You can make almost as many mistakes as you can afford. And Microsoft is a big honkin' monopoly. That Windows cash cow can fund ten thousand Bobs per year if it needs to.
I've worked in that kind of environment too; but it's (mostly) limited to companies large enough to have a large IT staff. (IBM, for instance, would roll enough of their own network infrastructure that the "drag-along" issues of Windows were mostly avoided, so you could run almost anything you wanted at your desk).
However, I've been assured by a gentleman in this thread that most people work in small companies (an assertion with which I agree); and at a small company, if the CEO's desktop system and a programmer's desktop system fight for the one IT guy's attention, which one do you think is going to win?
The point is that maintaining, with one guy, a network which simultaneously supports sales people; secretaries; executives; and programmers - basically mandates Windows. Not because the developers need Windows; but because the others must have it; and because in order for one guy to manage everything; the rest of us get dragged along (if I can't read the CFO's spreadsheet; I'm in big trouble. if I make the IT guy lose a day because of my linux-related network issue; I'm in big trouble).
By the way, most of this can be boiled down to problems with Windows not playing well with others; which, again, is a hallmark of... monopoly.
I'd assert that if the percentage of people that must run Windows for WHATEVER reason (IS; real hardware issues; app X which must be run; whatever) is large enough, that it is foolhardy to then claim that Microsoft is "not a monopoly"; and that was the only point being made.
That percentage of people is very very large; and therefore Microsoft does have a monopoly.
Why? Because your developers are 100% Windows users and can't live without it? How does that prove anything?
According to you, your company represents every single company in the world and no other possibility exists. How is that possible?
I assert that if a company where people would want to use linux (and our end-product is in java) still can't make it happen; that it is unlikely that MOST companies are able to support linux at their developers desk. Not all. But to claim that most can make it happen from a practical perspective seems to me, with experience at many different companies, to be foolish.
Note: Possible does not equal practical. Think about that before you post again.
In order for there to be enough of a viable alternative to Windows for the statement "Microsoft is not a monopoly" to be true in any useful sense, almost every company in software development would have to easily and practically support internal users on the alternative(s).
Because for every one of us developers, there are a thousand people whose job requires Microsoft Office. If even development shops only occasionally support linux at the desk, it is foolish to claim anything other than monopoly status for MS.
In other words, if the alternatives are not good enough for most developers to use at their job; there's no way the secretaries of the world could do it.
In our case, by the way, it's a combination of office tools and support requirements by our internal IT guy, who, by the way, loves linux as much as anybody here. But there's only one of him where there should be two or three; and a 100% Windows shop is easier than a mixed shop for an already overworked IT staffperson.
Microsoft has many advantages, but far from a lock on the future. The days of their operating system monopoly are over. They've been saying this, and working furiously to enter new markets, but no one but them seems to realize that this isn't just legal posturing but an accurate representation of the new world we're all facing.
What a load of crap. Try walking into any big company and suggesting that you should be able to run linux on your desk.
I work at a company which is extraordinarily pro-linux for a commercial enterprise; and yet all of our developers (100%) run Windows at their desk; because it's fundamentally impossible (STILL) to run a business any other way. Not even the most linux-loving among us can practically use it for his desktop O/S.
We use linux on the servers every chance we get; but there is No Reasonable Alternative To Windows On The Desktop.
Look outside the echo chamber, and Microsoft is still very much a monopoly.
Fifth, the only "solution" to the "problem" of job loss to other countries / technologies is to stay on top of the game: educate yourself continuously, never stop until you die. This keeps you happy, healthy, and employed. Another helpful hint is to be ultra flexible. In your job, your life, your thinking, your location. Be ready for change, and stay ahead...through education and training. Do whatever it takes to be the best, absolutely the best, at what you do. But, don't just focus on that skill or that area. Educate and adapt. Innovate. Treat yourself like a freakin' miniture company. Write articles, network, build value, sell yourself, remain as mobile as possible, never settle for what you have. Be like David Bowie [morevalue.com] and think of yourself like a product (Madonna, and other smart entertainers do this also). Are you getting the drift here?
Yeah; I get the drift - you're one of those Einstiens who thinks that 250 million Americans can treat themselves as self-promoted companies, and we'll all be better off for it.
There's perhaps 1% of OUR industry that can do that; and other industries have even smaller percentages of self-promoters. The whole concept is ludicrous on its face; this is not a solution for the masses, even in IT.
Duh. In his comment he obviously meant that Sony was the good cop. As in the original cop metaphor, both Sony and RIAA are really just two faces of the same organization.
1. Painted the CFO's new office (built while we were working in our cubicles) during work hours; causing most of us to escape to the outdoors to avoid brain damage from the fumes
2. Allowed the office management at the new building to BANG ON THE DAMN ROOF ALL YESTERDAY AND EVEN WORSE SO FAR TODAY
My compass is so off right now that I'd be thrilled with mere cell-phone rings. Yoga? Is there a way I can use that to turn off my senses?
You are a thoroughly sad little pedant. Again: MY issue was that the ballpark should not be squeamish because there was no way the ballpark could ethically claim to have "sold the rights" to said service to Comcast to begin with. Thus, can't get squeamish about somebody else correctly claiming to have provided said service.
SO, YOU SEE, CLETUS: I READ THE F*CKING ARTICLE; AND MADE A POINT WHICH WAS NOT, DESPITE YOUR BLEATINGS, MADE MOOT BY THE FACT THAT COMCAST DIDN'T CARE.
I've seen you making the same ill-educated poorly-mannered attacks on numerous posters in this thread. Certainly many of those people, like me, were under no mistaken impression about this article, despite your lunatic rantings to the contrary.
Listen, you complete waste of blood and hair: I'm arguing that the implied right to sell advertising endorsement of radio waves was silly on its face; whether or not the person who "donated" the radio waves for advertising sake thought so.
RTFA, yourself; in other words, stop reading between the lines; you obnoxious prat.
Dear asshat: I was referring to the guys from the baseball park; who were trying to "sell" something they didn't "own". Even if it was just selling the advertising rights for such.
It's the equivalent of "The sunshine hitting your skin is brought to you by AT&T".
1. The interest of the country is not the interest of the corporation, and vice-versa. No matter how much libertarian kool-aid you have drunk; the race to the bottom does not help our national interest. (I remember tweaking my IBM friends about the time of the last India-Pakistan brouhaha; wondering if their code was going to be radioactive).
2. Western Europe Might Have Been Right All Along.
You got close to the right analogy here. To finish it off, one should mention that the way to set speed limits for the best possible public safety is also the way which results in the fewest lawbreakers - the 85th percentile rule. This bridges the gap between the "something wrong with the lawbreakers" and the "something wrong with the law" positions - when MOST people disobey a law, your first assumption should be that there's something wrong with the law; especially since we live in a country where the consent of the governed is supposedly crucial.
No, not too much trouble. In fact, the actual practice in real companies, like the ones I've worked for, is to bring in the H1B people at a different level than the people they replaced; in other words, fire a senior guy; bring in a "junior" H1-B guy after posting the job with requirements that no truly junior guy could ever meet.
Companies hiring H1Bs are required by law to pay the going market rate, as determined by the Dept of Labor. Companies that are found not to comply can and do lose their 'right' to use H1Bs.
If you believe this is the way it works in the real computer industry, I have a bridge in Bombay to sell you.
What a load of crap. Yes, sponsorship costs dollars. A few thousand, in fact. When you can get an Indian to perform a 70K job for 35K, though, that extra few thousand for sponsorship is meaningless.
The reason not everybody uses it is that you have to have a fairly large HR department in order to handle the paperwork; or outsource to somebody who does.
The boom times may be over, but they're more 'over' for the folks that entered technology for the money. The kids that switched majors or took a couple courses at a tech school in order to get a lucrative programming job are in trouble. But the folks that can actually think for themselves & communicate ideas effectively are not going to have as much trouble staying employed.
I have a CS degree and 10 years of experience; as do most of my peers. This downturn, in addition to the structural interference with the market by the government (H1B) is definitely having a non-trivial impact on the job market; people are unemployed longer than they would be and they are getting less money when employed.
The snarky kids at slashdot are in for a rude awakening one of these days. Believe me; I know a lot of ex-"only bad programmers can't find work" believers.
The H1B program is an instance of government interference in the market - at the behest of big business, who did not like the idea that labor (programmers) were making more money than managers in many instances.
The EU is a good example - they simply don't allow guest workers in anywhere near the scale that H1B allowed. And just try to immigrate to Germany and see how far you get.
from the Slashdot Libertarian Brigade miss the point:
This isn't happening because our markets are free and it's what just happens naturally.
It's happening because of the interactions between national economies; which most certainly are NOT subject to the normal rules of capitalism.
H1B was big companies trying to use the government to change the law of supply and demand for labor. The intercompany transfer visas were more of the same.
Offshoring, on the other hand, is a different case; but still not "normal capitalism". Companies overseas are simply not treated the same way as companies in the local nation (whichever one you're in). They work under different labor laws; different environmental laws; they enjoy or suffer different taxation burdens. This competition is not fair and not particularly helpful in the long-run for EITHER country in the equation. The first-world country loses money and jobs; the third-world country gains better-paying but still sweatshop employment but never develops a middle-class and the concomittent protections against the unchecked abuses of the free market.
96% of general population also believes artists should be paid and that downloadable music should be cheaper. World also continues to rotate on axis, although this is considered less interesting.
The point was that Microsoft did not earn the enmity of techies for "being geared towards the common man", because both the Mac and OS/2 did the same thing. They earned their enmity the old-fashioned way: by being evil.
Slashdot Mirror
You can make almost as many mistakes as you can afford. And Microsoft is a big honkin' monopoly. That Windows cash cow can fund ten thousand Bobs per year if it needs to.
However, I've been assured by a gentleman in this thread that most people work in small companies (an assertion with which I agree); and at a small company, if the CEO's desktop system and a programmer's desktop system fight for the one IT guy's attention, which one do you think is going to win?
Java. Try again; you've just made an ass out of you and me.
The point is that maintaining, with one guy, a network which simultaneously supports sales people; secretaries; executives; and programmers - basically mandates Windows. Not because the developers need Windows; but because the others must have it; and because in order for one guy to manage everything; the rest of us get dragged along (if I can't read the CFO's spreadsheet; I'm in big trouble. if I make the IT guy lose a day because of my linux-related network issue; I'm in big trouble).
By the way, most of this can be boiled down to problems with Windows not playing well with others; which, again, is a hallmark of... monopoly.
That percentage of people is very very large; and therefore Microsoft does have a monopoly.
I assert that if a company where people would want to use linux (and our end-product is in java) still can't make it happen; that it is unlikely that MOST companies are able to support linux at their developers desk. Not all. But to claim that most can make it happen from a practical perspective seems to me, with experience at many different companies, to be foolish.
Note: Possible does not equal practical. Think about that before you post again.
Because for every one of us developers, there are a thousand people whose job requires Microsoft Office. If even development shops only occasionally support linux at the desk, it is foolish to claim anything other than monopoly status for MS.
In other words, if the alternatives are not good enough for most developers to use at their job; there's no way the secretaries of the world could do it.
In our case, by the way, it's a combination of office tools and support requirements by our internal IT guy, who, by the way, loves linux as much as anybody here. But there's only one of him where there should be two or three; and a 100% Windows shop is easier than a mixed shop for an already overworked IT staffperson.
I work at a company which is extraordinarily pro-linux for a commercial enterprise; and yet all of our developers (100%) run Windows at their desk; because it's fundamentally impossible (STILL) to run a business any other way. Not even the most linux-loving among us can practically use it for his desktop O/S.
We use linux on the servers every chance we get; but there is No Reasonable Alternative To Windows On The Desktop.
Look outside the echo chamber, and Microsoft is still very much a monopoly.
Yeah; I get the drift - you're one of those Einstiens who thinks that 250 million Americans can treat themselves as self-promoted companies, and we'll all be better off for it.
There's perhaps 1% of OUR industry that can do that; and other industries have even smaller percentages of self-promoters. The whole concept is ludicrous on its face; this is not a solution for the masses, even in IT.
Duh. In his comment he obviously meant that Sony was the good cop. As in the original cop metaphor, both Sony and RIAA are really just two faces of the same organization.
1. Painted the CFO's new office (built while we were working in our cubicles) during work hours; causing most of us to escape to the outdoors to avoid brain damage from the fumes
2. Allowed the office management at the new building to BANG ON THE DAMN ROOF ALL YESTERDAY AND EVEN WORSE SO FAR TODAY
My compass is so off right now that I'd be thrilled with mere cell-phone rings. Yoga? Is there a way I can use that to turn off my senses?
SO, YOU SEE, CLETUS: I READ THE F*CKING ARTICLE; AND MADE A POINT WHICH WAS NOT, DESPITE YOUR BLEATINGS, MADE MOOT BY THE FACT THAT COMCAST DIDN'T CARE.
I've seen you making the same ill-educated poorly-mannered attacks on numerous posters in this thread. Certainly many of those people, like me, were under no mistaken impression about this article, despite your lunatic rantings to the contrary.
Grow up, wanker.
RTFA, yourself; in other words, stop reading between the lines; you obnoxious prat.
It's the equivalent of "The sunshine hitting your skin is brought to you by AT&T".
Better yet; don't sell anything but baseball and snacks; you wankers.
1. The interest of the country is not the interest of the corporation, and vice-versa. No matter how much libertarian kool-aid you have drunk; the race to the bottom does not help our national interest. (I remember tweaking my IBM friends about the time of the last India-Pakistan brouhaha; wondering if their code was going to be radioactive). 2. Western Europe Might Have Been Right All Along.
You got close to the right analogy here. To finish it off, one should mention that the way to set speed limits for the best possible public safety is also the way which results in the fewest lawbreakers - the 85th percentile rule. This bridges the gap between the "something wrong with the lawbreakers" and the "something wrong with the law" positions - when MOST people disobey a law, your first assumption should be that there's something wrong with the law; especially since we live in a country where the consent of the governed is supposedly crucial.
No, not too much trouble. In fact, the actual practice in real companies, like the ones I've worked for, is to bring in the H1B people at a different level than the people they replaced; in other words, fire a senior guy; bring in a "junior" H1-B guy after posting the job with requirements that no truly junior guy could ever meet.
If you believe this is the way it works in the real computer industry, I have a bridge in Bombay to sell you.
The reason not everybody uses it is that you have to have a fairly large HR department in order to handle the paperwork; or outsource to somebody who does.
The snarky kids at slashdot are in for a rude awakening one of these days. Believe me; I know a lot of ex-"only bad programmers can't find work" believers.
The EU is a good example - they simply don't allow guest workers in anywhere near the scale that H1B allowed. And just try to immigrate to Germany and see how far you get.
This isn't happening because our markets are free and it's what just happens naturally.
It's happening because of the interactions between national economies; which most certainly are NOT subject to the normal rules of capitalism.
H1B was big companies trying to use the government to change the law of supply and demand for labor. The intercompany transfer visas were more of the same.
Offshoring, on the other hand, is a different case; but still not "normal capitalism". Companies overseas are simply not treated the same way as companies in the local nation (whichever one you're in). They work under different labor laws; different environmental laws; they enjoy or suffer different taxation burdens. This competition is not fair and not particularly helpful in the long-run for EITHER country in the equation. The first-world country loses money and jobs; the third-world country gains better-paying but still sweatshop employment but never develops a middle-class and the concomittent protections against the unchecked abuses of the free market.
96% of general population also believes artists should be paid and that downloadable music should be cheaper. World also continues to rotate on axis, although this is considered less interesting.
The point was that Microsoft did not earn the enmity of techies for "being geared towards the common man", because both the Mac and OS/2 did the same thing. They earned their enmity the old-fashioned way: by being evil.