The latest stats that I read (which was for June) was that in terms of marketshare, Vista is at around 14.5% (down from almost 20% when Win7 was released) and right now Win7 is at around 13.5%. So if you factor in the percentage of 64-bit systems all combined, it puts 64-bit Windows platforms at roughly 8.25% give or take. These are all rough numbers, and there's varying estimates out there (some higher, some lower in terms of overall marketshare) but I think it's safe to say that 64-bit Windows systems are around 10% overall.
Windows XP usage has dropped as well since Win7 was released (by about 7%, it's now at about 62% of systems overall). So for the most part, Win7 has cannibalized both Vista and XP installations fairly equally, but the effect has been much more profound for Vista because there were far fewer systems out there running it. I would exepct that by the end of the year, Win7 will clearly surpass Vista. Long term, I'm looking for when XP drops below 50% marketshare; when that happens, I think that'll be the indicator that the transition is accelerating.
It's not that 64-bit Office is "broken", it's that most software vendors haven't gotten around to providing 64-bit versions of their ActiveX/COM components. So if your business depends on one (i.e.: an add-in for Word, Outlook, etc. or for VBA scripting) then you have to stick with the 32-bit version. A 64-bit process cannot load and execute 32-bit code in its address space. It's possible for 64-bit code to use a 32-bit out-of-process COM server, but most of them aren't written that way (the vast majority are written as in-process servers).
As of right now, yes, Windows XP SP3 reaches end-of-life in 2014. Of course, that doesn't mean that companies will automagically stop using it on that date, but I'm sure companies are using that as part of their migration plans.
If you think about it, it took about a decade to complete the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit, if you consider the release of Windows NT in 1993 as the starting point for the platform. Windows 95 is when it started becoming mainstream, and for a long time after that you continued to have businesses use 16-bit legacy applications. With the release of Windows 7, I think we're at the "Windows 95" point of that transition curve for 64-bit.
One other thing to keep in mind is that Y2K provided a reason for businesses to upgrade their hardware and software at once; so you saw a large shift in the late 90s as they prepared for the transition (or the apocalypse, depending on who you listened to). That was a significant driver towards phasing out their legacy 16-bit applications; there really is no corresponding justification for businesses to dump working 32-bit desktop applications in favor of 64-bit. For the most part, Suzy the Secretary and Bob the Shipping Clerk aren't going to get their work done any faster or better on a 64-bit system. And when there's no concrete, tangible benefit to their bottom line, companies aren't very interested in making technology investments "just because they can" (particularly in this economy).
Businesses don't tend to have that short of an upgrade cycle when it comes to operating systems. They typically prefer to stay on the trailing-edge of technology as long as possible -- "if ain't broke, don't fix it" is the mantra of most IT departments, particularly in larger companies. If you look at a lot of the "droneware" business desktops out there today, they're sold with 2-4GB RAM and downgrade rights to XP 32-bit. So while the system may be "sold" with a Win 7 64-bit license, that doesn't mean it's ultimately how it's being used.
The reality is though that 10% of Windows systems are 64-bit (there's actually still more systems running Vista than Windows 7 out there, although the gap is shrinking). The vast majority of Windows desktops are still running the 32-bit version of Windows XP, and that's not going to change until businesses decide they have a compelling reason to upgrade.
I haven't really been following this of late, but is all that SCO has, or do they have anything that actually amounts to real evidence of copying (i.e.: two source code files that are the same aside from non-code elements like comments, whitespace, etc.)? The example shown isn't even a reach, it's just ridiculous.
What a surprise that video games would be considered a prime suspect (no doubt the Internet as well). As soon as I saw the date 1990 mentioned, I had a sneaking suspicion where some people would end up taking this. If there really has been a decline in creativity here, I think we need to look no further than an education system that focuses on rote memorization and the kind of linear thinking required to meet standardized testing requirements. We treat our children as interchangeable cogs in a one-size-fits-all, 19th century educational system. And then we're shocked, shocked I tell you, that they're not as good at thinking outside of the box we've stuffed them into.
The difference is that Free Software can still be commercial software.
Not really in any kind of a practical sense for small ISVs. When people are given the option of paying (obstensibly for support), the vast majority of them choose not to. They'll happily use whatever you've written and pay you not a nickle for it. If the last 10+ years have shown anything, it's that people really don't make the distinction between "free, as in freedom" and "free, as in beer". To the vast majority, free is free. And depending on the charity of strangers to eat and pay your bills is not a business model.
What it would do is shift everything to a service model, moving software off the desktop. Some aspects of the business are already going that way of course, but I'm just not sure it's a good thing for independent developers.
However, you need to keep in mind that those "huge profits" are paying off the costs of development. There's an old joke that in the software business, the first copy costs $1 million, and every copy after that costs $1.50. When you consider profits, you have to factor in cost. Of course, that's obstensibly why the GPL exists: without it, you'd have companies "borrowing" code, significantly reducing the cost of development but contributing nothing back.
I agree that the ultimate goal of groups like the FSF in eliminating commercial software is targetted against one particular business model. However, I personally think that it's wrong-headed. There is a place for both commerically developed and supported software, and a place for open-source, free (as in beer, and freedom) software. If you remove the "profit motive" from software development entirely, the overall quality of software will eventually go down, and there will be less innovation. Certainly people will continue write software because they enjoy it, but one has to prioritize one's ability to eat. If writing software doesn't allow you to meet your financial needs, then it's effectively downgraded from being a profession to being a hobby. I don't think that's a good road to travel down, for programmers or for end users.
You know what many kids that are asking for money in the streets do over here? They go to a cyber-café (there are over 5000 cyber-cafés in 3.000.000 inhabitant Uruguay).
Yeah, there's a country that has its priorities squared away.:/
You say, Mr. Dvorak, "with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year" but that same $100 doesn't cover educating ONE child for ONE year. You want to fill their stomachs, but starve their brains?
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yes, the ability to eat fresh food and drink clean water is more important than "filling their minds" with knowledge.
The problem is that the folks here, computer nerds one and all it's safe to imagine, have a fundamental disconnect with the reality of the day to day life of a people who exist primarily at a subsistance level. Even those who live in countries that are developing rapidly, most of them have staggering poverty, disease, starvation, you name it. India would be a good example of this, where the dividing line between the "haves" and the "have nots" is stark, much more so than in countries like the United States or Britain.
And, frankly, the idea raised by another poster that this is being critcized because of its ties to open source is laughable. Rich or poor, most of the people on this planet do not give a damn about open source, closed source or anything in between. The vast majority of those who use computers daily for their work only care if it turns on and runs the applications that they need to do their job. I can guarantee you it's absolutely irrelevant to someone who has to walk half a mile just to collect potable drinking water.
Talk about a strawman argument. Here, let me play too...
A) What if you're offered to live free (as in beer) in a country where you're promised a monthly stipend of $50,000, have unlimited access to execellent food, drink and the computer system of your dreams -- along with a stunningly gorgeous sex partner every evening on demand, as frequently as you desire. The only restriction is that you cannot speak out against the government.
B) Or, you can live in a rat-infested ghetto, with limited access to food, no clean drinking water, no electricity and all of your neighbors are either thugs or crackwhores. However, you're free to get up on your soapbox and proclaim how horrible the government is, and twice on Sundays.
Myself, being a firm believer in Maslow's "heirarchy of needs", would say that the vast majority of of folks would pick option (A). You probably would too, unless you're completely stark raving mad, or an idiot.
How come the Department of Justice, supposedly "closely monitoring" Microsoft's monopoly abuse, isn't stopping this?
Oh good grief. Any moderately competent programmer can do exactly what Microsoft is doing with a few extra lines of code.
People getting worked up about this reminds of those folks who demanded that the government immediately do something about the "dangerous chemical" dihydrogen oxide that's "found in our drinking water".
Before ranting for government intervention, it's always helpful to know what you're actually talking about.
It's trivial to directly perform a DNS query. Any third-party application (including malware) can do exactly the same thing Microsoft is doing, there's no "secret sauce" here that's only available to the coders in Redmond.
Good grief folks, the sky isn't falling here. Just read http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/workshop/a uthor/dhtml/overview/activating_activex.asp and the changes that need to be made are trivial. Simply move the code with the OBJECT tags to an external script, make a few minor changes and reference that script. They show you a few different ways you can do it, and none of it requires a degree in quantum physics.
The real issue is that the patent is stupid, and I had to laugh when I read an interview with Michael Doyle (the founder of Eolas) who kept referring to "we" and "us" -- as far as I know, Eolas has one employee, him. He's looking for a half-billion dollar plus payday for technology that the patent office should have ruled as obvious and there having being prior art. And his message to the world is "I don't give a damn if this screws up websites, Microsoft should just firehose me with buckets of cash and everyone else out there should be encouraging them to do that."
Frankly, I applaud Microsoft for not writing him a check.
I could see where Visual Basic 3.0 would be considered a good "beginner's langauge" because it was easy enough for folks to put together useful programs, and it introduced the concept of component-based development in a pretty straight-forward way.
The introduction of classes was the beginning of the downward spiral for "hobbiest" type developers who just wanted to write simple, useful programs and didn't want to have a computer science degree to do it. Start talking about issues like polymorphism, inheritance, operator overloading and virtual methods and their eyes just glaze over. They're the engineers, the business people, the ham radio operator etc. that just want to write something that's personally useful for them.
As for teaching programming, it's information overload (no pun intended). You can't just sit someone down and from scratch start throwing even basic concepts like classes at them and expect them to have a clue..NET in general has made the learning curve impossibly steep for folks who are completely new to the programming world.
I recall reading that he does plan on giving a bulk of his wealth away, but he wants to do it before he dies; which makes sense because he'd want control over where it actually went.
However, unless he's changed his mind since, he had talked about leaving ~300 million or so to each of his three children. And I sincerely doubt that he's going to leave Melinda high and dry; in fact, you could argue that the she and the kids are the real motivating force behind his philanthropy. Their foundation alone, aside from the other things she's involved in, is worth about $30 billion.
The real issue, as I see it, isn't that Internet Explorer is fundamentally flawed. The problem is the way that Microsoft installs the thing by default. The security zones and options give you a lot of flexibility, and allow you to take advantage of ActiveX controls but that should obviously only be done on sites that you explicitly trust.
The default configuration for IE should be that the Trusted Sites zone should be setup like the Internet zone is now; the Internet zone should not have ActiveX enabled in any form, and scripting should be limited. Any site accessed by IP address and not a domain name should be automatically considered to be in the Restricted zone where everything is disabled. No changes to IE itself, just how the security settings are configured by default, and you'd have 99% of these types of exploits go away. If a user wants to access a site that has all sorts of ActiveX scripting and so forth, then they can decide if they want to add it to the list of trusted sites.
Fine, if you (and I mean the general "you" here) are concerned about "slapping new service packs into production" when they're released, then take the responsibility to quarantine those vulnerable systems.
Sorry, by my sympathy for anyone's administration problems ends when their unpatched, compromised systems are attacking my network or impeding my ability to access other systems over the Internet.
Wait a second here. I understand that it's popular sport to loathe Microsoft here on./ however, what exactly do you expect them to do? They released information and a patch for this vulnerability in July, 2002 and sent out e-mail alerts to everyone on the security mailing list (and if you're an admin for Windows boxes and you're not on that mailing list, do us all a favor and choose another line of work.)
The problem isn't that some previously unknown vulnerability was exploited. The problem is that sysadmins didn't do their job, either because of concerns over installing the patch, or sheer incompetence, take your pick. With any system that is on the net, the admin has a responsibility to keep those systems patched. Period. Either patch up (and deal with any potential problems with the patch) or take steps to ensure that your vulnerable systems are quarantined.
Could Microsoft make the patching process easier, particularly for admins who handle large corporate networks? Sure. Does the fact that it's difficult, complicated and/or time consuming absolve those admins for not applying this patch? Hell no. Put fair share of the blame where it belongs, not solely on the head of Microsoft.
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The latest stats that I read (which was for June) was that in terms of marketshare, Vista is at around 14.5% (down from almost 20% when Win7 was released) and right now Win7 is at around 13.5%. So if you factor in the percentage of 64-bit systems all combined, it puts 64-bit Windows platforms at roughly 8.25% give or take. These are all rough numbers, and there's varying estimates out there (some higher, some lower in terms of overall marketshare) but I think it's safe to say that 64-bit Windows systems are around 10% overall.
Windows XP usage has dropped as well since Win7 was released (by about 7%, it's now at about 62% of systems overall). So for the most part, Win7 has cannibalized both Vista and XP installations fairly equally, but the effect has been much more profound for Vista because there were far fewer systems out there running it. I would exepct that by the end of the year, Win7 will clearly surpass Vista. Long term, I'm looking for when XP drops below 50% marketshare; when that happens, I think that'll be the indicator that the transition is accelerating.
It's not that 64-bit Office is "broken", it's that most software vendors haven't gotten around to providing 64-bit versions of their ActiveX/COM components. So if your business depends on one (i.e.: an add-in for Word, Outlook, etc. or for VBA scripting) then you have to stick with the 32-bit version. A 64-bit process cannot load and execute 32-bit code in its address space. It's possible for 64-bit code to use a 32-bit out-of-process COM server, but most of them aren't written that way (the vast majority are written as in-process servers).
As of right now, yes, Windows XP SP3 reaches end-of-life in 2014. Of course, that doesn't mean that companies will automagically stop using it on that date, but I'm sure companies are using that as part of their migration plans.
If you think about it, it took about a decade to complete the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit, if you consider the release of Windows NT in 1993 as the starting point for the platform. Windows 95 is when it started becoming mainstream, and for a long time after that you continued to have businesses use 16-bit legacy applications. With the release of Windows 7, I think we're at the "Windows 95" point of that transition curve for 64-bit.
One other thing to keep in mind is that Y2K provided a reason for businesses to upgrade their hardware and software at once; so you saw a large shift in the late 90s as they prepared for the transition (or the apocalypse, depending on who you listened to). That was a significant driver towards phasing out their legacy 16-bit applications; there really is no corresponding justification for businesses to dump working 32-bit desktop applications in favor of 64-bit. For the most part, Suzy the Secretary and Bob the Shipping Clerk aren't going to get their work done any faster or better on a 64-bit system. And when there's no concrete, tangible benefit to their bottom line, companies aren't very interested in making technology investments "just because they can" (particularly in this economy).
Businesses don't tend to have that short of an upgrade cycle when it comes to operating systems. They typically prefer to stay on the trailing-edge of technology as long as possible -- "if ain't broke, don't fix it" is the mantra of most IT departments, particularly in larger companies. If you look at a lot of the "droneware" business desktops out there today, they're sold with 2-4GB RAM and downgrade rights to XP 32-bit. So while the system may be "sold" with a Win 7 64-bit license, that doesn't mean it's ultimately how it's being used.
The reality is though that 10% of Windows systems are 64-bit (there's actually still more systems running Vista than Windows 7 out there, although the gap is shrinking). The vast majority of Windows desktops are still running the 32-bit version of Windows XP, and that's not going to change until businesses decide they have a compelling reason to upgrade.
I haven't really been following this of late, but is all that SCO has, or do they have anything that actually amounts to real evidence of copying (i.e.: two source code files that are the same aside from non-code elements like comments, whitespace, etc.)? The example shown isn't even a reach, it's just ridiculous.
What a surprise that video games would be considered a prime suspect (no doubt the Internet as well). As soon as I saw the date 1990 mentioned, I had a sneaking suspicion where some people would end up taking this. If there really has been a decline in creativity here, I think we need to look no further than an education system that focuses on rote memorization and the kind of linear thinking required to meet standardized testing requirements. We treat our children as interchangeable cogs in a one-size-fits-all, 19th century educational system. And then we're shocked, shocked I tell you, that they're not as good at thinking outside of the box we've stuffed them into.
The difference is that Free Software can still be commercial software.
Not really in any kind of a practical sense for small ISVs. When people are given the option of paying (obstensibly for support), the vast majority of them choose not to. They'll happily use whatever you've written and pay you not a nickle for it. If the last 10+ years have shown anything, it's that people really don't make the distinction between "free, as in freedom" and "free, as in beer". To the vast majority, free is free. And depending on the charity of strangers to eat and pay your bills is not a business model.
What it would do is shift everything to a service model, moving software off the desktop. Some aspects of the business are already going that way of course, but I'm just not sure it's a good thing for independent developers.
However, you need to keep in mind that those "huge profits" are paying off the costs of development. There's an old joke that in the software business, the first copy costs $1 million, and every copy after that costs $1.50. When you consider profits, you have to factor in cost. Of course, that's obstensibly why the GPL exists: without it, you'd have companies "borrowing" code, significantly reducing the cost of development but contributing nothing back.
I agree that the ultimate goal of groups like the FSF in eliminating commercial software is targetted against one particular business model. However, I personally think that it's wrong-headed. There is a place for both commerically developed and supported software, and a place for open-source, free (as in beer, and freedom) software. If you remove the "profit motive" from software development entirely, the overall quality of software will eventually go down, and there will be less innovation. Certainly people will continue write software because they enjoy it, but one has to prioritize one's ability to eat. If writing software doesn't allow you to meet your financial needs, then it's effectively downgraded from being a profession to being a hobby. I don't think that's a good road to travel down, for programmers or for end users.
You know what many kids that are asking for money in the streets do over here? They go to a cyber-café (there are over 5000 cyber-cafés in 3.000.000 inhabitant Uruguay).
Yeah, there's a country that has its priorities squared away. :/
You say, Mr. Dvorak, "with $100 you could almost feed a village for a year" but that same $100 doesn't cover educating ONE child for ONE year. You want to fill their stomachs, but starve their brains?
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Yes, the ability to eat fresh food and drink clean water is more important than "filling their minds" with knowledge.
The problem is that the folks here, computer nerds one and all it's safe to imagine, have a fundamental disconnect with the reality of the day to day life of a people who exist primarily at a subsistance level. Even those who live in countries that are developing rapidly, most of them have staggering poverty, disease, starvation, you name it. India would be a good example of this, where the dividing line between the "haves" and the "have nots" is stark, much more so than in countries like the United States or Britain.
And, frankly, the idea raised by another poster that this is being critcized because of its ties to open source is laughable. Rich or poor, most of the people on this planet do not give a damn about open source, closed source or anything in between. The vast majority of those who use computers daily for their work only care if it turns on and runs the applications that they need to do their job. I can guarantee you it's absolutely irrelevant to someone who has to walk half a mile just to collect potable drinking water.
Talk about a strawman argument. Here, let me play too... A) What if you're offered to live free (as in beer) in a country where you're promised a monthly stipend of $50,000, have unlimited access to execellent food, drink and the computer system of your dreams -- along with a stunningly gorgeous sex partner every evening on demand, as frequently as you desire. The only restriction is that you cannot speak out against the government. B) Or, you can live in a rat-infested ghetto, with limited access to food, no clean drinking water, no electricity and all of your neighbors are either thugs or crackwhores. However, you're free to get up on your soapbox and proclaim how horrible the government is, and twice on Sundays. Myself, being a firm believer in Maslow's "heirarchy of needs", would say that the vast majority of of folks would pick option (A). You probably would too, unless you're completely stark raving mad, or an idiot.
How come the Department of Justice, supposedly "closely monitoring" Microsoft's monopoly abuse, isn't stopping this?
Oh good grief. Any moderately competent programmer can do exactly what Microsoft is doing with a few extra lines of code.
People getting worked up about this reminds of those folks who demanded that the government immediately do something about the "dangerous chemical" dihydrogen oxide that's "found in our drinking water".
Before ranting for government intervention, it's always helpful to know what you're actually talking about.
It's trivial to directly perform a DNS query. Any third-party application (including malware) can do exactly the same thing Microsoft is doing, there's no "secret sauce" here that's only available to the coders in Redmond.
Good grief folks, the sky isn't falling here. Just read http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/workshop/a uthor/dhtml/overview/activating_activex.asp and the changes that need to be made are trivial. Simply move the code with the OBJECT tags to an external script, make a few minor changes and reference that script. They show you a few different ways you can do it, and none of it requires a degree in quantum physics.
The real issue is that the patent is stupid, and I had to laugh when I read an interview with Michael Doyle (the founder of Eolas) who kept referring to "we" and "us" -- as far as I know, Eolas has one employee, him. He's looking for a half-billion dollar plus payday for technology that the patent office should have ruled as obvious and there having being prior art. And his message to the world is "I don't give a damn if this screws up websites, Microsoft should just firehose me with buckets of cash and everyone else out there should be encouraging them to do that."
Frankly, I applaud Microsoft for not writing him a check.
I could see where Visual Basic 3.0 would be considered a good "beginner's langauge" because it was easy enough for folks to put together useful programs, and it introduced the concept of component-based development in a pretty straight-forward way. The introduction of classes was the beginning of the downward spiral for "hobbiest" type developers who just wanted to write simple, useful programs and didn't want to have a computer science degree to do it. Start talking about issues like polymorphism, inheritance, operator overloading and virtual methods and their eyes just glaze over. They're the engineers, the business people, the ham radio operator etc. that just want to write something that's personally useful for them. As for teaching programming, it's information overload (no pun intended). You can't just sit someone down and from scratch start throwing even basic concepts like classes at them and expect them to have a clue. .NET in general has made the learning curve impossibly steep for folks who are completely new to the programming world.
I recall reading that he does plan on giving a bulk of his wealth away, but he wants to do it before he dies; which makes sense because he'd want control over where it actually went.
However, unless he's changed his mind since, he had talked about leaving ~300 million or so to each of his three children. And I sincerely doubt that he's going to leave Melinda high and dry; in fact, you could argue that the she and the kids are the real motivating force behind his philanthropy. Their foundation alone, aside from the other things she's involved in, is worth about $30 billion.
The real issue, as I see it, isn't that Internet Explorer is fundamentally flawed. The problem is the way that Microsoft installs the thing by default. The security zones and options give you a lot of flexibility, and allow you to take advantage of ActiveX controls but that should obviously only be done on sites that you explicitly trust.
The default configuration for IE should be that the Trusted Sites zone should be setup like the Internet zone is now; the Internet zone should not have ActiveX enabled in any form, and scripting should be limited. Any site accessed by IP address and not a domain name should be automatically considered to be in the Restricted zone where everything is disabled. No changes to IE itself, just how the security settings are configured by default, and you'd have 99% of these types of exploits go away. If a user wants to access a site that has all sorts of ActiveX scripting and so forth, then they can decide if they want to add it to the list of trusted sites.
Why Microsoft refuses to do this, I have no idea.
Not if it was law enforcement. The law allows for police to use deception in order to catch criminals, hence no fraud on their part.
No sir, I wasn't lying. I was merely exercising my hippocampus. My progesterone receptors needed the workout, you understand.
When you insert and turn the key in the ignition of your car does the house next door explode? Do cats or dogs in the vicinity spontaneously combust?
You, sir, now owe me a new keyboard and a cup of coffee.
Apple too, while you're at it (at least until the early 90s).
You get that kind of information if you subscribe to their security mailing list.
Fine, if you (and I mean the general "you" here) are concerned about "slapping new service packs into production" when they're released, then take the responsibility to quarantine those vulnerable systems.
Sorry, by my sympathy for anyone's administration problems ends when their unpatched, compromised systems are attacking my network or impeding my ability to access other systems over the Internet.
Wait a second here. I understand that it's popular sport to loathe Microsoft here on ./ however, what exactly do you expect them to do? They released information and a patch for this vulnerability in July, 2002 and sent out e-mail alerts to everyone on the security mailing list (and if you're an admin for Windows boxes and you're not on that mailing list, do us all a favor and choose another line of work.)
The problem isn't that some previously unknown vulnerability was exploited. The problem is that sysadmins didn't do their job, either because of concerns over installing the patch, or sheer incompetence, take your pick. With any system that is on the net, the admin has a responsibility to keep those systems patched. Period. Either patch up (and deal with any potential problems with the patch) or take steps to ensure that your vulnerable systems are quarantined.
Could Microsoft make the patching process easier, particularly for admins who handle large corporate networks? Sure. Does the fact that it's difficult, complicated and/or time consuming absolve those admins for not applying this patch? Hell no. Put fair share of the blame where it belongs, not solely on the head of Microsoft.