No, but it is "feed themselves" good, right? And really good programmers make a lot more than $80K (gross), although that may depend upon where you live, I suppose. If you're a motivated contractor, you can gross $120K a year pretty easily.
From someone who worked in the voip industry for years, SIP is junk. Skype recognised this and jumped on the opportunity, and now they are without competition in the soft-phone market. Good for them, although it is a shame their call set-up is proprietary, but oh well.
Actually, the great majority of Unix gurus and pros that I know use Macs almost exclusively, with Linux or some BSD on their servers. Your "geek" friends probably aren't Unix people.
Your 95% number is way too high these days. And there are plenty of businesses that run entirely without Office.
The only corporation I've seen that doesn't run entirely on Windows desktops is Google, where there are a lot of Macs and some Linux desktops. And in my startup days, we (well, some of us) used Linux (Gentoo in my case). I imagine other startups are the same, although you'd be shocked at how many people run Windows to do Python development. Rather horrifying.
So in my particular experience, Windows corporate desktop penetration approaches 100%. 95% might be a little high, but not much - as recently as 2004, Gartner said it was 97%. Regardless, I get the feeling you are a positive thinker about this, and that's good.
As for Office, we'll have to agree to disagree. I admire your position, and I can say I don't make a habit of using Office either, but the great majority of places live and die by it. I used the word "convenient" simply because if everyone else uses something, it's most convenient for you to use that, too. As for viruses, etc., sad to say most places accept these as a cost of doing business. It must also be said that the problems you stated really aren't as massive as they are made out to be, otherwise every business would simply grind to a halt.
And of course, as you said, changing that whole Office dependency attitude would be nice. I have a contracting business, and I don't do Windows development, and I don't do Windows IT consulting. I am very aware of how much business I lose because of this, but the alternative is not worth it.
So take my word for it, no one wants to see an end to the corporate monoculture of Windows more than I do. But I am also a realist, and I know that back in the old days people chose Office etc. very specifically (contrary to your assertions), and they will continue to do so for many years to come.
You're right, Office did/does suck, but there were no alternatives. When NT came out, MS did not have a stranglehold on the business desktop. Businesses chose it, and the monopoly eventually took hold. I was there, and I saw it happen, over and over - "we need Word and Excel", "NT is stable", "look how easy Access is", "VB makes it so easy to get views on our data", "Crystal Reports is awesome - we need it", etc. etc.
And businesses do need Office, as they can't interoperate otherwise. Sad to say, there is no 100% compatible suite. That's why 95%+ of workspace desktops are some variant of Windows, and it's not going to change anytime soon. Those are the sad facts of life. People will choose the software that works most conveniently (as opposed to works the best), and damn the consequences.
You don't know what you're talking about. Machines like the SPARCstation SLC were available for less than a PC. As soon as Pentiums were out, you could run UNIX on them. And Linux and NT basically evolved in parallel. There was never a time at which a Microsoft machine was a cost-effective alternative to a non-Windows machine.
Yes, there was, because non-MS machines couldn't run Office, or much of anything else useful in a typical business, for that matter. Also, Unix workstation software was very expensive and typically very hard to use. Businesses chose NT because it put a friendly face on crucial software solutions. If Unix had served their needs better, it would have won. But it didn't.
Unfortunately, those days are still with us somewhat - no one has succeeded in breaking the Office stranglehold.
I think your analysis is spot-on and very well put. I too have long felt that all that p2p hand-wringing on the part of ISPs is just a feint to get the price infrastructure in place to manage hdtv streaming.
Actually, this is exactly how Gates writes and talks. I could tell from the first paragraph that it was him. I heard him speak live many years ago, and I barely understood what was going on - he comes across as a bit autistic or something.
I know, it's a new nadir for article submissions. Maybe Slashdot should change their official editorial policy and start actually editing submissions, unless the intention is to reveal the submitters as the cretins they generally are.
If I run Linux in a Parallels VM with 512 megs of ram (it's the platform I'm deploying to), then start a few needed pieces of software (IDEA, Skype, a bunch of terminals, Cisco vpn, Thunderbird, browser, etc.), I pretty much need 4 gigs.
All ISPs oversell, with our without Sandvine's products. Your ISP tells you you're getting a certain amount of bandwidth, but you aren't, at least not 24/7. This has always been the case from day one.
This company isn't doing anything particularly brilliant. ISPs have been doing ad hoc versions of it for years and years.
What? You have no idea what you're talking about. There were plenty of operating systems with guis way before Windows. And the rest of your comment is pure nonsense.
Sorry, I don't understand...do you mean, how often does one company include another company's proprietary code?
The inclusion of gpl'd code in the way I described - download software, find good bits, cut and paste anything from a few lines to entire files, change some strings, compile, link, and so forth - is practically impossible to detect in a big executable.
This goes for Java as well - I've witnessed (remotely) Indian shops copying screens of code from what they called "freeware" for inclusion into their outsourced code. Happens on a daily basis.
Because 99% of them get away with it. I've seen gpl'd code used all over the place, mostly not entire apps but big sections of cut and pasted code that is then compiled and linked in to some larger, proprietary app. Happens far, far more often than you'd think.
Agreed 100%, and it is an absolute farce that they were awarded the Summer Olympic Games. Tens of thousands of people were displaced in order to build facilities and erase "unsightly" slums.
I'm interested in seeing what the Tibetans get up to during the Games though - my guess is shenanigans will ensue, with the predictably heavy-handed military response. These Games could (hopefully will) end up being the biggest clusterfuck in the history of the Olympics.
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Python isn't interpreted. It's compiled to bytecode, like Java. You can even compile it to Java's bytecode and run it on the JVM if you want to.
No, but it is "feed themselves" good, right? And really good programmers make a lot more than $80K (gross), although that may depend upon where you live, I suppose. If you're a motivated contractor, you can gross $120K a year pretty easily.
I think $90,000+ a year qualifies as a bit more than feeding oneself. Do you work in the software industry?
From someone who worked in the voip industry for years, SIP is junk. Skype recognised this and jumped on the opportunity, and now they are without competition in the soft-phone market. Good for them, although it is a shame their call set-up is proprietary, but oh well.
Actually, the great majority of Unix gurus and pros that I know use Macs almost exclusively, with Linux or some BSD on their servers. Your "geek" friends probably aren't Unix people.
Actually, vast parts of OS X have nothing whatsoever to do with BSD. And BSD wasn't "based on" Unix, it IS Unix.
It is? Cobol is a very straightforward language, though verbose and sort of limited in scope. Have you ever written any Cobol?
The MS compiler has optimisation flags for minimum size, maximum speed, etc. The thread starter has no idea what he's talking about.
Your 95% number is way too high these days. And there are plenty of businesses that run entirely without Office.
The only corporation I've seen that doesn't run entirely on Windows desktops is Google, where there are a lot of Macs and some Linux desktops. And in my startup days, we (well, some of us) used Linux (Gentoo in my case). I imagine other startups are the same, although you'd be shocked at how many people run Windows to do Python development. Rather horrifying.
So in my particular experience, Windows corporate desktop penetration approaches 100%. 95% might be a little high, but not much - as recently as 2004, Gartner said it was 97%. Regardless, I get the feeling you are a positive thinker about this, and that's good.
As for Office, we'll have to agree to disagree. I admire your position, and I can say I don't make a habit of using Office either, but the great majority of places live and die by it. I used the word "convenient" simply because if everyone else uses something, it's most convenient for you to use that, too. As for viruses, etc., sad to say most places accept these as a cost of doing business. It must also be said that the problems you stated really aren't as massive as they are made out to be, otherwise every business would simply grind to a halt.
And of course, as you said, changing that whole Office dependency attitude would be nice. I have a contracting business, and I don't do Windows development, and I don't do Windows IT consulting. I am very aware of how much business I lose because of this, but the alternative is not worth it.
So take my word for it, no one wants to see an end to the corporate monoculture of Windows more than I do. But I am also a realist, and I know that back in the old days people chose Office etc. very specifically (contrary to your assertions), and they will continue to do so for many years to come.
You're right, Office did/does suck, but there were no alternatives. When NT came out, MS did not have a stranglehold on the business desktop. Businesses chose it, and the monopoly eventually took hold. I was there, and I saw it happen, over and over - "we need Word and Excel", "NT is stable", "look how easy Access is", "VB makes it so easy to get views on our data", "Crystal Reports is awesome - we need it", etc. etc.
And businesses do need Office, as they can't interoperate otherwise. Sad to say, there is no 100% compatible suite. That's why 95%+ of workspace desktops are some variant of Windows, and it's not going to change anytime soon. Those are the sad facts of life. People will choose the software that works most conveniently (as opposed to works the best), and damn the consequences.
You don't know what you're talking about. Machines like the SPARCstation SLC were available for less than a PC. As soon as Pentiums were out, you could run UNIX on them. And Linux and NT basically evolved in parallel. There was never a time at which a Microsoft machine was a cost-effective alternative to a non-Windows machine.
Yes, there was, because non-MS machines couldn't run Office, or much of anything else useful in a typical business, for that matter. Also, Unix workstation software was very expensive and typically very hard to use. Businesses chose NT because it put a friendly face on crucial software solutions. If Unix had served their needs better, it would have won. But it didn't.
Unfortunately, those days are still with us somewhat - no one has succeeded in breaking the Office stranglehold.
I think your analysis is spot-on and very well put. I too have long felt that all that p2p hand-wringing on the part of ISPs is just a feint to get the price infrastructure in place to manage hdtv streaming.
Actually, this is exactly how Gates writes and talks. I could tell from the first paragraph that it was him. I heard him speak live many years ago, and I barely understood what was going on - he comes across as a bit autistic or something.
Those, and the 130,000 caribou that live there. But who's counting, right?
I know, it's a new nadir for article submissions. Maybe Slashdot should change their official editorial policy and start actually editing submissions, unless the intention is to reveal the submitters as the cretins they generally are.
The FSF asks that people assign copyright to them for any number of GPL'd projects. No one seems to mind. Stop fear-mongering.
If I run Linux in a Parallels VM with 512 megs of ram (it's the platform I'm deploying to), then start a few needed pieces of software (IDEA, Skype, a bunch of terminals, Cisco vpn, Thunderbird, browser, etc.), I pretty much need 4 gigs.
All ISPs oversell, with our without Sandvine's products. Your ISP tells you you're getting a certain amount of bandwidth, but you aren't, at least not 24/7. This has always been the case from day one.
This company isn't doing anything particularly brilliant. ISPs have been doing ad hoc versions of it for years and years.
And it's still way more than the largest botnet. So it's still a good target. But it's never been exploited - I wonder why?
What? You have no idea what you're talking about. There were plenty of operating systems with guis way before Windows. And the rest of your comment is pure nonsense.
P.S. That site in your sig is great! I've stopped even bringing up nuclear because I just get shouted down.
Oh, they're distributed, all right - sold for lots of money. I wouldn't even mention it if it was solely in-house stuff.
Basically, if you outsource to India, it's practically guaranteed that what you're getting contains plenty of cut and paste from "freeware".
Sorry, I don't understand...do you mean, how often does one company include another company's proprietary code?
The inclusion of gpl'd code in the way I described - download software, find good bits, cut and paste anything from a few lines to entire files, change some strings, compile, link, and so forth - is practically impossible to detect in a big executable.
This goes for Java as well - I've witnessed (remotely) Indian shops copying screens of code from what they called "freeware" for inclusion into their outsourced code. Happens on a daily basis.
Because 99% of them get away with it. I've seen gpl'd code used all over the place, mostly not entire apps but big sections of cut and pasted code that is then compiled and linked in to some larger, proprietary app. Happens far, far more often than you'd think.
Agreed 100%, and it is an absolute farce that they were awarded the Summer Olympic Games. Tens of thousands of people were displaced in order to build facilities and erase "unsightly" slums.
I'm interested in seeing what the Tibetans get up to during the Games though - my guess is shenanigans will ensue, with the predictably heavy-handed military response. These Games could (hopefully will) end up being the biggest clusterfuck in the history of the Olympics.