production systems without testing do you? I am sure you have a test environment and they have to go through some testing.:-) Granted I don't, but I should! The fact is that these patches come out at such a rate AND the damage caused by not applying them is so huge that I can't waste time testing them.:-( So truthfully the time Gartner and company should factor in for "additional time" with Microsoft systems should be significantly higher than the 2 hours I spend a week I mentioned.
Ok, I hear the argument all the time with the 90% marketshare. Using that figure I should see 1 virus for all other systems for every ~20 I see for Microsoft. I don't.
The issue is that Microsoft doesn't take security seriously. Heck look at ActiveX compared to Java. Granted Applets suck to deal with, and the "sandbox" is not fun to play in, but at least Applets don't... Hijack your browser bar. Put spyware on your system.
Microsoft has done one thing great. They make it easy for "normal" people to work with a computer and manipulate data. However in doing so, they ignored security to provide features.
Could you imagine how much Novell, Oracle, Sun or IBM would love to not spend resources on security and testing? To Microsoft's credit, they focused on what the consumers wanted, and the consumers DIDN'T care about rebooting multiple times a day, and virus issues. All I am saying is; at what point will those customers care? and don't blame the virus writers any more, when a high school kid with time on his or her hands can take down a large portion of the worlds computers, Microsoft should shoulder a lot of the blame!.
Thank God some people are starting to get this concept now.
As for Microsoft having issues with only "older" code; I say nonsense! They released Windows Server 2003, and if they new about this type of bug before but didn't want to mess with legacy code then they had their opportunity to fix it, heck they could have even put this in a service pack months ago (not days ago). Now if this WAS some smaller company, that could almost be overlooked, but this is a company with over 40 BILLION in the bank. These types (and there are many), of issues should not come from the worlds largest and richest software manufacturer.
I hazzard to think of the day when someone puts some really nasty stuff in one of these security holes! This could have been far far worse.
Lastly, if this was just ONE isolated incedent, then I could overlook it, but this has been an ongoing issue with Microsoft for over a decade.
Good point, but NOBODY seems to fault Microsoft in this issue. They hold some of the blame for this, and I hope that people start to wake up and realize that this IS the additional cost of working with a Microsoft system. This has to be factored in with the total cost of ownership. But yet you NEVER see this in a Gartner report. Why? I spend around 1-2 hours a week on average working with virus issues on our Microsoft software and almost ZERO on all our other systems.
Gates and company made Windows programs easy to integrate (DDE, OLE etc) but they NEVER took security seriously, then when they started to make a NOS and those same BAD habits followed. Remember that Windows 95 use to send your password in CLEAR TEXT over the network!!! What serious company in their right mind (in the 90's) would have designed anything that way? They ignored security to give people like you "features". Well now one of those "features" is an un-secure operating system.
I could just imagine people that own a GM car had some hacker who could use the onstar stuff to shut down their car while they were in it. Granted, I think they would be initially mad at the person who caused this, but if it happened again and again and again and again, they would probably not buy a GM car again, and their anger would turn to GM. I wonder when this type of thinking will turn to Microsoft. How many systems will have to be down for days?
Yes I realize that this can't happen with a GM car, I am just using it as an example.
By the way, did you try and get a patch from their site yesterday? That sure was fun!!! I actually managed to get one 98 system updated at around 8:00pm est.
Granted Sony has made a TON on PlayStations, it by no means saved the company in the 90's.
My point is this. Sony would be a smaller company, but they would still be a VERY large company.
Now when looking at quarterly reports, you need to look at a lot of things. Did they take any huge write-offs? Did they make any new huge purchases? Did they build any new plants? Did they have any payouts to their shareholders?
My point is that Sony is a lot more diversified than Nintendo.
You do know that if the PlayStation died tomorrow, Sony could still make a bunch of money off of their other hardware and software sales.
I don't see too many Pachinko (mis-spelled) machines around anymore.
Haveing said that. I agree that Nintendo is fine. They OWN the younger gameing market, and it appears that neither Sony or Microsoft will go after that market very hard.
I would counter your argument by saying that anyone who chooses Win2k or 2003 server for a new "clean" install is brain dead. Why would you choose Windows over Linux? If both can do the job and the features are about the same (which they are), why would you want to pay... $1,000 for 2003 server with 5 FREKING CALS!!! >$1,000 for Exchange Server with 5 CALS!!! $1,000+ for antivirus software
I left out SQL server but I bet it is well over a grand also.
What if your office had between 50-100 users! (This is a giant percentage of small businesses). The cost would be freaking huge when compared to... umm... near FREE!!! Now factor in that you don't actually OWN Windows software but you lease it from Microsoft, makes this a "brain dead" decision to limit your Windows server installs.
I tell you it sure is fun to go in to managment when the company isn't doing to well and inform them that they HAVE TO do an upgrade of a product, because it is in the freaking licence agreement. Oh yeah and they have to pay that company huge $$$ again. Yep that sure is fun when they want lay off part of your staff just to pay a bill to a company. My example actually comes from Oracle, but now add Microsoft to the list. Get prepared to answer these questions a lot.
"Isn't what we have now running fine?" "Isn't there a chance that this will break what we currently have running?" "Won't we have to spend more money on training now?" "What benifit will this add to the company?"
and the best one. "Why don't we just outsource this stuff?"
Yep those are fun ones...
At least with Netware you do get security built in to the product, and the worst they have ever done is cut off support for a product.
Man I want a 17" Dell with a processor that won't catch my pants on fire when I use it. It is called a LAPtop for a reason.
I can't wait to get that $859 17" Dell laptop. I am sure it comes with Intel's top of the line CPU! Not some crappy Celeron! It wounldn't come with some crappy 14.1" XGA TFT screen either! Nope not from Dell! I am sure that the it doesn't come with less that 512MB of RAM either! Heck I bet I can even upgrade it to 1GB if I need to! I also want to edit video on the thing so I am sure that it has a firewire port, and at least a 60GB HD like the 17" Apple. Speaking of video I want to burn DVD's. I can't wait to do that with my $859 Dell Laptop! Do you know what software I get with it to do that? I am sure that it is integrated well in to the system and easy to use. I also like to sit in the living room and connect to my wireless router, again I am sure that Dell includes that in their $859 laptop like the 17" Apple. I can't wait to get Microsoft XP Professional Edition either. Man that Home edition kinda sucks! All this for $859!!!! Man what a deal. I am sure that the video card is one of the new ATI or GeForce cards, not some last generation card. I also can't wait to see how long the battery last while in use. I am sure that it is WAY longer than the 17" Macintosh.
Hang on a second I need to go to Dell's site....
a few seconds later
WTF!!!!!!!! The $859 laptop isn't anywhere near what you said it was!!!!!
The laptop I just speced out that has a Intel Pentium(R)M,1.7GHz,14.1XGA ATI 64MB Video is over $3,800. I thought you said that I could get one for $859.
Man am I bummed Anonymnous Coward!!! I thought I could trust you!:-)
Ahhh, but they could go up to apple and say. Don't do XXXX or YYYY, and if you do then the next version of Office for the Mac will be years late and run like crap.
They have hung that over Apples head for a long time. That is what kept IE on the Mac instead of Netscape for many years.
Also what exactly is the marketshare for Macintosh systems these days? Even the graphic shops I go in to are starting to use Wintel machines (not that I think they should use them).
As far as Linux goes, as long as it is free and has the large number of developers working on it, it will continue to make inroads in to Microsoft's monopoly. This is ONLY because people are generally cheap. For the life of me I can't get people to try out OpenOffice, but once I explain that Microsoft Office will cost them >$200.00, suddenly they want to take a long hard look at it.
I fully expect Microsoft to do everything they can to protect their monopoly, as they have done so in the past. Their history has shown that they are not above breaking laws to continue their stranglehold on the software industry, however at this point and time they have little threat of Linux, Apple, OpenOffice on the desktop or office level. This will probably change once more governments start using free software, but at this time they are still the 800 pound gorilla. It also shows why they fight so hard not to loose any government business to Linux.
I personally don't care between the AMD and Intel, but if I was Intel I would be a little worried. The Opteron appears to be a good chip (we are getting a dual 244 (1.8GH)processor box in this week), and currently competes against the Xeon. Well from what I can tell it spanks a Xeon in 32 bit Linux server software. Now for us that means that we don't have to purchase a 4X Xeon box for Oracle but can use a 2X Opteron. That saves our company ~$40,000 in software cost!
To me the real question is how fast can AMD clock this thing? Will Intel respond with some good chip? (Xeon 3GH 1MB cache doesn't cut it). How good will AMD64 be for desktop apps? Will Doom3 support AMD64 and if so how much better will it run?
Do I think that Intel should panic? No!!! They can use their "MarketShare" to force motherboard vendors and OEM's not to support AMD, but that will only last so long. But if (and this is a big if) AMD64 is a great chip and can outperform anything Intel has on the desktop side, Intel should worry.
Re:It's all over for Ximian
on
Novell Buys Ximian
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· Score: 2, Informative
Novell had another huge issue at the time. The had two different development camps. One wanted to move to TCP/IP and off the NetWare kernel, the other (Corporate) wanted to stay with NetWare. Corporate had most of the power at the time. So Novell at the time was sending out two different messages. Ray Noorda seemed to want to take the company to a Unix kernel for the server specifically Unixware. He also had a MAJOR battle going on with Microsoft at the time and probably focused too much attention to battling them as you mentioned above. However, if he would have stuck with his plan, NetWare would have probably have been migrated over to UnixWare AND most of todays apps for Linux would probably run just fine on it. In the worst case, it would be a heck of a lot easier to migrate from UnixWare to Linux than from NetWare to Linux. So Novell would have been in a much better position today than it is now....
I have been asking Novell to become another Linux distro for a long time now, and it appears that they are going to do that with NetWare 7. I look at it this way, I could get the following: NDS management GroupWise Email and Scheduling Linux Apps DirXML (Manage different directories) Support Linux Kernel and various apps
Hopefully I would get all that at a price competitive to RedHat Enterprice Server. Now it appears that they want to make their money with a per seat licence, so I hope that they start out with something like 1,000 seats for a LOW amount i.e. $800 per server. Personally I hope that they drop the per seat thing and go to some per processor licence. Either way Novell seems to mess up their licencing, so it will probably suck! They had better realize that they don't have many more chances left...
Lastly, I believe that this purchase will only be good for Ximian. I can see Novell putting effort in to hooking in their admin tools, and nothing more. Their technical guys seem to get it now and they seem a lot more focused on what their customers want.
Could you elaborate on why you think the current President is dumber than Dan Quayle?
Although there are a few issues I disagree with Bush on, (Microsoft case being one) I hate to think what we would have done if Gore would have been elected. We probably would be paying the Afgan people not to hurt us anymore.
In my opinion one of the worst leaders of the U.S. was the smartest (Jimmy Carter). So I would also contend that you can't draw just upon intelligence as a determining factor of leadership.
I do have to say that I find most Liberals view of conservatives funny. They either brand them in one of two ways. 1. Idiots 2. Evil war mongering people.
I am kinda shocked that you didn't put Bush in to the later, but you probably put him in both categories....
But when you compare republicans to democrats over the last few years, I think you will see that the democrates haven't put up the brightest people either.
Bush VS Gore. Neither one seems that bright to me. I have read Gores first book and I can say that it must be easy to write a book that just quotes other people...
Bush VS Clinton. Well if I was looking on ways to seduce under age women Clinton would win, but overall, about the same.
Regan VS Mondale - Well... today I would probably choose Mondale, (bad joke) but back in the 80's Regan.
Reagan VS ??? - Forget the guy, but he seemed Intelligent at the time. But given that he got crushed... I will have to take Reagan.
Reagan VS Carter - Carter wins. Too bad he was the worst president in the last 40 years. Someone please tell him that we still have oil, and the year is 2003. God I loved gas rationing, and negotiating with terrorist.
Carter VS Ford - Give this one to Carter.
I could keep going back, but you get the idea. It isn't that one side is brilliant. Both sides say what they are paid to say and don't give a rats ass about anything but their power.
I will give GW credit for one thing, he does make decisions on what he believes to be correct. He doesn't let the press or polls dictate his decisions.
In my opinion will he beat Hillary? Yep. Will the Democrats put Hillary up against him? Probably. So the next comparision:
Bush VS Clinton - Bush. Granted if I needed investment advice in the futures market... Clinton, or how to murder former co-workers she would also win.
Just because someone hasn't "been there" doesn't mean they can't say "It doesn't exist".
Here I will take a stab at it.
There are no humans living on the sun.
Also, I am not sure what bible you are talking about. In the bible that I know of it doesn't say "God created life on earth and only earth" Heck you could even read in to it a little bit. In that when Adam and Eve created original sin God removed them from Edin. Well what if Edin was another planet? I am not claiming to be some expert on Bible knowledge, but from what I know, finding other life wouldn't change much at all. Especially in the New Testimate.
It kinda is that way now. I go to my local fast food joint here in the midwest and find out that I need to speak Spanish just to order my freaking meal! I say bring on the robots. At lest I kinda know binary:-)
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My facts are straight. You are correct about Microsoft gaining some marketshare, but it's growth rate is almost flat. Now what NOS do you think is taking up that slack in medium and small business sector?
Linux is gaining huge grounds in the traditional Unix market, but that overall market share is small. So when they take a few % from the Windows market (or what that market would have been if Linux didn't exist) it makes a huge difference in overall marketshare.
It's kind of like this. Would you want 1% of a billion dollars or 10% of a 50 thoughsand?
I forgot one thing (besides ending my bold tag!), and that is what we went with.
We went with RedHat Enterprise $800 version on our database servers and we are going to go with RedHat 9.x on the rest of our servers. We will then have to upgrade those servers every year or so and plan on no real support with them, but RedHat kind of left us no option.
I will say that we just got in our dual 1.8GH Opteron and it ROCKS!!! I don't have much to test it with yet, but I will say it launches GNOME/Xwindows in around 3 seconds! I realize that this ins't much of a benchmark, but I don't have much loaded on it yet, and hope to get more on it next week. I can't wait to get Oracle on the thing. Oracle just released a version for the Opteron a few weeks ago.
I first want to say that I think Redhat is insane with their new pricing. I understand that they want to make money, but they need to make some serious changes to their current model.
Next, what you said about email support only isn't true for the Enterprise version. You get to call them, and their support is good.
I am in the exact same boat as the guy who posted this, and considered SuSE and RedHat. Here is how it broke down for me. I also need to run Oracle...
RedHat
$350 / server without phone support or upgrade protection, but you get up2date for a year, and some basic (email) install support. In my opinion it makes no sense to buy this version, given that 3.x of their product will be out this year, and that version will offer things like LVM install built in (and a lot of other things), and you would be forced to buy that version for $350.
$800 / server with "Normal business hours support" and upgrade protection for one year. This version is limited to 2 processors and 4 GIG of memory.
RedHat had more expensive options but these two covered my company needs.
SuSE
$700 / server per processor. Support included. Also Opteron support.
With both products the cost seems to be for support and you will need to pay them EVERY year some amount of money. I would put that amount down, but my belief is that it will change given market demand. Also it must be noted that neither one allows you to load a copy of it on a "test" or "development" box! You must plunk down the $350-$800 again!
What I wish RedHat would do is allow you to download the Enterprise edition and install it on as many machines as you want for a nominal price. Say like $300 / processor. (NOTE don't limit processors/RAM ect) but pay for Up2date and then offer a support packs. Specifically they need to offer like 10 calls to them for $5,000. Novell and Microsoft currently offer agreements like this and it works well. They could then offer a pack of 50 for a discount and so on...
When I approched RedHat about this they seem to believe that their competition is Sun and even with this pricing they are still cheaper than Sun, so it makes sense to them. I don't agree with this! They may take away 10% of Suns business, but they WERE taking away more than 1% of Microsofts business, and the fact is that 1% of Microsoft's share is a heck of a lot more than 10% of Suns.
Now one last point in favor of RedHat. Oracle DB Standard Edition charges $15k/cpu + support + maintanence. That comes to around $22k/processor then you have to pay support + maintanence EVERY year. That comes to around $5k EVERY year to Oracle. If your company can handle that, then throwing RedHat a bone every year shouldn't be too bad. It just seems extra bad because it use to be near free.
Also, DB2, Websphere and other IBM apps have the same requirements as Oracle in regards to Linux distros, so it appears that the "big business" has kinda dictated what RedHat and SuSE will do.
That might be. But look at Java applets vs ActiveX controls. Java Applets are all over the place and they perform very well. They had security designed up front, and you have to play in the "sandbox". Now the abomination that is ActiveX.... that is another story altogether.
So using your analogy, there should be a lot more holes found in Java apps than ActiveX controls, but there isn't.
I might actually be a fool, but that is another story.
I NEVER said that I was loading the patch for a 98 system. I said that I needed a patch for a 98 system. The patch I needed was for Internet Explorer.
I gave up on the NT based patches at 6:00pm EST.
Also, at least I have guts enough not to post Anonymously.
Good points, but my overall point is that there would be more around than what there currently is.
As for developers, I would argue that Microsoft has the lions share of the developer community and most of those seem to love Microsoft. So it doesn't seem out of reason to assume that some of them would try and hack other systems.
I don't agree that most of these contain anti-Microsoft messages either. Most seem to contain crap. The core issue is that Microsoft has ignored security at the cost of features while most of the competition hasn't and for the longest time I.T. consulting companies have ignored this as well. Now they should be held particaly responsible.
Lets compare Applets to ActiveX. Java Applets were far more prevelant than ActiveX controls, but Sun took security seriously and Microsoft didn't. ActiveX is an abomination at best and Applets, although a pain are still usefull.
Ahhh but which one of the MANY patches are you talking about? My point is that there are MANY 800+k patches that come out every few weeks or so.
I am not saying it doesn't make sense to appy patches, but to say that it is ZERO time and effort is incorrect, or that this is just ONE tiny 800k patch! This constant patching and testing must be factored in when working with Microsoft systems. This intern raises the Total Cost of Ownership of the system. Something that Microsoft doesn't want anyone to know about and EVERYONE seems to be ignoring i.e. GARTNER!
So every month when you have to load a couple of more 800k patches on most of your workstations and servers (and reboot them mind you), and some guy running NetWare or Linux doesn't have to remember this discussion. I know people that have NetWare systems that have been up running for over 5 years. Some of our Linux boxes have ran for around a year before I chose to reboot them.
Ok, using your analogy, for every 1 "critical" security update on Linux, Solaris, NetWare, and OSX there should be 10-20 for Windows. Well from my experience this isn't the case for two reasons. One those companies apprear to put resources in to security at the design level. Look at ActiveX vs Java for example, or NetWare's security vs What NT had at the 3.x and 4.x level. The second reason (focusing on RedHat) is that you mentioned RedHat 6.2. Hmmm lets see... RedHat has had 7.0, 7.1, 7.2,7.3,8.0 and 9.0 since then. I belive that since 7.1 they have installed a personal firewall by default. So even IF such a service as FTP or Telnet (not installed by default mind you) had an issue, your DESKTOP system would not have an issue. Microsoft on the other hand still has MAJOR security issues with Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP!
Ok, use my car analogy again. What if GM kept having you call them once every other week or so just to get updates. Then when you car shut down again because of some hacker, GM then told you that you should have got the latest update. How do you think that would fly? Now add that you neighbor that drives a Ford doesn't have to mess with this at all.
:-) Granted I don't, but I should! The fact is that these patches come out at such a rate AND the damage caused by not applying them is so huge that I can't waste time testing them. :-( So truthfully the time Gartner and company should factor in for "additional time" with Microsoft systems should be significantly higher than the 2 hours I spend a week I mentioned.
People still sue the automotive industry AFTER a car has been recalled for a defective part.
If this was a one time thing, or heck a two or three time thing it would not be that big of a deal, but these "critical" patches are so common that it is getting ridiculous.
My other point still holds true. I have to spend time EVERY week making sure our Windows boxes keep up to date. How often do "critical" patches come out for NetWare, Apple, Sun, AIX, OS/390, SGI, and Linux? Yet companies like Gartner NEVER factor that in to the total cost of ownership with Windows. If they start (and I hope some of them read this!) then the cost of admining a Windows system will go up considerably.
By they way, you don't just load "critical" patches on production systems without testing do you? I am sure you have a test environment and they have to go through some testing.
Ok, I hear the argument all the time with the 90% marketshare. Using that figure I should see 1 virus for all other systems for every ~20 I see for Microsoft. I don't.
The issue is that Microsoft doesn't take security seriously. Heck look at ActiveX compared to Java. Granted Applets suck to deal with, and the "sandbox" is not fun to play in, but at least Applets don't...
Hijack your browser bar.
Put spyware on your system.
Microsoft has done one thing great. They make it easy for "normal" people to work with a computer and manipulate data. However in doing so, they ignored security to provide features.
Could you imagine how much Novell, Oracle, Sun or IBM would love to not spend resources on security and testing? To Microsoft's credit, they focused on what the consumers wanted, and the consumers DIDN'T care about rebooting multiple times a day, and virus issues. All I am saying is; at what point will those customers care? and don't blame the virus writers any more, when a high school kid with time on his or her hands can take down a large portion of the worlds computers, Microsoft should shoulder a lot of the blame!.
Thank God some people are starting to get this concept now.
As for Microsoft having issues with only "older" code; I say nonsense! They released Windows Server 2003, and if they new about this type of bug before but didn't want to mess with legacy code then they had their opportunity to fix it, heck they could have even put this in a service pack months ago (not days ago). Now if this WAS some smaller company, that could almost be overlooked, but this is a company with over 40 BILLION in the bank. These types (and there are many), of issues should not come from the worlds largest and richest software manufacturer.
I hazzard to think of the day when someone puts some really nasty stuff in one of these security holes! This could have been far far worse.
Lastly, if this was just ONE isolated incedent, then I could overlook it, but this has been an ongoing issue with Microsoft for over a decade.
I know, but they had another issue with I.E. 6 that an updated supposedly fixed.
Notice that they didn't put the loss in alphabetical order.
I wonder what movie tanked.
Good point, but NOBODY seems to fault Microsoft in this issue. They hold some of the blame for this, and I hope that people start to wake up and realize that this IS the additional cost of working with a Microsoft system. This has to be factored in with the total cost of ownership. But yet you NEVER see this in a Gartner report. Why? I spend around 1-2 hours a week on average working with virus issues on our Microsoft software and almost ZERO on all our other systems.
Gates and company made Windows programs easy to integrate (DDE, OLE etc) but they NEVER took security seriously, then when they started to make a NOS and those same BAD habits followed. Remember that Windows 95 use to send your password in CLEAR TEXT over the network!!! What serious company in their right mind (in the 90's) would have designed anything that way? They ignored security to give people like you "features". Well now one of those "features" is an un-secure operating system.
I could just imagine people that own a GM car had some hacker who could use the onstar stuff to shut down their car while they were in it. Granted, I think they would be initially mad at the person who caused this, but if it happened again and again and again and again, they would probably not buy a GM car again, and their anger would turn to GM. I wonder when this type of thinking will turn to Microsoft. How many systems will have to be down for days?
Yes I realize that this can't happen with a GM car, I am just using it as an example.
By the way, did you try and get a patch from their site yesterday? That sure was fun!!! I actually managed to get one 98 system updated at around 8:00pm est.
Bob Barker on the Price is Right.
What the heck are you talking about???
Granted Sony has made a TON on PlayStations, it by no means saved the company in the 90's.
My point is this. Sony would be a smaller company, but they would still be a VERY large company.
Now when looking at quarterly reports, you need to look at a lot of things. Did they take any huge write-offs? Did they make any new huge purchases? Did they build any new plants? Did they have any payouts to their shareholders?
My point is that Sony is a lot more diversified than Nintendo.
You do know that if the PlayStation died tomorrow, Sony could still make a bunch of money off of their other hardware and software sales.
I don't see too many Pachinko (mis-spelled) machines around anymore.
Haveing said that. I agree that Nintendo is fine. They OWN the younger gameing market, and it appears that neither Sony or Microsoft will go after that market very hard.
I would counter your argument by saying that anyone who chooses Win2k or 2003 server for a new "clean" install is brain dead. Why would you choose Windows over Linux? If both can do the job and the features are about the same (which they are),
why would you want to pay...
$1,000 for 2003 server with 5 FREKING CALS!!!
>$1,000 for Exchange Server with 5 CALS!!!
$1,000+ for antivirus software
I left out SQL server but I bet it is well over a grand also.
What if your office had between 50-100 users! (This is a giant percentage of small businesses). The cost would be freaking huge when compared to... umm... near FREE!!!
Now factor in that you don't actually OWN Windows software but you lease it from Microsoft, makes this a "brain dead" decision to limit your Windows server installs.
I tell you it sure is fun to go in to managment when the company isn't doing to well and inform them that they HAVE TO do an upgrade of a product, because it is in the freaking licence agreement. Oh yeah and they have to pay that company huge $$$ again. Yep that sure is fun when they want lay off part of your staff just to pay a bill to a company. My example actually comes from Oracle, but now add Microsoft to the list. Get prepared to answer these questions a lot.
"Isn't what we have now running fine?"
"Isn't there a chance that this will break what we currently have running?"
"Won't we have to spend more money on training now?"
"What benifit will this add to the company?"
and the best one.
"Why don't we just outsource this stuff?"
Yep those are fun ones...
At least with Netware you do get security built in to the product, and the worst they have ever done is cut off support for a product.
Sign me up for that Dell!!!!
:-)
Man I want a 17" Dell with a processor that won't catch my pants on fire when I use it. It is called a LAPtop for a reason.
I can't wait to get that $859 17" Dell laptop. I am sure it comes with Intel's top of the line CPU! Not some crappy Celeron! It wounldn't come with some crappy 14.1" XGA TFT screen either! Nope not from Dell! I am sure that the it doesn't come with less that 512MB of RAM either! Heck I bet I can even upgrade it to 1GB if I need to! I also want to edit video on the thing so I am sure that it has a firewire port, and at least a 60GB HD like the 17" Apple. Speaking of video I want to burn DVD's. I can't wait to do that with my $859 Dell Laptop! Do you know what software I get with it to do that? I am sure that it is integrated well in to the system and easy to use. I also like to sit in the living room and connect to my wireless router, again I am sure that Dell includes that in their $859 laptop like the 17" Apple. I can't wait to get Microsoft XP Professional Edition either. Man that Home edition kinda sucks! All this for $859!!!! Man what a deal. I am sure that the video card is one of the new ATI or GeForce cards, not some last generation card. I also can't wait to see how long the battery last while in use. I am sure that it is WAY longer than the 17" Macintosh.
Hang on a second I need to go to Dell's site....
a few seconds later
WTF!!!!!!!! The $859 laptop isn't anywhere near what you said it was!!!!!
The laptop I just speced out that has a Intel Pentium(R)M,1.7GHz,14.1XGA ATI 64MB Video is over $3,800. I thought you said that I could get one for $859.
Man am I bummed Anonymnous Coward!!! I thought I could trust you!
Ahhh, but they could go up to apple and say. Don't do XXXX or YYYY, and if you do then the next version of Office for the Mac will be years late and run like crap.
They have hung that over Apples head for a long time. That is what kept IE on the Mac instead of Netscape for many years.
Also what exactly is the marketshare for Macintosh systems these days? Even the graphic shops I go in to are starting to use Wintel machines (not that I think they should use them).
As far as Linux goes, as long as it is free and has the large number of developers working on it, it will continue to make inroads in to Microsoft's monopoly. This is ONLY because people are generally cheap. For the life of me I can't get people to try out OpenOffice, but once I explain that Microsoft Office will cost them >$200.00, suddenly they want to take a long hard look at it.
I fully expect Microsoft to do everything they can to protect their monopoly, as they have done so in the past. Their history has shown that they are not above breaking laws to continue their stranglehold on the software industry, however at this point and time they have little threat of Linux, Apple, OpenOffice on the desktop or office level. This will probably change once more governments start using free software, but at this time they are still the 800 pound gorilla. It also shows why they fight so hard not to loose any government business to Linux.
I personally don't care between the AMD and Intel, but if I was Intel I would be a little worried. The Opteron appears to be a good chip (we are getting a dual 244 (1.8GH)processor box in this week), and currently competes against the Xeon. Well from what I can tell it spanks a Xeon in 32 bit Linux server software. Now for us that means that we don't have to purchase a 4X Xeon box for Oracle but can use a 2X Opteron. That saves our company ~$40,000 in software cost!
To me the real question is how fast can AMD clock this thing? Will Intel respond with some good chip? (Xeon 3GH 1MB cache doesn't cut it). How good will AMD64 be for desktop apps? Will Doom3 support AMD64 and if so how much better will it run?
Do I think that Intel should panic? No!!! They can use their "MarketShare" to force motherboard vendors and OEM's not to support AMD, but that will only last so long. But if (and this is a big if) AMD64 is a great chip and can outperform anything Intel has on the desktop side, Intel should worry.
Novell had another huge issue at the time. The had two different development camps. One wanted to move to TCP/IP and off the NetWare kernel, the other (Corporate) wanted to stay with NetWare. Corporate had most of the power at the time. So Novell at the time was sending out two different messages. Ray Noorda seemed to want to take the company to a Unix kernel for the server specifically Unixware. He also had a MAJOR battle going on with Microsoft at the time and probably focused too much attention to battling them as you mentioned above. However, if he would have stuck with his plan, NetWare would have probably have been migrated over to UnixWare AND most of todays apps for Linux would probably run just fine on it. In the worst case, it would be a heck of a lot easier to migrate from UnixWare to Linux than from NetWare to Linux. So Novell would have been in a much better position today than it is now....
I have been asking Novell to become another Linux distro for a long time now, and it appears that they are going to do that with NetWare 7. I look at it this way, I could get the following:
NDS management
GroupWise Email and Scheduling
Linux Apps
DirXML (Manage different directories)
Support
Linux Kernel and various apps
Hopefully I would get all that at a price competitive to RedHat Enterprice Server. Now it appears that they want to make their money with a per seat licence, so I hope that they start out with something like 1,000 seats for a LOW amount i.e. $800 per server. Personally I hope that they drop the per seat thing and go to some per processor licence. Either way Novell seems to mess up their licencing, so it will probably suck! They had better realize that they don't have many more chances left...
Lastly, I believe that this purchase will only be good for Ximian. I can see Novell putting effort in to hooking in their admin tools, and nothing more. Their technical guys seem to get it now and they seem a lot more focused on what their customers want.
You have to see things to believe in them?
There are a lot of things that you can't see, so I guess that you don't believe in a lot.
Now, granted that is far different than saying you have no faith.
Could you elaborate on why you think the current President is dumber than Dan Quayle?
Although there are a few issues I disagree with Bush on, (Microsoft case being one) I hate to think what we would have done if Gore would have been elected. We probably would be paying the Afgan people not to hurt us anymore.
In my opinion one of the worst leaders of the U.S. was the smartest (Jimmy Carter). So I would also contend that you can't draw just upon intelligence as a determining factor of leadership.
I do have to say that I find most Liberals view of conservatives funny. They either brand them in one of two ways.
1. Idiots
2. Evil war mongering people.
I am kinda shocked that you didn't put Bush in to the later, but you probably put him in both categories....
But when you compare republicans to democrats over the last few years, I think you will see that the democrates haven't put up the brightest people either.
Bush VS Gore. Neither one seems that bright to me. I have read Gores first book and I can say that it must be easy to write a book that just quotes other people...
Bush VS Clinton. Well if I was looking on ways to seduce under age women Clinton would win, but overall, about the same.
Regan VS Mondale - Well... today I would probably choose Mondale, (bad joke) but back in the 80's Regan.
Reagan VS ??? - Forget the guy, but he seemed Intelligent at the time. But given that he got crushed... I will have to take Reagan.
Reagan VS Carter - Carter wins. Too bad he was the worst president in the last 40 years. Someone please tell him that we still have oil, and the year is 2003. God I loved gas rationing, and negotiating with terrorist.
Carter VS Ford - Give this one to Carter.
I could keep going back, but you get the idea. It isn't that one side is brilliant. Both sides say what they are paid to say and don't give a rats ass about anything but their power.
I will give GW credit for one thing, he does make decisions on what he believes to be correct. He doesn't let the press or polls dictate his decisions.
In my opinion will he beat Hillary? Yep. Will the Democrats put Hillary up against him? Probably. So the next comparision:
Bush VS Clinton - Bush. Granted if I needed investment advice in the futures market... Clinton, or how to murder former co-workers she would also win.
A cow or fish on Mars...
Just because someone hasn't "been there" doesn't mean they can't say "It doesn't exist".
Here I will take a stab at it.
There are no humans living on the sun.
Also, I am not sure what bible you are talking about. In the bible that I know of it doesn't say "God created life on earth and only earth" Heck you could even read in to it a little bit. In that when Adam and Eve created original sin God removed them from Edin. Well what if Edin was another planet? I am not claiming to be some expert on Bible knowledge, but from what I know, finding other life wouldn't change much at all. Especially in the New Testimate.
It kinda is that way now. I go to my local fast food joint here in the midwest and find out that I need to speak Spanish just to order my freaking meal! I say bring on the robots. At lest I kinda know binary :-)