Apple does not have a monopoly of home computer users, Microsoft does. Most things MS "integrates" into their OS will become a monopoly simply because they have a monopoly on the home computer user market.
Don't you see the problem with MS doing this? McAfee, Norton, etc have built their business around MS and anti-virus. If MS puts some anti-virus software in MS Windows, those markets will crash and burn. So much for putting your eggs in the "MS-Basket". Again, this is MS using their OS monopoly to take over another market. Once you have the OS monopoly, it is not very hard to take over many, many other areas by "integrating and extending". MS should be split into two companies. One for the base OS and one for applications.
You seem to be missing the point that MS is a monopoly. When you are a monopoly you cannot use your OS monopoly to make your other products a monopoly.
For example. A media company wants to release some videos for download. What format do they pick? Windows Media. Why? Because they know that it will be on 90%+ of all user desktops. This gives MS an instant monopoly on a video format by just putting it in their OS. They didn't earn that monopoly, they leveraged one monopoly to get it. Now if MS were to include a competing format say, Quicktime or RealVideo in their OS, OR, make the wma format open, then no one would be able to complian since now people can choose the format they want based on merit and not the fact that it is what is included in the OS. When you are a monopoly, all your actions are watched closely to see if you are trying to tip the level of competition in your favor by leveraging your monopoly.
This does not apply to Apple since they have less then 3% of the desktop market, 0.1% less then Linux on the desktop infact. Apple's format is picked because of the quality, not because Apple is leveraging a monopoly.
It could be. The article was not one of the most well written articles I have read. I doubt they would jump to Linux on the desktop from being a MS Only shop on the desktop for so long. Usually companies get their feet wet by getting a Linux server in and then experimenting.
Of course, now I can sit back and watch these fax machines get slashdotted. Not that they don't every day that a BAS/IAS is due anyway!;-)
"Specifically "not recommended or supported" in the SOE are the GNU/Linux open source operating system and the Mozilla open-source browser."
The non-Linux move comes as no surprise. It's no secret that the current hardware is great for Fragfests (Some of the best Quake players that I knew were ATO employees...)
That was the old SOE. The new SOE would allow Linux, which is in the _very_ first paragraph:
THE Australian Tax Office will adopt an open-source software policy for the first time, opening its Microsoft-dominated standard operating environment (SOE) to products such as Linux.
perhaps not, according to the article "Specifically 'not recommended or supported' in the SOE are the GNU/Linux open source operating system and the Mozilla open-source browser."
That was the old SOE.
The very first paragraph states:
THE Australian Tax Office will adopt an open-source software policy for the first time, opening its Microsoft-dominated standard operating environment (SOE) to products such as Linux.
What if the lawyers do it for free or close to free? Think what the lawyer(s) will get out of it. Advertising. All that media coverage will make those ambulance chasers drool! That free media coverage can turn an ordinary lawyer chasing around an ambulance into a "super" lawyer that gets some high profile cases. Look at the idiots representing SCO. Didn't they lose most/all of thier big cases, yet they still got the SCO case and have already made millions.
What are you talking about? You can get the code from CVS to WineX from here. All of the WineX stuff gets back to Wine except for a few proprietary technologies that Transgamming does not own. Many commercial Win32 games have copy protection crap on them. WineX works with that protection, however Transgamming is not allowed to just release the code to some other companies copy protection technology. In fact, the only two things you cannot get from WineX without purchasing a subscription is copy protection related code and texture compression. The whole focus of WineX is games, and WineX supports far more games then just Wine does. So if you don't need to run any Win32 games, then Wine will work fine for you. Just don't go around spreding FUD about how Transgamming doesn't give back the code, when that is commplete bull.
Huh? Who would mod this up informative? Come on people do a littlereading
Wine consists of a program loader, which loads and executes a Windows binary, and a set of libraries that implements Windows API calls using their UNIX or X11 equivalents. There is no "translation" and no "emulation". A win32 binary should run as fast if not faster as under MS Windows on the same hardware. Some programs I have run under Wine do seem faster and others seem slower. What could cause that? It is the Wine source code itself. Wine has 1,000's of win32 function to write and convert to a Linux world. Some of those function are not complete yet, some have not been tuned yet, etc. It is a huge job and takes time.
There is no translation as if one massive wine function grabs all the Win32 calls and goes through a massive switch statement and "translates" it to some Linux function.
Say a Win32 application calls CreateWindowEx, under Wine that application does the same thing. Wine has a function named CreateWindowEx that has the same parameters as the Win32 version. The application doesn't know and doesn't care.
I actaully read that in the EULA for MS Front Page you are not allowed to use Front Page to make any site that is demeaning to microsoft, and by using MS Front Page, you agree to not make any negative sites about MS.
Are you sure? I though I read somewhere that you could use a small part of a copyrighted work without permission. Obviously re-broadcasting an entire news story would need permission. Read this post. I am not sure if it is correct, though it does sound familiar.
you are obviously a fucking moron. YOU said you were doing custom COM objects to get your shitty calendar crap to work. Thus making you a fucking liar, and a bullshitter. Grow up and take responsibility for your actions; although you arent even doing this stuff, you are probably some slug intern in the accounting department who tries to be all cool and talk computers with the real tech guys. Here's a tip- YOU ARE BORING. Go away. We dont want to talk to you, and hobbyists arent interesting. You arent impressing anybody.
Awww, did t0ny's wittle feelings get hurt? You know when someone starts to curse, whine and call names like a child it just means that they do not have a good argument.
The CUSTOM is in the fact that MS DID NOT WRITE THE COM OBJECT FOR US you dope. The custom object uses the MS made API for talking to Exchange. Microsofts own people reviewed the code and found it no problems (though with the track record of MS, that doesn't make me feel any better). Boy, you are pretty dense. This isn't rocket science here. See, I am a senior programmer for a fortune 500. You are one of those people that does not have the brain power to program and get all childish when someone has a superior skillset to you.
You have no proof that MS is going to charge you 500 times as much for the licenses in a year if you dont upgrade. A year from now they will want to sell you the stuff just as much as they do today. Heck, maybe even more so. So again, grow up and be a man. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.
Damn, you sound more and more dumb the more you talk. Have you heard of licensing 6? Haven't you read any of the news of how tons of companies are mad at MS and thier new licensing plans. If you don't upgrade sooner, it WILL cost you more later. Ever hear of Microsoft's "software assurance"? It is to ensure that MS gets paid continuously.
No, I dont waste my time working with things I dont care about. I focus on being an expert on Windows, not a hobbyist playing with two or more operating systems.
Translation: I do not have the skillset to manage more then a point-n-click fisher price GUI. I guess IBM, Oracle, Google, Amazon.com, Merril Lynch and plenty of others are all just "hobbyist playing with two or more operating systems".
So name one, moron. Thats what I asked, because you were trying to be clever and name companies which converted all their SERVERS to desktops. Sorry, it takes more intelligence than you possess to bullshit me. You are just angry you got caught.
You need to take some reading comprehension classes. What part of Largo FL did you not understand? The city coverted to Linux. I know this is over your head, so I will goooo sloooow foooor yooou.
Not only did the coversion go so well, they are now planning to put Linux terminals in all the police cars. Try searching on google if you can manage to point and click that much.
Now run along and play little t0ny, your not grown up enough yet to play with the big boys. Oh, and don't waste your time replying, because we both know what crap you will spew. It will be some cursing, whining, and crying, and not in any of it will there be an intelligent response worth my time or effort.
You are allowed to use copyrighted information to some extent for certain purposes such as educationl, parady, etc. You can use a small clip from a song, you can display a paragrahp from a book, etc. I doubt anyone would consider showing 10 lines or so of source code out of millions a copyright violation. The grandparent post is obviously for education purposes only : )
So your original statement was misleading. Its locking up because you are doing non-standard things, not because you are doing a plain vanilla Exchange 2003 server.
Umm, no. Nice try though. The MS Exchange 2003 server is locking up all by itself and having other problems. It also locks out users randomly.
Oh, and get a clue. How in the world can you say that Microsoft Collaboration Data Objects is non-standard? It is made by MS to WORK WITH MS EXCHANGE. Did you also forget the part of my post where I said that Microsofts OWN people checked the code? The code is as simple as can be. I guess you also missed the part of how it has been workign in MS Exhcange 2000 for some time now? Statements like that show you to be just a blind MS Weeine. Talk about zealotry.
Come on, now you are making stuff up. And, even were that the case, they still arent forcing you to do anything. Thats like saying Jewel is forcing me to buy oranges because they are on sale this week.
You are obviously just an MS troll, so I won't wast much time on you. How in the world is this NOT a forced upgrade? MS does this ALL THE TIME. If you were a manager and turned down a forced upgrade from MS now, and 1-2 years later had to pay up to twice as much for the same software, do you think you would still have your job?
You are talking about servers, not desktops. There is a difference between running a Linux server farm and a 1000 desktop linux network. So point out some companies which have converted all their users to Linux, and come back and talk. M'kay?
Do you have experience doing ANY large Linux rollout? Nope. So shut yer' trap M'kay? There are plenty of people around the world doing/have done desktp Linux roll outs. I am right outside of Orlando. Not too far from me is Largo FL. I guess you don't recall that conversion to Linux on the Desktop? That is running sweet as pie.
A lot more honest that the Slashdot zealotry, thats for sure.
Man, you have really been blinded by the MS PR machine. I have hundreds of Links on crap MS has done. License to plunder
That is a more of a hack then what we had to do! Plus, I don't have access to create/change passwords, I am a senior programmer, not an admin. The admins would never go for something like this because it touches too many systems. It would takes weeks to get it tested in our dev lab.
Too bad it doesn't run on Linux, it would be very scriptable and simple to do.
I question that last part. A key point in any project is being able to roll back
Of course there were rollbacks. There are several MS Exchange servers running. Us programmers get to be the ones using the "latest and greatest" from MS. MS has had their people at our company for a while now and are still scratching their heads. MS came in after the problems started, did a complete reintstall and it still is not right. The system randomly locks users out and all kinds of crap. We have a custom COM object that talks to the Exchange server to get calendar/email for users to display on our corporate portal. Exchange 2003 will lock the user that the COM object runs as out ever 2 hours our so. We have to have 2 compiled version of the COM object with different a username/password and swap that object on the server every two hours just to get it to work. This code has been running perfectly under Exchange 2k for some time now. The MS guys have audited the code of the COM object and found no problems it and they are still scrathing their head on what is wrong with their latest and greatest.
They didnt force anybody to upgrade
Well, MS comes in and says if you upgrade now, you will save money, if you wait 2 years, it will be almost twice as much. That is pretty much forcing the upgrade.
Thats why anywhere with real IT pros wont convert to Linux
Well, Oracle is/has converted all of its internal business to run on Linux. A lot of Wall Street companies are/have converted to Linux. Amazon.com and plenty of others. Linux has 25% of the server market _right now_ with many analyst predicting 45% within 3 years. Though I guess none of these companies have _anyone_ that knows what they are doing. Maybe they should all hire you since you are the only It person in the world that knows how to run things?
I'll bet if you interview anybody who actaully does any work there in one year, they will have tons of complaints.
Umm, you can interview users at just about _any_ company NOW and here tons of complaints about MS software, so what is your point?
But you wont see those interviews, you will only see IBM saying "Mission Accomplished!". Makes me think of GWB standing in a flightsuit on the deck of an aircraft carrier. We got it done! Truth be damned!
Because we all know just how "honest" the MS PR machine is right?
Do those "free" readers work under Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris? Nope. What if I need to submit a document to the government? Why should I be forced to pay MS to create a document? The governemt should _only_ use open document formats that are not controlled by one company. Formats like PDF that are open or even postscript or Open Office since Open Office formats are completely open and the software is freely available for many platforms.
Also that MS Word viewer only supports MS Word 97/2000. MS Word documents are not forward compatible so an MS Word XP/2003 only feature will not be supported by that viewer.
That require you to buy software from MS to run those "free" viewers. There are no free viewers for Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. It also looks like those viewers are released a while after the MS office version. I found a viewer for MS Word 97/2000 but not XP or 2003. Government documents should not be locked into a proprietary format that requires any one vendor. They should be in an open format that is viewable by all such as PDF or even Open Office since the format is completely open.
Are you saying that $142.85 per system is too high or too low?
It is not too high when you consider how much it would cost for one year of support for MS XP and MS Office XP. That doesn't count _any_ developer tools, etc. At $142 a month, that comes out to about $1,700 per year/per system. An MSDN subscription cost more then that. Your average office workers desktp with MS XP and MS Office XP would cost less, say maybe about $800 per year or about $66 a month. So if you add the developer systems, the DBA systems, average worker systes, etc, an average of $142 per system/per month is not that high for an MS solution.
The question now was whether they spend $23.7 million everytime Microsoft decides so, or they spend $35.7 million and are free to decide themselves when the next change come.
Not only that, but with Linux being Open Source they can continue to use their systems after the support period and compile their own software and push them out system wide. It would be very easy to have one or two people maintain the software, build one RPM and have all the other systems grab them from a network server. They could use their new systems for 10 years if they wanted to. With MS, once support is up, you need to upgrade if you want any new security patches/updates/software.
I see the point you are trying to make, however I think there are a few points you might not be taking into consideration.
Munich was a long time user of MS software and like other companies/governments, have felt the heavy hand of MS far too often. The MS deal was originally a little more, however the "dancing monkey" didn't want to lose this deal and made that huge cut in the final offer. This type of action is exactly what Munich and many others want to get away from.
If MS could make an offer that was $12+ milllion less, why in the world did they not make that offer from the begining? Because MS wants to suck all the money they can get from you while you are their customer. Forced upgrades, high prices and intentionally making their software incompatible with standards to lock you in. The fact is, is that MS could make a huge profit while still selling their software for much less, not make their software incompatible with non-MS software/standards, not try to force upgrades, etc.
It is my opinion that what Munich is doing _is_ the best chioce. Munich will now control their own IT and not have the heavy hand of MS to deal with. Sure there will be growing pains, however those pains will quickly dissapear and leave Munich with an excellent IT infrastructure that _they_ control.
I doubt they are out of money. A budget is usually a floating target. They most likely broke the migration down to phases and gave each phase $X,XXX amount of money. They probably under budgeted the testing/dev phase, and went over the budget for testing/dev and so that means they will have to either take money from some other phase or come up with more money. Poor budgeting will get you every time.
Hey captain courageous, the parent I replied to didn't say anything about Linux PPC. He only made a point of a few apps that run on Mac OS X and stated that they also run on Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
You can use more then just Apple's media format on the Mac. You can even get Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X and RealOne for Mac OS X.
Apple does not have a monopoly of home computer users, Microsoft does. Most things MS "integrates" into their OS will become a monopoly simply because they have a monopoly on the home computer user market.
Don't you see the problem with MS doing this? McAfee, Norton, etc have built their business around MS and anti-virus. If MS puts some anti-virus software in MS Windows, those markets will crash and burn. So much for putting your eggs in the "MS-Basket". Again, this is MS using their OS monopoly to take over another market. Once you have the OS monopoly, it is not very hard to take over many, many other areas by "integrating and extending". MS should be split into two companies. One for the base OS and one for applications.
You seem to be missing the point that MS is a monopoly. When you are a monopoly you cannot use your OS monopoly to make your other products a monopoly.
For example. A media company wants to release some videos for download. What format do they pick? Windows Media. Why? Because they know that it will be on 90%+ of all user desktops. This gives MS an instant monopoly on a video format by just putting it in their OS. They didn't earn that monopoly, they leveraged one monopoly to get it. Now if MS were to include a competing format say, Quicktime or RealVideo in their OS, OR, make the wma format open, then no one would be able to complian since now people can choose the format they want based on merit and not the fact that it is what is included in the OS. When you are a monopoly, all your actions are watched closely to see if you are trying to tip the level of competition in your favor by leveraging your monopoly.
This does not apply to Apple since they have less then 3% of the desktop market, 0.1% less then Linux on the desktop infact. Apple's format is picked because of the quality, not because Apple is leveraging a monopoly.
It could be. The article was not one of the most well written articles I have read. I doubt they would jump to Linux on the desktop from being a MS Only shop on the desktop for so long. Usually companies get their feet wet by getting a Linux server in and then experimenting.
The very first paragraph states:
What if the lawyers do it for free or close to free? Think what the lawyer(s) will get out of it. Advertising. All that media coverage will make those ambulance chasers drool! That free media coverage can turn an ordinary lawyer chasing around an ambulance into a "super" lawyer that gets some high profile cases. Look at the idiots representing SCO. Didn't they lose most/all of thier big cases, yet they still got the SCO case and have already made millions.
What are you talking about? You can get the code from CVS to WineX from here. All of the WineX stuff gets back to Wine except for a few proprietary technologies that Transgamming does not own. Many commercial Win32 games have copy protection crap on them. WineX works with that protection, however Transgamming is not allowed to just release the code to some other companies copy protection technology. In fact, the only two things you cannot get from WineX without purchasing a subscription is copy protection related code and texture compression. The whole focus of WineX is games, and WineX supports far more games then just Wine does. So if you don't need to run any Win32 games, then Wine will work fine for you. Just don't go around spreding FUD about how Transgamming doesn't give back the code, when that is commplete bull.
Wine consists of a program loader, which loads and executes a Windows binary, and a set of libraries that implements Windows API calls using their UNIX or X11 equivalents. There is no "translation" and no "emulation". A win32 binary should run as fast if not faster as under MS Windows on the same hardware. Some programs I have run under Wine do seem faster and others seem slower. What could cause that? It is the Wine source code itself. Wine has 1,000's of win32 function to write and convert to a Linux world. Some of those function are not complete yet, some have not been tuned yet, etc. It is a huge job and takes time.
There is no translation as if one massive wine function grabs all the Win32 calls and goes through a massive switch statement and "translates" it to some Linux function. Say a Win32 application calls CreateWindowEx, under Wine that application does the same thing. Wine has a function named CreateWindowEx that has the same parameters as the Win32 version. The application doesn't know and doesn't care.
I actaully read that in the EULA for MS Front Page you are not allowed to use Front Page to make any site that is demeaning to microsoft, and by using MS Front Page, you agree to not make any negative sites about MS.
Are you sure? I though I read somewhere that you could use a small part of a copyrighted work without permission. Obviously re-broadcasting an entire news story would need permission. Read this post. I am not sure if it is correct, though it does sound familiar.
Linux a big hit in Largo, FL
Largo loves Linux more than ever
Not only did the coversion go so well, they are now planning to put Linux terminals in all the police cars. Try searching on google if you can manage to point and click that much.
Now run along and play little t0ny, your not grown up enough yet to play with the big boys. Oh, and don't waste your time replying, because we both know what crap you will spew. It will be some cursing, whining, and crying, and not in any of it will there be an intelligent response worth my time or effort.
You are allowed to use copyrighted information to some extent for certain purposes such as educationl, parady, etc. You can use a small clip from a song, you can display a paragrahp from a book, etc. I doubt anyone would consider showing 10 lines or so of source code out of millions a copyright violation. The grandparent post is obviously for education purposes only : )
Oh, and get a clue. How in the world can you say that Microsoft Collaboration Data Objects is non-standard? It is made by MS to WORK WITH MS EXCHANGE. Did you also forget the part of my post where I said that Microsofts OWN people checked the code? The code is as simple as can be. I guess you also missed the part of how it has been workign in MS Exhcange 2000 for some time now? Statements like that show you to be just a blind MS Weeine. Talk about zealotry.
You are obviously just an MS troll, so I won't wast much time on you. How in the world is this NOT a forced upgrade? MS does this ALL THE TIME. If you were a manager and turned down a forced upgrade from MS now, and 1-2 years later had to pay up to twice as much for the same software, do you think you would still have your job? Do you have experience doing ANY large Linux rollout? Nope. So shut yer' trap M'kay? There are plenty of people around the world doing/have done desktp Linux roll outs. I am right outside of Orlando. Not too far from me is Largo FL. I guess you don't recall that conversion to Linux on the Desktop? That is running sweet as pie. Man, you have really been blinded by the MS PR machine. I have hundreds of Links on crap MS has done. License to plunderToo bad it doesn't run on Linux, it would be very scriptable and simple to do.
Do those "free" readers work under Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris? Nope. What if I need to submit a document to the government? Why should I be forced to pay MS to create a document? The governemt should _only_ use open document formats that are not controlled by one company. Formats like PDF that are open or even postscript or Open Office since Open Office formats are completely open and the software is freely available for many platforms.
Also that MS Word viewer only supports MS Word 97/2000. MS Word documents are not forward compatible so an MS Word XP/2003 only feature will not be supported by that viewer.
That require you to buy software from MS to run those "free" viewers. There are no free viewers for Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, etc. It also looks like those viewers are released a while after the MS office version. I found a viewer for MS Word 97/2000 but not XP or 2003. Government documents should not be locked into a proprietary format that requires any one vendor. They should be in an open format that is viewable by all such as PDF or even Open Office since the format is completely open.
Are you saying that $142.85 per system is too high or too low?
It is not too high when you consider how much it would cost for one year of support for MS XP and MS Office XP. That doesn't count _any_ developer tools, etc. At $142 a month, that comes out to about $1,700 per year/per system. An MSDN subscription cost more then that. Your average office workers desktp with MS XP and MS Office XP would cost less, say maybe about $800 per year or about $66 a month. So if you add the developer systems, the DBA systems, average worker systes, etc, an average of $142 per system/per month is not that high for an MS solution.
Munich was a long time user of MS software and like other companies/governments, have felt the heavy hand of MS far too often. The MS deal was originally a little more, however the "dancing monkey" didn't want to lose this deal and made that huge cut in the final offer. This type of action is exactly what Munich and many others want to get away from.
If MS could make an offer that was $12+ milllion less, why in the world did they not make that offer from the begining? Because MS wants to suck all the money they can get from you while you are their customer. Forced upgrades, high prices and intentionally making their software incompatible with standards to lock you in. The fact is, is that MS could make a huge profit while still selling their software for much less, not make their software incompatible with non-MS software/standards, not try to force upgrades, etc.
It is my opinion that what Munich is doing _is_ the best chioce. Munich will now control their own IT and not have the heavy hand of MS to deal with. Sure there will be growing pains, however those pains will quickly dissapear and leave Munich with an excellent IT infrastructure that _they_ control.
I doubt they are out of money. A budget is usually a floating target. They most likely broke the migration down to phases and gave each phase $X,XXX amount of money. They probably under budgeted the testing/dev phase, and went over the budget for testing/dev and so that means they will have to either take money from some other phase or come up with more money. Poor budgeting will get you every time.
Hey captain courageous, the parent I replied to didn't say anything about Linux PPC. He only made a point of a few apps that run on Mac OS X and stated that they also run on Linux.