Assuming 92% of the users use IE and default to MSN.
2/3 of the workforce 100 million
5 minutes per day
245 workdays per year
$20 / hour
$40.8B
See there's the real threat.
So if users would just give up IE, we could kiss the Social Security Issues goodbye
Come on GWB, you just aren't trying, think outside the box
Although this is funny, I believe it does bring up a relevant point. If you allow software patents where do you stop, where do decide the difference between software and non-fiction works.
To me it appears that it would never end. The dividing line between copyright and patents could be completely blurred. The only group that would benefit from this appears to be lawyers.
Both my brother and a friend of his purchased servers from Dell. Neither actually use the computer for something I would call a server, both purchased based on equipment specs. Mainly they wanted a high end workstation with raid and multiprocessor. I'm curious as to whether this would have been classified as server sales by MS and/or the equipment manufacturer.
I really don't think that they will charge for this . I believe what they have done is purchase a stop gap measure until Longhorn comes out. They are currently getting dinged on this TCO thing. One of the big points that kills them here is not the initial cost of OS, but the third party stuff that it also requires. Currently you can't run Windows and IE on the internet without Anti-virus, spyware detection/removal tool and a firewall. They have addressed, somewhat, the firewall issue with WinXP SP2. But the user is still out about another $60 in 3rd party software for AV and Spyware removal tools.
But when MS purchased RAV, I also hoped they would bundle AV with the operating system. I've pretty much given up on that dream.
Currently I don't see paper going away. We have documents and records that have been sitting in a file cabinet for 15 years.
We haven't had to move them to new media, get concerned about format compatability or any of that. It's there.
It's not as easy to get to as an electronic media form, but it's more dependable than electronic information.
I wish someone would do a study on data and come up with some idea of how long we really need to keep it.( I realize that some data has legal obligation for storage) But sometimes you look at this data and feel like those guys on the commercial in the conference room, how much does all this stuff cost? I think part of the problem is that nobody has done a study on how much it cost to store data in perpetuity I work at a manufacturing facility and there is a lot of data generated. Most of it is just kept and copied over and over. Some of it is data that was stored in Access 1.0 or something like that. If we needed to get to that data, we would be hard pressed. I think part of the problem is that nobody wants to take responsibility for deleting it.
Maybe one day they have a class at Harvard Business School doing Cost-Benefit analysis on keeping data. Then maybe we could get rid of some of this crap.
I have a relative that has severe dyslexia. This program has been instrumental in getting him through college. He's going through a prestigous private business school and is doing well, 3.0+ and his mom says that without that program it probably wouldn't have happened.
I tried to use a version about 5 years ago and found it somewhat frustrating, but the best of breed. I heard that it had improved quite a bit and recommended it.
Great I feel that way also, IF.
If you send us a couple of thousand so we can install software that enforces and monitors usage to prevent spyware
If you come over and spend a couple of days training users on how to prevent installation of spyware?
If you supply us with a technician a couple a days a month to clean up one of the users computers which has crashed?
Then I wouldn't have a problem with it. Due to resource usage and time spent on this issue. My current estimate for the last year is about $10,000 for 100 computers. This is money directly out of the IT budget and doesn't include lost time in user productivity. This includes computer recovery time, training, anti-spyware installation.
The other issue is cost of anti-virus. We have some computers with 400 MHz - 500Mhz CPU which until recently were working fine. Used mainly to read mail work on Office documents and such. Despite no changes to OS or software these are becoming unusable. We find that if we turn off the anti-virus they work fine, turn it back on and it's like working in mud. Okay, so now let's add another $15,000 for upgrading computers.
If users were using Linux these computers would still be usable. So we'll only add on $7,500 for 2 year life we lost with these computers due to running MS or $3,250/year in lost computer usage (Assuming 4 year computer life).
So I just had $13,250/year per 100 computers tacked onto my IT budget. This is a very conservative estimate, but it seriously pisses me off, especially when I don't see it in the latest MS TCO calculations.
And to top it off, this report indicates that most of the anti-spyware installs were ineffective.
They understand the Asian business culture even less than they do the US. When your dealing with Asian culture they will smile and say we are sorry, what can we do to make you happy. While in the background everyone is getting the whips, chains, and tasers. All Ballmer did with this statement is acknowledge that they were going to start a business war. What he may fail to see is that the business war has already started. He just told them where they were going to throw a salvo. So now they can posture being defensless and talk and negotiate on this point, while making other plans.
I really think that his statements were meant for the ear of US businesses.
Yeah, or I could be in a closet in a mud hut in Fallujah typing this on a commodore64 or using WebTV with one of those towel looking hats on my head.
Geez I feel so much better. Thank goodness I have this tin foil hat. Thanks Alcoa.
Prior art. If your technology and information was out there public, prior to their claim of invention, then it's there bad. But the problem is, you need a lawyer with about 350 billion dollars behind him.
That's one of the main reasons the US needs to reform it's patent laws.
But then again, what do we do with all those left over lawyers. Ahhhhh! We increase the number of representatives in Congress.
Which brings us to the question, could we be more f&*%$d than we currently are?
I canceled their crap 3-4 months ago.
The sky is falling.
The sky is falling.
The sky is falling.
Protect our advertising dollars.
The sky is falling.
The only chance you have is with RH and Suse, god forbid you should go to a newsgroup and ask someone. (Man, you gave us the internet and now we're using it, for something besides downloading songs and movies, ain't that a bitch). We just can't do that. But relying on talking to someone on the phone for 12 hours for $200/hr. Yeah, that make sense.
I have yet to have two users logged into a Windows Machine NT, 2000 or XP at the same time using a GUI interface. Whereas 4 years ago, when I first started using linux I was able to have multiple users logged into a machine using a GUI interface independently. These are multiple users logged into the same machine at the same time. As far as NT being called a multi user system, yes multiple people can log onto the system, but not at the same time #4 The reason that most of these points don't make sense to you is that you have never truly used a multi user system. (that's the only way I can make sense of your statement)
Another thing try applying a patch to a MS system remotely. Hopefully someones there with Administrative privileges to input the CD or mount the partition with the CD.(this is with apps mainly)
#3 The use of RPC has been encouraged by MS. (See how simple it is to program remote apps with MS)
#1 Okay maybe it is modular, but it is presented to everyone else as monolithic totally integrated design. If I can't work with the modules or seperate them out, then as far as I am concerned it is a monolith.
I think that 2 is also required. This is the number one reason we haven't adopted OO, because 2 or more people can't be working on the same document at the same time, like MS Office Share feature.
I believe that a lot of other small to medium sized businesses are in the same situation, where they are using multiple excel files like a simple database.
Maybe we should just tell him he can't do that with a linux system. It seems like everybody wants to tell him how to raise the kid instead of how to solve the technical problem
I was really interested in some answers to this.
Poor MS.
So what Gartner is saying is that MS, the biggest baddest computer programming company out there, can't come up with a scheme that would reduce/stop software pirating.
I guess if they did, they would have to add the cost of license management to TCO and that just wouldn't be right.
I noticed that the RSS Summary page is gone.
During the last week a couple of magazines have come out with articles showing all the good things you can do with RSS. Now some of the MS techies around here are going RSS.. RSS.. RSS it's so great. it's so wonderful, We've got to have it, we should put it in every application and on everybodies desktop.
So last week I showed them that it was and had been incorporated into Evolution.
So now they take it out!!!!
Man talk about bad timing Plus they discuss all the other places in gnome where you can use/find it. I've tried some of those and they never seemed to work as good. How many users, have the news scroll working on there desktop? Yeah, that's real useful. Five letters in a title scrolling by in a window. If I write it down as they go by, I may be able to figure out the title. Maybe I should go sell my Novell stock, because it's beginning to look like Netware all over again.
I'd have to agree with some of this response.
Those of us that work on linux need to face the fact that we have a serious problem, and to be honest I'm not sure how we can cure it. Things I've noticed in the last 4 months.
1. There are a lot of documents out there which are old and therefore confusing to users. Example: I was recently looking for information on swatch and i came across directions on configuration which were outdated. The posting wasn't clear on the date or the version.
2. Some of the documents are confusing, it becomes difficult to figure out what is supposed to work how and when.
3. A number of groups or sites appear to have taken to combining all of their emails to monthly downloads. So if you are looking for a problem you have to download a few months and search through it to find out if anyone has posted that problem.
4. Newsgroups seem to have become more acidic lately to posters. I have noticed a larger number of postings denigrating some user for a silly post or being off topic or just somebody trying to troll. This may be related to linux's growing popularity, or increasing competition. But this creates a serious problem when you try to tell people that they can go to a newsgroup to find an answer.(This may also be related to MS being able to moderate some of their groups more closely)
Okay, it seems that I may have gotten a little off-topic here. But these are some of the issues that relate to TOC. It costs money to have people go look up information. Yes, I agree a lot of these people should never have been computer technicians or consultants. Just keep in mind that this guy may be the only computer expert <cough><cough> they have and as long as he doesn't feel comfortable working with linux or working around the linux environment, he is going to keep pushing windows. And as long as there are 250,000 guys like this out there, companies are not going to write drivers for linux, applications for linux or games for linux.
</rant>
All I can say is that I encourage you to keep posting. The methods used here to keep trolling to a minimum are not perfect and do lead sometimes to unfair censorship. But, basically I'd encourage you to just keep posting and the hell with the points. I may strongly disagree with what you have to say, but I appreciate your participation despite your knack for severely pissing me off.
And if you get to date Natalie Portman before I do, then f#$% this karma thing it was meaningless.
This is pretty close to exactly what I was thinking about. But I would want it to call out to my cell phone and tell me if there is a status change. I can get nagios to tell it if there is a problem and if it detects it, it can then send a message to me over the phone. Email messaging doesn't work when your firewall or internet connection goes down. Which is when the critical backups over VPN goes down. I have been trying to figure how to do this for about a year now.
Most of the computer hardware is made in Asia. Asia is already leaning toward OpenSource. I think a stunt like this would make them jump all over it. It would prove their concerns that MS wants to dictate their economy and can't be trusted. As far as MB, hardware manufacturers go, we would find that hardware made for US may have this built in, but hardware made for Asia would not. So what happens, people start buying more hardware from Asian importers, much like some Asian movies(Hero).
Then what if an OpenSource standard is created and adopted in Asia, where all the hardware is made, which Asian manufacturers don't have to pay an extra fee to produce. The OpenSource variant becomes cheaper or has a greater supply
So bring on your marketing bugles Intel and MS push/demand these security features be added, this could be the nail those overzealous linux fanatics were looking for. Especially if someone is able to crack the MS variant.
I say "Bring it on".
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming 92% of the users use IE and default to MSN.
2/3 of the workforce 100 million
5 minutes per day
245 workdays per year
$20 / hour
$40.8B
See there's the real threat.
So if users would just give up IE, we could kiss the Social Security Issues goodbye
Come on GWB, you just aren't trying, think outside the box
I'll drink to that
Although this is funny, I believe it does bring up a relevant point. If you allow software patents where do you stop, where do decide the difference between software and non-fiction works.
To me it appears that it would never end. The dividing line between copyright and patents could be completely blurred. The only group that would benefit from this appears to be lawyers.
Both my brother and a friend of his purchased servers from Dell. Neither actually use the computer for something I would call a server, both purchased based on equipment specs. Mainly they wanted a high end workstation with raid and multiprocessor. I'm curious as to whether this would have been classified as server sales by MS and /or the equipment manufacturer.
Great under IE it causes a system to crash.
I really don't think that they will charge for this
. I believe what they have done is purchase a stop gap measure until Longhorn comes out. They are currently getting dinged on this TCO thing. One of the big points that kills them here is not the initial cost of OS, but the third party stuff that it also requires. Currently you can't run Windows and IE on the internet without Anti-virus, spyware detection/removal tool and a firewall. They have addressed, somewhat, the firewall issue with WinXP SP2. But the user is still out about another $60 in 3rd party software for AV and Spyware removal tools.
But when MS purchased RAV, I also hoped they would bundle AV with the operating system. I've pretty much given up on that dream.
Currently I don't see paper going away. We have documents and records that have been sitting in a file cabinet for 15 years.
We haven't had to move them to new media, get concerned about format compatability or any of that. It's there.
It's not as easy to get to as an electronic media form, but it's more dependable than electronic information.
I wish someone would do a study on data and come up with some idea of how long we really need to keep it.( I realize that some data has legal obligation for storage) But sometimes you look at this data and feel like those guys on the commercial in the conference room, how much does all this stuff cost? I think part of the problem is that nobody has done a study on how much it cost to store data in perpetuity
I work at a manufacturing facility and there is a lot of data generated. Most of it is just kept and copied over and over. Some of it is data that was stored in Access 1.0 or something like that. If we needed to get to that data, we would be hard pressed. I think part of the problem is that nobody wants to take responsibility for deleting it.
Maybe one day they have a class at Harvard Business School doing Cost-Benefit analysis on keeping data. Then maybe we could get rid of some of this crap.
I have a relative that has severe dyslexia. This program has been instrumental in getting him through college. He's going through a prestigous private business school and is doing well, 3.0+ and his mom says that without that program it probably wouldn't have happened.
I tried to use a version about 5 years ago and found it somewhat frustrating, but the best of breed. I heard that it had improved quite a bit and recommended it.
Great I feel that way also, IF.
If you send us a couple of thousand so we can install software that enforces and monitors usage to prevent spyware
If you come over and spend a couple of days training users on how to prevent installation of spyware?
If you supply us with a technician a couple a days a month to clean up one of the users computers which has crashed?
Then I wouldn't have a problem with it. Due to resource usage and time spent on this issue. My current estimate for the last year is about $10,000 for 100 computers. This is money directly out of the IT budget and doesn't include lost time in user productivity. This includes computer recovery time, training, anti-spyware installation.
The other issue is cost of anti-virus. We have some computers with 400 MHz - 500Mhz CPU which until recently were working fine. Used mainly to read mail work on Office documents and such. Despite no changes to OS or software these are becoming unusable. We find that if we turn off the anti-virus they work fine, turn it back on and it's like working in mud. Okay, so now let's add another $15,000 for upgrading computers.
If users were using Linux these computers would still be usable. So we'll only add on $7,500 for 2 year life we lost with these computers due to running MS or $3,250/year in lost computer usage (Assuming 4 year computer life).
So I just had $13,250/year per 100 computers tacked onto my IT budget. This is a very conservative estimate, but it seriously pisses me off, especially when I don't see it in the latest MS TCO calculations.
And to top it off, this report indicates that most of the anti-spyware installs were ineffective.
They understand the Asian business culture even less than they do the US. When your dealing with Asian culture they will smile and say we are sorry, what can we do to make you happy. While in the background everyone is getting the whips, chains, and tasers.
All Ballmer did with this statement is acknowledge that they were going to start a business war. What he may fail to see is that the business war has already started. He just told them where they were going to throw a salvo. So now they can posture being defensless and talk and negotiate on this point, while making other plans.
I really think that his statements were meant for the ear of US businesses.
Yeah, or I could be in a closet in a mud hut in Fallujah typing this on a commodore64 or using WebTV with one of those towel looking hats on my head.
Geez I feel so much better. Thank goodness I have this tin foil hat. Thanks Alcoa.
Prior art.
If your technology and information was out there public, prior to their claim of invention, then it's there bad.
But the problem is, you need a lawyer with about 350 billion dollars behind him.
That's one of the main reasons the US needs to reform it's patent laws.
But then again, what do we do with all those left over lawyers. Ahhhhh! We increase the number of representatives in Congress.
Which brings us to the question, could we be more f&*%$d than we currently are?
You can patent anything, just ask Ballmer.
I canceled their crap 3-4 months ago.
The sky is falling.
The sky is falling.
The sky is falling.
Protect our advertising dollars.
The sky is falling.
The only chance you have is with RH and Suse, god forbid you should go to a newsgroup and ask someone. (Man, you gave us the internet and now we're using it, for something besides downloading songs and movies, ain't that a bitch). We just can't do that.
But relying on talking to someone on the phone for 12 hours for $200/hr. Yeah, that make sense.
Shi* I'll talk to you on the phone for $200/hr.
US piracy 15%
China piracy 95%
I'm not doubting your numbers but I would like to know the source.
I have yet to have two users logged into a Windows Machine NT, 2000 or XP at the same time using a GUI interface.
Whereas 4 years ago, when I first started using linux I was able to have multiple users logged into a machine using a GUI interface independently.
These are multiple users logged into the same machine at the same time.
As far as NT being called a multi user system, yes multiple people can log onto the system, but not at the same time
#4 The reason that most of these points don't make sense to you is that you have never truly used a multi user system. (that's the only way I can make sense of your statement)
Another thing try applying a patch to a MS system remotely. Hopefully someones there with Administrative privileges to input the CD or mount the partition with the CD.(this is with apps mainly)
#3 The use of RPC has been encouraged by MS. (See how simple it is to program remote apps with MS)
#1 Okay maybe it is modular, but it is presented to everyone else as monolithic totally integrated design. If I can't work with the modules or seperate them out, then as far as I am concerned it is a monolith.
I think that 2 is also required. This is the number one reason we haven't adopted OO, because 2 or more people can't be working on the same document at the same time, like MS Office Share feature.
I believe that a lot of other small to medium sized businesses are in the same situation, where they are using multiple excel files like a simple database.
Maybe we should just tell him he can't do that with a linux system.
It seems like everybody wants to tell him how to raise the kid instead of how to solve the technical problem
I was really interested in some answers to this.
Poor MS.
So what Gartner is saying is that MS, the biggest baddest computer programming company out there, can't come up with a scheme that would reduce/stop software pirating.
I guess if they did, they would have to add the cost of license management to TCO and that just wouldn't be right.
I noticed that the RSS Summary page is gone.
During the last week a couple of magazines have come out with articles showing all the good things you can do with RSS.
Now some of the MS techies around here are going RSS.. RSS.. RSS it's so great. it's so wonderful, We've got to have it, we should put it in every application and on everybodies desktop.
So last week I showed them that it was and had been incorporated into Evolution.
So now they take it out!!!!
Man talk about bad timing
Plus they discuss all the other places in gnome where you can use/find it. I've tried some of those and they never seemed to work as good.
How many users, have the news scroll working on there desktop? Yeah, that's real useful. Five letters in a title scrolling by in a window. If I write it down as they go by, I may be able to figure out the title.
Maybe I should go sell my Novell stock, because it's beginning to look like Netware all over again.
I'd have to agree with some of this response.
Those of us that work on linux need to face the fact that we have a serious problem, and to be honest I'm not sure how we can cure it. Things I've noticed in the last 4 months.
1. There are a lot of documents out there which are old and therefore confusing to users. Example: I was recently looking for information on swatch and i came across directions on configuration which were outdated. The posting wasn't clear on the date or the version.
2. Some of the documents are confusing, it becomes difficult to figure out what is supposed to work how and when.
3. A number of groups or sites appear to have taken to combining all of their emails to monthly downloads. So if you are looking for a problem you have to download a few months and search through it to find out if anyone has posted that problem.
4. Newsgroups seem to have become more acidic lately to posters. I have noticed a larger number of postings denigrating some user for a silly post or being off topic or just somebody trying to troll. This may be related to linux's growing popularity, or increasing competition. But this creates a serious problem when you try to tell people that they can go to a newsgroup to find an answer.(This may also be related to MS being able to moderate some of their groups more closely)
Okay, it seems that I may have gotten a little off-topic here. But these are some of the issues that relate to TOC. It costs money to have people go look up information. Yes, I agree a lot of these people should never have been computer technicians or consultants. Just keep in mind that this guy may be the only computer expert <cough><cough> they have and as long as he doesn't feel comfortable working with linux or working around the linux environment, he is going to keep pushing windows. And as long as there are 250,000 guys like this out there, companies are not going to write drivers for linux, applications for linux or games for linux.
</rant>
All I can say is that I encourage you to keep posting. The methods used here to keep trolling to a minimum are not perfect and do lead sometimes to unfair censorship.
But, basically I'd encourage you to just keep posting and the hell with the points.
I may strongly disagree with what you have to say, but I appreciate your participation despite your knack for severely pissing me off.
And if you get to date Natalie Portman before I do, then f#$% this karma thing it was meaningless.
This is pretty close to exactly what I was thinking about.
But I would want it to call out to my cell phone and tell me if there is a status change. I can get nagios to tell it if there is a problem and if it detects it, it can then send a message to me over the phone.
Email messaging doesn't work when your firewall or internet connection goes down. Which is when the critical backups over VPN goes down.
I have been trying to figure how to do this for about a year now.
Most of the computer hardware is made in Asia. Asia is already leaning toward OpenSource. I think a stunt like this would make them jump all over it. It would prove their concerns that MS wants to dictate their economy and can't be trusted. As far as MB, hardware manufacturers go, we would find that hardware made for US may have this built in, but hardware made for Asia would not. So what happens, people start buying more hardware from Asian importers, much like some Asian movies(Hero).
Then what if an OpenSource standard is created and adopted in Asia, where all the hardware is made, which Asian manufacturers don't have to pay an extra fee to produce.
The OpenSource variant becomes cheaper or has a greater supply
So bring on your marketing bugles Intel and MS push/demand these security features be added, this could be the nail those overzealous linux fanatics were looking for.
Especially if someone is able to crack the MS variant.
I say "Bring it on".
That's why there is linuxbase.org.