Once the tech has matured.. and I bathe my license plate in infrared, would that therefore block the speed camera from taking the picture of my license plate?
There was something called chameleon plates a little while ago that did a similar thing. They reflected the light of the speed camera's flash so that they couldn't take photos of your license plate.
This is another step in that it is an active device in that it shines light into the camera.
It's the old consumer theory of "You get what you pay for". In the networking market, Juniper (I think?) had a VERY hard time selling their product against Cisco. To the extent that they were selling their product at half the price of what the Cisco stuff was selling for. Nevermind the fact that the Juniper equipment in question had the ability to push twice the amount of traffic as the Cisco equivilant.
Someone in the marketing dept turned around and said "We are selling our stuff too cheap, people think we are full of shit and that our product isn't as good as Cisco's" So they doubled the price of the Cisco hardware and started selling their own kit at that price. Sales apparently took off.
If Intel dropped the price on their stuff that far then people would turn around and start buying AMD for the same reason. AMD already did this on their Opteron processors as they didn't want to drop them below the retail price of the Xeons for the same fear.
The users don't give a shit at all what you run on the server, so long as it works. That's your domain, as long as they don't get hit with problems, that's your first step.
On that server, you can do whatever you please. Installing additional stuff like CRM packages that integrate with what they have already is a great place to start. You will also have to train the users on this software. Something else you may or may not know how to do at the moment. Can't harm to hire a trainer though if the budget is there.
The server side I know you will be able to convert in a weekend, but you need to go through and analyse EVERYTHING that they do. I am sure that if you are their admin you know everything (Roughly) that they do already so this bit won't be that hard.
What you need to do is think about everything that they use that server for... For everything go through and write a list and write down what it's equivelant is going to be:
Windows File and Printer Sharing - Samba Email - Qmail / Courier? Webmail - IMP Remote Access - PPTP? IPSEC? Backups - Amanda Printing - CUPS / Samba PDF Document conversion - GhostScript User Management - LDAP (With or without kerberos?) Centralised Calendering - Figure out
Also, write everything down. I can't stress this enough, if it's in your head consider it gone. When you move through this project later you will be thinking.... Why was I thinking that?
Once you have this list, go through, install and setup all the differnt stuff, this will help you make an even more informed decision.
There are a LOT of questions that you are going to have to look into.
The business, if there isn't any great loss sometimes are willing to switch as for a simple thing as network based PDF conversion and Anti Spam.
This can save the company money. That is something they will definately be interested in.
Also, I noticed that you are running SBS 2003. Are they using Windows Portal Services at all? SQL databases?
On this note, do you have software assurance? What you might be better off doing would be waiting till support for 2003 dies and then have a solution ready to take it's place (Presuming you stay there that long). Either that or use the money that you would spend on migrating to 2005 when it comes out to move to Linux.
Once you have done this, this will be first step. Then start changing the users over. Overall, changing the OS of the workstations will most likely end up harder to do than the server stuff, but if you can pull this off, then it will become easier to do the desktop stuff as you will understand much better at this point what it's all about.
My email address is real and have been there before, if you want to ask a question, flick it across.
There are a whole heap of benefits to running Linux for a small business like this.
SugarCRM SpamD Less virus Higher availability from better security (SELinux anybody?) MultiSync
Essentially a lot of value add that doesn't exist now without spending a lot of money on proprietry software. Yes, a lot of this could be run under Windows if you REALLY wanted to. However, this isn't exactly the best supported scenario.
The other thing the business has to consider is, what happens when you get hit by a bus? What is the availablity of other admins to do your job?
However as the parent said, take this into consideration when you do look at this. On the other hand, as the grandparent said, unless you are going to go through, plan and change everything in a methodical manner, the business risk otherwise is too high.
1. Describe your problem: 2. Now, describe the problem accurately: 3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem: 4. Problem Severity:
1. Minor __
2. Minor __
3. Minor __
4. Trivial __
5. Nature of the problem:
1. Locked Up __
2. Frozen __
3. Hung __
4. Strange Smell __ 6. Is Your Computer Plugged In? Yes_____ No______ 7. Is It Turned On? Yes_____ No_____ 8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes_____ No_____ 9. Have you made it worse? Yes_____ No_____ 10. Have you had a "friend" who "Knows all about computers" try to fix it for you? Yes_____ No_____ 11. Did they make it worse? Yes_____ No_____ 12. Have you read the manual? Yes_____ No_____ 13. Are you sure you've read the manual? Yes_____ No_____ 14. Are you absolutely certain you've read the manual? Yes_____ No_____ 15. If you read the manual, do you think you understood it? Yes_____ No_____ 16. If 'yes', then explain why you can't fix the problem yourself? 17. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred? 18. If you answered 'nothing' then explain why you were logged in? 19. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes_____ No_____ 20. Does the clock on your home VCR blink 12:00? Yes_____ What's a VCR? _____ 21. Do you have a copy of 'PCs for Dummies'? Yes_____ No_____ 22. Do you have any independent witnesses to the problem? Yes_____ No_____ 23. Do you have any electronics products that DO work? Yes_____ No_____ 24. Is there anyone else you could blame this problem on? Yes_____ No_____ 25. Have you given the machine a good whack on the top? Yes_____ No_____ 26. Is the machine on fire? Yes_____ No_____ Not Yet_____ 27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me? Yes_____ No_____
I thought that "Easy to reach canned air. Easy to reach paper towels" was your sig, and I thought, "Yes , an air horn and toilet paper could well be of a lot of use"... Well, that is if you have the air horn and they don't know you are behind them.... Then THEY need the toilet paper.
Business is always in control. That's the way things run. If you want to take the control away from the people that know how to support the systems though. Good luck supporting that business.
If you don't trust the people that work for you... There is serious issues in your management.
BTW, if it is YOUR machine, and you personally paid for it out of YOUR wages, and YOU pay for the internet access and all of YOUR license fees etc etc. Then YOU need to consider YOUR employment practices.
Sure, one of the help deskers can remote control your machine when you need admin rights once every 6 months. With a properly managed situation this will never happen. If you wish to behave like that and you can't change a margin in word, that's fine, we will send you on a training course, then one for excel, one for outlook etc etc until it's obvious that you are too dumb to work, and then we fire you. As you have had all the training courses and still behave like a child, we don't get into trouble if you try to sue us for discrimination either.
From my experience, go to your boss' office, tell them whatever you please. When your manager comes to my office and asks me what's going on and I sit down and have a rational conversation about business risk and that you having admin rights and installing all this software that is unsupported by us (We have to draw the line somewhere you know, we are human) downloading all this stuff off the net really isn't in the business' best interest... 99% of the time, they agree with me and walk off to smooth things over with you. That's the way things run. If it goes further up the chain, I have been around for so long that people tend to trust my judgement nowadays.
If you have a business reason as to WHY you need admin rights and it's not possible at all for you to do your job without it, then come up to me and tell me rationally why this needs to happen. If you can't, then bye bye.
You allow through what you want, harden those systems to the level of the firewall that you are protecting them with, and then harden the systems that they connect to, to the same level.
At the end of the day though, you can only harden so far. You have to balance the security vs ease of use arguement along the way. The best way to do this is to take all the applications that make the business money, find a secure way to allow them through (Proxy or otherwise) and then deny the rest of the traffic. As people whinge, allow those applications through based on merit.
One of my friends at the moment is trying to convince his head of IT (My old head of IT) to impleement IPSEC everywhere. That's a great idea and all, especially from a security persepctive, but it adds a layer of complexity that could well become harmful and the head of IT isn't going to buy into it.
What we need to do is go about education, telling the users what should and shouldn't happen, the idea that if "this" comes up to hit cancel or to report it, and that is their options. Make this the default for the "deny any" policy that Marcus was trying to get across.
At the end of the day, we can't harden everything, as much as we would like to we can't. Simply because of a lack of resourcing or otherwise this isn't a possibility. Unless someone comes to bat for a much larger (And smarter) security group, that is going to look after absolutely EVERYTHING, every single request that crosses a helpdesk and specifies what every user will need access to and ensuring that those applications are hardened will Marcus' idea ever take off.
Oh I wish for the day when it does, but in the next 5 - 10 years, I don't see it happening..
Please someone prove me wrong.
You have to wonder what they are up to...
on
Google Hires Vint Cerf
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
You really have to wonder what they are up to.. Now either what I put in my previous post is correct and they are just trying to minimise their risk by distributing the BGP peers and reducing their risk, and trying to cut out Akamai who they were originally paying a reasonable amount of money to for various hosting things. Or they are about to come out with something over the next couple of years that will put us all in shock. I have no idea what is about to become of this..
Does anyone have any ideas on what they would be doing with one of the pioneers of the internet and a truckload of fibre?
In all honesty I have no idea, they could well be putting two wavelegnths down the fibre, a visible red light to check for connectivity on the transmit side and the data carrier which you can't see.
If it's longhaul I make sure that the interface is down (i.e. no laser or anything, and i trust what the record books say / trace the cable myself) with the transmission power on those things, unless someone else shows me otherwise I am not going near it.
Multimode is typically so low power the only way to see something on the cable is to cup your hand around the connector and look through your hand to the connector as the amount of white light in a comms room will stop you from being able to see the light on the fibre. i.e. the light outside is brighter than what's on the cable.
yeah, but if it's used it's not exactly going to be dark is it?
You can buy your own fibre, and as long as there's no light on it, it would normally be considered "dark". The idea of pulling a plug off the end of a fibre panel attaching a flylead and pointing at my hand (about half a metre off and moving in) and looking for something (Presuming red visible spectrum here) wouldn't be unheard of for a lot of slashdotters.
If you are dealing with long range transmission kit folks don't look into it directly that shit hurts!
In all honesty, and it's been talked about already in this topic. That Google is simply buying fibre to connect their networks.
Now with the amount of fibre they could be buying, why not put up free access points and come up with a good advertising delivery mechanism behind it. Could well be the targetted location based internet advertising that so many marketing companies have wanted to do for so long. "Buy a coffee at Joe's! Mention this ad an get a free donut!"
As well, could you imagine the communication costs that they are incurring as we speak? The amount of data that would be traversing their network at the moment would be out of control. Why not just buy some fibre now, setup another company to manage it and slash your comms costs? Especially if they are ordering in the hundreds of gigabits of data which I am guessing they probably are (Think about it for a second)..
Gmail going live, there's another few terabytes worth of data burnt each week having to store all that... All the extra internet content that gets loaded on each day, and they have to index it... Site redundancy.... The lists go on and on...
So what if they setup a second internet? Let them! If it encourages competition, why the hell not? MCI and AOL and everyone else isn't exactly going to sit on their hands and let their market dissapear in front of them are they?
In all honesty though, what are the chances of them making a change in business tactic from being a content search facility and marketers to being an internet service provider.. I don't think it fits in with their business model.
The only thing I think they could be doing is connecting datacentres and possibly (Not having seen WHERE they have bought fibre) they could quite easily be trying to get peering arangements with all the major ISPs to try to distribute the input load onto their network as it could quite well just be getting beyond the point of stupidity and manageability.
BTW, how much are they paying Akamai at the moment?
Why can't we band together and just by Sun? Everyone buys a few stocks over time, at the end of the day we have the company by the balls, we can do whatever we want with them...
Then we don't have to worry about all this as we can change the corporate governance to ensure that Sun behave themselves in the market... We also have the ability to use this as a position to start out in the market and use for cover when things get rough. It's not monopolistic as there is a heap of competition, and then this arguement of Solaris x86 vs Linux becomes mute as we can have the best of both worlds. Another possibility would be patent protection (depending on the wording of the contracts) from MS and anyone else Sun has signed agreements with..
I understand that the chances of this happening are a snowflake's chance in hell given that we can't even keep ourselves together on the choice between a few distros (Please don't flame me on this one, it's just a random point to ensure you catch my drift) but is there any reason as a whole we couldn't do this?
Slashdot Mirror
MSN for search, buying AOL...
:P
Would that be "Cutting off their air supply?"
God I can't wait till Bush gets the arse, then you can get a DOJ with some teeth and you can chase Microsoft with pitchforks again
Once the tech has matured.. and I bathe my license plate in infrared, would that therefore block the speed camera from taking the picture of my license plate?
There was something called chameleon plates a little while ago that did a similar thing. They reflected the light of the speed camera's flash so that they couldn't take photos of your license plate.
This is another step in that it is an active device in that it shines light into the camera.
Go you one more point as well.
It's the old consumer theory of "You get what you pay for". In the networking market, Juniper (I think?) had a VERY hard time selling their product against Cisco. To the extent that they were selling their product at half the price of what the Cisco stuff was selling for. Nevermind the fact that the Juniper equipment in question had the ability to push twice the amount of traffic as the Cisco equivilant.
Someone in the marketing dept turned around and said "We are selling our stuff too cheap, people think we are full of shit and that our product isn't as good as Cisco's" So they doubled the price of the Cisco hardware and started selling their own kit at that price. Sales apparently took off.
If Intel dropped the price on their stuff that far then people would turn around and start buying AMD for the same reason. AMD already did this on their Opteron processors as they didn't want to drop them below the retail price of the Xeons for the same fear.
Any chance when it's done that we can integrate it with slashcode to stop all the whining all day about grammatically correct posts?
Leave the users alone.
The users don't give a shit at all what you run on the server, so long as it works. That's your domain, as long as they don't get hit with problems, that's your first step.
On that server, you can do whatever you please. Installing additional stuff like CRM packages that integrate with what they have already is a great place to start. You will also have to train the users on this software. Something else you may or may not know how to do at the moment. Can't harm to hire a trainer though if the budget is there.
The server side I know you will be able to convert in a weekend, but you need to go through and analyse EVERYTHING that they do. I am sure that if you are their admin you know everything (Roughly) that they do already so this bit won't be that hard.
What you need to do is think about everything that they use that server for... For everything go through and write a list and write down what it's equivelant is going to be:
Windows File and Printer Sharing - Samba
Email - Qmail / Courier?
Webmail - IMP
Remote Access - PPTP? IPSEC?
Backups - Amanda
Printing - CUPS / Samba
PDF Document conversion - GhostScript
User Management - LDAP (With or without kerberos?)
Centralised Calendering - Figure out
Also, write everything down. I can't stress this enough, if it's in your head consider it gone. When you move through this project later you will be thinking.... Why was I thinking that?
Once you have this list, go through, install and setup all the differnt stuff, this will help you make an even more informed decision.
There are a LOT of questions that you are going to have to look into.
The business, if there isn't any great loss sometimes are willing to switch as for a simple thing as network based PDF conversion and Anti Spam.
This can save the company money. That is something they will definately be interested in.
Also, I noticed that you are running SBS 2003. Are they using Windows Portal Services at all? SQL databases?
On this note, do you have software assurance? What you might be better off doing would be waiting till support for 2003 dies and then have a solution ready to take it's place (Presuming you stay there that long). Either that or use the money that you would spend on migrating to 2005 when it comes out to move to Linux.
Once you have done this, this will be first step. Then start changing the users over. Overall, changing the OS of the workstations will most likely end up harder to do than the server stuff, but if you can pull this off, then it will become easier to do the desktop stuff as you will understand much better at this point what it's all about.
My email address is real and have been there before, if you want to ask a question, flick it across.
Berny
There are a whole heap of benefits to running Linux for a small business like this.
SugarCRM
SpamD
Less virus
Higher availability from better security (SELinux anybody?)
MultiSync
Essentially a lot of value add that doesn't exist now without spending a lot of money on proprietry software. Yes, a lot of this could be run under Windows if you REALLY wanted to. However, this isn't exactly the best supported scenario.
The other thing the business has to consider is, what happens when you get hit by a bus? What is the availablity of other admins to do your job?
However as the parent said, take this into consideration when you do look at this. On the other hand, as the grandparent said, unless you are going to go through, plan and change everything in a methodical manner, the business risk otherwise is too high.
Berny
You read a lot of BOFH don't you?
I guess the question is: Doesn't everybody?
Sharepoint, Microsoft Office Communicator..
How many else?
Double checking their answers while they fill out the questionaire before you start work on their PC?
From: http://lotl.cc/humor.xs
1. Describe your problem:
2. Now, describe the problem accurately:
3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:
4. Problem Severity:
1. Minor __
2. Minor __
3. Minor __
4. Trivial __
5. Nature of the problem:
1. Locked Up __
2. Frozen __
3. Hung __
4. Strange Smell __
6. Is Your Computer Plugged In? Yes_____ No______
7. Is It Turned On? Yes_____ No_____
8. Have you tried to fix it yourself? Yes_____ No_____
9. Have you made it worse? Yes_____ No_____
10. Have you had a "friend" who "Knows all about computers" try to fix it for you? Yes_____ No_____
11. Did they make it worse? Yes_____ No_____
12. Have you read the manual? Yes_____ No_____
13. Are you sure you've read the manual? Yes_____ No_____
14. Are you absolutely certain you've read the manual? Yes_____ No_____
15. If you read the manual, do you think you understood it? Yes_____ No_____
16. If 'yes', then explain why you can't fix the problem yourself?
17. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred?
18. If you answered 'nothing' then explain why you were logged in?
19. Are you sure you aren't imagining the problem? Yes_____ No_____
20. Does the clock on your home VCR blink 12:00? Yes_____ What's a VCR? _____
21. Do you have a copy of 'PCs for Dummies'? Yes_____ No_____
22. Do you have any independent witnesses to the problem? Yes_____ No_____
23. Do you have any electronics products that DO work? Yes_____ No_____
24. Is there anyone else you could blame this problem on? Yes_____ No_____
25. Have you given the machine a good whack on the top? Yes_____ No_____
26. Is the machine on fire? Yes_____ No_____ Not Yet_____
27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me? Yes_____ No_____
I thought that "Easy to reach canned air. Easy to reach paper towels" was your sig, and I thought, "Yes , an air horn and toilet paper could well be of a lot of use"... Well, that is if you have the air horn and they don't know you are behind them.... Then THEY need the toilet paper.
Some things are out of your control, and unless you have video tape evidence, it really doesn't matter that much.
Get the customer to sign a disclaimer as they give you the PC. Accidents happen sometimes, nothing you can do about it.
Business is always in control. That's the way things run. If you want to take the control away from the people that know how to support the systems though. Good luck supporting that business.
If you don't trust the people that work for you... There is serious issues in your management.
BTW, if it is YOUR machine, and you personally paid for it out of YOUR wages, and YOU pay for the internet access and all of YOUR license fees etc etc. Then YOU need to consider YOUR employment practices.
Sure, one of the help deskers can remote control your machine when you need admin rights once every 6 months. With a properly managed situation this will never happen. If you wish to behave like that and you can't change a margin in word, that's fine, we will send you on a training course, then one for excel, one for outlook etc etc until it's obvious that you are too dumb to work, and then we fire you. As you have had all the training courses and still behave like a child, we don't get into trouble if you try to sue us for discrimination either.
From my experience, go to your boss' office, tell them whatever you please. When your manager comes to my office and asks me what's going on and I sit down and have a rational conversation about business risk and that you having admin rights and installing all this software that is unsupported by us (We have to draw the line somewhere you know, we are human) downloading all this stuff off the net really isn't in the business' best interest... 99% of the time, they agree with me and walk off to smooth things over with you. That's the way things run. If it goes further up the chain, I have been around for so long that people tend to trust my judgement nowadays.
If you have a business reason as to WHY you need admin rights and it's not possible at all for you to do your job without it, then come up to me and tell me rationally why this needs to happen. If you can't, then bye bye.
And I follow his thinking....
You allow through what you want, harden those systems to the level of the firewall that you are protecting them with, and then harden the systems that they connect to, to the same level.
At the end of the day though, you can only harden so far. You have to balance the security vs ease of use arguement along the way. The best way to do this is to take all the applications that make the business money, find a secure way to allow them through (Proxy or otherwise) and then deny the rest of the traffic. As people whinge, allow those applications through based on merit.
One of my friends at the moment is trying to convince his head of IT (My old head of IT) to impleement IPSEC everywhere. That's a great idea and all, especially from a security persepctive, but it adds a layer of complexity that could well become harmful and the head of IT isn't going to buy into it.
What we need to do is go about education, telling the users what should and shouldn't happen, the idea that if "this" comes up to hit cancel or to report it, and that is their options. Make this the default for the "deny any" policy that Marcus was trying to get across.
At the end of the day, we can't harden everything, as much as we would like to we can't. Simply because of a lack of resourcing or otherwise this isn't a possibility. Unless someone comes to bat for a much larger (And smarter) security group, that is going to look after absolutely EVERYTHING, every single request that crosses a helpdesk and specifies what every user will need access to and ensuring that those applications are hardened will Marcus' idea ever take off.
Oh I wish for the day when it does, but in the next 5 - 10 years, I don't see it happening..
Please someone prove me wrong.
When I posted about Google buying a lot of dark fibre I never would have thought about these two things put together....
You really have to wonder what they are up to.. Now either what I put in my previous post is correct and they are just trying to minimise their risk by distributing the BGP peers and reducing their risk, and trying to cut out Akamai who they were originally paying a reasonable amount of money to for various hosting things. Or they are about to come out with something over the next couple of years that will put us all in shock. I have no idea what is about to become of this..
Does anyone have any ideas on what they would be doing with one of the pioneers of the internet and a truckload of fibre?
Pardon my ignorance, but WHO is Kroger?
I presume this means it's time to use that little box in the top right hand corner of my screen with the blue G beside it?
In all honesty I have no idea, they could well be putting two wavelegnths down the fibre, a visible red light to check for connectivity on the transmit side and the data carrier which you can't see.
If it's longhaul I make sure that the interface is down (i.e. no laser or anything, and i trust what the record books say / trace the cable myself) with the transmission power on those things, unless someone else shows me otherwise I am not going near it.
Multimode is typically so low power the only way to see something on the cable is to cup your hand around the connector and look through your hand to the connector as the amount of white light in a comms room will stop you from being able to see the light on the fibre. i.e. the light outside is brighter than what's on the cable.
Red dot, usually a good way to tell.
Ever looked at a lit fibre optic cable? Something just like a 100Mb multimode lit cable? It is quite visible to the naked eye.
yeah, but if it's used it's not exactly going to be dark is it?
You can buy your own fibre, and as long as there's no light on it, it would normally be considered "dark". The idea of pulling a plug off the end of a fibre panel attaching a flylead and pointing at my hand (about half a metre off and moving in) and looking for something (Presuming red visible spectrum here) wouldn't be unheard of for a lot of slashdotters.
If you are dealing with long range transmission kit folks don't look into it directly that shit hurts!
Who is Katrina? Why was she eating curry if it affects her so badly?
In all honesty, and it's been talked about already in this topic. That Google is simply buying fibre to connect their networks.
Now with the amount of fibre they could be buying, why not put up free access points and come up with a good advertising delivery mechanism behind it. Could well be the targetted location based internet advertising that so many marketing companies have wanted to do for so long. "Buy a coffee at Joe's! Mention this ad an get a free donut!"
As well, could you imagine the communication costs that they are incurring as we speak? The amount of data that would be traversing their network at the moment would be out of control. Why not just buy some fibre now, setup another company to manage it and slash your comms costs? Especially if they are ordering in the hundreds of gigabits of data which I am guessing they probably are (Think about it for a second)..
Gmail going live, there's another few terabytes worth of data burnt each week having to store all that... All the extra internet content that gets loaded on each day, and they have to index it... Site redundancy.... The lists go on and on...
So what if they setup a second internet? Let them! If it encourages competition, why the hell not? MCI and AOL and everyone else isn't exactly going to sit on their hands and let their market dissapear in front of them are they?
In all honesty though, what are the chances of them making a change in business tactic from being a content search facility and marketers to being an internet service provider.. I don't think it fits in with their business model.
The only thing I think they could be doing is connecting datacentres and possibly (Not having seen WHERE they have bought fibre) they could quite easily be trying to get peering arangements with all the major ISPs to try to distribute the input load onto their network as it could quite well just be getting beyond the point of stupidity and manageability.
BTW, how much are they paying Akamai at the moment?
Even if you had a 50% stake in their operations you would still have a powerful voice into what they do...
Hey, I saw you checkin' out my goods! You want a sample, a little try before you buy, eh?
I normally don't reply to sigs, but this time I will make an exception....
Wearing painted on vinyl pants doesn't exactly leave a lot to the imagination...
j/k
Everyone,
I have a thought?
Why can't we band together and just by Sun? Everyone buys a few stocks over time, at the end of the day we have the company by the balls, we can do whatever we want with them...
Then we don't have to worry about all this as we can change the corporate governance to ensure that Sun behave themselves in the market... We also have the ability to use this as a position to start out in the market and use for cover when things get rough. It's not monopolistic as there is a heap of competition, and then this arguement of Solaris x86 vs Linux becomes mute as we can have the best of both worlds. Another possibility would be patent protection (depending on the wording of the contracts) from MS and anyone else Sun has signed agreements with..
I understand that the chances of this happening are a snowflake's chance in hell given that we can't even keep ourselves together on the choice between a few distros (Please don't flame me on this one, it's just a random point to ensure you catch my drift) but is there any reason as a whole we couldn't do this?