I've heard of XenApp but didn't realize it could do all that. I get the running the app on the XenApp server and then having a thin client visualize the output. I don't know how they do the local application serving so you can take Excel with you to a non-network environment unless they somehow deliver it to a local VM capable of running Windows apps.
All in all, this looks very promising. Thanks for the info.
I'll have to agree. I've found so much in the business world is tied to proprietary products many of which don't have a OSS equivalent. As much as we've tried to get rid of Windows products and move towards OSS, we still have to give employees a Windows laptop to handle many tasks.
I've also witnessed in many cases that good Linux systems administrators are hard to come by. Many of my customers were forced to eliminate Linux systems because it's far easier to find a certified Windows administrator who can manage your systems than to train someone on Linux.
I consider myself a Linux Guru. I've worked with Linux for over 12 years. I've administered Linux and Unix systems for almost 25 years. I love Linux for what I do. But it's still not a one stop shop. I still need Windows (or a Mac). Luckily, Linux systems can work well with Windows systems so it's easier to add Linux systems to a Windows base. It's much harder to go the other way.
Microsoft isn't worried about Linux because Linux doesn't compete directly with Windows. Microsoft won over the US corporate world about a decade ago with a set of business and office tools that integrate the entire corporation together. Linux is getting there but they're about 2-4 years away from being where Microsoft was in 2000. You can't find many US corporations where you don't have a Windows computer on every desktop connected to Windows based email, directory and web servers.
This corporate culture that promotes everything Microsoft spreads to other non-Microsoft areas. Even though Linux and OSS has made progress in these areas of late, non-Microsoft companies must carry Microsoft computers for compatibility with the rest of the corporate world. Microsoft makes the standards and everyone else has to follow.
In addition, US corporations are like aircraft carriers. Once something is adopted, its unlikely it will change course anytime soon. Microsoft got there first and is now reaping the benefits. Most US corporations still use decades old technology because its too costly to switch. Any move to something like Linux would have to be phased in VERY slowly.
Linux may be approaching Microsoft in terms of functionality and ease of use but it has to convince large corporations that Linux is superior to Windows before there will be any effort to switch. As a result, Linux is still and probably always will be a niche market in the US.
In my experiences with corporations, projects that were Unix based have either switched to Linux or are in the process of switching. I've yet to see a Windows based project in my area switch to Linux. Since I support Linux based software, I've found that in many cases, being Linux only is a barrier to entry into some corporations because they've spent tons of money to develop a local support staff around Windows and are unwilling to retrain personnel to do Linux. On the other hand, a Linux based company must also support Windows so its less of a barrier for a Windows only company to sell its products to a Linux based company.
In Europe and especially emerging economies, where corporations and governments have yet to adopt the "everything Microsoft" mentality, Linux is making strong headway. I suspect in 10 years, we'll have a very similar split between the US and the rest of the world to what we see in many other technologies. Europe and Asia will be primarily Linux based and the US will still be Windows based.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Vista is not an upgrade and I get the feeling Microsoft never wanted it to be. When XP came out, everyone wanted to upgrade their ailing Win95/98 boxes. XP didn't require new hardware but the OS features and added stability made it a must upgrade. Vista's requirements are so steep that few computers bought prior to Vista have enough speed and memory to install it. IMHO, it was clearly intended to be the next generation OS running exclusively on next generation hardware. So with Vista, Microsoft doesn't have to support hardware prior to 2006 and thus can concentrate on the next generation hardware. This is why I've noticed the couple of times I've been in a computer store recently that they don't offer Vista Home Basic, only Home Premium. I suspect this is because if you are going to upgrade, you won't do the neutered Basic edition if you need to upgrade the hardware to get there. If you're spending the money on new hardware, you'll pay for the premium upgrade.
So what this leaves is that Vista is ONLY going onto new PCs. I did the calculations and if you look at estimated PC sales worldwide and assume Vista will be installed on 80% of them, you get a figure of about 45 million Vista sales in the first 3 months of this year. So I suspect this is an OEM number and I would be very surprised if Vista boxes are flying off the shelves of places like CompUSA or Circuit City.
OK, I estimate that PC sales for 2007 are going to be around 75 million units in the U.S. and about 225 million units world wide. If you take 3 months of this, it would be about 19 million PCs sold in the U.S. and about 55 million world wide. So if you estimate that 80% of all those units sold will have Vista on it, you get about 40 million units total. Humm...
Now compare this to 2001 when XP came out. PC sales back then were about 55 million in the U.S. and 125 million world wide and you can see that XP wouldn't have come close in sales during its first three months.
What that tells me is that Microsoft is using the expansion in world wide PC sales as an way to promote how well Vista is going. But considering there isn't an upgrade path to Vista (thanks to greatly increased hardware requirements) like there was with XP, I'm sure these sales will level off.
I think you missed my point. The desktop is all about the applications. Open Source Software has really only been working in the desktop application realm for about 5-8 years and it has a lot of catching up to do to get to where Windows is today. There are some positive signs in applications like OpenOffice, Evolution and Gimp. But there are so many areas that OSS either has no application or the software is in its infancy, thus lacking what is needed to be truly usable.
You notice I said open/free as well. You can only go so far with free. If Linux is to compete with Windows and MacOSX, it needs a better set of proprietary applications. Lets face it, fully supporting audio, video and other proprietary areas will require software manufacturers to either start porting their applications into Linux (not likely to happen soon) or for Linux to start licensing these technologies and incorporating them into OSS applications. Either way, it won't be free. I would pay $75 for a desktop Linux distribution that included proprietary codecs, drivers, etc so that my Linux desktop could play a variety of music, DVDs, etc without using marginal and/or illegal add-ins.
I have a Fedora Core 6 system at work and have a similar setup at home. I've been a programmer in Unix for over 20 years and a systems administrator for over 15. I use Linux for as much as I can use Linux. I would love to see my Linux computer completely replace my Windows computer but without the full suite of "usable" applications, I will have to have a Windows computer. In this sense, I believe Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows.
> This is headed for a major court battle. In fact, it should be obvious that SCO is just the first.
I said this back when SCO sacrificed itself to try and take down Linux. Linux has been treading on thin ice for years. The programming landscape has been filled with copyrights and patents for decades and to try and develop an operating system, not to mention applications that don't use them is next to impossible. Lets face it, it tough to write 5 lines of code without violating some sort of a patent.
Today, you can only make a have baked OS and have half baked applications before you enter the patent and copyright mine field. Linux might be able to exist at the server level thanks to Unix's legacy but for it to make any progress on the desktop, its going to have to start licensing these expensive technologies. Many of these technologies are reserved by companies like Microsoft and you can bet Linux will not get a free ride licensing them. Look at what SCO wanted to do to Linux. They intentionally priced their SCO-Linux license so that Linux would become the most expensive small server OS by a wide margin. SCO wasn't going to just license Linux, they were going to bury Linux.
I think this is what Microsoft wants to do. I'm sure Apple and others are in the same boat. The idea is to restrict certain technologies to the point where Linux looks like Windows 3.1 in functionality and thus preserve their desktop monopoly.
In my opinion, open/free Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows and OSX in terms of desktop functionality and these hurdles aren't going to allow the gap to close any time soon. On the other hand, enterprise versions of Linux, that can license these technologies, are so expensive, they really aren't an alternative to Windows on the desktop.
If it weren't for IBM backing Linux, it would be dead today. Microsoft, SCO and others would have patent-infringed Linux back to the stone ages. Clearly IBM's presence has kept a lot of this from happening. But as OSS and Linux become more popular, its clear the lawsuits will start coming fast and furious. We've only seen the beginning of this.
Not to mention that the last 5 movies I've seen come out in the last month or so in HD, only 1 is in HD-DVD. The other 4 were Blu-Ray only.
HD formats will die on the vine if more titles that really show off HD come out. I bought the HD-DVD version Chronos, a Imax movie from the mid 80s, and it is a pain to play on the Xbox player but once every 20 or so tries, it will play. When it does, its spectacular.
The Xbox add-on player did include King Kong which is visually spectacular. Even though I didn't particularly like the movie, it does really show off HD.
Most engineers and mathematicians I know are liberal leaning. I think anyone who is fairly well educated because he or she is intellectually curious is probably more liberal than conservative. Now I do know scientists that are not politically curious and they tend to be conservative. If what you are saying that they spend so much time working in their field of interest that they tend to accept politics rather than challenging it, you are correct to a certain extent.
I agree. I'm just stating what some analysts feel is a major reason satellite radio subscriptions have started to level off. I'd hate to see satellite radio go away. I've have downloaded from iTunes a ton of songs I've heard on XM. IMHO, the fact you can listen to music that isn't programmed by the recording industry is a plus. You can get 10 times the variety on satellite radio, minus the annoying commercials. Its amazing how much good music there is out there that isn't crammed down our throats by the recording industry. Not to mention all the specialty programming.
But I get the feeling that I'm in the minority and that most people just want to listen to their favorite 20 songs over and over again (thank you iPod). I suspect satellite radio will evolve into something much closer to what you hear on your FM dial... promoted music and commercials. By then, why bother!
Sirius went to commercial free music channels rather early on. XM still have a majority of its music channels with limited commericals but dropped them about 2 years ago.
Its clear that XM and Sirius were in competition for a limited market. The iPod in the end was what brought these two together. XM and Sirius had a small window before cars started installing adapters for iPods. Since almost everyone who listens to music has a iPod, it meant that the benefits of satellite radio where lost when you could just plug in your iPod.
Whereas the two radio networks were counting on subscriptions continuing to increase each year for the next 4 years, in reality, they started leveling off this year. And now they have a business model based on a subscription base neither is likely to meet.
As a result, I think we'll see one of two things out of the new company. Either a substantial rate increase or a substantial content decrease. At any rate, its unlikely that the new company will have the variety of content that we see on both today.
I have XM myself and was introduced to it when I got a new Honda Accord about 4 years ago. I had gotten so frustrated with open air radio for two main reasons.
One is the lack of diversity. In most markets, you have 3 hip-hop stations, 4 country music stations, 2 top 40 rock stations, a classic rock and an oldies station. When you listen to these stations, you'll hear exactly what the recording companies want you to listen to. Its a 90 minute playlist that beats current hits into your head like Chinese water torture. If you want to hear anything outside of their playlist, you're just out of luck. Add to this that 90% of the stations in a particular market are owned by 2 or 3 companies basically out for profit and you can see there won't be much diversity.
Second, is all the commercials. I used to station surf all the time on my way into work. I truly believe that the reason you have 6 presets on your car radio is it takes that many presets to find a station doing something other than promotions and commercials. For most of the stations I used to listen to, you were lucky to get 25 minutes of music.
This is why XM really hit a chord with me. You can listen to a wide variety of music, not just 4 genries. You can listen to a station 6 hours and not hear the same song twice. And you can listen without commercial interruption!!
But lets face it, XM and Sirius are on the quick path to bankruptcy. Both companies are bleeding so much red ink that its unlikely they'll stay out of chapter 11 for more than another 18 months. The amount of money both have socked into exclusive programming like the NFL, major league baseball, Howard Stern, Oprah, etc means that to keep from going out of business, they'll have to dump a majority of this content. This is going to be a game of chicken to see who eventually caves first. My bet is that they'll both go under.
So this decision is one that the industry realizes is likely to doom both of them. The bottom line is that they only way either may survive is to salvage the best from both and create a single profitable company. Right now the only competition going on in satellite radio is to see who can stay out of bankruptcy the longest!
I think this all nothing more than carefully placed FUD. It comes a couple of days after Red Hat thumbed its nose at Microsoft for not caving in to its demands of pay MS money for the use of Linux or MS will sue it for copyright and patent infringement. This is SCO all over again and I can't help but believe IBM and others won't step up again to fight this.
Also, keep in mind that Microsoft reinvented itself back in the early 90s. MS wanted a product line that would win in the desktop AND the server markets. It crafted the desktop off of what Apple had done and it wan't to use the leverage they'd get from the desktop to win over the server market as well. The only way to do that was to create a propriety system from the ground up. The OS design was an "anything but Unix" design. It wanted to make sure no other system could talk to Windows and no Windows desktop could talk to anything other than another Windows computer. It developed its own networking protocol, its own file sharing protocols, its own Windows API. The idea was if you have a Windows desktop, it could only talk to a Windows server and that was how MS was going to win over the server market as well.
But an interesting thing happened on the way to total market dominance... There was the Internet and the WWW. Remember, Microsoft didn't originally support TCP/IP but was forced to when the Internet became widely popular in the mid 90s. There was the web browser which allow people to run applications on Unix servers and have the output displayed on their desktop screens. And worse of all, there was reverse engineering. Oh wow, the very tactic Microsoft used to become powerful in the first place was being used against it to chip away at its dominance.
Now that everyone has figured out how to get Windows computers to interact with non-Windows computers, Microsoft is feeling the pinch. Its losing the server market as the Linux market is a more efficient and more cost effective platform to put a server application on. Its losing the desktop market as low cost applications are replacing the big cash cows like Microsoft Office.
So about the time we're feeling comfortable about how everything is one big happy family, Microsoft is going to throw a monkey wrench into all of this. Vista appears to be a BIG blow to interoperability as MS vows to reinforce its proprietary dominance. A new set of protocols and a new DRM layer will make applications tougher to run and data harder to use. Now, Microsoft is going to the next level... using its near monopoly status and huge cash coffers to shut down its competition. If Vista is a failure, Microsoft could very well wither away. It's betting its future on Vista and its new line of products wrapped around Vista. It's betting Vista will bring back the Microsoft only universe. But if MS thinks Vista is going to be a slam dunk winner, why is it bothering to put out all this propaganda about Linux. Maybe its covering all the bases in that by forcing the hand of Linux and FOSS, it will convince users that the risks of using OSS are too high and they will run back to proprietary Microsoft.
Its amazing how this has flipped 180 degrees. Twenty five years ago, Microsoft was using DOS and Basic to allow people to develop software to get out from underneath the proprietary world of the large mainframes of IBM, Dec and others. Now, Linux, supported by IBM and others is offering FOSS to allow people to get out from underneath the proprietary world of Microsoft.
I think this is the real point!!
I see this move all over the place. Perl is passe today with most new scripted code being written in Python and PHP. Many developers want the structure and OO design of these languages. Perl has lacked that in a strict sense.
I love to program in Perl but I see its days numbered. I too am migrating to Python and PHP. Its not because I hate Perl but the need to have something more like Java and C++ is limiting my use of Perl.
I see the move to Perl 6 being about 4 years too late. Perl 6 should have come out in 2002... a language with a better grasp of OO programming. But Perl 6 even today seems to be more vaporware than a real language. When will we really see a full Perl 6 implementation. It looks like Pug is still a couple of years away from being mainstream?? By that time, anyone who will need the functionality of Perl 6 will have already moved on to another language.
You are correct. My understanding is that new releases will be priced up to $3 per song. Popular, highly requested songs will go up to $2 per song. This includes slightly older material that is still popular like 3 year old U2 and Mariah Carey. Some old, barely bought material will go to as low as 50 cents per song. The bottom line is that for most of us, we'll see a 2-3x increase in price.
What this also does is bring on artists that balked at the 99 cent price to begin with. Also this means flexible pricing for long songs. Now 8 minute or longer songs require the purchase of the album. Now they can price that relative to song length so you can download just that song.
This is exactly the direction its going. The Internet is quickly fragmenting as we speak. The research community has gone to Internet II. Newer faster fiber based networks will be connecting major research facilities worldwide. The Internet as we see it has become the modern day equivalent of the mail service.
Now with the US reluctant to give up rights to the existing Internet, Europe and Asia are quickly moving towards their own Internet with their own numbering system. I think this is just a matter of time. The US wants all the money coming in for domain registration and all the control over top level domains. The US is shooting itself in the foot thinking it can keep this control forever!!
With virtually no competition in the US broadband market, its unlikely we'll see anything like this soon. Right now, 3Mb/sec is running $40-50/month and is likely to stay there.
What I wished would happen is to see the 3Mb/sec costs come down to roughly $20/month but I realize this is unlikely to happen unless the government steps in and changes the way broadband Internet is done in the US. Right now Internet connectivity is considered a luxury item and thus, cannot be regulated. I seriously doubt we'll see a change here for at least 3 more years.
As I understand, one of the jamming related problems with GPS is not by criminals/terrorists, but by the government when they see the need. It seems more of a political than a technical nature. That's one of the potential benefits of the Galileo system: to have more than one "supplier" of such information.
This was the reason the Europeans put up their own GPS in the first place. The US always contended the current GPS system was for military use only but provided the signals, in degraded form, for private use. The bottom line was that at any time, the US could cut off all private use of the GPS signal if it felt there was a security threat to the US.
The Clinton administration removed the degraded restriction in the late 90s but the military cutoff still remained. As everything from marine and aviation navigation to commercial uses such as truck and train locating became dependent on GPS in the 90s it was clear that ending use of GPS was going to wreak havoc on many systems.
After 9/11, the Europeans realized that depending on a US system was too risky and decided to circumvent US GPS systems and put up their own. The US threatened to jam the European GPS signal. I haven't heard whether this has been resolved or not.
But what I've heard recently is that the European system has much greater accuracy than the now antiquated US system. This probably forced the military to upgrade their network, hence the 2R-M series. We'll see how this battle pans out.
At one time, I thought buying music was an ethical thing to do. That was until I heard that the artists often get less than a quarter out of every $17 CD you purchase. The other 97% of what you pay for is the bloated infrastructure and the profits of the industry. Your $17 is more likely to go to pay for a guaranteed $50 million J Lo contract than to the artist on that CD. This is where the priorities of the RIAA are all wrong.
Let's be clear, the RIAA would love for us to go back to the analog years where LPs were the way music was distributed and listened to. The fact that music can be reproduced exactly in a digital form means that pirating has become a way of life today. Much like what the MPAA is doing by forcing new technology on DVD players to prevent digital copying of DVDs, we're seeing much the same with CD technology. It won't be long before you won't be able to buy a new CD that won't have copy protection on it... a copy protection that won't play on computers except with expensive new players and special software.
The problem is that the RIAA sees no way it can survive in a digital world. Either they must DRM and encrypt music to a near unusable form or move back to an old analog world where lossy reproduction guaranteed industry profits. So they see it as worth their while to make life tough for the 5% of us that will complain if they see their profit skyrocket in the next 10 years.
Comcast was never able to get channel space for G4. Nobody wanted to carry it. Buying TechTV gave them the channel space they so badly wanted.
Boy, this sounds like modern day business practices. If you can't get your all gaming network onto Dish and DirecTV, buy out TechTV and replace it with G4. This is basically what happened. There is nothing left of TechTV except for a couple of hold outs like Adam, Morgan and Sarah. I suspect these are holding out in LA hoping to transition into bigger and better jobs like Jessica, Erica and others from TechTV did.
G4 is basically a 24x7 infomercial for the computer gaming industry. I'm sure its this aspect that is the only thing keeping G4 afloat.
Well, if you look at it, G4 absorbed TechTV and then dissolved it. Lets face it, there weren't enough tech geeks like us to keep TechTV afloat. In the end, money, sponsorship and advertising wins out and often good programming gets canned.
The Screensavers was a very good program but at times a bit unprofessional. It was the last non-gaming show left on G4 and now its just another gaming show. I call it "Entertainment tonight meets gaming". Only Sarah's tidbits from the Internet keep it from being a game only show.
But I saw the handwriting on the wall at least a year before G4 took over. There was a push to morph TechTV into more than a tech network. You saw Jessica doing interviews with celebrities about there recent shows. The show went from 90 to 60 minutes and commercials limited true content in the show to about 10-15 minutes. There was more of a push to appeal to the gaming crowd (where 90% of the geeks under 25 reside today). G4 just finished the transition. Realistically, G4 should turn AOTS into another 30 minute taped show like everything else.
I am so glad that Leo kept up the Screensavers tradition with Call For Help, even though he had to go to Canada to do it. I'm hoping Leo doesn't bow down to the G4 lords and morph CFH like we saw in TSS.
I went over to Best Buy the other day and it was appauling. The only hard drive MP3 players on the shelf were iPods. There were empty shelves for a single type of Creative and iRiver players. But you could get an iPod in 12 different flavors and 4 different colors. Then you turn around and there was shelf after shelf of iPod accessories. Its clear to me, Apple has all but won the hard drive audio player wars. I think I saw somewhere where they have about 75% of the market right now.
I've had a Creative hard drive player now for over 2 years and although its not terribly portable, it offers 20GB of space and, at the time, cost $100 less than the equivalent iPod. Its a great device with nice sound quality. At the time, I saw no reason to get an iPod for an extra $100 of flash.
What amazed me was how Apple was able to conquer the market with a product 35-50% more expensive than its competitors. The music quality and ease of use was virtually identical from the reviews I read.
I think Apple was able to win the war with a slick marketing campaign. First, like Apple always does, the package was more about style than substance. It was relatively small and had no buttons. And that circle that passed as a selector was a thing of brilliance. In other words, I never really thought it functioned any better than the more traditional hardware but it looked "so cool". Add to this a music store that had AAC files that could only be used with an iPod and no wonder people started buying into it.
Apple again was very forward thinking and caught all its competitors off guard. Now, unlike their PC business, they have a virtual monopoly on audio players. Lets see how they manage this?? I suspect the single use device like an iPod will be surplanted by more functional devices in the near future. The question is whether Apple will rest on their laurels or try and beat everyone to the next great multimedia handheld device...
But the point here is that it amazes me that in the technology world, there is so little competition. I'm sad to see Rio drop out. iRiver seems more popular in the flash player market. Creative looks to be Apple's only remaining competition. Lack of competition often means no inventiveness. We'll see.
Well, this is a bit simplistic. Prior to WWII, most of the great universities were in Europe. When we think scientific research, we thought Europe. All the greats were over there. WWII changed that! The US had the facilities and the money to fund new research and this caused many of the great scientist to leave the bombed out facilities in Europe for the US.
Prior to WWII, the US was primarily an industrial country where most of its efforts were not going into science but into new technology. We had the large corporations to take the inventions and turn them into consumer goods, much like Japan and Korea does today.
Today, we're a user country. Very little new technology is getting into everyday life. If you look at a household of 1975 and compare it to 2005, you'll see very little difference. The difference from 1945 to 1975 is quite dramatic!! You look at essays from the mid 70s as to what we'd be doing in 2005, using the previous 30 years as a guideline, it was amazing that almost none of those predictions came true.
We've lost our edge not only in technology but in research in general. I've read that today, US corporations are ruled so much by quarterly profits that R&D is almost a 4 letter word. We're now implementing what other countries develop. Our corporations are little more than warehouses for Japanese and European products and technology.
So it should come as no surprise that we have an ultra-conservative administration that seems content to rule out scientific innovation. It seems that in this country, if it hasn't been totally explained beyond the shadow of a doubt by science, then the explanation is from religion. Why do we need further scientific research when the Bible explains what is currently unexplained.
What raises humans above other creatures is their ability to investigate. To try and understand the universe using scientific process rather than relying on a religious fall-back.
I feel we as a species can't progress if we lose our intuitive nature. But many today believe its easier to let religion explain it than to try and find it out ourselves. In other words, we are becoming replicating robots and little more. I then lose my reason to exist... other than to procreate!
I am very tempted to go back to over the air TV and 56K dialup. I've seen my cable bill nearly double in 7 years and now with high speed, I'm forking out almost $150/month for a service (TV/Internet) I don't use that much... not to mention the service is not as good as it was 5 years ago.
What ever happened to the idea that cable was cheap? What ever happened to the $10/month high speed Internet?? Knowing the direction Comcast is going, I suspect my cable bill will be over $200/month within the next 2 years.
In my area, there is no competition! If you want high speed Internet, Comcast is your only choice (no DSL). My housing community has strict rules on dishes so DirecTV is probably not an option either.
My question is where is the Federal government here? It seems like there is a strong push to allow all companies to effectively create their own monopolies with all this deregulation that in essence puts their competition out of business.
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I've heard of XenApp but didn't realize it could do all that. I get the running the app on the XenApp server and then having a thin client visualize the output. I don't know how they do the local application serving so you can take Excel with you to a non-network environment unless they somehow deliver it to a local VM capable of running Windows apps.
All in all, this looks very promising. Thanks for the info.
I'll have to agree. I've found so much in the business world is tied to proprietary products many of which don't have a OSS equivalent. As much as we've tried to get rid of Windows products and move towards OSS, we still have to give employees a Windows laptop to handle many tasks.
I've also witnessed in many cases that good Linux systems administrators are hard to come by. Many of my customers were forced to eliminate Linux systems because it's far easier to find a certified Windows administrator who can manage your systems than to train someone on Linux.
I consider myself a Linux Guru. I've worked with Linux for over 12 years. I've administered Linux and Unix systems for almost 25 years. I love Linux for what I do. But it's still not a one stop shop. I still need Windows (or a Mac). Luckily, Linux systems can work well with Windows systems so it's easier to add Linux systems to a Windows base. It's much harder to go the other way.
You are exactly correct.
Microsoft isn't worried about Linux because Linux doesn't compete directly with Windows. Microsoft won over the US corporate world about a decade ago with a set of business and office tools that integrate the entire corporation together. Linux is getting there but they're about 2-4 years away from being where Microsoft was in 2000. You can't find many US corporations where you don't have a Windows computer on every desktop connected to Windows based email, directory and web servers.
This corporate culture that promotes everything Microsoft spreads to other non-Microsoft areas. Even though Linux and OSS has made progress in these areas of late, non-Microsoft companies must carry Microsoft computers for compatibility with the rest of the corporate world. Microsoft makes the standards and everyone else has to follow.
In addition, US corporations are like aircraft carriers. Once something is adopted, its unlikely it will change course anytime soon. Microsoft got there first and is now reaping the benefits. Most US corporations still use decades old technology because its too costly to switch. Any move to something like Linux would have to be phased in VERY slowly.
Linux may be approaching Microsoft in terms of functionality and ease of use but it has to convince large corporations that Linux is superior to Windows before there will be any effort to switch. As a result, Linux is still and probably always will be a niche market in the US.
In my experiences with corporations, projects that were Unix based have either switched to Linux or are in the process of switching. I've yet to see a Windows based project in my area switch to Linux. Since I support Linux based software, I've found that in many cases, being Linux only is a barrier to entry into some corporations because they've spent tons of money to develop a local support staff around Windows and are unwilling to retrain personnel to do Linux. On the other hand, a Linux based company must also support Windows so its less of a barrier for a Windows only company to sell its products to a Linux based company.
In Europe and especially emerging economies, where corporations and governments have yet to adopt the "everything Microsoft" mentality, Linux is making strong headway. I suspect in 10 years, we'll have a very similar split between the US and the rest of the world to what we see in many other technologies. Europe and Asia will be primarily Linux based and the US will still be Windows based.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Vista is not an upgrade and I get the feeling Microsoft never wanted it to be. When XP came out, everyone wanted to upgrade their ailing Win95/98 boxes. XP didn't require new hardware but the OS features and added stability made it a must upgrade. Vista's requirements are so steep that few computers bought prior to Vista have enough speed and memory to install it. IMHO, it was clearly intended to be the next generation OS running exclusively on next generation hardware. So with Vista, Microsoft doesn't have to support hardware prior to 2006 and thus can concentrate on the next generation hardware. This is why I've noticed the couple of times I've been in a computer store recently that they don't offer Vista Home Basic, only Home Premium. I suspect this is because if you are going to upgrade, you won't do the neutered Basic edition if you need to upgrade the hardware to get there. If you're spending the money on new hardware, you'll pay for the premium upgrade.
So what this leaves is that Vista is ONLY going onto new PCs. I did the calculations and if you look at estimated PC sales worldwide and assume Vista will be installed on 80% of them, you get a figure of about 45 million Vista sales in the first 3 months of this year. So I suspect this is an OEM number and I would be very surprised if Vista boxes are flying off the shelves of places like CompUSA or Circuit City.
OK, I estimate that PC sales for 2007 are going to be around 75 million units in the U.S. and about 225 million units world wide. If you take 3 months of this, it would be about 19 million PCs sold in the U.S. and about 55 million world wide. So if you estimate that 80% of all those units sold will have Vista on it, you get about 40 million units total. Humm...
Now compare this to 2001 when XP came out. PC sales back then were about 55 million in the U.S. and 125 million world wide and you can see that XP wouldn't have come close in sales during its first three months.
What that tells me is that Microsoft is using the expansion in world wide PC sales as an way to promote how well Vista is going. But considering there isn't an upgrade path to Vista (thanks to greatly increased hardware requirements) like there was with XP, I'm sure these sales will level off.
I think you missed my point. The desktop is all about the applications. Open Source Software has really only been working in the desktop application realm for about 5-8 years and it has a lot of catching up to do to get to where Windows is today. There are some positive signs in applications like OpenOffice, Evolution and Gimp. But there are so many areas that OSS either has no application or the software is in its infancy, thus lacking what is needed to be truly usable.
You notice I said open/free as well. You can only go so far with free. If Linux is to compete with Windows and MacOSX, it needs a better set of proprietary applications. Lets face it, fully supporting audio, video and other proprietary areas will require software manufacturers to either start porting their applications into Linux (not likely to happen soon) or for Linux to start licensing these technologies and incorporating them into OSS applications. Either way, it won't be free. I would pay $75 for a desktop Linux distribution that included proprietary codecs, drivers, etc so that my Linux desktop could play a variety of music, DVDs, etc without using marginal and/or illegal add-ins.
I have a Fedora Core 6 system at work and have a similar setup at home. I've been a programmer in Unix for over 20 years and a systems administrator for over 15. I use Linux for as much as I can use Linux. I would love to see my Linux computer completely replace my Windows computer but without the full suite of "usable" applications, I will have to have a Windows computer. In this sense, I believe Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows.
> This is headed for a major court battle. In fact, it should be obvious that SCO is just the first.
I said this back when SCO sacrificed itself to try and take down Linux. Linux has been treading on thin ice for years. The programming landscape has been filled with copyrights and patents for decades and to try and develop an operating system, not to mention applications that don't use them is next to impossible. Lets face it, it tough to write 5 lines of code without violating some sort of a patent.
Today, you can only make a have baked OS and have half baked applications before you enter the patent and copyright mine field. Linux might be able to exist at the server level thanks to Unix's legacy but for it to make any progress on the desktop, its going to have to start licensing these expensive technologies. Many of these technologies are reserved by companies like Microsoft and you can bet Linux will not get a free ride licensing them. Look at what SCO wanted to do to Linux. They intentionally priced their SCO-Linux license so that Linux would become the most expensive small server OS by a wide margin. SCO wasn't going to just license Linux, they were going to bury Linux.
I think this is what Microsoft wants to do. I'm sure Apple and others are in the same boat. The idea is to restrict certain technologies to the point where Linux looks like Windows 3.1 in functionality and thus preserve their desktop monopoly.
In my opinion, open/free Linux is still 5-10 years behind Windows and OSX in terms of desktop functionality and these hurdles aren't going to allow the gap to close any time soon. On the other hand, enterprise versions of Linux, that can license these technologies, are so expensive, they really aren't an alternative to Windows on the desktop.
If it weren't for IBM backing Linux, it would be dead today. Microsoft, SCO and others would have patent-infringed Linux back to the stone ages. Clearly IBM's presence has kept a lot of this from happening. But as OSS and Linux become more popular, its clear the lawsuits will start coming fast and furious. We've only seen the beginning of this.
HD formats will die on the vine if more titles that really show off HD come out. I bought the HD-DVD version Chronos, a Imax movie from the mid 80s, and it is a pain to play on the Xbox player but once every 20 or so tries, it will play. When it does, its spectacular.
The Xbox add-on player did include King Kong which is visually spectacular. Even though I didn't particularly like the movie, it does really show off HD.
Most engineers and mathematicians I know are liberal leaning. I think anyone who is fairly well educated because he or she is intellectually curious is probably more liberal than conservative. Now I do know scientists that are not politically curious and they tend to be conservative. If what you are saying that they spend so much time working in their field of interest that they tend to accept politics rather than challenging it, you are correct to a certain extent.
But I get the feeling that I'm in the minority and that most people just want to listen to their favorite 20 songs over and over again (thank you iPod). I suspect satellite radio will evolve into something much closer to what you hear on your FM dial... promoted music and commercials. By then, why bother!
Its clear that XM and Sirius were in competition for a limited market. The iPod in the end was what brought these two together. XM and Sirius had a small window before cars started installing adapters for iPods. Since almost everyone who listens to music has a iPod, it meant that the benefits of satellite radio where lost when you could just plug in your iPod.
Whereas the two radio networks were counting on subscriptions continuing to increase each year for the next 4 years, in reality, they started leveling off this year. And now they have a business model based on a subscription base neither is likely to meet.
As a result, I think we'll see one of two things out of the new company. Either a substantial rate increase or a substantial content decrease. At any rate, its unlikely that the new company will have the variety of content that we see on both today.
One is the lack of diversity. In most markets, you have 3 hip-hop stations, 4 country music stations, 2 top 40 rock stations, a classic rock and an oldies station. When you listen to these stations, you'll hear exactly what the recording companies want you to listen to. Its a 90 minute playlist that beats current hits into your head like Chinese water torture. If you want to hear anything outside of their playlist, you're just out of luck. Add to this that 90% of the stations in a particular market are owned by 2 or 3 companies basically out for profit and you can see there won't be much diversity.
Second, is all the commercials. I used to station surf all the time on my way into work. I truly believe that the reason you have 6 presets on your car radio is it takes that many presets to find a station doing something other than promotions and commercials. For most of the stations I used to listen to, you were lucky to get 25 minutes of music.
This is why XM really hit a chord with me. You can listen to a wide variety of music, not just 4 genries. You can listen to a station 6 hours and not hear the same song twice. And you can listen without commercial interruption!!
But lets face it, XM and Sirius are on the quick path to bankruptcy. Both companies are bleeding so much red ink that its unlikely they'll stay out of chapter 11 for more than another 18 months. The amount of money both have socked into exclusive programming like the NFL, major league baseball, Howard Stern, Oprah, etc means that to keep from going out of business, they'll have to dump a majority of this content. This is going to be a game of chicken to see who eventually caves first. My bet is that they'll both go under.
So this decision is one that the industry realizes is likely to doom both of them. The bottom line is that they only way either may survive is to salvage the best from both and create a single profitable company. Right now the only competition going on in satellite radio is to see who can stay out of bankruptcy the longest!
Also, keep in mind that Microsoft reinvented itself back in the early 90s. MS wanted a product line that would win in the desktop AND the server markets. It crafted the desktop off of what Apple had done and it wan't to use the leverage they'd get from the desktop to win over the server market as well. The only way to do that was to create a propriety system from the ground up. The OS design was an "anything but Unix" design. It wanted to make sure no other system could talk to Windows and no Windows desktop could talk to anything other than another Windows computer. It developed its own networking protocol, its own file sharing protocols, its own Windows API. The idea was if you have a Windows desktop, it could only talk to a Windows server and that was how MS was going to win over the server market as well.
But an interesting thing happened on the way to total market dominance... There was the Internet and the WWW. Remember, Microsoft didn't originally support TCP/IP but was forced to when the Internet became widely popular in the mid 90s. There was the web browser which allow people to run applications on Unix servers and have the output displayed on their desktop screens. And worse of all, there was reverse engineering. Oh wow, the very tactic Microsoft used to become powerful in the first place was being used against it to chip away at its dominance.
Now that everyone has figured out how to get Windows computers to interact with non-Windows computers, Microsoft is feeling the pinch. Its losing the server market as the Linux market is a more efficient and more cost effective platform to put a server application on. Its losing the desktop market as low cost applications are replacing the big cash cows like Microsoft Office.
So about the time we're feeling comfortable about how everything is one big happy family, Microsoft is going to throw a monkey wrench into all of this. Vista appears to be a BIG blow to interoperability as MS vows to reinforce its proprietary dominance. A new set of protocols and a new DRM layer will make applications tougher to run and data harder to use. Now, Microsoft is going to the next level... using its near monopoly status and huge cash coffers to shut down its competition. If Vista is a failure, Microsoft could very well wither away. It's betting its future on Vista and its new line of products wrapped around Vista. It's betting Vista will bring back the Microsoft only universe. But if MS thinks Vista is going to be a slam dunk winner, why is it bothering to put out all this propaganda about Linux. Maybe its covering all the bases in that by forcing the hand of Linux and FOSS, it will convince users that the risks of using OSS are too high and they will run back to proprietary Microsoft.
Its amazing how this has flipped 180 degrees. Twenty five years ago, Microsoft was using DOS and Basic to allow people to develop software to get out from underneath the proprietary world of the large mainframes of IBM, Dec and others. Now, Linux, supported by IBM and others is offering FOSS to allow people to get out from underneath the proprietary world of Microsoft.
I think this is the real point!! I see this move all over the place. Perl is passe today with most new scripted code being written in Python and PHP. Many developers want the structure and OO design of these languages. Perl has lacked that in a strict sense. I love to program in Perl but I see its days numbered. I too am migrating to Python and PHP. Its not because I hate Perl but the need to have something more like Java and C++ is limiting my use of Perl. I see the move to Perl 6 being about 4 years too late. Perl 6 should have come out in 2002... a language with a better grasp of OO programming. But Perl 6 even today seems to be more vaporware than a real language. When will we really see a full Perl 6 implementation. It looks like Pug is still a couple of years away from being mainstream?? By that time, anyone who will need the functionality of Perl 6 will have already moved on to another language.
What this also does is bring on artists that balked at the 99 cent price to begin with. Also this means flexible pricing for long songs. Now 8 minute or longer songs require the purchase of the album. Now they can price that relative to song length so you can download just that song.
Now with the US reluctant to give up rights to the existing Internet, Europe and Asia are quickly moving towards their own Internet with their own numbering system. I think this is just a matter of time. The US wants all the money coming in for domain registration and all the control over top level domains. The US is shooting itself in the foot thinking it can keep this control forever!!
What I wished would happen is to see the 3Mb/sec costs come down to roughly $20/month but I realize this is unlikely to happen unless the government steps in and changes the way broadband Internet is done in the US. Right now Internet connectivity is considered a luxury item and thus, cannot be regulated. I seriously doubt we'll see a change here for at least 3 more years.
This was the reason the Europeans put up their own GPS in the first place. The US always contended the current GPS system was for military use only but provided the signals, in degraded form, for private use. The bottom line was that at any time, the US could cut off all private use of the GPS signal if it felt there was a security threat to the US.
The Clinton administration removed the degraded restriction in the late 90s but the military cutoff still remained. As everything from marine and aviation navigation to commercial uses such as truck and train locating became dependent on GPS in the 90s it was clear that ending use of GPS was going to wreak havoc on many systems.
After 9/11, the Europeans realized that depending on a US system was too risky and decided to circumvent US GPS systems and put up their own. The US threatened to jam the European GPS signal. I haven't heard whether this has been resolved or not.
But what I've heard recently is that the European system has much greater accuracy than the now antiquated US system. This probably forced the military to upgrade their network, hence the 2R-M series. We'll see how this battle pans out.
Let's be clear, the RIAA would love for us to go back to the analog years where LPs were the way music was distributed and listened to. The fact that music can be reproduced exactly in a digital form means that pirating has become a way of life today. Much like what the MPAA is doing by forcing new technology on DVD players to prevent digital copying of DVDs, we're seeing much the same with CD technology. It won't be long before you won't be able to buy a new CD that won't have copy protection on it... a copy protection that won't play on computers except with expensive new players and special software.
The problem is that the RIAA sees no way it can survive in a digital world. Either they must DRM and encrypt music to a near unusable form or move back to an old analog world where lossy reproduction guaranteed industry profits. So they see it as worth their while to make life tough for the 5% of us that will complain if they see their profit skyrocket in the next 10 years.
Boy, this sounds like modern day business practices. If you can't get your all gaming network onto Dish and DirecTV, buy out TechTV and replace it with G4. This is basically what happened. There is nothing left of TechTV except for a couple of hold outs like Adam, Morgan and Sarah. I suspect these are holding out in LA hoping to transition into bigger and better jobs like Jessica, Erica and others from TechTV did.
G4 is basically a 24x7 infomercial for the computer gaming industry. I'm sure its this aspect that is the only thing keeping G4 afloat.
The Screensavers was a very good program but at times a bit unprofessional. It was the last non-gaming show left on G4 and now its just another gaming show. I call it "Entertainment tonight meets gaming". Only Sarah's tidbits from the Internet keep it from being a game only show.
But I saw the handwriting on the wall at least a year before G4 took over. There was a push to morph TechTV into more than a tech network. You saw Jessica doing interviews with celebrities about there recent shows. The show went from 90 to 60 minutes and commercials limited true content in the show to about 10-15 minutes. There was more of a push to appeal to the gaming crowd (where 90% of the geeks under 25 reside today). G4 just finished the transition. Realistically, G4 should turn AOTS into another 30 minute taped show like everything else.
I am so glad that Leo kept up the Screensavers tradition with Call For Help, even though he had to go to Canada to do it. I'm hoping Leo doesn't bow down to the G4 lords and morph CFH like we saw in TSS.
I've had a Creative hard drive player now for over 2 years and although its not terribly portable, it offers 20GB of space and, at the time, cost $100 less than the equivalent iPod. Its a great device with nice sound quality. At the time, I saw no reason to get an iPod for an extra $100 of flash.
What amazed me was how Apple was able to conquer the market with a product 35-50% more expensive than its competitors. The music quality and ease of use was virtually identical from the reviews I read.
I think Apple was able to win the war with a slick marketing campaign. First, like Apple always does, the package was more about style than substance. It was relatively small and had no buttons. And that circle that passed as a selector was a thing of brilliance. In other words, I never really thought it functioned any better than the more traditional hardware but it looked "so cool". Add to this a music store that had AAC files that could only be used with an iPod and no wonder people started buying into it.
Apple again was very forward thinking and caught all its competitors off guard. Now, unlike their PC business, they have a virtual monopoly on audio players. Lets see how they manage this?? I suspect the single use device like an iPod will be surplanted by more functional devices in the near future. The question is whether Apple will rest on their laurels or try and beat everyone to the next great multimedia handheld device...
But the point here is that it amazes me that in the technology world, there is so little competition. I'm sad to see Rio drop out. iRiver seems more popular in the flash player market. Creative looks to be Apple's only remaining competition. Lack of competition often means no inventiveness. We'll see.
Well, this is a bit simplistic. Prior to WWII, most of the great universities were in Europe. When we think scientific research, we thought Europe. All the greats were over there. WWII changed that! The US had the facilities and the money to fund new research and this caused many of the great scientist to leave the bombed out facilities in Europe for the US. Prior to WWII, the US was primarily an industrial country where most of its efforts were not going into science but into new technology. We had the large corporations to take the inventions and turn them into consumer goods, much like Japan and Korea does today. Today, we're a user country. Very little new technology is getting into everyday life. If you look at a household of 1975 and compare it to 2005, you'll see very little difference. The difference from 1945 to 1975 is quite dramatic!! You look at essays from the mid 70s as to what we'd be doing in 2005, using the previous 30 years as a guideline, it was amazing that almost none of those predictions came true. We've lost our edge not only in technology but in research in general. I've read that today, US corporations are ruled so much by quarterly profits that R&D is almost a 4 letter word. We're now implementing what other countries develop. Our corporations are little more than warehouses for Japanese and European products and technology. So it should come as no surprise that we have an ultra-conservative administration that seems content to rule out scientific innovation. It seems that in this country, if it hasn't been totally explained beyond the shadow of a doubt by science, then the explanation is from religion. Why do we need further scientific research when the Bible explains what is currently unexplained. What raises humans above other creatures is their ability to investigate. To try and understand the universe using scientific process rather than relying on a religious fall-back. I feel we as a species can't progress if we lose our intuitive nature. But many today believe its easier to let religion explain it than to try and find it out ourselves. In other words, we are becoming replicating robots and little more. I then lose my reason to exist... other than to procreate!
I am very tempted to go back to over the air TV and 56K dialup. I've seen my cable bill nearly double in 7 years and now with high speed, I'm forking out almost $150/month for a service (TV/Internet) I don't use that much... not to mention the service is not as good as it was 5 years ago. What ever happened to the idea that cable was cheap? What ever happened to the $10/month high speed Internet?? Knowing the direction Comcast is going, I suspect my cable bill will be over $200/month within the next 2 years. In my area, there is no competition! If you want high speed Internet, Comcast is your only choice (no DSL). My housing community has strict rules on dishes so DirecTV is probably not an option either. My question is where is the Federal government here? It seems like there is a strong push to allow all companies to effectively create their own monopolies with all this deregulation that in essence puts their competition out of business.