Granted, these things are mostly routers cell phones and telephone exchanges, but the fact that ordinary yokels cannot see the mountain of Linux devices in the field, doesn't mean that they aren't there.
Linux is successful in environments where the average user has little or no engagement with the OS.
The OS in tucked away in box that manages the office telephone network It has a single job to do that no one but the Geek - who is also tucked away in a box somewhere - understands.
The yokels, Ma and Pa Kettle, as another poster called them, have a remarkably good ear for picking up on what the Geek really thinks of them. That does not translate into a warm reception for what is preeminently the Geek's OS.
Linux was in its infancy in 1995. Fifteen years after the launch of the IBM PC. The PC is an office machine in 1980. It is a viable gaming platform no later than King's Quest in 1984. In 1995 Windows 95 is accepted with wild enthusiasm by users who would never again willingly touch a command line. The BASIC interpreter is gone - and with it the last connections to the micro's hobbyist roots. In 1996 AOL adopts flat-rate pricing and the people go on-line and stay online. In 1997 they discover instant messaging and the mp3.
Linux wasn't there when the PC took its final shape in the mass consumer market.
The OSX and Windows user shares almost nothing in common with the Geek. He has never looked at a PC in quite the same way, he has never used a PC in quite the same way.
It's not because Linux is free, it's because businesses don't put Linux on their desktops.
The home PC and the locked down corporate desktop parted company quite some time back. You can chose any arbitrary date:
1991 Neverwinter Nights 1993 Doom and Quicken for Windows 3 1995 Windows 95 and Amazon.com 1996 America Online adopts flat rate pricing. $19.95 a month. 1997 Internet Explorer 4, AIM and Winamp
I chose these particular examples because they took the home PC in directions the office machine could not go.
If you haven't checked the code yourself, you can never trust it 100%. For most of readers here it will no doubt be obvious, but sadly this is lost on many people who buy software
Not everyone who buys software can read code or understand the hardware which it controls. Not everyone who can do both - or thinks he can - can be trusted to detect every flaw.
Thank you for proving my point. You are talking about a $500 pc, whereas the market is moving towards sub $200.
The history of the web appliance is crash and burn.
There is always something more that makes the full-featured PC the better value.
I have yet to see hard numbers for sales of the gPC at Walmart.
The gPC shipped with a non-functional modem. Walmart has a lot of customers in rural areas and small towns who can afford AOL Essentials at $10/mo but can't get broadband at any price.
The fully assembled Acer dual core Vista Premium desktop with 2 GB of RAM is $500 at Newegg.com Let me know how many people you think build their own laptops.
Granted that US Dollar has fallen around 20% in 2007, just about every international company posting 10-15% growth scored no growth at all.
Microsoft is reporting 20% growth each quarter.
Take a look at the numbers Microsoft Watch posts for fiscal 2007-2008. Numbers so big they are difficult to grasp. Microsoft draws 60% of its revenues from outside the U.S.
Porting a public domain programming language invented at Dartmouth to personal computer platforms might not be buying cool stuff from other companies, but it isn't exactly innovating either.
Dartmouth BASIC was a compiler. 1964. Punch cards and teletype terminals.
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was an interpreter for the late 70's micro with 4K of RAM - and marks the beginning of the end of the mainframe era.
Wasn't that a port of an already existing public domain BASIC?
In 1974, Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote the first microcomputer Basic interpreter on a PDP-8 minicomputer for an Intel 8080 microprocessor emulator.
MITS licensed MBASIC for the Altair in late 1975, and Micro-Soft was born. By the end of 1976, over ten thousand Altair computers were sold with either the original 4K or a newly expanded 8K MBASIC. Micro-Soft's work on the 8K version was spurred by a new player, Commodore Business Machines, and its Personal Electronic Transactor (PET), which debuted in mid-1976 with a licensed version of what was now called MBASIC 2.0. Early in 1978, Tandy Corporation licensed MBASIC 2.0 for its TRS-80 Model 1 Level II and called it Level II BASIC. At the same time, Tandy cross-licensed Level II BASIC to Apple, so the same MBASIC was running on virtually every microcomputer of any significance.ComputerSource
Not a bad showing for an OS whose greatest strength in 2007 was in the high end of the OEM consumer market, where the Vista Premium and Ultimate PC competes directly against the Mac system bundle.
the rise of the low end markets where they simply can't compete
Microsoft's $3 "Student Innovation Suite" bundles Learning Essentials for MS Office, Microsoft Math, Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail, and XP Starter Edition.
The Vista Starter Edition will arrive somewhere down the road.
At first glance, the pricing is shockingly low considering the broader value of the software. For example, in the United States, Office Home and Student 2007 retails for about $150. But further examination reveals pricing not so out of line with what college students might see in the United States. It's fairly typical for universities to provide students with Microsoft software for as little as $5 or $10 a copy under a Microsoft Campus License. It's a bit out-of-box thinking. It is very clever," said Clive Longbottom, service director of Business Process Analysis for Quocirca. "We wouldn't see millions of licenses sold through educational institutions in established markets. You will see thousands."
But in markets like China, "you will see millions."
If it wasn't for getting lucky with DOS (which they bought from someone else) and IBM they would not be existing right now.
It amazes me that the geek still fantasies about MS-DOS.
Microsoft was incorporated in 1975 and by 1980 was dominant in languages for the microcomputer. Microsoft was moving up and moving fast.
There would be an MBASIC for the IBM PC and much, much more to come.
Gates promised to deliver a cheap, serviceable, OS in time for the projected launch of the IBM PC, an OS that would sell for about 1/6 the price of CP/M 86.
That was all IBM needed to know, that was all IBM wanted to know.
But it was Bill Gates who had the imagination to see the enormous potential for growth and profit in the MS-DOS PC that was almost - but not in its beginning - an IBM PC-clone.
There seems to be nothing that can pull the Geek out of denial.
Microsoft posted breathtaking results in its first and second quarters. 15-20% growth in Windows. In Office. In servers. In home entertainment.
That kind of growth isn't fueled by massive "upgrades" to Win XP.
67 cents of every new retail dollar spent on PC software goes to Microsoft Office.
Microsoft gambled on "the ribbon" and won.
For the quarter, Microsoft sales increased 30 percent in emerging markets, 20 percent in established markets like Europe and 15 percent in the United States. Microsoft has become very well insulated from a recession in the states.
Online services are still posting a loss, but ad revenues are up damn near 40% from fiscal 2007 to $623 million.
There are 427 million Windows Live IDs.
Which suggests that estimates of one billion Windows users world-wide are on the money.
Microsoft has been paying dividends, buying back stock. It holds $20 billion in liquid reserves and doesn't owe a dime to anyone.
If Lessig really wants in to congress, he should run for local office first
"All politics are local." Silicon Valley isn't about tech, it's about people. Its just possible the voters in his district are more concerned about health insurance than copyright reform.
This is taking slashvertisments to the preschool tantrum level.
You are being far too charitable.
The Slashdot "editor" - and I use the word loosely - leads with any story slamming Microsoft and Vista, no matter how transparently flawed or fraudulent on its face.
The crapflood has been building ever since Microsoft posted its first and second quarterly returns.
With Vista positioned to overtake OSX and Linux in a month or two. Not a bad showing for an OS whose greatest strength has been in the Premium and Ultimate OEM consumer install.
Full support for multiple DRM technologies is built into everything!
Translation:
The family subscribes to satellite radio and TV, plays console games on their big screen TV, and rents Blu-Ray videos from Netflix. Broadband Internet is an important part of the mix, but the PC still runs some flavor of Windows or OSX.
Re:Entitlement Complex in Open Source Software
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· Score: 1
Then hire (and more importantly pay) a mechanic to fix it.
People are buying solutions to problems the "community" ignores.
The thing is, you'll find most likely them at the shop where the mechanics are hired by Microsoft or Apple.
The fact that at only few years ago you could not include Linux (and even MacOS) in this list actually serves as an answer to your question.
No it doesn't.
The Mac has been around since 1984. When Boot Camp becomes a feature you are no longer competing head-on against Windows - no matter how cute and clever your adds.
Linux has a 0.8% percent of the desktop, according to Intel. Both are viable platforms for the developer. But BeOS has been out of the picture for a very long time.
How many politicians are going to go after games continually when they gain the same status as movies in the public eye?
It seems worth asking again a question I have asked before:
How many developers whose names do not begin with the letter "R" have been unable to launch an "M" rated title without a PR blow-back as fierce as "Manhunt 2?"
_____
This year's "Golden Tomato" Award for best-reviewed film went to "Ratatouille."
Ratatouille won a Grammy for best musical score and an Oscar nomination for best screen play.
It will likely win the Animated Feature Oscar, which is as close as the Academy gets these days to honoring the traditional Hollywood production. The films the audiences line up to watch.
If you want to win over an adult audience for your video game, then write and produce a game for adults and not the adolescent grossing out over a pirated download of "Saw."
The central goal of the Haiku project is to create an operating system that is ideally suited for use on the desktop
To the user, the desktop ideal is an OS that supports the applications he wants and needs. I am not sure where a resurrected BeOS fits in a universe dominated by Windows, OSX and Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is successful in environments where the average user has little or no engagement with the OS.
The OS in tucked away in box that manages the office telephone network It has a single job to do that no one but the Geek - who is also tucked away in a box somewhere - understands.
The yokels, Ma and Pa Kettle, as another poster called them, have a remarkably good ear for picking up on what the Geek really thinks of them. That does not translate into a warm reception for what is preeminently the Geek's OS.
Operating System Market Share for January, 2008
Fifteen years after the launch of the IBM PC.
The PC is an office machine in 1980. It is a viable gaming platform no later than King's Quest in 1984.
In 1995 Windows 95 is accepted with wild enthusiasm by users who would never again willingly touch a command line. The BASIC interpreter is gone - and with it the last connections to the micro's hobbyist roots.
In 1996 AOL adopts flat-rate pricing and the people go on-line and stay online. In 1997 they discover instant messaging and the mp3.
Linux wasn't there when the PC took its final shape in the mass consumer market.
The OSX and Windows user shares almost nothing in common with the Geek. He has never looked at a PC in quite the same way, he has never used a PC in quite the same way.
The home PC and the locked down corporate desktop parted company quite some time back. You can chose any arbitrary date:
1991 Neverwinter Nights
1993 Doom and Quicken for Windows 3
1995 Windows 95 and Amazon.com
1996 America Online adopts flat rate pricing. $19.95 a month.
1997 Internet Explorer 4, AIM and Winamp
I chose these particular examples because they took the home PC in directions the office machine could not go.
But will you win on appeal?
Not everyone who buys software can read code or understand the hardware which it controls. Not everyone who can do both - or thinks he can - can be trusted to detect every flaw.
The history of the web appliance is crash and burn.
There is always something more that makes the full-featured PC the better value.
I have yet to see hard numbers for sales of the gPC at Walmart.
The gPC shipped with a non-functional modem. Walmart has a lot of customers in rural areas and small towns who can afford AOL Essentials at $10/mo but can't get broadband at any price.
BTW the Everex Vista Basic Desktop is $278.
That is the Vista Premium System Builder price from Newegg.com. Microsoft Windows Vista 32-Bit Home Premium for System Builders Single Pack DVD - OEM No bundled hardware.
The fully assembled Acer dual core Vista Premium desktop with 2 GB of RAM is $500 at Newegg.com Let me know how many people you think build their own laptops.
Microsoft is reporting 20% growth each quarter.
Take a look at the numbers Microsoft Watch posts for fiscal 2007-2008. Numbers so big they are difficult to grasp. Microsoft draws 60% of its revenues from outside the U.S.
Dartmouth BASIC was a compiler. 1964. Punch cards and teletype terminals.
Microsoft's Altair BASIC was an interpreter for the late 70's micro with 4K of RAM - and marks the beginning of the end of the mainframe era.
In 1974, Paul Allen and Bill Gates wrote the first microcomputer Basic interpreter on a PDP-8 minicomputer for an Intel 8080 microprocessor emulator.
MITS licensed MBASIC for the Altair in late 1975, and Micro-Soft was born. By the end of 1976, over ten thousand Altair computers were sold with either the original 4K or a newly expanded 8K MBASIC. Micro-Soft's work on the 8K version was spurred by a new player, Commodore Business Machines, and its Personal Electronic Transactor (PET), which debuted in mid-1976 with a licensed version of what was now called MBASIC 2.0. Early in 1978, Tandy Corporation licensed MBASIC 2.0 for its TRS-80 Model 1 Level II and called it Level II BASIC. At the same time, Tandy cross-licensed Level II BASIC to Apple, so the same MBASIC was running on virtually every microcomputer of any significance. ComputerSource
It was the Intel exec that gave Linux 0.8% of the desktop.
In the January W3 Schools OS Platfrorm Stats Vista is poised to overtake OSX and Linux combined in a month or two.
Not a bad showing for an OS whose greatest strength in 2007 was in the high end of the OEM consumer market, where the Vista Premium and Ultimate PC competes directly against the Mac system bundle.
the rise of the low end markets where they simply can't compete
Microsoft's $3 "Student Innovation Suite" bundles Learning Essentials for MS Office, Microsoft Math, Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live Mail, and XP Starter Edition.
The Vista Starter Edition will arrive somewhere down the road.
At first glance, the pricing is shockingly low considering the broader value of the software. For example, in the United States, Office Home and Student 2007 retails for about $150. But further examination reveals pricing not so out of line with what college students might see in the United States. It's fairly typical for universities to provide students with Microsoft software for as little as $5 or $10 a copy under a Microsoft Campus License. It's a bit out-of-box thinking. It is very clever," said Clive Longbottom, service director of Business Process Analysis for Quocirca. "We wouldn't see millions of licenses sold through educational institutions in established markets. You will see thousands."
But in markets like China, "you will see millions."
What is Microsoft's Unlimited Potential?
It amazes me that the geek still fantasies about MS-DOS.
Microsoft was incorporated in 1975 and by 1980 was dominant in languages for the microcomputer. Microsoft was moving up and moving fast.
There would be an MBASIC for the IBM PC and much, much more to come.
Gates promised to deliver a cheap, serviceable, OS in time for the projected launch of the IBM PC, an OS that would sell for about 1/6 the price of CP/M 86.
That was all IBM needed to know, that was all IBM wanted to know.
But it was Bill Gates who had the imagination to see the enormous potential for growth and profit in the MS-DOS PC that was almost - but not in its beginning - an IBM PC-clone.
Perhaps you can't forgive the pun. But...
There seems to be nothing that can pull the Geek out of denial.
Microsoft posted breathtaking results in its first and second quarters. 15-20% growth in Windows. In Office. In servers. In home entertainment.
That kind of growth isn't fueled by massive "upgrades" to Win XP.
67 cents of every new retail dollar spent on PC software goes to Microsoft Office.
Microsoft gambled on "the ribbon" and won.
For the quarter, Microsoft sales increased 30 percent in emerging markets, 20 percent in established markets like Europe and 15 percent in the United States. Microsoft has become very well insulated from a recession in the states.
Online services are still posting a loss, but ad revenues are up damn near 40% from fiscal 2007 to $623 million.
There are 427 million Windows Live IDs.
Which suggests that estimates of one billion Windows users world-wide are on the money.
Microsoft has been paying dividends, buying back stock. It holds $20 billion in liquid reserves and doesn't owe a dime to anyone.
Microsoft Q2 2008 By The Numbers
China allows only twenty foreign films theatrical release each year.
There are periodic "blackouts" to protect the domestic product. China bans Hollywood movies to protect its own film industry Protection comes at a cost.
The domestic product competes against the pirated Hollywood DVD with a street price of $1.
It is the export product that makes money for the Chinese studio - meaning the Chinese studio has to "go Hollywood" to survive.
Have you ever wondered what non Western societies make of flicks like "Saw" and "Hostel?"
That's the Yahoo! board speaking. Not the Yahoo! shareholders who are quietly trying to cut a deal with Microsoft.
"All politics are local." Silicon Valley isn't about tech, it's about people. Its just possible the voters in his district are more concerned about health insurance than copyright reform.
You are being far too charitable.
The Slashdot "editor" - and I use the word loosely - leads with any story slamming Microsoft and Vista, no matter how transparently flawed or fraudulent on its face.
The crapflood has been building ever since Microsoft posted its first and second quarterly returns.
____
The W3Schools OS Platform Stats are out for January.
With Vista positioned to overtake OSX and Linux in a month or two. Not a bad showing for an OS whose greatest strength has been in the Premium and Ultimate OEM consumer install.
When the septic tank backflows into your tub, do you pump out the sludge yourself or do you hire someone to do it for you?
If no one wants the job, what then?
Translation:
The family subscribes to satellite radio and TV, plays console games on their big screen TV, and rents Blu-Ray videos from Netflix. Broadband Internet is an important part of the mix, but the PC still runs some flavor of Windows or OSX.
People are buying solutions to problems the "community" ignores.
The thing is, you'll find most likely them at the shop where the mechanics are hired by Microsoft or Apple.
No it doesn't.
The Mac has been around since 1984. When Boot Camp becomes a feature you are no longer competing head-on against Windows - no matter how cute and clever your adds.
Linux has a 0.8% percent of the desktop, according to Intel. Both are viable platforms for the developer. But BeOS has been out of the picture for a very long time.
What makes you think Gen X won't change as it ages?
Your great-grandfather held as tight a grip on the keys to his Ford V-8 as your dad did to his '76 Honda Civic.
It seems worth asking again a question I have asked before:
How many developers whose names do not begin with the letter "R" have been unable to launch an "M" rated title without a PR blow-back as fierce as "Manhunt 2?"
_____
This year's "Golden Tomato" Award for best-reviewed film went to "Ratatouille."
Ratatouille won a Grammy for best musical score and an Oscar nomination for best screen play.
It will likely win the Animated Feature Oscar, which is as close as the Academy gets these days to honoring the traditional Hollywood production. The films the audiences line up to watch.
If you want to win over an adult audience for your video game, then write and produce a game for adults and not the adolescent grossing out over a pirated download of "Saw."
To the user, the desktop ideal is an OS that supports the applications he wants and needs. I am not sure where a resurrected BeOS fits in a universe dominated by Windows, OSX and Linux.