If MSFT is going to try and litigate Linux they're going to try it with or without Novell. OpenOffice is compatible with a lot of file formats, including PDF export. If this was some attempt to poison an open source code base it's both clumsy and ineffective.
Unless Ballmer is completely stupid...and I wouldn't necessarily rule that out...then you have to believe the SCO litigation-by-proxy is seen internally as a huge, embarrassing mistake. If anything the whole fiaSCO actually highlighted how strong Linux is from an IP standpoint. SCO demonstrated that attacking Linux is bad business, and the reaction of the open source to community to an attack from MSFT could be even more extreme.
In my opinion Ballmer is bluffing. It would be stupid for MSFT to launch a direct attack against Linux. More likely this is their own clumsy way of trying to cut a deal, handicapped by naturally poor corporate execution and their ego driven CEO. You don't have to look any farther than Zune to see another glaring example of ego inspired faltering execution. Ballmer wanted to grab a piece of the iPod market because he doesn't like Jobs and had they been anyone but MSFT they might have succeeded. This same group isn't going to be any more effective or execute any better against Linux. So don't give them the satisfaction of going off the handle and every bit of drool that comes out of Ballmer's mouth.
Because the planet is going to be tropical after pumping that much CO2 into the atmosphere. That's good if you own property in central Georgia because it's going to be ocean front one of these days. And Florida...well, you sort of support the people backing the oil companies. Knowing how big you all are on making people take responsibility for their choices, the rest of us will honor your commitment to that ideal by standing back and watching the flooding. We'll have George fly over in Air Force One and look suitably concerned.
Whether there's oil in the ground or not is not material. What is material that Saudi Arabia, one of our top oil suppliers, is a corrupt, decadent country that also happens to be one of the top exporters and financiers of militant Islam. Suddenly cutting our use of oil would send them down the economic toilet and into political chaos. That unfortunate event would cut off one of the biggest foreign sources of lobbying dollars in the history of corrupt politics. It's a horrible, wickedly dysfunctional relationship between the royal family, Washington and US weapons manufacturers, which sell a lot of our top shelf military hardware to the Saudis. Why do you think that getting off foreign oil isn't a national security priority?
Our energy policy today is to the US what Pearl Harbor was to the Navy before WWII: A disaster waiting to happen.
Well, when you consider the Chamber of Commerce gets 100K from every corporate donor...and that's on the low end...business has a lot of money to make sure enforcement is lax.
This isn't exactly new. When Clinton proposed universal health care it was HMO's and drug companies lining up to throw money at influencing public opinion against it.
Unless we come up with a way of creating a more intelligent and discerning general population...and I wouldn't hold my breath on that...anyone with a big enough budget to afford a negative campaign is going to be able to smear every good idea that some business group wants to see killed. The only other possible solution is to change the perception that a corporation is an artificial person with an absolute right to free speech. Restrictions they would probably then skirt by creating and funding lobbying groups separate from the corporation to promote its interests. Many of them do that anyway to avoid being publicly linked to "research" that shows there is no stinking global warming.
It's a tricky question. How to level the playing field when the corporate world can spend investor dollars in the defense of their own interests but still give them ability to present their side of things. Not sure there are any easy answers. Besides influencing the news and public opinion many corporations are also paying for scientific research results that support the conclusions they want. And there are plenty of research organizations, public and private, willing to compromise the results in the interest of getting the money, which they justify by saying the money will support other research that will balance out the evil of selling out.
I wonder how much of this the public really understands? Considering the/. crowd is bit more technical than the average PC owner. How many people downloaded songs from MSFT thinking they'd be able to play them anywhere. Going to be a rude surprise to find out all the music they purchased is in a format MSFT is moving away from. Nice. All that money you invested...gone.
Electronic voting has fairly demonstrably been adopted for the express purpose of more easily committing fraud.
First, I agree with you that voting needs to be open and verifiable. That's probably the only thing 91% of the electorate agrees on.
But I'm not sure electronic voting fraud on a national scale would be all that easy. Not all the voting machines are made by one company and the voting process can be quite different place to place. Though I'm sure cheating here and there has occurred, fraud on a massive scale takes people cooperating. The more people involved, the more the potential one of them will get cold feet or attack of conscience and squeal. I'm not sure there are a lot of people willing to risk trading their country club membership for federal prison to help Karl Rove.
Besides another potential problem with counting on people to cheat in elections is what happens if they decide to cheat on you?
PC technology is getting more mature so I'm not surprised to see sales flatten out. Home computers were already far more powerful than the average person ever needed almost ten years ago. Today they're over-powered to the point the average user can get by years longer before there's compelling reason to buy a new machine.
I would consider myself a power user, built all my own PC's. Some of them are going on five years old and there's no compelling reason to upgrade them. I can work, play games, watch TV or movies...why do I need a new computer? Okay, they're not the hottest and fastest boxes on the market. So what? They're fast enough for me. The weak link in the PC interface is sitting in the chair. No matter how fast a PC is, absolute speed is going to be limited at some point by the user. You can only type so fast and take in so much information. Any mid-range machine today can stay ahead of the user in terms of information flow.
Another trend impacting white box PC sales is the proliferation of specialty PC devices like game consoles, mp3 players and appliances like Blackberry. Those off-load what were traditional PC tasks. Where did PC makers think the growth was going to come from? If they think they have it bad now, just wait until the $100.00 laptops (now $175.00 I think) start flooding the market.
Unless he used false documents to bypass airport security, or the government can demonstrate that others did, it's going to be tough to make a case. A security researcher publishing an embarrassing hole in our False Hope brand security system right before a pivotal election...his lawyer should have a field day with that one. It's going to be tough to prove intent and all it takes is one of us on the jury. It would be goofy to take this to trial.
Instead of fixing the glaring hole our tireless defenders of the homeland instead expend a huge amount of time and government resources to attack the messenger. Brilliant. The icing on the stupid cake was breaking the window instead of just getting a locksmith. That genius strategy had to come right from Gonzales. No underling could be that ignorant and not have the idea slapped down as utter stupidity. No, the really stupid ideas have to come from way up. High enough for anyone with a mortgage to be afraid to point out the obvious.
But none of that will matter to the right wing. There doesn't seem to be any new data or weight of evidence that will make them change their mind. Amazing in their intractability.
Good luck with that. Bush can't control Baghdad with 140,000 troops, what makes him think he could control Rhode Island if they were pissed off? Though it could be scary power in the hands of someone competent it's going to be expensive to use.
America is too big, too open and way too easy to sabotage to try and control by martial law. Besides, we're almost bankrupt now, where they going to get the money to occupy an area the size of a state? Especially if the people in that state don't want to be occupied.
Though the bug was caught this late in the game it does appear to be, although minimally, that MS is trying to do the right thing for once.
One minor observation. MSFT cleared over 3 billion dollars LAST QUARTER! You'd think they could have taken a paltry 300 or 400 million of just that one quarter of profit and invested in the technical resources to get Vista out the door on time.
You are seen as a cost center, when your contributions can be very useful to an organization.
Too bad the people who really need to get that message wouldn't be reading/. Here's another one. You actually practice kaizen in IT. Constantly improving your business processes, getting your organization down to the very minimum of people, shaping your business practices to provide maximum service to the customer. Over the span of a couple years you are able to move one person to another job, then another. Demands increase but you still manage improvements and hold or reduce costs. You are profitable as a department.
The reward for all that hard work? One day someone sticks their head in the door and says, "We need to cut IT staff by 20%." Just like that.
...why management thinks IT people have no grasp of practical business concepts.
Think of this as a credit union for software development. A hybrid between open source and a pure commercial venture. Co-op business models and profits are not mutually exclusive. The credit union I belong to operates profitably, as will any that want to stay in business. The local farmer's co-op in town makes a profit, then cuts a check for part of it back to the members. Grocery co-ops thrive, though you rarely hear about them because they don't usually have an advertising budget.
He can't be more specific on how they would operate because there's no way to predict that without actually forming one. The structure and operation are more fluid than a commercial venture. And the character and operation will change as the membership changes over time.
I think once the co-op development model undergoes more development it will be recognized as the next step in the evolution of software as a resource commodity. It's a business model that's been around a lot longer than any of us. It's just strange to those of you growing up on the internet because it involves human interaction in meat space.;)
This is the same Forbes that called all the tech jobs going overseas in the late 90's "pruning the dead wood." And treated SCO like their case actually had merit.
We have all kinds of tough new drunk driving enforcement over here, too. Though thankfully short of fingerprinting people going into clubs. The net effect is people who are problem drinkers drink anyway and responsible people, many of whom don't like the police gettin' up in their business, stay home. Instead we'll have private parties, where our guests can stay the night. Just like I'm guessing a lot of people will skip their pint at the pub because being fingerprinted seems sort of creepy.
You might think that's a responsible solution and you'd be right. The downside is for people trying to run a business. The more enforcement, the more responsible people stay home. It's getting to the point we don't go out on weekends at all. Who wants to run the road block gauntlet just to go out to eat and dancing for a couple hours?
More enforcement is always easy from a political point of view. It's a feel good thing to do that doesn't really work, but since when do results matter in political solutions? I'm not sure there are any easy answers. But I can say for sure, the tougher you get on enforcement, the more your business and entertainment district is going to suffer.
Or maybe they're worried that the code contains evidence of tampering with election results? Otherwise it's just code. Just because it's public doesn't mean Diebold loses their copyright.
But if that code contains evidence of treason...which is what tampering with election results would be...then anyone involved deserves to be stood up against the nearest wall and shot. Then leave the bodies as a permanent reminder to anyone else thinking about ballot stuffing.
The real question is if the results were rigged, what's that do to the Bush presidency? It would seem to invalidate the '04 election. That means anything he's done while in office should be voided and Kerry should be allowed to serve out the rest of his term. It gets really interesting to consider that the deciding vote on the Supreme Court would be one of those invalidated actions.
And my experience is that the free software guys don't have Marketing Rats, or at least none worthy of the name, else the products wouldn't have names like "The GIMP."
I'm so glad not to be the only one thinking that. I like GIMP for some things but the name gives me Pulp Fiction flashbacks...and not to one of the good parts.
You mean asparagus isn't the most articulate vegetable ever? Dang, guess that means I'll have to send back that plaque I ordered for the Articulate Vegetable Awards show.
If the idea is to make the devices as useful as possible to local populations in diverse places, then the component drivers need to be as available as the software. There's no way to anticipate every situation and every mod a particular community might want to make. And it's worth the effort even if that means it takes another two years to get the device to market.
and to not worry about the people who havn't bothered installing SP2 yet for some reason.
The reason most of my business customers haven't "bothered" installing SP2 is that certain critical applications will stop working. I'm not sure how you're defining "bother" but it's a major deal for them.
In fairness I did start warning them a year ago to start updating those apps. Always on the todo list, never a priority. One of those projects.
...and there are code reviews. One of the customers I work at hired EDS to do a code review (not one of my apps). EDS sent five people...none of them actual programmers. They spent the first two days in a conference room figuring out how to approach the job. 80 man-hours later the EDS team reaches the startling conclusion that they're going to need programmer support for the actual code review.
And people say Big 5 consultants aren't worth the money. Pshaah.
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If MSFT is going to try and litigate Linux they're going to try it with or without Novell. OpenOffice is compatible with a lot of file formats, including PDF export. If this was some attempt to poison an open source code base it's both clumsy and ineffective.
Unless Ballmer is completely stupid...and I wouldn't necessarily rule that out...then you have to believe the SCO litigation-by-proxy is seen internally as a huge, embarrassing mistake. If anything the whole fiaSCO actually highlighted how strong Linux is from an IP standpoint. SCO demonstrated that attacking Linux is bad business, and the reaction of the open source to community to an attack from MSFT could be even more extreme.
In my opinion Ballmer is bluffing. It would be stupid for MSFT to launch a direct attack against Linux. More likely this is their own clumsy way of trying to cut a deal, handicapped by naturally poor corporate execution and their ego driven CEO. You don't have to look any farther than Zune to see another glaring example of ego inspired faltering execution. Ballmer wanted to grab a piece of the iPod market because he doesn't like Jobs and had they been anyone but MSFT they might have succeeded. This same group isn't going to be any more effective or execute any better against Linux. So don't give them the satisfaction of going off the handle and every bit of drool that comes out of Ballmer's mouth.
Spoken like someone without a clue. Sheesh.
It's coming from a country where one of their top tourist draws is sex tourism.
Because the planet is going to be tropical after pumping that much CO2 into the atmosphere. That's good if you own property in central Georgia because it's going to be ocean front one of these days. And Florida...well, you sort of support the people backing the oil companies. Knowing how big you all are on making people take responsibility for their choices, the rest of us will honor your commitment to that ideal by standing back and watching the flooding. We'll have George fly over in Air Force One and look suitably concerned.
Whether there's oil in the ground or not is not material. What is material that Saudi Arabia, one of our top oil suppliers, is a corrupt, decadent country that also happens to be one of the top exporters and financiers of militant Islam. Suddenly cutting our use of oil would send them down the economic toilet and into political chaos. That unfortunate event would cut off one of the biggest foreign sources of lobbying dollars in the history of corrupt politics. It's a horrible, wickedly dysfunctional relationship between the royal family, Washington and US weapons manufacturers, which sell a lot of our top shelf military hardware to the Saudis. Why do you think that getting off foreign oil isn't a national security priority?
Our energy policy today is to the US what Pearl Harbor was to the Navy before WWII: A disaster waiting to happen.
Well, when you consider the Chamber of Commerce gets 100K from every corporate donor...and that's on the low end...business has a lot of money to make sure enforcement is lax.
This isn't exactly new. When Clinton proposed universal health care it was HMO's and drug companies lining up to throw money at influencing public opinion against it.
Unless we come up with a way of creating a more intelligent and discerning general population...and I wouldn't hold my breath on that...anyone with a big enough budget to afford a negative campaign is going to be able to smear every good idea that some business group wants to see killed. The only other possible solution is to change the perception that a corporation is an artificial person with an absolute right to free speech. Restrictions they would probably then skirt by creating and funding lobbying groups separate from the corporation to promote its interests. Many of them do that anyway to avoid being publicly linked to "research" that shows there is no stinking global warming.
It's a tricky question. How to level the playing field when the corporate world can spend investor dollars in the defense of their own interests but still give them ability to present their side of things. Not sure there are any easy answers. Besides influencing the news and public opinion many corporations are also paying for scientific research results that support the conclusions they want. And there are plenty of research organizations, public and private, willing to compromise the results in the interest of getting the money, which they justify by saying the money will support other research that will balance out the evil of selling out.
I wonder how much of this the public really understands? Considering the /. crowd is bit more technical than the average PC owner. How many people downloaded songs from MSFT thinking they'd be able to play them anywhere. Going to be a rude surprise to find out all the music they purchased is in a format MSFT is moving away from. Nice. All that money you invested...gone.
Electronic voting has fairly demonstrably been adopted for the express purpose of more easily committing fraud.
First, I agree with you that voting needs to be open and verifiable. That's probably the only thing 91% of the electorate agrees on.
But I'm not sure electronic voting fraud on a national scale would be all that easy. Not all the voting machines are made by one company and the voting process can be quite different place to place. Though I'm sure cheating here and there has occurred, fraud on a massive scale takes people cooperating. The more people involved, the more the potential one of them will get cold feet or attack of conscience and squeal. I'm not sure there are a lot of people willing to risk trading their country club membership for federal prison to help Karl Rove.
Besides another potential problem with counting on people to cheat in elections is what happens if they decide to cheat on you?
PC technology is getting more mature so I'm not surprised to see sales flatten out. Home computers were already far more powerful than the average person ever needed almost ten years ago. Today they're over-powered to the point the average user can get by years longer before there's compelling reason to buy a new machine.
I would consider myself a power user, built all my own PC's. Some of them are going on five years old and there's no compelling reason to upgrade them. I can work, play games, watch TV or movies...why do I need a new computer? Okay, they're not the hottest and fastest boxes on the market. So what? They're fast enough for me. The weak link in the PC interface is sitting in the chair. No matter how fast a PC is, absolute speed is going to be limited at some point by the user. You can only type so fast and take in so much information. Any mid-range machine today can stay ahead of the user in terms of information flow.
Another trend impacting white box PC sales is the proliferation of specialty PC devices like game consoles, mp3 players and appliances like Blackberry. Those off-load what were traditional PC tasks. Where did PC makers think the growth was going to come from? If they think they have it bad now, just wait until the $100.00 laptops (now $175.00 I think) start flooding the market.
Your code will be assimilated.
From experience I've known that you and I see eye to eye on a number of industry issues but I'm a little baffled by your idealism on this front:
Baffled by a company writing an honest review instead of a fluff piece. And this is what industry expects from trade rags. Pathetic.
Unless he used false documents to bypass airport security, or the government can demonstrate that others did, it's going to be tough to make a case. A security researcher publishing an embarrassing hole in our False Hope brand security system right before a pivotal election...his lawyer should have a field day with that one. It's going to be tough to prove intent and all it takes is one of us on the jury. It would be goofy to take this to trial.
Instead of fixing the glaring hole our tireless defenders of the homeland instead expend a huge amount of time and government resources to attack the messenger. Brilliant. The icing on the stupid cake was breaking the window instead of just getting a locksmith. That genius strategy had to come right from Gonzales. No underling could be that ignorant and not have the idea slapped down as utter stupidity. No, the really stupid ideas have to come from way up. High enough for anyone with a mortgage to be afraid to point out the obvious.
But none of that will matter to the right wing. There doesn't seem to be any new data or weight of evidence that will make them change their mind. Amazing in their intractability.
Good luck with that. Bush can't control Baghdad with 140,000 troops, what makes him think he could control Rhode Island if they were pissed off? Though it could be scary power in the hands of someone competent it's going to be expensive to use.
America is too big, too open and way too easy to sabotage to try and control by martial law. Besides, we're almost bankrupt now, where they going to get the money to occupy an area the size of a state? Especially if the people in that state don't want to be occupied.
Though the bug was caught this late in the game it does appear to be, although minimally, that MS is trying to do the right thing for once.
One minor observation. MSFT cleared over 3 billion dollars LAST QUARTER! You'd think they could have taken a paltry 300 or 400 million of just that one quarter of profit and invested in the technical resources to get Vista out the door on time.
Ya think?
You are seen as a cost center, when your contributions can be very useful to an organization.
Too bad the people who really need to get that message wouldn't be reading /. Here's another one. You actually practice kaizen in IT. Constantly improving your business processes, getting your organization down to the very minimum of people, shaping your business practices to provide maximum service to the customer. Over the span of a couple years you are able to move one person to another job, then another. Demands increase but you still manage improvements and hold or reduce costs. You are profitable as a department.
The reward for all that hard work? One day someone sticks their head in the door and says, "We need to cut IT staff by 20%." Just like that.
It's all quite insane.
...why management thinks IT people have no grasp of practical business concepts.
Think of this as a credit union for software development. A hybrid between open source and a pure commercial venture. Co-op business models and profits are not mutually exclusive. The credit union I belong to operates profitably, as will any that want to stay in business. The local farmer's co-op in town makes a profit, then cuts a check for part of it back to the members. Grocery co-ops thrive, though you rarely hear about them because they don't usually have an advertising budget.
He can't be more specific on how they would operate because there's no way to predict that without actually forming one. The structure and operation are more fluid than a commercial venture. And the character and operation will change as the membership changes over time.
I think once the co-op development model undergoes more development it will be recognized as the next step in the evolution of software as a resource commodity. It's a business model that's been around a lot longer than any of us. It's just strange to those of you growing up on the internet because it involves human interaction in meat space. ;)
This is the same Forbes that called all the tech jobs going overseas in the late 90's "pruning the dead wood." And treated SCO like their case actually had merit.
We have all kinds of tough new drunk driving enforcement over here, too. Though thankfully short of fingerprinting people going into clubs. The net effect is people who are problem drinkers drink anyway and responsible people, many of whom don't like the police gettin' up in their business, stay home. Instead we'll have private parties, where our guests can stay the night. Just like I'm guessing a lot of people will skip their pint at the pub because being fingerprinted seems sort of creepy.
You might think that's a responsible solution and you'd be right. The downside is for people trying to run a business. The more enforcement, the more responsible people stay home. It's getting to the point we don't go out on weekends at all. Who wants to run the road block gauntlet just to go out to eat and dancing for a couple hours?
More enforcement is always easy from a political point of view. It's a feel good thing to do that doesn't really work, but since when do results matter in political solutions? I'm not sure there are any easy answers. But I can say for sure, the tougher you get on enforcement, the more your business and entertainment district is going to suffer.
Or maybe they're worried that the code contains evidence of tampering with election results? Otherwise it's just code. Just because it's public doesn't mean Diebold loses their copyright.
But if that code contains evidence of treason...which is what tampering with election results would be...then anyone involved deserves to be stood up against the nearest wall and shot. Then leave the bodies as a permanent reminder to anyone else thinking about ballot stuffing.
The real question is if the results were rigged, what's that do to the Bush presidency? It would seem to invalidate the '04 election. That means anything he's done while in office should be voided and Kerry should be allowed to serve out the rest of his term. It gets really interesting to consider that the deciding vote on the Supreme Court would be one of those invalidated actions.
The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative... Democrats
the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures. Republicans
And my experience is that the free software guys don't have Marketing Rats, or at least none worthy of the name, else the products wouldn't have names like "The GIMP."
I'm so glad not to be the only one thinking that. I like GIMP for some things but the name gives me Pulp Fiction flashbacks...and not to one of the good parts.
30% of Americans fat and stupid
Bush approval ratings still around 30%
Coincidence?
You mean asparagus isn't the most articulate vegetable ever? Dang, guess that means I'll have to send back that plaque I ordered for the Articulate Vegetable Awards show.
Load weapon
Aim at foot
Pull trigger
Profit!!!
If the idea is to make the devices as useful as possible to local populations in diverse places, then the component drivers need to be as available as the software. There's no way to anticipate every situation and every mod a particular community might want to make. And it's worth the effort even if that means it takes another two years to get the device to market.
and to not worry about the people who havn't bothered installing SP2 yet for some reason.
The reason most of my business customers haven't "bothered" installing SP2 is that certain critical applications will stop working. I'm not sure how you're defining "bother" but it's a major deal for them.
In fairness I did start warning them a year ago to start updating those apps. Always on the todo list, never a priority. One of those projects.
...and there are code reviews. One of the customers I work at hired EDS to do a code review (not one of my apps). EDS sent five people...none of them actual programmers. They spent the first two days in a conference room figuring out how to approach the job. 80 man-hours later the EDS team reaches the startling conclusion that they're going to need programmer support for the actual code review.
And people say Big 5 consultants aren't worth the money. Pshaah.