Damn, where are the mod points when someone says something smart.
Part numbers change for a reason if the replacement part is different you can bet it was due to defect. Or a new supplier.
I would argue that it is not particularly Bill's interest to hire "cheap" H1B labor, but that by flooding the market with highly skilled and trained labor, the U.S. market for that labor goes down.
"But most of the administrators are used to Windows and badly want an upgrade."
Why? I mean you imply that there are valid reasons but I don't feel any compelling reason to move off of 2K. What does Vista offer that OSX, Linus or W2K do not provide?
I think the use of the E^3 term sells Microsoft short in the harm they cause to the software industry. There was a time when every developer hoped to code the "next big thing", get some venture capital, go IPO and strike it rich, and be the next Bill Gates. However, with Microsoft's monopolistic presence in the industy and thier historical behavior of consuming any promising startup or inovative business, by buying them out for cheap or threatening to compete directly, who wants to take the risk of being innovative?
Microsoft does more harm than good in the software industry by thier efforts to maintain thier Monopoly. That is why I hate them.
Last time I checked, tech support WAS IT. You do your 18mos. and then move into a real job. I am a project manager for a large IT company and we hire 50% of our new hires from our own IT department (phone support) and the other 50% from temps who have proven themseves on the job. No external resumes need be submitted.
"The reason for this is that Microsoft wants to pretend it's shipping Vista in 2006, but no enterprise customers are going to install a brand new OS without months of testing."
I totally agree. What businees in their right mind is going to deploy a new MicroSoft OS before SP 1? You have to give the hackers and script kiddies a little time to find all of the undiscoverd and undisclosed exploits first. Then allow MicoSoft a liberal amount of time to fix them. I don't think even the most incompetant IT department would deploy before June.
"Vendors are upset because a new OS helps to drive hardware sales, and some people will be holding off getting a new PC until they're available with Vista pre-installed."
No, vendors are upset because a new Microsoft OS stops sales dead in their tracks, until the new OS is released. Some vendors consider the Holiday Season pretty important.
"Personally, I predict the real show-stopper will be a surprise price reduction from Apple. Seriously, if they knocked Leopard *down* to $99 or something, Microsoft would be looking really bad."
#^@) that. If Jobs were to announce a licencing deal with Dell for OS X at Mac World, then you'd be talking some serious pain. 99% of PC users don't even know what Leopard is. I can't even begin to imagine the media blitz MicroSoft is going to put out for thier first OS release in over 5 years. My guess is that Apple will not even be able to afford any ad time or sponsoships near the launch of Vista becase MiroSoft is going to buy it all up.
You are too damn young. Five, Sroking Kirk's Dick, the Shatner directed desecration of Trek where Kirk confronts God and wins, is the walk-out movie of choice.
"The user says, "It takes too long to log in." Microsoft responds by showing the desktop before it is "ready"; you can move the mouse, and you can bring up some menus, but they will be forcibly unposted in a few seconds, and attempts to start applications are no faster than they would be if you waited for all the startup items to finish."
What I partiularly hate is that even if the system has stopped at the log in, it waits indefinantly for me to log in before finishing the boot. Jackasses.
"Because WalMart is practically in bed with Microsoft, and Tesco is not?"
That may be true to an extent, I belive that in additoin, at least in the US, Microsoft is one of Wal*Marts biggest customers. Most big chain retailers make thier greatest profits off of selling retail space, regardless of the sale of the product itself. In order for a manufacurer to get thier product into the chain stores, they must pay the retailer to even carry the product in the first place. Companies must pay additonal money for placment at the ends of isles and eye level shelf space.
Back in the day, when I worked retail, I can recall MicroSoft paying for entire shelves of eye level placement for Windows 95, Office 97 and Windows 98. For Win 95 they "rented" every end cap in our store to have the product placed there.
I think it is very similar to how the RIAA pays Clear Channel to play thier songs and Intel pays for a large percentage of computer manufactures ads. It serves to keep small start ups from being able to compete with the established or sponsored players.
I think it is a mutually benifical relationsip, in a way, as the big players do not pay these incentives to mom and pop retailers. So that is how the Big Box stores can afford to sell some items with "instant rebates" that would appear to be below cost, while the independant outfits can not afford to do the same. I mean, what dumb ass would pay 300 dollars for a word processing and spread sheet program, that has the same functions as the one he got 3 years ago or is free on the web? The answer I think in no one. They either buy a site licence or get it from an OEM with thier computer. But it does keep OpenOffic.org and Word Perfect off the shelves and the mom and pop in the margins selling service instead of products.
"One thing I can think of is that blind ATM users would probably appreciate some sort of feedback to let them know the money is ready to be retrieved from the slot."
Bullshit. We should always distrust out government an be vigilant to any abuses of power. The terrorist win when we are so afraid of them that we take the eye of the ball and let our government become so powereful that it becomes totalitarian. The power belongs to the people and our founding fathers were well aware of how dangerous any governnment can become when granted unchecked powers.
Hypothetically speaking, assume that "W" is impeached and removed from office? Yay, President Cheney. . I feel better already. Who's next? Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, on to the cabinet? I am not amused. Of course, post Jan 14th, things could get moderately better. My opinion though is that the Dems are little better in regard to this erosion of personal liberties, that appear to be funded by corporations and special interest groups.
AMD is not succeding against Intel so much due to the "invisible hand of the market", as much as Intel has made some colossal mistakes in the recent past.
With Intels faied attempt to leverage thier procesor monopoly into the memory market via there stock swap deal with RAMBUS, to their failed attemt to monopolize the 64 bit arcitecture via Itanium, to the "Slocket" fiasco. Intel has made some very bad decisions that have cost them very large sums of money and ill will with some of their major partners. I think there were some bad decisions related to chipsets as well but I forget the details. Video? NIC's? I forget the specifics.
The question I as myself is, why with the impeding launch of Woodcrest and Conroe is Dell NOW using AMD in there future servers? Would not the past two years of AMD superiority have been the ideal time to make this transition? What do the bigwigs in development at Dell know that we do not about AMD's future processors or Intels ablilty to deliver processors and chipsets in quantity? Intel is nororious in my opinion for "paper" launches of thier products, while when AMD anounces a product launch they have the goods to deliver.
Intel has been too long accustomed to the monopoly position and does not seem to me to have the ability to perform in and actualy competeitve market.
ARE there any games that are XP only? I'm still running 2K on all of my systems and have yet to find a game that REALLY won't run on it. Occasionally I'll find one that has an installer that SAYS i'ts XP only but a little googling about usualy finds me a fix.
Why would any developer make an Vista only game unless it represents a majority of the market? And why would any serious gamer upgrade to Vista when it's about the games and my guess it that using Vista would DEGRADE gaming performance given Vista's system requirements.
Until the OEM installed Vista systems outnumber the installed base, I don't see the likelyhood of a DX10 only game as viable. I would guess 1.5 years from Vista launch, if then.
I agree with you on the CPA stuff. Of course the real gold mine is anything in the medical fields, particularly Geriactric type fields, Medical equipment anything or any kind of Nursing. With 75 million or more baby boomers heading into retirement you will retire a millionare. Of course the boomers might vote to open the border to get cheaper nurses and orderlies, but the future demand will be staggering.
For CS and other software people, you are screwed. My company is splitting the differce with China and 50% of all management, development, project management and test engineering jobs are going over there. If you are not in the top 50% of your chosen IT profession, my reccomendation would be to get fuck out because you are going to be competing with the 50% of the experienced IT professionals that get let go.
The only saving grace is that unemployment is creeping closer and closer to pre bubble levels but I doubt that those jobs will be in anything that can be eaisily outsouced.
You are misinformed, or predjudiced in some way. Americans are the one of the most produciive nations per capita in the world. Americans are just not the most producive per $ in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, where are the mod points when someone says something smart. Part numbers change for a reason if the replacement part is different you can bet it was due to defect. Or a new supplier.
Dear Penthouse,
This morning I was stuck behind a vapid looking blond in a Mercedes...
There, I did the begining, now if someone would finish this up?
I would argue that it is not particularly Bill's interest to hire "cheap" H1B labor, but that by flooding the market with highly skilled and trained labor, the U.S. market for that labor goes down.
"But most of the administrators are used to Windows and badly want an upgrade." Why? I mean you imply that there are valid reasons but I don't feel any compelling reason to move off of 2K. What does Vista offer that OSX, Linus or W2K do not provide?
I think the use of the E^3 term sells Microsoft short in the harm they cause to the software industry. There was a time when every developer hoped to code the "next big thing", get some venture capital, go IPO and strike it rich, and be the next Bill Gates. However, with Microsoft's monopolistic presence in the industy and thier historical behavior of consuming any promising startup or inovative business, by buying them out for cheap or threatening to compete directly, who wants to take the risk of being innovative?
Microsoft does more harm than good in the software industry by thier efforts to maintain thier Monopoly. That is why I hate them.
Last time I checked, tech support WAS IT. You do your 18mos. and then move into a real job. I am a project manager for a large IT company and we hire 50% of our new hires from our own IT department (phone support) and the other 50% from temps who have proven themseves on the job. No external resumes need be submitted.
"The reason for this is that Microsoft wants to pretend it's shipping Vista in 2006, but no enterprise customers are going to install a brand new OS without months of testing."
I totally agree. What businees in their right mind is going to deploy a new MicroSoft OS before SP 1? You have to give the hackers and script kiddies a little time to find all of the undiscoverd and undisclosed exploits first. Then allow MicoSoft a liberal amount of time to fix them. I don't think even the most incompetant IT department would deploy before June.
"Vendors are upset because a new OS helps to drive hardware sales, and some people will be holding off getting a new PC until they're available with Vista pre-installed."
No, vendors are upset because a new Microsoft OS stops sales dead in their tracks, until the new OS is released. Some vendors consider the Holiday Season pretty important.
"Personally, I predict the real show-stopper will be a surprise price reduction from Apple. Seriously, if they knocked Leopard *down* to $99 or something, Microsoft would be looking really bad." #^@) that. If Jobs were to announce a licencing deal with Dell for OS X at Mac World, then you'd be talking some serious pain. 99% of PC users don't even know what Leopard is. I can't even begin to imagine the media blitz MicroSoft is going to put out for thier first OS release in over 5 years. My guess is that Apple will not even be able to afford any ad time or sponsoships near the launch of Vista becase MiroSoft is going to buy it all up.
I found this article particularly salient to the subject. http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?d ist=newsfinder&siteid=google&guid=%7B984BDADB-4BC6 -4B0F-BAAE-2CC966C369E1%7D&keyword=
Damn Luddites
"It's a Win-Win!"
Well said. I whish I had some mod points left.
You are too damn young. Five, Sroking Kirk's Dick, the Shatner directed desecration of Trek where Kirk confronts God and wins, is the walk-out movie of choice.
"The user says, "It takes too long to log in." Microsoft responds by showing the desktop before it is "ready"; you can move the mouse, and you can bring up some menus, but they will be forcibly unposted in a few seconds, and attempts to start applications are no faster than they would be if you waited for all the startup items to finish." What I partiularly hate is that even if the system has stopped at the log in, it waits indefinantly for me to log in before finishing the boot. Jackasses.
"Because WalMart is practically in bed with Microsoft, and Tesco is not?"
That may be true to an extent, I belive that in additoin, at least in the US, Microsoft is one of Wal*Marts biggest customers. Most big chain retailers make thier greatest profits off of selling retail space, regardless of the sale of the product itself. In order for a manufacurer to get thier product into the chain stores, they must pay the retailer to even carry the product in the first place. Companies must pay additonal money for placment at the ends of isles and eye level shelf space.
Back in the day, when I worked retail, I can recall MicroSoft paying for entire shelves of eye level placement for Windows 95, Office 97 and Windows 98. For Win 95 they "rented" every end cap in our store to have the product placed there.
I think it is very similar to how the RIAA pays Clear Channel to play thier songs and Intel pays for a large percentage of computer manufactures ads. It serves to keep small start ups from being able to compete with the established or sponsored players.
I think it is a mutually benifical relationsip, in a way, as the big players do not pay these incentives to mom and pop retailers. So that is how the Big Box stores can afford to sell some items with "instant rebates" that would appear to be below cost, while the independant outfits can not afford to do the same. I mean, what dumb ass would pay 300 dollars for a word processing and spread sheet program, that has the same functions as the one he got 3 years ago or is free on the web? The answer I think in no one. They either buy a site licence or get it from an OEM with thier computer. But it does keep OpenOffic.org and Word Perfect off the shelves and the mom and pop in the margins selling service instead of products.
It's a joke that's almost as old as ATM's.
"One thing I can think of is that blind ATM users would probably appreciate some sort of feedback to let them know the money is ready to be retrieved from the slot."
In a drive through?
Bullshit. We should always distrust out government an be vigilant to any abuses of power. The terrorist win when we are so afraid of them that we take the eye of the ball and let our government become so powereful that it becomes totalitarian. The power belongs to the people and our founding fathers were well aware of how dangerous any governnment can become when granted unchecked powers.
Hypothetically speaking, assume that "W" is impeached and removed from office? Yay, President Cheney. . I feel better already. Who's next? Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, on to the cabinet? I am not amused. Of course, post Jan 14th, things could get moderately better. My opinion though is that the Dems are little better in regard to this erosion of personal liberties, that appear to be funded by corporations and special interest groups.
Very good post!
AMD is not succeding against Intel so much due to the "invisible hand of the market", as much as Intel has made some colossal mistakes in the recent past.
With Intels faied attempt to leverage thier procesor monopoly into the memory market via there stock swap deal with RAMBUS, to their failed attemt to monopolize the 64 bit arcitecture via Itanium, to the "Slocket" fiasco. Intel has made some very bad decisions that have cost them very large sums of money and ill will with some of their major partners. I think there were some bad decisions related to chipsets as well but I forget the details. Video? NIC's? I forget the specifics.
The question I as myself is, why with the impeding launch of Woodcrest and Conroe is Dell NOW using AMD in there future servers? Would not the past two years of AMD superiority have been the ideal time to make this transition? What do the bigwigs in development at Dell know that we do not about AMD's future processors or Intels ablilty to deliver processors and chipsets in quantity? Intel is nororious in my opinion for "paper" launches of thier products, while when AMD anounces a product launch they have the goods to deliver.
Intel has been too long accustomed to the monopoly position and does not seem to me to have the ability to perform in and actualy competeitve market.
ARE there any games that are XP only? I'm still running 2K on all of my systems and have yet to find a game that REALLY won't run on it. Occasionally I'll find one that has an installer that SAYS i'ts XP only but a little googling about usualy finds me a fix. Why would any developer make an Vista only game unless it represents a majority of the market? And why would any serious gamer upgrade to Vista when it's about the games and my guess it that using Vista would DEGRADE gaming performance given Vista's system requirements. Until the OEM installed Vista systems outnumber the installed base, I don't see the likelyhood of a DX10 only game as viable. I would guess 1.5 years from Vista launch, if then.
I agree with you on the CPA stuff. Of course the real gold mine is anything in the medical fields, particularly Geriactric type fields, Medical equipment anything or any kind of Nursing. With 75 million or more baby boomers heading into retirement you will retire a millionare. Of course the boomers might vote to open the border to get cheaper nurses and orderlies, but the future demand will be staggering. For CS and other software people, you are screwed. My company is splitting the differce with China and 50% of all management, development, project management and test engineering jobs are going over there. If you are not in the top 50% of your chosen IT profession, my reccomendation would be to get fuck out because you are going to be competing with the 50% of the experienced IT professionals that get let go. The only saving grace is that unemployment is creeping closer and closer to pre bubble levels but I doubt that those jobs will be in anything that can be eaisily outsouced.
You are misinformed, or predjudiced in some way. Americans are the one of the most produciive nations per capita in the world. Americans are just not the most producive per $ in the world.
I think you'd die from exhaustion before you got through even half of it.