After Compaq obliterated some of the best technologies the computer wolrd has created (VMS, Alpha and now Tru64), I can only be glad for them to pull this stuff. They're going to go down in flames, and I can't care less. So, Compaq, you crave for a Wintel world? Sure, too bad you won't be around to enjoy it!
Yeah, I know, -1 flamebait. BTW, I am sorry for the great Alpha design engineers that had to go through all this shit, at Compaq. I'm sure you'll se some sunny days, again.
Actually, Ypsilon, Now acquired by Nokia, produces routers with a FreeBSD kernel. These are real FreeBSD machines, on Intel CPUs, with a very limited userspace, and some hacks to the motherboard. The thing is really fast.
There was a dude saying that with Cisco hardware the packets don't hit the CPU. That's just half true. It depends on the header. If the roting is straightforward, then it's done in shared memory, but as soon as parts of the header contain pertinent information, the CPU is, indeed, involved, with Cisco routers, too. And the problem with Cisco routers is, that they don't have very fast CPUs. Of course, this depends on the model, but noone of them is as fast as, say, a 1 GHz Athlon.
I'll tell you what IS frightening: a colleague and friend of mine, who graduated electronic engineering and has been programming in C, pascal and assembler, before he became a TCP/IP engineer working on Cisco routers and Linux and *BSD based NDS servers... well, this guy tells me "I had problems installing IPv6 on Linux" I ask "What version?" and he says "Linux version 6.2". And it wasn't a slip of the tongue, it took 5 minutes of dialogue with the dude, to accertain that it was RedHat Linux 6.2.
I like Slackware much, much more, and am sad to see that with these Linux distros it is a "the winner takes it all"-game.
I again had to realize hat a fucked-up world we live in. Sure, corporations here in Europe have a bit less power, but it's a nuance.
More and more, I learn how money can buy anything. In the end, it boils down to this.
By the way, there is another aspect to this subject: it turns out, the medicine manufacturers that have some sort of AIDS medication in their portfolio, do not, actually, research on an AIDS vaccine! Why? Of course, because then people would be actually cured, and wouldn't have to buy the expensive medicine again and again. So, these companies actually trive on incurable, cronic diseases. I read somewhere that because of this situation, the only way to find a vaccine for AIDS will be by govt. sponsorship.
Being so involved with high and midrange servers, I was very suprised that IDC claimed 24% of servershare belongs to Linux. With all due respect, and indeed acknovledging that Linux does have it's functions in corporate networks, I believe that Gartner's figure is much closer to reality.
Yep, damn shame. Ever opened any HP-UX manual? Like the looks? Okay, that's done in TeX.
It would be a much better world if all wordporcessors supported:
TeX
html
rich text format(but not the bastardized, newer MS implementations of it)
and, of course: SGML
Re:Consider the limitations
on
PS2 As PC
·
· Score: 1
I don't want to start a KDE vs Gnome war, but when I read your post, I went to my lab workstation in my company, which I knew I had the KDE up since a very, very long time. I can't afford to shutdown X, at the present time, because I use 4 workspaces, in each I have 3 or more telnet sessions to some development hosts, or I am just monitoring some other things, and this setup s perfect for my development.
And sometimes I even start a separate X session on display 1!
Anyway, I went to my lab computer, and checked the uptime, and it's up 171 days! That means my KDE is up 171 days, and I have only 128 MB of RAM.
I would guess that the version of KDE I use doesn't leak much memory, over time. I also have Netscape 4.7 running constantly, which shows that despite all the criticism, it's not a bad browser, for Linux.
As much as I hate MS to push the other guys out of the game console market (I actually mean "strongarm" them out), and as much as I wish you were right, I can't hep but see flaws in your post, as the people before me have noted.
However, the one thinkg I do agree with you is, MS has NEVER ever introduced a product that was as flaweless as a game console needs to be.
You made me think. What is going to happen to databases? I personally, predict an explosive growth, and here is why:
1. More and more people access the Internet and various services there
2. Users are lured by providers who offer richer services
3. The world population is growing geometrically (duh)
From this point of view, it would appear to me that the high-end database business is poised to be lucrative. Linux is still not there, but it will, quite soon. But don't expect Solaris to stay still. Solaris is evolving, too, and now their (Sun's) hardware is getting quite cheap (unlike HP's L,N or V, or IBM's RS/6000).
So, I think Linux developers should seriously target the large db business, but by no means should this quality leap be done sloppily.
I read many comments on the issue of pricing. Well, I think the new Blade workstations, with UltraSparc at 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM,100/10 Mbit ethernet, 4 USB, FireWire, PGX64 Framebuffer, CD and floppy at the price of less than one grand, is cheap.
I don't want to be a party pooper, but I beleive it was on slashdot that I read about the space elevator, that would use a nanotube rope.
I even think Isac Asimov was mentioned as the author of a novel where such an elevator is mentioned. In this novel the elevator has it's earth base on Sri Lanka.
Or maybe it was some other sci-fi writer, but that was the idea.
Why I htink there are good sides (or could be, we don't kow whether the doc is genuine):
MS has a stronghold on the desktop. Yes, Linux made an inroad worth appreciation, but MS still has 90+ % of the desktops. In USA it might be less, due to the popularity of Apple, but in EMEA it's way higher percentage for MS.
So, here we have AOL, the only player who has the power and the motivation (!) to take on MS for control of the desktop market. Will AOL take over this market (always keeping in mind that the doc might be fake etc.)? Well, I think not, but AOL could upset this stronghold. I believe this would present a chance for alternative OS. And mind you, WindowsXP with.NET is more than just a desktop OS, it could hurt Linux and the other alternative OS' in more than one way.
This is just how I see it, I mightbe wrong but I sort of wish AOL was really pissed at MS, and did something about it.
Very well said. I completely agree, and actually, this has been my suspicion since a long time. Why would the RIAA allow fair use? They can make lods of cash if they prevent you from fair use, therefore...
However, there is one problem (ok, there are many, but at least one more): there are too many good out-of-print records, movies on VHS and DVD. Which means, the MPA and RIAA don't give a shit about stuff that only a few thousand people would buy. The profit margin is too small (i.e. maybe less than 90%). And don't fool yourself, these guys don't care about cultural heritage or art. I know of reels of wonderful movies that were not stored adequately, and are, therefore, lost. Even classics like "My Fair Lady" were halfway destroyed. So, yes, they will sell you the various fair use surrogates, but probably only for the popular stuff. If your copy of OOP DVD is damaged, tough, "but we can sell you Mission Impossible 7, as a consolation".
..the numbers are not in their favor. Let's just look at the cash situation:
Infineon: $325M
Rambus: $138M
How much cash can Rambus burn on attorney fees? Even without cash, Infineon has much more financial power. In the worst situation, Infineon can sell a building or two, but Rambus?
Whic sort of reflects the basis of the two companies: one is a huge, 26B mkt cap chip maker (with tons of IP created over the years) while Rambus is a one-trick company, that lasts until the SDRAM/DDR license users feel like submitting themselves to that single trick.
I wouldn't bet one dime on Rambus' chances, and therefore, I am happy I am not a RMBS shareholder. And note, I have not even touched the legal/ethical aspect of the trial.
This might not be directly related, but it kinda goes in the same direction: I expect the EU or at least some of it's countries, to declare DVD Region coding illegal. I see a lot of political forces pointing in that direction, here, and perhaps Denmark, France or one of the Scandinavian countries will soon do the big step... (I guess you know that region free DVD players are completely legal in Europe.)
She also made much of a rather telling fact: there is no piracy attributable to DeCSS whatsoever. Not one traditional copyright infringement has ever been attributed
to DeCSS, and the movie studios admitted in the case that they could not produce even one example of an infringement due to DeCSS. (Technically-literate people may realize that mass DVD copying is performed by stamping complete copies of the DVDs, encryption and all, no decryption required, though that wasn't covered
in the hearing.) But Sullivan jumped on this point for all it was worth and then some -- the judges seemed fairly skeptical about accepting it, trying to insist that widepsread and massive copyright infringement due to DeCSS must be occurring, somehow, somewhere. It just must be.
I would have insisted much more on the fact that DeCSS can -not- be used for mass duplication, and that, actually, even for creating single copies is not particularly useful. I think it would have been very good to point out that the encription does not, in any way, prevent pirates from copying software, neither does DeCSS make it any easier. And then, of course, I would bring in a testimony (a technical authority) to confirm this.
I believe that, if we break the scepticism and -ignorance- of the judges, we can have the case largely won.
Remember, this case is buit upon ignorance!! The way to de-construct it is to decrease the ignorane.. through education. I believe that a lot of (self)education was what happened to judge Jackson.
Yet another case to introduce -1, Misinformative. The post is not off topic, it's not a troll, it's not a flamebait. But the information it presents is simply completely wrong, and it baffles me that somebody actually cared to mod it up.
I wouldn't want to moderate it as Overrated, either, because it would seem, to an uncareful meta-moderator, that I have some personal thing against the poster, which is really not the case.
As someone already noted, RISC means Restricted Instruction Set Computer, not restricted number of registers. Said that, I am not willing to get into the debate whether LinuxPPC is or is not a good idea, due tothe difference between CISC and RISC architectures. I'll leave that to the experts.
I work for a certain Telecommunications/IT company that has 50k+ employees. In case of these On-call duties, it's quite normal to get the 60% of your normal hourly wage. Which is nice. So, let's say you get 100 per hour. Since you are On-call, all the time outside your normal workhours (which, in Finland, is 24 - 8 = 16) counts towards those 60%. Therefore, you make 16 * 60 = 960 per day. Which is fair, sicne you have to keep your mobile phone all the time with you, you can NOT go to theaters/cinema/football (well, at least here you are supposed to turn off your mobile in these places), most likely you can not go tracking (unless you have broadband wireless access, or you are sure you don't have to access some host remotely), and even spending intimate moments with your loved ones can be interrupted. On-call means you HAVE TO answer the call.
Usually you have to deal with people who don't understand what you're saying, or you don't understand their accent, or the call drops, or you just happened to having had a shower and the water is dropping in the phone:o)
And when you can't solve the problem, and have to escalate, oh, that's when the fun begins: is the next one in the escalation ladder actually aware of his/her position, is he/she available/willing to take the case/competent/pissed off? What if you have to escalate even further?...
This just to illustrate how painful On-call can (always) sometimes be, and that you should be paid fairly for it.
One more thing: week-ends and national holidays count as double the rate, that is, 120%. Christmas and New Year are FOUR times (240%) the normal amount, and that's very nice.
This, of course, in a country where workers have a lot of rights and protection. I dunno about USA. Still, don't sell your ass too cheap.
I was wondering, after following the Linux development since the early 2.0.x days: is the total aomount of bugs in the Linux kernel always constant, instead of decreasing? (maybe a bit like the development of the old IBM System/360 - they were fixing bugs all the time, and all the time they were adding new ones... but this is not a perfect example, as the Linux kernel actually is adding always new features.)
I am a software engineer, and I certainly prefere adding a new cool feature to my code, than fixing old bugs, expecially if these bugs are not critical. Makes me feel kinda good knowing that even much better programmers have the same mentality.
I second that, no matter how unpopular this view might be on these boards. I started with NetWare 3.11, right after my graduation. I have gone a long way after that, dealing mainly with HP-UX andSolaris now. I still have to see a server with the stability (in overcoming utilization surges) and uptimes of NetWare 3.1x.
It was actually a bad thing for Novell: almost noone wanted to upgrade!
Intel is implicitly admitting they released a sucky CPU. This very big price cut sounds like an apology: "Sorry for releasing such a crappy CPU, but now you get to pay the real price for it". I don't know exactly how to express the feelings that this announcement produces in me, but it makes Intel look bad. If they really think the P 4 is the thing of the future (even without SMP), they should have stuck with the price, at least until they have something much better around the corner, which they don't. A 1.6 MHz part would not justify such a huge price cut.
Of course, it's bad for Intel profits-wise, too. You don't know how these things creep up in the quarterly reports. Unless, of course, Intel made tons of money on the early adopters, and those suckers are now paying for the ones who are going to pick on the 50% cut.
Actually, Microsoft is much more frightened of open protocols and standards. This, of course, is related to the opensource facet, but it's a larger issue.
Microsoft wants to prey every aspect of the IT economy, by putting in piece of their proprietary technology. Example: Windows on each PC, because everyone has it. Office on each PC, because.doc and.xls are de-facto (proprietary) standards. MSN (the replacement for Internet) - well, this one (thank Heaven) didn't work out for MS. WindowsCE in every mobile phone - this didn't work out YET. Internet Explorer - everybody must use it, because more and more sites don't look good with Netscape.
etc. etc. etc. With.NET and Explorer, Microsoft is becoming the middleman everywhere, and is going to be able to leverage it's muscle everywhere. Literally.
Slashdot Mirror
"Turn off your butt!"
After Compaq obliterated some of the best technologies the computer wolrd has created (VMS, Alpha and now Tru64), I can only be glad for them to pull this stuff. They're going to go down in flames, and I can't care less. So, Compaq, you crave for a Wintel world? Sure, too bad you won't be around to enjoy it!
Yeah, I know, -1 flamebait. BTW, I am sorry for the great Alpha design engineers that had to go through all this shit, at Compaq. I'm sure you'll se some sunny days, again.
Actually, Ypsilon, Now acquired by Nokia, produces routers with a FreeBSD kernel. These are real FreeBSD machines, on Intel CPUs, with a very limited userspace, and some hacks to the motherboard. The thing is really fast. There was a dude saying that with Cisco hardware the packets don't hit the CPU. That's just half true. It depends on the header. If the roting is straightforward, then it's done in shared memory, but as soon as parts of the header contain pertinent information, the CPU is, indeed, involved, with Cisco routers, too. And the problem with Cisco routers is, that they don't have very fast CPUs. Of course, this depends on the model, but noone of them is as fast as, say, a 1 GHz Athlon.
I'll tell you what IS frightening: a colleague and friend of mine, who graduated electronic engineering and has been programming in C, pascal and assembler, before he became a TCP/IP engineer working on Cisco routers and Linux and *BSD based NDS servers... well, this guy tells me "I had problems installing IPv6 on Linux" I ask "What version?" and he says "Linux version 6.2". And it wasn't a slip of the tongue, it took 5 minutes of dialogue with the dude, to accertain that it was RedHat Linux 6.2.
I like Slackware much, much more, and am sad to see that with these Linux distros it is a "the winner takes it all"-game.
I again had to realize hat a fucked-up world we live in. Sure, corporations here in Europe have a bit less power, but it's a nuance.
More and more, I learn how money can buy anything. In the end, it boils down to this.
By the way, there is another aspect to this subject: it turns out, the medicine manufacturers that have some sort of AIDS medication in their portfolio, do not, actually, research on an AIDS vaccine! Why? Of course, because then people would be actually cured, and wouldn't have to buy the expensive medicine again and again. So, these companies actually trive on incurable, cronic diseases. I read somewhere that because of this situation, the only way to find a vaccine for AIDS will be by govt. sponsorship.
I am not sure IDC smells any better.
Being so involved with high and midrange servers, I was very suprised that IDC claimed 24% of servershare belongs to Linux. With all due respect, and indeed acknovledging that Linux does have it's functions in corporate networks, I believe that Gartner's figure is much closer to reality.
My 0.02, anyway.
Yep, damn shame. Ever opened any HP-UX manual? Like the looks? Okay, that's done in TeX.
It would be a much better world if all wordporcessors supported:
TeX
html
rich text format(but not the bastardized, newer MS implementations of it)
and, of course: SGML
I don't want to start a KDE vs Gnome war, but when I read your post, I went to my lab workstation in my company, which I knew I had the KDE up since a very, very long time. I can't afford to shutdown X, at the present time, because I use 4 workspaces, in each I have 3 or more telnet sessions to some development hosts, or I am just monitoring some other things, and this setup s perfect for my development.
And sometimes I even start a separate X session on display 1!
Anyway, I went to my lab computer, and checked the uptime, and it's up 171 days! That means my KDE is up 171 days, and I have only 128 MB of RAM.
I would guess that the version of KDE I use doesn't leak much memory, over time. I also have Netscape 4.7 running constantly, which shows that despite all the criticism, it's not a bad browser, for Linux.
As much as I hate MS to push the other guys out of the game console market (I actually mean "strongarm" them out), and as much as I wish you were right, I can't hep but see flaws in your post, as the people before me have noted.
However, the one thinkg I do agree with you is, MS has NEVER ever introduced a product that was as flaweless as a game console needs to be.
You made me think. What is going to happen to databases? I personally, predict an explosive growth, and here is why:
1. More and more people access the Internet and various services there
2. Users are lured by providers who offer richer services
3. The world population is growing geometrically (duh)
From this point of view, it would appear to me that the high-end database business is poised to be lucrative. Linux is still not there, but it will, quite soon. But don't expect Solaris to stay still. Solaris is evolving, too, and now their (Sun's) hardware is getting quite cheap (unlike HP's L,N or V, or IBM's RS/6000).
So, I think Linux developers should seriously target the large db business, but by no means should this quality leap be done sloppily.
First time ever that a Murphy's Law worked in my favor!
I read many comments on the issue of pricing. Well, I think the new Blade workstations, with UltraSparc at 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM,100/10 Mbit ethernet, 4 USB, FireWire, PGX64 Framebuffer, CD and floppy at the price of less than one grand, is cheap.
Didn't Xerox have a lab complex called "PARC"? I can see it now, the first days the engineers would joke about working in crap ;o)
I don't want to be a party pooper, but I beleive it was on slashdot that I read about the space elevator, that would use a nanotube rope.
I even think Isac Asimov was mentioned as the author of a novel where such an elevator is mentioned. In this novel the elevator has it's earth base on Sri Lanka.
Or maybe it was some other sci-fi writer, but that was the idea.
Why I htink there are good sides (or could be, we don't kow whether the doc is genuine):
MS has a stronghold on the desktop. Yes, Linux made an inroad worth appreciation, but MS still has 90+ % of the desktops. In USA it might be less, due to the popularity of Apple, but in EMEA it's way higher percentage for MS.
So, here we have AOL, the only player who has the power and the motivation (!) to take on MS for control of the desktop market. Will AOL take over this market (always keeping in mind that the doc might be fake etc.)? Well, I think not, but AOL could upset this stronghold. I believe this would present a chance for alternative OS. And mind you, WindowsXP with
This is just how I see it, I mightbe wrong but I sort of wish AOL was really pissed at MS, and did something about it.
Very well said. I completely agree, and actually, this has been my suspicion since a long time. Why would the RIAA allow fair use? They can make lods of cash if they prevent you from fair use, therefore...
However, there is one problem (ok, there are many, but at least one more): there are too many good out-of-print records, movies on VHS and DVD. Which means, the MPA and RIAA don't give a shit about stuff that only a few thousand people would buy. The profit margin is too small (i.e. maybe less than 90%). And don't fool yourself, these guys don't care about cultural heritage or art. I know of reels of wonderful movies that were not stored adequately, and are, therefore, lost. Even classics like "My Fair Lady" were halfway destroyed. So, yes, they will sell you the various fair use surrogates, but probably only for the popular stuff. If your copy of OOP DVD is damaged, tough, "but we can sell you Mission Impossible 7, as a consolation".
Thanks for your post, very good points.
..the numbers are not in their favor. Let's just look at the cash situation:
Infineon: $325M
Rambus: $138M
How much cash can Rambus burn on attorney fees? Even without cash, Infineon has much more financial power. In the worst situation, Infineon can sell a building or two, but Rambus?
Whic sort of reflects the basis of the two companies: one is a huge, 26B mkt cap chip maker (with tons of IP created over the years) while Rambus is a one-trick company, that lasts until the SDRAM/DDR license users feel like submitting themselves to that single trick.
I wouldn't bet one dime on Rambus' chances, and therefore, I am happy I am not a RMBS shareholder. And note, I have not even touched the legal/ethical aspect of the trial.
This might not be directly related, but it kinda goes in the same direction: I expect the EU or at least some of it's countries, to declare DVD Region coding illegal. I see a lot of political forces pointing in that direction, here, and perhaps Denmark, France or one of the Scandinavian countries will soon do the big step... (I guess you know that region free DVD players are completely legal in Europe.)
Anyhow, more power to the danes!
She also made much of a rather telling fact: there is no piracy attributable to DeCSS whatsoever. Not one traditional copyright infringement has ever been attributed
to DeCSS, and the movie studios admitted in the case that they could not produce even one example of an infringement due to DeCSS. (Technically-literate people may realize that mass DVD copying is performed by stamping complete copies of the DVDs, encryption and all, no decryption required, though that wasn't covered
in the hearing.) But Sullivan jumped on this point for all it was worth and then some -- the judges seemed fairly skeptical about accepting it, trying to insist that widepsread and massive copyright infringement due to DeCSS must be occurring, somehow, somewhere. It just must be.
I would have insisted much more on the fact that DeCSS can -not- be used for mass duplication, and that, actually, even for creating single copies is not particularly useful. I think it would have been very good to point out that the encription does not, in any way, prevent pirates from copying software, neither does DeCSS make it any easier. And then, of course, I would bring in a testimony (a technical authority) to confirm this.
I believe that, if we break the scepticism and -ignorance- of the judges, we can have the case largely won.
Remember, this case is buit upon ignorance!! The way to de-construct it is to decrease the ignorane.. through education. I believe that a lot of (self)education was what happened to judge Jackson.
Yet another case to introduce -1, Misinformative. The post is not off topic, it's not a troll, it's not a flamebait. But the information it presents is simply completely wrong, and it baffles me that somebody actually cared to mod it up.
I wouldn't want to moderate it as Overrated, either, because it would seem, to an uncareful meta-moderator, that I have some personal thing against the poster, which is really not the case.
As someone already noted, RISC means Restricted Instruction Set Computer, not restricted number of registers. Said that, I am not willing to get into the debate whether LinuxPPC is or is not a good idea, due tothe difference between CISC and RISC architectures. I'll leave that to the experts.
I work for a certain Telecommunications/IT company that has 50k+ employees. In case of these On-call duties, it's quite normal to get the 60% of your normal hourly wage. Which is nice. So, let's say you get 100 per hour. Since you are On-call, all the time outside your normal workhours (which, in Finland, is 24 - 8 = 16) counts towards those 60%. Therefore, you make 16 * 60 = 960 per day. Which is fair, sicne you have to keep your mobile phone all the time with you, you can NOT go to theaters/cinema/football (well, at least here you are supposed to turn off your mobile in these places), most likely you can not go tracking (unless you have broadband wireless access, or you are sure you don't have to access some host remotely), and even spending intimate moments with your loved ones can be interrupted. On-call means you HAVE TO answer the call. :o)
Usually you have to deal with people who don't understand what you're saying, or you don't understand their accent, or the call drops, or you just happened to having had a shower and the water is dropping in the phone
And when you can't solve the problem, and have to escalate, oh, that's when the fun begins: is the next one in the escalation ladder actually aware of his/her position, is he/she available/willing to take the case/competent/pissed off? What if you have to escalate even further?...
This just to illustrate how painful On-call can (always) sometimes be, and that you should be paid fairly for it.
One more thing: week-ends and national holidays count as double the rate, that is, 120%. Christmas and New Year are FOUR times (240%) the normal amount, and that's very nice.
This, of course, in a country where workers have a lot of rights and protection. I dunno about USA. Still, don't sell your ass too cheap.
I was wondering, after following the Linux development since the early 2.0.x days: is the total aomount of bugs in the Linux kernel always constant, instead of decreasing? (maybe a bit like the development of the old IBM System/360 - they were fixing bugs all the time, and all the time they were adding new ones... but this is not a perfect example, as the Linux kernel actually is adding always new features.)
I am a software engineer, and I certainly prefere adding a new cool feature to my code, than fixing old bugs, expecially if these bugs are not critical. Makes me feel kinda good knowing that even much better programmers have the same mentality.
I second that, no matter how unpopular this view might be on these boards. I started with NetWare 3.11, right after my graduation. I have gone a long way after that, dealing mainly with HP-UX andSolaris now. I still have to see a server with the stability (in overcoming utilization surges) and uptimes of NetWare 3.1x.
It was actually a bad thing for Novell: almost noone wanted to upgrade!
Intel is implicitly admitting they released a sucky CPU. This very big price cut sounds like an apology: "Sorry for releasing such a crappy CPU, but now you get to pay the real price for it". I don't know exactly how to express the feelings that this announcement produces in me, but it makes Intel look bad. If they really think the P 4 is the thing of the future (even without SMP), they should have stuck with the price, at least until they have something much better around the corner, which they don't. A 1.6 MHz part would not justify such a huge price cut.
Of course, it's bad for Intel profits-wise, too. You don't know how these things creep up in the quarterly reports. Unless, of course, Intel made tons of money on the early adopters, and those suckers are now paying for the ones who are going to pick on the 50% cut.
Actually, Microsoft is much more frightened of open protocols and standards. This, of course, is related to the opensource facet, but it's a larger issue.
.doc and .xls are de-facto (proprietary) standards. MSN (the replacement for Internet) - well, this one (thank Heaven) didn't work out for MS. WindowsCE in every mobile phone - this didn't work out YET. Internet Explorer - everybody must use it, because more and more sites don't look good with Netscape.
.NET and Explorer, Microsoft is becoming the middleman everywhere, and is going to be able to leverage it's muscle everywhere. Literally.
Microsoft wants to prey every aspect of the IT economy, by putting in piece of their proprietary technology. Example: Windows on each PC, because everyone has it. Office on each PC, because
etc. etc. etc. With