Hmm... I composed a response, but it seems to have disappeared on me. I'll try to hit the main points quickly:
I can understand your concern if it sounded like I was an enthusiast wanting to switch platforms for no good reason without considering that emulation might not work well. On the other hand, you don't seem to appreciate how little you know about me, my situation, or my company's needs. I think I'm being diplomatic here when I say that perhaps you've assumed too much.
The fact is, Microsoft has been a real problem for my company, as they has been for every company I've worked for. Because Microsoft has entrenched themselves and done such a bang-up job of enforcing vendor lock-in, they're a bit of a necessary evil. And that's not some hippy bullshit coming from an open-source nutjob, but a cold hard reality for many IT departments. However, in my case, and probably many cases, Microsoft is so bad for business that any decent IT pro should be looking for alternatives. Depending on a particular situation, those alternatives may or may not be viable. Sometimes, even if there are problems associated with the alternative, it may be the lesser of two evils.
Now, I'm not running around installing Linux/WINE on everyone's desktop without testing because of some political agenda-- I'm talking about a business decision to evaluate what my options would be if I were to lessen my investment in Windows. I'm evaluating alternatives to a vendor which hasn't serviced me well, and working to implement those alternatives which make business sense. I've said as much previously. I don't understand why you're arguing like you are, and find it absurd to claim that it's a bad idea to switch from Windows to Linux because I will have "locked everyone into a platform". Where's the lock-in with Linux?
What ever gave you any indication that I like Windows or that I want to play FPS at work?
You talk like a tinkerer and game-player rather than an IT pro. You advocate worrying about what users want against business needs, and sticking with Microsoft's vendor lock-in in spite of viable alternatives. That's what gave me the idea.
By the way, you brought up MacOS Classic as an example of the evils of emulation, but I would generally choose to run OSX with some Classic applications for an indefinite period of time rather than run OS9 during that same period of time. This statement comes from experience, and I think OSX running Classic is an example of the tremendous benefits of emulated environments.
I also run PPC applications on an Intel processor all the time. Virtual machines are useful for a variety of purposes. Emulation is not a bad thing simply because it's emulation. The question is only whether it's the best solution, which depends greatly on how well that emulation works, and requires that you know the situation and have evaluated the benefits and drawbacks, along with the benefits and drawbacks of other solutions.
I'd tried NeoOffice before, and hadn't quite been pleased. It was at the stage where I'd be inclined to say, "I'm glad someone is working on it, but I'm not going to use it." However, this new release of 2.0 seems very nice. Surprisingly good in spite of being a beta.
Well, that's been said of the mind anyhow. You can assert that a brain could be understood, provided you were willing to accept that there's more to "mind" than "brain".
Enterprise-wise, it looks stable enough for use - networking is better than XP (even though it's a new stack), group policy has been better fine tuned, UAC is usable enough, and hardware detection is light-years ahead of XP. All of those basic things are ready and if thats what enterprise customers are expected to get, then I think it's good to go, after they fix the occaisonal dialog box with three different fonts.
This is what bothers me, though. I look at everything you listed there and think, "bug fixes": Networking, security, and hardware detection have been improved and fine-tuned. That sounds like a service pack to me. But where are the features? I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars per seat to buy a version of the OS I bought years ago, that this time it works properly. Bug fixes should be free. If you want my money, give me some new features.
Even if a particular application can be emulated well, that doesn't necessarily make it fully functional and useful.
Umm... I said it depends on how well the application runs. If Microsoft Word isn't fully functional and useful, for example, I wouldn't say it "ran well" in that emulation environment.
As a general rule, people do not like to run apps in any kind of emulation. Look at how quickly "Classic" mode was phased out on Macs.
In fact, I supported a network during the transition from MacOS->OSX+Classic->OSX. The problem for us wasn't that people didn't "like" running things in emulation. For my network, the problem was that MacOS was an aging OS that wasn't well suited for business, and running things in Classic meant that you still suffered many of the old MacOS problems. Well, that and the fact that some programs didn't "run well" in Classic, as well as the fact that all new versions of software were OSX-based, which means that Classic MacOS applications got phased out naturally. It had nothing to do with what users "liked". If anything, I had a hard time getting users to stop using Classic, because they were old-school Mac users and used to the interface.
While YOU might like to admin OS X or Linux instead Windows, that isn't necessarily what is best for users.
What exactly are you accusing me of? I don't "like" administering to a Linux or OSX network. I don't particularly like administering to any network, which is part of the reason I'm pretty good at it. I like getting things set up so they work properly so I won't have to do very much to keep them working properly. I like to avoid spending my company's money wherever possible so that my bosses think I'm awesome and give me big raises. In these endeavors, Microsoft is my enemy. They want me to spend excessive amounts of money on software that will need my constant attention. Then, I'll have to buy additional software to fill in the gaps in features and security that the OS lacks, and pay for support on that software as well.
But I should just ignore all that, ignore what works well and what's good for my company-- why? Because it would be "best for users"? I don't understand how.
And incidentally, I don't care what's "best for users" other than making sure my users have a good, stable platform that lets them get their work done and keeps their productivity high. If you want Windows because you "like it", or so you can play FPS at work, well, that's not going to be a high priority for me.
If you find that you have to emulate lots of apps, chances are that emulation is not a good idea.
And why not, if it works well? Why should I avoid using emulation, presuming I can get it to work well for my purposes, and instead use Windows, which doesn't work well for my purposes?
For me, the real question is, how well do the apps I need run in my emulation environment? If they all run very well, then it may well be worth it, even if there are many.
Terminal services are good, but of course there are trade-offs. What about laptops that will leave the environment? Do I make Terminal Services available to the outside world? What if someone wants to work where they have no network connection?
In some cases TS is ideal, but sometimes I want things running client end. Of course, for users who have a ton of Windows-only apps, I'm not trying to migrate them to another platform for no reason other than anti-MS sentiment. However, when I'm looking to buy machines, I keep asking myself, "Do I really want to spend a bundle on more Microsoft licenses when I haven't been happy with my Microsoft purchases in the past?" In some cases, the answer is, "Yes, because I have to." I don't like that answer. When I buy something, I'd like the reason to be that I'm happy with the purchase, and when there is nothing I'd be happy with, I'd like to know that I'm at least getting the best thing out there. It annoys me that I have to buy something that I'm not happy with, instead of the product I want, because of vendor lock-in.
The quick and obvious, Microsoft uses "activation" which makes it hard to move the license of either Windows or Office (anything post-2000) from one computer to another: restrictive. You're a fool if you leave an MS machine connected to the internet without the benefit of a 3rd party firewall and antivirus: insecure.
I mean, I have more problems with Windows than that, but for me, that's enough.
Instead of an analogy of someone's boogers (which are unlikely to be seen as objects of value by anyone), let's take another example: rare baseball cards
Well, yes, it might be more apt than boogers. Boogers were used specifically for the response to someone who claimed that something had intrinsic value because it took his time.
The problem with the baseball card example, however, is that people are willing to spend money on a baseball card specifically because it's the original, and you can make new "originals". It's sentimental, sure, but the whole thing hinges on the idea that you could reprint an old Babe Ruth card, but it wouldn't be the same as having an old Babe Ruth card. However, if you had a digital baseball card that was just a PNG, it seems like it'd be harder to sell it for thousands of dollars.
Then again, I'm not saying that these things can't or shouldn't be worth money. I just think people should keep some perspective that these aren't real items with genuine rarity. We should be careful, and not be too quick to assume that virtual assets in any game should necessarily have a real-life financial value.
Let's not go overboard. "Real money" is an artifice, sure. Even in hard currency, a dollar is just a sheet of paper. It gets its value chiefly because the government is there to back that value up. There's no body or organization that will give you an exchange on monopoly money to something else of the claimed value.
So the question as to whether this "rare item" is money hinges on whether you can exchange it for something else. But either way it doesn't get its value from being a "super rare item". It's not valuable because the evil wizard only made one sword, or whatever. There is no wizard, there is no sword, and there is no item. When that MMORPG goes off-line, that "item" simple ceases to exist, because it never existed in the first place. Get over it.
I mean, sure, sure.... supply and demand and all that. In that sense, everything is as valuable as the highest bidder is willing to pay. However, that whole way of thinking about things breaks down a little when someone pays $10K on a grilled cheese sandwich because it has a burn mark that looks like jesus. That person is obviously stupid and paying more than the thing is worth. Worse still if he were to pay thousands of dollars for an imaginary sandwich with an jesus burn mark, existing only as a photoshopped image.
Yeah, the same thing could be said about magic cards-- that they aren't intrinsically valuable. In fact, I'd say they have very little value to anyone who doesn't belong in a mental hospital. Of course, any crazy thing can be valuable to someone.
If I already have Windows, and all of my stuff already works with Windows, why should I go through the hassle of a different OS to use Windows Apps?
Maybe because Windows itself isn't working well for you? I have to say that, as the manager of an IT department, I'm tired of being over the barrel with Microsoft. It's restrictive and insecure, and I'm supposed to spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade to Vista in order to get an OS which hopefully might possibly work, meanwhile locking myself further into a vendor which has caused me nothing but headaches? No thanks.
Now, I'm all in favor of people using whatever system works for them, and if Windows does the job for you, more power to you. In my mind, anything that lets me move to OSX, or better yet Linux, is a good thing.
I don't know-- I think many Mac users won't quite be satisfied with running the crossover office windows version of their app. It'll be enough for them to get by and ditch Windows, but they won't quite like it. How many Mac users use OpenOffice, for example? How many people will be happy when there's a good, stable, up-to-date native OSX version?
So I think that this sort of thing will encourage switchers, and the increased user base will encourage native development. Hopefully.
Exactly the same argument can be used with real-world money like the US$ or any other modern currency.
Yes, but that's an artifice that we've all agreed to for the sake of having an economy. But I wouldn't be able to call any of those digital dollars in the bank computer a "unique item".
Really, I just hate being bound to an OS at all. In a perfect world, apps would be very cross-platform, so you could choose your OS based on the merits of the OS, not the apps it runs. Of course, this requires that somebody convince developers to clean up their act, which I could only really see happening with OSS, because closed-source vendors have too much stake in locking down the use of their software.
Actually, they released their solution (Boot Camp) shortly after someone else came up with a way to boot Windows on the Intel Mac. I think it was sort of a, "Well, since you're doing it anyway, we might as well give you an easy way to do it properly without breaking anything."
I wouldn't even be surprised to see a wrapper that installs Windows apps on Macs to run without a full version of Windows installed... As a Mac professional, this prospect scares the crap out of me.
Except for the fact that, you know.... it's not a "super-rare item". It's not an item at all. It's this tiny little bit of data that could be replicated a million times much more easily than the monopoly money could be replicated-- it's only the game developers who are artificially setting the rarity of that data.
And there's nothing inherently valuable about that data either. You can't justify its worth by labor alone, since it's entirely possible to spend 400 hours on an endeavor that has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Spending 400 hours picking your nose wouldn't make your boogers valuable.
Well, the irony of course is that if they do "walk the web standards walk", then their web-design package will make pages that don't display properly in their web browser.
But the truth is most simply don't want to and why should they? Where's the return?
The return would be simple: you get to run the best software for the job, whatever the job is. If you have a need that would be most easily met by Linux, you use Linux. If one user needs Final Cut Pro and the other needs the most recent version of Microsoft Project, you give the first user a Mac and the second a Windows machine.
Plus, heterogeneous environments are more stable and secure. A single virus or security hole can't wipe you out. And what's gained by sticking with a single platform? Slightly better interoperability, which can in many cases be overcome without too much trouble (assuming your IT staff has a clue).
How long between each Apple upgrade? XP and XP Pro has been out since 2001 and continue to be supported with no clear EOL currently in sight (although Vista appears to be RC1).
So you're trying to spin it so Microsoft's failure to finish a meaningful update to their OS as a good thing?
Look, neither Apple nor Microsoft discontinue support simply because they release a new version. Yes, Apple has released several major upgrades to their OS in the time that it has taken Microsoft to produce one. Each upgrade was worthwhile and significant, but users who didn't wish to purchase the upgrade could stay with the older version, and those versions continue to be supported after the new version comes out.
I don't see where the problem is. Microsoft released Windows XP 2 years after Windows 2000 and charged existing users for the upgrade. Apple releases 10.4 a year and a half after 10.3, it's a bigger improvement than Windows XP was compared to Win2k, and Apple also charges for the upgrade. The only difference I see is that Apple has been making more rapid progress with their OS.
In some areas, two lines don't really matter. There are places where all internet traffic pretty much goes through the same Verizon station, no matter who the ISP is, and if something in that station breaks, you're just screwed.
Well, it doesn't matter much, because we can all say that such-and-such released RC1 of their software, but it's really a beta. However, the words do have accepted technical meaning, and they shouldn't be used for marketing IMHO.
Google using the term "beta" however, I see that as a different issue. They are betas. Opening your beta testing doesn't keep it from being beta. Google's betas sometimes lack features found in the final and they are buggy sometimes, and the term "beta" serves to indicate that the software is not yet fit for general consumption. Now, you could argue that there betas are still better than a lot of their competition's final products, but again, that's a separate issue.
However, I agree that lots of people misuse the terminology. Because developers have taken to naming things "release candidates" which are not release candidates means that the term "release candidate" is not a meaningful technical term. It's a meaningless marketing term. We may as well be talking about synergy then.
I'd like to commend you on your response. You hit all the right points. Many people noted that he could have had multiple T1s running with failover, but I think that's only one of many techniques that should be in your arsenal. The fact is, there are many ways to protect yourself from internet outages, and buying 20 T1s isn't the most efficient (or effective) method. Multiple connections, an extra POTS line, mirroring/colocation-- you have many techniques available, and you should use as many as possible. Only one kind of redundancy/failover isn't enough.
But for gods sake, man, you should at least have a backup MX record. Bare minimum.
Using two ISP's is a relatively untapped resource today
Not among business of much size. Multiple T1s with some sort of load-balancing is pretty standard practice, really. Providing services to the outside world over those connections can be a bit tricky, but outgoing connections are easy as pie.
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Hmm... I composed a response, but it seems to have disappeared on me. I'll try to hit the main points quickly:
I can understand your concern if it sounded like I was an enthusiast wanting to switch platforms for no good reason without considering that emulation might not work well. On the other hand, you don't seem to appreciate how little you know about me, my situation, or my company's needs. I think I'm being diplomatic here when I say that perhaps you've assumed too much.
The fact is, Microsoft has been a real problem for my company, as they has been for every company I've worked for. Because Microsoft has entrenched themselves and done such a bang-up job of enforcing vendor lock-in, they're a bit of a necessary evil. And that's not some hippy bullshit coming from an open-source nutjob, but a cold hard reality for many IT departments. However, in my case, and probably many cases, Microsoft is so bad for business that any decent IT pro should be looking for alternatives. Depending on a particular situation, those alternatives may or may not be viable. Sometimes, even if there are problems associated with the alternative, it may be the lesser of two evils.
Now, I'm not running around installing Linux/WINE on everyone's desktop without testing because of some political agenda-- I'm talking about a business decision to evaluate what my options would be if I were to lessen my investment in Windows. I'm evaluating alternatives to a vendor which hasn't serviced me well, and working to implement those alternatives which make business sense. I've said as much previously. I don't understand why you're arguing like you are, and find it absurd to claim that it's a bad idea to switch from Windows to Linux because I will have "locked everyone into a platform". Where's the lock-in with Linux?
What ever gave you any indication that I like Windows or that I want to play FPS at work?
You talk like a tinkerer and game-player rather than an IT pro. You advocate worrying about what users want against business needs, and sticking with Microsoft's vendor lock-in in spite of viable alternatives. That's what gave me the idea.
By the way, you brought up MacOS Classic as an example of the evils of emulation, but I would generally choose to run OSX with some Classic applications for an indefinite period of time rather than run OS9 during that same period of time. This statement comes from experience, and I think OSX running Classic is an example of the tremendous benefits of emulated environments.
I also run PPC applications on an Intel processor all the time. Virtual machines are useful for a variety of purposes. Emulation is not a bad thing simply because it's emulation. The question is only whether it's the best solution, which depends greatly on how well that emulation works, and requires that you know the situation and have evaluated the benefits and drawbacks, along with the benefits and drawbacks of other solutions.
I'd tried NeoOffice before, and hadn't quite been pleased. It was at the stage where I'd be inclined to say, "I'm glad someone is working on it, but I'm not going to use it." However, this new release of 2.0 seems very nice. Surprisingly good in spite of being a beta.
Also, when Apple started selling TV shows, ABC was the first on board. ABC is owned by Disney.
Well, that's been said of the mind anyhow. You can assert that a brain could be understood, provided you were willing to accept that there's more to "mind" than "brain".
Enterprise-wise, it looks stable enough for use - networking is better than XP (even though it's a new stack), group policy has been better fine tuned, UAC is usable enough, and hardware detection is light-years ahead of XP. All of those basic things are ready and if thats what enterprise customers are expected to get, then I think it's good to go, after they fix the occaisonal dialog box with three different fonts.
This is what bothers me, though. I look at everything you listed there and think, "bug fixes": Networking, security, and hardware detection have been improved and fine-tuned. That sounds like a service pack to me. But where are the features? I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars per seat to buy a version of the OS I bought years ago, that this time it works properly. Bug fixes should be free. If you want my money, give me some new features.
Even if a particular application can be emulated well, that doesn't necessarily make it fully functional and useful.
Umm... I said it depends on how well the application runs. If Microsoft Word isn't fully functional and useful, for example, I wouldn't say it "ran well" in that emulation environment.
As a general rule, people do not like to run apps in any kind of emulation. Look at how quickly "Classic" mode was phased out on Macs.
In fact, I supported a network during the transition from MacOS->OSX+Classic->OSX. The problem for us wasn't that people didn't "like" running things in emulation. For my network, the problem was that MacOS was an aging OS that wasn't well suited for business, and running things in Classic meant that you still suffered many of the old MacOS problems. Well, that and the fact that some programs didn't "run well" in Classic, as well as the fact that all new versions of software were OSX-based, which means that Classic MacOS applications got phased out naturally. It had nothing to do with what users "liked". If anything, I had a hard time getting users to stop using Classic, because they were old-school Mac users and used to the interface.
While YOU might like to admin OS X or Linux instead Windows, that isn't necessarily what is best for users.
What exactly are you accusing me of? I don't "like" administering to a Linux or OSX network. I don't particularly like administering to any network, which is part of the reason I'm pretty good at it. I like getting things set up so they work properly so I won't have to do very much to keep them working properly. I like to avoid spending my company's money wherever possible so that my bosses think I'm awesome and give me big raises. In these endeavors, Microsoft is my enemy. They want me to spend excessive amounts of money on software that will need my constant attention. Then, I'll have to buy additional software to fill in the gaps in features and security that the OS lacks, and pay for support on that software as well.
But I should just ignore all that, ignore what works well and what's good for my company-- why? Because it would be "best for users"? I don't understand how.
And incidentally, I don't care what's "best for users" other than making sure my users have a good, stable platform that lets them get their work done and keeps their productivity high. If you want Windows because you "like it", or so you can play FPS at work, well, that's not going to be a high priority for me.
If you find that you have to emulate lots of apps, chances are that emulation is not a good idea.
And why not, if it works well? Why should I avoid using emulation, presuming I can get it to work well for my purposes, and instead use Windows, which doesn't work well for my purposes?
For me, the real question is, how well do the apps I need run in my emulation environment? If they all run very well, then it may well be worth it, even if there are many.
Terminal services are good, but of course there are trade-offs. What about laptops that will leave the environment? Do I make Terminal Services available to the outside world? What if someone wants to work where they have no network connection?
In some cases TS is ideal, but sometimes I want things running client end. Of course, for users who have a ton of Windows-only apps, I'm not trying to migrate them to another platform for no reason other than anti-MS sentiment. However, when I'm looking to buy machines, I keep asking myself, "Do I really want to spend a bundle on more Microsoft licenses when I haven't been happy with my Microsoft purchases in the past?" In some cases, the answer is, "Yes, because I have to." I don't like that answer. When I buy something, I'd like the reason to be that I'm happy with the purchase, and when there is nothing I'd be happy with, I'd like to know that I'm at least getting the best thing out there. It annoys me that I have to buy something that I'm not happy with, instead of the product I want, because of vendor lock-in.
The quick and obvious, Microsoft uses "activation" which makes it hard to move the license of either Windows or Office (anything post-2000) from one computer to another: restrictive. You're a fool if you leave an MS machine connected to the internet without the benefit of a 3rd party firewall and antivirus: insecure.
I mean, I have more problems with Windows than that, but for me, that's enough.
Instead of an analogy of someone's boogers (which are unlikely to be seen as objects of value by anyone), let's take another example: rare baseball cards
Well, yes, it might be more apt than boogers. Boogers were used specifically for the response to someone who claimed that something had intrinsic value because it took his time.
The problem with the baseball card example, however, is that people are willing to spend money on a baseball card specifically because it's the original, and you can make new "originals". It's sentimental, sure, but the whole thing hinges on the idea that you could reprint an old Babe Ruth card, but it wouldn't be the same as having an old Babe Ruth card. However, if you had a digital baseball card that was just a PNG, it seems like it'd be harder to sell it for thousands of dollars.
Then again, I'm not saying that these things can't or shouldn't be worth money. I just think people should keep some perspective that these aren't real items with genuine rarity. We should be careful, and not be too quick to assume that virtual assets in any game should necessarily have a real-life financial value.
Let's not go overboard. "Real money" is an artifice, sure. Even in hard currency, a dollar is just a sheet of paper. It gets its value chiefly because the government is there to back that value up. There's no body or organization that will give you an exchange on monopoly money to something else of the claimed value.
So the question as to whether this "rare item" is money hinges on whether you can exchange it for something else. But either way it doesn't get its value from being a "super rare item". It's not valuable because the evil wizard only made one sword, or whatever. There is no wizard, there is no sword, and there is no item. When that MMORPG goes off-line, that "item" simple ceases to exist, because it never existed in the first place. Get over it.
I mean, sure, sure.... supply and demand and all that. In that sense, everything is as valuable as the highest bidder is willing to pay. However, that whole way of thinking about things breaks down a little when someone pays $10K on a grilled cheese sandwich because it has a burn mark that looks like jesus. That person is obviously stupid and paying more than the thing is worth. Worse still if he were to pay thousands of dollars for an imaginary sandwich with an jesus burn mark, existing only as a photoshopped image.
Yeah, the same thing could be said about magic cards-- that they aren't intrinsically valuable. In fact, I'd say they have very little value to anyone who doesn't belong in a mental hospital. Of course, any crazy thing can be valuable to someone.
If I already have Windows, and all of my stuff already works with Windows, why should I go through the hassle of a different OS to use Windows Apps?
Maybe because Windows itself isn't working well for you? I have to say that, as the manager of an IT department, I'm tired of being over the barrel with Microsoft. It's restrictive and insecure, and I'm supposed to spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade to Vista in order to get an OS which hopefully might possibly work, meanwhile locking myself further into a vendor which has caused me nothing but headaches? No thanks.
Now, I'm all in favor of people using whatever system works for them, and if Windows does the job for you, more power to you. In my mind, anything that lets me move to OSX, or better yet Linux, is a good thing.
I don't know-- I think many Mac users won't quite be satisfied with running the crossover office windows version of their app. It'll be enough for them to get by and ditch Windows, but they won't quite like it. How many Mac users use OpenOffice, for example? How many people will be happy when there's a good, stable, up-to-date native OSX version?
So I think that this sort of thing will encourage switchers, and the increased user base will encourage native development. Hopefully.
Exactly the same argument can be used with real-world money like the US$ or any other modern currency.
Yes, but that's an artifice that we've all agreed to for the sake of having an economy. But I wouldn't be able to call any of those digital dollars in the bank computer a "unique item".
Really, I just hate being bound to an OS at all. In a perfect world, apps would be very cross-platform, so you could choose your OS based on the merits of the OS, not the apps it runs. Of course, this requires that somebody convince developers to clean up their act, which I could only really see happening with OSS, because closed-source vendors have too much stake in locking down the use of their software.
Actually, they released their solution (Boot Camp) shortly after someone else came up with a way to boot Windows on the Intel Mac. I think it was sort of a, "Well, since you're doing it anyway, we might as well give you an easy way to do it properly without breaking anything."
I wouldn't even be surprised to see a wrapper that installs Windows apps on Macs to run without a full version of Windows installed... As a Mac professional, this prospect scares the crap out of me.
Ahem...
Except for the fact that, you know.... it's not a "super-rare item". It's not an item at all. It's this tiny little bit of data that could be replicated a million times much more easily than the monopoly money could be replicated-- it's only the game developers who are artificially setting the rarity of that data.
And there's nothing inherently valuable about that data either. You can't justify its worth by labor alone, since it's entirely possible to spend 400 hours on an endeavor that has no intrinsic value whatsoever. Spending 400 hours picking your nose wouldn't make your boogers valuable.
Well, the irony of course is that if they do "walk the web standards walk", then their web-design package will make pages that don't display properly in their web browser.
But the truth is most simply don't want to and why should they? Where's the return?
The return would be simple: you get to run the best software for the job, whatever the job is. If you have a need that would be most easily met by Linux, you use Linux. If one user needs Final Cut Pro and the other needs the most recent version of Microsoft Project, you give the first user a Mac and the second a Windows machine.
Plus, heterogeneous environments are more stable and secure. A single virus or security hole can't wipe you out. And what's gained by sticking with a single platform? Slightly better interoperability, which can in many cases be overcome without too much trouble (assuming your IT staff has a clue).
How long between each Apple upgrade? XP and XP Pro has been out since 2001 and continue to be supported with no clear EOL currently in sight (although Vista appears to be RC1).
So you're trying to spin it so Microsoft's failure to finish a meaningful update to their OS as a good thing?
Look, neither Apple nor Microsoft discontinue support simply because they release a new version. Yes, Apple has released several major upgrades to their OS in the time that it has taken Microsoft to produce one. Each upgrade was worthwhile and significant, but users who didn't wish to purchase the upgrade could stay with the older version, and those versions continue to be supported after the new version comes out.
I don't see where the problem is. Microsoft released Windows XP 2 years after Windows 2000 and charged existing users for the upgrade. Apple releases 10.4 a year and a half after 10.3, it's a bigger improvement than Windows XP was compared to Win2k, and Apple also charges for the upgrade. The only difference I see is that Apple has been making more rapid progress with their OS.
99.9999% of problems are with getting to the main pipes though.
Not when you live in the area where everything goes through the same Verizon station. I'll tell you, that Verizon station breaks down all the time.
In some areas, two lines don't really matter. There are places where all internet traffic pretty much goes through the same Verizon station, no matter who the ISP is, and if something in that station breaks, you're just screwed.
Well, it doesn't matter much, because we can all say that such-and-such released RC1 of their software, but it's really a beta. However, the words do have accepted technical meaning, and they shouldn't be used for marketing IMHO.
Google using the term "beta" however, I see that as a different issue. They are betas. Opening your beta testing doesn't keep it from being beta. Google's betas sometimes lack features found in the final and they are buggy sometimes, and the term "beta" serves to indicate that the software is not yet fit for general consumption. Now, you could argue that there betas are still better than a lot of their competition's final products, but again, that's a separate issue.
However, I agree that lots of people misuse the terminology. Because developers have taken to naming things "release candidates" which are not release candidates means that the term "release candidate" is not a meaningful technical term. It's a meaningless marketing term. We may as well be talking about synergy then.
I'd like to commend you on your response. You hit all the right points. Many people noted that he could have had multiple T1s running with failover, but I think that's only one of many techniques that should be in your arsenal. The fact is, there are many ways to protect yourself from internet outages, and buying 20 T1s isn't the most efficient (or effective) method. Multiple connections, an extra POTS line, mirroring/colocation-- you have many techniques available, and you should use as many as possible. Only one kind of redundancy/failover isn't enough.
But for gods sake, man, you should at least have a backup MX record. Bare minimum.
Using two ISP's is a relatively untapped resource today
Not among business of much size. Multiple T1s with some sort of load-balancing is pretty standard practice, really. Providing services to the outside world over those connections can be a bit tricky, but outgoing connections are easy as pie.