Whilst modded "funny", it's this preconcieved notion and the spite of the *nix community that actually makes their arguments look far poorer.
I took a RHEL class (instructor FROM RedHat) a while back, and 1/4 of the class was dedicated to bashing Windows. Oddly enough, most of his complaints were from a lack of knowledge, not because of the OS, so what does it say when you keep pushing that kind of attitude when people are trying to make *nix more successful and widely received?
Uhm, free means that my company buys me a license for my home PCs so that I can work (not that I do) from home. I have a laptop too, so I consider it free.
Netbooks use 32 bit processors, and Microsoft isn't going to cede that market to Linux, so there will be a variant of Windows as long as there are 32 bit processors around to install them on.
It's only for VOIP apps that work off a mobile network. So Skype can still be on Marketplace, just not allowed to work over a cellular network, only Wifi.
It's not much different than what Apple has allowed. Except they are idiots because of banning the NIN App.
Too bad most people don't care about that, and everybody else can use DynDNS or NOIP for their DNS forwarding.
It's not as techie, but it works and people can still play their games and run their favorite applications. Linux doesn't provide any benefit for the average user, and thus will be relegated to the server market where it does quite well.
Because there is nothing that Linux CAN do that Windows can't do.
Photo editing, music editing, web surfing, reading email... that's what people buy a simple netbook for. If you think that the average user gives a flying fuck about hardened kernels, the ability to restart GUIs, or anything like that -- you're an idiot.
People want to be able to turn on their computer, find some neat applications (of which there are PLENTY in the Windows space) and do the aforementioned tasks. And now that Windows 7 actually "works well", the Linux fanboys are going to have to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves if they are building an OS for server use (which it's great for) or for desktop use, or both. There's no focused design in Linux that I can see, each distro being unique in some way, but one thing is clear -- Ubuntu which is the 'prettiest' is still not as pretty or easy to use as Windows 7.
Any time you tell a user that a company needs to "write a driver" or "drop to the terminal" to do XYZ, then you've already lost that user to Windows. Click and Run was a great idea when it was introduced, too bad nothing ever came of that.
That's just stupid because all the options you have on Windows are there too, and when you "buy the netbook" you already would have PAID FOR 7.
So you can buy a $300 netbook, use OpenOffice, and have "unlimited applications" because there's more freeware for Windows than there is for Linux. And to top it off, it's largely more usable for the average user.
The difference is not going to even be $100 between the two OSes. Dell sold laptops without OSes before -- want to know the price difference? $40 more for XP. I imagine it will be the same for 7.
So your entire argument that uses large dollar amounts really just boils down to about $40 and your disdain for anything Microsoft.
It's exactly the same principle, that you have a 'standard' set of guidelines.
The PC world brings you the ability to get deeper textures and whatever if you want better graphics, or LESS if you want faster framerates. It's nice customizability, and while a $99 graphics card may be all you need to play the titles, the options don't end just there... and that's why there will always be a market for higher end graphics cards, or processors for that matter.
Quite frankly, there are few things in the OSS world that rival that of what is in the closed source (for profit) world.
Adobe Photoshop is better than GIMP by a long shot. It's more expensive sure -- but it's just a lot better too. And it's become a standard.
Microsoft Office is far better than Open Office. Open Office works, it can type out documents, but it can't be used in other applications that have 'plugins' and addons like Bloomberg, Reuters, Pertrac and lots of other financial software. Plus, it lacks the integration of a centralized document repository with checkin/out capabilities like Sharepoint has.
Firefox is an amazing piece of open source software, and it's better than the competition. That's why it has succeeded.
For years I have heard (and will continue to hear) how Linux is better, or open source is more beneficial, etc.. businesses don't care about up front cost. They care about long term value and benefits. We can invest $1 million into a technology, be it Photoshop, Office, or Exchange if we can use it for a larger scale operation later on. The vision with Exchange is that we can build our own messaging apps and use Exchange as a delivery platform using.NET and MS APIs. It's cheap development too, and we don't recreate the wheel. Then there's Office, where we can develop Sharepoint applications and deploy them in a snap, integrating entirely with our Office suite on the backend. It all works seamlessly, and we can offer it on an outward basis to our clients as well.
Now while I can agree with lots of people who pay hefty license fees for Microsoft and don't want to -- they should be investigating other methods to save money. The problem is that most of the minds here on Slashdot are that of nerds and not of managers. So we see the technical merits of software and the benefits of open source, and completely miss the 'big picture'. It honestly doesn't even have to be Windows, or Microsoft. It could just as easily be IBM and WebSphere.
Honestly, I think that enterprises are going to continue to drive what the 'standards' are for smaller businesses to stick to. If you're a small parts manufacturer, is it cheaper for you to have an inventory system that integrates seamlessly (and quickly) with what the OEM you're dealing with has? Or are you going to create an open source version that works really well for you, but nobody else?
While everybody is trying to push the small business and mid market with Linux (many of whom don't have the resources and knowhow to set it up properly, causing even more backlash), people are not focused on the enterprises that drive this stuff down the throats of their smaller partners. You'd be surprised at how often it happens. And even then, I hear on a regular basis how Windows is insecure, and you have trojans and blue screens (hahaha, right?), but every corporate environment I've been a part of, Windows works just fine and is just as secure as anything else because they operate with the same principles of multiple layers of security.
All I'm saying is that if you want this to be the year of Linux on the desktop there has to be first, better software for Linux and better open source software (and that means pretty GUIs and good graphics) available for consumption, and then you have to sign on enterprise level companies and make them make an investment into it. In the meanwhile, I think everybody here is fine with Windows on the desktop as we are more and more productive, even though our licensing costs are high, our revenues are generally far higher.
Because then the other departments see how our budget becomes more 'flexible' and that's a bad place to be in.
If people know you can make cuts, they will force the cuts on your department rather than go after marketing come layoff time (which has been lately). IT is a cost center and business departments bill out to that, so obviously IT is also an area where it's looked to get a cut often.
Saving money out of our power budget just constricts our budget for the next year. We can't re-allocate those funds to buying more servers, or upgrading our core switches, or even getting more cat6 laid out in our server room.
So I think the article is correct, in that I'll just keep wasting energy and allow my budget not to get constricted.
And how does that have anything to do with being an MS wannabe?
I'm just saying Google should have more actual "products" that you know.. make money. Advertising is great, but just imagine Microsoft puts in an easy to get ad-block utility, and Google's revenue is in the shitter immediately. At least if people don't buy Office, there are 20 other products MS can potentially make money off of to satisfy their payroll and R&D.
They have plenty of losers, but the profit centers in their organization can supplant the losers by a big margin. Office and Windows alone are behemoths in that area to take cash from.
That said, they are still profitable in other areas (as stated) like the Xbox area, BizTalk (message queuing), and some others.
But it allows for small operations like Microsoft Research (who have some *brilliant* engineers), or the IE team, or some Photosynth, or the Live team, etc to do their work by feeding the main addictions of Windows and Office retroactively through their work, where Google doesn't have a strong profit center in drawing back people to their search as well.
Again, right now Google's on top but I don't know how long it can last for. I do use Google primarily though -- I forced myself to switch to Yahoo for a week, then Live Search for a week, and it made me realize how good Google actually is.
Too bad the salaries for Google employees, plus the benefits (and no, I don't mean free lunch and dinner) are lower than what you'd get at Microsoft or IBM.
But if you want to believe they are hiring the best, they are definitely selective... but people want to work for Google more than Google wants people working for them, so right now they are working just fine with their human resources. There will come a time though, where it's a diminishing return, and who knows when that time will come?
Honestly, looking at Google's repertoire of products, most of them don't make money. Only the advertising seems to.
Which is as long as Google can stay on top as search engine king, they can fund these unprofitable pieces of software, be it Chrome, or Gears, or Docs, or whatever... but if they slip in ad revenue, or they have a couple of shitty quarters, I can see some big trouble for Google.
Say what you will about MS, but they have profit centers throughout the company, and have a hoard of cash to boot. Not a bad idea for Google to follow suit in.
But I'm also one of the ones who realizes the *benefits* of Windows 7 as well.
First, it runs faster than XP. On similar machines using the 7000 public build, we boot faster, shut down faster, load apps faster and make better use of the standard PC we have. That means less resources wasted.
Second, standard imaging formats (WIM). I can create an image and 'inject' drivers into the images without having to redo the image at ALL. Our images change quite a bit, so we spend many full time employee hours on this task as we change our configs. It would be a huge saving there in time alone.
Better policy management -- this speaks for itself. While we have everything configured to run with scripts, the administration nightmare would be greatly lessened if we could instead rely on the "Policies and Preferences" that now ship standard with Group Policy.
That's just a handful though. We will be waiting a while to ensure compatibility (and that just takes time) and besides, MS support is a necessity at our company (17k users worldwide) so we can't be running desktops that are out of support. There are a lot of benefits to Windows 7 and while I know this is Slashdot and I should be wary of the *nix fans, some businesses have a significant investment into MS technologies and make a lot of money with them. We're one of them, and we run smooth, and if I can follow the next upgrade path for Windows and save lots of cash and time in the meanwhile, then I look like a winner all the way around.
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux.
on
Linux Needs Critics
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· Score: 1
I'll say it slowly for you.
Your admin set it up *wrong*. If he used %username% in the profile path when he set up the original account, then the "copy" would have worked without a hitch. That's the first problem
Secondly, if you're looking to do batch jobs in AD, you need to use the right tool. This is the DSQUERY/DSGET, or straight up LDAP binds (if you want to) to do this work. These are *native* tools, and not third party utilities. The DSGET/DSQUERY are made by Microsoft and included in the Admin Pack.
Now if you want to continue the inane argument about the "default tool" it works exactly as it needs to. The fact that your admin is either incompetent or didn't bother to use a variable when setting up a user, or that you don't know enough isn't a failure of the tool. It's a failure of the user.
I'm not saying MS's shit doesn't stink. Lots of problems are there and plenty can be fixed and modified to be better, stronger, faster. Linux has the same problems. What you're doing is trying to defend an argument that you really don't even know anything about, in order to bolster your own poor argument that it can be done in Linux through the command line.
It can be done the exact same way in Windows. That's all I'm telling you. Now whether you want to split hairs now and call the dsget/LDAP binds a "3rd party utility", or that the default tool doesn't work because your admin set up the user wrong, well -- feel free. I'm not defending them. I'm clarifying your misconception.
But I'm going to guess you'll continue arguing, because nothing makes a mindless fan of anything better, than dismissing logic and just arguing a point nobody is making. So feel free. You've done it in several replies now and totally ignored what I offered you that you did WRONG.
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux.
on
Linux Needs Critics
·
· Score: 1
You using the wrong tool is an obvious mistake.
It's like saying that "this hammer doesn't screw in my philips head!".
I don't care to defend MS, there are plenty more people to do that, but I work hand in hand with the technology as well as *nix technologies as I am tasked to implement either system based on metrics -- and most systems I had implemented in the last 3 years were a *nix backend. It's only lately with.NET that we can see a cost savings on web development and deployment, even though licensing through MS is steeper, the overall costs are lower. It depends on the system, of course.
Re:I hear lots of negative criticism about Linux.
on
Linux Needs Critics
·
· Score: 1
It works just fine if your admin had initially used %username% when creating the profile paths.
You can't blame the tool if your admin is incompetent. That's the problem with so many orgs lately, but I won't bother you with the details since it's clear you will do anything to attack the platform.
Slashdot Mirror
Whilst modded "funny", it's this preconcieved notion and the spite of the *nix community that actually makes their arguments look far poorer.
I took a RHEL class (instructor FROM RedHat) a while back, and 1/4 of the class was dedicated to bashing Windows. Oddly enough, most of his complaints were from a lack of knowledge, not because of the OS, so what does it say when you keep pushing that kind of attitude when people are trying to make *nix more successful and widely received?
Uhm, free means that my company buys me a license for my home PCs so that I can work (not that I do) from home. I have a laptop too, so I consider it free.
It's still ugly looking.
Usable, maybe... but I get MS Office free so I won't bother. I'll wait to be labeled flamebait.
They can't.
Netbooks use 32 bit processors, and Microsoft isn't going to cede that market to Linux, so there will be a variant of Windows as long as there are 32 bit processors around to install them on.
It's only for VOIP apps that work off a mobile network. So Skype can still be on Marketplace, just not allowed to work over a cellular network, only Wifi.
It's not much different than what Apple has allowed. Except they are idiots because of banning the NIN App.
Too bad most people don't care about that, and everybody else can use DynDNS or NOIP for their DNS forwarding.
It's not as techie, but it works and people can still play their games and run their favorite applications. Linux doesn't provide any benefit for the average user, and thus will be relegated to the server market where it does quite well.
Because there is nothing that Linux CAN do that Windows can't do.
Photo editing, music editing, web surfing, reading email... that's what people buy a simple netbook for. If you think that the average user gives a flying fuck about hardened kernels, the ability to restart GUIs, or anything like that -- you're an idiot.
People want to be able to turn on their computer, find some neat applications (of which there are PLENTY in the Windows space) and do the aforementioned tasks. And now that Windows 7 actually "works well", the Linux fanboys are going to have to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask themselves if they are building an OS for server use (which it's great for) or for desktop use, or both. There's no focused design in Linux that I can see, each distro being unique in some way, but one thing is clear -- Ubuntu which is the 'prettiest' is still not as pretty or easy to use as Windows 7.
Any time you tell a user that a company needs to "write a driver" or "drop to the terminal" to do XYZ, then you've already lost that user to Windows. Click and Run was a great idea when it was introduced, too bad nothing ever came of that.
That's just stupid because all the options you have on Windows are there too, and when you "buy the netbook" you already would have PAID FOR 7.
So you can buy a $300 netbook, use OpenOffice, and have "unlimited applications" because there's more freeware for Windows than there is for Linux. And to top it off, it's largely more usable for the average user.
The difference is not going to even be $100 between the two OSes. Dell sold laptops without OSes before -- want to know the price difference? $40 more for XP. I imagine it will be the same for 7.
So your entire argument that uses large dollar amounts really just boils down to about $40 and your disdain for anything Microsoft.
Your comparison is FAIL.
Oddly enough, I get updates to my existing Windows 7 Beta, so I don't see why I wouldn't with the RC.
We will lose that offensive.
We are the ones who come up with copy protections and it takes some kid in Scandanavia a few hours to crack it.
We will quickly be destroyed by the cyber armies of 13 year olds with 22 hours of sunlight and Mountain Dew in their grasp.
"640K is more memory than anyone will ever need."
Am I alone?
Xbox.
It's exactly the same principle, that you have a 'standard' set of guidelines.
The PC world brings you the ability to get deeper textures and whatever if you want better graphics, or LESS if you want faster framerates. It's nice customizability, and while a $99 graphics card may be all you need to play the titles, the options don't end just there... and that's why there will always be a market for higher end graphics cards, or processors for that matter.
No.
I'll be here all week.
Quite frankly, there are few things in the OSS world that rival that of what is in the closed source (for profit) world.
Adobe Photoshop is better than GIMP by a long shot. It's more expensive sure -- but it's just a lot better too. And it's become a standard.
Microsoft Office is far better than Open Office. Open Office works, it can type out documents, but it can't be used in other applications that have 'plugins' and addons like Bloomberg, Reuters, Pertrac and lots of other financial software. Plus, it lacks the integration of a centralized document repository with checkin/out capabilities like Sharepoint has.
Firefox is an amazing piece of open source software, and it's better than the competition. That's why it has succeeded.
For years I have heard (and will continue to hear) how Linux is better, or open source is more beneficial, etc.. businesses don't care about up front cost. They care about long term value and benefits. We can invest $1 million into a technology, be it Photoshop, Office, or Exchange if we can use it for a larger scale operation later on. The vision with Exchange is that we can build our own messaging apps and use Exchange as a delivery platform using .NET and MS APIs. It's cheap development too, and we don't recreate the wheel. Then there's Office, where we can develop Sharepoint applications and deploy them in a snap, integrating entirely with our Office suite on the backend. It all works seamlessly, and we can offer it on an outward basis to our clients as well.
Now while I can agree with lots of people who pay hefty license fees for Microsoft and don't want to -- they should be investigating other methods to save money. The problem is that most of the minds here on Slashdot are that of nerds and not of managers. So we see the technical merits of software and the benefits of open source, and completely miss the 'big picture'. It honestly doesn't even have to be Windows, or Microsoft. It could just as easily be IBM and WebSphere.
Honestly, I think that enterprises are going to continue to drive what the 'standards' are for smaller businesses to stick to. If you're a small parts manufacturer, is it cheaper for you to have an inventory system that integrates seamlessly (and quickly) with what the OEM you're dealing with has? Or are you going to create an open source version that works really well for you, but nobody else?
While everybody is trying to push the small business and mid market with Linux (many of whom don't have the resources and knowhow to set it up properly, causing even more backlash), people are not focused on the enterprises that drive this stuff down the throats of their smaller partners. You'd be surprised at how often it happens. And even then, I hear on a regular basis how Windows is insecure, and you have trojans and blue screens (hahaha, right?), but every corporate environment I've been a part of, Windows works just fine and is just as secure as anything else because they operate with the same principles of multiple layers of security.
All I'm saying is that if you want this to be the year of Linux on the desktop there has to be first, better software for Linux and better open source software (and that means pretty GUIs and good graphics) available for consumption, and then you have to sign on enterprise level companies and make them make an investment into it. In the meanwhile, I think everybody here is fine with Windows on the desktop as we are more and more productive, even though our licensing costs are high, our revenues are generally far higher.
It's more the conglomeration I work for that has these rules in place.
Play by the rules and work within them to make it work for you, else you find yourself in the unemployment line.
I work for a financial firm :)
Because then the other departments see how our budget becomes more 'flexible' and that's a bad place to be in.
If people know you can make cuts, they will force the cuts on your department rather than go after marketing come layoff time (which has been lately). IT is a cost center and business departments bill out to that, so obviously IT is also an area where it's looked to get a cut often.
Saving money out of our power budget just constricts our budget for the next year. We can't re-allocate those funds to buying more servers, or upgrading our core switches, or even getting more cat6 laid out in our server room.
So I think the article is correct, in that I'll just keep wasting energy and allow my budget not to get constricted.
And how does that have anything to do with being an MS wannabe?
I'm just saying Google should have more actual "products" that you know.. make money. Advertising is great, but just imagine Microsoft puts in an easy to get ad-block utility, and Google's revenue is in the shitter immediately. At least if people don't buy Office, there are 20 other products MS can potentially make money off of to satisfy their payroll and R&D.
They have plenty of losers, but the profit centers in their organization can supplant the losers by a big margin. Office and Windows alone are behemoths in that area to take cash from.
That said, they are still profitable in other areas (as stated) like the Xbox area, BizTalk (message queuing), and some others.
But it allows for small operations like Microsoft Research (who have some *brilliant* engineers), or the IE team, or some Photosynth, or the Live team, etc to do their work by feeding the main addictions of Windows and Office retroactively through their work, where Google doesn't have a strong profit center in drawing back people to their search as well.
Again, right now Google's on top but I don't know how long it can last for. I do use Google primarily though -- I forced myself to switch to Yahoo for a week, then Live Search for a week, and it made me realize how good Google actually is.
Too bad the salaries for Google employees, plus the benefits (and no, I don't mean free lunch and dinner) are lower than what you'd get at Microsoft or IBM.
But if you want to believe they are hiring the best, they are definitely selective... but people want to work for Google more than Google wants people working for them, so right now they are working just fine with their human resources. There will come a time though, where it's a diminishing return, and who knows when that time will come?
Honestly, looking at Google's repertoire of products, most of them don't make money. Only the advertising seems to.
Which is as long as Google can stay on top as search engine king, they can fund these unprofitable pieces of software, be it Chrome, or Gears, or Docs, or whatever... but if they slip in ad revenue, or they have a couple of shitty quarters, I can see some big trouble for Google.
Say what you will about MS, but they have profit centers throughout the company, and have a hoard of cash to boot. Not a bad idea for Google to follow suit in.
But I'm also one of the ones who realizes the *benefits* of Windows 7 as well.
First, it runs faster than XP. On similar machines using the 7000 public build, we boot faster, shut down faster, load apps faster and make better use of the standard PC we have. That means less resources wasted.
Second, standard imaging formats (WIM). I can create an image and 'inject' drivers into the images without having to redo the image at ALL. Our images change quite a bit, so we spend many full time employee hours on this task as we change our configs. It would be a huge saving there in time alone.
Better policy management -- this speaks for itself. While we have everything configured to run with scripts, the administration nightmare would be greatly lessened if we could instead rely on the "Policies and Preferences" that now ship standard with Group Policy.
That's just a handful though. We will be waiting a while to ensure compatibility (and that just takes time) and besides, MS support is a necessity at our company (17k users worldwide) so we can't be running desktops that are out of support. There are a lot of benefits to Windows 7 and while I know this is Slashdot and I should be wary of the *nix fans, some businesses have a significant investment into MS technologies and make a lot of money with them. We're one of them, and we run smooth, and if I can follow the next upgrade path for Windows and save lots of cash and time in the meanwhile, then I look like a winner all the way around.
I'll say it slowly for you.
Your admin set it up *wrong*. If he used %username% in the profile path when he set up the original account, then the "copy" would have worked without a hitch. That's the first problem
Secondly, if you're looking to do batch jobs in AD, you need to use the right tool. This is the DSQUERY/DSGET, or straight up LDAP binds (if you want to) to do this work. These are *native* tools, and not third party utilities. The DSGET/DSQUERY are made by Microsoft and included in the Admin Pack.
Now if you want to continue the inane argument about the "default tool" it works exactly as it needs to. The fact that your admin is either incompetent or didn't bother to use a variable when setting up a user, or that you don't know enough isn't a failure of the tool. It's a failure of the user.
I'm not saying MS's shit doesn't stink. Lots of problems are there and plenty can be fixed and modified to be better, stronger, faster. Linux has the same problems. What you're doing is trying to defend an argument that you really don't even know anything about, in order to bolster your own poor argument that it can be done in Linux through the command line.
It can be done the exact same way in Windows. That's all I'm telling you. Now whether you want to split hairs now and call the dsget/LDAP binds a "3rd party utility", or that the default tool doesn't work because your admin set up the user wrong, well -- feel free. I'm not defending them. I'm clarifying your misconception.
But I'm going to guess you'll continue arguing, because nothing makes a mindless fan of anything better, than dismissing logic and just arguing a point nobody is making. So feel free. You've done it in several replies now and totally ignored what I offered you that you did WRONG.
You using the wrong tool is an obvious mistake.
It's like saying that "this hammer doesn't screw in my philips head!".
I don't care to defend MS, there are plenty more people to do that, but I work hand in hand with the technology as well as *nix technologies as I am tasked to implement either system based on metrics -- and most systems I had implemented in the last 3 years were a *nix backend. It's only lately with .NET that we can see a cost savings on web development and deployment, even though licensing through MS is steeper, the overall costs are lower. It depends on the system, of course.
It works just fine if your admin had initially used %username% when creating the profile paths.
You can't blame the tool if your admin is incompetent. That's the problem with so many orgs lately, but I won't bother you with the details since it's clear you will do anything to attack the platform.