By the way, what will happen when the Federal government sends documents to Massachusetts in word format? Would the state send them back?
Open Office or all packages that support OpenDoc can read the MS word format without any problem. Likewise, the reply docs can be saved in word doc versions and still be read by the Fed systems running MS Office. I don't see any problems here.... except for locked down formats like Microsoft's.
The chief reason why Office is no longer attractive to enterprises is bcos of it's closed formats. It's not possible to manipulate an Office document without using the application, and that's pricey, bloated and proprietary - besides being locked down to the platform.
Companies around me have stuck with Office 97 for docs and use the Mozilla range for mail and internet. IE and OE are too buggy and bloated - and more easily replaced than Office. In a year's time, Open Office 2 should stabilise and remove the need for the OS itself.
Office 12 might contain a ton of features, but the crucial one is this:
An open, documented format - and I mean 100% open, not like the 65% shared source initiative from MS that means zilch to devleopers.
MS has to realise that the data in the document which I put in is much more valuable than the format in which it's stored. If I'm forced to use only MS tools to manipulate data in Office docs, it's not too exciting.
Recently, I searched for ways to update a VSS store from a remote location using a web interface. I learnt that the small 3rd party app needed to achieve this was ridiculously expensive, and crucially MS didn't have this component for it's own software. I'm now looking to change from VSS rather than getting a plug-in. More enterprise users would move away from Office if it sticks to proprietary patented stuff in the new version.
Right! And if Opera adoption picks up now, it's even better news for standards-compliant web development. Specially in view of the fact that MS is trying to pick up a stake in AOL - if AOL dropped Mozilla because it was 'too insecure and expensive to keep patching and releasing' - freeloaders will jump to Opera.
One expects that since Opera is not head-quartered in the US, they'd be more immune to take-overs. It'd be a shame if some non-descript US company bought over Opera and delivers the coup-de-grace - like Novell is doing to SuSE. Too early for them to go Open Source, methinks.
Ditto. Matter of fact - pricing of Oracle products is identical on either platform - Linux or Windows. Not sure about IBM's websphere - whether open source or not - but Oracle is definitely NOT open source. Sybase, Ingres and even Informix I believe have joined the Open Source route on Linux - Oracle is still pricey and closed-source.
It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
I call Bullshit. It's like saying "Working for commercial software companies is like prositution. Still, prostitution and sex are 2 different ideologies and both can co-exist." You see how stupid this is?
Open source programmers and implementers are paid to customise OSS projects to suit client requirements. Much like MCSEs are required to install and configure MS Exchange and SQL servers.
Just because the CD says Exchange server, it doesn't mean it will install itself and configure itself the way I intend it to. And again just naming the product Office 97 or Office 2003 does not translate to better features and usability that the buyer expects.
The cost of licensing and implementing a full-featured MS server for a single service - like mail - is already greater than paying an Open Source programmer to implement Open Groupware with LDAP support. In the former approach, MS makes about $85 and the implementer gets about $15. With open source, it's $0 for the license and $100 for services.
Naturally, people who can configure Open Source products for customer's real needs are better paid than $5 per hour MCSEs. This is the exact opposite of what Gates seems to imply. OSS coders aren't cutting hair in the morning, they're chopping the balls off "closed-source lock-in software vendors". No wonder companies like Microsoft are worried.
why no country has attempted to do this sort of thing? For the entire world, there could be only 6 billion records - a single nation would need to have less than a billion - maybe a few million for most countries.
What can be the security implications for storing things like name, date of birth, sex, present address, etc. for all citizens? It's amazing that in these days of hi-tech gadgets and advances in storage, such elementary data is not available OR not reliably accurate.
Even population estimates have a more than 10% error rate for most nations. How can we plan for social welfare and emergency relief when we don't have accurate data? Amazing, really...
Hmmmmm... maybe MS wanted to support OpenDoc aka XML doc... then eXtend it and make it XXML; and the eXtinguish it when they came along with a newer format - ha now, it's clear.
MS wants us to adopt their XXXML - they feel it's much better than XML!
Like, building a populous city below sea level. The worst damage caused by a hurricane is bcos of the water level, not the wind speed. If the water can drain in a couple of days, not much damage (as in life) will be caused.
The failure to follow standards should be punished in some way..
With so many standards out there, how would you define a 'failure'? I'd suggest failure to follow an 'open standard' should be punished. Or rather, failure to publish a standard, protocol, format, whatever.... not the implementation of these.
There was an article a year ago - the Indian President inaugurating the Indian Institute of Information Technology.. and in his address, he asked for firms and govts. to stay away from proprietary standards, software and formats. He'd even mentioned his 'discussions with Bill Gates turned difficult' when Gates visited him. Incidentally, this was a short while after Richard Stallman visited the Indian President.
Methinks after Massachusets, very slowly people in the 'First World' are waking up to this fact.
The FEMA website specifically checks only for the user agent string - and repels non-IE browsers. Proving they've taken EXTRA efforts to repel the rest.
It's not like the FEMA has to be designing a better web portal NOW, after the storm. The very purpose of FEMA is to handle emergencies... and looks like they've gone out of their way to screw up non-IE users.
Having to re-install Windows is a pain, sure, but no-one dies.
Atleast until XP, Windows died (BSOD) and a re-install would solve the issue. With XP it says something vague like "Dr Watson performed an illegal operation" or even more confusing "Win32 Generic Services failed unexpectedly"... followed by the helpful "Send Error report to Microsoft?" Whatever for?
Atleast let the damn OS die in peace so the offending component (IE or kernel32 or whatever) can be de-installed. From XP on it's not possible to do this, so the user experience is really awful. As I said elsewhere, Creative seems to have chosen a wrong software platform for their device.
Should Creative be given a hard enough pranging to get the attention of other software manufacturers?
If we treat MS the same way, they'll have a valid reason to NEVER ship LongHorn. After a decade, they still can't get out code that DOESN'T NEED an anti-virus out of the box. Methinks Creative chose a wrong platform for their device.
That's a feature.. not a bug! Windows provides full upward compatibility for all code from DOS onwards, including viruses, worms and ticks... but excluding Lotus, WordPerfect, Netscape....
Can't think of a single virus that runs only on Win98 but not on XP...
I think the OSDL should politely decline the invite to spend... er waste good money on stupid research and launch a counter capmaign "Get the Right Facts" or some such.
Facts: 1. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist - Fact. 2. Microsoft has written software and spent billions - specifically to crush competition and reduce the user experience - FACT. 3. Microsoft fudged a demo during trial - under OATH - Fact. etc.... instead of simply declining and being labelled a coward.
There's little use 'marketing' Open Source and Free Software adopting the same methods and paradigm as Microsoft software. Microsoft has been on the offensive for the past decade and more wrt competition - Lotus 123 gave up after a few years as did Word Perfect and later Netscape.
F/OSS is a different kettle of fish. Being aggressive, sponsored research etc. hasn't cut much ice. Customers are interested in 'Getting their Act' more than 'Getting the twisted Facts'. The ones that base their decisions on Gartner reports aren't worth addressing anyway.
"Wont microsoft take this skeptism, and then spend 10 million in marketing to say that OSDL backed out of an open test because they know linux is inferior?"
I think the world has built up a healthy skepticism about anything coming from Microsoft, so another $10m FUD marketing is gonna go down the drain. There's some key points with this "joint, independent" study:
1. OSDL is just one of the agencies involved in the creation and upkeep of Open Source projects. MS is the only one developing Windows.
2. FOSS projects get used and adopted by word of mouth, whereas MS depends on Gartner reports and 'funded, independent' research to propogate their products. How many Gartner reports and mainstream media reports could forecast the spectacular growth of Open Source?
3. The OSDL could rather focus on their core area of writing and distributing quality software - money invested in 'research' activities such as this is pure waste.
4. Microsoft's philosophy is 'one-size-fits-all' - totally contrary to the FOSS world. If there's an issue with IE it's impossible to (completely) remove it from the OS and be secure - it's possible to install a Linux server that does not include a browser. Hardly any purpose would be served comparing the two.
If people are going to adopt and deploy FOSS, they don't need any of these 'sponsored' reports. Microsoft has no choice.
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By the way, what will happen when the Federal government sends documents to Massachusetts in word format? Would the state send them back?
Open Office or all packages that support OpenDoc can read the MS word format without any problem. Likewise, the reply docs can be saved in word doc versions and still be read by the Fed systems running MS Office. I don't see any problems here.... except for locked down formats like Microsoft's.
In true Mohammed Saees Al Sahaf style "Google is no more with us"..
The chief reason why Office is no longer attractive to enterprises is bcos of it's closed formats. It's not possible to manipulate an Office document without using the application, and that's pricey, bloated and proprietary - besides being locked down to the platform.
Companies around me have stuck with Office 97 for docs and use the Mozilla range for mail and internet. IE and OE are too buggy and bloated - and more easily replaced than Office. In a year's time, Open Office 2 should stabilise and remove the need for the OS itself.
BALLMER: Where is Clippy? Is he safe, is he all right?
... it seems in your anger, you killed him.
GATES: I'm afraid he died.
BALLMER: Hmmmm.... was it tacked onto some chair??
Office 12 might contain a ton of features, but the crucial one is this:
An open, documented format - and I mean 100% open, not like the 65% shared source initiative from MS that means zilch to devleopers.
MS has to realise that the data in the document which I put in is much more valuable than the format in which it's stored. If I'm forced to use only MS tools to manipulate data in Office docs, it's not too exciting.
Recently, I searched for ways to update a VSS store from a remote location using a web interface. I learnt that the small 3rd party app needed to achieve this was ridiculously expensive, and crucially MS didn't have this component for it's own software. I'm now looking to change from VSS rather than getting a plug-in. More enterprise users would move away from Office if it sticks to proprietary patented stuff in the new version.
Right! And if Opera adoption picks up now, it's even better news for standards-compliant web development. Specially in view of the fact that MS is trying to pick up a stake in AOL - if AOL dropped Mozilla because it was 'too insecure and expensive to keep patching and releasing' - freeloaders will jump to Opera.
One expects that since Opera is not head-quartered in the US, they'd be more immune to take-overs. It'd be a shame if some non-descript US company bought over Opera and delivers the coup-de-grace - like Novell is doing to SuSE. Too early for them to go Open Source, methinks.
I'll now buy about a 100 of them to stop my Windows-powered spybots...
Ditto. Matter of fact - pricing of Oracle products is identical on either platform - Linux or Windows. Not sure about IBM's websphere - whether open source or not - but Oracle is definitely NOT open source. Sybase, Ingres and even Informix I believe have joined the Open Source route on Linux - Oracle is still pricey and closed-source.
This is not news at all.
It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
I call Bullshit. It's like saying "Working for commercial software companies is like prositution. Still, prostitution and sex are 2 different ideologies and both can co-exist." You see how stupid this is?
Open source programmers and implementers are paid to customise OSS projects to suit client requirements. Much like MCSEs are required to install and configure MS Exchange and SQL servers.
Just because the CD says Exchange server, it doesn't mean it will install itself and configure itself the way I intend it to. And again just naming the product Office 97 or Office 2003 does not translate to better features and usability that the buyer expects.
The cost of licensing and implementing a full-featured MS server for a single service - like mail - is already greater than paying an Open Source programmer to implement Open Groupware with LDAP support. In the former approach, MS makes about $85 and the implementer gets about $15. With open source, it's $0 for the license and $100 for services.
Naturally, people who can configure Open Source products for customer's real needs are better paid than $5 per hour MCSEs. This is the exact opposite of what Gates seems to imply. OSS coders aren't cutting hair in the morning, they're chopping the balls off "closed-source lock-in software vendors". No wonder companies like Microsoft are worried.
why no country has attempted to do this sort of thing? For the entire world, there could be only 6 billion records - a single nation would need to have less than a billion - maybe a few million for most countries.
What can be the security implications for storing things like name, date of birth, sex, present address, etc. for all citizens? It's amazing that in these days of hi-tech gadgets and advances in storage, such elementary data is not available OR not reliably accurate.
Even population estimates have a more than 10% error rate for most nations. How can we plan for social welfare and emergency relief when we don't have accurate data? Amazing, really...
Hmmmmm... maybe MS wanted to support OpenDoc aka XML doc... then eXtend it and make it XXML; and the eXtinguish it when they came along with a newer format - ha now, it's clear.
MS wants us to adopt their XXXML - they feel it's much better than XML!
Like, building a populous city below sea level. The worst damage caused by a hurricane is bcos of the water level, not the wind speed. If the water can drain in a couple of days, not much damage (as in life) will be caused.
Even if it does taste crap, 90% of the computer users will pirate it just to taste it.
The failure to follow standards should be punished in some way..
With so many standards out there, how would you define a 'failure'? I'd suggest failure to follow an 'open standard' should be punished. Or rather, failure to publish a standard, protocol, format, whatever.... not the implementation of these.
There was an article a year ago - the Indian President inaugurating the Indian Institute of Information Technology.. and in his address, he asked for firms and govts. to stay away from proprietary standards, software and formats. He'd even mentioned his 'discussions with Bill Gates turned difficult' when Gates visited him. Incidentally, this was a short while after Richard Stallman visited the Indian President.
Methinks after Massachusets, very slowly people in the 'First World' are waking up to this fact.
If this is true, it proves that:
The FEMA website specifically checks only for the user agent string - and repels non-IE browsers. Proving they've taken EXTRA efforts to repel the rest.
Highly mischevous.
I call BULLSHIT. It should require special effort to make a site work ONLY with IE, not browser-independent like 90% of the sites on the web.
It's not like the FEMA has to be designing a better web portal NOW, after the storm. The very purpose of FEMA is to handle emergencies... and looks like they've gone out of their way to screw up non-IE users.
Too bad.
XP + Nanotech coating = Transparent Windows! Probly explains the long delay in releasing LongHorn...
Having to re-install Windows is a pain, sure, but no-one dies.
... followed by the helpful "Send Error report to Microsoft?" Whatever for?
Atleast until XP, Windows died (BSOD) and a re-install would solve the issue. With XP it says something vague like "Dr Watson performed an illegal operation" or even more confusing "Win32 Generic Services failed unexpectedly"
Atleast let the damn OS die in peace so the offending component (IE or kernel32 or whatever) can be de-installed. From XP on it's not possible to do this, so the user experience is really awful. As I said elsewhere, Creative seems to have chosen a wrong software platform for their device.
Should Creative be given a hard enough pranging to get the attention of other software manufacturers?
If we treat MS the same way, they'll have a valid reason to NEVER ship LongHorn. After a decade, they still can't get out code that DOESN'T NEED an anti-virus out of the box. Methinks Creative chose a wrong platform for their device.
That's a feature.. not a bug! Windows provides full upward compatibility for all code from DOS onwards, including viruses, worms and ticks... but excluding Lotus, WordPerfect, Netscape....
Can't think of a single virus that runs only on Win98 but not on XP...
I think the OSDL should politely decline the invite to spend... er waste good money on stupid research and launch a counter capmaign "Get the Right Facts" or some such.
Facts:
1. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist - Fact.
2. Microsoft has written software and spent billions - specifically to crush competition and reduce the user experience - FACT.
3. Microsoft fudged a demo during trial - under OATH - Fact.
etc.... instead of simply declining and being labelled a coward.
There's little use 'marketing' Open Source and Free Software adopting the same methods and paradigm as Microsoft software. Microsoft has been on the offensive for the past decade and more wrt competition - Lotus 123 gave up after a few years as did Word Perfect and later Netscape.
F/OSS is a different kettle of fish. Being aggressive, sponsored research etc. hasn't cut much ice. Customers are interested in 'Getting their Act' more than 'Getting the twisted Facts'. The ones that base their decisions on Gartner reports aren't worth addressing anyway.
"Wont microsoft take this skeptism, and then spend 10 million in marketing to say that OSDL backed out of an open test because they know linux is inferior?"
I think the world has built up a healthy skepticism about anything coming from Microsoft, so another $10m FUD marketing is gonna go down the drain. There's some key points with this "joint, independent" study:
1. OSDL is just one of the agencies involved in the creation and upkeep of Open Source projects. MS is the only one developing Windows.
2. FOSS projects get used and adopted by word of mouth, whereas MS depends on Gartner reports and 'funded, independent' research to propogate their products. How many Gartner reports and mainstream media reports could forecast the spectacular growth of Open Source?
3. The OSDL could rather focus on their core area of writing and distributing quality software - money invested in 'research' activities such as this is pure waste.
4. Microsoft's philosophy is 'one-size-fits-all' - totally contrary to the FOSS world. If there's an issue with IE it's impossible to (completely) remove it from the OS and be secure - it's possible to install a Linux server that does not include a browser. Hardly any purpose would be served comparing the two.
If people are going to adopt and deploy FOSS, they don't need any of these 'sponsored' reports. Microsoft has no choice.