MS Bob was an attempt to model a home office in a literal fashion. It could never work because computers are by definition abstract.
My proposal is for an abstraction, of course. The key question is "what kind of abstraction works most closely like the way we actually think".
My conclusion is that windows and folders do not match the way I (and many creative people) think. Thus, my search for a new model, a unified metaphor that can represent all my tasks, hundreds and thousands of them.
Comparing this with Microsoft Bob is just being ignorant and flippant. However, if that is the best prior art that Slashdot can show me, I at least know that I'm not reinventing the wheel.
This is a troll, I warn you in advance. That is, I am going to deliberate provoke you to think.
Looking at the incredible screenshot of Expocity for Metacity, I think to myself: how can anyone work with such a confusion of information in front of them?
My hero, Dijkstra (anyone who could live with 5 successive constanants in his name must be cool), once said "GOTOs considered harmful". We know where that led us to...
Anyhow, I believe the desktop Window metaphor has outlived its usefulness. It dates to the earliest metaphors of visual computing, but continues today only because it has become dogma. Let me list some of the ways it does not model a true desktop, such as you or I sit at every day and work on.
First, a true desktop has hundreds of objects on it, varying from piles of CDs, documents, bills to be paid, loudspeakers, mouldy cups of coffee... This is the real working environment of most creative people, a cluttered mess that makes perfect sense because it maps our projects. You've all had that sense of panic when someone "cleaned your desk?"
Second, in a real desktop, you add new stuff, it covers old stuff. This is normal and natural and necessary and the only way to filter the real work from the junk. If it ain't screaming at you, it's not serious.
Thirdly, the objects on a GUI windowed desktop do not match the actual objects we work on. I have to look through my email client to find important emails, I have my bookmarks in Konqueror, I have that hot dossier on a disk somewhere.
There has to be a better way.
What we need is a unified desktop that represents the real objects we work on, in a way that mirrors the manner in which we actually use them.
A desktop that hides information which needs to be hidden, and exposes the information which needs to be visible. A desktop that shows everything, from incoming emails to useful web bookmarks, to documents and toys, newsgroups, and devices.
The day will come when people buy software for reasons other than utility: fashion, conspicuous consumption, political affiliation... but today it's simply a matter of price and functionality.
Microsoft can say what they like, but very few people will try OOo and then MSOffice and then choose to pay for MSOffice with their own money simply because of a sound bite.
But the Titor story is particularly weak. If you're going to handle tough realities by fleeing into fantasy, at least pick a decent author and have the guts to face the real world again when it's done. The current problem is not going away by itself, nor is any "time traveller" there to save us or show the way, this is just a reenactment of the Christian Jesus story. The USA is owned by the oligarchs, just like Russia is. The rich men own the government, the courts, the military, the banks, the media, and the economy. There is not going to be any dramatic world war, just a series of revolutions by the have-nots, and a series of bloody repressions by the haves. The Bush administration is actually simply a good old facist dictatorship under democratic cover. One more election victory (and yes, you can expect a dramatic and well-timed terrorist attack to keep the patriotic fever going), and we will be into twenty-five years of hell. And this time there will be no US of A to come and save the world.
The ICANN vs. ITU battle is a stage in the ongoing wars (fought with instruments other than bullets and knives for my fellow slashdottians who take everything uberliterally) between the rich states and the stateless masses.
The ICANN (or should this be called the "UCANT") represents the rich west controlling the Internet, the ITU represents what is laughingly called the "United Nations".
There is about much chance of the ITU taking over the nexus of the Internet as there is of the UN relocating to the Pentagon.
Hmmm, since we're on a serious but enjoyable tangent here, I'll take your question and double it.
The "self-destruction" is implicit in the surrender of the "I". By definition.
However, that is neither good nor bad, since these terms can't even be defined without recourse to the "self" we've just destroyed.
The temporary collection of genes that has registered under the Slashdot alias of HeironymousCoward, and which we can abbreviate as "I" for the purposes of discussion, thinks that what is left after destruction of the "self" is in fact a very harmonious situation.
With no "I" (except in Slashdot, where we can all agree that an alias "exists", representing Karma points, a journal, and many slanderous comments that will haunt the replicator in question until its disintegration), there is also no blame or responsibility beyond the genetic obligation to replicate. Further, there is no need to reflect or plan except when reflection and planning are the natural and easy thing to do.
(I would interject deliciously self-destructive the observation that "conscious decisions" are made about 0.5 seconds after most acts.)
The destruction of the self is therefore not just inevitable as we move towards a deeper understanding of how we (and this replicator uses the term loosely) function, but it is also highly desirable, because it frees us. This replicator cannot say what such freedom brings, but after about 30 minutes of experiencing it, "I" have to report that it is, on the whole, enjoyable.
If Darwin was right, we're just replicators, the concept of "I" is a trick of perspective created by our minds in order to improve our performance, and intelligence is limited by the awareness horizon that, once we cross, we realize it's all a big joke and we self-destruct. Philosophically speaking, of course.
Sigh. At least we'll be able to buy brain-sized supercomputers to replace our auto-anihilating intelligence organs.
Take your standard technology curve (aka Moore's Law), take any specification/cost point, then move ahead an arbitrary point in time and wonders of wonders, it costs less and is smaller and does more.
Yes, one day supercomputers will fit into your wristwatch! What's more, they already do! If you use an ancient measure from, say, 50 years ago.
It's very disappointing to see technology always reduced to whizz-bang figures that are in fact meaningless. What about the impact on our society? What about the capability for good and for bad? What do "good" and "bad" mean, anyhow? How do I know I even exist? What does "I" even mean?
Now, that kind of stuff is worth discussing.
OK, go ahead and mod me as a troll now, if you can't think of an intelligent answer.
Linus: "And the Penguin Prize for top crack smoker of 2003 goes to... yes, SCO!!! Darl, if you'd come up to the stage we can give you this gold plated CD of the Stoned Beaver Linux kernel."
Darl: "I couldn't have done it without all my buddies at Redmond (chokes)... Thanks, Steve and Bill, I love you guys so much!"
Crowd: applause. Cue video animation of stoned beaver...
Secondly, the range of activities that can be considered 'computer crime' are vast, ranging from sabotage by competitors and disgruntled ex-employees, through to vandalism by youths seeking to hack their way to underground fame, through to indebted housewives seeking to make just one more credit card payment anywhich way.
Lastly, you can't measure an iceberg by studying the visible tip, and any 'hacker' who talks about him/herself is almost by definition not representative.
The fact is that computer crime is as widespread as computers, and computer criminals as representative as the people who use computers. When IT was the plaything of the geeky elite, only elite geeky crooks misused it. When computers have pervaded every niche of industrial society, the crooks follow.
In fact the distinctions between 'cyber' and 'real' is becoming moot, not just in terms of crime, but also in business, communications, art, relationships, etc.
Your plan would be a lot more coherent if you had control of most of government, the supreme court, the media, the army, and big business. With all that, I'd agree that voting would kind of be irrelevant.
My Brussels company is actually involved in a cybercrime case (one of our ex-employees woke up one day and decided he wanted to trash our CVS).
The EU has had a cybercrime convention that was passed into law in Belgium in 2000, three years ago. The very first case is currently appearing in court. Until today, cybercrimes have mostly been classified under random sections of the criminal act such as "theft of electricity", "abuse of confidential information", and so on.
Belgium actually has a specialized cybercrime cell in the prosecutor's office. But it's still a very new area and could do with some better coverage. Few people know, for instance, that hacking one's own company is actually considered much more serious than hacking from "the outside", in the case of our departed hacker, worth between 18 months and 3 years in prison.
No-one really knows what counts as "evidence" either, and since laws in most European countries are not based on court cases but on statutory definitions, we don't even know if emails and expert's reports count as evidence.
I think cybercrime will be very important in the years ahead, as more and more business-critical information is stored in databases that can be accessed from the other side of the world if one knows the correct passwords.
Surely you all have dual redundant Internet links? My company has _three_, all through different providers. One is just a simple ADSL.
But sometimes I wish the Net would just vanish and we could return to the good old days of a 9 to 5 job, before these thing called "productivity", "always-on", "emails from other timezones", and of course "unlimited porn", the carrot that makes it all feel worthwile now and then.
Apart from the question of who is actually financing this and what they hope to get from it, the idea is good.
The next year will see a massive publicity campaign from the top 5 music companies as they try to exaggerate the impact of p2p ("try" is what I mean, cause I believe the impact is really huge), in the hope that this will allow them to merge into 2 or 3 companies.
Without some anti-publicity, it means a lot more of the "hacker pirates stealing music" stories. Kazaa are not my choice for a champion, I'd prefer someone like Michael Robertson of mp3.com fame. But it's a start.
Windows has a solid share, yes, but of a market that is inevitably doomed. IT is not a static business, it eats itself continuously, and the desktop PC is a dying beast, being replaced by servers, thin clients, portable formats, etc.
Microsoft has long been aware of this but they have simply been unable, despite their wealth and influence, to enter a single new market with anything like the position they occupy in the PC market. Even in the PDA market, they have been unable to get the 80% or so that defines "control", and they have failed in many other critical areas: set-top boxes, embedded computing, mobile phones, servers, Internet appliances, tablets, etc.
Control over a shrinking market is worth nothing in the long term - look at the music industry. Microsoft needs, badly, to find new markets but every single potential new market turns to Linux and other alternatives (like Symbian on phones) before trying Microsoft.
And Office? Big deal. I mean, seriously, how much more functionality can a person use? Office suites were perfected about 5 years ago, and MS Office has been forcing unwanted upgrades since then. Open source alternatives (OpenOffice, particularly) hit the functional sweetpoint with no particular effort, and again in new markets (Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, China), Microsoft finds itself undercut, unwanted, an outsider with little to say and nothing to offer.
Microsoft are also trapped by the rising tide of technology. Operating systems have become a commodity item, simply because they are a "solved problem". Office suites are much the same thing. Microsoft have tried over the year to move to higher grounds, but most of these are already occupied. Yes, they have entered the ERP market, but is this making a profit for them? Do they make money from SQLServer? Some, but not a lot.
Its harsh, but my judgement is that Microsoft is in a weak position, despite having lots of money and an apparent revenue stream. They cannot get out of the low-level software business: they cannot move into consulting, into hardware, into services... and their business model is a few years away from being turned into worthless vapour, much like the CD-based music industry.
So, basically, for all their size and apparent omnipresence, Microsoft sell the same things they sold 10 years ago, to the same people, in the same way. This is a bad place to be in a world that changes all the time. In this business, if you can't reinvent yourself at least once per decade, you die, period.
Prove me wrong: show me one new market that Microsoft has entered and competed in and created significant revenue.
The sheer ignorance of the post also shocked me. Of course they meant South Africa, but c'mon...
It should be high-school knowledge that culturally and genetically, there is more variation in Africa than in the entire rest of the world, by a huge factor. It's easy just to lump this huge, seething continent together into an amorphous lump, but it's very far from the truth, which is that even a small part of a country like Nigeria has measurably more human variety than anything we're used to.
Another story on Slashdot today about Linux powering a new NASA supercomputer.
Is it not already obvious to everyone except the fanatics that Microsoft is running in the wrong race? Linus is not superman but he's at the eye of a hurricane that is simply erasing the very notion of commercial software.
It's not a question of resources or strategy or even competition. Linux is simply the product of a unstoppable and irreversible commoditization of software technology.
Like TCP/IP wiped out all other networking protocols, Linux is already the de-facto operating system in every new market that emerges, from handhelds to supercomputers. Microsoft will shift from profiting from their market to protecting it, to bleeding for it.
q1. Why did SCO sue IBM? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q2. Why are SCO attacking Linux? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q3. Why are SCO attacking the GPL? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q4. Why are SCO trying to extort money from Linux users? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q5. Why are SCO now attacking *BSD? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q6. Why do SCO want to destroy Linux at the same time as they claim to 0wn it? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q7. Why do SCO appear to be the crack-smoking bitches of a certain gang originating in redmond? a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q8. Why... a: CSRBB, dude!!
The case for a link with Microsoft
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SCO News Roundup
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It is of course circumstantial, but here is the evidence that I have observed:
1. Means: Microsoft's financial support, via 'licensing'.
2. SCO's specific attacks that fall widely outside their original complaint against IBM, namely attacks against Torvalds, Stallman, and the GPL
3. (Most damning) SCO's denial that MS helped them in any way
4. Motive: MS are one of the few (only?) companies who stand to benefit from FUD surrounding Linux, GPL
5. Timing: as soon as SCO's attacks began, Microsoft stopped theirs. Later, when the SCO case reached a plateau, Microsoft started again.
If SCO were seriously interested in making money from Linux licenses, they would not (could not!) attack its very legitimacy. Instead, they would promote the system at the same time as they tried to claim ownership over it.
It is true that SCO executives appear to also be involved in a "pump and dump" scheme but I seriously doubt this was the original or principal plan, it is far too risky. The inflated SCO shares are a bonus but not the motive.
And Occam's Razor demands that one seeks the simplest explanation that fits a set of observations. Indeed, it would be very curious if Microsoft did not support SCO, morally and financially.
The historical importance of SCO
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SCO News Roundup
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Guys,
You are watching history in the making. SCO might look like an annoying pest, a cynical manipulator of the stock market, a bucket of shit without the bucket, but think about how future generations will view this.
First, this is the first serious industry-wide debate about the legitimacy of Linux, as an open source concept, as a child of the GPL, and as an operating system. The simple fact that people are prepared to go to war (and this is war) over Linux raises it from a curiosity to a treasure.
Second, this is of course about much more than SCO vs. The World, and future generations will place it in its correct context. Mainly, this is about Microsoft trying to ward off the oncoming Linux mammoth, unable to attack Linux head-on for many reasons, but unable to watch as it demolishes their market with an apparently unstoppable force.
Thirdly, this is about the Old versus the New, on the one side the forces of "software is a product" and on the other, the forces of "software is a commodity technology". The period 1998-2003 saw software evolve from a rare and precious thing to something that is so cheap we simply can't build harddisks large enough any more. SCO and Microsoft are firmly in the "Old" camp, IBM and most of the rest of the world are in the "New" camp. You don't need to be a genius to see the inexorable grip that the technology cycle has on software, and the consequences of this.
SCO lost before they started, that is clear. But this battle defines the line that must be crossed to move into the future. Stick with proprietary platforms, die. Move to commodity platforms, live and prosper.
It would be a good time to sell your Microsoft shares too: $51 billion can disappear remarkably quickly when the money stops rolling in.
What keeps a competitor from obtaining a copy of your product and rereleasing it as is for less than you sell it for?
Since I give away my products for free, this is unlikely. If the competitors wants to make a derivation, he's welcome, so long as he makes his changed code available as well.
I'm not convinced this inhibits innovation - after all, nothing has been taken away from the commercial software cycle, we have only created a parallel free software process.
I also believe that this free software process is inevitable and necessary (see my signature) because software cannot continue to be priced at a premium, improvements in technology make it both unnecessary and unjustifiable. Free software is just the symptom of the significant improvements we've made in how software is built, mainly due to cheaper communications.
Software is the embodiement of models of thinking, and as such it eventually must become part of common culture and knowledge (or die). Take the definition of an "office suite", something that is obvious today but was not 10 or 20 years ago.
GPL or not, the key is that anything which pushes such models into common use enhances innovation (which must happen in new domains). Commercial software has the opposite interest at heart: keep the software 'premium' as long as possible, and this does inhibit innovation.
Having worked in software for 20 years, and made literally hundreds of products both free and commercial, this is my expert opinion. To be honest, I very much doubt the Internet would even exist if it had been built for commercial gain. We would still be using something like SNA-over-NetBIOS with clumsy coax cables.
Slashdot Mirror
MS Bob was an attempt to model a home office in a literal fashion. It could never work because computers are by definition abstract.
My proposal is for an abstraction, of course. The key question is "what kind of abstraction works most closely like the way we actually think".
My conclusion is that windows and folders do not match the way I (and many creative people) think. Thus, my search for a new model, a unified metaphor that can represent all my tasks, hundreds and thousands of them.
Comparing this with Microsoft Bob is just being ignorant and flippant. However, if that is the best prior art that Slashdot can show me, I at least know that I'm not reinventing the wheel.
This is a troll, I warn you in advance. That is, I am going to deliberate provoke you to think.
Looking at the incredible screenshot of Expocity for Metacity, I think to myself: how can anyone work with such a confusion of information in front of them?
My hero, Dijkstra (anyone who could live with 5 successive constanants in his name must be cool), once said "GOTOs considered harmful". We know where that led us to...
Anyhow, I believe the desktop Window metaphor has outlived its usefulness. It dates to the earliest metaphors of visual computing, but continues today only because it has become dogma. Let me list some of the ways it does not model a true desktop, such as you or I sit at every day and work on.
First, a true desktop has hundreds of objects on it, varying from piles of CDs, documents, bills to be paid, loudspeakers, mouldy cups of coffee... This is the real working environment of most creative people, a cluttered mess that makes perfect sense because it maps our projects. You've all had that sense of panic when someone "cleaned your desk?"
Second, in a real desktop, you add new stuff, it covers old stuff. This is normal and natural and necessary and the only way to filter the real work from the junk. If it ain't screaming at you, it's not serious.
Thirdly, the objects on a GUI windowed desktop do not match the actual objects we work on. I have to look through my email client to find important emails, I have my bookmarks in Konqueror, I have that hot dossier on a disk somewhere.
There has to be a better way.
What we need is a unified desktop that represents the real objects we work on, in a way that mirrors the manner in which we actually use them.
A desktop that hides information which needs to be hidden, and exposes the information which needs to be visible. A desktop that shows everything, from incoming emails to useful web bookmarks, to documents and toys, newsgroups, and devices.
I've specified this desktop in
journal entries.
Putting my money where my mouth is, we're working on a prototype that will be unleashed on the world sometime early next year.
The statement can be read both ways.
The day will come when people buy software for reasons other than utility: fashion, conspicuous consumption, political affiliation... but today it's simply a matter of price and functionality.
Microsoft can say what they like, but very few people will try OOo and then MSOffice and then choose to pay for MSOffice with their own money simply because of a sound bite.
But the Titor story is particularly weak.
If you're going to handle tough realities by fleeing into fantasy, at least pick a decent author and have the guts to face the real world again when it's done.
The current problem is not going away by itself, nor is any "time traveller" there to save us or show the way, this is just a reenactment of the Christian Jesus story.
The USA is owned by the oligarchs, just like Russia is. The rich men own the government, the courts, the military, the banks, the media, and the economy. There is not going to be any dramatic world war, just a series of revolutions by the have-nots, and a series of bloody repressions by the haves.
The Bush administration is actually simply a good old facist dictatorship under democratic cover. One more election victory (and yes, you can expect a dramatic and well-timed terrorist attack to keep the patriotic fever going), and we will be into twenty-five years of hell.
And this time there will be no US of A to come and save the world.
Human nature, it gets us every time.
How about this:
Primary Prime Drive
Secondary Prime Drive
Primary Vice Drive
Secondary Vice Drive
I like it, and no-one can complain about the use of the word "vice" in California.
The ICANN vs. ITU battle is a stage in the ongoing wars (fought with instruments other than bullets and knives for my fellow slashdottians who take everything uberliterally) between the rich states and the stateless masses.
The ICANN (or should this be called the "UCANT") represents the rich west controlling the Internet, the ITU represents what is laughingly called the "United Nations".
There is about much chance of the ITU taking over the nexus of the Internet as there is of the UN relocating to the Pentagon.
Hmmm, since we're on a serious but enjoyable tangent here, I'll take your question and double it.
The "self-destruction" is implicit in the surrender of the "I". By definition.
However, that is neither good nor bad, since these terms can't even be defined without recourse to the "self" we've just destroyed.
The temporary collection of genes that has registered under the Slashdot alias of HeironymousCoward, and which we can abbreviate as "I" for the purposes of discussion, thinks that what is left after destruction of the "self" is in fact a very harmonious situation.
With no "I" (except in Slashdot, where we can all agree that an alias "exists", representing Karma points, a journal, and many slanderous comments that will haunt the replicator in question until its disintegration), there is also no blame or responsibility beyond the genetic obligation to replicate. Further, there is no need to reflect or plan except when reflection and planning are the natural and easy thing to do.
(I would interject deliciously self-destructive the observation that "conscious decisions" are made about 0.5 seconds after most acts.)
The destruction of the self is therefore not just inevitable as we move towards a deeper understanding of how we (and this replicator uses the term loosely) function, but it is also highly desirable, because it frees us. This replicator cannot say what such freedom brings, but after about 30 minutes of experiencing it, "I" have to report that it is, on the whole, enjoyable.
...assuming it exists.
:)
Good going until this point.
If Darwin was right, we're just replicators, the concept of "I" is a trick of perspective created by our minds in order to improve our performance, and intelligence is limited by the awareness horizon that, once we cross, we realize it's all a big joke and we self-destruct. Philosophically speaking, of course.
Sigh. At least we'll be able to buy brain-sized supercomputers to replace our auto-anihilating intelligence organs.
Take your standard technology curve (aka Moore's Law), take any specification/cost point, then move ahead an arbitrary point in time and wonders of wonders, it costs less and is smaller and does more.
Yes, one day supercomputers will fit into your wristwatch! What's more, they already do! If you use an ancient measure from, say, 50 years ago.
It's very disappointing to see technology always reduced to whizz-bang figures that are in fact meaningless. What about the impact on our society? What about the capability for good and for bad? What do "good" and "bad" mean, anyhow? How do I know I even exist? What does "I" even mean?
Now, that kind of stuff is worth discussing.
OK, go ahead and mod me as a troll now, if you can't think of an intelligent answer.
Linus: "And the Penguin Prize for top crack smoker of 2003 goes to... yes, SCO!!! Darl, if you'd come up to the stage we can give you this gold plated CD of the Stoned Beaver Linux kernel."
Darl: "I couldn't have done it without all my buddies at Redmond (chokes)... Thanks, Steve and Bill, I love you guys so much!"
Crowd: applause. Cue video animation of stoned beaver...
First, the sample is so small as to be useless.
Secondly, the range of activities that can be considered 'computer crime' are vast, ranging from sabotage by competitors and disgruntled ex-employees, through to vandalism by youths seeking to hack their way to underground fame, through to indebted housewives seeking to make just one more credit card payment anywhich way.
Lastly, you can't measure an iceberg by studying the visible tip, and any 'hacker' who talks about him/herself is almost by definition not representative.
The fact is that computer crime is as widespread as computers, and computer criminals as representative as the people who use computers. When IT was the plaything of the geeky elite, only elite geeky crooks misused it. When computers have pervaded every niche of industrial society, the crooks follow.
In fact the distinctions between 'cyber' and 'real' is becoming moot, not just in terms of crime, but also in business, communications, art, relationships, etc.
Your plan would be a lot more coherent if you had control of most of government, the supreme court, the media, the army, and big business. With all that, I'd agree that voting would kind of be irrelevant.
:) Posting a phone number, or even an email address to Slashdot would be rather indiscrete.
Reply to my latest journal posting, we will continue the discussion there.
"I hired Darl, then realized what a HUGE mistake that was, so I quit SCO and sold my shares and Debian is really cool, thanks guys!"
My Brussels company is actually involved in a cybercrime case (one of our ex-employees woke up one day and decided he wanted to trash our CVS).
The EU has had a cybercrime convention that was passed into law in Belgium in 2000, three years ago. The very first case is currently appearing in court. Until today, cybercrimes have mostly been classified under random sections of the criminal act such as "theft of electricity", "abuse of confidential information", and so on.
Belgium actually has a specialized cybercrime cell in the prosecutor's office. But it's still a very new area and could do with some better coverage. Few people know, for instance, that hacking one's own company is actually considered much more serious than hacking from "the outside", in the case of our departed hacker, worth between 18 months and 3 years in prison.
No-one really knows what counts as "evidence" either, and since laws in most European countries are not based on court cases but on statutory definitions, we don't even know if emails and expert's reports count as evidence.
I think cybercrime will be very important in the years ahead, as more and more business-critical information is stored in databases that can be accessed from the other side of the world if one knows the correct passwords.
Surely you all have dual redundant Internet links? My company has _three_, all through different providers. One is just a simple ADSL.
But sometimes I wish the Net would just vanish and we could return to the good old days of a 9 to 5 job, before these thing called "productivity", "always-on", "emails from other timezones", and of course "unlimited porn", the carrot that makes it all feel worthwile now and then.
Apart from the question of who is actually financing this and what they hope to get from it, the idea is good.
The next year will see a massive publicity campaign from the top 5 music companies as they try to exaggerate the impact of p2p ("try" is what I mean, cause I believe the impact is really huge), in the hope that this will allow them to merge into 2 or 3 companies.
Without some anti-publicity, it means a lot more of the "hacker pirates stealing music" stories. Kazaa are not my choice for a champion, I'd prefer someone like Michael Robertson of mp3.com fame. But it's a start.
Windows has a solid share, yes, but of a market that is inevitably doomed. IT is not a static business, it eats itself continuously, and the desktop PC is a dying beast, being replaced by servers, thin clients, portable formats, etc.
Microsoft has long been aware of this but they have simply been unable, despite their wealth and influence, to enter a single new market with anything like the position they occupy in the PC market. Even in the PDA market, they have been unable to get the 80% or so that defines "control", and they have failed in many other critical areas: set-top boxes, embedded computing, mobile phones, servers, Internet appliances, tablets, etc.
Control over a shrinking market is worth nothing in the long term - look at the music industry. Microsoft needs, badly, to find new markets but every single potential new market turns to Linux and other alternatives (like Symbian on phones) before trying Microsoft.
And Office? Big deal. I mean, seriously, how much more functionality can a person use? Office suites were perfected about 5 years ago, and MS Office has been forcing unwanted upgrades since then. Open source alternatives (OpenOffice, particularly) hit the functional sweetpoint with no particular effort, and again in new markets (Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, China), Microsoft finds itself undercut, unwanted, an outsider with little to say and nothing to offer.
Microsoft are also trapped by the rising tide of technology. Operating systems have become a commodity item, simply because they are a "solved problem". Office suites are much the same thing. Microsoft have tried over the year to move to higher grounds, but most of these are already occupied. Yes, they have entered the ERP market, but is this making a profit for them? Do they make money from SQLServer? Some, but not a lot.
Its harsh, but my judgement is that Microsoft is in a weak position, despite having lots of money and an apparent revenue stream. They cannot get out of the low-level software business: they cannot move into consulting, into hardware, into services... and their business model is a few years away from being turned into worthless vapour, much like the CD-based music industry.
So, basically, for all their size and apparent omnipresence, Microsoft sell the same things they sold 10 years ago, to the same people, in the same way. This is a bad place to be in a world that changes all the time. In this business, if you can't reinvent yourself at least once per decade, you die, period.
Prove me wrong: show me one new market that Microsoft has entered and competed in and created significant revenue.
The sheer ignorance of the post also shocked me. Of course they meant South Africa, but c'mon...
It should be high-school knowledge that culturally and genetically, there is more variation in Africa than in the entire rest of the world, by a huge factor. It's easy just to lump this huge, seething continent together into an amorphous lump, but it's very far from the truth, which is that even a small part of a country like Nigeria has measurably more human variety than anything we're used to.
Ehrojue, bioju obo!
Another story on Slashdot today about Linux powering a new NASA supercomputer.
Is it not already obvious to everyone except the fanatics that Microsoft is running in the wrong race? Linus is not superman but he's at the eye of a hurricane that is simply erasing the very notion of commercial software.
It's not a question of resources or strategy or even competition. Linux is simply the product of a unstoppable and irreversible commoditization of software technology.
Like TCP/IP wiped out all other networking protocols, Linux is already the de-facto operating system in every new market that emerges, from handhelds to supercomputers. Microsoft will shift from profiting from their market to protecting it, to bleeding for it.
q1. Why did SCO sue IBM?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q2. Why are SCO attacking Linux?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q3. Why are SCO attacking the GPL?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q4. Why are SCO trying to extort money from Linux users?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q5. Why are SCO now attacking *BSD?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q6. Why do SCO want to destroy Linux at the same time as they claim to 0wn it?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q7. Why do SCO appear to be the crack-smoking bitches of a certain gang originating in redmond?
a: because they're crack-smoking redmond boyz' bitches.
q8. Why...
a: CSRBB, dude!!
It is of course circumstantial, but here is the evidence that I have observed:
1. Means: Microsoft's financial support, via 'licensing'.
2. SCO's specific attacks that fall widely outside their original complaint against IBM, namely attacks against Torvalds, Stallman, and the GPL
3. (Most damning) SCO's denial that MS helped them in any way
4. Motive: MS are one of the few (only?) companies who stand to benefit from FUD surrounding Linux, GPL
5. Timing: as soon as SCO's attacks began, Microsoft stopped theirs. Later, when the SCO case reached a plateau, Microsoft started again.
If SCO were seriously interested in making money from Linux licenses, they would not (could not!) attack its very legitimacy. Instead, they would promote the system at the same time as they tried to claim ownership over it.
It is true that SCO executives appear to also be involved in a "pump and dump" scheme but I seriously doubt this was the original or principal plan, it is far too risky. The inflated SCO shares are a bonus but not the motive.
And Occam's Razor demands that one seeks the simplest explanation that fits a set of observations. Indeed, it would be very curious if Microsoft did not support SCO, morally and financially.
Guys,
You are watching history in the making. SCO might look like an annoying pest, a cynical manipulator of the stock market, a bucket of shit without the bucket, but think about how future generations will view this.
First, this is the first serious industry-wide debate about the legitimacy of Linux, as an open source concept, as a child of the GPL, and as an operating system. The simple fact that people are prepared to go to war (and this is war) over Linux raises it from a curiosity to a treasure.
Second, this is of course about much more than SCO vs. The World, and future generations will place it in its correct context. Mainly, this is about Microsoft trying to ward off the oncoming Linux mammoth, unable to attack Linux head-on for many reasons, but unable to watch as it demolishes their market with an apparently unstoppable force.
Thirdly, this is about the Old versus the New, on the one side the forces of "software is a product" and on the other, the forces of "software is a commodity technology". The period 1998-2003 saw software evolve from a rare and precious thing to something that is so cheap we simply can't build harddisks large enough any more. SCO and Microsoft are firmly in the "Old" camp, IBM and most of the rest of the world are in the "New" camp. You don't need to be a genius to see the inexorable grip that the technology cycle has on software, and the consequences of this.
SCO lost before they started, that is clear. But this battle defines the line that must be crossed to move into the future. Stick with proprietary platforms, die. Move to commodity platforms, live and prosper.
It would be a good time to sell your Microsoft shares too: $51 billion can disappear remarkably quickly when the money stops rolling in.
Please mod parent up +1 Funny.
What keeps a competitor from obtaining a copy of your product and rereleasing it as is for less than you sell it for?
Since I give away my products for free, this is unlikely. If the competitors wants to make a derivation, he's welcome, so long as he makes his changed code available as well.
I'm not convinced this inhibits innovation - after all, nothing has been taken away from the commercial software cycle, we have only created a parallel free software process.
I also believe that this free software process is inevitable and necessary (see my signature) because software cannot continue to be priced at a premium, improvements in technology make it both unnecessary and unjustifiable. Free software is just the symptom of the significant improvements we've made in how software is built, mainly due to cheaper communications.
Software is the embodiement of models of thinking, and as such it eventually must become part of common culture and knowledge (or die). Take the definition of an "office suite", something that is obvious today but was not 10 or 20 years ago.
GPL or not, the key is that anything which pushes such models into common use enhances innovation (which must happen in new domains). Commercial software has the opposite interest at heart: keep the software 'premium' as long as possible, and this does inhibit innovation.
Having worked in software for 20 years, and made literally hundreds of products both free and commercial, this is my expert opinion. To be honest, I very much doubt the Internet would even exist if it had been built for commercial gain. We would still be using something like SNA-over-NetBIOS with clumsy coax cables.