Well actually the original article already did that, by indicating that you could use an old distro without worrying that new versions of applications would be incompatible. I was responding to the bit I quoted.
For example, upgrade to the latest Ubuntu, say, isn't an issue because it is free and if the hardware won't go there you can just stick with the old version, safe in the knowledge that developers aren't actively trying to find reasons to make their latest offerings not run on it.
Sticking with old versions of Linux can be problematic as well. Unless you're willing to continue using old versions of all of your applications, you'll want to build packages from upstream source. When you try to do this, you'll find that many of them have dependencies on newer versions of libraries which aren't available in the older distro's repository. You can end up in a situation where you're needing to track down and port a whole bunch of libraries yourself... and at the end of the day, you may still find that one of them relies on a kernel feature that simply isn't there. Unless you've got a lot of time to spend mucking around, or are willing to accept the fact that many newer applications simply won't work, running outdated Linux distros isn't going to be a cakewalk.
You also won't be getting automatic security patches (though I suppose older distros are going to be relatively secure via "security through obscurity").
Unfortunately, at the majority of companies it does. So if you work at a company like that, and you want to remain in the loop technically, the clear answer is "job change".
IMO you really don't want to fight them on this, especially since they're not asking for root access. Even if you kick it up the chain of command and get a ruling in your favor (which is by no means a foregone conclusion), making enemies in the IT department is simply bad office politics.
If you cooperate with them on the little things, you increase your odds of being able to fly under the radar on the stuff that actually matters.
Where I work, the IT infrastructure is very MS-centric. We're a satellite R&D office, with no dedicated IT staff; the corporate IT people are 1000 miles away. I help the IT folks with the day-to-day stuff at our site (making sure the Windows server gets backed up, installing software, troubleshooting Outlook problems, etc.), and in return they leave the software group (which comprises about 20% of the people in this office) alone to manage our own Linux-based server and desktops. Everybody wins. (Well, other than the part about me having to troubleshoot other people's Outlook problems... but I digress!)
The people in charge of the Chinese space program are probably old-school Communist era types, and are running things accordingly. This will inevitably drive costs up, preventing them from being competitive. If they're really serious about providing cost-effective launch capability, they should probably turn over management of their space program to Foxconn...
I'm of two minds on that. On one hand, it's true that these people aren't creating value. However, their efforts do have the effect of at least creating an insanely efficient market that reacts to stimuli in milliseconds. On the other hand, the error cascade for those systems is so huge that glitches cause crashes. Leverage is too damn high too.
Yes, the market is "efficient" (in the sense of reacting instantly to stimuli); but I think we're losing (if we haven't already lost) sight of the original purpose of the markets, namely to provide a mechanism to match willing investors with companies that need working capital. HFT (where the latencies of the trading algorithms are literally measured in microseconds not milliseconds) benefits nobody other than the gigantic trading firms who can afford to co-locate millions of dollars' worth of server equipment at the major exchanges.
I went to grad school at a place where the Wall Street companies come to steal talent, and they were probably 30% of the companies represented at career fairs (this was before the crash, though). I didn't work for them because that work isn't for me. But the problem was that there just weren't enough other attractive options to drown those guys out. If you're a mathie/physical scientist and you don't want to become a prof, work for a startup or a national lab, then you have fewer options than you might think, and Wall Street, management consulting (ie, Bain or McKinsey) and defense contractors dominate the remaining options. Sucks, really.
Used to be you could get a decent (and reasonably interesting) job in the telecommunications industry, but telecom basically imploded a little over 10 years ago. Funding for national labs is dicey these days as well. Over the course of my career I've made the rounds (several telecom firms, national lab, couple of stops in the financial industry, and now defense). Defense seems (relatively) secure for the moment... at least until the people clamoring for reducing the deficit face reality and realize that some of those cuts will need to come from defense. Regardless, I don't think this is what I want to do until I retire. As you say, the situation sucks.
Speaking of textile jobs, the company I work for started out over 100 years ago as a textile mill. Today they make head-mounted "augmented reality" displays. Those who are able to change and adapt will survive over the long term; those who do not will find that they've become obsolete. This applies equally on the small scale (as an individual keeping your skills current is the only true long-term job security), the medium scale (as with my employer), and on a national scale.
IMO the rise of Wall Street as the dominant force in our economy is a big part of the problem. Putting our "best and brightest" to work figuring out new and creative ways to skim profits off of people moving money around is not a good recipe for remaining an economic superpower in a global economy.
I don't see it as an "epic battle" either. I've simply reached the conclusion that I don't want to pay for something that -- given what I currently use my computers for -- does not provide any added value. Other people, with different requirements, may have perfectly rational reasons for believing otherwise.
If the improvements of Win7 over Vista are indeed minor, then I think we are entitled to bash them for dropping support for Vista in future versions of IE in an attempt to pressure people to upgrade to Win7. But I realize most Microsoft apologists enjoy making excuses for their behavior more than objectively evaluating the value of their software to the end user.
Yes, I realize that they are ultimately answerable to their shareholders, not their customers... and in this light, their behavior probably makes sense. But just because it might make sense for them as an overall business strategy doesn't mean I need to like it, or continue to buy their products.
You should not be able to prohibit a person from doing what they're good at, as long as they're not doing something illegal or stealing proprietary information. The fact that you don't like this person's choice of (former) employer, or what they're doing now, is irrelevant. This ruling sets a bad precedent IMO.
IMO this is a non-event in terms of pissing off content developers. That's water under the bridge, since MS has already been dragged (kicking and screaming) in the direction of standards compliance. IE6 (universally loathed by content developers) has already been EOLed (it is not supported on Vista AFAIK).
This is definitely a customer-hostile move though.
Yup, same here. Been running Ubuntu on my primary desktops (home and work) since shortly after 8.04 LTS came out, and haven't looked back. Also got my youngest daughter (who is in high school) to switch a couple of months ago, and she's a satisfied Linux convert as well.
Amusing side story: Friends and co-workers who have previously relied on me for advice on troubleshooting their Windows-related problems are discovering that I'm not as reliable of a source any more, since my Windows expertise tapers off pretty drastically after Windows XP. I still haven't decided whether this is a good thing or a bad thing overall, but I'm leaning towards the former!;-)
I wouldn't have a problem with your argument if they'd released Win7 as a (no charge) upgrade or service pack to Vista. But since they opted not to do this, they're effectively "giving the middle finger" (to use your terminology) to all the people who bought Vista... just because they can.
Yup, that was my first thought too. Microsoft is essentially saying, "Vista? Oh yeah... that thing we released between XP and Win7... *ahem*... we'd really like to pretend that it doesn't exist."
It seems to me the larger the organization, the more difficult it is to get upgrades and the more likely that people will take matters into their own hands.
On the other hand, I think people in smaller organizations are more likely to actually give a crap about getting their work done. In a large organization, you're going to have more people who just say "Oh well, it's not my problem if they won't give me the computer I need to do my job effectively!"
Some ten per cent of UK workers said they'd even resort to buying new parts for their work devices themselves to perform their own upgrade; particularly those who work in smaller organizations."
I don't work in the UK (I am in the US), but I can relate to this. When the company I work for suspended the planned round of desktop upgrades a couple of years ago, I started buying and bringing in my own parts from home. At this point the only piece of my original Pentium 4 desktop left is one of the data drives... and I'm still waiting for my "official" upgrade. People who started working here after me (I've been here since this office opened a number of years ago) generally haven't had to resort to this sort of thing, since their desktops were purchased more recently and are generally less out-of-date.
Amusingly, the company also has a rule against storing company data on personal equipment. So just to make sure I'm in compliance with the letter of the law, any files I'm working on which could be considered proprietary in nature are kept either on a network share, or on that one hard drive that still belongs to the company!
So Microsoft is tuning their algorithms based on the search habits of people who are too stupid to not use Internet Explorer? This seems like a strategy that could backfire.
Back in the day, Sony was a pretty cool company. They made affordable audio equipment with decent performance for the price; through high school and college, my turntable (vinyl LPs... remember them?) was a Sony. I also remember my first Sony Walkman cassette portable (early 1980s) and CD DiscMan with great fondness; Sony pretty much single-handedly invented the portable audio industry. My first camcorder was a Sony too, and I enjoyed the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 immensely.
Somewhere along the line, they lost their way. Maybe it had something to do with their transformation into a combination of consumer electronics giant and content provider; I'm not sure. But the CD rootkit fiasco was an indication of where they were heading. My opinion of them also took a nosedive when my second Sony camcorder (purchased around 6 years ago) turned out to be a piece of crap.
These days, they are solidly on my "avoid" list. I used to consider a Sony nameplate to be a badge of quality; now it is more of a warning label.
Do "millions of users" really rely on Skype's toolbar plugin? Do "millions of users" even know what Skype's toolbar does? Didn't think so.
This is a complete non-event, except perhaps for the developers who worked on the toolbar code (who may be facing a demotion, or at least a less-than-stellar performance review).
Just because the code was allegedly re-licensed under the Apache license doesn't mean Apache had anything to do with it. That would be like claiming the FSF is responsible for all code released under the GPL. As already noted, the files in question were not part of the Harmony code base, so I don't understand how anyone could see this as Google "pinning copyright violations on ASF".
Sounds like someone definitely f**ked up though.
I hope their "Unladen Swallow" project succeeds, so they can port everything to Python and give Oracle the finger.
Probably roughly the same way they're within environmental pollution regulations.
I'd be willing to bet that for each instance where someone gets caught flouting environmental pollution regulations, there are at least three more who are getting away with it. Seems to me the temptation to cheat the carbon trading system would be even stronger, since it is essentially "free money".
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But you're conflating two different use patterns
Well actually the original article already did that, by indicating that you could use an old distro without worrying that new versions of applications would be incompatible. I was responding to the bit I quoted.
For example, upgrade to the latest Ubuntu, say, isn't an issue because it is free and if the hardware won't go there you can just stick with the old version, safe in the knowledge that developers aren't actively trying to find reasons to make their latest offerings not run on it.
Sticking with old versions of Linux can be problematic as well. Unless you're willing to continue using old versions of all of your applications, you'll want to build packages from upstream source. When you try to do this, you'll find that many of them have dependencies on newer versions of libraries which aren't available in the older distro's repository. You can end up in a situation where you're needing to track down and port a whole bunch of libraries yourself... and at the end of the day, you may still find that one of them relies on a kernel feature that simply isn't there. Unless you've got a lot of time to spend mucking around, or are willing to accept the fact that many newer applications simply won't work, running outdated Linux distros isn't going to be a cakewalk.
You also won't be getting automatic security patches (though I suppose older distros are going to be relatively secure via "security through obscurity").
Heck, I'm not even a team lead and I spend way too much time in meetings!
Unfortunately, at the majority of companies it does. So if you work at a company like that, and you want to remain in the loop technically, the clear answer is "job change".
So after enough people have seen both stories one of them disappears?
IMO you really don't want to fight them on this, especially since they're not asking for root access. Even if you kick it up the chain of command and get a ruling in your favor (which is by no means a foregone conclusion), making enemies in the IT department is simply bad office politics.
If you cooperate with them on the little things, you increase your odds of being able to fly under the radar on the stuff that actually matters.
Where I work, the IT infrastructure is very MS-centric. We're a satellite R&D office, with no dedicated IT staff; the corporate IT people are 1000 miles away. I help the IT folks with the day-to-day stuff at our site (making sure the Windows server gets backed up, installing software, troubleshooting Outlook problems, etc.), and in return they leave the software group (which comprises about 20% of the people in this office) alone to manage our own Linux-based server and desktops. Everybody wins. (Well, other than the part about me having to troubleshoot other people's Outlook problems... but I digress!)
The people in charge of the Chinese space program are probably old-school Communist era types, and are running things accordingly. This will inevitably drive costs up, preventing them from being competitive. If they're really serious about providing cost-effective launch capability, they should probably turn over management of their space program to Foxconn...
I'm of two minds on that. On one hand, it's true that these people aren't creating value. However, their efforts do have the effect of at least creating an insanely efficient market that reacts to stimuli in milliseconds. On the other hand, the error cascade for those systems is so huge that glitches cause crashes. Leverage is too damn high too.
Yes, the market is "efficient" (in the sense of reacting instantly to stimuli); but I think we're losing (if we haven't already lost) sight of the original purpose of the markets, namely to provide a mechanism to match willing investors with companies that need working capital. HFT (where the latencies of the trading algorithms are literally measured in microseconds not milliseconds) benefits nobody other than the gigantic trading firms who can afford to co-locate millions of dollars' worth of server equipment at the major exchanges.
I went to grad school at a place where the Wall Street companies come to steal talent, and they were probably 30% of the companies represented at career fairs (this was before the crash, though). I didn't work for them because that work isn't for me. But the problem was that there just weren't enough other attractive options to drown those guys out. If you're a mathie/physical scientist and you don't want to become a prof, work for a startup or a national lab, then you have fewer options than you might think, and Wall Street, management consulting (ie, Bain or McKinsey) and defense contractors dominate the remaining options. Sucks, really.
Used to be you could get a decent (and reasonably interesting) job in the telecommunications industry, but telecom basically imploded a little over 10 years ago. Funding for national labs is dicey these days as well. Over the course of my career I've made the rounds (several telecom firms, national lab, couple of stops in the financial industry, and now defense). Defense seems (relatively) secure for the moment... at least until the people clamoring for reducing the deficit face reality and realize that some of those cuts will need to come from defense. Regardless, I don't think this is what I want to do until I retire. As you say, the situation sucks.
Speaking of textile jobs, the company I work for started out over 100 years ago as a textile mill. Today they make head-mounted "augmented reality" displays. Those who are able to change and adapt will survive over the long term; those who do not will find that they've become obsolete. This applies equally on the small scale (as an individual keeping your skills current is the only true long-term job security), the medium scale (as with my employer), and on a national scale.
IMO the rise of Wall Street as the dominant force in our economy is a big part of the problem. Putting our "best and brightest" to work figuring out new and creative ways to skim profits off of people moving money around is not a good recipe for remaining an economic superpower in a global economy.
I had been holding out hope that Jackson Jr. was less of a whack job than his father. Oh well, so much for that.
I don't see it as an "epic battle" either. I've simply reached the conclusion that I don't want to pay for something that -- given what I currently use my computers for -- does not provide any added value. Other people, with different requirements, may have perfectly rational reasons for believing otherwise.
If the improvements of Win7 over Vista are indeed minor, then I think we are entitled to bash them for dropping support for Vista in future versions of IE in an attempt to pressure people to upgrade to Win7. But I realize most Microsoft apologists enjoy making excuses for their behavior more than objectively evaluating the value of their software to the end user.
Yes, I realize that they are ultimately answerable to their shareholders, not their customers... and in this light, their behavior probably makes sense. But just because it might make sense for them as an overall business strategy doesn't mean I need to like it, or continue to buy their products.
You should not be able to prohibit a person from doing what they're good at, as long as they're not doing something illegal or stealing proprietary information. The fact that you don't like this person's choice of (former) employer, or what they're doing now, is irrelevant. This ruling sets a bad precedent IMO.
IMO this is a non-event in terms of pissing off content developers. That's water under the bridge, since MS has already been dragged (kicking and screaming) in the direction of standards compliance. IE6 (universally loathed by content developers) has already been EOLed (it is not supported on Vista AFAIK).
This is definitely a customer-hostile move though.
If it was "fixed with updates", why did they feel they needed to fix it again (Win7)?
Yup, same here. Been running Ubuntu on my primary desktops (home and work) since shortly after 8.04 LTS came out, and haven't looked back. Also got my youngest daughter (who is in high school) to switch a couple of months ago, and she's a satisfied Linux convert as well.
Amusing side story: Friends and co-workers who have previously relied on me for advice on troubleshooting their Windows-related problems are discovering that I'm not as reliable of a source any more, since my Windows expertise tapers off pretty drastically after Windows XP. I still haven't decided whether this is a good thing or a bad thing overall, but I'm leaning towards the former! ;-)
I wouldn't have a problem with your argument if they'd released Win7 as a (no charge) upgrade or service pack to Vista. But since they opted not to do this, they're effectively "giving the middle finger" (to use your terminology) to all the people who bought Vista... just because they can.
Yup, that was my first thought too. Microsoft is essentially saying, "Vista? Oh yeah... that thing we released between XP and Win7... *ahem*... we'd really like to pretend that it doesn't exist."
It seems to me the larger the organization, the more difficult it is to get upgrades and the more likely that people will take matters into their own hands.
On the other hand, I think people in smaller organizations are more likely to actually give a crap about getting their work done. In a large organization, you're going to have more people who just say "Oh well, it's not my problem if they won't give me the computer I need to do my job effectively!"
Some ten per cent of UK workers said they'd even resort to buying new parts for their work devices themselves to perform their own upgrade; particularly those who work in smaller organizations."
I don't work in the UK (I am in the US), but I can relate to this. When the company I work for suspended the planned round of desktop upgrades a couple of years ago, I started buying and bringing in my own parts from home. At this point the only piece of my original Pentium 4 desktop left is one of the data drives... and I'm still waiting for my "official" upgrade. People who started working here after me (I've been here since this office opened a number of years ago) generally haven't had to resort to this sort of thing, since their desktops were purchased more recently and are generally less out-of-date.
Amusingly, the company also has a rule against storing company data on personal equipment. So just to make sure I'm in compliance with the letter of the law, any files I'm working on which could be considered proprietary in nature are kept either on a network share, or on that one hard drive that still belongs to the company!
So Microsoft is tuning their algorithms based on the search habits of people who are too stupid to not use Internet Explorer? This seems like a strategy that could backfire.
Back in the day, Sony was a pretty cool company. They made affordable audio equipment with decent performance for the price; through high school and college, my turntable (vinyl LPs... remember them?) was a Sony. I also remember my first Sony Walkman cassette portable (early 1980s) and CD DiscMan with great fondness; Sony pretty much single-handedly invented the portable audio industry. My first camcorder was a Sony too, and I enjoyed the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 immensely.
Somewhere along the line, they lost their way. Maybe it had something to do with their transformation into a combination of consumer electronics giant and content provider; I'm not sure. But the CD rootkit fiasco was an indication of where they were heading. My opinion of them also took a nosedive when my second Sony camcorder (purchased around 6 years ago) turned out to be a piece of crap.
These days, they are solidly on my "avoid" list. I used to consider a Sony nameplate to be a badge of quality; now it is more of a warning label.
Do "millions of users" really rely on Skype's toolbar plugin? Do "millions of users" even know what Skype's toolbar does? Didn't think so.
This is a complete non-event, except perhaps for the developers who worked on the toolbar code (who may be facing a demotion, or at least a less-than-stellar performance review).
Just because the code was allegedly re-licensed under the Apache license doesn't mean Apache had anything to do with it. That would be like claiming the FSF is responsible for all code released under the GPL. As already noted, the files in question were not part of the Harmony code base, so I don't understand how anyone could see this as Google "pinning copyright violations on ASF".
Sounds like someone definitely f**ked up though.
I hope their "Unladen Swallow" project succeeds, so they can port everything to Python and give Oracle the finger.
Probably roughly the same way they're within environmental pollution regulations.
I'd be willing to bet that for each instance where someone gets caught flouting environmental pollution regulations, there are at least three more who are getting away with it. Seems to me the temptation to cheat the carbon trading system would be even stronger, since it is essentially "free money".