This is only the beginning. Do you think foreign governments are going to respect your privacy? Imagine going to a meeting and the person on the other side of the table knows all the meds you might be taking and all your credit card transactions for the last six months. Sure, sign with us and we can keep your little secret about that apartment across town out of the news.
Let's see them prosecute identity theft in Bangladore. It's only a matter of time before people who make 3 dollars an hour start figuring out how to turn your financial data and credit card numbers into $$$$$.
I'm not sure how valid this observation is, but it seems as if MS lands their FUD in front of decision makers and the OSS community publishes their responses where they're read by people who are already OSS users. Don't take me wrong, I think there's an obligation to counter one-sided marketing copy. I'm just wondering how to equalize the distribution. It doesn't do any good if MSFT and the OSS community are talking to different camps.
I don't know, maybe it's not all one-sided. Interesting question, though.
Someone please remind me again why open source has to be pushed into the same development box as proprietary software? Seems to me OSS developers subject to the same stress as paid developers are getting all the crap without any of the benefits.
Besides, OSS has come along just fine without being subject to other people's ideas about how it should work or a roadmap or any of that other bullshit. If you want predictability and a roadmap and all that, go buy it. If you want particular features on an OSS product, pay someone to develop it for you on your schedule. Now you've got the roadmap you want, in the time frame you want, at a price way under what you'd pay for licenses and everyone benefits from your upgrades.
I say leave well enough alone. Trying to stop OSS now is like trying to stop the wind. It's going to get adopted anyway because it's a smarter way to do business. Don't feel like you have to dance to anyone else's fiddle.
Especially in close quarters like an apartment or dorm. There are certainly advantages to your own private network, free from the prying eyes of administrators. Create your own music sharing network with no worries...until someone in the chain connects to the net. But even then it's a very fluid user environment. Very hard to track. Be funny to see RIAA out on a war drive trying to find music sharing networks.
There would be other possibilities for small regional networks as well. Clever idea.
With MS you can't always tell how deep the cut really is, but you can guess from their reaction. If they bothered to produce a competitive analysis...as bad as it is...it says they've already been stung.
The fact is OO is a serious alternative to Office. As soon as you decide you're tired of MSBS (sounds like a certification) you have somewhere to go. For small businesses OO is a very workable alternative. It's super for producing forms. Notice they didn't say anything about Sun Office, either. Interesting.
And I'm not sure where they get their training figures, but it certainly isn't reality. Figure training and license costs cancel each other out. And I'm betting you could design an in-house training program for less than 299 per person. The way to start if you're thinking about switching in a bigger office is to hand out free disks to everyone and invite them to install it at home. For that matter if you were worried about customers being able to access your documents, send them a free disk too.
Chops to the OO team. They should be proud of what they've accomplished. It's got to feel good taking a serious whack out of MS's bottom line. Yeah, ba-by!
That's because Millington Telephone is also involved with BigRiver, the local ISP. Many MilTel customers can get DSL, at the bargain price of just 60 dollars a month. Also why the local cable company doesn't offer Inet access...same group runs them all if memory serves. BellSouth highspeed is around 45/month.
Atoka is in Tipton county so it would seem like they'll eventually be able to split from MilTel in Shelby county. The Supreme Corporate Court ruling makes certain that Atoka and Munford can't team up to provide a critical mass of infrastructure to get a regional system of their own off the ground. But Atoka is growing a lot faster because the taxes are so much lower. Eventually someone will find that market.
I was tempted to look into setting up WIMAX access in that area. There are some pretty affluent neighborhoods around Atoka. You see a lot of satellite broadband out there which is, as you might guess, also around 60/month. What a coincidence, huh?
I know exactly how you feel. There's about 15 minutes of fun rolling out a new application to users, then it's back to the salt mines.
The only thing I'd add is I think I just got tired of the fight after a while and burned out. Made up my mind this is my last IT job...at least for a while Not even going to accept another position on the same contract. If I ever do go back to IT it will be on my terms, not someone else's.
And what do they have to be so unhappy about? I gotta stand in here in this stupid white coat and count stupid pills all day. One of these days I'm just going to wear a BLUE coat...I'll show 'em. I told 'em.
Just like with phones. I don't care if my phone takes pictures or plays games or plays Free Bird when I'm getting a call. I want a phone that connects reliably and works well for making phone calls.
And I don't want a cash machine to entertain me with up-sells and ads, I want cash. Now. If I need a low interest mortgage I'll use my phone to call the bank. Mortgages are not impluse items, if they were Wal-Mart would have them in displays by the check out lines. How many people walk around thinking, "Gee, I wish I had a low interest mortgage right now." Be interesting to find out if anyone has made a dime off cash machine ads.
Cash machines on XP. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry, but that's f'ing hilarious.
Who are you to apologize for anyone else? I use Linux because I like it and it works, the same reason everyone else here uses it. You can take your starry eyed reference and stick it right up your starry back end. Personally, I think the starry eyed people are the ones thinking Longhorn is going to fix anything.
A bit of a drop from Microsoft. Ha! If that's how you describe the porking a big chunk of the computing public has been taking lately, then I want some of the medication you're taking. Pass the bong, dude.
But, yeah, if you want to keep using Windows, have at it. Some people have to use it for work. Just don't try to connect it to my network.
The worm may attack firewalls, but it's still a Windows problem. I hate to sound unsympathetic (which is usually a clue someone is about to sound that way) but how many times do people have to get virus-smacked before they wise up and move off Windows? There are some really simple Linux distros out there.
It was a great feeling the other day when the wife was checking Email on her Linux workstation and asked me about a funny attachment she got from one of her girlfriends.
As shitty as MSFT has acted, it's not a bit sad to watch them slide.
The Fisher-Price of operating systems teams up with the Tinker Toys of Internet connections. Perfect. Now all the n00bs can migrate to one protected little corner of the net.
I dont know about anybody else, but as much as I dont like people invading my privacy, I would rather not be on a plane with a criminal.
How many times have you been assualted or meanaced on an airplane? What's the reality of that threat? In hundreds of flights, the number of threats for me has been zero, if you don't count the kid kicking the back of my seat on a flight from Denver.
This isn't as much a question of privacy as reality. Does the reality of the threat justify the invasion of privacy? And how do you classify a violent criminal? If they haven't gotten caught, you won't know they're a criminal. If they've been sent up for violent crime before, what are the odds they're going to decide to repeat that behavior on your flight? Does a fist fight in a bar constitute violent behavior? Who makes that decision?
Liberty and privacy don't go away all at once. They get chipped away little by little. Always for a good cause. For the children, to keep violent people off airplanes, to make sure the people who just moved in down the street aren't terrorists.
If we continue to live in a culture of fear and sell our privacy for imagined threats, we'll still have the fear because we're not addressing the real threats and we'll end up living in a police state. We're not that far away now.
All because of some puss who's afraid the person in the seat next to them on the plane might be a criminal.
You really want to take the defense on the question of MS not being stupid? Individually, no. They're very bright and reasonable people. I've met many of them. But I'm talking about their collective intelligence level. Personally, I wouldn't want to defend the intelligence of a lot of what they've done.
You can add DoD and the Army to that list. Army is experimenting with embedded Linux in some battlefield com and data systems, which are pretty cool, btw.
OS X is picking up in popularity with the intelligence and security types, as you mentioned, but also in some of the research fields like high energy physics
There are probably some, but off the top of my head I can't think of a single one.
How many had Kodak filed before their market share started to dwindle? Or SCO before their deck started tilting down at the head?
Seems like IP litigation has gotten way out of hand. If another company steals something from you...not an idea, but the implementation of that idea...you deserve compensation. But there has to be a better system than what we have now. Which is a breeding ground for leeches like Anderner. Blood suckers who don't add any real value. What's strange is he doesn't even seem to have that good of a grasp of copyright issues. But if McBride and company pulled him in to consult, you can see where some of their thinking came from. Hard to tell. It's human nature to tend to rely on other people like themselves. McBride would've resonated on what Anderner is saying.
What I can't figure out is why Boise didn't tell them they were stretching copyright law into shapes that were far outside reality? A good lawyer would've told them they didn't have much of a chance of winning. The next thing out of McBrides's mouth would've been, "We don't need to win."
You're not a web application developer, are you? I can tell you're not.
Yes, I am. And I develop in ASP.NET and VB.NET (not my choice, the customer's. I voted for C#), ASP, PHP and PERL. On the back end Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL. Your comment about being able to build something faster in.NET than traditional ASP makes me wonder if you ever built anything in ASP. I use.NET every single day and I think it sucks. Maybe there are times.Nyet would be faster, but it really depends on the functional specs. Like I said, for publishing and consuming a web service, very nice. And the two times we needed to do that it made short work of it. And if you're developing in an MS environment for MS clients, it's a great choice.
For someone who says they don't like MS, you sure sound like them. The only people I've ever heard stick up for it like you do were the MS instructors and the MS solution providers. Among the developers here we have only one.NET booster.
And I'll stand behind the convoluted, slow, crapass development environment comment, too. Tell them how many hours it takes to install and drags on a fairly beefy workstation. It's true I don't like MS and some things about.NET are nice, but overall it's expensive, it's bloatware and it's slow. Give me Apache, PHP, MySQL and a text editor any day.
Not all of.Net is created equal. ASP.Net is the most horrible, convoluted, clunky, slow, crapass environment to build web applications that dont't scale worth damn that I've ever used. Definitely not going to increase anyone's agility in that department. And I wouldn't put a lot of faith in MS security in any environment. You're right about not staying complacent, though. It is nice for publishing web services and writing an interface for an older system, but for web apps...*retch*.
Desktop and mobile apps, a little different story. Wait, I should say Windows apps. That's a breeze in DotNet. C# is nice, VB.NET should be outlawed. The downside is going from DLL Hell to DLL Version Hell.
MS can bite my butt. The strength of OSS is that it rarely feels the need to re-invent itself. It just gets better and better one generation to the next. I'm not sure it's complacency as much as a different philosophy.
Don't uncouple the media player from the OS, uncouple PC's from the operating system. Maybe that's the remedy the justice department missed. When people go into Best Buy they have to buy the PC and OS separately, then BB installs it for them. BB makes a little green on the install for the clueless and the rest of us can say, "That's okay, I've got Linux disks at home." Or install it themselves. Then the consumer really understands they have a choice, where now they don't. Part of the status quo is the incestuous relationship between hardware vendors and MS. Break that up and let MS compete on an even playing field. They might even be tempted to *shock* add some value to their crapass product.
The truth is most people would rather not bother with it, which would probably be a boon for Apple. But if you made them do the same thing...it would be a boon for techies. Every store would have to have installers or people would take their machine to a certified installer to do it for them for a small fee. Would create some jobs for the tech types. Perhaps unnecessarily but it would make the choice a lot clearer.
...not about you, Valar, you can hold off on the restraining order.
Always thought it would be cool to have a big party somewhere, like the Burning Man event. Except everyone gets together and burns their Microsoft licenses. Call them Roasters or some cute name like that.
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Let's see them prosecute identity theft in Bangladore. It's only a matter of time before people who make 3 dollars an hour start figuring out how to turn your financial data and credit card numbers into $$$$$.
Sometimes it seems like a few them might have taken out a second mortgage to pay for their .NET classes and are trying to protect their investment.
Not exactly. We're sacrificing most everything for the Bush program to plant a flag in Baghdad.
I don't know, maybe it's not all one-sided. Interesting question, though.
Besides, OSS has come along just fine without being subject to other people's ideas about how it should work or a roadmap or any of that other bullshit. If you want predictability and a roadmap and all that, go buy it. If you want particular features on an OSS product, pay someone to develop it for you on your schedule. Now you've got the roadmap you want, in the time frame you want, at a price way under what you'd pay for licenses and everyone benefits from your upgrades.
I say leave well enough alone. Trying to stop OSS now is like trying to stop the wind. It's going to get adopted anyway because it's a smarter way to do business. Don't feel like you have to dance to anyone else's fiddle.
There would be other possibilities for small regional networks as well. Clever idea.
The fact is OO is a serious alternative to Office. As soon as you decide you're tired of MSBS (sounds like a certification) you have somewhere to go. For small businesses OO is a very workable alternative. It's super for producing forms. Notice they didn't say anything about Sun Office, either. Interesting.
And I'm not sure where they get their training figures, but it certainly isn't reality. Figure training and license costs cancel each other out. And I'm betting you could design an in-house training program for less than 299 per person. The way to start if you're thinking about switching in a bigger office is to hand out free disks to everyone and invite them to install it at home. For that matter if you were worried about customers being able to access your documents, send them a free disk too.
Chops to the OO team. They should be proud of what they've accomplished. It's got to feel good taking a serious whack out of MS's bottom line. Yeah, ba-by!
Atoka is in Tipton county so it would seem like they'll eventually be able to split from MilTel in Shelby county. The Supreme Corporate Court ruling makes certain that Atoka and Munford can't team up to provide a critical mass of infrastructure to get a regional system of their own off the ground. But Atoka is growing a lot faster because the taxes are so much lower. Eventually someone will find that market.
I was tempted to look into setting up WIMAX access in that area. There are some pretty affluent neighborhoods around Atoka. You see a lot of satellite broadband out there which is, as you might guess, also around 60/month. What a coincidence, huh?
I know exactly how you feel. There's about 15 minutes of fun rolling out a new application to users, then it's back to the salt mines.
The only thing I'd add is I think I just got tired of the fight after a while and burned out. Made up my mind this is my last IT job...at least for a while Not even going to accept another position on the same contract. If I ever do go back to IT it will be on my terms, not someone else's.
And what do they have to be so unhappy about? I gotta stand in here in this stupid white coat and count stupid pills all day. One of these days I'm just going to wear a BLUE coat...I'll show 'em. I told 'em.
And I don't want a cash machine to entertain me with up-sells and ads, I want cash. Now. If I need a low interest mortgage I'll use my phone to call the bank. Mortgages are not impluse items, if they were Wal-Mart would have them in displays by the check out lines. How many people walk around thinking, "Gee, I wish I had a low interest mortgage right now." Be interesting to find out if anyone has made a dime off cash machine ads.
Cash machines on XP. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry, but that's f'ing hilarious.
A bit of a drop from Microsoft. Ha! If that's how you describe the porking a big chunk of the computing public has been taking lately, then I want some of the medication you're taking. Pass the bong, dude.
But, yeah, if you want to keep using Windows, have at it. Some people have to use it for work. Just don't try to connect it to my network.
to Microsoft! lol.
It was a great feeling the other day when the wife was checking Email on her Linux workstation and asked me about a funny attachment she got from one of her girlfriends.
As shitty as MSFT has acted, it's not a bit sad to watch them slide.
When MSFT pries my cold dead hands off of it.
The Fisher-Price of operating systems teams up with the Tinker Toys of Internet connections. Perfect. Now all the n00bs can migrate to one protected little corner of the net.
How many times have you been assualted or meanaced on an airplane? What's the reality of that threat? In hundreds of flights, the number of threats for me has been zero, if you don't count the kid kicking the back of my seat on a flight from Denver.
This isn't as much a question of privacy as reality. Does the reality of the threat justify the invasion of privacy? And how do you classify a violent criminal? If they haven't gotten caught, you won't know they're a criminal. If they've been sent up for violent crime before, what are the odds they're going to decide to repeat that behavior on your flight? Does a fist fight in a bar constitute violent behavior? Who makes that decision?
Liberty and privacy don't go away all at once. They get chipped away little by little. Always for a good cause. For the children, to keep violent people off airplanes, to make sure the people who just moved in down the street aren't terrorists.
If we continue to live in a culture of fear and sell our privacy for imagined threats, we'll still have the fear because we're not addressing the real threats and we'll end up living in a police state. We're not that far away now.
All because of some puss who's afraid the person in the seat next to them on the plane might be a criminal.
You really want to take the defense on the question of MS not being stupid? Individually, no. They're very bright and reasonable people. I've met many of them. But I'm talking about their collective intelligence level. Personally, I wouldn't want to defend the intelligence of a lot of what they've done.
It's easy to laugh when you're beyond the recall age.
I don't know but I've been told, Slashdot read-ers are migh-ty bold! Sound off like you got a pair, ladies!
In case you're interested, the address for donating the John Kerry campaign is:
http://www.johnkerry.com/
You can add DoD and the Army to that list. Army is experimenting with embedded Linux in some battlefield com and data systems, which are pretty cool, btw.
OS X is picking up in popularity with the intelligence and security types, as you mentioned, but also in some of the research fields like high energy physics
How many had Kodak filed before their market share started to dwindle? Or SCO before their deck started tilting down at the head?
Seems like IP litigation has gotten way out of hand. If another company steals something from you...not an idea, but the implementation of that idea...you deserve compensation. But there has to be a better system than what we have now. Which is a breeding ground for leeches like Anderner. Blood suckers who don't add any real value. What's strange is he doesn't even seem to have that good of a grasp of copyright issues. But if McBride and company pulled him in to consult, you can see where some of their thinking came from. Hard to tell. It's human nature to tend to rely on other people like themselves. McBride would've resonated on what Anderner is saying.
What I can't figure out is why Boise didn't tell them they were stretching copyright law into shapes that were far outside reality? A good lawyer would've told them they didn't have much of a chance of winning. The next thing out of McBrides's mouth would've been, "We don't need to win."
Yes, I am. And I develop in ASP.NET and VB.NET (not my choice, the customer's. I voted for C#), ASP, PHP and PERL. On the back end Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL. Your comment about being able to build something faster in .NET than traditional ASP makes me wonder if you ever built anything in ASP. I use .NET every single day and I think it sucks. Maybe there are times .Nyet would be faster, but it really depends on the functional specs. Like I said, for publishing and consuming a web service, very nice. And the two times we needed to do that it made short work of it. And if you're developing in an MS environment for MS clients, it's a great choice.
For someone who says they don't like MS, you sure sound like them. The only people I've ever heard stick up for it like you do were the MS instructors and the MS solution providers. Among the developers here we have only one .NET booster.
And I'll stand behind the convoluted, slow, crapass development environment comment, too. Tell them how many hours it takes to install and drags on a fairly beefy workstation. It's true I don't like MS and some things about .NET are nice, but overall it's expensive, it's bloatware and it's slow. Give me Apache, PHP, MySQL and a text editor any day.
Desktop and mobile apps, a little different story. Wait, I should say Windows apps. That's a breeze in DotNet. C# is nice, VB.NET should be outlawed. The downside is going from DLL Hell to DLL Version Hell.
MS can bite my butt. The strength of OSS is that it rarely feels the need to re-invent itself. It just gets better and better one generation to the next. I'm not sure it's complacency as much as a different philosophy.
The truth is most people would rather not bother with it, which would probably be a boon for Apple. But if you made them do the same thing...it would be a boon for techies. Every store would have to have installers or people would take their machine to a certified installer to do it for them for a small fee. Would create some jobs for the tech types. Perhaps unnecessarily but it would make the choice a lot clearer.
Always thought it would be cool to have a big party somewhere, like the Burning Man event. Except everyone gets together and burns their Microsoft licenses. Call them Roasters or some cute name like that.