murders and executions? I mean mergers and aquisitions...
Between Symantec buying Veritas today, MS snatching up anti-spyware tools and Oracle eating up PeopleSoft I have to wonder if all this limiting of choice, won't in the long run be helpful to Linux? I have heard a lot of client backlash lately about vendor lock in, especially in regards to Symantec (I think most PHBs have adjusted to MS lock in by now) and now that they are pretty much mopping up the utility arena what will this mean?
I like some CA products but they are too inconsistent across their whole spectrum, some of the smaller vendors offer decent tools but don't have full page ads in PC Magazine for the PHBs to read in the executive rest rooms, so can a case for having the source code be a serious marketing point now? In regards to corporate computing I would assume that IBM would jump all over this, and Sun with their "sorta' OSS" stance as well.
I can only hope your name is clearly printed on your name tag when I see you at Burger King? Perhaps that MBA will get you in the management program.
You are correct that utilty jobs are next, but as others have pointed out, right behind them will be their supervisors, project managers and executives. You don't really believe that to alleviate the language, time zone and cultural differences that U.S. companies will bring these functions back the U.S., do you?
easy gestures that get confused with actual meaningful laws. It's also the kind of law that most law enforcement agencies and lawyers love, much like the draconian laws against gambling and marijuana. In the majority of cases if you were a cop would you rather...
1. Knock down the door of a meth lab and charge in to who knows what?
2. Bust up an illegal dice game behind a convenience store and spend the rest of the night processing prisoners?
3. Respond to the little old lady who says the guy next door is smoking pot on his back porch?
4. Arrest 2 kids and a GameStop clerk for a transaction involving GTA III?
5. Roust some hookers and get a free blow job?
Meth dealers have guns and paranoia, but pot smokers usually bongs instead of bullets. Apply the same logic to the other examples, you can stay pretty busy locking up people for victimless crimes, stand tall on a "law and order" platform and not get your ass shot off when you knock on a heroin dealers door.
Now apply this to lawyers, what's more fun and profitable....
1. Trying to explain that Brutus the Biker is not a rogue drug dealer but a misunderstood chemist who "accidentally" created a profitable batch of Crytal Meth?
2. Defend a 16 year old who got caught with a black market copy of Postal 2?
3. Do anything besides Satan's evil bidding because you are a scum sucking lawyer?
See, just a bunch of gestures, everyone looks busy, the prison system and lawyers keep the cash machine churning and we lock up more citizens and charge more people with nuiscance (sp?) crimes than almost any other country in the world.
Nope, I get paid a nice buck to remove spyware from several corporate customer networks, the sad truth is that most people who call themselves "power users" or "savvy" are usually the biggest idiots in the building. Remember, those idiot home users eventually have to stop surfing pR0n and forwarding email chain letters and go to work in the morning.
sucks, they bought PowerQuest and have taken simple and useful products like V2i Protector and Partition Magic and made them more cumbersome to use (Symantec LiveState is teh suck) and slowed 'em down with the same painful copy protection/authentication scheme they put on their latest A/V suite. Most Veritas products are far from what I would could "user friendly" so I can only imagine Symantec's black touch making a bad thing worse.
It's stuff like this that keeps me excited about Linux, I still have choice.
You are confusing the classic "geek" gamer archetype, which probably represents you and I pretty well, versus the more typical "gamer" today, which you decribed perfectly. You only had to drive by a store during the Halo 2 release to see what the typical "gamer" has become, and it ain't us.
the analogy to the Oscars, look how many absolute crap movies get nominated and win Oscars every year. The real problem is that we have turned gaming in to such a big business, which explains why so many crap games get released every Tuesday. Maybe there is a paralell between Hollywood and the games industry, but not the one you want to draw...
Where are you posting? This is/., the following always apply...
1. MS = Evil
2. IIS always sucks
3./.ers are smart enough to know better
Any admin worth his wages knows better than to use IIS, steaming pile that it is. I know the button monkeys like it because it's easier than all that damn reading and knowledge that Apache requires, but it still sucks. And we could exclude Linux from this anyway (if we chose to), Apache runs on Wintel just fine, amongst many other platforms. That said, if you are here hawking your Linux tools there is something lame about hosting them on IIS.
really wanting to go and knowing that the real name of this show should be Birth Control World Tour, might be so geeky that my normally geek-loving wife would cringe.
Real seems to be doomed by bad decision making and a complete lack of timing. They had streaming media all to themselves for a year or so and squandered that trying to parlay it into huge distribution deals. No doubt they were at least partially screwed by trying to make a deal with MS, which Rob should have known better than to try, and this ate up a few more years. Now we get regularly scheduled ovetures toward OSS (HelixPlayer) while they are still trying to make big money deals with the likes of MS, and forcably muscle in to Apple's stuff. So instead of the typical 3 steps to success that was so common in the dot.com era, I give you Rob's 8 steps to success in the age of digital media..
1. Create and distribute inferior technology
2. Whine and cry when you squander a market you had to yourself
3. Stew for 6 years
4. Suddenly realize you blew it and try to leech on to Apple success
that since Ziff Davis bought/merged with Cnet two bad sources of information have gotten worse. The hysteria, weak security articles and shoddy reviews are now in the majority and duplicated across 2 domains for good measure. Ahhh, the good old days when all Z-D really had to offer was Dvorak mocking Apple and Cnet had no pundits, only poor reviews paid for by advertisers.
Don't let MS off the hook for lax security design simply based on ubiquity. While true that if Mac OS was still running on the same foundation as the time period you reference it would be rife with holes, clearly it is not the case with todays OS X.
There lies the greatest difference, that both Linux and Mac OS X (BSD) were built with security as a cornerstone, not as an afterthought. While a surge in usage would expose new security issues to either OS, the way in which and time frame in which these threats were dealt with would be orders of magnitude better.
The issue with MS security runs so deep even they can't fix it. Too many times the only solution is a "baby with the bath water" approach (i.e. shut off all Active X controls, disable all attachements in Outlook Express, etc...). Look at the breakage that XP SP2 and now W2K3 Server SP1 has/is causing, while I commend MS for finally getting around to security, the price is getting a little steep for end users and business customers.
Steve Ballmer might be able to sell the whole "we are the biggest target, therefore we will be attacked the most" with a straight face, but no one else should. The real issue isn't how often you are attacked, instead it is how often you are actually compromised and how much does it cost to recover. Don't tell me a *nix based OS wouldn't fare better when either of these questions are asked.
thing to be an easy answer to home users, but someone has to explain to me why corporate customers continue to tolerate this stuff that is directly targeted at Windows weak spots? It would be tough, and damn unlikely to get mom, pop and granny off of their Windows XP machines, but I have several customers who spend all day in Office, e-mail and the web for all of their business and I make a steady buck doing spyware removal. And they dont' want to talk prevention, every meeting ends with "well, we just won't allow employees to install things like this any longer" and 2 months later I get a call to come back.
Barring use of some Windows based Spyware prevention tools (most of which aren't free for corporate use), mirgating to some combination of Mac OS X and Linux would end virtually all of this and then I could charge them for stuff like implementing cool new tools for them to use instead of upkeep of a broken system. Of course, these are the same customers who won't try FireFox because it "just doesn't feel right"???
I'm truly torn between my ethics and the need to keep up my income in a crap economy.
about 3.5 years now, I surely couldn't live without it at this point. But I guess the question I have is, who does this really effect? I don't think the average Tivo owner really cares as long as they get what they pay for. And in most cases you are "Paying Per View" for one view of that movie in a certain window, so as long as it's clear you have to watch it by a certain date, what is the issue? Same thing with the NFL, they share revenue based on a fairly complex formula, something like Tivo could really screw that up.
These debates always boil down to those who are willing to pirate and those who aren't, but we can mask it as a "Fair Use" or "Consumer Rights" issue to keep the post count rolling. As far as Tivo goes, I watch a show, I delete it, I don't need to archive it for historical purposes and I have no right to do anything else with it. If it's really great I'll buy it on DVD and if it's like most shows I won't care. I'll bet I am in the majority of Tivo owners on this usage pattern yet people act like this policy somehow infringes on my right to use the device and it's content as described.
I know it's hard for some of you to accept, but not everyone purchases consumer electronics to discover exploits and alternative uses, and most people are willing to accept some limitations for the added convenince that Tivo brings. Most people aren't pirating off ST:DS9 and editing out the commercials for their personal archive or for uploading to usenet. It's hardly a stretch to imagine your downloaded copy of Gigli is time limited and you have no friends, so stop playing that hacked version of Counter Strike Source with the aimbot you just found and watch your damn rental.
2 systems at home and 450 at work, ZERO issues. The key is to have all of your software patched before the upgrade and to have a clean and stable system prior to the upgrade. As for the supposed security holes that still exist, even prior to service pack 2 I haven't had any issues at home or professionally, perhaps some people just can't make that leap from WebTV to the PC? What's funny is that we think people who can't maintain an XP box will be competent with Linux.
And seriously, problems with a Dell, what a shock since the tend to try and turn even simple "open" devices into proprietary cash cows (I had a customer with 5 Dimension XPs, all were extremely noisey, I recomended he swap the exhaust fans when we determined they were the source of the noise, but could only order the same replacement from Dell since the power connector was completely non-standard and attached to a non-standard header on the motherboard, no fan detected in BIOS, no boot). Dell always sticks their customers with the old "it's third party so we can't help" crap, so can that really be counted?
Not true, the last few Rio's have been just as good if not better, but now combine the MS music store, new Windows Media Player and the raft of players to follow that will integrate with that store and you'll see a space owned by Apple filled with competition. Apple makes some of the most overrated products ever, I can't wait to watch them blow it again.
as competition equal to or better than the iPod begins to emerge Steve Jobs and Apple watch yet another market slip away. Drop the price of this new Rio $50 and it's all over.
the Inquirer everyday, taking statements out of context and making them headlines. This is the type of hit count whoring I expect out of Ziff Davis and Dvorak, not the supposed beacon of geek culture.
Too bad that is such an extreme amount of bullshit, and considering how Pennfield-Jackson was obviously on a vendetta (by his own words and behavior), that conviction is at best questionable.
Yep, that's the entire MS catalog, and clearly they haven't touched those programs since they bought 'em. Just slapped a new logo on the box and off they went. How can anyone mod this as Inofrmative? MS makes no secret of it's aquisitions, its common knowledge. Now if we were discussing Symantec's recent take over of PowerQuest there would be an example of a compnay aquiring a new product line and making no changes except the logo and raising the price, see the difference?
Once again, OSS will never gain traction in the mainstream until its supporters stop with the "Anything But Microsoft" angle. It's boring, unfair and unrealistic. Just because it's not free or doesn't fit your vision of what it should be does not mean it's bad.
First, who cares, you won't find too many people doing even close to all of that at once, so meh.Some of it yes (see below) but most people don't need 17 termunals and simaltaneous DVD playback, so what is that really worth?
Second, I call bullshit, the current state of Linux sound drivers is still pretty sucky so I don't see all of that happening without a lot of snap/crackle/pop dominating your speakers. Linux sound and CPU usage is bad enough with one or two apps vying for the sound cards attention.
Third, my XP box mutli-task just as vigoruosly and with no stability issues either, albeit without trying to run 3 media apps concurrently (because why would I?). Having multimedia, chat, IM/IRC, web and office apps open simaltaneoulsy sounds like the same activity as 90% of Windows users every day, tack on Automatic Updates transferring files in the background and it't not that far off. Robust multitasking isn't unique to Linux.
And of course the big benefit I have on my XP box is I don't have to urpmi/emerge 3/4s of the contents of my machine each month while compiling a new kernel. When will people figure out that this kind of software maintenance is not a positive selling point for Linux? So you have to shut a few apps during an install to make sure critical DLLs aren't in use with XP, I have to fall back to Init3 to update my nVidia drivers under Linux, I don't have to boot into DOS or safemode to upgrade my video drivers under Windows? See, just trade offs. Get to what Linux really does better and attack MS based on facts, not OSS rhetoric.
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Between Symantec buying Veritas today, MS snatching up anti-spyware tools and Oracle eating up PeopleSoft I have to wonder if all this limiting of choice, won't in the long run be helpful to Linux? I have heard a lot of client backlash lately about vendor lock in, especially in regards to Symantec (I think most PHBs have adjusted to MS lock in by now) and now that they are pretty much mopping up the utility arena what will this mean?
I like some CA products but they are too inconsistent across their whole spectrum, some of the smaller vendors offer decent tools but don't have full page ads in PC Magazine for the PHBs to read in the executive rest rooms, so can a case for having the source code be a serious marketing point now? In regards to corporate computing I would assume that IBM would jump all over this, and Sun with their "sorta' OSS" stance as well.
You are correct that utilty jobs are next, but as others have pointed out, right behind them will be their supervisors, project managers and executives. You don't really believe that to alleviate the language, time zone and cultural differences that U.S. companies will bring these functions back the U.S., do you?
1. Knock down the door of a meth lab and charge in to who knows what?
2. Bust up an illegal dice game behind a convenience store and spend the rest of the night processing prisoners?
3. Respond to the little old lady who says the guy next door is smoking pot on his back porch?
4. Arrest 2 kids and a GameStop clerk for a transaction involving GTA III?
5. Roust some hookers and get a free blow job?
Meth dealers have guns and paranoia, but pot smokers usually bongs instead of bullets. Apply the same logic to the other examples, you can stay pretty busy locking up people for victimless crimes, stand tall on a "law and order" platform and not get your ass shot off when you knock on a heroin dealers door.
Now apply this to lawyers, what's more fun and profitable....
1. Trying to explain that Brutus the Biker is not a rogue drug dealer but a misunderstood chemist who "accidentally" created a profitable batch of Crytal Meth?
2. Defend a 16 year old who got caught with a black market copy of Postal 2?
3. Do anything besides Satan's evil bidding because you are a scum sucking lawyer?
See, just a bunch of gestures, everyone looks busy, the prison system and lawyers keep the cash machine churning and we lock up more citizens and charge more people with nuiscance (sp?) crimes than almost any other country in the world.
Nope, I get paid a nice buck to remove spyware from several corporate customer networks, the sad truth is that most people who call themselves "power users" or "savvy" are usually the biggest idiots in the building. Remember, those idiot home users eventually have to stop surfing pR0n and forwarding email chain letters and go to work in the morning.
It's stuff like this that keeps me excited about Linux, I still have choice.
You are confusing the classic "geek" gamer archetype, which probably represents you and I pretty well, versus the more typical "gamer" today, which you decribed perfectly. You only had to drive by a store during the Halo 2 release to see what the typical "gamer" has become, and it ain't us.
the analogy to the Oscars, look how many absolute crap movies get nominated and win Oscars every year. The real problem is that we have turned gaming in to such a big business, which explains why so many crap games get released every Tuesday. Maybe there is a paralell between Hollywood and the games industry, but not the one you want to draw...
1. MS = Evil
2. IIS always sucks
3. /.ers are smart enough to know better
Any admin worth his wages knows better than to use IIS, steaming pile that it is. I know the button monkeys like it because it's easier than all that damn reading and knowledge that Apache requires, but it still sucks. And we could exclude Linux from this anyway (if we chose to), Apache runs on Wintel just fine, amongst many other platforms. That said, if you are here hawking your Linux tools there is something lame about hosting them on IIS.
I sedond the motion, he builds Linux tools but host his work on an IIS server, mod the original post up.
really wanting to go and knowing that the real name of this show should be Birth Control World Tour, might be so geeky that my normally geek-loving wife would cringe.
1. Create and distribute inferior technology
2. Whine and cry when you squander a market you had to yourself
3. Stew for 6 years
4. Suddenly realize you blew it and try to leech on to Apple success
5. Get smacked by Apple
6. Return to brooding
7. ???
8. $$$
that since Ziff Davis bought/merged with Cnet two bad sources of information have gotten worse. The hysteria, weak security articles and shoddy reviews are now in the majority and duplicated across 2 domains for good measure. Ahhh, the good old days when all Z-D really had to offer was Dvorak mocking Apple and Cnet had no pundits, only poor reviews paid for by advertisers.
Yes, Rob Enderle, clearly a bigger doofus than Thurrot, but not by much.
Cringeley puts it in perspective, too bad HP has spent all this time trying to be more like Dell and not innovating like they used to.
There lies the greatest difference, that both Linux and Mac OS X (BSD) were built with security as a cornerstone, not as an afterthought. While a surge in usage would expose new security issues to either OS, the way in which and time frame in which these threats were dealt with would be orders of magnitude better.
The issue with MS security runs so deep even they can't fix it. Too many times the only solution is a "baby with the bath water" approach (i.e. shut off all Active X controls, disable all attachements in Outlook Express, etc...). Look at the breakage that XP SP2 and now W2K3 Server SP1 has/is causing, while I commend MS for finally getting around to security, the price is getting a little steep for end users and business customers.
Steve Ballmer might be able to sell the whole "we are the biggest target, therefore we will be attacked the most" with a straight face, but no one else should. The real issue isn't how often you are attacked, instead it is how often you are actually compromised and how much does it cost to recover. Don't tell me a *nix based OS wouldn't fare better when either of these questions are asked.
Barring use of some Windows based Spyware prevention tools (most of which aren't free for corporate use), mirgating to some combination of Mac OS X and Linux would end virtually all of this and then I could charge them for stuff like implementing cool new tools for them to use instead of upkeep of a broken system. Of course, these are the same customers who won't try FireFox because it "just doesn't feel right"???
I'm truly torn between my ethics and the need to keep up my income in a crap economy.
These debates always boil down to those who are willing to pirate and those who aren't, but we can mask it as a "Fair Use" or "Consumer Rights" issue to keep the post count rolling. As far as Tivo goes, I watch a show, I delete it, I don't need to archive it for historical purposes and I have no right to do anything else with it. If it's really great I'll buy it on DVD and if it's like most shows I won't care. I'll bet I am in the majority of Tivo owners on this usage pattern yet people act like this policy somehow infringes on my right to use the device and it's content as described.
I know it's hard for some of you to accept, but not everyone purchases consumer electronics to discover exploits and alternative uses, and most people are willing to accept some limitations for the added convenince that Tivo brings. Most people aren't pirating off ST:DS9 and editing out the commercials for their personal archive or for uploading to usenet. It's hardly a stretch to imagine your downloaded copy of Gigli is time limited and you have no friends, so stop playing that hacked version of Counter Strike Source with the aimbot you just found and watch your damn rental.
And seriously, problems with a Dell, what a shock since the tend to try and turn even simple "open" devices into proprietary cash cows (I had a customer with 5 Dimension XPs, all were extremely noisey, I recomended he swap the exhaust fans when we determined they were the source of the noise, but could only order the same replacement from Dell since the power connector was completely non-standard and attached to a non-standard header on the motherboard, no fan detected in BIOS, no boot). Dell always sticks their customers with the old "it's third party so we can't help" crap, so can that really be counted?
Not true, the last few Rio's have been just as good if not better, but now combine the MS music store, new Windows Media Player and the raft of players to follow that will integrate with that store and you'll see a space owned by Apple filled with competition. Apple makes some of the most overrated products ever, I can't wait to watch them blow it again.
as competition equal to or better than the iPod begins to emerge Steve Jobs and Apple watch yet another market slip away. Drop the price of this new Rio $50 and it's all over.
the Inquirer everyday, taking statements out of context and making them headlines. This is the type of hit count whoring I expect out of Ziff Davis and Dvorak, not the supposed beacon of geek culture.
Too bad that is such an extreme amount of bullshit, and considering how Pennfield-Jackson was obviously on a vendetta (by his own words and behavior), that conviction is at best questionable.
Once again, OSS will never gain traction in the mainstream until its supporters stop with the "Anything But Microsoft" angle. It's boring, unfair and unrealistic. Just because it's not free or doesn't fit your vision of what it should be does not mean it's bad.
You must be trolling because you can't really be this clueless, can you?
Second, I call bullshit, the current state of Linux sound drivers is still pretty sucky so I don't see all of that happening without a lot of snap/crackle/pop dominating your speakers. Linux sound and CPU usage is bad enough with one or two apps vying for the sound cards attention.
Third, my XP box mutli-task just as vigoruosly and with no stability issues either, albeit without trying to run 3 media apps concurrently (because why would I?). Having multimedia, chat, IM/IRC, web and office apps open simaltaneoulsy sounds like the same activity as 90% of Windows users every day, tack on Automatic Updates transferring files in the background and it't not that far off. Robust multitasking isn't unique to Linux.
And of course the big benefit I have on my XP box is I don't have to urpmi/emerge 3/4s of the contents of my machine each month while compiling a new kernel. When will people figure out that this kind of software maintenance is not a positive selling point for Linux? So you have to shut a few apps during an install to make sure critical DLLs aren't in use with XP, I have to fall back to Init3 to update my nVidia drivers under Linux, I don't have to boot into DOS or safemode to upgrade my video drivers under Windows? See, just trade offs. Get to what Linux really does better and attack MS based on facts, not OSS rhetoric.