I had the same experience. I never figured out if it was corruption, or just incompetence. These machines are DEFINITELY being purchased with Windows licenses already in place. Microsoft basically tells the government rep: "if you want a decent volume purchasing agreement from us you have to agree to license Windows for every PC separately". For this you get N copies of Windows, N copies of Office, and a FEW copies of some backend software like Exchange, IIS, and a few MSDN subscriptions thrown in for good measure. The Microsoft reps moan and groan and convince the government people that they have really made a great deal. The article mentions an 89 percent profit margin...I'd guess its closer to 98 percent. You don't even get a copy of the media for each machine. A few hundred CDs and an signed piece of paper and another Microsoft sales rep laughs all the way to the bank. Congratulations American taxpayer.
PS: When it was mentioned that these machines came with Windows already install and they were essentially paying for it twice the government agent said somjething like "Well we have to wipe these machines and re-install for security reasons, so that existing copy doesn't really count".
Nobody's that stupid right? So it HAS to be corruption. Makes me sick.
Development for 3D-VR are proceeding in a few parallel paths. Unfortunately, to date, watching this happen is about like watching grass grow. VRML while it has many die-hard adherents failed to find the "sweet spot" for development of these types of programs. Renderware, which came closer, has failed to become enough of a standard. So basically, rather than suffer the limitations of these "infrastructure" products, commercial companies are rolling their own interfaces more or less from scratch.
If you look at the hardware requirements for SL you'll notice that you need a good 3D capable video card, and broadband access. This has limited the potential marketplace for these programs in the past, but look at it this way:
(1) Intel and AMD (not to mention PPC Chips) keep rolling out faster and faster processors which are hard to justify for spreadsheet and word processing alone. Even for end-user multimedia work, these systems are becoming overkill. The only thing that keeps all PCs from dropping down to the $200 price point is integrators penchant to bundle more and more peripherals to bring the prices back up closer to $2000.
(2) The Dot-com boom provided tons of bandwidth that are going unused right now. Verizon just dropped the price of DSL to $35, tripled the speed for many users, and extended it to some places that were not even scheduled (I'm using it from a beach location that barely has working phone service, but I have DSL).
(3) Voice and handwriting technology are duds now and for the foreseeable future. To me that leaves 3D-VR as the perfect use for all these over qualified systems we have on our desktops.
The initial commercial successes for this will be (have been) games, but if you buy into the "Snowcrash" version of where this will end up (I do) you know that this stuff has to become more than a game eventually. It becomes an extension to just about everything we do: going to the office, exchanging documents, checking mail. Maybe this is something Microsoft should consider. They really NEED something that goes beyond their current product line. I've also been impressed with where Adobe Atmosphere is heading. Fairly easy content creation, javascript object manipulation. Better than VRML, but I'm not sure it enough.
Basically, the MMORPGs are the testing lab for these underlying technologies, the acceptance of a general purpose non-prefabricated system such as Second Life will be a good sign that the hardware base is out there to support not only game, but business use for these technologies. While there is not an obvious successor to VRML, I know there are several systems being developed, and they use experiences from the MMORPGS as feedback into this process, at least one of them is an Open Source project, which I think is where this stuff ultimately belongs.
You cannot import models from other programs (at least yet), but one of the unique things about this program is that a modeler is BUILT-IN to the interface. You actually assemble the primitives, add textures, tinker with UV settings right there in-world. As someone who never could decide which I hated more, Truespace or 3DSMAX, I got used to the building interface for this pretty quickly. There are also scripting and physics properties which you can enable on an object by object basis.
One of the "objectives" of the program when thought of as a game is participation in the built-in economy which involves, among other things, creation and trading of 3D objects. I think one of their initial concerns was the ability to upload and download objects from other interfaces would make it too easy to clone other peoples work. Just a hunch.
I've included a link to the sign-up page as my "homepage" link here. If you use it to sign up I'll get in-world credit. I need the money!!!
Linux and OS X support are the things that excite me most about this prog. As a beta tester for about a year I interacted a few times with the staff there and got the definite impression that they are Linux fans (the servers are Linux by the way). The other thing I can report is that they have been very much on schedule with this thing the whole time. I was very skeptical when I heard their target dates for going production, but the system just kept getting more and more feature complete with a new release every few days. If they say it will be ready by end of 2003 I tend to believe them at this point.
The idea of being able to use this program on both Linux and OS X which have never compared well with Windows for Game development I hope will be the start of many similar moves by other game developers (especially if this takes off).
At last the age old chat greeting of "ASL?" can be replaced by "ASLP?" (Age, Sex, Location, Platform).
Looks like Forbes doesn't vet their articles for facts any better than Slashdot does. It still had some usefull info however:
The article describes a company that operates a lot like Enron, although on a much smaller scale, shuffling funds from one company to another as needed to prop up their FTC reports.
But then the article concludes that this is a company to be recconed with!!
Sounds more like a house of cards too me. Now we know that the lunacy going on at SCO is inherited from "The Canopy Group". I bet we get to see them on TV in handcuffs before too long.
The most usefull thing about the article though is that it gives the names of about 5 more people, and several more companies that you should never do business with if you want to walk away with your wallet. I'll add them to my list.
I also signed up for alerts for when these crooks, errr "businessmen" engage in other noteworthy activities.
"You have successfully signed up for the following News Alerts: Canopy Group, Linux, Darl McBride, Ralph J. Yarro III! "
I'll read this right after I read Hillary's
on
Platform Evangelism
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"This book focuses on technical evangelism as it was practiced at Microsoft from 1990 through 2000. In this decade, we may have lost a few skirmishes, but we won every battle. As a direct result, Microsoft built its annual profits from an impressive XXX to an astounding XXX. Microsoft stock made its founders, investors, and employees rich. In its many platform battles along the way, we crushed competing platforms consistently, ruthlessly, and systematically."
Proof that if you are a self centered A-hole and want to start a company you should surround yourself with other self centered a-holes too.
Evangelism is a great word for the Microsoft phenomena. They ask you to believe without any proof, in fact in spite of proof to the contrary, that they advanced technology during the 80's and 90's.
The PC phenomena, in spite of a good start has set computing back at least 10 years. Almost all of the innovations brought to us via the PC have come in spite of Microsoft not because of it. Even so, there is so much re-invention of wheels going on. From protected memory spaces, multitasking, asynchronous I/O devices, it all had to be re-invented for the PC and more specifically, for Windows, when all of the concepts had been invented, and refined on mainframes years earlier.
We've turned into a society of publishers with no time to read. We can't get customer support for our flaked out computing infrastructure because everyone is too busy working on their blog to man the help-desk.
If Microsoft doesn't change, the combination of true Enterprise computing, Open Source, and Internationalism is going to cause Microsoft to lose skirmish, battle and war. What Microsoft needs not is not evangelists, bit strategists. And this time, rather than strategizing only on how to "crush the competition", maybe they should try strategizing on how to do something good for the world or at least a value-add for their customers. In the process they may allow their company to continue to survive.
By the way, this doesn't look like a very good book. Sounds like the kid in the bubble trying to tell you how the world works, excpcept he hasn't even bothered to look up what the XXX number are yet. Astonding!
Hopefully we will get to track these guys careers down the tubes for the next couple of years. This will teach publicly traded companies to ask potential CEOs that they are at least old enough to have a drivers license. (Maybe an IQ test would be in order too, ever see these guys interviewed?)
That's the trouble with the Linux community, boys and germs; arrogance.
You guys think that because you have spent unbelievable amounts of time sitting in front of a glowing CRT learning the intricate details of an OS, that anyone who doesn't want to do likewise is a lamer, loser, or whatever."
Arrogance is hardly confined to the Linux community. Ever talk to a sports car enthusiast? Or a boater? Or a surfer?. It's just human nature for people to try and one-up each other on these things. Even Windows and Apple users do it to each other.
The only difference with Linux is that it is just now dipping it's toe into the mainstream user base, so the vast majority of Linux users are still "early adopters". That will change, gradually.
Nothing to worry about, and certainly better than the alternative.
Everyone on this thread seems to be missing the obvious. There is a vast gulf of difference between Windows and it's targeted user base and the currently typical Linux user. You can all argue 'till the cows come home about who is better or who is right, but the fact is that gulf over which you are arguing will get filled, not "decided".
The true success of Linux (which will, in some pure form, always be for the educated technologist) is that it will be adapted by the Red Hats, Suses and Lindows style companies into something more easily approached by "Joe Servicepack".
Unlike Windows, the open source approach gives almost infinite variability in what gets presented to the user. Microsoft's response to this (if they manage to make one) will probably be some quite different forms for Windows as well. You might even say that the Xbox is the first of these experiments, the Notepad version yet another. (Failed before they hit the stores IHMO).
I can imagine Microsoft ultimately failing and becoming the Salon.com of the software business. I can also imagine them achieving some partial success where they establish some steady-state rivalry with the Open Source alternatives. But I can't imagine them putting Open Source "out of business".
Even the geekiest of us has the need to be able to quickly install an operating system and have the system productive in short order. That drives such packaging as Knoppix to continue to raise the bar for everyone else. Those advances in Linux are happening whether "Joe Servicepack", or Bill Gates for that matter see them coming or not. While a greater acceptance by these people might speed the process along, the current rate of growth for Linux is sustainable, and in fact, most likely unstoppable.
No, YOU'RE wrong. Those multiple agencies engage in a lot of copy-cat behavior. While there is a bit of independence between the military and civilian agencies, there is precious little independent thought within each group. One of the biggest steps toward a government mandated operating system came about when the GSA started requiring proposals to be submitted in WORD format, and nothing else. Submitting a proposal to the government as a flat file, HTML, RTF, Wordperfect or anything else leads to immediate disqualification. That change was followed almost immediately by departmental bans again running "alternative" operating systems such as Linux and OS/2. Where mandates didn't work, coercion was used. IT departments would offer to replace another departments computers with upgraded models if they would agree to switch to Windows. Think these moves were not inspired by creative Microsoft marketing people? Think again. Mid level government managers are easily tricked into doing the bidding of clever contractors and vendors. It happens all the time and is a regular subject of industry jokes.
I have PERSONALLY had conversations with such government types where it was agreed that for the benefit of the agency they needed to select standards based protocols, and had that conversation turned into a mandate to use.NET and Oracle. These people either don't have a clue, or are on the take from vendors with deep expense accounts. You decide.
There seems little hope for democracy to work in California. The same administration that created the energy shortage (and then blamed the energy companies for it), also purchesed about 10 times the number of Oracle licenses that they needed costing Californians millions I'm sure, even after the word got out.
After those two screw-ups, he got re-elected and now will be laying off a large percentage of the states teachers. Will he succeed in blaming it on those evil Republicans? Probably.
I wish Microsoft would jump both feet first into being a hardware vendor. They'd fall flat on their face a lot faster that way.
Instead MS will lead Intel, AMD and the others down a primrose path where they take all the risks, and Microsoft makes most of the profit (if there is any to be made).
Commodity prices and international pressures will force this to be at best a specialty item IMHO. Home users who care will pay a bit more if they need to in order to be able to run without restrictions. They won't be running Windows though, or hardware made in the USA so in that sense Microsoft is shooting itself in the other foot. I expect this to be about as successfull as Rambus memory was. I can hardly wait!
While I think the debate over static vs dynamic libraries, DLL Hell, and registry vs central vs distributed storage of program parameters and settings is all worthwhile, he didn't cover what I think is *the* most important issue in the Linux installation process, and that is device detection.
MOST of the problems I've had with installing Windows, Linux or OS X involve the fact that when I am all done, not all the components of my machine are working the way I expected them to. I end up with no sound, or bad sound, or video that isn't right, or a mouse that doesn't work, or in the really bad cases, disk drives that work well enough to boot the system but then fail after I'm in the middle of something important.
Once I get past the initial installation I feel I am home free. If the devices all work the way they are supposed to, then I can avoid most other problems by just sticking with the distro that I started with. If it was Debian Stable I stay with that, and if I need to install something that isn't part of that system I install it as a user (new version of Mozilla, Evolution, Real*, Java for example).
It would definitely be nice if developers who used shared libraries didn't seem to live in a fantasy land where they are the only users of those libraries. But I *don't* think that this is Linux's biggest problem with acceptance. What Linux needs is an agreement by all the distros to use something like the Knoppix device detection process... and then to cooperatively improve on it. A run-from-CD version of every distro would be great. Why blow away whatever you are running now just to find out if another version of Linux might suit you better?
I'd like a system that does a pre-install phase where every component of my system can be detected and tested before I commit to doing the install. The results of that could be saved somewhere so that when I commit to the install I don't have to answer any questions a second time (and possibly get it wrong).
There is nothing that can guarantee that what appears to be a good install doesn't go bad a week later, but I personally haven't had this happen. I usually know I have a bad install within a few minutes of booting up the first time, and by then, its too late to easily go back to the system that was "good enough".
I don't think anyone here will quibble with the idea that Microsoft puts an emphasis on marketing.
For me the question is, to what extent is this a good thing, especially for the consumer?
It is a tautology that a product can't succeed, no matter how good it is, if it's existence is never revealed. A product that is of no value can, on the other hand be sold to many people with a sufficient amount of marketing.
These two facts may lead some people to think that the budget for any company under any circumstances should favor marketing over product development. I don't see it that way. In fact, while Microsoft has gotten where they are today by out-marketing companies who in many cases had superior products, I think MS is now a victim of it's own success with that strategy. Having dominated the desktop as they have, it's going to be difficult if not impossible to convince the majority of Windows/Office users that they HAVE to have the next versions of those products. In fact most people I talk to who are happy with Windows/Office think that the current versions of both products are TOO complex and would love to have something come along and simplify their PC usage.
Microsoft may be able to sell developers on dot-net, I've talked to developers who seem oh so excited about it, but can't quite explain to me what it is. But the real question is what is the next big money maker for MS on hundreds of millions of desktops? I don't think Microsoft knows, and I don't think they have a line-up of possibilities waiting in the wings either.
When it all comes tumbling down, there will be arguments about whether Microsoft lost its marketing touch, or whether product development simply failed to deliver the goods.
The truth is, that by letting marketing considerations predominate, Microsoft has produced a glittering tower, and in their haste, not provided a solid foundation for it. The sorts of things intentionally left out of that foundation (a robust command line interface, security, hardware portability) cannot be patched up with a new GUI front end (although that won't stop them from trying). What Microsoft needs to do now is what Apple has just finished doing: throw out the underpinnings of the OS and start over. The difference is that Microsoft will almost certainly lose market share in the process, and that market share will be lost in the only areas of the company's product line that are profitable. Had Xbox, MSNBC, Slate or their consulting division efforts been successful it might be a different story.
Regardless of what happens with Sun, Microsoft needs to pull a big rabbit out of their hat right now. I don't even see ears yet.
"According to Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief technical officer, as the open-source movement grows, it will get better at producing free clones of commercial software."
I give up. What is Apache a clone of? I wish they had included an actual quote on this. Maybe the journalist was "interpreting".
Most of the article is on target though. The easy way to evaluate the strengths of the companies mentioned is to look at how diversified they are (or aren't).
IBM is no longer primarily a hardware company. They have a strong consulting division, they do fundamental research and grab pattents on REAL things (rather than new parsing algorithms like some companies I can think of), they have a very strong software development component, they farm out hardware manufacturing that is no longer profitable (disk drives) while hanging on to things that they do best and can make money on (chip fabrication).
Sun is primarily a hardware company. Their operating systems are (almost) exclusively sold to customers who use their hardware. Java and Star Office are far from being cash cows. Their weakness is that as Intel, AMD, etc, chips get cheaper there is less incentive to use Sun's higher priced hardware components. Supporting Linux helps them a bit, but it is the price of their hardware that puts them at a disadvantage.
Microsoft is a software company. They are trying real hard to become something else too, but like Sun they are having a heck of a time making anything else work. They don't really do fundamental research, but instead try and grab patents on programming concepts so that they can bully other companies in court when it suits them. They don't really make any hardware, but instead stamp their logo on a few things to make it seem that they do. They do select good subcontractors for mice and keyboards, I'll grant them that. Everything they do except Windows and Office lose money. Prospects for either of those (because they are already so successful) can only go down. They currently have a scatter shot approach to the "next big thing" which consists of trying everything at once and seeing if any of it takes off. Few companies have the money to do this. But they will bleed themselves dry rather quickly if they are not carefull. Something tells me they are not going to be carefull.
Apple is trying to diversify too. Since they are starting small the only way they have to go is up. It would be nice to see them further popularize the power-pc server. My personal experience with OS X is that they are rushing versions of it out the door too fast. I've decided to wait for XI (or whatever they call it) and switched to running Linux on my iBook. Those gel buttons are cute though.
The Jefferson Muzzle Awards seemed well reasoned on average. The Stupid Security Competition much less so.
Just one example: San Fransisco's subway system BART is criticized for closing their public restrooms. In Washington DC the subway systems was designed 20 years or so ago without public restrooms in the first place. It is in fact hard to find a spot in the DC subway system where you are not under the watchfull eye of a video camera, all being monitored by at least one attendant visible to the public (I think the feeds go to a central location as well). Since they don't put subway stops in deserted parts of the city, this is hardly a major inconvenience. You simply visit a public restroom before you enter the station.
I can't think of any security measures anywhere that don't have at least one of the following problems:
Inconvenient
Invasion of privacy
Not 100 percent effective
The awards seem to include examples of all three. When I have talked to people who complain about various security measures I try to come up with scenarios that would justify the specific measure that they are complaining about. I can almost always get them to say "Oh, I never thought of that."
In a perfect world we would do this experiment: Every city would have TWO airports. One with the current mix of inconvenient, invasive, and imperfect security checks, the other with only the most cursory check in place (like US Airports in the 50's). Pilots, passengers and employees would use/work at the airport of their own choosing. There would probably be significant cost savings associated with having little or no security measures in place, so that airport could use lower costs as an incentive too.
Actually, I thought a much more interesting part of the article, which covered several topics, was:
"As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus."
Is this common knowledge? Great concept. In the long run I'd think they would be better off running blade computers to save power and reduce heat etc.
Tieing back to the subject... Network Attached Storage is the way of the future. Ultimately I'd rather have everything online somewhere where is it getting backed up properly. If I have to keep the data in my house at all I'd certainly rather it be on a specialized device that does one thing and does it well rather than on a Windows machine where it is at the mercy of the latest service pack.
I never understood the scene in Brazil where the guy is staring at his tiny monitor through a magnifying glass until now. People are obsessed with these things to the extent that they use them in permanently tethered mode even though they have a full sized monitor and keyboard sitting right next to the thing.
That part of the fad will fade I think, along with the eyesight of users. The main thing that will drive computing for the next few years will be PRICE. It's a dismal prospect for Microsoft and I'm sure these studies are designed to give them hope that people will switch from paying $2000 for a full sized PC whose cost of manufacture is $100 to paying $500 for a palmtop which contains $10 worth of parts. They are addicted to these outrageous profit margins and they have absolutely no plan for how to replace the cashflow that they generate.
They better get such a plan and soon however. These PDA/Notepad dreams will never come true in the way MS needs them to. A decent PDA in the near future will cost $50 or less, subsidized by cell phone service agreements if they have that function, and a notpad style PC will go for $300 and both devices will be considered "disposable" since in either case you drop them on concrete and they become useless and unfixable.
High (relative) profit margin items for the next few years will be ordinary notebooks, but people and companies on a budget will keep using what they have for as long as possible. Notebooks are the best compromise... readable displays and normal keyboards... single device for each user with no need to constantly "synch". I think even good notebooks will be available from every brand for under $1000 and the competitive price for these devices will flirt with $500. Read it and weep Microsoft.
"Boy this is puzzling. Is everybody going to be happy that the Windows Media stuff will make it's way to Linux, or will they complain that MS is trying to extend it's monopoly? "
I would guess that the industry rags are no longer getting the bulk of their ad revenue from Microsoft or any of its competitors. Instead the ads are selling web services, routers, CRM applications, and other things in which Microsoft is not a player.
These publications can aford to be brutally honest with everyone except their one or two largest advertisers and I bet Microsoft is no longer in that club.
Anchordesk continues to say glowing things about Microsoft products though, and almost every issue comes with an ad from Redmond. Coincidence?
Yes, Apache has always been the dominant web server. I remember we were running it on an IBM 1130 computer with 8K of memory when I was in college in the 70's.
Great name you picked for yourself. Fiting in that the hopefull predictions of SF writers like Clark might be a thing of the past.
One of my favorite SF stories, by Stanislaw Lem predicts a future so drugged-up that only one man on earth knows reality from a drug induced mass halucination. The title is "The Futurologicl Congress". Mostly a downer of a book. Lem while painting a bleak picture of the future always maintains a sense of humor about it. The story that has Trurl's machine in it was very funny, even though it did come pretty close to ending the universe as I recall. err recll.
I think the big deal is that everyone is looking for something that will make all programming jobs a piece of cake. XML is just the latest in a long series of "magic bullets".
I remember storing data on mainframes in a very XML like syntax in the 70's. Just as HTML was as much evolutionary as it was revolutionary, so is XML. The hope is that all of these concepts rolled together will have some sort of critical mass that does for programming what HTML, URLs, and the Internet did for information sharing.
Personally I don't think this will happen. The problem is that there are already too many very powerful tools out there being misused and XML will not replace these tools but be layered on top of them making matters worse, maybe much worse.
I remember when SQL was first introduced its major benefit was to provide an easily READABLE syntax for describing relational databases. With a GOOD understanding of your data you could replace large chunks of your application with SQL code that did much of the data crunching for you, and in theory, did it with fewer possibilities for error.
But what happened next? Systems such as Powerbuilder came along and attempted to relieve the programmer of the headaches associated with managing complex SQL statements. The drag and drop interface built complex (and often faulty) SQL in the background allowing the programmer to turn out pure crap without bothering to have a clue.
Now I can guarantee you, because I know of people already "studying" XML for this purpose, that there will be people coding PowerBuilder applications to insert XML strings into SQL databases, no doubt using constructs that are specific to Oracle, or DB2. They will be parsing out carriage returns, converting the strings from ASCII to EBCDIC and back again.
Three years from now when someone tries to analyze the data and asks "why is this field that you told me is critical always zero in all of your data", the answer will be (just as it is now) "The programmer who put all this together doesn't work here any more and nobody else has ever been able to figure it out".
Large organizations with deep pockets tend to just go out and buy all the latest tools just like us gadget freaks have to have the latest 24-bit color palmtop devices. They train up their people to use these tools and by golly they expect the tools to be used in the next project.
So, come hell or high water we are going to use Systems Engineer, to automatically turn out PowerBuilder Code and SQL statements to house our XML data that we transfered to the mainframe and ran through the old Cobol programs and back out again, and by the time someone realizes how f*cked up it is our 5 year contract will be up and someone else can worry about fixing it. Yay team!
These things work great "in the lab" and when carefully applied by true computer scientists. The problem is that much programming these days is done not by computer scientists, but by people who barely escaped from high school. In one attempt after another to create something so simple that even THEY can deal with it we have instead created a monster, or more precisely a series of them.
I guess the good news is that (as pointed out here recently in the mock interview with the inventor of C++) the ridiculous complexity resulting from all of this will keep smart folks employed for a long long time straightening it all out.
Of course you have to suspend your desire to accomplish truly usefull products in the short term. That just ain't gonna happen.
"True, but public opinion has relatively little to do with whether your computers are secure or not. If it did, then nobody would bother with engineering approaches to security; they'd just set aside a large PR budget to create the public perception of security, and that would make their software secure."
Punch line: Oh, wait, MS already tried that!
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how effective actual ajustments to the code will be for them. I have a hunch that there is far more wrong with Microsoft security than finding all the buffer overflows. Like the fundamental design of some Windows components that ignored security in favor of "feetures" back when they were duking it out with Wordperfect and Netscape.
And when-the-heck are they going to make up their mind where the equivalent of the users "home" deirectory is going to be housed. I seems like every major new release puts it somewhere new.
Slashdot Mirror
I had the same experience. I never figured out if it was corruption, or just incompetence. These machines are DEFINITELY being purchased with Windows licenses already in place. Microsoft basically tells the government rep: "if you want a decent volume purchasing agreement from us you have to agree to license Windows for every PC separately". For this you get N copies of Windows, N copies of Office, and a FEW copies of some backend software like Exchange, IIS, and a few MSDN subscriptions thrown in for good measure. The Microsoft reps moan and groan and convince the government people that they have really made a great deal. The article mentions an 89 percent profit margin...I'd guess its closer to 98 percent. You don't even get a copy of the media for each machine. A few hundred CDs and an signed piece of paper and another Microsoft sales rep laughs all the way to the bank. Congratulations American taxpayer.
PS: When it was mentioned that these machines came with Windows already install and they were essentially paying for it twice the government agent said somjething like "Well we have to wipe these machines and re-install for security reasons, so that existing copy doesn't really count".
Nobody's that stupid right? So it HAS to be corruption. Makes me sick.
Development for 3D-VR are proceeding in a few parallel paths. Unfortunately, to date, watching this happen is about like watching grass grow. VRML while it has many die-hard adherents failed to find the "sweet spot" for development of these types of programs. Renderware, which came closer, has failed to become enough of a standard. So basically, rather than suffer the limitations of these "infrastructure" products, commercial companies are rolling their own interfaces more or less from scratch.
If you look at the hardware requirements for SL you'll notice that you need a good 3D capable video card, and broadband access. This has limited the potential marketplace for these programs in the past, but look at it this way:
(1) Intel and AMD (not to mention PPC Chips) keep rolling out faster and faster processors which are hard to justify for spreadsheet and word processing alone. Even for end-user multimedia work, these systems are becoming overkill. The only thing that keeps all PCs from dropping down to the $200 price point is integrators penchant to bundle more and more peripherals to bring the prices back up closer to $2000.
(2) The Dot-com boom provided tons of bandwidth that are going unused right now. Verizon just dropped the price of DSL to $35, tripled the speed for many users, and extended it to some places that were not even scheduled (I'm using it from a beach location that barely has working phone service, but I have DSL).
(3) Voice and handwriting technology are duds now and for the foreseeable future. To me that leaves 3D-VR as the perfect use for all these over qualified systems we have on our desktops.
The initial commercial successes for this will be (have been) games, but if you buy into the "Snowcrash" version of where this will end up (I do) you know that this stuff has to become more than a game eventually. It becomes an extension to just about everything we do: going to the office, exchanging documents, checking mail. Maybe this is something Microsoft should consider. They really NEED something that goes beyond their current product line. I've also been impressed with where Adobe Atmosphere is heading. Fairly easy content creation, javascript object manipulation. Better than VRML, but I'm not sure it enough.
Basically, the MMORPGs are the testing lab for these underlying technologies, the acceptance of a general purpose non-prefabricated system such as Second Life will be a good sign that the hardware base is out there to support not only game, but business use for these technologies. While there is not an obvious successor to VRML, I know there are several systems being developed, and they use experiences from the MMORPGS as feedback into this process, at least one of them is an Open Source project, which I think is where this stuff ultimately belongs.
You cannot import models from other programs (at least yet), but one of the unique things about this program is that a modeler is BUILT-IN to the interface. You actually assemble the primitives, add textures, tinker with UV settings right there in-world. As someone who never could decide which I hated more, Truespace or 3DSMAX, I got used to the building interface for this pretty quickly. There are also scripting and physics properties which you can enable on an object by object basis.
One of the "objectives" of the program when thought of as a game is participation in the built-in economy which involves, among other things, creation and trading of 3D objects. I think one of their initial concerns was the ability to upload and download objects from other interfaces would make it too easy to clone other peoples work. Just a hunch.
I've included a link to the sign-up page as my "homepage" link here. If you use it to sign up I'll get in-world credit. I need the money!!!
Linux and OS X support are the things that excite me most about this prog. As a beta tester for about a year I interacted a few times with the staff there and got the definite impression that they are Linux fans (the servers are Linux by the way). The other thing I can report is that they have been very much on schedule with this thing the whole time. I was very skeptical when I heard their target dates for going production, but the system just kept getting more and more feature complete with a new release every few days. If they say it will be ready by end of 2003 I tend to believe them at this point.
The idea of being able to use this program on both Linux and OS X which have never compared well with Windows for Game development I hope will be the start of many similar moves by other game developers (especially if this takes off).
At last the age old chat greeting of "ASL?" can be replaced by "ASLP?" (Age, Sex, Location, Platform).
The article describes a company that operates a lot like Enron, although on a much smaller scale, shuffling funds from one company to another as needed to prop up their FTC reports.
But then the article concludes that this is a company to be recconed with!!
Sounds more like a house of cards too me. Now we know that the lunacy going on at SCO is inherited from "The Canopy Group". I bet we get to see them on TV in handcuffs before too long.
The most usefull thing about the article though is that it gives the names of about 5 more people, and several more companies that you should never do business with if you want to walk away with your wallet. I'll add them to my list.
I also signed up for alerts for when these crooks, errr "businessmen" engage in other noteworthy activities.
"You have successfully signed up for the following News Alerts: Canopy Group, Linux, Darl McBride, Ralph J. Yarro III! "
"This book focuses on technical evangelism as it was practiced at Microsoft from 1990 through 2000. In this decade, we may have lost a few skirmishes, but we won every battle. As a direct result, Microsoft built its annual profits from an impressive XXX to an astounding XXX. Microsoft stock made its founders, investors, and employees rich. In its many platform battles along the way, we crushed competing platforms consistently, ruthlessly, and systematically."
Proof that if you are a self centered A-hole and want to start a company you should surround yourself with other self centered a-holes too.
Evangelism is a great word for the Microsoft phenomena. They ask you to believe without any proof, in fact in spite of proof to the contrary, that they advanced technology during the 80's and 90's.
The PC phenomena, in spite of a good start has set computing back at least 10 years. Almost all of the innovations brought to us via the PC have come in spite of Microsoft not because of it. Even so, there is so much re-invention of wheels going on. From protected memory spaces, multitasking, asynchronous I/O devices, it all had to be re-invented for the PC and more specifically, for Windows, when all of the concepts had been invented, and refined on mainframes years earlier.
We've turned into a society of publishers with no time to read. We can't get customer support for our flaked out computing infrastructure because everyone is too busy working on their blog to man the help-desk.
If Microsoft doesn't change, the combination of true Enterprise computing, Open Source, and Internationalism is going to cause Microsoft to lose skirmish, battle and war. What Microsoft needs not is not evangelists, bit strategists. And this time, rather than strategizing only on how to "crush the competition", maybe they should try strategizing on how to do something good for the world or at least a value-add for their customers. In the process they may allow their company to continue to survive.
By the way, this doesn't look like a very good book. Sounds like the kid in the bubble trying to tell you how the world works, excpcept he hasn't even bothered to look up what the XXX number are yet. Astonding!
I think the Dukes of Hazard one might be a better fit though.
Have you seen this Darl guy?
Darl Pic
"Business" types with spiked hair scare me! What kind of name is Darl anyway?
Sontag isn't much better:
Sontag pic
I think I remember him from Animal House.
Hopefully we will get to track these guys careers down the tubes for the next couple of years. This will teach publicly traded companies to ask potential CEOs that they are at least old enough to have a drivers license. (Maybe an IQ test would be in order too, ever see these guys interviewed?)
You guys think that because you have spent unbelievable amounts of time sitting in front of a glowing CRT learning the intricate details of an OS, that anyone who doesn't want to do likewise is a lamer, loser, or whatever."
Arrogance is hardly confined to the Linux community. Ever talk to a sports car enthusiast? Or a boater? Or a surfer?. It's just human nature for people to try and one-up each other on these things. Even Windows and Apple users do it to each other.
The only difference with Linux is that it is just now dipping it's toe into the mainstream user base, so the vast majority of Linux users are still "early adopters". That will change, gradually.
Nothing to worry about, and certainly better than the alternative.
Everyone on this thread seems to be missing the obvious. There is a vast gulf of difference between Windows and it's targeted user base and the currently typical Linux user. You can all argue 'till the cows come home about who is better or who is right, but the fact is that gulf over which you are arguing will get filled, not "decided".
The true success of Linux (which will, in some pure form, always be for the educated technologist) is that it will be adapted by the Red Hats, Suses and Lindows style companies into something more easily approached by "Joe Servicepack".
Unlike Windows, the open source approach gives almost infinite variability in what gets presented to the user. Microsoft's response to this (if they manage to make one) will probably be some quite different forms for Windows as well. You might even say that the Xbox is the first of these experiments, the Notepad version yet another. (Failed before they hit the stores IHMO).
I can imagine Microsoft ultimately failing and becoming the Salon.com of the software business. I can also imagine them achieving some partial success where they establish some steady-state rivalry with the Open Source alternatives. But I can't imagine them putting Open Source "out of business".
Even the geekiest of us has the need to be able to quickly install an operating system and have the system productive in short order. That drives such packaging as Knoppix to continue to raise the bar for everyone else. Those advances in Linux are happening whether "Joe Servicepack", or Bill Gates for that matter see them coming or not. While a greater acceptance by these people might speed the process along, the current rate of growth for Linux is sustainable, and in fact, most likely unstoppable.
No, YOU'RE wrong. Those multiple agencies engage in a lot of copy-cat behavior. While there is a bit of independence between the military and civilian agencies, there is precious little independent thought within each group. One of the biggest steps toward a government mandated operating system came about when the GSA started requiring proposals to be submitted in WORD format, and nothing else. Submitting a proposal to the government as a flat file, HTML, RTF, Wordperfect or anything else leads to immediate disqualification. That change was followed almost immediately by departmental bans again running "alternative" operating systems such as Linux and OS/2. Where mandates didn't work, coercion was used. IT departments would offer to replace another departments computers with upgraded models if they would agree to switch to Windows. Think these moves were not inspired by creative Microsoft marketing people? Think again. Mid level government managers are easily tricked into doing the bidding of clever contractors and vendors. It happens all the time and is a regular subject of industry jokes.
.NET and Oracle. These people either don't have a clue, or are on the take from vendors with deep expense accounts. You decide.
I have PERSONALLY had conversations with such government types where it was agreed that for the benefit of the agency they needed to select standards based protocols, and had that conversation turned into a mandate to use
There seems little hope for democracy to work in California. The same administration that created the energy shortage (and then blamed the energy companies for it), also purchesed about 10 times the number of Oracle licenses that they needed costing Californians millions I'm sure, even after the word got out.
After those two screw-ups, he got re-elected and now will be laying off a large percentage of the states teachers. Will he succeed in blaming it on those evil Republicans? Probably.
Amen Brother!
I wish Microsoft would jump both feet first into being a hardware vendor. They'd fall flat on their face a lot faster that way.
Instead MS will lead Intel, AMD and the others down a primrose path where they take all the risks, and Microsoft makes most of the profit (if there is any to be made).
Commodity prices and international pressures will force this to be at best a specialty item IMHO. Home users who care will pay a bit more if they need to in order to be able to run without restrictions. They won't be running Windows though, or hardware made in the USA so in that sense Microsoft is shooting itself in the other foot. I expect this to be about as successfull as Rambus memory was. I can hardly wait!
While I think the debate over static vs dynamic libraries, DLL Hell, and registry vs central vs distributed storage of program parameters and settings is all worthwhile, he didn't cover what I think is *the* most important issue in the Linux installation process, and that is device detection.
MOST of the problems I've had with installing Windows, Linux or OS X involve the fact that when I am all done, not all the components of my machine are working the way I expected them to. I end up with no sound, or bad sound, or video that isn't right, or a mouse that doesn't work, or in the really bad cases, disk drives that work well enough to boot the system but then fail after I'm in the middle of something important.
Once I get past the initial installation I feel I am home free. If the devices all work the way they are supposed to, then I can avoid most other problems by just sticking with the distro that I started with. If it was Debian Stable I stay with that, and if I need to install something that isn't part of that system I install it as a user (new version of Mozilla, Evolution, Real*, Java for example).
It would definitely be nice if developers who used shared libraries didn't seem to live in a fantasy land where they are the only users of those libraries. But I *don't* think that this is Linux's biggest problem with acceptance. What Linux needs is an agreement by all the distros to use something like the Knoppix device detection process... and then to cooperatively improve on it. A run-from-CD version of every distro would be great. Why blow away whatever you are running now just to find out if another version of Linux might suit you better?
I'd like a system that does a pre-install phase where every component of my system can be detected and tested before I commit to doing the install. The results of that could be saved somewhere so that when I commit to the install I don't have to answer any questions a second time (and possibly get it wrong).
There is nothing that can guarantee that what appears to be a good install doesn't go bad a week later, but I personally haven't had this happen. I usually know I have a bad install within a few minutes of booting up the first time, and by then, its too late to easily go back to the system that was "good enough".
I don't think anyone here will quibble with the idea that Microsoft puts an emphasis on marketing.
For me the question is, to what extent is this a good thing, especially for the consumer?
It is a tautology that a product can't succeed, no matter how good it is, if it's existence is never revealed. A product that is of no value can, on the other hand be sold to many people with a sufficient amount of marketing.
These two facts may lead some people to think that the budget for any company under any circumstances should favor marketing over product development. I don't see it that way. In fact, while Microsoft has gotten where they are today by out-marketing companies who in many cases had superior products, I think MS is now a victim of it's own success with that strategy. Having dominated the desktop as they have, it's going to be difficult if not impossible to convince the majority of Windows/Office users that they HAVE to have the next versions of those products. In fact most people I talk to who are happy with Windows/Office think that the current versions of both products are TOO complex and would love to have something come along and simplify their PC usage.
Microsoft may be able to sell developers on dot-net, I've talked to developers who seem oh so excited about it, but can't quite explain to me what it is. But the real question is what is the next big money maker for MS on hundreds of millions of desktops? I don't think Microsoft knows, and I don't think they have a line-up of possibilities waiting in the wings either.
When it all comes tumbling down, there will be arguments about whether Microsoft lost its marketing touch, or whether product development simply failed to deliver the goods.
The truth is, that by letting marketing considerations predominate, Microsoft has produced a glittering tower, and in their haste, not provided a solid foundation for it. The sorts of things intentionally left out of that foundation (a robust command line interface, security, hardware portability) cannot be patched up with a new GUI front end (although that won't stop them from trying). What Microsoft needs to do now is what Apple has just finished doing: throw out the underpinnings of the OS and start over. The difference is that Microsoft will almost certainly lose market share in the process, and that market share will be lost in the only areas of the company's product line that are profitable. Had Xbox, MSNBC, Slate or their consulting division efforts been successful it might be a different story.
Regardless of what happens with Sun, Microsoft needs to pull a big rabbit out of their hat right now. I don't even see ears yet.
I give up. What is Apache a clone of? I wish they had included an actual quote on this. Maybe the journalist was "interpreting".
Most of the article is on target though. The easy way to evaluate the strengths of the companies mentioned is to look at how diversified they are (or aren't).
IBM is no longer primarily a hardware company. They have a strong consulting division, they do fundamental research and grab pattents on REAL things (rather than new parsing algorithms like some companies I can think of), they have a very strong software development component, they farm out hardware manufacturing that is no longer profitable (disk drives) while hanging on to things that they do best and can make money on (chip fabrication).
Sun is primarily a hardware company. Their operating systems are (almost) exclusively sold to customers who use their hardware. Java and Star Office are far from being cash cows. Their weakness is that as Intel, AMD, etc, chips get cheaper there is less incentive to use Sun's higher priced hardware components. Supporting Linux helps them a bit, but it is the price of their hardware that puts them at a disadvantage.
Microsoft is a software company. They are trying real hard to become something else too, but like Sun they are having a heck of a time making anything else work. They don't really do fundamental research, but instead try and grab patents on programming concepts so that they can bully other companies in court when it suits them. They don't really make any hardware, but instead stamp their logo on a few things to make it seem that they do. They do select good subcontractors for mice and keyboards, I'll grant them that. Everything they do except Windows and Office lose money. Prospects for either of those (because they are already so successful) can only go down. They currently have a scatter shot approach to the "next big thing" which consists of trying everything at once and seeing if any of it takes off. Few companies have the money to do this. But they will bleed themselves dry rather quickly if they are not carefull. Something tells me they are not going to be carefull.
Apple is trying to diversify too. Since they are starting small the only way they have to go is up. It would be nice to see them further popularize the power-pc server. My personal experience with OS X is that they are rushing versions of it out the door too fast. I've decided to wait for XI (or whatever they call it) and switched to running Linux on my iBook. Those gel buttons are cute though.
Just one example: San Fransisco's subway system BART is criticized for closing their public restrooms. In Washington DC the subway systems was designed 20 years or so ago without public restrooms in the first place. It is in fact hard to find a spot in the DC subway system where you are not under the watchfull eye of a video camera, all being monitored by at least one attendant visible to the public (I think the feeds go to a central location as well). Since they don't put subway stops in deserted parts of the city, this is hardly a major inconvenience. You simply visit a public restroom before you enter the station.
I can't think of any security measures anywhere that don't have at least one of the following problems:
The awards seem to include examples of all three. When I have talked to people who complain about various security measures I try to come up with scenarios that would justify the specific measure that they are complaining about. I can almost always get them to say "Oh, I never thought of that."
In a perfect world we would do this experiment: Every city would have TWO airports. One with the current mix of inconvenient, invasive, and imperfect security checks, the other with only the most cursory check in place (like US Airports in the 50's). Pilots, passengers and employees would use/work at the airport of their own choosing. There would probably be significant cost savings associated with having little or no security measures in place, so that airport could use lower costs as an incentive too.
I'd love to see the long-term results.
"As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus."
Is this common knowledge? Great concept. In the long run I'd think they would be better off running blade computers to save power and reduce heat etc.
Tieing back to the subject... Network Attached Storage is the way of the future. Ultimately I'd rather have everything online somewhere where is it getting backed up properly. If I have to keep the data in my house at all I'd certainly rather it be on a specialized device that does one thing and does it well rather than on a Windows machine where it is at the mercy of the latest service pack.
I never understood the scene in Brazil where the guy is staring at his tiny monitor through a magnifying glass until now. People are obsessed with these things to the extent that they use them in permanently tethered mode even though they have a full sized monitor and keyboard sitting right next to the thing.
That part of the fad will fade I think, along with the eyesight of users. The main thing that will drive computing for the next few years will be PRICE. It's a dismal prospect for Microsoft and I'm sure these studies are designed to give them hope that people will switch from paying $2000 for a full sized PC whose cost of manufacture is $100 to paying $500 for a palmtop which contains $10 worth of parts. They are addicted to these outrageous profit margins and they have absolutely no plan for how to replace the cashflow that they generate.
They better get such a plan and soon however. These PDA/Notepad dreams will never come true in the way MS needs them to. A decent PDA in the near future will cost $50 or less, subsidized by cell phone service agreements if they have that function, and a notpad style PC will go for $300 and both devices will be considered "disposable" since in either case you drop them on concrete and they become useless and unfixable.
High (relative) profit margin items for the next few years will be ordinary notebooks, but people and companies on a budget will keep using what they have for as long as possible. Notebooks are the best compromise... readable displays and normal keyboards... single device for each user with no need to constantly "synch". I think even good notebooks will be available from every brand for under $1000 and the competitive price for these devices will flirt with $500. Read it and weep Microsoft.
I just like watching them squirm!
"Stick another pin in it Eddy!"
I would guess that the industry rags are no longer getting the bulk of their ad revenue from Microsoft or any of its competitors. Instead the ads are selling web services, routers, CRM applications, and other things in which Microsoft is not a player.
These publications can aford to be brutally honest with everyone except their one or two largest advertisers and I bet Microsoft is no longer in that club.
Anchordesk continues to say glowing things about Microsoft products though, and almost every issue comes with an ad from Redmond. Coincidence?
OTOH I bet we COULD do more than one thing at a time.
Yes, Apache has always been the dominant web server. I remember we were running it on an IBM 1130 computer with 8K of memory when I was in college in the 70's.
Hey, it is April 02 yet?
Great name you picked for yourself. Fiting in that the hopefull predictions of SF writers like Clark might be a thing of the past.
One of my favorite SF stories, by Stanislaw Lem predicts a future so drugged-up that only one man on earth knows reality from a drug induced mass halucination. The title is "The Futurologicl Congress". Mostly a downer of a book. Lem while painting a bleak picture of the future always maintains a sense of humor about it. The story that has Trurl's machine in it was very funny, even though it did come pretty close to ending the universe as I recall. err recll.
I think the big deal is that everyone is looking for something that will make all programming jobs a piece of cake. XML is just the latest in a long series of "magic bullets".
I remember storing data on mainframes in a very XML like syntax in the 70's. Just as HTML was as much evolutionary as it was revolutionary, so is XML. The hope is that all of these concepts rolled together will have some sort of critical mass that does for programming what HTML, URLs, and the Internet did for information sharing.
Personally I don't think this will happen. The problem is that there are already too many very powerful tools out there being misused and XML will not replace these tools but be layered on top of them making matters worse, maybe much worse.
I remember when SQL was first introduced its major benefit was to provide an easily READABLE syntax for describing relational databases. With a GOOD understanding of your data you could replace large chunks of your application with SQL code that did much of the data crunching for you, and in theory, did it with fewer possibilities for error.
But what happened next? Systems such as Powerbuilder came along and attempted to relieve the programmer of the headaches associated with managing complex SQL statements. The drag and drop interface built complex (and often faulty) SQL in the background allowing the programmer to turn out pure crap without bothering to have a clue.
Now I can guarantee you, because I know of people already "studying" XML for this purpose, that there will be people coding PowerBuilder applications to insert XML strings into SQL databases, no doubt using constructs that are specific to Oracle, or DB2. They will be parsing out carriage returns, converting the strings from ASCII to EBCDIC and back again.
Three years from now when someone tries to analyze the data and asks "why is this field that you told me is critical always zero in all of your data", the answer will be (just as it is now) "The programmer who put all this together doesn't work here any more and nobody else has ever been able to figure it out".
Large organizations with deep pockets tend to just go out and buy all the latest tools just like us gadget freaks have to have the latest 24-bit color palmtop devices. They train up their people to use these tools and by golly they expect the tools to be used in the next project.
So, come hell or high water we are going to use Systems Engineer, to automatically turn out PowerBuilder Code and SQL statements to house our XML data that we transfered to the mainframe and ran through the old Cobol programs and back out again, and by the time someone realizes how f*cked up it is our 5 year contract will be up and someone else can worry about fixing it. Yay team!
These things work great "in the lab" and when carefully applied by true computer scientists. The problem is that much programming these days is done not by computer scientists, but by people who barely escaped from high school. In one attempt after another to create something so simple that even THEY can deal with it we have instead created a monster, or more precisely a series of them.
I guess the good news is that (as pointed out here recently in the mock interview with the inventor of C++) the ridiculous complexity resulting from all of this will keep smart folks employed for a long long time straightening it all out.
Of course you have to suspend your desire to accomplish truly usefull products in the short term. That just ain't gonna happen.
You had the start of a great joke there:
"True, but public opinion has relatively little to do with whether your computers are secure or not. If it did, then nobody would bother with engineering approaches to security; they'd just set aside a large PR budget to create the public perception of security, and that would make their software secure."
Punch line: Oh, wait, MS already tried that!
Anyway, it will be interesting to see how effective actual ajustments to the code will be for them. I have a hunch that there is far more wrong with Microsoft security than finding all the buffer overflows. Like the fundamental design of some Windows components that ignored security in favor of "feetures" back when they were duking it out with Wordperfect and Netscape.
And when-the-heck are they going to make up their mind where the equivalent of the users "home" deirectory is going to be housed. I seems like every major new release puts it somewhere new.
"Where do you want your stuff to go today?"