I'm sorry, but did serious people ever use Oracle for DOS? [Or Oracle for OS/2 for that matter?] I have done consultancy at many (>100) Oracle sites over the years and am yet to see either of those configurations being used in anger. Maybe you need to look at your organisation's OS selection policy before being so quick to blame companies like Oracle for pulling the plug...
I'm no great fan of Oracle. There IS lots wrong with Oracle. But be fair... pulling support for Oracle on DOS is a bad thing???? The only bad thing is that there ever was support on DOS in the first place.
As somebody who worked for O$ for many years, I'm interested by Larry's jump into bed with Linux. I'm out of the loop now, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of a "testing the OSS water" strategy. I also wouldn't be surprised to see some low revenue Oracle products (e.g. JDeveloper, Developer, Application Server) being turned open source.
"...but linux can be a gateway drug to other Open Source/FREE software"
For now, I don't think this is a (serious) risk. Oracle has been distributing Apache now for a number of years, for example. If you know anything about the history of Oracle, the success it has achieved is more about sales and marketing than about having a superior (or cheaper) product (remember Ingres??). If you're an CTO for a Fortune 500, are you going to move your corporate databases to MySQL? I don't think so. You are going to stick with the database vendor that's running corporate databases for most of the rest of the Fortune 500. If you're the kind of company that has a budget so tight that you NEED to run MySQL or Postgres for core systems, Oracle doesn't want or need you. Maybe the best weapon Oracle has against MySQL and Postgres is the fact that you are able to download the complete version of Oracle from OTN. There are many unlicenced Oracle implementations around the world as a result of this free download facility.
I'm all for Postgres and MySQL pushing into the enterprise world, but MSSQL should be the first target. If Oracle are prepared to put real money into backing Linux, let's support them...
sociological solution
I totally agree. [highly stretched analogy follows...] Like trying to reduce amount of hard drugs on our streets, it's more effective in the long term to try to reduce demand by education than to try go after the suppliers. There will always be someone out there to fill the place of a convicted dealer (or spammer). There will always be someone out there who'll figure out a new way to smuggle drugs or send spam.
We can start educating by telling our friends and families not to buy anything that advertised in unsolicited email. Unfortunately, we all know that there's another sucker born every minute, and educating them about spam is going to be difficult (if not impossible). Maybe as well as educating people not to respond, we could make it illegal to purchase a product from an unsolicited email? Pretty draconian, I know, but... Most suckers are law-abiding citizens. They might be dumb or desperate enough to buy an enlargement cream from a spammer, but would they risk a fine or (worse) being asked to explain their purchase to a judge?
And that idea that somehow managerial IT positions are superior to the engineering jobs (where the real work happens) is where the problem lies... In the boom days, myself and my buddies always assumed that the people who fell into middle management IT positions (often incompetent software engineers) would be the first to be hit when the bubble burst. You know, the actual "doers" would remain long after the "talkers" were gone. The fact is that many programmers and administrators are very much capable of doing the executive level roles that you're talking about. You didn't rise through the ranks, you just followed a different career path to your co-workers.
I am still earning top dollar for some pretty niche skills. But I looked around my team yesterday - 5 managers of varying levels (all local born), 12 system engineers (7 indian, 2 mexican, 1 kenyan, 1 australian, 1 local born - me). I don't resent these guys - they're just doing the best they can to get a better life for their families back home. I'd do the same in their position. Here's the thing that DOES annoy me. The only jobs that aren't filled by low cost overseas workers (apart from mine and the Australian's) are the managerial positions. The original "doers" have all been priced out of the market. Many have started new careers outside of IT (as I myself intend to do at the end of this year). Yet the most ridiculous thing is that all of the managers remain...
In case you're wondering, I'm not bitter. I like that fact that I'm able to explain to people what I do for a living - i.e. what it is that I contribute to the world. Be honest with yourself, if you're an IT manager or IT director (this is a general comment, not necessarily directed at the original poster). You contribute little or nothing to the world. You create nothing. It is likely that you no longer have the capability to create anything yourself (if you ever had that ability in the first place). When your ivory tower falls and cheap labour moves into your job, you will find that the world that isn't interested in a washed up middle manager rejected by an ailing industry... The doers will continue to do. Will you survive?
The real cash cows are the places where management is so hopeless that their IT infrastructure resembles a plate of undocumented and unsupported spaghetti. Save your manager's ass a few times... Be reliable... Be trusted... Be essential... Be EXPENSIVE.
Remember that the European Commission is a confused mix of cultural, political and economic madness. The Commission is a huge bureacracy "led" by a small number of unelected politicians who are either ideologically convinced, corrupt or meglomaniac (or some combination of the above). They are not afraid of Microsoft as they are unelected and pretty much untouchable. They don't care about what the operating system on your desk looks like. Once in a while they like to flex a bit of muscle and show that they do have power as a regulator (over Europe and business that operates within the boundaries of the EU).
The European Commission has never been frightened of applying tough punishment against abuse of monopolies and price fixing as illustrated by the Commission's $147 Million fine for Nintendo price fixing. Also, it would be good PR for the Commission to be seen to protect MPlayer as Hungary (the home of mplayerhq.hu) is in the process of joining the European Union. The Commission always likes to invest in, protect and welcome its newer and poorer members.
I speak as somebody who was "commissioned" by the Commission to work on a Europe-wide project for 2 years. I have had the pleasure of working with some pretty incompetent people over the years (if you've worked in defence, local government or taxation you'll have met some of them yourself), but compared to the Commission these places are run like a well-oiled machines. I have never seen such a hopeless bunch of overpaid, underworked, gravy-train spongers in my life, and I don't expect to again.
Anyway, back on topic... I think that Europe could be a key battleground for Microsoft over the coming years. There is a fashionable anti-"Corporate America" feeling around in European politics right now. I think that we'll see Governments and public sector in Europe moving towards Open Source for that reason (quite apart from the fact that in many cases OSS offers a superior technical solution). Big investment in Open Source, along with a few high profile and successful reference sites is something Microsoft will try to avoid at all costs.
Surely 80% of the Instant Messaging market is the only asset AOL have that's worth anything to anyone?? Apart from that, what else is there? Millions of Joe 6 DDoS drones... Netscape seems to have been abandoned, it's worth nothing now, if it was ever worth anything in the first place...
If this is more than an American Dream, let's hope that an outcome will be that AOL will loosen their grip on the IM market. The closed model they've been trying to enforce has been holding back a world of possibilities for Jabber and IM client development.
Maybe one answer is to go after the owners of the drones. If Joe has a hacked Windows 98 PC always connected via DSL (in the unlikely event that a 98 PC would stay up for more than 3 hours without crashing;-). Let's say he never applied a patch to it and now it's being used for DDOS. Does he share some of the responsibility for the crime that is being committed with his hardware?
An analogy might be... if I left a gun unattended just by my front door, and a would-be murderer pushed my door open and took it, maybe I would share some small part of the responsibility for his future crimes. I'd certainly feel some sense of guilt...
If Joe's getting stung, he's going to shout at his vendor -> his vendor is going to shout at his manufacturer -> his manufacturer is going to shout at the people who set up his OS, and left in lots of vulnerabilities in there along with an insecure default setup. At the very least, Joe is going to make sure he tells all of his Joe pals not to leave their machines with always on connections and no security patches.
I know Joe is a victim too, but maybe we need to be a little more pragmatic about how we can reduce the growing problem of DDoS attacks. Individual Joe's are alot easier to track down and scare than the Russian mob.
Unless we're missing something... Who's to say that Microsft haven't been doing a little unpublished research, looking for buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities that they're soon going to demonstrate? There are still bright people at Microsft. There are certainly people bright enough to find bugs in software (maybe they won't find much wrong with the Linux kernel, but it's not going to be too difficult to find bugs in myriad GNU and other packages that come with a typical distro). They might view finding and making public security holes in the competition as a more valuable and profitable exercise than securing their own OS and software.
If they like many of us see Linux as the biggest credible threat out there, they might resort to fighting dirty. Linux does have the potential to shift the paradigm of the whole IT industry in the same way that Microsoft themselves did through the 80s and 90s. Sun et al are already feeling the heat in the server market. I'm certain that Bill and co are getting twitchy about how things are developing.
We all know Microsoft is pretty cold and calculated when it comes to competitors. If Linux is next in the firing line, the open source community needs to be ready for this battle and the wars that will follow...
Something else you almost never see in UK advertising is a message like <no 1 competitor's name> isn't as big/fast/tasty/pretty/popular as <advertiser's brand>, even if there is quantifiable evidence to prove it. Advertising as highly regulated. To pull a fast one on the opposition just wouldn't be cricket old chap.
The only ones who seem to be able to get away with trashy advertising are politicians with pre-election advertisements (on billboards, etc). Even those are tame by US standards.
The SUSE and RH changes reflect the success of Linux. Both vendors have worked hard on
building enterprise alliances with traditional software vendors (like Oracle). RH have
decided that the time is right to make a grab for a piece the lucrative server marketshare
being lost by (Sun et al).
"Soon the Enterprise solutions will follow them in the dump because no one will bother learning RH anymore."
I totally disagree with this (troll???). If you've got Debian or Slackware at home, it's not going to be too much of a jump to configure a RH box is it??? I work with lots of blue chips, fortune 500s and public sector organisations, and a few hundred for a server support contract is not going to worry any of them... But not having to spend 50k on a new Solaris or HP-UX box is a mighty big carrot to dangle in front of any IT manager - especially if he knows his enterprise software vendors are backing and promoting a cheaper alternative platform (as for example Oracle are backing RH and to a lesser extent SUSE right now).
I'm not pleased that my RH9 installs aren't going to be supported any more, but I'm happy
to move to something else knowing that RedHat are pushing Linux into the heart of the
enterprise. A low cost and low risk alternative to Microsoft, fighting them where Sun
never could. If Novell can get their act together with SUSE, then they'll have something
to fight Microsoft with too. And that can't be a bad thing...
Red Hat looks like it has a very bright future. I thought about buying shares at about $10 too, but IMHO I think there are echoes of dotcom enthusiasm about the RHAT share price. If you compare the market cap to the turnover they are generating, I don't think it adds up to a great investment.
That said, I think Red Hat is a company going places. I am talking as someone who until very recently worked for a large database vendor (let's call it O$). In the last couple of years, O$ have jumped on the Linux bandwagon. I think this shift, maybe more than anything else will kill Sun. At O$, Red Hat clients are popping up all over the place (from Consultant laptops to developer's workstations). At the back end, O$'s Apps development databases (for example) run on Linux.
O$ have recognised the Enterprise needs rock solid support (or at least the Enterprise needs to believe that it has access to rock solid support). They see Red Hat as the best chance to get this in the Linux world, with a little help... Oracle Technology Network: Oracle and Red Hat signed a "Cooperative Technical Support Agreement" in order to provide joint customers with the highest level of technical support where Oracle will provide critical (Priority 1) OS level support to customers running any Oracle product on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES. For issues below P1 in severity, Oracle will work closely with Red Hat to jointly resolve these issues. Oracle will provide any Red Had Linux Advanced Server OS critical bug fixes/patches to Red Hat for inclusion in their future maintenance releases.
I'm working at a Fortune 500 now that runs HP-UX and Oracle. They've said no to the first recommend of Linux, but with O$ and Red Hat beginning to look like a serious proposition, pretty soon No will become PoC and then PoC will become production. That's good news for Oracle (customers have a low cost hardware alternative to M$), and great news for Red Hat and the Linux community. I'm not saying that the words "Oracle on Solaris" or "Oracle on HP-UX" won't be heard in IT departments, I'm just saying we'll hear more of "Oracle on Linux". The big danger for O$, is that in introducing the suits to Linux, somewhere down the line they are going to look at the open source options available in the database world too...
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but did serious people ever use Oracle for DOS? [Or Oracle for OS/2 for that matter?] I have done consultancy at many (>100) Oracle sites over the years and am yet to see either of those configurations being used in anger. Maybe you need to look at your organisation's OS selection policy before being so quick to blame companies like Oracle for pulling the plug...
I'm no great fan of Oracle. There IS lots wrong with Oracle. But be fair... pulling support for Oracle on DOS is a bad thing???? The only bad thing is that there ever was support on DOS in the first place.
"...but linux can be a gateway drug to other Open Source/FREE software"
For now, I don't think this is a (serious) risk. Oracle has been distributing Apache now for a number of years, for example. If you know anything about the history of Oracle, the success it has achieved is more about sales and marketing than about having a superior (or cheaper) product (remember Ingres??). If you're an CTO for a Fortune 500, are you going to move your corporate databases to MySQL? I don't think so. You are going to stick with the database vendor that's running corporate databases for most of the rest of the Fortune 500. If you're the kind of company that has a budget so tight that you NEED to run MySQL or Postgres for core systems, Oracle doesn't want or need you. Maybe the best weapon Oracle has against MySQL and Postgres is the fact that you are able to download the complete version of Oracle from OTN. There are many unlicenced Oracle implementations around the world as a result of this free download facility.
I'm all for Postgres and MySQL pushing into the enterprise world, but MSSQL should be the first target. If Oracle are prepared to put real money into backing Linux, let's support them...
Modified subject... You're absolutely right...
I totally agree. [highly stretched analogy follows...] Like trying to reduce amount of hard drugs on our streets, it's more effective in the long term to try to reduce demand by education than to try go after the suppliers. There will always be someone out there to fill the place of a convicted dealer (or spammer). There will always be someone out there who'll figure out a new way to smuggle drugs or send spam.
We can start educating by telling our friends and families not to buy anything that advertised in unsolicited email. Unfortunately, we all know that there's another sucker born every minute, and educating them about spam is going to be difficult (if not impossible). Maybe as well as educating people not to respond, we could make it illegal to purchase a product from an unsolicited email? Pretty draconian, I know, but... Most suckers are law-abiding citizens. They might be dumb or desperate enough to buy an enlargement cream from a spammer, but would they risk a fine or (worse) being asked to explain their purchase to a judge?
And that idea that somehow managerial IT positions are superior to the engineering jobs (where the real work happens) is where the problem lies... In the boom days, myself and my buddies always assumed that the people who fell into middle management IT positions (often incompetent software engineers) would be the first to be hit when the bubble burst. You know, the actual "doers" would remain long after the "talkers" were gone. The fact is that many programmers and administrators are very much capable of doing the executive level roles that you're talking about. You didn't rise through the ranks, you just followed a different career path to your co-workers.
I am still earning top dollar for some pretty niche skills. But I looked around my team yesterday - 5 managers of varying levels (all local born), 12 system engineers (7 indian, 2 mexican, 1 kenyan, 1 australian, 1 local born - me). I don't resent these guys - they're just doing the best they can to get a better life for their families back home. I'd do the same in their position. Here's the thing that DOES annoy me. The only jobs that aren't filled by low cost overseas workers (apart from mine and the Australian's) are the managerial positions. The original "doers" have all been priced out of the market. Many have started new careers outside of IT (as I myself intend to do at the end of this year). Yet the most ridiculous thing is that all of the managers remain...
In case you're wondering, I'm not bitter. I like that fact that I'm able to explain to people what I do for a living - i.e. what it is that I contribute to the world. Be honest with yourself, if you're an IT manager or IT director (this is a general comment, not necessarily directed at the original poster). You contribute little or nothing to the world. You create nothing. It is likely that you no longer have the capability to create anything yourself (if you ever had that ability in the first place). When your ivory tower falls and cheap labour moves into your job, you will find that the world that isn't interested in a washed up middle manager rejected by an ailing industry... The doers will continue to do. Will you survive?
The real cash cows are the places where management is so hopeless that their IT infrastructure resembles a plate of undocumented and unsupported spaghetti. Save your manager's ass a few times... Be reliable... Be trusted... Be essential... Be EXPENSIVE.
It's a troll I know... but I think you'll find that Microsoft has already been doing this for some time.
The European Commission has never been frightened of applying tough punishment against abuse of monopolies and price fixing as illustrated by the Commission's $147 Million fine for Nintendo price fixing. Also, it would be good PR for the Commission to be seen to protect MPlayer as Hungary (the home of mplayerhq.hu) is in the process of joining the European Union. The Commission always likes to invest in, protect and welcome its newer and poorer members.
I speak as somebody who was "commissioned" by the Commission to work on a Europe-wide project for 2 years. I have had the pleasure of working with some pretty incompetent people over the years (if you've worked in defence, local government or taxation you'll have met some of them yourself), but compared to the Commission these places are run like a well-oiled machines. I have never seen such a hopeless bunch of overpaid, underworked, gravy-train spongers in my life, and I don't expect to again.
Anyway, back on topic... I think that Europe could be a key battleground for Microsoft over the coming years. There is a fashionable anti-"Corporate America" feeling around in European politics right now. I think that we'll see Governments and public sector in Europe moving towards Open Source for that reason (quite apart from the fact that in many cases OSS offers a superior technical solution). Big investment in Open Source, along with a few high profile and successful reference sites is something Microsoft will try to avoid at all costs.
Prison is not an adequate punishment.
If this is more than an American Dream, let's hope that an outcome will be that AOL will loosen their grip on the IM market. The closed model they've been trying to enforce has been holding back a world of possibilities for Jabber and IM client development.
An analogy might be... if I left a gun unattended just by my front door, and a would-be murderer pushed my door open and took it, maybe I would share some small part of the responsibility for his future crimes. I'd certainly feel some sense of guilt...
If Joe's getting stung, he's going to shout at his vendor -> his vendor is going to shout at his manufacturer -> his manufacturer is going to shout at the people who set up his OS, and left in lots of vulnerabilities in there along with an insecure default setup. At the very least, Joe is going to make sure he tells all of his Joe pals not to leave their machines with always on connections and no security patches.
I know Joe is a victim too, but maybe we need to be a little more pragmatic about how we can reduce the growing problem of DDoS attacks. Individual Joe's are alot easier to track down and scare than the Russian mob.
If they like many of us see Linux as the biggest credible threat out there, they might resort to fighting dirty. Linux does have the potential to shift the paradigm of the whole IT industry in the same way that Microsoft themselves did through the 80s and 90s. Sun et al are already feeling the heat in the server market. I'm certain that Bill and co are getting twitchy about how things are developing.
We all know Microsoft is pretty cold and calculated when it comes to competitors. If Linux is next in the firing line, the open source community needs to be ready for this battle and the wars that will follow...
toilets in our cars Will you get a hands free set for that??
The only ones who seem to be able to get away with trashy advertising are politicians with pre-election advertisements (on billboards, etc). Even those are tame by US standards.
Professional sportsman was on the list ;-)
Independent IT expert becomes one of The Ten Most Overpaid Jobs In The U.K.
Why not become a wedding night photographer... Fetish website potential...
What about B = JD Edwards; A = Peoplesoft; C = Oracle? I'd say that is a pretty good example...
How about SAP + MySQL + SUSE? That would be a nice European team for enterprise software / OS...
"Soon the Enterprise solutions will follow them in the dump because no one will bother learning RH anymore."
I totally disagree with this (troll???). If you've got Debian or Slackware at home, it's not going to be too much of a jump to configure a RH box is it??? I work with lots of blue chips, fortune 500s and public sector organisations, and a few hundred for a server support contract is not going to worry any of them... But not having to spend 50k on a new Solaris or HP-UX box is a mighty big carrot to dangle in front of any IT manager - especially if he knows his enterprise software vendors are backing and promoting a cheaper alternative platform (as for example Oracle are backing RH and to a lesser extent SUSE right now).
I'm not pleased that my RH9 installs aren't going to be supported any more, but I'm happy to move to something else knowing that RedHat are pushing Linux into the heart of the enterprise. A low cost and low risk alternative to Microsoft, fighting them where Sun never could. If Novell can get their act together with SUSE, then they'll have something to fight Microsoft with too. And that can't be a bad thing...
Red Hat looks like it has a very bright future. I thought about buying shares at about $10 too, but IMHO I think there are echoes of dotcom enthusiasm about the RHAT share price. If you compare the market cap to the turnover they are generating, I don't think it adds up to a great investment. That said, I think Red Hat is a company going places. I am talking as someone who until very recently worked for a large database vendor (let's call it O$). In the last couple of years, O$ have jumped on the Linux bandwagon. I think this shift, maybe more than anything else will kill Sun. At O$, Red Hat clients are popping up all over the place (from Consultant laptops to developer's workstations). At the back end, O$'s Apps development databases (for example) run on Linux. O$ have recognised the Enterprise needs rock solid support (or at least the Enterprise needs to believe that it has access to rock solid support). They see Red Hat as the best chance to get this in the Linux world, with a little help... Oracle Technology Network: Oracle and Red Hat signed a "Cooperative Technical Support Agreement" in order to provide joint customers with the highest level of technical support where Oracle will provide critical (Priority 1) OS level support to customers running any Oracle product on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES. For issues below P1 in severity, Oracle will work closely with Red Hat to jointly resolve these issues. Oracle will provide any Red Had Linux Advanced Server OS critical bug fixes/patches to Red Hat for inclusion in their future maintenance releases. I'm working at a Fortune 500 now that runs HP-UX and Oracle. They've said no to the first recommend of Linux, but with O$ and Red Hat beginning to look like a serious proposition, pretty soon No will become PoC and then PoC will become production. That's good news for Oracle (customers have a low cost hardware alternative to M$), and great news for Red Hat and the Linux community. I'm not saying that the words "Oracle on Solaris" or "Oracle on HP-UX" won't be heard in IT departments, I'm just saying we'll hear more of "Oracle on Linux". The big danger for O$, is that in introducing the suits to Linux, somewhere down the line they are going to look at the open source options available in the database world too...