"If Wal-Mart, which sells PCs from companies such as Hewlett-Packard and eMachines, moves into the notebook market successfully, it could send ripples across the PC industry. The retailer's typically aggressive pricing could compel manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Toshiba to reduce their notebook prices in response, analysts said."
I KNOW there are people who hate Walmart, but I don't. Any store that forces hardware prices down to closer to manufacturing cost is fine by me. Over priced hardware has made over price software viable for far too long. I want to PAY for true innovation and pay commodity prices for things that have long since become commodities.
Picture a big fat guy dancing around on stage clapping his hands:
When I plug my Olympus camera into the USB port it shows up as a disk drive. I just drag the pictures wherever I want and can use the thumbnails generated by Konqueror or Nautilus to reject the duds. I've never had to use Gphoto at all.
Seems to me that not only should digital cameras avoid specialized software for Windows, but they can avoid the need for specialized software in Linux as well. Scanners or Webcam devices probably need something special in that area, but cameras that just take pictures to be uploaded or music devices that hold MP3s etc should just look like a drive.
You got that right!. The problem is not only that Open Source products are not on the menu but that the whole selection process is closed. A few people at the top make these decisions based on politics, payola and country club networking rather than TCP/IP issues. They then hold meetings and hire consultants to rubber stamp the decision. I have participated in such shams and know them to be total fakes.
Our country REALLY needs for these decisions to be made in an "Open" environment as well. If given such an environment the best deal involves Microsoft then fine. Show us the paperwork and meeting minutes that lead up to that decision. Otherwise this is just further defrauding of local taxpayers.
From an educational point of view the best solution would be for school systems to sample from several sources. Why not expose kids to Microsoft, Apple, Linux and maybe a few other things? For the most part these systems work well together on the same networks. Otherwise the company with the most money (in this case MS) eventally figures out that giving product away to schools is the best way to keep market share down the line. I think it would be better to have some selection even if the school system had to actually pay for copies of some things.
Don't forget that a large part of Microsoft's "punishment" in the anit-trust case was that they are "forced" to give away copies of Windows to various schools. The California settlement went that way too. As far as I know they can even take deductions on these lost leader deals. There were some school systems that switched from Apple on a large scale because they preferred to get Microsoft products for free rather than pay drastically lowered Apple prices. So essentially Microsoft manipulated the government into "sentencing" it to do what the marketing department wanted to do anyway. I don't give Microsoft credit for much, but they sure do run circles around the Feds.
"I didn't look close but from what I've heard in the past, this system failed because it was on a network which ended up getting flooded with traffice from all the infected Microsoft Windows machines on the same network."
That may well be the case. Reporting on these technology glitches often eats major shit. I know that a recent 2-day outage at the Department of State was reported as "minor" (you, know...that system that is supposed to keep the terrorists out?). Moreover I know that the system that was said to be affected by a Microsoft based virus was in fact totally mainframe based. The various reports I read were all nonsense unless you know a bit about the internal working of the system (which apparently spokespersons for the agency do not). My guess is that there was a huge amount of finger pointing within the agency and the "hobbyists" who run the PC front-end to the system didn't want to take full responsibility for the problem so they conveniently substituted the name for the back-end part of the process for the press release.
If in fact in this case at hand it was actually the Unix component which failed you might also consider that when you have systems that stay up for years at a time with no intervention you can get lazy about things. Maybe Microsoft should make the case that a system that has to be re-booted every few days is MORE secure since the personnel who run such systems are more familiar with recovery procedures.:)
I don't think the issue is so much with individuals and what software they choose to use. If you are an avid game player and have to have Windows to run your games that's fine. Do so at home, with my blessing. In business and government, it's another matter, particularly in government. Here are my two first hand experiences... compare with your own...
At the Department of Energy I worked with a group of 100 or so OS/2 users. This was back in the early 90s. They loved OS/2 and had no desire to change. As an autonomous department, they technically could run any software they wanted. However when it came time to upgrade their PCs to a newer generation of hardware they were given an ultimatum: Switch to Windows or keep your old PCs. They eventually switched.
At another well known federal agency there is a group of people who love IBM computers and operating systems. There is also a group of people who hate IBM and anything connected with them. More importantly these two groups hate each other and are in constant conflict. Since their systems have to talk to one another there is ample opportunity to stab each other in the back... cause something to fail (or just wait for a natural occurence) and then try and blame the other group.
Many years ago the anti-IBM crowd decided to build a system based on Wang mini-computers. The system basically sucked, but it wasn't a good career move to say so. The only reason they migrated off the Wang systems was that Wang went out of business. In fact they ran the system out of used parts for quite a while before declaring the situation an "emergency" which meant that huge amounts of money were spent for a quick conversion effort that should instead have been carefully planned.
They picked Windows as their new target architecture. I'm not sure that this was necessarily a bad decision, and in fact there were parts of the "plan", such as it was, that tried to encourage the use of "standards based" softare. This means that you write your programs to use, to the extent possible, generic SQL (for example) rather than Oracle, DB/2, or SQL Server syntax. Because it was an "emergency" however, these sound business concepts were ignored and the system became locked into specific DBMS/Compiler/Operating system ways of doing things. Seven years later and the system is still buggy as hell. The application is written in a now non-supported programming language, but the only fix for this would be another total re-write.
At one point a group I was involved with was asked to recommend some statistical analysis software to allow for ad-hoc queries of this 7 years worth of data. Using live data the analyst compared several potential products and rated them. As part of the summary he pointed out that while several of the proposed products were quite capable, he had noticed during the tests that almost no column of values in the database had sufficiently enough valid data points (both missing and mangled values) to draw any statistical inferences, no matter what product they picked. Both analyst and report were "shuffled off to Buffalo" never to be seen again.
I was there for another year or so after that. There was begrudging talk about the lack of wisdom in continuing to rely on non-supported components. Jokes about the similarity to the Wang systems were getting too common. They went to one of the top consulting firms for independent outside advice (a very good idea in my opinion). After months of study, they issued an analysis of just one of the many applications there. Not surprisingly they said it was too dependant on the quirks and features of a particular DBMS. It also was using outmoded client/server methodologies and of course the non-supported compiler was full of bugs as was the resultant application. They also threw in some concerns about Windows security, which was just starting to show up on the radar for large geographically dispersed organizations (network dependencies).
(And by the way, please don't split your infinitives. I know that an excess of Star Trek does that to people, but it grates on the rest of us.) "
Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years, but it is hard to see what exactly is wrong with saying to boldly go. Its meaning is clear. It has a strong rhythm than reinforces the meaning. And rearranging the phrase only makes it less effective.
In fact, the split infinitive is distinguished both by its length of use and the greatness of its users. People have been splitting infinitives since the 14th century, and some of the most noteworthy splitters include John Donne, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather.
From: The American Heritage(R) Book of English Usage.
"By doing this they have also made it quite difficult or impossible for a vast amount of people to also create things."
I don't think so. There will still be a lot of copyright free stuff to be had. In fact I doubt most people will bother to enforce any sort of copyright on their creations.
This move was important for programs such as Second Life however because the creation exists entirely on the server. Without this change in the TOS the obvious interpretations would be that Linden Labs owns everything that is created in the Second Life environment. This makes it clear that content you create can, if you choose, remain under your control in the IP sense, even though not in your physical possesion.
You and your company have been on the forefront of promoting and standardizing Linux for a number of years. You have done this while at the same time actually running a profitable company, so far be it from me to question your companies move away from desktop products.
However, there are a lot of people out there (myself included) who use Linux for all of out computing needs. I tried Linux (Red Hat in fact) as a Windows replacement for the first time a little more than a year ago. I've never gone back. While I can see that for some organizations, maybe in fact many organizations, such a switch would be difficult if not impossible at this point in time, for the life of me I can't imagine however why in a recent interview you suggested that most people should just stick with Windows for desktop use. I don't see how this statement serves either your interests or the interests of the larger Linux community. I have no plans to switch back to Windows, and having a single distribution to worry about saves a lot of work. Needless to say Red Hat won't be my first choice for either desktop or server use at this time. I do hope that as others continue to pioneer implementing Linux on the desktop that it will ultimately be in your companies best interest to re-join them.
I guess my question is: What possible benefit was it for you to recommend that people stick with Windows on the desktop? Who are your constituents for this point of view? And if you simply think that it is "bad business", why not let your competitors go down that road unobstructed?
This is an EXCELLENT post and I wish I had some mod points handy.
The furniture analogy is one I haven't heard before but it seems much better than the ones I usually come up with (deck work and siding for the house) in that furniture does indeed come in many forms all the way from very expensive designer furniture all the way to completely do-it-yourself.
Cars don't do well as an analogy because of the high manufacturing costs that make building economy cars on a small scale impossible.
In fact, looking for some other industry to compare with Microsoft's position in the software sector is what should give Microsoft management and investors nightmares. There simply is nothing that comes close. There is practically no money making activity these days that both requires so little capital investment to get started in and yet still has such a high profit potential. As Microsoft has become more and more an Intel only company they have made their situation worse rather than better. At some point if Microsoft and Intel don't merge I think it will be Intel that survives the partnership and not Microsoft. A lot of people have trouble imagining Microsoft squandering that 40 billion dollar warchest they have now, but if they keep their head in the clouds long enough it could happen.
I'd say it's pretty funny. They guy has to copy 30 machines and wants to do it in a hurry. You come along and suggest that he try some experiments that MIGHT work, that you have never tried and say things like "I don't know if XP'll shit itself over it's activation process".
I was about to add, "and posting anonymously", but I see now thats not the case.
In any event, I can't see why anyone would post a suggestion they haven't already tried. It almost seems like the Microsoft people are a bit embarrassed by the limitations of their product of choice... as I supposed they should be.
I myself have used Ghost to do this with no problems. I was lucky though that the entire disk image would fit onto a single CD (with compression) and I could set it up to boot from the CD and run a utility to read the data part of the CD onto the hard drive. It took several hours to set all this up and it didn't work right the first couple of times, but once we got it working it eventually saved us time in the long run. I'd probably use the dd method mentioned several times already if I had it to do over again.
My guess is that Microsoft doesn't make this easier because it would make pirating easier too. The only problem with that theory is that a real pirate wouldn't be slowed down by this at all, they are probably well versed in the alternatives. So why not just make it easier for Windows users (and admins) to do their jobs?
I don't know, but something about all of Microsoft's recent announcements make me wonder if I am not having one great big lucid dream experiences.
I guess it started with the active directory thing that starts to move everything about an individual user back to a central server. Then grabbing the Citrix technology to essentially turn a PC into a dumb terminal. Now all of a sudden they no longer want to hide the Command Line Interface and are coming out with a new one with supposedly decent scripting capabilities. Now this!
Well, you know you can sort of steer a lucid dream anywhere you want to go, so here is what's coming out soon from Redmond:
Punch Cards: No more worrying if that last CD backup you did of your system is really readable. Now anything on your system can be easily converted to 80 column Hollerith format. The new WinPunch will attach to a standard USB port and allow for both punching and reading of standard IBM punch cards. Special programs will allow your keyboard to be used to directly punch these cards, or you can program your own virtual IBM 029 drum card to speed up repetitive tasks.
Paper Tape: For you PDP and other non-IBM users there is WinPT which will have similar I/O capabilities but use either roll based paper tapes or the much preferred fold style. Thanks to new fabrication techniques and years of work by the Microsoft R& D lab much higher densities will be available than those you remember.
WinHenge: Tired of using those old techniques to figure out when the summer solstice will begin?.....
"I haven't played Second Life (though I have been accepted into the beta), it seems to offer a lot more gameplay than There does, "
Huh? Second life has been out of beta for a few months now. If you are still waiting for your invitation to sign up, consider this it.
"There" (which is actually a rather poor choice of names since not putting it in quotes almost always leads to a confusing sentence) is way too cartoonish to me. Microsoft experimented with chat bubbles in one of the versions of MS Chat and most people found it very confusing. The graphics too look very flat to me. I've never seen a screen shot where there was any evidence of shading or local lighting effects.
They appear to have a great marketing department though. By having a beta program that allowed just about everyone to sign up they have built a large user base. They also have an NDA that you agree to when you sign up. However I get the impression that enforcement of the NDA is quite selective. If they don't like the tone of the text you include with the screen shots you get a call from their lawyers.
If you look at the "about us" section of their web page is reads like a who's who of the dot-com bust. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but they are for the most part marketing people and bean counters, not programmers and technologists. Their game plan is obviously along the old dot-com lines: Get the most market share quickly and render the competition irrelevant.
Unfortunately for this marketing plan, it isn't going to work. 3D-VR is too new, fundamental improvements are still being made and for the next 5 to 10 years there is not going to be a shake-out of companies doing this kind of stuff. Instead there will be a steady churn of new systems coming online and old ones (some of them anyway) becoming marginalized.
Why do you think Microsoft doesn't have a product in this area? I have no doubt that they will at some point, but they have no appetite for long drawn out competitions, they just want to buy the winner (sure beats actually funding an R&D department).
Second Life has an environment almost totally built by users. You can create an attractive avatar or a short, fat and pimply one. You can be a space alien or a penguin (although there are some limitations on non-human forms). While the 3D look is not photo-realistic, it is certainly in that direction. Textures you apply to objects retain close to their original resolution when inspected up close.
Servers for Second life are Linux based (no big surprise there) but I have heard that most of the original development for the client takes place on Linux machines too, and is then ported to Windows for the final build. This means that unlike some other systems that have been developed using Windows only tools and then (as an afterthought) ported to other platforms (Myst for OS X comes to mind, as well as some of the Linux ports done using Wine) this is likely to be a first-class client under both OS X and Linux. For Linux in particular it may well be "the only game in town" and for a good long while.
"Starting over would render close to a decade of work worthless. That kind of suggestion is hard to justify."
But by SOME people's measuring stick it WAS worthless from the beginning. Back when there was actually competition between Microsoft and other companies in both the operating system and Office suite business people (like me) were warning that some of the new "usability" features from Redmond were going to create security issues.
They didn't HAVE to continue down that path and consequently waste those 10 years. They just did.
Blame whoever you want to for that. But the code IS worthless and will have to be replaced, even if its one line at a time as they seem to be doing now.
"The embedded market is much larger than the PDA market. Think cellphones. Think consumer electronics, connected DVD players, industrial products, etc."
Yeah, I just found my next PDA (if my old Pilot III ever wears out) at Costco. From Sharp. Looks like a Palm Pilot to me. Has all the USEFUL functionality of a Palmtop. Can sync with a PC etc. $25.
My last two cell phone were free. One as a "Good Customer Bonus" from AT&T, and the other as a Sign-up reward from Verizon. You CAN pay a lot for a cell phone, but the vast majority of users won't.
A $200 operating system for my microwave? Hmmm I don't think so.
I'm not saying the embedded market isn't important. It will be at the heart of everything we do with electronics. I'm just not sure that Microsoft is prepared to only make two dollars a pop on Windows CE. This is not how they are going to achieve new market share. That is, unless they decide to merge with Sony or something in which case they will soon cease to be Microsoft as we know it an will become a part of a much more intricate Borg.
"The reason BSD can produce a secure OS for free and MS can't is because MS focuses on usability. There is a reason most people haven't heard of BSD much less use it, and that is because it is extremely hard for the average person to use. Hell, it's hard for somewhat knowledgable people to use."
Well...that was the theory anyway.
Isn't there an old saying that goes: "Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither."?
I guess the geek version of that would be: "Those who would trade security for ease of use deserver neither."
And we got what we deserved too.
Step 1: Get rid of those hard to understand INI files and replace them with dialog boxes with dropdown options and help menus...
So, THEME = "neon" became a series of nicely drawn dialogs with cute graphics and dropdowns. Ooooh, cool beans, I R a systems programmer now.
Only it turned out that there were thousands of such dialogs needed to cover the more esoteric settings, and with the product running behind schedule... oh what the heck lets just do a general purpose editor for such things. Put all the values in a database sort of thing... call it "The Registry" and train people to find:
Well, this will only be temporary... Next release we will finish off all those dialog boxes... it will be REALLY easy to use, honest.
Three releases later we are still waiting.
My favorite things are the context based help features. You know the ones that have something like:
"Deframulater Aperture Limits" followed by a dropdown box with 40 different values. And in tiny print below: "Failure to set this value properly may destroy your Deframulator". No problemo! I click on the handy question mark in the upper right hand corner, point to the box full of settings and Viola: "Select Deframulator value here".
Oh yeah, now we are cooking with gas! This is EASY!
And when we need to set the companies 500 desktops Deframulators we just hire some temps to go around and do that right? "Now you temps... PLEASE be careful with these settings...and DON'T.... no matter how hard that end user begs you... DON'T do any other settings... just that one....got it?"
Oh, but no need to do that!... There is a scripting language to do that sort of repetitive task. *Slaps forehead* Of COURSE! Why didn't *I* think of that! No problems setting those 500 machines. *Goes to two weeks of MCSE classes* Now there are some 'issues' with the scripting language which has all the power of a batch file and all the elegance of Quick-basic. "Are you telling me I can't test return codes or that they are not set?.... oh, a little of both huh? So the best thing is to just plow thorough all the setting and see if the network stays up?, OK, Got it."
Man, I'm not so sure about all this "ease of use" stuff. Well at least now we have Policy Editors. Which can be used to put these setting on floppy disks and carry them around to each machine. "Oh be careful not to try and BOOT off of some of those floppys, we heard a few of them have Monkeypod viruses on them".
And finally, the really great news is that in the FINAL, ULTIMATE, Part 3 Matrix Trilogy version of Windows NT known as Longshot...err... Longhorn, all of this information will be safely on the network in a database, which, as we know are impervious to outside attacks from worms and things, as long as you use the appropriate dropdown on your routers to close off certain ports etc. We can control all of this centrally... Yahoo! And we can still use scripts if we want to, YAY!. And there will be this neat new thing called "The Shell" and it will look a lot like some ancient forgoten language called "Bash" or something like that... must have been a punk-rock group.
"Another guess is that the bounty is an idea from a P.R. person associated with Microsoft, someone who knows nothing about technical things. "
Yeah, this sounds more like a PR stunt than anything else. The Microsoft security initiatives sound like 90% PR and 10% yelling at the developers to be more careful.
Microsoft's droning on in the press about security issues sounds a lot like OJ Simpson saying he would spend the rest of his life tracking down Nicole's murderer.
Such statements can only be made by people or organizations who are so self absorbed as to not know that they are being watched by people with very long memories.
It's always better to fix a problem and then talk about it rather than the other way around.
Weird. I don't think I've ever heard of the Hackers Diet even though it seems to have been around quite a while.
I'm puzzled by the page that has all the Excel spreadsheets where Walker complains about all the changes forced on it by new versions of Excel. Seems like a perfect candidate for an Open Office version. Anyone ever put such a thing together?
I STILL think all these things are overpriced. Heck in the 80's I got hold of a calculator that was credit card sized..literally in every dimension. flexible like a credit card too so it fit into my wallet and got sat on just like other credit cards with no ill-effects. I think I paid about $5 for it on a boardwalk in CA, but I never saw the things widely marketed in the US. Instead I saw much thicker devices that would crack if flexed at all and they cost several times as much. Palm devices are the same way. The technology exists to build the thing for $15 and have all the standard Pilot functionality. As long as people will pay $200 for every new tiny incremental improvement you can't blame the hardware companies for taking your money.
If my Palm III ever dies and goes to heaven (doesn't show any signs of it) my plan to is go to Walmart and see what Casio has been up to. I have a sneaking suspicion that they already have all the functionality I need for a carry-everywhere device. I'm a bit more picky about laptops however.
Yeah, don't let the facts get in the way of a chance to bash Bush.
The report was issued in June 2002. The article says it sat on the shelf for 2 years before release. The events in the report happened in the NINETIES and the article points out that the redaction was done by life-long government drones and simply approved by the appointees (who can't possibly give serious attention to every document put out by their agencies.)
The cover-up is bad, I hope some people get fired over it (even though it's almost impossible to fire a government worker). I'll vote for any party that claims they are going to clean things up in Washington. Last person to even make that claim was Perot.
Once people get it though their head that it's "The Government" that is at fault and not just a particular administration, maybe things will stand a chance of getting fixed. Until then, partisanship just proves that you are not paying attention. And they like it that way.
"The darwin award exists for those who kill them selves in stupid ways... we need to invent an award for idiots that fall for obvious scams like this."
Funny you should say that, my first reaction to this was that we should invent some new punishments for these scum-bags that at minimum involves removal of their reproductive organs.
Both the victims and the perpetrators of such crimes would seem to be a threat to our species.
I think the nethack logo is too complex. Go compare with logos for corporations and other groups, they are universally very simple graphics that can be recognized from across the room.
Sorry that you missed the game of life, but for many of us it represents the first really interesting program we wrote when we were getting started. It was the subject of SA articles for years after its introduction.
The internet is abuzz with "instant reviews" of the new tablet PCs. Woop-dee-do. For anyone contemplating buying one of these I'd recommend you wait... a good long time in fact...', 'First of all, I question the value of a review written by anyone after one day of using a new product. The only reason I can think of to do this is that it allows you to say glowing things about the product and still be "objective". Perfect for anyone being rewarded (directly or indirectly) by the vendor. What a potential buyer of any new device really needs is a review written after a few weeks of usage, that would be in this case:
After the thing has been treated like a pad of paper for a while: Dropped a few times, been stacked with other materials including stapled paper and paper clipped paper and so forth, carried under ones arm for a while, tossed into the passenger seat of your car, thrown from that seat onto the floor when you slam on brakes thanks to that stupid driver in front of you. It needs to be evaluated after its run out of batteries a few times when you really needed it to keep working. One needs to know what a good "fall-back" plan is for the device (like always carry a real pad of paper with it, or a spare set of batteries, etc). Does the screen get scratched with use? That would be the case if like Palm devices it has a semi flexible plastic screen. Or is the screen hard like glass, scratch-proof, but easily broken in a fall? Do you HAVE to us a special pen with these? Won't a regular palmtop stylus do? or a fingernail in a pinch? I sometimes find in meeting that I take TOO many notes. When I get to a PC I can often summarize these notes with a sentence or two. How will this compare to loading all your notes, scribbles and all onto your PC for permanent review. Will I treasure or loath these added use of my disk space after a year or so?
I think there is a future for these devices. Lord knows, the industry has shown a willingness to keep trying no matter how many times they get it wrong. The question is: Is this the time they finally get it right?
Finally, after reading all the praise and contempt for Microsoft I haven't seen anyone else point out that there is very little risk for Microsoft here. They are only responsible for the operating system, and from what I can see its mostly a derivative of their other products. If it fails, no big deal for them. The hardware guys are taking all the $$ risk. They'll scratch and claw at one another until only one or two companies are making them at a profit. The worst thing that can happen for Microsoft is that price pressure will bring the average price for these things down to about $200 where they belong, at which point it won't be viable to run an expensive operating system on them. In the mean time MS will rake in the licensing fees. They'll do well in the medium term. I have no problem with a Microsoft that is forced (mostly against its will) to continue innovating, even if that innovation is largely just variations on a theme. The existence of open source alternatives is going to keep Microsoft honest from here on out. It will eventually transform them into a different company than they are now. Smaller, less critical to our infrastructure, probably doing a lot more consulting and a lot less of everything else. If HP and a few others have to pay the price for Microsoft's continued success in the mean time, so be it, they did so quite willingly. There is already a non-MS box out there at a much lower price (made by a non-US company of course) and there will soon be more. I can wait.
Slashdot Mirror
"If Wal-Mart, which sells PCs from companies such as Hewlett-Packard and eMachines, moves into the notebook market successfully, it could send ripples across the PC industry. The retailer's typically aggressive pricing could compel manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Toshiba to reduce their notebook prices in response, analysts said."
... commodity commodity commodity commodity "
I KNOW there are people who hate Walmart, but I don't. Any store that forces hardware prices down to closer to manufacturing cost is fine by me. Over priced hardware has made over price software viable for far too long. I want to PAY for true innovation and pay commodity prices for things that have long since become commodities.
Picture a big fat guy dancing around on stage clapping his hands:
"commodity commodity commodity commodity
"Give it up for MEEEEE"
When I plug my Olympus camera into the USB port it shows up as a disk drive. I just drag the pictures wherever I want and can use the thumbnails generated by Konqueror or Nautilus to reject the duds. I've never had to use Gphoto at all.
Seems to me that not only should digital cameras avoid specialized software for Windows, but they can avoid the need for specialized software in Linux as well. Scanners or Webcam devices probably need something special in that area, but cameras that just take pictures to be uploaded or music devices that hold MP3s etc should just look like a drive.
You got that right!. The problem is not only that Open Source products are not on the menu but that the whole selection process is closed. A few people at the top make these decisions based on politics, payola and country club networking rather than TCP/IP issues. They then hold meetings and hire consultants to rubber stamp the decision. I have participated in such shams and know them to be total fakes.
Our country REALLY needs for these decisions to be made in an "Open" environment as well. If given such an environment the best deal involves Microsoft then fine. Show us the paperwork and meeting minutes that lead up to that decision. Otherwise this is just further defrauding of local taxpayers.
From an educational point of view the best solution would be for school systems to sample from several sources. Why not expose kids to Microsoft, Apple, Linux and maybe a few other things? For the most part these systems work well together on the same networks. Otherwise the company with the most money (in this case MS) eventally figures out that giving product away to schools is the best way to keep market share down the line. I think it would be better to have some selection even if the school system had to actually pay for copies of some things.
Don't forget that a large part of Microsoft's "punishment" in the anit-trust case was that they are "forced" to give away copies of Windows to various schools. The California settlement went that way too. As far as I know they can even take deductions on these lost leader deals. There were some school systems that switched from Apple on a large scale because they preferred to get Microsoft products for free rather than pay drastically lowered Apple prices. So essentially Microsoft manipulated the government into "sentencing" it to do what the marketing department wanted to do anyway. I don't give Microsoft credit for much, but they sure do run circles around the Feds.
"I didn't look close but from what I've heard in the past, this system failed because it was on a network which ended up getting flooded with traffice from all the infected Microsoft Windows machines on the same network."
:)
That may well be the case. Reporting on these technology glitches often eats major shit. I know that a recent 2-day outage at the Department of State was reported as "minor" (you, know...that system that is supposed to keep the terrorists out?). Moreover I know that the system that was said to be affected by a Microsoft based virus was in fact totally mainframe based. The various reports I read were all nonsense unless you know a bit about the internal working of the system (which apparently spokespersons for the agency do not). My guess is that there was a huge amount of finger pointing within the agency and the "hobbyists" who run the PC front-end to the system didn't want to take full responsibility for the problem so they conveniently substituted the name for the back-end part of the process for the press release.
If in fact in this case at hand it was actually the Unix component which failed you might also consider that when you have systems that stay up for years at a time with no intervention you can get lazy about things. Maybe Microsoft should make the case that a system that has to be re-booted every few days is MORE secure since the personnel who run such systems are more familiar with recovery procedures.
I don't think the issue is so much with individuals and what software they choose to use. If you are an avid game player and have to have Windows to run your games that's fine. Do so at home, with my blessing. In business and government, it's another matter, particularly in government. Here are my two first hand experiences... compare with your own...
At the Department of Energy I worked with a group of 100 or so OS/2 users. This was back in the early 90s. They loved OS/2 and had no desire to change. As an autonomous department, they technically could run any software they wanted. However when it came time to upgrade their PCs to a newer generation of hardware they were given an ultimatum: Switch to Windows or keep your old PCs. They eventually switched.
At another well known federal agency there is a group of people who love IBM computers and operating systems. There is also a group of people who hate IBM and anything connected with them. More importantly these two groups hate each other and are in constant conflict. Since their systems have to talk to one another there is ample opportunity to stab each other in the back... cause something to fail (or just wait for a natural occurence) and then try and blame the other group.
Many years ago the anti-IBM crowd decided to build a system based on Wang mini-computers. The system basically sucked, but it wasn't a good career move to say so. The only reason they migrated off the Wang systems was that Wang went out of business. In fact they ran the system out of used parts for quite a while before declaring the situation an "emergency" which meant that huge amounts of money were spent for a quick conversion effort that should instead have been carefully planned.
They picked Windows as their new target architecture. I'm not sure that this was necessarily a bad decision, and in fact there were parts of the "plan", such as it was, that tried to encourage the use of "standards based" softare. This means that you write your programs to use, to the extent possible, generic SQL (for example) rather than Oracle, DB/2, or SQL Server syntax. Because it was an "emergency" however, these sound business concepts were ignored and the system became locked into specific DBMS/Compiler/Operating system ways of doing things. Seven years later and the system is still buggy as hell. The application is written in a now non-supported programming language, but the only fix for this would be another total re-write.
At one point a group I was involved with was asked to recommend some statistical analysis software to allow for ad-hoc queries of this 7 years worth of data. Using live data the analyst compared several potential products and rated them. As part of the summary he pointed out that while several of the proposed products were quite capable, he had noticed during the tests that almost no column of values in the database had sufficiently enough valid data points (both missing and mangled values) to draw any statistical inferences, no matter what product they picked. Both analyst and report were "shuffled off to Buffalo" never to be seen again.
I was there for another year or so after that. There was begrudging talk about the lack of wisdom in continuing to rely on non-supported components. Jokes about the similarity to the Wang systems were getting too common. They went to one of the top consulting firms for independent outside advice (a very good idea in my opinion). After months of study, they issued an analysis of just one of the many applications there. Not surprisingly they said it was too dependant on the quirks and features of a particular DBMS. It also was using outmoded client/server methodologies and of course the non-supported compiler was full of bugs as was the resultant application. They also threw in some concerns about Windows security, which was just starting to show up on the radar for large geographically dispersed organizations (network dependencies).
I was encouraged by the
(And by the way, please don't split your infinitives. I know that an excess of Star Trek does that to people, but it grates on the rest of us.) "
Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years, but it is hard to see what exactly is wrong with saying to boldly go. Its meaning is clear. It has a strong rhythm than reinforces the meaning. And rearranging the phrase only makes it less effective.
In fact, the split infinitive is distinguished both by its length of use and the greatness of its users. People have been splitting infinitives since the 14th century, and some of the most noteworthy splitters include John Donne, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather.
From: The American Heritage(R) Book of English Usage.
"By doing this they have also made it quite difficult or impossible for a vast amount of people to also create things."
I don't think so. There will still be a lot of copyright free stuff to be had. In fact I doubt most people will bother to enforce any sort of copyright on their creations.
This move was important for programs such as Second Life however because the creation exists entirely on the server. Without this change in the TOS the obvious interpretations would be that Linden Labs owns everything that is created in the Second Life environment. This makes it clear that content you create can, if you choose, remain under your control in the IP sense, even though not in your physical possesion.
Mr. Suzik:
You and your company have been on the forefront of promoting and standardizing Linux for a number of years. You have done this while at the same time actually running a profitable company, so far be it from me to question your companies move away from desktop products.
However, there are a lot of people out there (myself included) who use Linux for all of out computing needs. I tried Linux (Red Hat in fact) as a Windows replacement for the first time a little more than a year ago. I've never gone back. While I can see that for some organizations, maybe in fact many organizations, such a switch would be difficult if not impossible at this point in time, for the life of me I can't imagine however why in a recent interview you suggested that most people should just stick with Windows for desktop use. I don't see how this statement serves either your interests or the interests of the larger Linux community. I have no plans to switch back to Windows, and having a single distribution to worry about saves a lot of work. Needless to say Red Hat won't be my first choice for either desktop or server use at this time. I do hope that as others continue to pioneer implementing Linux on the desktop that it will ultimately be in your companies best interest to re-join them.
I guess my question is: What possible benefit was it for you to recommend that people stick with Windows on the desktop? Who are your constituents for this point of view? And if you simply think that it is "bad business", why not let your competitors go down that road unobstructed?
What happens in the last chapter?"
It turns out that the whole thing was a dream. Just like Matrix III and all those Dallas episodes.
This is an EXCELLENT post and I wish I had some mod points handy.
The furniture analogy is one I haven't heard before but it seems much better than the ones I usually come up with (deck work and siding for the house) in that furniture does indeed come in many forms all the way from very expensive designer furniture all the way to completely do-it-yourself.
Cars don't do well as an analogy because of the high manufacturing costs that make building economy cars on a small scale impossible.
In fact, looking for some other industry to compare with Microsoft's position in the software sector is what should give Microsoft management and investors nightmares. There simply is nothing that comes close. There is practically no money making activity these days that both requires so little capital investment to get started in and yet still has such a high profit potential. As Microsoft has become more and more an Intel only company they have made their situation worse rather than better. At some point if Microsoft and Intel don't merge I think it will be Intel that survives the partnership and not Microsoft. A lot of people have trouble imagining Microsoft squandering that 40 billion dollar warchest they have now, but if they keep their head in the clouds long enough it could happen.
I'd say it's pretty funny. They guy has to copy 30 machines and wants to do it in a hurry. You come along and suggest that he try some experiments that MIGHT work, that you have never tried and say things like "I don't know if XP'll shit itself over it's activation process".
I was about to add, "and posting anonymously", but I see now thats not the case.
In any event, I can't see why anyone would post a suggestion they haven't already tried. It almost seems like the Microsoft people are a bit embarrassed by the limitations of their product of choice... as I supposed they should be.
I myself have used Ghost to do this with no problems. I was lucky though that the entire disk image would fit onto a single CD (with compression) and I could set it up to boot from the CD and run a utility to read the data part of the CD onto the hard drive. It took several hours to set all this up and it didn't work right the first couple of times, but once we got it working it eventually saved us time in the long run. I'd probably use the dd method mentioned several times already if I had it to do over again.
My guess is that Microsoft doesn't make this easier because it would make pirating easier too. The only problem with that theory is that a real pirate wouldn't be slowed down by this at all, they are probably well versed in the alternatives. So why not just make it easier for Windows users (and admins) to do their jobs?
I don't know, but something about all of Microsoft's recent announcements make me wonder if I am not having one great big lucid dream experiences.
I guess it started with the active directory thing that starts to move everything about an individual user back to a central server. Then grabbing the Citrix technology to essentially turn a PC into a dumb terminal. Now all of a sudden they no longer want to hide the Command Line Interface and are coming out with a new one with supposedly decent scripting capabilities. Now this!
Well, you know you can sort of steer a lucid dream anywhere you want to go, so here is what's coming out soon from Redmond:
Punch Cards: No more worrying if that last CD backup you did of your system is really readable. Now anything on your system can be easily converted to 80 column Hollerith format. The new WinPunch will attach to a standard USB port and allow for both punching and reading of standard IBM punch cards. Special programs will allow your keyboard to be used to directly punch these cards, or you can program your own virtual IBM 029 drum card to speed up repetitive tasks.
Paper Tape: For you PDP and other non-IBM users there is WinPT which will have similar I/O capabilities but use either roll based paper tapes or the much preferred fold style. Thanks to new fabrication techniques and years of work by the Microsoft R& D lab much higher densities will be available than those you remember.
WinHenge: Tired of using those old techniques to figure out when the summer solstice will begin?.....
"I haven't played Second Life (though I have been accepted into the beta), it seems to offer a lot more gameplay than There does, "
Huh? Second life has been out of beta for a few months now. If you are still waiting for your invitation to sign up, consider this it.
"There" (which is actually a rather poor choice of names since not putting it in quotes almost always leads to a confusing sentence) is way too cartoonish to me. Microsoft experimented with chat bubbles in one of the versions of MS Chat and most people found it very confusing. The graphics too look very flat to me. I've never seen a screen shot where there was any evidence of shading or local lighting effects.
They appear to have a great marketing department though. By having a beta program that allowed just about everyone to sign up they have built a large user base. They also have an NDA that you agree to when you sign up. However I get the impression that enforcement of the NDA is quite selective. If they don't like the tone of the text you include with the screen shots you get a call from their lawyers.
If you look at the "about us" section of their web page is reads like a who's who of the dot-com bust. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but they are for the most part marketing people and bean counters, not programmers and technologists. Their game plan is obviously along the old dot-com lines: Get the most market share quickly and render the competition irrelevant.
Unfortunately for this marketing plan, it isn't going to work. 3D-VR is too new, fundamental improvements are still being made and for the next 5 to 10 years there is not going to be a shake-out of companies doing this kind of stuff. Instead there will be a steady churn of new systems coming online and old ones (some of them anyway) becoming marginalized.
Why do you think Microsoft doesn't have a product in this area? I have no doubt that they will at some point, but they have no appetite for long drawn out competitions, they just want to buy the winner (sure beats actually funding an R&D department).
Second Life has an environment almost totally built by users. You can create an attractive avatar or a short, fat and pimply one. You can be a space alien or a penguin (although there are some limitations on non-human forms). While the 3D look is not photo-realistic, it is certainly in that direction. Textures you apply to objects retain close to their original resolution when inspected up close.
Servers for Second life are Linux based (no big surprise there) but I have heard that most of the original development for the client takes place on Linux machines too, and is then ported to Windows for the final build. This means that unlike some other systems that have been developed using Windows only tools and then (as an afterthought) ported to other platforms (Myst for OS X comes to mind, as well as some of the Linux ports done using Wine) this is likely to be a first-class client under both OS X and Linux. For Linux in particular it may well be "the only game in town" and for a good long while.
"Starting over would render close to a decade of work worthless. That kind of suggestion is hard to justify."
But by SOME people's measuring stick it WAS worthless from the beginning. Back when there was actually competition between Microsoft and other companies in both the operating system and Office suite business people (like me) were warning that some of the new "usability" features from Redmond were going to create security issues.
They didn't HAVE to continue down that path and consequently waste those 10 years. They just did.
Blame whoever you want to for that. But the code IS worthless and will have to be replaced, even if its one line at a time as they seem to be doing now.
"The embedded market is much larger than the PDA market. Think cellphones. Think consumer electronics, connected DVD players, industrial products, etc."
Yeah, I just found my next PDA (if my old Pilot III ever wears out) at Costco. From Sharp. Looks like a Palm Pilot to me. Has all the USEFUL functionality of a Palmtop. Can sync with a PC etc. $25.
My last two cell phone were free. One as a "Good Customer Bonus" from AT&T, and the other as a Sign-up reward from Verizon. You CAN pay a lot for a cell phone, but the vast majority of users won't.
A $200 operating system for my microwave? Hmmm I don't think so.
I'm not saying the embedded market isn't important. It will be at the heart of everything we do with electronics. I'm just not sure that Microsoft is prepared to only make two dollars a pop on Windows CE. This is not how they are going to achieve new market share. That is, unless they decide to merge with Sony or something in which case they will soon cease to be Microsoft as we know it an will become a part of a much more intricate Borg.
"The reason BSD can produce a secure OS for free and MS can't is because MS focuses on usability. There is a reason most people haven't heard of BSD much less use it, and that is because it is extremely hard for the average person to use. Hell, it's hard for somewhat knowledgable people to use."
.... no matter how hard that end user begs you... DON'T do any other settings... just that one....got it?"
Well...that was the theory anyway.
Isn't there an old saying that goes: "Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither."?
I guess the geek version of that would be: "Those who would trade security for ease of use deserver neither."
And we got what we deserved too.
Step 1: Get rid of those hard to understand INI files and replace them with dialog boxes with dropdown options and help menus...
So, THEME = "neon" became a series of nicely drawn dialogs with cute graphics and dropdowns. Ooooh, cool beans, I R a systems programmer now.
Only it turned out that there were thousands of such dialogs needed to cover the more esoteric settings, and with the product running behind schedule... oh what the heck lets just do a general purpose editor for such things. Put all the values in a database sort of thing... call it "The Registry" and train people to find:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
-->SYSTEM
---->ControlSet00 1
------>Enum
-------->DISPLAY
and so on.
Well, this will only be temporary... Next release we will finish off all those dialog boxes... it will be REALLY easy to use, honest.
Three releases later we are still waiting.
My favorite things are the context based help features. You know the ones that have something like:
"Deframulater Aperture Limits" followed by a dropdown box with 40 different values. And in tiny print below: "Failure to set this value properly may destroy your Deframulator". No problemo! I click on the handy question mark in the upper right hand corner, point to the box full of settings and Viola: "Select Deframulator value here".
Oh yeah, now we are cooking with gas! This is EASY!
And when we need to set the companies 500 desktops Deframulators we just hire some temps to go around and do that right? "Now you temps... PLEASE be careful with these settings...and DON'T
Oh, but no need to do that!... There is a scripting language to do that sort of repetitive task. *Slaps forehead* Of COURSE! Why didn't *I* think of that! No problems setting those 500 machines. *Goes to two weeks of MCSE classes* Now there are some 'issues' with the scripting language which has all the power of a batch file and all the elegance of Quick-basic. "Are you telling me I can't test return codes or that they are not set?.... oh, a little of both huh? So the best thing is to just plow thorough all the setting and see if the network stays up?, OK, Got it."
Man, I'm not so sure about all this "ease of use" stuff. Well at least now we have Policy Editors. Which can be used to put these setting on floppy disks and carry them around to each machine. "Oh be careful not to try and BOOT off of some of those floppys, we heard a few of them have Monkeypod viruses on them".
And finally, the really great news is that in the FINAL, ULTIMATE, Part 3 Matrix Trilogy version of Windows NT known as Longshot...err... Longhorn, all of this information will be safely on the network in a database, which, as we know are impervious to outside attacks from worms and things, as long as you use the appropriate dropdown on your routers to close off certain ports etc. We can control all of this centrally... Yahoo! And we can still use scripts if we want to, YAY!. And there will be this neat new thing called "The Shell" and it will look a lot like some ancient forgoten language called "Bash" or something like that... must have been a punk-rock group.
And
"Another guess is that the bounty is an idea from a P.R. person associated with Microsoft, someone who knows nothing about technical things. "
Yeah, this sounds more like a PR stunt than anything else. The Microsoft security initiatives sound like 90% PR and 10% yelling at the developers to be more careful.
Microsoft's droning on in the press about security issues sounds a lot like OJ Simpson saying he would spend the rest of his life tracking down Nicole's murderer.
Such statements can only be made by people or organizations who are so self absorbed as to not know that they are being watched by people with very long memories.
It's always better to fix a problem and then talk about it rather than the other way around.
Weird. I don't think I've ever heard of the Hackers Diet even though it seems to have been around quite a while.
I'm puzzled by the page that has all the Excel spreadsheets where Walker complains about all the changes forced on it by new versions of Excel. Seems like a perfect candidate for an Open Office version. Anyone ever put such a thing together?
I STILL think all these things are overpriced. Heck in the 80's I got hold of a calculator that was credit card sized..literally in every dimension. flexible like a credit card too so it fit into my wallet and got sat on just like other credit cards with no ill-effects. I think I paid about $5 for it on a boardwalk in CA, but I never saw the things widely marketed in the US. Instead I saw much thicker devices that would crack if flexed at all and they cost several times as much. Palm devices are the same way. The technology exists to build the thing for $15 and have all the standard Pilot functionality. As long as people will pay $200 for every new tiny incremental improvement you can't blame the hardware companies for taking your money.
If my Palm III ever dies and goes to heaven (doesn't show any signs of it) my plan to is go to Walmart and see what Casio has been up to. I have a sneaking suspicion that they already have all the functionality I need for a carry-everywhere device. I'm a bit more picky about laptops however.
Yeah, don't let the facts get in the way of a chance to bash Bush.
The report was issued in June 2002. The article says it sat on the shelf for 2 years before release. The events in the report happened in the NINETIES and the article points out that the redaction was done by life-long government drones and simply approved by the appointees (who can't possibly give serious attention to every document put out by their agencies.)
The cover-up is bad, I hope some people get fired over it (even though it's almost impossible to fire a government worker). I'll vote for any party that claims they are going to clean things up in Washington. Last person to even make that claim was Perot.
Once people get it though their head that it's "The Government" that is at fault and not just a particular administration, maybe things will stand a chance of getting fixed. Until then, partisanship just proves that you are not paying attention. And they like it that way.
"The darwin award exists for those who kill them selves in stupid ways... we need to invent an award for idiots that fall for obvious scams like this."
Funny you should say that, my first reaction to this was that we should invent some new punishments for these scum-bags that at minimum involves removal of their reproductive organs.
Both the victims and the perpetrators of such crimes would seem to be a threat to our species.
"(since hacking is more about competence than simply attitude)"
Oh. Then I propose a new logo for us incompetent hackers. It's a much more meaningful symbol...
* *
***
* *
The leter H which in the game of life disolves into nothingness after 6 generations. Just like most of my programs.
I think the nethack logo is too complex. Go compare with logos for corporations and other groups, they are universally very simple graphics that can be recognized from across the room.
Sorry that you missed the game of life, but for many of us it represents the first really interesting program we wrote when we were getting started. It was the subject of SA articles for years after its introduction.
The internet is abuzz with "instant reviews" of the new tablet PCs. Woop-dee-do. For anyone contemplating buying one of these I'd recommend you wait... a good long time in fact...', 'First of all, I question the value of a review written by anyone after one day of using a new product. The only reason I can think of to do this is that it allows you to say glowing things about the product and still be "objective". Perfect for anyone being rewarded (directly or indirectly) by the vendor. What a potential buyer of any new device really needs is a review written after a few weeks of usage, that would be in this case:
After the thing has been treated like a pad of paper for a while: Dropped a few times, been stacked with other materials including stapled paper and paper clipped paper and so forth, carried under ones arm for a while, tossed into the passenger seat of your car, thrown from that seat onto the floor when you slam on brakes thanks to that stupid driver in front of you. It needs to be evaluated after its run out of batteries a few times when you really needed it to keep working. One needs to know what a good "fall-back" plan is for the device (like always carry a real pad of paper with it, or a spare set of batteries, etc). Does the screen get scratched with use? That would be the case if like Palm devices it has a semi flexible plastic screen. Or is the screen hard like glass, scratch-proof, but easily broken in a fall? Do you HAVE to us a special pen with these? Won't a regular palmtop stylus do? or a fingernail in a pinch? I sometimes find in meeting that I take TOO many notes. When I get to a PC I can often summarize these notes with a sentence or two. How will this compare to loading all your notes, scribbles and all onto your PC for permanent review. Will I treasure or loath these added use of my disk space after a year or so?
I think there is a future for these devices. Lord knows, the industry has shown a willingness to keep trying no matter how many times they get it wrong. The question is: Is this the time they finally get it right?
Finally, after reading all the praise and contempt for Microsoft I haven't seen anyone else point out that there is very little risk for Microsoft here. They are only responsible for the operating system, and from what I can see its mostly a derivative of their other products. If it fails, no big deal for them. The hardware guys are taking all the $$ risk. They'll scratch and claw at one another until only one or two companies are making them at a profit. The worst thing that can happen for Microsoft is that price pressure will bring the average price for these things down to about $200 where they belong, at which point it won't be viable to run an expensive operating system on them. In the mean time MS will rake in the licensing fees. They'll do well in the medium term. I have no problem with a Microsoft that is forced (mostly against its will) to continue innovating, even if that innovation is largely just variations on a theme. The existence of open source alternatives is going to keep Microsoft honest from here on out. It will eventually transform them into a different company than they are now. Smaller, less critical to our infrastructure, probably doing a lot more consulting and a lot less of everything else. If HP and a few others have to pay the price for Microsoft's continued success in the mean time, so be it, they did so quite willingly. There is already a non-MS box out there at a much lower price (made by a non-US company of course) and there will soon be more. I can wait.