The quaint American notion of quality, service and spiffy design features is something that an IBM-like customer would specify in their order to a Lenovo-like company and not the other way around.
I used to work for a Taiwanese ODM/OEM so I have some experience in the area.
Skype pays handsomely to put product in Dvorak's hands.
Furthermore, Dvorak might, but probably doesn't install it himself. He'll typically get a report from a staffer on how the install went.
I'm too lazy to find the/. PR articles. One referenced Paul Graham's site, the other rightfully questioning the objectivity in hardware reviews. Please review both to get a better understanding of how the creation of editorial content actually works.
Dvorak needs to hype something new to keep the advertisers happy. Period.
BG might be thinking it's to his advantage to bring them in from all over the world, work on one tiny part of a mega-project and then send them back as Microsoft sees fit. When the coder leaves, he/she doesn't know that much more than when they came.
The alternative, set up a shop in a low-wage country means you have a group of coders who will have valuable information about a large chunk of a project in a country with less rigorous IP law. A smart coder might do something really innovative with that information.
Microsoft's success in destop publishing history is a real mixed bag.
-Office's file formats are the dominant document creation files. Adobe/Macromedia users can chill-out because you are typically represented as a more lucrative, but smaller market segment.
-Does anyone use Microsoft's wacky desktop publishing software included in some versions of Office?
-/.'s know they can get the excellent PDFcreator for winblows, but the average user simply pays for Acrobat when they discover Acrobat Reader is cripple-ware. PDF products have also driven much of Adobe's growth in the last few quarters.
- I see -no- incentive for a printer manufacturer to develop a driver for this new M$ format.
-The wise thing for M$ to do would be to abandon whatever printing system they've got now and replace it with Metro.
All of these factoids suggest to me that MS believes they have an opportunity, but it will fail.
I was working for a hardware OEM who had to test betas like this and witnessed both Microsoft and Apple go through these development cycles.
Back then, they were not pretty in the beginning. When they got close to release, then they'd include the eye candy. I'm not sure if it works like this now, so YMMV.
I can remember thinking what a shameful hack XP's eye candy was when I saw it for the first time. The timing of the XP GUI release was just a couple of weeks after OSX's pretty GUI release too. That made it even more sickening.
Like any good company, they don't do anything out of fear. They did it to corner the desktop publishing market. They are a well-run company looking to destroy competition to ensure future profits. Period.
I don't think Adobe really cares all that much about any Macromedia software except Flash. It's another PDF to them.
If Adobe were being generous, they might release another version of Macromedia titles. But they're not, so I expect most Macromedia software will just die.
FYI: As a lesson to those who don't know, track Macromedia and Adobe's share prices and you'll see that the many shareholders knew about the merger well ahead of the announcement. Note where share values diverge.
I'm probably the only one fascinated by this kind of situation.
Guy #1 "Good for the Wiki" This guy is being promoted as hard-working honest person working toward a common social good. The stereotypical "honest working man."
Guy #2 "Good for Guy #2" This guy is portrayed as a status seeker whose sole purpose is to extend his control of the wiki world. That's a kind of selfish good with the sole purpose of seeking praise. Stereotypical executive manager maybe?
I'm fascinated at how #2's drive away a few and attack (managing?) the ones that hang around for the punishment, decrease the production of quality content AND be praised for doing it. It's counter intuitive to me.
What book teaches you how to be a #2? Being a #1 isn't working for me.
I think you might find quark is part of elaborate publishing systems that don't change very often.
So as bad as it may be, they've got big customers that (rightly) fear change and provide a steady license/support revenue. Adobe needs those customers the most because they are typically very profitable.
I believe your question cuts to the heart of the matter.
I'm imagining Nikon makes a presentation to Adobe about their products, "we need Adobe's support" blah blah blah. And then when Nikon gets to the specifics of their high-end camera they tell Adobe, "Nikon is giving Adobe a wonderful opportunity to license our RAW technology for use in Adobe products!"
After Nikon buys Adobe people an expensive lunch, Adobe is indignant that they must license the RAW import technology. They are ADOBE SYSTEMS for gosh's sake. Adobe Engineering can hack their way into it, but Nikon's smart and is leaving the litigation door open.
Adobe then attempts to reassert their dominance by making Nikon/DMCA out to be the bad guys (which IMHO they are not.)in the press in an attempt to get industry/public opinion on their side.
I give Adobe kudos for doing whatever it takes to get a lower price/free technology. It takes real talent to make customers feel good while they take it up the a**. I'd be much better off if I could do it as well as they do.
They don't buy it so much for the technology. They buy it to kill the competition off once and for all.
A nightmare for Adobe would be the Quark owner(s) sell to someone with lots of access to capital. To make sure it doesn't happen, Adobe pays a hefty premium because the owner(s) know how much easier it would be to not have any competition.
Winners: Adobe has encircled Quark's publishing product with Illustrator, Photoshop, and now Flash and Dreamweaver in their stable. It will likely be a slow and painful death for Quark.
Quark is privately held , so chances are good they will sell to Adobe at a premium way above what Adobe just paid for Macromedia.
Losers: Employees at both companies. I smell RIF's coming soon.
Consumers lose big. I don't see much innovation. But there will be big price increases in Adobe pro/consumer products coming.
I've been modded down for some muddled comments regarding adobe's monopoly in the past, so I guess./'ers will welcome their new desktop publishing overlords.
Longhorn Demo: Microsoft: "Thanks for coming to eat free food. Check out Longhorn." (Porn music to play behind the OS demo.) Microsoft: "Check out the translucent windows! You know we invented them..." (few grunts, skin slaps and music continues) Microsoft: "Check out these icons made from the *actual first page* of the document! AmAAAZziing huh?" (groans mixed into porn music followed by climax noises) Microsoft fanboys will blow a load, go home and blog "Longhorn is the best OS EVER!
Like many/.'s, I'm a big fan of Linux Everywhere on Everything.(TM) BUT, Arguing technical points is fine and good on./. In the real world where PHB's make the decisions in the business market and individuals make decisions in the consumer market, Linux has a long, long road ahead.
1. M$ Longhorn. To the PHB's and consumers it will look like it kicks ass. Just because it's not released yet, the media is giving Linux some praise because it creates tension and conflict. As soon as Longhorn releases, Microsoft will be certain to make Linux look like a stinking pile of crap. And the media who takes Microsoft's money will spread the word because it fuels the tension and conflict.
2. GIVE USERS A COMPELLING REASON TO SWITCH TO LINUX and they will. I don't care which PC reseller supports Linux. They won't sell many unless there is a compelling reason to buy. Linux servers are a fantastic example. Features, functionality and price are there driving the adoption. What's it going to be on the desktop?
"Software companies will not be the primary drive behind open source." The _old_ business model of a software company innovates only when profit is in peril or the path to more profit is obvious. Innovation (risk) is not as profitable as locking a customer in.
"The bottom line... insert platitude here... it will come out of academia, non-profit organizations, and hobbyists." Who cares if innovation is from academia, hobbyists or Red Hat or Novell?
The bottom line, Open source is new(ish), innovative and the biggest threat to the old software company business model. Even Microsoft agrees with me!
I would hazzard a guess and say that one reason they are doing this is to subsidize french IT.
-The French got behind smart cards from their inception. -Sagem is one of the leaders in AFIS. (automatic fingerprint identification system) They provide a whole lot of biometric hardware and software technology to countries that can afford to install it.
What about debian as a server distro? I would want my production hardware to get security updates for about 3 years from release. A long release cycle makes sense to me on a server.
I'd like to hear what anyone else thinks about Debian as a Server distro.
Your call to arms reminds me of Adamantix. But I found Adamantix to be pretty rough around the edges.
But you are quite right, there is no server-centric distro where you don't have to cobble things together. Even in Debian, you have to know what to install and how to get it working. The business model is service and education based. There are some features lacking in the Linux environment, but what a great way to generate some interest in getting those done OSS.
If anyone else wants to get involved please email me.
Lesson #1: From what I can tell, BitMover got involved with the Linux kernel for very little or no money. Expecting a return from giving your product away for free and expecting return in the form of corporate profit is a huge mistake when it appears the business model is product (not support/integration service) oriented.
Lesson #2: Every good idea gets reversed engineered. Take it as a compliment that your software is being reversed engineered. In this article and judging by some of the comments, it's not viewd as complimentary and it might land the parties in court. (I won't get started with the problems with American IP)
Personal Opinion and Off-Topic: (Here's where I get modded down) Reverse engineering should be valued as an accomplishment in American culture. A reverse-engineered product is typically lower in cost and innovates because more consumers can afford it.
I see M$ adopting unix features as really bad news.
Security features like this are enough to make PHB's everywhere believe Longhorn "just as secure" as Linux. The details are too technical for most of them to care.
Add overwhelming amounts of graphic eye-candy and the year of Linux on the desktop is over. Again!
I had the same experience that the author did except my laptop is an old Thinkpad P3 500 with lots of RAM.
Fedora: Installer exited with error before it was done.
Suse 9.1: Installed and ran great, but there are/were issues with usb-hotplug and I couldn't compile anything from source either. (terminal exit with error 1?) My lack of patience put that distro to an end.
Debian Sarge: The best by far. I had to do the kernel recompile to get the wireless card to collect stats, but otherwise there have been no surprises. As much as I hear compliants about a lack of a Sarge release, it works much better right now than Suse 9.1 (with updates) without the Suse polish.
I call B.S. on most of the "Photoshop is the King! GIMP sucks." posts. Adobe has created and sustains a monopoly market for image-editing software. GIMP is different and not as feature-filled as Photoshop, but it has very many features that would more than satisfy many Photoshop users. Here's how Adobe sustains their monopoly.
1. Low-Price Adobe relies on their software getting cracked so mom-and-pop consumers will purchase the upgrade version to make themselves feel better. The cracked versions prevent any competitor from using a low-price strategy.
Score- Adobe 1 Non-Adobe 0
2. Groupthink _Many_ Photoshop consumers would find the GIMP to be more image-editor than they need. The subset of users that actually need some of the features that only Photoshop has is vocal. They're experts in PhotoshopSpeak after all and that makes them sound even more like experts too.
Score- Adobe 2 Non-Adobe 0
Usability The Adobe groupthinkers had to learn Photoshop's UI. Photoshop is not an "easy" UI but neither is GIMP. Adobe has patents protecting their UI features too. So their UI will be promoted and protected vigorously.
Score- Adobe 2 Non-Adobe 0
3. Purchase or Destroy Adobe propels the Photoshop myth with their capacity to buy or adjudicate their viable competitors into oblivion. Macromedia was the closest thing Adobe had to a competitor. When Macromedia market captialization started to be on par with Adobe's, that's when Adobe took them to court under the guise of patent enforcement and cut Macromedia down to size. (bonus point for this)
Score- Adobe 4 Non-Adobe 0
Adobe Wins! Now I'll go back to my Adobe groupthinking ways. GIMP Sucks! I feel better now...
Microsoft can now say, "Office XML file format is available for anyone to read. This proves Microsoft is promoting open standards."
Decision makers who don't care about the nuances of open standards or this issue, will put a check mark next to Open Standards in their features matrix.
Meanwhile, MS develops MSXML solutions to extend their reach into lucrative corporate markets now populated by small companies.
Don't mod me down (again) for the following, because this is the harsh reality.
Alternative office suites may be able to read and write M$ XML all they want some day. Microsoft simply doesn't care because they aren't a real threat to their bottom line. *No* Office application competitor redefines the broad market or adds new overwhelming feature/value to the broad Office applications market. Period. You can imagine what MS would do if such a thing existed.
This is a play to keep the U.S. Government as their customer. Microsoft has a bunch of API's for handling smart cards for a really long time, so this isn't new.
The U.S. Government (NIST) is creating a standard for identification and authentication and any vendor wanting to keep those government contracts going will need at least the appearance of compliance. The NIST url is http://csrc.nist.gov/piv-project/
A related comment: I agree with another post that the smart card is a good way to make some kind of super-DRM, but the cost of a USB dongle would be prohibitive and not very marketable and I don't think the mobo makers would play Microsoft's game by allowing a surface mounted smart card module on the mobo that *only* Microsoft controls.
Slashdot Mirror
For now, the majors won't be selling Linux for all of the reasons others have listed.
There are linux desktop/laptop/workstation vendors that would even sell you a dual-boot.
If you are taking a chance with Linux, take a chance with a new hardware vendor!
-Made in China-
and
-Made in China to IBM's Specifications and Subject To IBM's Terms and Conditions-
Are two entirely different things. I won't even get into how bad Lenovo's support will be as compared to IBM's.
The quaint American notion of quality, service and spiffy design features is something that an IBM-like customer would specify in their order to a Lenovo-like company and not the other way around.
I used to work for a Taiwanese ODM/OEM so I have some experience in the area.
Uhhh. No.
/. PR articles. One referenced Paul Graham's site, the other rightfully questioning the objectivity in hardware reviews. Please review both to get a better understanding of how the creation of editorial content actually works.
Skype pays handsomely to put product in Dvorak's hands.
Furthermore, Dvorak might, but probably doesn't install it himself. He'll typically get a report from a staffer on how the install went.
I'm too lazy to find the
Dvorak needs to hype something new to keep the advertisers happy. Period.
BG might be thinking it's to his advantage to bring them in from all over the world, work on one tiny part of a mega-project and then send them back as Microsoft sees fit. When the coder leaves, he/she doesn't know that much more than when they came.
The alternative, set up a shop in a low-wage country means you have a group of coders who will have valuable information about a large chunk of a project in a country with less rigorous IP law. A smart coder might do something really innovative with that information.
Microsoft's success in destop publishing history is a real mixed bag.
/.'s know they can get the excellent PDFcreator for winblows, but the average user simply pays for Acrobat when they discover Acrobat Reader is cripple-ware. PDF products have also driven much of Adobe's growth in the last few quarters.
-Office's file formats are the dominant document creation files. Adobe/Macromedia users can chill-out because you are typically represented as a more lucrative, but smaller market segment.
-Does anyone use Microsoft's wacky desktop publishing software included in some versions of Office?
-
- I see -no- incentive for a printer manufacturer to develop a driver for this new M$ format.
-The wise thing for M$ to do would be to abandon whatever printing system they've got now and replace it with Metro.
All of these factoids suggest to me that MS believes they have an opportunity, but it will fail.
I was working for a hardware OEM who had to test betas like this and witnessed both Microsoft and Apple go through these development cycles.
Back then, they were not pretty in the beginning. When they got close to release, then they'd include the eye candy. I'm not sure if it works like this now, so YMMV.
I can remember thinking what a shameful hack XP's eye candy was when I saw it for the first time. The timing of the XP GUI release was just a couple of weeks after OSX's pretty GUI release too. That made it even more sickening.
Mike
Like any good company, they don't do anything out of fear. They did it to corner the desktop publishing market. They are a well-run company looking to destroy competition to ensure future profits. Period.
I don't think Adobe really cares all that much about any Macromedia software except Flash. It's another PDF to them.
If Adobe were being generous, they might release another version of Macromedia titles. But they're not, so I expect most Macromedia software will just die.
FYI: As a lesson to those who don't know, track Macromedia and Adobe's share prices and you'll see that the many shareholders knew about the merger well ahead of the announcement. Note where share values diverge.
I'm probably the only one fascinated by this kind of situation.
Guy #1 "Good for the Wiki"
This guy is being promoted as hard-working honest person working toward a common social good. The stereotypical "honest working man."
Guy #2 "Good for Guy #2"
This guy is portrayed as a status seeker whose sole purpose is to extend his control of the wiki world. That's a kind of selfish good with the sole purpose of seeking praise. Stereotypical executive manager maybe?
I'm fascinated at how #2's drive away a few and attack (managing?) the ones that hang around for the punishment, decrease the production of quality content AND be praised for doing it. It's counter intuitive to me.
What book teaches you how to be a #2? Being a #1 isn't working for me.
I think you might find quark is part of elaborate publishing systems that don't change very often.
So as bad as it may be, they've got big customers that (rightly) fear change and provide a steady license/support revenue. Adobe needs those customers the most because they are typically very profitable.
I believe your question cuts to the heart of the matter.
I'm imagining Nikon makes a presentation to Adobe about their products, "we need Adobe's support" blah blah blah. And then when Nikon gets to the specifics of their high-end camera they tell Adobe, "Nikon is giving Adobe a wonderful opportunity to license our RAW technology for use in Adobe products!"
After Nikon buys Adobe people an expensive lunch, Adobe is indignant that they must license the RAW import technology. They are ADOBE SYSTEMS for gosh's sake. Adobe Engineering can hack their way into it, but Nikon's smart and is leaving the litigation door open.
Adobe then attempts to reassert their dominance by making Nikon/DMCA out to be the bad guys (which IMHO they are not.)in the press in an attempt to get industry/public opinion on their side.
I give Adobe kudos for doing whatever it takes to get a lower price/free technology. It takes real talent to make customers feel good while they take it up the a**. I'd be much better off if I could do it as well as they do.
They don't buy it so much for the technology. They buy it to kill the competition off once and for all.
A nightmare for Adobe would be the Quark owner(s) sell to someone with lots of access to capital. To make sure it doesn't happen, Adobe pays a hefty premium because the owner(s) know how much easier it would be to not have any competition.
Winners:
./'ers will welcome their new desktop publishing overlords.
Adobe has encircled Quark's publishing product with Illustrator, Photoshop, and now Flash and Dreamweaver in their stable. It will likely be a slow and painful death for Quark.
Quark is privately held , so chances are good they will sell to Adobe at a premium way above what Adobe just paid for Macromedia.
Losers:
Employees at both companies. I smell RIF's coming soon.
Consumers lose big. I don't see much innovation. But there will be big price increases in Adobe pro/consumer products coming.
I've been modded down for some muddled comments regarding adobe's monopoly in the past, so I guess
Longhorn Demo:
Microsoft: "Thanks for coming to eat free food. Check out Longhorn."
(Porn music to play behind the OS demo.)
Microsoft: "Check out the translucent windows! You know we invented them..."
(few grunts, skin slaps and music continues)
Microsoft: "Check out these icons made from the *actual first page* of the document! AmAAAZziing huh?"
(groans mixed into porn music followed by climax noises)
Microsoft fanboys will blow a load, go home and blog "Longhorn is the best OS EVER!
I'm already tired of it.
Like many /.'s, I'm a big fan of Linux Everywhere on Everything.(TM) BUT, ./. In the real world where PHB's make the decisions in the business market and individuals make decisions in the consumer market, Linux has a long, long road ahead.
Arguing technical points is fine and good on
1. M$ Longhorn. To the PHB's and consumers it will look like it kicks ass. Just because it's not released yet, the media is giving Linux some praise because it creates tension and conflict. As soon as Longhorn releases, Microsoft will be certain to make Linux look like a stinking pile of crap. And the media who takes Microsoft's money will spread the word because it fuels the tension and conflict.
2. GIVE USERS A COMPELLING REASON TO SWITCH TO LINUX and they will. I don't care which PC reseller supports Linux. They won't sell many unless there is a compelling reason to buy. Linux servers are a fantastic example. Features, functionality and price are there driving the adoption. What's it going to be on the desktop?
"Software companies will not be the primary drive behind open source."
The _old_ business model of a software company innovates only when profit is in peril or the path to more profit is obvious. Innovation (risk) is not as profitable as locking a customer in.
"The bottom line... insert platitude here... it will come out of academia, non-profit organizations, and hobbyists."
Who cares if innovation is from academia, hobbyists or Red Hat or Novell?
The bottom line, Open source is new(ish), innovative and the biggest threat to the old software company business model. Even Microsoft agrees with me!
I would hazzard a guess and say that one reason they are doing this is to subsidize french IT.
-The French got behind smart cards from their inception.
-Sagem is one of the leaders in AFIS. (automatic fingerprint identification system) They provide a whole lot of biometric hardware and software technology to countries that can afford to install it.
What about debian as a server distro? I would want my production hardware to get security updates for about 3 years from release. A long release cycle makes sense to me on a server.
I'd like to hear what anyone else thinks about Debian as a Server distro.
Michael
Your call to arms reminds me of Adamantix. But I found Adamantix to be pretty rough around the edges.
But you are quite right, there is no server-centric distro where you don't have to cobble things together. Even in Debian, you have to know what to install and how to get it working. The business model is service and education based. There are some features lacking in the Linux environment, but what a great way to generate some interest in getting those done OSS.
If anyone else wants to get involved please email me.
Lesson #1:
From what I can tell, BitMover got involved with the Linux kernel for very little or no money. Expecting a return from giving your product away for free and expecting return in the form of corporate profit is a huge mistake when it appears the business model is product (not support/integration service) oriented.
Lesson #2:
Every good idea gets reversed engineered. Take it as a compliment that your software is being reversed engineered. In this article and judging by some of the comments, it's not viewd as complimentary and it might land the parties in court. (I won't get started with the problems with American IP)
Personal Opinion and Off-Topic:
(Here's where I get modded down) Reverse engineering should be valued as an accomplishment in American culture. A reverse-engineered product is typically lower in cost and innovates because more consumers can afford it.
I see M$ adopting unix features as really bad news.
Security features like this are enough to make PHB's everywhere believe Longhorn "just as secure" as Linux. The details are too technical for most of them to care.
Add overwhelming amounts of graphic eye-candy and the year of Linux on the desktop is over. Again!
I had the same experience that the author did except my laptop is an old Thinkpad P3 500 with lots of RAM.
Fedora: Installer exited with error before it was done.
Suse 9.1: Installed and ran great, but there are/were issues with usb-hotplug and I couldn't compile anything from source either. (terminal exit with error 1?) My lack of patience put that distro to an end.
Debian Sarge: The best by far. I had to do the kernel recompile to get the wireless card to collect stats, but otherwise there have been no surprises. As much as I hear compliants about a lack of a Sarge release, it works much better right now than Suse 9.1 (with updates) without the Suse polish.
I call B.S. on most of the "Photoshop is the King! GIMP sucks." posts. Adobe has created and sustains a monopoly market for image-editing software. GIMP is different and not as feature-filled as Photoshop, but it has very many features that would more than satisfy many Photoshop users. Here's how Adobe sustains their monopoly.
1. Low-Price
Adobe relies on their software getting cracked so mom-and-pop consumers will purchase the upgrade version to make themselves feel better. The cracked versions prevent any competitor from using a low-price strategy.
Score- Adobe 1 Non-Adobe 0
2. Groupthink
_Many_ Photoshop consumers would find the GIMP to be more image-editor than they need. The subset of users that actually need some of the features that only Photoshop has is vocal. They're experts in PhotoshopSpeak after all and that makes them sound even more like experts too.
Score- Adobe 2 Non-Adobe 0
Usability
The Adobe groupthinkers had to learn Photoshop's UI. Photoshop is not an "easy" UI but neither is GIMP. Adobe has patents protecting their UI features too. So their UI will be promoted and protected vigorously.
Score- Adobe 2 Non-Adobe 0
3. Purchase or Destroy
Adobe propels the Photoshop myth with their capacity to buy or adjudicate their viable competitors into oblivion. Macromedia was the closest thing Adobe had to a competitor. When Macromedia market captialization started to be on par with Adobe's, that's when Adobe took them to court under the guise of patent enforcement and cut Macromedia down to size. (bonus point for this)
Score- Adobe 4 Non-Adobe 0
Adobe Wins! Now I'll go back to my Adobe groupthinking ways. GIMP Sucks! I feel better now...
Microsoft can now say, "Office XML file format is available for anyone to read. This proves Microsoft is promoting open standards."
Decision makers who don't care about the nuances of open standards or this issue, will put a check mark next to Open Standards in their features matrix.
Meanwhile, MS develops MSXML solutions to extend their reach into lucrative corporate markets now populated by small companies.
Don't mod me down (again) for the following, because this is the harsh reality.
Alternative office suites may be able to read and write M$ XML all they want some day. Microsoft simply doesn't care because they aren't a real threat to their bottom line. *No* Office application competitor redefines the broad market or adds new overwhelming feature/value to the broad Office applications market. Period. You can imagine what MS would do if such a thing existed.
This is a play to keep the U.S. Government as their customer. Microsoft has a bunch of API's for handling smart cards for a really long time, so this isn't new.
The U.S. Government (NIST) is creating a standard for identification and authentication and any vendor wanting to keep those government contracts going will need at least the appearance of compliance. The NIST url is http://csrc.nist.gov/piv-project/
A related comment:
I agree with another post that the smart card is a good way to make some kind of super-DRM, but the cost of a USB dongle would be prohibitive and not very marketable and I don't think the mobo makers would play Microsoft's game by allowing a surface mounted smart card module on the mobo that *only* Microsoft controls.