This is what the real fear should be. Suppose Microsoft picks up SCO for pocket change? Now, instead of going to court against a company with limited resources, you have to go up against the beast himself. Guess what? You are fucked. You are fucked without lube, or even so much as a kiss.
It has nothing to do with whether or not any suit would have merit, it has to do with the fact that Microsoft can keep any company in court until they go bust, or give in to their demands.
At the same time, they have access to all the code, and can cherry pick whatever they need. If Microsoft were to buy SCO, OSS is dead, dead, dead. Every cost advantage of Linux goes out the window that day. Everything done to the Kernal has to go through a Microsoft ANAL PROBE for compliance.
With these SCO copyrights, ya'll better hope that Gates and the boys are not feeling bitter this morning, because if they are, you may be bending over and taking one for Linux. OUCH! "Where the fuck did I put that Astroglide?"-OSS
Do you think you are selling to the majority, either in small or mid-size businesses? Your business could be booming, and be only a fraction of a percentage or Microsoft's sales into your same market.
To 90% of your market, value is what Microsoft says it is. If you and your competitors fight over the other 10%, no one in Redmond is going to lose any sleep.
Those of you who think Microsoft is making a mistake by publicising Linux are really stupid, or at best, lacking understanding in the reasons that Microsoft is where they are today.
If there ever was a time to ENCOURAGE comparisons between Windows and Linux, THAT TIME IS NOW. You need to consider the audience, people. The audience is NOT GEEKS. It is all of those under-trained, under-skilled folks who still need a computer to do something for them with a minimum of input or instruction.
Microsoft wants those people looking at Linux TODAY, not a year or two from now, when Linux is much better, or when skill sets have improved to make it less difficult to do a proper install.
For every battle against Linux that Microsoft loses today, they will win 20-30 others, because lets face it, the bulk of the people who use computers, both in business and in a personal setting are blithering idiots compared to those of us who know how to use and extend Linux.
Microsoft is brilliant(as usual) in encouraging people to start making comparisons NOW as opposed to later, because if people are turned off by the complexities of Linux now, they are unlikely to revisit the issue anytime soon. Once Microsoft has their dollars, the battle is over for at least a decade.
Some of you folks need to go out and buy "The Prince", and learn a little about winners and losers.
If you use gdm to login, add the line "1=Standard" after "0=Standard" in your gdm.conf. If you use kdm I think you just add the line ":1 local@tty1/usr/X11R6/bin/X vt8" after the line ":0 local@tty1/usr/X11R6/bin/X vt7", but I don'y use kdm, so your milage may vary. (xdm is more complicated, so google if ya use that). As suggested by the kdm config to start a new X server on another virtual terminal just specify the vt you want to use.
If we think that Windows users are going to be wanting to do all that with Linux boxes we must be fucking nuts.
GNU/Linux treats information like information rather than a false property right
Totally false. If you dont think information is 'PROPERTY' then go take some that is claimed by someone else and see what happens to you. Information is like anything else. It can be free, it can be owned, it can be rented, it can be stolen, it can be borrowed and returned. It that is irrational, then the world is irrational.
The GPL is moot, pal. Or did you read the article and understand it? Web Services kick the GPL in the ass and send it running home to momma.
Copyrights become even more important now, because services themseves will become redundant, and features and availability will determine who gets the dollar. It used to be that the guy who made the movie got rich. Now, it is going to be the guy who sells tickets, and the maker will be happy to share his wares with anyone and everyone who wants to build upon them.
Microsoft has moved toward Web Services more than any other vendor. With a couple of strategic purchases, I think they stand to win big time.
"It is tempting for Open Source developers to look at Microsoft's marketing blitz surrounding.NET and scoff. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft is positioning itself for the future. Because only descriptions of Web Services are needed in order to use them, Web Services greatly reduces the need for vendor-supplied libraries to be installed on local workstations. A Web Service aware application will become a small shell of a program that contains display logic. Where does this leave the Open Source community? It won't be hard to create Open Source work-alike applications to access the same services that the closed source version does, but is that the point? The Open Source movement is about the freedom to play with code as if it were a box of Lego; Web Services just might take the most interesting parts away."
True that the market for Developers(the new mechanics) will shrink. But other markets for those skills will open up, as long as developers keep a business focus to what they do. There is nothing left to innovate in software itself, but much to innovate in the use and application of same to solve or streamline a business process or customer's service.
I'm happy for the change, so we can get over these stupid platform wars, and focus on things that actually do something besides send bits back and forth. Now we get to focus more on the value of those bits, and I think that is a good thing.
For at least the last 5 years, Microsoft has understood that nobody buys 'Windows or Office or Exchange'. Corporation buy Networking, Information Management and Messaging instead, and the winners are those who provide the TOOLS for these business missions better than the next guy.
Linux vs Windows was never the proper battle, it was always a battle over what you DO with these things, and how you do them more effieciently than the other guy. Lots of companies NEED something like Exchange, so they by an Active Directory and Windows by default, and so on and so on.
O'Reilly is dead on right. All this shit is just commodity for the applications built upon it that actually generate income. Superiority of one platform over another is a moot point. No one decides to buy a book at Amazon because of Linux, instead of Barnes and Noble because they run on IIS, so get over it.
Windows against Linux is now like Goodyear versus Michelin. Who gives a shit? Only tire makers, not CAR makers. So, it is time to focus on building shit that rides on these things, instead of so much focus on the things themselves. No side has an advantage right now, but that could change overnight. Suppose Microsoft buys Amazon, or EBay buys Oracle? Same players, whole new battle, and all this crap over which OS is better doesnt mean a thing.
What if Microsoft buys Macromedia; takes Flash and does interesting remoting stuff with Web Services tied only to.NET? What is the competing solution from IBM going to look like?
I've got no answers, but I agree with O'Reilly that things are going to get very interesting over the next few years, and things are never going to be the same.
The thing about Rutan, is that he is so innovative, that I think he could get the public actually interested in Space again, which would force Congress to fund them better. "Will of the people" and all that shit.
The current space shuttle is a flying truck. Who gives a crap about that? We need fuckin' Buck Rogers! We need something that kids will go to sleep dreaming about participating in. That will get this nation back to loving science again.
It would also help students get back to learning fundamental engineering concepts, including software geeks, and get rid of so much reliance on tools to do things for us. Any thing that would bring back assembly-language programming into voque would be awesome.
The only reason for the success of the initial space programs, was that they captured public imagination with their cool rockets and can-do attitude. The shuttle is a fuckin' yuppie SUV compared to what we used to do. Stuff that had me in front of my parent's TV for 24 hours at a time when I was a kid.
Now all we have to show for all that money and research is a fat-pig of a shuttle that can be shot down by STYROFOAM!!! ARRRRRRRGGGGGG!!
NASA is a money wasting, CYA weak sister organization with no vision, drive or innovation. It needs an infusion of creative thinking by engineers who do their jobs out of a love for science, rather than 'dont-blame-me-if-it-fails' pussies who over-design everything adding cost and weight to their designs in an effort to make space safe for fucking school teachers.
Space is a long way from becoming a routine travel destination, and NASA needs to treat it as such, and stop with the friendly pussy designs, and get back to the business of exploration and pure scientific research. Taking people into space only to be spam-in-a-can for marketing purposes is a waste of our tax dollars. We need to stop treating space as cool until we can manage to put stuff up there without having to cross our fingers at the launch pad.
Put someone like Burt Rutan in charge or stop wasting my fucking taxes on studing how frogs behave in space, you bastards!
I dont give a crap about fonts. I give a crap about all the promises of wonderful things coming from OSS that never seem to get here. Fonts is only one example. Would you like a few hundred more?
Are you seriously going to compare FONTS to an Enterprise messaging system in terms of complexity? I mention fonts because it is the other thing that OSS has been promising for a loooooooong time now. If it takes 10 years to get a decent anti-aliased set of fonts, how long are people supposed to wait for your blessed Exchange killer? Come on, dude.
Things are fine, 9 years, and the entire Exchange group is laughing at you. Hate MS all you want, pal. Just stop bitching and beat us if you can. Make something better, and I'll use it too.
Give me the man hours, a good development team, a solid web sever and database server, and you could have a semi-decent web based, accesible from anywhere, email solution. Email is such a simple application, and its so feasible to do the same work as a client, via server to browser interaction....
Been done.
It's called Outlook Web Access; it's got all of Outlook's features in a web client connecting to Exchange Servers.
How about fixing something simple, like fucking FONTS!?!
Maybe then OSS might be ready to take on Microsoft's ace in the hole? How many projects are out there? How many have gotten fucking anywhere? Here's an idea; why dont we all just go install Netscape 4 again, and beat ourselves in the head until we bleed? Oh yeah, Exchange is dead meat. LOL!
"Switch from Exchange to Oracle over a weekend, and many of the employees won't even notice the difference."
I wish you had put that bullshit at the beginning of your posting, so I would not have had to muddle through the rest of it. If you believe that, then you know NOTHING about Exchange, and have no business responding to me. Go away.
How does Apache blow IIS out of the water? Features? No. Page serving speed? No. Security, maybe, but not near like before. Have you seen IIS 6.0? Very VERY fast. ASP.NET is fucking awesome, if you have not tried it. Especially ADO.NET. Nothing is as fast or flexible. I admit that standard ASP is beyond sucky. I would not trust Access for anything, but good luck.
Understand; I'm looking at this from the perpective of CIO's. They like features and integration, and can live with marginal security. Anyone who does not believe that would have to explain MS current marketshare in the Server space.
Can it be done? No, so dont waste your breath.
on
Technology Buying Slump
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
This is not a fucking troll, so just read it, losers. And everyone who wants to share their recipe for some mashed-together-shit-for-solution, just save it. There is NOTHING out there, that is going to duplicate the combined functionality of Exchange and Outlook within the next 3 or 4 years. I hear nothing but talk, talk, talk about everything in "development", but nothing is coming anytime soon enough to matter.
Will Apache serve up my OWA of Exchange? Fuck no. Will it distribute MS Project files? Dont even try it. No watch as all the geniuses come to defend all the shit that is "coming" and has been so for years now.
OSS has one thing and one thing ONLY going for it; COST. Functionality on a par with Microsoft is NOT going to happen in this decade. You can talk about security all you want, but Windows shops have accepted the negatives in favor of the positives.
People hear can call Windows users stupid until they are blue in the face. That does not replace putting up or shutting up.
Here come those suggesting that the HOV payment plans are racist, sexist and discriminatory, because lower income groups do not have equal ability to pay for the stickers.
Tax cuts will be fought over how they effect one's ability to buy stickers. Liberals will argue that Senior Citizens are choosing between HOV stickers and food. Jesse Jackson will find 20 words that rhyme with HOV. Democrats will say that they need to create Liberal freeways, because all the current freeways have gone right wing.
Enough trolling for mod points, okay? Odds are, you dont know what the fuck you are talking about. CSS used properly is the best thing that ever happened to web sites. It makes sites smaller Idiot, by replacing tables with div tags. The gratuitous plug for/. is so fucking phony you should be banned.
First, walkouts are for pussies. If you walk out, understand that your job is 99% over. Your mission at this point is to get revenge on your boss. If you are let back in, it will only be until your ass can be replaced. So, decide that if you are going, go.
Now, here is the hard part.
Say NOTHING.
No contact, period.
Just leave, dont look back, accept no messages, open no mail, just send it back unopened. If your entire crew does that, you can insure that your former boss is toast. One thing that people do naturally is talk too much. Silence is power.
If you keep quiet, the HR department will be ORDERED to find out what happened. Meanwhile your group picks a single person who is NOT an employee to do all the talking for your side. If you let multiple people talk, they will turn your words against you. It also prevents you from being served with a lawsuit notice.
That person meets with HR off the premises alone, and gives them a single list of complains attributed to the group, without specifying individuals. HR will demand to speak to employees before anything happens. Resist and let them replace you if nessesary. Do NOT allow anyone from your group to speak with them for any reason, no matter how trivial.
The frustration will be directed at your Boss who is still there. Their ability to manage people will be questioned. There could be no other conclusion, due to your extreme position in not speaking with them. Your company will start looking for your boss' replacement while he is looking for yours.
You may never get your jobs back, but you can insure that the pain you cause your company will cause your boss to lose his job too. You need to decide just how far you are willing to take this. If you are just pissed off, you will get no satisfaction. If you are committed, you might be able to inact some sort of revenge on your former boss.
Look around at your group. If you have any pussies in it, forget the above and get back to work; you fucking slacker, you.
Slashdot Mirror
It has nothing to do with whether or not any suit would have merit, it has to do with the fact that Microsoft can keep any company in court until they go bust, or give in to their demands.
At the same time, they have access to all the code, and can cherry pick whatever they need. If Microsoft were to buy SCO, OSS is dead, dead, dead. Every cost advantage of Linux goes out the window that day. Everything done to the Kernal has to go through a Microsoft ANAL PROBE for compliance.
With these SCO copyrights, ya'll better hope that Gates and the boys are not feeling bitter this morning, because if they are, you may be bending over and taking one for Linux. OUCH! "Where the fuck did I put that Astroglide?"-OSS
Do you think you are selling to the majority, either in small or mid-size businesses? Your business could be booming, and be only a fraction of a percentage or Microsoft's sales into your same market.
To 90% of your market, value is what Microsoft says it is. If you and your competitors fight over the other 10%, no one in Redmond is going to lose any sleep.
If there ever was a time to ENCOURAGE comparisons between Windows and Linux, THAT TIME IS NOW. You need to consider the audience, people. The audience is NOT GEEKS. It is all of those under-trained, under-skilled folks who still need a computer to do something for them with a minimum of input or instruction.
Microsoft wants those people looking at Linux TODAY, not a year or two from now, when Linux is much better, or when skill sets have improved to make it less difficult to do a proper install.
For every battle against Linux that Microsoft loses today, they will win 20-30 others, because lets face it, the bulk of the people who use computers, both in business and in a personal setting are blithering idiots compared to those of us who know how to use and extend Linux.
Microsoft is brilliant(as usual) in encouraging people to start making comparisons NOW as opposed to later, because if people are turned off by the complexities of Linux now, they are unlikely to revisit the issue anytime soon. Once Microsoft has their dollars, the battle is over for at least a decade.
Some of you folks need to go out and buy "The Prince", and learn a little about winners and losers.
If we think that Windows users are going to be wanting to do all that with Linux boxes we must be fucking nuts.
Either that, or someone could REALLY use a nap.
Totally false. If you dont think information is 'PROPERTY' then go take some that is claimed by someone else and see what happens to you. Information is like anything else. It can be free, it can be owned, it can be rented, it can be stolen, it can be borrowed and returned. It that is irrational, then the world is irrational.
The GPL is moot, pal. Or did you read the article and understand it? Web Services kick the GPL in the ass and send it running home to momma.
Copyrights become even more important now, because services themseves will become redundant, and features and availability will determine who gets the dollar. It used to be that the guy who made the movie got rich. Now, it is going to be the guy who sells tickets, and the maker will be happy to share his wares with anyone and everyone who wants to build upon them.
Microsoft has moved toward Web Services more than any other vendor. With a couple of strategic purchases, I think they stand to win big time.
"It is tempting for Open Source developers to look at Microsoft's marketing blitz surrounding .NET and scoff. Unfortunately for them, Microsoft is positioning itself for the future. Because only descriptions of Web Services are needed in order to use them, Web Services greatly reduces the need for vendor-supplied libraries to be installed on local workstations. A Web Service aware application will become a small shell of a program that contains display logic. Where does this leave the Open Source community? It won't be hard to create Open Source work-alike applications to access the same services that the closed source version does, but is that the point? The Open Source movement is about the freedom to play with code as if it were a box of Lego; Web Services just might take the most interesting parts away."
I'm happy for the change, so we can get over these stupid platform wars, and focus on things that actually do something besides send bits back and forth. Now we get to focus more on the value of those bits, and I think that is a good thing.
Linux vs Windows was never the proper battle, it was always a battle over what you DO with these things, and how you do them more effieciently than the other guy. Lots of companies NEED something like Exchange, so they by an Active Directory and Windows by default, and so on and so on.
O'Reilly is dead on right. All this shit is just commodity for the applications built upon it that actually generate income. Superiority of one platform over another is a moot point. No one decides to buy a book at Amazon because of Linux, instead of Barnes and Noble because they run on IIS, so get over it.
Windows against Linux is now like Goodyear versus Michelin. Who gives a shit? Only tire makers, not CAR makers. So, it is time to focus on building shit that rides on these things, instead of so much focus on the things themselves. No side has an advantage right now, but that could change overnight. Suppose Microsoft buys Amazon, or EBay buys Oracle? Same players, whole new battle, and all this crap over which OS is better doesnt mean a thing.
What if Microsoft buys Macromedia; takes Flash and does interesting remoting stuff with Web Services tied only to .NET? What is the competing solution from IBM going to look like?
I've got no answers, but I agree with O'Reilly that things are going to get very interesting over the next few years, and things are never going to be the same.
The current space shuttle is a flying truck. Who gives a crap about that? We need fuckin' Buck Rogers! We need something that kids will go to sleep dreaming about participating in. That will get this nation back to loving science again.
It would also help students get back to learning fundamental engineering concepts, including software geeks, and get rid of so much reliance on tools to do things for us. Any thing that would bring back assembly-language programming into voque would be awesome.
The only reason for the success of the initial space programs, was that they captured public imagination with their cool rockets and can-do attitude. The shuttle is a fuckin' yuppie SUV compared to what we used to do. Stuff that had me in front of my parent's TV for 24 hours at a time when I was a kid.
Now all we have to show for all that money and research is a fat-pig of a shuttle that can be shot down by STYROFOAM!!! ARRRRRRRGGGGGG!!
Fix it!!!
Space is a long way from becoming a routine travel destination, and NASA needs to treat it as such, and stop with the friendly pussy designs, and get back to the business of exploration and pure scientific research. Taking people into space only to be spam-in-a-can for marketing purposes is a waste of our tax dollars. We need to stop treating space as cool until we can manage to put stuff up there without having to cross our fingers at the launch pad.
Put someone like Burt Rutan in charge or stop wasting my fucking taxes on studing how frogs behave in space, you bastards!
You need to check out the Exchange 2003 version.
I dont give a crap about fonts. I give a crap about all the promises of wonderful things coming from OSS that never seem to get here. Fonts is only one example. Would you like a few hundred more?
Are you seriously going to compare FONTS to an Enterprise messaging system in terms of complexity? I mention fonts because it is the other thing that OSS has been promising for a loooooooong time now. If it takes 10 years to get a decent anti-aliased set of fonts, how long are people supposed to wait for your blessed Exchange killer? Come on, dude.
Things are fine, 9 years, and the entire Exchange group is laughing at you. Hate MS all you want, pal. Just stop bitching and beat us if you can. Make something better, and I'll use it too.
Been done.
It's called Outlook Web Access; it's got all of Outlook's features in a web client connecting to Exchange Servers.
Maybe then OSS might be ready to take on Microsoft's ace in the hole? How many projects are out there? How many have gotten fucking anywhere? Here's an idea; why dont we all just go install Netscape 4 again, and beat ourselves in the head until we bleed? Oh yeah, Exchange is dead meat. LOL!
I wish you had put that bullshit at the beginning of your posting, so I would not have had to muddle through the rest of it. If you believe that, then you know NOTHING about Exchange, and have no business responding to me. Go away.
Understand; I'm looking at this from the perpective of CIO's. They like features and integration, and can live with marginal security. Anyone who does not believe that would have to explain MS current marketshare in the Server space.
Will Apache serve up my OWA of Exchange? Fuck no. Will it distribute MS Project files? Dont even try it. No watch as all the geniuses come to defend all the shit that is "coming" and has been so for years now.
OSS has one thing and one thing ONLY going for it; COST. Functionality on a par with Microsoft is NOT going to happen in this decade. You can talk about security all you want, but Windows shops have accepted the negatives in favor of the positives.
People hear can call Windows users stupid until they are blue in the face. That does not replace putting up or shutting up.
Here come those suggesting that the HOV payment plans are racist, sexist and discriminatory, because lower income groups do not have equal ability to pay for the stickers.
Tax cuts will be fought over how they effect one's ability to buy stickers. Liberals will argue that Senior Citizens are choosing between HOV stickers and food. Jesse Jackson will find 20 words that rhyme with HOV. Democrats will say that they need to create Liberal freeways, because all the current freeways have gone right wing.
Yep, that's a fucking great idea.
Enough trolling for mod points, okay? Odds are, you dont know what the fuck you are talking about. CSS used properly is the best thing that ever happened to web sites. It makes sites smaller Idiot, by replacing tables with div tags. The gratuitous plug for /. is so fucking phony you should be banned.
LIFE!!!!
you bastards.
Now, here is the hard part.
Say NOTHING.
No contact, period.
Just leave, dont look back, accept no messages, open no mail, just send it back unopened. If your entire crew does that, you can insure that your former boss is toast. One thing that people do naturally is talk too much. Silence is power.
If you keep quiet, the HR department will be ORDERED to find out what happened. Meanwhile your group picks a single person who is NOT an employee to do all the talking for your side. If you let multiple people talk, they will turn your words against you. It also prevents you from being served with a lawsuit notice.
That person meets with HR off the premises alone, and gives them a single list of complains attributed to the group, without specifying individuals. HR will demand to speak to employees before anything happens. Resist and let them replace you if nessesary. Do NOT allow anyone from your group to speak with them for any reason, no matter how trivial.
The frustration will be directed at your Boss who is still there. Their ability to manage people will be questioned. There could be no other conclusion, due to your extreme position in not speaking with them. Your company will start looking for your boss' replacement while he is looking for yours.
You may never get your jobs back, but you can insure that the pain you cause your company will cause your boss to lose his job too. You need to decide just how far you are willing to take this. If you are just pissed off, you will get no satisfaction. If you are committed, you might be able to inact some sort of revenge on your former boss.
Look around at your group. If you have any pussies in it, forget the above and get back to work; you fucking slacker, you.
The final Battle happens to be showing right now on the Action Network!!! Just started a minute ago.