Anecdotal, mostly. Office 2007 isn't that bad...but my company (like many others) is having a hard time justifying an upgrade to 2007 when they can see the costs associated with user retraining. I personally own 2007, though, and I have a hard time trying to go back to 2003 or earlier versions.
I think it will take more than Vista to cause the business community to start to lose confidence in Microsoft. They have several other strong product lines that many businesses rely upon for their operations, and one bad desktop operating system isn't going to make a Sys Admin or DBA reconsider Windows Server, Exchange, or SQL Server.
If anything, Microsoft has shaken the confidence of the consumer market with Vista, the XBox 360 RRoD, HD-DVD, and the Windows Home Server corruption problems. In the grand scheme of things, that is small potatoes to the company that has locked up a good portion of the business world.
Make no mistake - Microsoft will not go away because of Vista, and no amount of wishful thinking can change that. It may hurt them, but they will continue to not go quietly into the night.
If something were to happen that would greatly harm Microsoft to the point that they would be going out of business (like this attempted hostile takeover of Yahoo), you can believe that they would be selling or spinning off their different divisions to remain around just a bit longer.
If every insignificant country switched to Linux overnight, Microsoft would be screwed within months.
Hurt? Definitely. But screwed? I doubt it. Remember, Microsoft is sitting on mountains of cash, and they can go for a couple of years without the sale of a single product before that cash reserve runs out and a market where Windows and Office are often sold for $1 per license or pirated. I doubt they would be hurt that much if those countries just switched over to a Linux stack.
Microsoft's cash cow is Windows/Office/Server/Exchange for business, and its not likely that businesses would just chuck that solution overnight.
Part of the reason for that is the crap that is on the albums. Most of the time, the song or two that are (barely) worth listening to are the only songs that make it onto the radio with the rest being filler.
How is his answer wrong? He doesn't advocate dragging injured people out of a car when there is an accident. He advocates people getting and refreshing basic first aid training.
You can sell the resulting binaries - provided you give buyers access to the machine readable source. There is nothing that prevents you from selling GPL'ed software.
The 'retention' problem is not because this generation wants the kitchen sink; it's because these companies don't have any money to buy kitchens.
Part of that could be that the generation hasn't yet gained the experience to negotiate for better salaries when going out for their first couple of jobs.
That's a good point about the upscale bar. Depending on when the court case is, that information might have cleared out of the system by the time its needed by the prosecutor/divorce attorney. That won't work, though, at any bar that doesn't have an electronic POS system installed (like many low- or mid-scale bars...at least the ones that aren't busy). Bartenders tend to have a good memory in those cases.
Still...the fact that the purchase was made on your card doesn't mean that the purchaser drank...especially if they're the over-generous kind who like to buy lots of drinks for other people.
That depends on how the system is used to start with. Everywhere I've seen one of these types of machines used, it has been at the bar door to verify that your ID is legit. So if someone wanted to check, they would see that I make the bar rounds three nights a week, but anyone looking at just the information in that database wouldn't be able to tell if I had three waters, three sodas, or three beers.
You couldn't even tell if you cross-referenced with credit card information. One mixed drink might cost the same as two beers or four sodas, so anyone looking to use that info wouldn't be able to prove that the individual who went to the bar actually drank.
In this case, I think "Open" has more to do with the "open pricing options" than "Open Source Software." That would make a lot more sense, given that Microsoft already has other "Open Licensing" plans than any attempt at undermining "Open Source."
Your post comes across as "Look at this stupid kid...he didn't even think about these things that I, with my experience, know to take into consideration." Give the poor kid a bit of a break. There are a lot of things that aren't taught in school and only come from experience and a good mentor.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck with all three. I've only been there a few months, and I was hired into a computer room move that included moving the network admin's office into the server room. It really does suck...at the time I moved into that office, we were moving out of an office building (no one is sure why...possibly for cost savings) and into the front of one of the plants and we didn't have any extra space.
Personally, I don't mind the cold of the AC. It's nice to have a 65 degree office all year round, especially when it is 110 w/ the heat index in summer. The noise from servers and the phone system, and the perpetual mess, constantly bother me. I can't have conversations, meet with vendors, or use speakerphone when I'm in my office, and whenever we get new hardware, I'm surrounded by boxes and machines until I can get everything deployed.
Make sure you can get a separate office away from your server/network room, otherwise you will be miserable.
I'm sure there were people like you who said that about the 1st Generation iPods as well. 5GB is too small...people have way more music than that. Yeah, people do have more music than 16 gb, but smaller storage space will not be the reason stopping people from buying the Touch.
Given the recent increases in flash memory storage space, I would bet the next versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch will have a lot more storage space than 16 GB.
I'm not worried about Iran "blowing us up" because as much as they talk and bluster, they aren't stupid or crazy enough to risk their own hides to take the US down a peg. While some terrorist groups would certainly use a WMD, no nation would because the immediate result would be that country becoming a glass parking lot.
And so what if Iran is a known state sponsor of Hezbollah and wants to destabilize Israel. The US and other nations are by no means innocent of similar crimes, so I don't see why we hold Iran (who's political situation today is a direct result of our meddling in the 1950s) to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.
Ranger: "Holy macaroni! I can't believe I'm seeing a 3-digit UID. He's in focus! Oh, I've waited my entire life for this moment!" *takes out gun*
Bender: "What are you doing with that?"
Lrrr: "You're going to kill this innocent Slashdotter?"
Ranger: "Of course not! I'm just gonna tranquilize him so I can chop off his feet as proof he exists. Then dump him back in the wild. He'll do fine!"
Price-wise, CDW might not be the best deal for some items if you're not under a JBA or corporate contract. But if you are, or you absolutely must have it tomorrow (or today in the Chicagoland-area), then you really can't beat them.
On the flip side of things, the division of a national corporation that i work for is almost exclusively Dell, and our account reps are trying to get the entire company. We get our orders very quickly with huge discounts. The plants I oversee are sort of the odd ones out because I still buy Lenovo Thinkpads over the Dell Latitudes.
Those cheaper switches often have no protection against connecting two of their ports together with a crossover cable either, that can cause utter chaos.
That happened on a production network I support (but didn't design...currently redesigning to avoid this problem). A maintenance supervisor accidentally unplugged the switch and then plugged the two ends of the same cable into the switch. Chaos ensued for the day as our entire network came to a standstill.
So break it up over a couple of years. Get the money to do one section of the building at a time, then it wouldn't be as hard to convince the school to go along with it. I have to do that to get the money to rewire both of my plants - corporate won't surrender their entire capital budget to let me repull all the Cat5 in the plant, so I have to pick and choose which areas need the work the most.
This year's goal is to remove all the Thinnet from one plant and move most of an IDF up into the computer room.
Slashdot Mirror
Anecdotal, mostly. Office 2007 isn't that bad...but my company (like many others) is having a hard time justifying an upgrade to 2007 when they can see the costs associated with user retraining. I personally own 2007, though, and I have a hard time trying to go back to 2003 or earlier versions.
I think it will take more than Vista to cause the business community to start to lose confidence in Microsoft. They have several other strong product lines that many businesses rely upon for their operations, and one bad desktop operating system isn't going to make a Sys Admin or DBA reconsider Windows Server, Exchange, or SQL Server.
If anything, Microsoft has shaken the confidence of the consumer market with Vista, the XBox 360 RRoD, HD-DVD, and the Windows Home Server corruption problems. In the grand scheme of things, that is small potatoes to the company that has locked up a good portion of the business world.
Make no mistake - Microsoft will not go away because of Vista, and no amount of wishful thinking can change that. It may hurt them, but they will continue to not go quietly into the night.
If something were to happen that would greatly harm Microsoft to the point that they would be going out of business (like this attempted hostile takeover of Yahoo), you can believe that they would be selling or spinning off their different divisions to remain around just a bit longer.
Hurt? Definitely. But screwed? I doubt it. Remember, Microsoft is sitting on mountains of cash, and they can go for a couple of years without the sale of a single product before that cash reserve runs out and a market where Windows and Office are often sold for $1 per license or pirated. I doubt they would be hurt that much if those countries just switched over to a Linux stack.
Microsoft's cash cow is Windows/Office/Server/Exchange for business, and its not likely that businesses would just chuck that solution overnight.
Part of the reason for that is the crap that is on the albums. Most of the time, the song or two that are (barely) worth listening to are the only songs that make it onto the radio with the rest being filler.
It can't be any worse than Lotus Sametime.
This! If I had mod points, I would definitely mod you up for that analogy. Even my girlfriend laughed when I read it to her.
How is his answer wrong? He doesn't advocate dragging injured people out of a car when there is an accident. He advocates people getting and refreshing basic first aid training.
It sounds like an excuse that some would use to nationalize certain industries.
You can sell the resulting binaries - provided you give buyers access to the machine readable source. There is nothing that prevents you from selling GPL'ed software.
Part of that could be that the generation hasn't yet gained the experience to negotiate for better salaries when going out for their first couple of jobs.
While that may have been the case in this instance, usually these machines are used at bars and clubs as a condition of entrance.
That's a good point about the upscale bar. Depending on when the court case is, that information might have cleared out of the system by the time its needed by the prosecutor/divorce attorney. That won't work, though, at any bar that doesn't have an electronic POS system installed (like many low- or mid-scale bars...at least the ones that aren't busy). Bartenders tend to have a good memory in those cases.
Still...the fact that the purchase was made on your card doesn't mean that the purchaser drank...especially if they're the over-generous kind who like to buy lots of drinks for other people.
The problem is that this system will only be able to prove that you were in the bar, not that you were actually drinking.
That depends on how the system is used to start with. Everywhere I've seen one of these types of machines used, it has been at the bar door to verify that your ID is legit. So if someone wanted to check, they would see that I make the bar rounds three nights a week, but anyone looking at just the information in that database wouldn't be able to tell if I had three waters, three sodas, or three beers.
You couldn't even tell if you cross-referenced with credit card information. One mixed drink might cost the same as two beers or four sodas, so anyone looking to use that info wouldn't be able to prove that the individual who went to the bar actually drank.
In this case, I think "Open" has more to do with the "open pricing options" than "Open Source Software." That would make a lot more sense, given that Microsoft already has other "Open Licensing" plans than any attempt at undermining "Open Source."
Your post comes across as "Look at this stupid kid...he didn't even think about these things that I, with my experience, know to take into consideration." Give the poor kid a bit of a break. There are a lot of things that aren't taught in school and only come from experience and a good mentor.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck with all three. I've only been there a few months, and I was hired into a computer room move that included moving the network admin's office into the server room. It really does suck...at the time I moved into that office, we were moving out of an office building (no one is sure why...possibly for cost savings) and into the front of one of the plants and we didn't have any extra space.
Personally, I don't mind the cold of the AC. It's nice to have a 65 degree office all year round, especially when it is 110 w/ the heat index in summer. The noise from servers and the phone system, and the perpetual mess, constantly bother me. I can't have conversations, meet with vendors, or use speakerphone when I'm in my office, and whenever we get new hardware, I'm surrounded by boxes and machines until I can get everything deployed.
Make sure you can get a separate office away from your server/network room, otherwise you will be miserable.
I'm sure there were people like you who said that about the 1st Generation iPods as well. 5GB is too small...people have way more music than that. Yeah, people do have more music than 16 gb, but smaller storage space will not be the reason stopping people from buying the Touch.
Given the recent increases in flash memory storage space, I would bet the next versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch will have a lot more storage space than 16 GB.
I'm not worried about Iran "blowing us up" because as much as they talk and bluster, they aren't stupid or crazy enough to risk their own hides to take the US down a peg. While some terrorist groups would certainly use a WMD, no nation would because the immediate result would be that country becoming a glass parking lot.
And so what if Iran is a known state sponsor of Hezbollah and wants to destabilize Israel. The US and other nations are by no means innocent of similar crimes, so I don't see why we hold Iran (who's political situation today is a direct result of our meddling in the 1950s) to a higher standard than we hold ourselves.
Then you shouldn't be so frigid!
Ranger: "Holy macaroni! I can't believe I'm seeing a 3-digit UID. He's in focus! Oh, I've waited my entire life for this moment!" *takes out gun*
Bender: "What are you doing with that?"
Lrrr: "You're going to kill this innocent Slashdotter?"
Ranger: "Of course not! I'm just gonna tranquilize him so I can chop off his feet as proof he exists. Then dump him back in the wild. He'll do fine!"
Price-wise, CDW might not be the best deal for some items if you're not under a JBA or corporate contract. But if you are, or you absolutely must have it tomorrow (or today in the Chicagoland-area), then you really can't beat them.
On the flip side of things, the division of a national corporation that i work for is almost exclusively Dell, and our account reps are trying to get the entire company. We get our orders very quickly with huge discounts. The plants I oversee are sort of the odd ones out because I still buy Lenovo Thinkpads over the Dell Latitudes.
Those cheaper switches often have no protection against connecting two of their ports together with a crossover cable either, that can cause utter chaos.
That happened on a production network I support (but didn't design...currently redesigning to avoid this problem). A maintenance supervisor accidentally unplugged the switch and then plugged the two ends of the same cable into the switch. Chaos ensued for the day as our entire network came to a standstill.
So break it up over a couple of years. Get the money to do one section of the building at a time, then it wouldn't be as hard to convince the school to go along with it. I have to do that to get the money to rewire both of my plants - corporate won't surrender their entire capital budget to let me repull all the Cat5 in the plant, so I have to pick and choose which areas need the work the most.
This year's goal is to remove all the Thinnet from one plant and move most of an IDF up into the computer room.