So let's say that you or some other scientist in the field figures out a way to actually get humans to live to 1000 years. Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
I'm not saying there are *no* alternatives. But for many businesses/applications, there really aren't any good alternatives. Every small/medium sized retail store would be *screwed* because there really isn't anything else out there (and believe me, I've looked).
A decent point-of-sale system. There's nothing that runs on Linux that's either A. not absolute crap or B. enterprise level. Nothing even remotely affordable on HPUX or Sun, and nothing serious on OSX. So sorry, but as far as low and mid level point-of-sale systems, Windows is the only logical way to go.
OK, so all of a sudden, nobody can buy the OS that runs 95% of the world's computers, and nothing will happen? Uuuh, OK. It doesn't take an economics degree to realize that that would deeply impact the entire planet. On top of that, but all of that revenue that isn't flowing into MS would end up not going anywhere would be massive. 80,000 well-paid employees, all suddenly out of work. Thousands of companies making MS products. $51,000,000,000 in sales suddenly gone. I'd have to shut my business at least temporarily to find replacement software, along with millions of others. You're on crack if you think that people would just switch to something like Red Hat and the world would keep turning. That's laughable.
Microsoft can't be excised from the IT world. If they, for the sake of argument, collapsed next week, there would be a worldwide IT company crash of epic proportions. We would all suffer.
Actually, I'd wager that every economy in the world would crash. The amount of money that MS generates effects every single person on the planet, and their technology effects all but the most primitive cultures.
don't see why they would need to keep backwards compatibility with their base OS, there are enough choices for running those old programs in some sort of container, be it a VM, or WINE-like process,
That's simply not good enough for mission-critical apps. I wouldn't trust any critical business apps on something like WINE, which seems like a half-assed solution, regardless of how well it may or may not work.
, would you choose a mature, well established alternative like Linux or MacOSX,
To call either one of these OS's as "mature" or "well-established" is a bit far-fetched, in my opinion. Even within a distribution, there's a completely new version of Linux seemingly every 6 months. That's enough to keep my business far, far away from Linux. OSX has only existed since 2001. I'd hardly call that "mature".
It would be nice if the author explained why he thinks that everybody should have a web presence. I don't buy it. I don't have a web presence at all (none of that Myspace/Facebook crap-ola), and I've been pretty successful in staying off the radar that way.
My best suggestion is to dump those stupid LCD's. I don't understand why people like these things so damn much. Even the best ones give me a headache after no time at all. All of my monitors and TV's (with the exception of my laptops) are CRT's. They're clearer, brighter, and produce much, much less eyestrain than even the most expensive LCD.
This is typical web 2.0 hype... more is better. Which, as anybody who has used Wikipedia knows, is utter bullshit. The scientific method can't be supplanted by a large amount of questionable data. Tons and tons of bad data is still bad data. It doesn't get any more correct just because there's more of it.
Military taking the lead on computing as usual. Why is the military so much more progressive (with practical results) than any other institution of government?
Capacity? Sure, 256 GB drives are down to $100 thee days, but do you know a lot of consumers that can fill a 256 GB drive? I've got my entire music collection from over 25 years of collecting music in FLAC format, and it's just now filling a 320 GB drive.
I don't think that malware is so advanced that all you have to do is "use a toolkit" and poof - magically financial and personal data will just show up on the hard drive.
Actually, it IS that easy. Tools like that have existed for years. Anybody with malicious intent and even a basic understanding of computers can easily run their own bot-net. Really. Literally a few button clicks, and the data is yours.
If you're in as good shape as you say you're in, then you shouldn't notice a few extra pounds, either. Personally, I haven't been a desk-bound drone for 6+ years.
Personally, lugging a big heavy laptop is a no-go for a lot of us.
If you're talking about modern laptops, I'd like to suggest that you talk to a doctor. No grown adult should consider a 5 lb, 10"x16" chunk of plastic either "big" or "heavy", and it shouldn't require "lugging".
After many, many years of reading the tripe that passes for news here, I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find a news story that is actually useful. I'm shopping for POS systems right now, and this is gonna make me think twice about MS DRMS. The last thing you want in a POS is instability. Lines of happy customers can quickly become angry if the cash registers suddenly die.
I agree with you 100%. That's why we're outsourcing our Exchange Server. We have the option of using Outlook locally or the web. It beats Google hands-down in terms of flexibility.
Nah. You can get Exchange hosted by an ISP for cheap. I know a few businesses that do it that way. I'm picking a provider for the same thing right now.
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So let's say that you or some other scientist in the field figures out a way to actually get humans to live to 1000 years. Have you or anybody in your field considered that humans living that long would grossly exacerbate the current crisis concerning population and resources?
I'm not saying there are *no* alternatives. But for many businesses/applications, there really aren't any good alternatives. Every small/medium sized retail store would be *screwed* because there really isn't anything else out there (and believe me, I've looked).
A decent point-of-sale system. There's nothing that runs on Linux that's either A. not absolute crap or B. enterprise level. Nothing even remotely affordable on HPUX or Sun, and nothing serious on OSX. So sorry, but as far as low and mid level point-of-sale systems, Windows is the only logical way to go.
I don't rely on that company, but that's the only company making a product that is a good value. Nobody else is doing it.
OK, so all of a sudden, nobody can buy the OS that runs 95% of the world's computers, and nothing will happen? Uuuh, OK. It doesn't take an economics degree to realize that that would deeply impact the entire planet. On top of that, but all of that revenue that isn't flowing into MS would end up not going anywhere would be massive. 80,000 well-paid employees, all suddenly out of work. Thousands of companies making MS products. $51,000,000,000 in sales suddenly gone. I'd have to shut my business at least temporarily to find replacement software, along with millions of others. You're on crack if you think that people would just switch to something like Red Hat and the world would keep turning. That's laughable.
Seriously, are you going to trust a mission-critical program to run on a Windows box in the first place.
Sure. I have several in place right now. As do millions of other companies. Suggesting that it's a bad idea, or that it doesn't happen is FUD.
Microsoft can't be excised from the IT world. If they, for the sake of argument, collapsed next week, there would be a worldwide IT company crash of epic proportions. We would all suffer.
Actually, I'd wager that every economy in the world would crash. The amount of money that MS generates effects every single person on the planet, and their technology effects all but the most primitive cultures.
don't see why they would need to keep backwards compatibility with their base OS, there are enough choices for running those old programs in some sort of container, be it a VM, or WINE-like process,
That's simply not good enough for mission-critical apps. I wouldn't trust any critical business apps on something like WINE, which seems like a half-assed solution, regardless of how well it may or may not work.
, would you choose a mature, well established alternative like Linux or MacOSX,
To call either one of these OS's as "mature" or "well-established" is a bit far-fetched, in my opinion. Even within a distribution, there's a completely new version of Linux seemingly every 6 months. That's enough to keep my business far, far away from Linux. OSX has only existed since 2001. I'd hardly call that "mature".
It would be nice if the author explained why he thinks that everybody should have a web presence. I don't buy it. I don't have a web presence at all (none of that Myspace/Facebook crap-ola), and I've been pretty successful in staying off the radar that way.
I could be wrong, but I doubt that germs live very long on plastic.
My best suggestion is to dump those stupid LCD's. I don't understand why people like these things so damn much. Even the best ones give me a headache after no time at all. All of my monitors and TV's (with the exception of my laptops) are CRT's. They're clearer, brighter, and produce much, much less eyestrain than even the most expensive LCD.
Keep in mind that people who pay to watch TV are also paying to watch advertising. I can't really imagine why somebody would want to do that.
This is typical web 2.0 hype... more is better. Which, as anybody who has used Wikipedia knows, is utter bullshit. The scientific method can't be supplanted by a large amount of questionable data. Tons and tons of bad data is still bad data. It doesn't get any more correct just because there's more of it.
Military taking the lead on computing as usual. Why is the military so much more progressive (with practical results) than any other institution of government?
Are you kidding?
The article makes a plausible argument, but fails to give any real world examples.
Capacity? Sure, 256 GB drives are down to $100 thee days, but do you know a lot of consumers that can fill a 256 GB drive? I've got my entire music collection from over 25 years of collecting music in FLAC format, and it's just now filling a 320 GB drive.
I don't think that malware is so advanced that all you have to do is "use a toolkit" and poof - magically financial and personal data will just show up on the hard drive.
Actually, it IS that easy. Tools like that have existed for years. Anybody with malicious intent and even a basic understanding of computers can easily run their own bot-net. Really. Literally a few button clicks, and the data is yours.
If you're in as good shape as you say you're in, then you shouldn't notice a few extra pounds, either. Personally, I haven't been a desk-bound drone for 6+ years.
Personally, lugging a big heavy laptop is a no-go for a lot of us.
If you're talking about modern laptops, I'd like to suggest that you talk to a doctor. No grown adult should consider a 5 lb, 10"x16" chunk of plastic either "big" or "heavy", and it shouldn't require "lugging".
After many, many years of reading the tripe that passes for news here, I'm shocked, SHOCKED to find a news story that is actually useful. I'm shopping for POS systems right now, and this is gonna make me think twice about MS DRMS. The last thing you want in a POS is instability. Lines of happy customers can quickly become angry if the cash registers suddenly die.
This guy is a real piece of work. Saying he's narcissistic is an understatement.
Yeah. Sounds like a programmer. Kinda' why I got out of the industry.
I agree with you 100%. That's why we're outsourcing our Exchange Server. We have the option of using Outlook locally or the web. It beats Google hands-down in terms of flexibility.
Nah. You can get Exchange hosted by an ISP for cheap. I know a few businesses that do it that way. I'm picking a provider for the same thing right now.
E-bay is an e-cesspool of e-fraud. It's the worst parts of the Net all rolled up into one site.