Microsoft needs open source because established companies cannot compete with them in the "normal" market outside of the web (Google and Yahoo) where Microsoft has historically played catch-up. Open source levels the field, and so you have things like Firefox. Firefox forced Microsoft to come out of their "it's good enough and no one has a choice anyway" stagnation. The inevitable comparisons between Apache and IIS5 ended up resulting in IIS6. When Microsoft feels the pressure, they are a better company with better products.
Arguably this is not true for all their markets, such as development tools and Office, which historically have not been too contested (not lately at least) and yet have not resulted in the same stagnation.
Many people want open source to succeed, because one of the end results of that is a better Microsoft. I've always included myself in that group.
As for the article, I think it's a good read for all the "LOLOL M$ is TEH AFRAID OF THE GNU/PENGUIN ETC" crowd:
Microsoft doesn't fear open source; it fears what the competition can do with it.
Microsoft fears IBM and Novell and CA. It doesn't "fear" Ubuntu or Gentoo or Torvalds. That's the key issue that RMS managed to miss (or probably chose to ignore for the oomph effect) in his incisive analysis of the "Halloween documents".
First off, no one asked for "gnu/linux", unless that was Richard Stallman. Most people refer to it as "Linux", possibly by appending "Ubuntu" or "RedHat". If Stallman wants "GNU" appended to something, maybe he should come up with his own kernel.
Second, a couple of thousand people in an obviously dicey online poll (we all know how good those are) demanded Dell sell their favorite distro. Dell has millions of customers all over the world. Having said that, I'm all for being able to buy a preconfigured desktop with Linux to use as a cheap home server. I'm sure other people have other motivations.
Michael Dell is still afraid
Is that why he's going to sell Linux? Or why he's probably pissing them off by asking for OEM XP licenses that they didn't intend to sell at all? Or was there another reason? I'm fuzzy on this point here or why you even brought it up. Maybe just to get another dollar sign in?
so this move by Dell is little more than a nice talking point
Are you happy he's not selling Vista, that he's selling more XP licenses or that he's selling Linux? I can't quite make this one out either. It's like you type and it seems you're saying something, but you're really not.
discontinue the sales of Vista because it's defective
When you say "defective" do you mean that "defectivebydesign" FUD from your fair and balanced friends at "BadVista.org" or something else? I mean, I have a Vista box here and I haven't had any issues so far so I'm not sure what the problem is.
and promote gnu/linux as superior to XP
So then by your logic XP was superior to Linux, but Vista is not?
The problem is that none of the stuff that they push is portable to other systems.
Microsoft writes software for Microsoft Windows. Maybe a day will come when they will no longer dominate the desktop and they'll be more agreeable to creating software for other platforms. You're seeing a little bit of that with OS X now. But for the time being expecting Microsoft to offer you a cross-platform solution is naive at best. If you don't like what they're offering then you can of course always go to the other platforms.
In any case, my point is that it's a bit disingenous to say "Microsoft didn't recommend Perl to me, bwah" when it's clearly not something they'll be doing any time soon. They're a corporation, not a charity.
Pretty much only you would take this and claim that the problems caused by patents that affect all of the industry (except for the happy submarine patent farms and "IP concerns" like Eolas and friends) are the result of the "inefficiency of Windoze use" and your imagined "tax chain" that of course in your mind does not apply to anything else in the macroeconomic scene ("oh, you use forklifts in your warehouse. If you used robots like the ones on Aliens you's save me so much money").
You can add all the infantile dollar signs you want to your posts, the fact still remains that you said absolutely nothing of value here. As usual.
Those are very good points, and aside from my stubborn insistence that SPs are the One True Solution, I agree with you =)
Certainly, what works with one solution doesn't necessarily have to work with all the others. I've been in this business long enough that I recognize I sure as hell don't have all the answers, and more importantly, I have ceased to be amazed at the crap I see in companies of all types and sizes. The best tools for the job and all that.
Does it really matter? If they budget for $10B and it ends up costing $32B, they'll (or rather we) pay for it anyway. It's not like you abandon projects like that.
Look closely at what he's replying to and how. What he links to is irrelevant. This is a deeply disturbed person who thinks someone making a comment about a Slashdot submission he disagrees with should be considered a troll and called a "pawn". That's interesting isn't it? Twatter doesn't know who the hell this person is, but he sure as hell can deduct from what he's saying that his comment is "The usual" and he's a "Windoze" developer and a "pawn", no less. So he trots out one of his favorite "M$ is TEH SUX" link. Wow, and a Microsoft manager said that 10 years ago? Color me outraged. Bruce Perens claimed a long time ago that Eric "007" Raymond wanted to kill him, but I don't bring that up to prove that open source is "teh sux" every half chance I get.
Holy shit, honestly? I'm actually afraid of anyone who cannot see that petty arrogance and faux aggressive bullshit attitude in that post and a thousand others.
You know, I used to think that as well. Specifically when dealing with parametrized queries that require optional parameters and customized ORDER BY statments depending on context and things like that. I've never been very good with SQL dialects. I think it's the fact that they're not really programming languages or whatever, but I've never been comfortable with them. So I used to think a little bit like you in the sense that even though I prefered SPs, there would be times when I would have no choice but to use inline SQL.
And then a few years ago I had a developer in one of my teams that was a freakin' SQL guru. I mean, this guy was just fantastic. He showed us how to do the most amazing things with SPs and functions without sacrificing speed, integrity or maintainability. I'm really grateful that I had the (humbling!) experience of working with him for a year, because I learned a hell of a lot about a topic that previously I had found mostly fastidious. Trust me that whetever we were paying him at the time it wasn't nearly enough.
I'll give you an example where inline SQL is not only problematic but simply just flat out impossible. At a previous project I was in charge of a rather large application for a financial services company that shall not be named at this time. Aside from actually designing and writing the thing, part of the mandate was to be able to pass a SOX audit with flying colors. The database for this app was secured so that the confgured identity we were using only had permission to execute SPs and views. No direct table access. This enables the architect (moi) to assert that there is a clear audit trail in the form of source control for the SPs and the database changelogs that can tell them (the auditors) at what point who decided that writing or reading from/to TableX or TableY was a good idea. In a scenario like this, not only would inline SQL simply fail for lack of permissions, but it would cause me a few week's delay and a good chunk of the client's budget (and likely my job thereafter) to fix because I'd fail the audit.
The world of enterprise corporate software development can be a bitch, but it pays very well =)
As a manager now, I would fire anyone who uses stored procedures. Even if it is "faster."
Rest assured that if you were one of my developers you'd be out the door in no time. The application you're describing here cannot be anything north of trivial if you were able to just switch a connection string and all your messy inline SQL statements continued to run without any changes whatsoever (which I seriously doubt). Not everyone writes trivial applications.
There are reasons other than "fast" to using stored procedures. I've seen enough misuse of SPs, functions and triggers to fill up a book, but when done correctly they are simply superior to the alternative in just about every way.
Sometimes I'd like to think about what it would be if a GPL case had gone to trial and the judge had conducted himself in the way Jackson did with Microsoft. Oh yeah, the GPL "apologists" would be coming out of the woodwork to point out that the trial was bogus because the judge was an asshole who got on Oprah to discuss the finer points of the case. But of course this as applied to Microsoft is just an inconvenient detail better swept under the rug.
A Microsoft "apologist" would be contesting the fact that Microsoft abused its monopoly. So far I've seen requests for you to prove that Microsoft was "convicted" of something, which I haven't really seen. But hey, it always helps to get in the quippy about how you're unfairly being targeted by people with different opinions about issues than yours.
Sure twitter, you seem such an expert on the topic that I'm surprised you don't even know anything of substance about it. And I'll even use the Wikipedia article, since you constantly link to them to back up your arguments:
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned Judge Jackson's rulings against Microsoft on browser tying and attempted monopolization on grounds that he gave off-the-record (but nevertheless disclosed) interviews to the news media during the case, and that Judge Jackson having opinions about the defendant was improper. Judge Jackson's response to this was that Microsoft's conduct itself was the cause of any "perceived bias"; Microsoft executives had "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and transparently false.... Microsoft is a company with an institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." However, the appeals court did affirm in part Judge Jackson's ruling on monopolization. The D.C. Circuit remanded the case for consideration of a proper remedy for "drastically altered scope of liability" that the court had upheld, under Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. The DOJ, now under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.
They were handed a summary judgement to the effect they had violated antitrust laws (which was fairly obvious), a judgement that was overturned later on appeal (that's what happens when your "judge" is an asshole). But help me out here, I can't find the term "conviction" anywhere. Maybe I missed it?
Here, I'll give you a free hint: A conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.
Why is it that you feel the need to attack anyone who disagrees with you in the slightest, throw ad hominems at them and accuse them of being "M$ defenders", shills and astroturfers? You didn't even really understand that the OP was saying, did you?
Maybe - and this is just a wild guess - people grow tired of the mindless hyperbolic "M$ IS TEH ZUX" mantra, the unecessary lies and dumb generalizations backed up with lots of irrelevant links that the people who mod you up obviously never bother to pull up. Maybe it's that simple, and not as complicated as your weird theories of a vast "M$" conspiracy designed to stalk you personally on teh interwebs.
Microsoft was not "convicted" of anything. Please point me to a legal document that implies they were "convicted", I'd love to see it. Besides, the GP's point is that there are no "rights revoked" as implied by Twitter The Head Zealot for whatever reason, a point that you didn't even address.
Coming from the guy who destroyed the graphics design market first by gobbling up Aldus and all the rest, and then bottled up the active content delivery space with Macromedia and proceeded to kill of his "complimentary product lines", that's rich.
He might be a smaller "monopolist" than Microsoft, but he still has his own little monopoly and all the great things that come from that.
Oh look, troll. And two super duper front page stories for Intel just today. Yeah, I guess I must be seeing things. How could anyone not trust Slashdot!?
Gave him a hard time and got him to say stupid and counter productive things
I find it amusing that you can give us all these links and attach your own interpretation to them given that you're the indusputed master of nitpicking and generalizations. The reality is the whole Quinn story looks quite different if you are not approaching it from your quite obvious "free software is teh bestest and M$ Windoze sux" POV. It just doesn't jive in so many ways it's not even funny. But I guess this desperate struggle to make people believe what you think they should believe will just never end.
Well, and as usual you're emboldened by being modded up so what's a little fabrication between friends, eh?
I know this is OT, but does the fact that Slashdot now has an "Intel Opinion Center" mean we will be seeing more gushing reviews and meta-reviews of Intel products and less reporting of important issues like the AMD antitrust suit?
Hi twitter. When you're done with the "M$ is teh evilz" routine, I was wondering if you were planning on posting a reply to this? Much appreciated and all that.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike Microsoft, which has never engaged in massive layoffs.
You sure have great role models.
Arguably this is not true for all their markets, such as development tools and Office, which historically have not been too contested (not lately at least) and yet have not resulted in the same stagnation.
Many people want open source to succeed, because one of the end results of that is a better Microsoft. I've always included myself in that group.
As for the article, I think it's a good read for all the "LOLOL M$ is TEH AFRAID OF THE GNU/PENGUIN ETC" crowd:
Microsoft fears IBM and Novell and CA. It doesn't "fear" Ubuntu or Gentoo or Torvalds. That's the key issue that RMS managed to miss (or probably chose to ignore for the oomph effect) in his incisive analysis of the "Halloween documents".
First off, no one asked for "gnu/linux", unless that was Richard Stallman. Most people refer to it as "Linux", possibly by appending "Ubuntu" or "RedHat". If Stallman wants "GNU" appended to something, maybe he should come up with his own kernel.
Second, a couple of thousand people in an obviously dicey online poll (we all know how good those are) demanded Dell sell their favorite distro. Dell has millions of customers all over the world. Having said that, I'm all for being able to buy a preconfigured desktop with Linux to use as a cheap home server. I'm sure other people have other motivations.
Is that why he's going to sell Linux? Or why he's probably pissing them off by asking for OEM XP licenses that they didn't intend to sell at all? Or was there another reason? I'm fuzzy on this point here or why you even brought it up. Maybe just to get another dollar sign in?
Are you happy he's not selling Vista, that he's selling more XP licenses or that he's selling Linux? I can't quite make this one out either. It's like you type and it seems you're saying something, but you're really not.
When you say "defective" do you mean that "defectivebydesign" FUD from your fair and balanced friends at "BadVista.org" or something else? I mean, I have a Vista box here and I haven't had any issues so far so I'm not sure what the problem is.
So then by your logic XP was superior to Linux, but Vista is not?
Microsoft writes software for Microsoft Windows. Maybe a day will come when they will no longer dominate the desktop and they'll be more agreeable to creating software for other platforms. You're seeing a little bit of that with OS X now. But for the time being expecting Microsoft to offer you a cross-platform solution is naive at best. If you don't like what they're offering then you can of course always go to the other platforms.
In any case, my point is that it's a bit disingenous to say "Microsoft didn't recommend Perl to me, bwah" when it's clearly not something they'll be doing any time soon. They're a corporation, not a charity.
You can add all the infantile dollar signs you want to your posts, the fact still remains that you said absolutely nothing of value here. As usual.
Certainly, what works with one solution doesn't necessarily have to work with all the others. I've been in this business long enough that I recognize I sure as hell don't have all the answers, and more importantly, I have ceased to be amazed at the crap I see in companies of all types and sizes. The best tools for the job and all that.
Cheers.
Does it really matter? If they budget for $10B and it ends up costing $32B, they'll (or rather we) pay for it anyway. It's not like you abandon projects like that.
Well, if they are pushing Microsoft solutions then I guess we're OK, right? Or did you expect them to push Oracle or IBM solutions?
Holy shit, honestly? I'm actually afraid of anyone who cannot see that petty arrogance and faux aggressive bullshit attitude in that post and a thousand others.
And then a few years ago I had a developer in one of my teams that was a freakin' SQL guru. I mean, this guy was just fantastic. He showed us how to do the most amazing things with SPs and functions without sacrificing speed, integrity or maintainability. I'm really grateful that I had the (humbling!) experience of working with him for a year, because I learned a hell of a lot about a topic that previously I had found mostly fastidious. Trust me that whetever we were paying him at the time it wasn't nearly enough.
I'll give you an example where inline SQL is not only problematic but simply just flat out impossible. At a previous project I was in charge of a rather large application for a financial services company that shall not be named at this time. Aside from actually designing and writing the thing, part of the mandate was to be able to pass a SOX audit with flying colors. The database for this app was secured so that the confgured identity we were using only had permission to execute SPs and views. No direct table access. This enables the architect (moi) to assert that there is a clear audit trail in the form of source control for the SPs and the database changelogs that can tell them (the auditors) at what point who decided that writing or reading from/to TableX or TableY was a good idea. In a scenario like this, not only would inline SQL simply fail for lack of permissions, but it would cause me a few week's delay and a good chunk of the client's budget (and likely my job thereafter) to fix because I'd fail the audit.
The world of enterprise corporate software development can be a bitch, but it pays very well =)
Rest assured that if you were one of my developers you'd be out the door in no time. The application you're describing here cannot be anything north of trivial if you were able to just switch a connection string and all your messy inline SQL statements continued to run without any changes whatsoever (which I seriously doubt). Not everyone writes trivial applications.
There are reasons other than "fast" to using stored procedures. I've seen enough misuse of SPs, functions and triggers to fill up a book, but when done correctly they are simply superior to the alternative in just about every way.
Well, maybe I'd "back up" that claim if I had actually made it. Please point out where I did and we'll go from there. Game?
A Microsoft "apologist" would be contesting the fact that Microsoft abused its monopoly. So far I've seen requests for you to prove that Microsoft was "convicted" of something, which I haven't really seen. But hey, it always helps to get in the quippy about how you're unfairly being targeted by people with different opinions about issues than yours.
No need to thank me or anything like that.
Here, I'll give you a free hint: A conviction is the verdict that results when a court of law finds a defendant guilty of a crime.
Maybe - and this is just a wild guess - people grow tired of the mindless hyperbolic "M$ IS TEH ZUX" mantra, the unecessary lies and dumb generalizations backed up with lots of irrelevant links that the people who mod you up obviously never bother to pull up. Maybe it's that simple, and not as complicated as your weird theories of a vast "M$" conspiracy designed to stalk you personally on teh interwebs.
Just a thought.
Microsoft was not "convicted" of anything. Please point me to a legal document that implies they were "convicted", I'd love to see it. Besides, the GP's point is that there are no "rights revoked" as implied by Twitter The Head Zealot for whatever reason, a point that you didn't even address.
I'm sure that's a great relief to users of software gobbled up by Adobe and then promptly "discontinued" due to "overlap".
He might be a smaller "monopolist" than Microsoft, but he still has his own little monopoly and all the great things that come from that.
Oh look, troll. And two super duper front page stories for Intel just today. Yeah, I guess I must be seeing things. How could anyone not trust Slashdot!?
I find it amusing that you can give us all these links and attach your own interpretation to them given that you're the indusputed master of nitpicking and generalizations. The reality is the whole Quinn story looks quite different if you are not approaching it from your quite obvious "free software is teh bestest and M$ Windoze sux" POV. It just doesn't jive in so many ways it's not even funny. But I guess this desperate struggle to make people believe what you think they should believe will just never end.
Well, and as usual you're emboldened by being modded up so what's a little fabrication between friends, eh?
Which is a problem you don't have, right?
I know this is OT, but does the fact that Slashdot now has an "Intel Opinion Center" mean we will be seeing more gushing reviews and meta-reviews of Intel products and less reporting of important issues like the AMD antitrust suit?
Thanks!
Absolutely agree. Thanks for that.