I bet there's a number of other people that have had the same dream. I just wish there was a way to make it stop. Because I keep having it over and over again. Each time a little further along then the last.
Too bad, because it (your fellow citizen's freedom) will be sold for the right price.
Today's lesson: Freedom is for sale for about $2 less than the going price.
After all the economics of all schools systems are dismal. Children and schools aren't profitable investments. At this point in time, the system is designed as a kind of state-run babysitting service and the voters like it that way.
We are conciously chosing not to invest in our future and ensure the social and political stability an education gives back to a society.
Prisons solve the social problems really well so there's no reason to worry.
Wireless providers like cingular may add those features, but will do so at extremely high rent to end-users.
Look at music download service provided by the wireless vendors. Bandwidth is very expensive for those mobile phones, so I expect slightly higher prices than Apple but not the ridiculous prices they have now.
Mobile phones and the SIM chips in them have fantastic capabilities that can't be touched by entrepreneurs. Interoperability and outside innovaters are to be discouraged at all costs. The wireless providers like it that way. Java/j2me certainly didn't solve the problem.
I don't like MS as much as the next guy, but proclamations like this just make MS look good.
They just wouldn't revoke an OS license for many reasons:
1. ANY copy of the OS in use is a win for MS. They don't want to make it impossible to steal. Just hard enough so fewer people can steal it. As protection schemes are cracked, they have to come up with another. They have to keep up appearances.
2. Revoking the wrong desktop/server will generate too much fear and drive now-uncertain users to other platforms. So they can't really do it.
Vista is STILL the silent personal media rights killer well on it's way to becoming a set top box. But articles like this make it very easy to justify the claim that there are "linux zealots."
IMHO This tactic is being abused to pass legislation that still screws the average Australian out of whatever kind of current "fair use" (personal copies, don't sell duplicates, etc)
They use policies like this to spin the argument so the real meat of the set of laws isn't discussed. The RIAA corporations marginalize their opposition, and the bill passes, "modified" much to the dismay of no one in particular as this part was never actually supposed to make it through legislation.
It's the other stuff buried deep in Aussie legalese that they really want passed. Which shouldn't go through, but probably will.
Bam... Just like that the individual is sold out in favor of corporate control of your media. The average citizen doesn't even know or understand what's just happened to them.
This screed reeks of the Good Manager's First Priority: Blaming someone else. In this case it's the whole fscking organization.
I think it's reasonable to assume this guy's department has as many problems as the next department except he's doing the classic pre-emptive management tactic of shifting blame by calling out someone else.
They are your worst kind of manager. They stink up the whole organization as soon as they drop their first pre-emptive strike. Get out quick because they tend to drag everything down and stay around launching strike after strike on others and collect hefty bonuses at the end of the fiscal year.
What makes it so insidious is they get all of the people that want a better organization (change advocates) behind them because jackasses like this blindly fire salvo after salvo around the organization. The change advocates typically don't like the person in question but see any kind of change as "Better than it was." It turns the departments in the work environment into a fortress.
I can't imagine a job that would be worth staying in with nut jobs like this.
I'd like to know what/.'ers think the right thing to do is.
1. Start a drive to invalidate patents. 2. Identify MS patents in OSS and design around them. 3. Get a judge to ??? in regards to the MS monopoly status? 4. Draw Oracle/Dead Cat/IBM into the fray? 5. Go offshore? e.g. host projects in patent hostile countries?
MS is still sitting in the driver's seat, ready to legally carpet bomb every distro into oblivion. DSL, Slackware, Debian, Mandriva, Freespire, Mepis, are just a few that I seriously doubt have the legal resources to go even one round in court.
It's important that there are so many distros. This is how linux is winning right now. Linux is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
A couple of cease and desist letters from MS and they will control Linux too.
How is the parent comment insightful? or even accurate?
t just amazes me that a community of people who run two, three, or more different OS's, on different hardware platforms
hmmm a few hundred? users versus hundreds of millions running on Windows? That's what you call a competitive marketplace? Apple meaningfully changing Microsoft's marketshare? Yet? How about ever?
I don't think you got the/. memo: Microsoft is a REAL monopoly. Has been, and continues to be. You are worse off for it and will only continue to be more worse off the longer you stick with it.
A monopoly strongly tends to produce at a lower quantity (Qm) versus a competitive market. (Qc)
For you and all consumers, that translages into: 1. Microsoft is a price maker. They alone set the price and define the functionality for their OS and get to drive the cost of the computer package up accordingly. They will probably provide at Quantity Qm instead of Qc to OEM's like Dell who have no choice but to pass on that cost to you.
2. They will only provide their OS at successively higher prices and lower quantity. There is no reason to believe the price they demand will ever go down or the features offered will increase at the same given price. This is why there are 6+/- different SKU's of Vista in various modes of broken. Next OS it will probably have add-on subscriptions much like phone company services where you will end up paying more for less functionality but not noticing because you won't track the incremental costs nor will you acknowledge or recognize the loss of personal freedom.
3. Microsoft and it's entertainment mega-corp content buddies will define what you can and cannot do with their content. You don't have anything to say about it. Are the entertainment mega-corps "hurting" now? Have they been over the last few years? No.
There is no path where Microsoft becomes enlightened and lowers their prices to provide the quantity and features the market demands. History has proven this repeatedly.
The poor EU reps who are rightly attempting to establish a more competitive PC market will be in for some surprises I'd say. Some possible alternatives for MS:
1. Drag them all to some court for no-win tests of EU law just to buy them time. 2. Have key drivers in this fight on the EU side "re-assigned" or otherwise voted out. 3. Introduce even more fast-track legislation to protect their monopoly.
Any way they go, MS can and most likely will eat some fines for a few months until they reach a more "final" solution to these trouble makers.
and I think you begin to notice that in -this- way GWB is reflecting the will of the American peoples.
There is no set of eco-friendly economic or political rules where the balance of power shifts away from the U.S. that will ever be adopted. For example, when the world starts trading polution credits, a country with rich forests pumping out oxygen won't suddenly become an economic superpower.
Every developing nation with some "fire in the belly" is going to laugh at the foolish american who has no choice but to acknowledge that we have pillaged huge amounts of natural resources and continue to pollute with reckless abandon on our way to global dominance. So why can't they? Well, they can and they will.
I'm all for a less polluted planet, but I don't see how it happens. I see lots of little nature preserves acting like ecological museums or zoos without cages making us feel better. (Yosemite anyone?) But that's about it.
and see if getting a metric ton of vendors to make their various bits all work together in some new way to deploy mega-healthcare infrastructure gets close to working. One vendor typically does not want to know or care to know what the others are doing which makes for lots of daily progress.
Oh wait, then there's the legacy system vendors.
Easy, in fact, too easy to take shots at programs like this.
They stand such a high rate of failure that incremental change should have been adopted in the first place. The politicians behind this one have all disowned the project by now I'm sure.
Is the reference that most everyone here is commenting on.
Best case scenario for most sysadmins is backward compatibility is the equivalent of a broad fallow field with landmines randomly placed. Everything else is just arguing how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
I will argue that backward compatibility is something a PHB throws out when she/he wants to say no to something without having to specify their concerns. It's not a reason why the purchase order is cut for your company versus your competitor.
I'm positive I'm not the only one who has had backward compatibility issues with Microsoft apps. IMHO backward compatibility has fallen out of favor for Microsoft. My last nightmare was installing a clustered instance of MSSQL 2000 running on a new win2003 cluster node. Yet there are many fanboys who will claim exactly the opposite.
I also admin Linux servers and find "backward compatibility" is mostly solved with backports. Debian is one distro that provides backports. http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php Double-plus goodness right there. If you really -must- have it in Linux, downloading sources and working out libraries is not hard. Time consuming, but not hard. I speak from experience.
I'll learn.NET. I'm more marketable to employers Today you will. But tomorrow, economic principals strongly suggest it will be used by fewer and fewer consumers. In a few years, your.net skills will not be marketable.
A monopoly strongly tends to produce at a lower quantity (Qm) versus a competitive market. (Qc)
For you, and all other developers that translates into: 1. fewer organizations using.Net 2. More.net developers chasing fewer.net jobs driving the wages for.net developers down.
For you and all consumers, that translages into: 1. More expensive hardware. Microsoft is a price maker. They alone set the price for their OS and get to drive the cost of the computer package up accordingly. They will probably provide at Quantity Qm instead of Qc to OEM's like Dell who have no choice but to pass on that cost to you. 2. Fewer employers using Microsoft products. They will only provide their OS at successively higher prices and lower quantity. There is no reason to believe the price they demand will ever go down because the thirst for profit is unquenchable. 3. Lack of innovation on Microsoft's part. Since Microsoft has no competition, there is no reason to innovate. Like most big businesses they borrow or steal from the innovaters. This will drive many customers away as well.
I still feel like I paid for XP & not the Express tools. 1. As my previous comments point out, you already paid too much. 2. You are limiting your future revenue by adopting microsoft tools. There is no path where Microsoft becomes enlightened and lowers their prices to provide the quantity the market demands. History has proven this repeatedly. 3. You would do well to add GPL'd languages that -today- do not command a premium, but will indeed tomorrow because of Microsoft's monopoly position creating demand between points Qm and Qc.
To silence the quickie-mart economists and Microsofties who claim I just "proved" that the developer world is competitive, please note that economic theory also strongly suggests "consumer surplus" is -still- destroyed despite alternatives.
Today's lesson: There is no good that can come from Microsoft any more.
First, I'm disappointed that this got modded insightful. It speaks to the lack of understanding how Intellectual Property law works in this country.
Second, the whole reason Microsoft started down this path is to narrow the market for Linux distros down to one. The one that microsoft controls through threat of litigation carpet bombing. Microsoft's competitors here are Oracle and Dead Cat. They can, when they are ready, litigate Novell into extinction.
Third, microsoft doesn't actually -want- to sue developers like the RIAA does to individuals. They want Linux dollars flowing to them only. Litigation is a big carrot/stick that will ensure the corporate dollars flow to Microsoft.
Will Microsoft sue individual developers? If their current strategy doesn't work. Yes. They'll identify maybe 10 key contributors and a couple of distros who aren't backed by IBM/Oracle and let the litigation fly. This is your "chilling effect."
1. Another Microsoft deal where the other party is eaten alive. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. 2. The term "Free" (as in Freedom) software is further confused to the average PHB. 3. Microsoft sucks up the revenue desperately needed to grow Linux. 4. Totally free software is further equated with the price you pay. Nothing.
Patenting the shape of the corners of a gift card and the tsunami of other meaningless patents overwhelming the PTO will not bring about patent reform. Working the PTO, like most gov't jobs is something private industry doesn't want to do and is a relatively small portion of the Gov budget. Crying about the extra work and hiring 1 for every 100 requested reviewers is about the only way it's being addressed right now.
Clogging the (I assume federal) courts with patent related litigation will. Why? Because the courts will be asking for many more judges, clerks, infrastructure, (money$$$) to address the tidal wave of litigation.
Judges and their courts are much more expensive and much more respected than mere patent workers.
The more litigation related to frivolous patents, the better.
That doesn't make sense. Doctors have been making a ton for years.
Like Microsoft, Doctors are a monopoly. There is only one AMA right? Lawyers? There's only one Bar for each state. In each case, there are progressively fewer consumers that can afford either one of them.
Another risk with a small company is here today gone tomorrow. All but two companies I've ever worked for are gone. It's okay because there's lots more where they came from.
If.Net is the right tool for the job, then go for it. I'd be *very* interested to hear what about.net addresses your current want/need. Beware though, it's a crack pipe and.net makes it very easy to replace you with someone at a lower pay.
At this point, it is reasonable to assume most organizations that do not want to rely on their IT employee talent or skill will choose Microsoft.
TCO, like most statistics is skewed toward the biases of the people putting the numbers together listening carefully and intentionally including the biases of their employer. In this case the TCO will never come out in favor of Linux because of the organization's biases.
I think this is a good thing though. The more biased and irrational the PHB the more likely they will listen to Dvorak/Microsoft craziness. The more that hyperbole is abused the better for Linux.
Meanwhile, the more rational PHB will look at the tools available for the job and decide which is best. In increasingly more and more situations, Linux will be the better tool.
I am borrowing heavily from someone else but here goes:.Net Job is the higher paying job because they have to pay you more today because "tomorrow" (5+ yrs?) there will be less demand or lower wages for the same position. So, in 5+ years you can reasonably expect to have a skillset that fewer employers will want or pay high wages for. When it comes to pricing and innovation the most likely scenario for Microsoft is they will be driving away more new business and demanding more money from their current customers.
The Perl Job is lower paying because the difference between the.net and perl job is the price you are paying to learn a skill that will be in greater demand in the future. (e.g. "Paying your dues") Typically in the early days of any new market, you'll find lots of people who didn't earn very much, and maybe learned the business. The ones that are lucky enough to stick around that industry for 10 years end up earning cha-ching because they paid their dues to be there. Their customers, who were small businesses 10 years ago are much bigger 10 years later and will pay much higher prices for the few experts in the field.
It also depends on your personality. Personally, I am -much- happier earning a little less doing many different tasks and working with people who work together as opposed to large companies where you have a few tasks and "chinese walls" surrounding you.
I agree Dvorak stories are flamebait on/. I believe Dvorak and his like-thinking journalists can be used to promote Linux use.
The more PHB's that can't think for themselves and think (somehow) Dvorak is making sense, the more they will hang themselves with a Microsoft noose. The more they misunderstand the GPL and discredit Linux the better.
Meanwhile the critical thinking PHB looks at who provides the better tool for the job, factors in cost and chooses from there. Linux will be chosen in many instances and many more to come.
Like fleas on a Microsoft dog, Linux will be everywhere and nowhere if there's enough Dvorak spouting confusing rhetoric. This is the ideal scenario for Linux competing against a very powerful monopoly. Eventually, the dog is covered in fleas and is exausted, confused and miserable trying to deal with them. To abuse the analogy some more, Dvorak and his kind promote more fleas.
Let Dvorak do it some more. I'm going over to his publishers site right now to agree with Dvorak if I can leave a comment on the article. If you want more Linux adoption, I suggest you do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
What a coincidence.....
I bet there's a number of other people that have had the same dream. I just wish there was a way to make it stop. Because I keep having it over and over again. Each time a little further along then the last.
Too bad, because it (your fellow citizen's freedom) will be sold for the right price.
Today's lesson: Freedom is for sale for about $2 less than the going price.
Voters don't want a better school system.
After all the economics of all schools systems are dismal. Children and schools aren't profitable investments. At this point in time, the system is designed as a kind of state-run babysitting service and the voters like it that way.
We are conciously chosing not to invest in our future and ensure the social and political stability an education gives back to a society.
Prisons solve the social problems really well so there's no reason to worry.
Wireless providers like cingular may add those features, but will do so at extremely high rent to end-users.
Look at music download service provided by the wireless vendors. Bandwidth is very expensive for those mobile phones, so I expect slightly higher prices than Apple but not the ridiculous prices they have now.
Mobile phones and the SIM chips in them have fantastic capabilities that can't be touched by entrepreneurs. Interoperability and outside innovaters are to be discouraged at all costs. The wireless providers like it that way. Java/j2me certainly didn't solve the problem.
I'm disappointed by the summary's FUD.
I don't like MS as much as the next guy, but proclamations like this just make MS look good.
They just wouldn't revoke an OS license for many reasons:
1. ANY copy of the OS in use is a win for MS. They don't want to make it impossible to steal. Just hard enough so fewer people can steal it. As protection schemes are cracked, they have to come up with another. They have to keep up appearances.
2. Revoking the wrong desktop/server will generate too much fear and drive now-uncertain users to other platforms. So they can't really do it.
Vista is STILL the silent personal media rights killer well on it's way to becoming a set top box. But articles like this make it very easy to justify the claim that there are "linux zealots."
IMHO This tactic is being abused to pass legislation that still screws the average Australian out of whatever kind of current "fair use" (personal copies, don't sell duplicates, etc)
They use policies like this to spin the argument so the real meat of the set of laws isn't discussed. The RIAA corporations marginalize their opposition, and the bill passes, "modified" much to the dismay of no one in particular as this part was never actually supposed to make it through legislation.
It's the other stuff buried deep in Aussie legalese that they really want passed. Which shouldn't go through, but probably will.
Bam... Just like that the individual is sold out in favor of corporate control of your media. The average citizen doesn't even know or understand what's just happened to them.
This screed reeks of the Good Manager's First Priority: Blaming someone else. In this case it's the whole fscking organization.
I think it's reasonable to assume this guy's department has as many problems as the next department except he's doing the classic pre-emptive management tactic of shifting blame by calling out someone else.
They are your worst kind of manager. They stink up the whole organization as soon as they drop their first pre-emptive strike. Get out quick because they tend to drag everything down and stay around launching strike after strike on others and collect hefty bonuses at the end of the fiscal year.
What makes it so insidious is they get all of the people that want a better organization (change advocates) behind them because jackasses like this blindly fire salvo after salvo around the organization. The change advocates typically don't like the person in question but see any kind of change as "Better than it was." It turns the departments in the work environment into a fortress.
I can't imagine a job that would be worth staying in with nut jobs like this.
I'd like to know what /.'ers think the right thing to do is.
1. Start a drive to invalidate patents.
2. Identify MS patents in OSS and design around them.
3. Get a judge to ??? in regards to the MS monopoly status?
4. Draw Oracle/Dead Cat/IBM into the fray?
5. Go offshore? e.g. host projects in patent hostile countries?
MS is still sitting in the driver's seat, ready to legally carpet bomb every distro into oblivion. DSL, Slackware, Debian, Mandriva, Freespire, Mepis, are just a few that I seriously doubt have the legal resources to go even one round in court.
It's important that there are so many distros. This is how linux is winning right now. Linux is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
A couple of cease and desist letters from MS and they will control Linux too.
What's YOUR idea to address the threat?
How is the parent comment insightful? or even accurate?
/. memo: Microsoft is a REAL monopoly. Has been, and continues to be. You are worse off for it and will only continue to be more worse off the longer you stick with it.
n g_for_unregulated_monopolies and I've got the graph explained in plainer english here. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206320&cid=168 24770
t just amazes me that a community of people who run two, three, or more different OS's, on different hardware platforms
hmmm a few hundred? users versus hundreds of millions running on Windows? That's what you call a competitive marketplace? Apple meaningfully changing Microsoft's marketshare? Yet? How about ever?
I don't think you got the
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Price_setti
What is the logical flaw in the parent comment called? I'd love to know.
None of that will happen. Microsoft has nothing to fear for disaffected customers because there will be so few.
n g_for_unregulated_monopolies (or not)
Take a look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Price_setti
A monopoly strongly tends to produce at a lower quantity (Qm) versus a competitive market. (Qc)
For you and all consumers, that translages into:
1. Microsoft is a price maker. They alone set the price and define the functionality for their OS and get to drive the cost of the computer package up accordingly. They will probably provide at Quantity Qm instead of Qc to OEM's like Dell who have no choice but to pass on that cost to you.
2. They will only provide their OS at successively higher prices and lower quantity. There is no reason to believe the price they demand will ever go down or the features offered will increase at the same given price. This is why there are 6+/- different SKU's of Vista in various modes of broken. Next OS it will probably have add-on subscriptions much like phone company services where you will end up paying more for less functionality but not noticing because you won't track the incremental costs nor will you acknowledge or recognize the loss of personal freedom.
3. Microsoft and it's entertainment mega-corp content buddies will define what you can and cannot do with their content. You don't have anything to say about it. Are the entertainment mega-corps "hurting" now? Have they been over the last few years? No.
There is no path where Microsoft becomes enlightened and lowers their prices to provide the quantity and features the market demands. History has proven this repeatedly.
The poor EU reps who are rightly attempting to establish a more competitive PC market will be in for some surprises I'd say. Some possible alternatives for MS:
8 24770
1. Drag them all to some court for no-win tests of EU law just to buy them time.
2. Have key drivers in this fight on the EU side "re-assigned" or otherwise voted out.
3. Introduce even more fast-track legislation to protect their monopoly.
Any way they go, MS can and most likely will eat some fines for a few months until they reach a more "final" solution to these trouble makers.
Lest anyone doubt that the MS monopoly doesn't affect them, please review this post: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206320&cid=16
No good can come from using Microsoft products any more.
and I think you begin to notice that in -this- way GWB is reflecting the will of the American peoples.
There is no set of eco-friendly economic or political rules where the balance of power shifts away from the U.S. that will ever be adopted. For example, when the world starts trading polution credits, a country with rich forests pumping out oxygen won't suddenly become an economic superpower.
Every developing nation with some "fire in the belly" is going to laugh at the foolish american who has no choice but to acknowledge that we have pillaged huge amounts of natural resources and continue to pollute with reckless abandon on our way to global dominance. So why can't they? Well, they can and they will.
I'm all for a less polluted planet, but I don't see how it happens. I see lots of little nature preserves acting like ecological museums or zoos without cages making us feel better. (Yosemite anyone?) But that's about it.
and see if getting a metric ton of vendors to make their various bits all work together in some new way to deploy mega-healthcare infrastructure gets close to working. One vendor typically does not want to know or care to know what the others are doing which makes for lots of daily progress.
Oh wait, then there's the legacy system vendors.
Easy, in fact, too easy to take shots at programs like this.
They stand such a high rate of failure that incremental change should have been adopted in the first place. The politicians behind this one have all disowned the project by now I'm sure.
Is the reference that most everyone here is commenting on.
Best case scenario for most sysadmins is backward compatibility is the equivalent of a broad fallow field with landmines randomly placed. Everything else is just arguing how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
I will argue that backward compatibility is something a PHB throws out when she/he wants to say no to something without having to specify their concerns. It's not a reason why the purchase order is cut for your company versus your competitor.
I'm positive I'm not the only one who has had backward compatibility issues with Microsoft apps. IMHO backward compatibility has fallen out of favor for Microsoft. My last nightmare was installing a clustered instance of MSSQL 2000 running on a new win2003 cluster node. Yet there are many fanboys who will claim exactly the opposite.
I also admin Linux servers and find "backward compatibility" is mostly solved with backports. Debian is one distro that provides backports. http://www.backports.org/dokuwiki/doku.php Double-plus goodness right there. If you really -must- have it in Linux, downloading sources and working out libraries is not hard. Time consuming, but not hard. I speak from experience.
Good Cop Bad Cop.
Right now, this guy is playing good cop. While another part of the organization litigates the end-user into oblivion.
The goal remains, Greater control for higher revenue, which naturally entails drastically limiting consumer usage.
Microsoft's goal, RIAA members goal. All of them.
That this is even being considered as thoughtful by some is just... astroturfing.
I'll learn .NET. I'm more marketable to employers .net skills will not be marketable.
n g_for_unregulated_monopolies (or not)
.Net .net developers chasing fewer .net jobs driving the wages for .net developers down.
Today you will. But tomorrow, economic principals strongly suggest it will be used by fewer and fewer consumers. In a few years, your
Take a look at this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly#Price_setti
A monopoly strongly tends to produce at a lower quantity (Qm) versus a competitive market. (Qc)
For you, and all other developers that translates into:
1. fewer organizations using
2. More
For you and all consumers, that translages into:
1. More expensive hardware. Microsoft is a price maker. They alone set the price for their OS and get to drive the cost of the computer package up accordingly. They will probably provide at Quantity Qm instead of Qc to OEM's like Dell who have no choice but to pass on that cost to you.
2. Fewer employers using Microsoft products. They will only provide their OS at successively higher prices and lower quantity. There is no reason to believe the price they demand will ever go down because the thirst for profit is unquenchable.
3. Lack of innovation on Microsoft's part. Since Microsoft has no competition, there is no reason to innovate. Like most big businesses they borrow or steal from the innovaters. This will drive many customers away as well.
I still feel like I paid for XP & not the Express tools.
1. As my previous comments point out, you already paid too much.
2. You are limiting your future revenue by adopting microsoft tools. There is no path where Microsoft becomes enlightened and lowers their prices to provide the quantity the market demands. History has proven this repeatedly.
3. You would do well to add GPL'd languages that -today- do not command a premium, but will indeed tomorrow because of Microsoft's monopoly position creating demand between points Qm and Qc.
To silence the quickie-mart economists and Microsofties who claim I just "proved" that the developer world is competitive, please note that economic theory also strongly suggests "consumer surplus" is -still- destroyed despite alternatives.
Today's lesson: There is no good that can come from Microsoft any more.
First, I'm disappointed that this got modded insightful. It speaks to the lack of understanding how Intellectual Property law works in this country.
Second, the whole reason Microsoft started down this path is to narrow the market for Linux distros down to one. The one that microsoft controls through threat of litigation carpet bombing. Microsoft's competitors here are Oracle and Dead Cat. They can, when they are ready, litigate Novell into extinction.
Third, microsoft doesn't actually -want- to sue developers like the RIAA does to individuals. They want Linux dollars flowing to them only. Litigation is a big carrot/stick that will ensure the corporate dollars flow to Microsoft.
Will Microsoft sue individual developers? If their current strategy doesn't work. Yes. They'll identify maybe 10 key contributors and a couple of distros who aren't backed by IBM/Oracle and let the litigation fly. This is your "chilling effect."
You mention what's happening now.
In a few more years, the GPL will be circumvented in ways that Novell hasn't even thought of yet.
It will be the corporation driving those circumventions.
Capitalism is at least as infectious as chicken pox in the average second grade classroom.
I'm glad Debian is staying focused.
This guy probably has what you are looking for.
His application runs a little on the secure side, but he's got it integrated nicely into ActiveDirectory.
He's a programmer more than a marketing guy, so his site's a little rough around the edges. Cards/Application works beautifully for me though.
http://www.snakecard.com/
I'll have plenty of work babysitting those desktops.
1. Another Microsoft deal where the other party is eaten alive. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
2. The term "Free" (as in Freedom) software is further confused to the average PHB.
3. Microsoft sucks up the revenue desperately needed to grow Linux.
4. Totally free software is further equated with the price you pay. Nothing.
Patenting the shape of the corners of a gift card and the tsunami of other meaningless patents overwhelming the PTO will not bring about patent reform. Working the PTO, like most gov't jobs is something private industry doesn't want to do and is a relatively small portion of the Gov budget. Crying about the extra work and hiring 1 for every 100 requested reviewers is about the only way it's being addressed right now.
Clogging the (I assume federal) courts with patent related litigation will. Why? Because the courts will be asking for many more judges, clerks, infrastructure, (money$$$) to address the tidal wave of litigation.
Judges and their courts are much more expensive and much more respected than mere patent workers.
The more litigation related to frivolous patents, the better.
That doesn't make sense. Doctors have been making a ton for years.
.Net is the right tool for the job, then go for it. I'd be *very* interested to hear what about .net addresses your current want/need. Beware though, it's a crack pipe and .net makes it very easy to replace you with someone at a lower pay.
Like Microsoft, Doctors are a monopoly. There is only one AMA right? Lawyers? There's only one Bar for each state. In each case, there are progressively fewer consumers that can afford either one of them.
Another risk with a small company is here today gone tomorrow.
All but two companies I've ever worked for are gone. It's okay because there's lots more where they came from.
If
At this point, it is reasonable to assume most organizations that do not want to rely on their IT employee talent or skill will choose Microsoft.
TCO, like most statistics is skewed toward the biases of the people putting the numbers together listening carefully and intentionally including the biases of their employer. In this case the TCO will never come out in favor of Linux because of the organization's biases.
I think this is a good thing though. The more biased and irrational the PHB the more likely they will listen to Dvorak/Microsoft craziness. The more that hyperbole is abused the better for Linux.
Meanwhile, the more rational PHB will look at the tools available for the job and decide which is best. In increasingly more and more situations, Linux will be the better tool.
I am borrowing heavily from someone else but here goes: .Net Job is the higher paying job because they have to pay you more today because "tomorrow" (5+ yrs?) there will be less demand or lower wages for the same position. So, in 5+ years you can reasonably expect to have a skillset that fewer employers will want or pay high wages for. When it comes to pricing and innovation the most likely scenario for Microsoft is they will be driving away more new business and demanding more money from their current customers.
.net and perl job is the price you are paying to learn a skill that will be in greater demand in the future. (e.g. "Paying your dues") Typically in the early days of any new market, you'll find lots of people who didn't earn very much, and maybe learned the business. The ones that are lucky enough to stick around that industry for 10 years end up earning cha-ching because they paid their dues to be there. Their customers, who were small businesses 10 years ago are much bigger 10 years later and will pay much higher prices for the few experts in the field.
The Perl Job is lower paying because the difference between the
It also depends on your personality. Personally, I am -much- happier earning a little less doing many different tasks and working with people who work together as opposed to large companies where you have a few tasks and "chinese walls" surrounding you.
Seriously.
/. I believe Dvorak and his like-thinking journalists can be used to promote Linux use.
I agree Dvorak stories are flamebait on
The more PHB's that can't think for themselves and think (somehow) Dvorak is making sense, the more they will hang themselves with a Microsoft noose. The more they misunderstand the GPL and discredit Linux the better.
Meanwhile the critical thinking PHB looks at who provides the better tool for the job, factors in cost and chooses from there.
Linux will be chosen in many instances and many more to come.
Like fleas on a Microsoft dog, Linux will be everywhere and nowhere if there's enough Dvorak spouting confusing rhetoric. This is the ideal scenario for Linux competing against a very powerful monopoly. Eventually, the dog is covered in fleas and is exausted, confused and miserable trying to deal with them. To abuse the analogy some more, Dvorak and his kind promote more fleas.
Let Dvorak do it some more. I'm going over to his publishers site right now to agree with Dvorak if I can leave a comment on the article. If you want more Linux adoption, I suggest you do the same.