That's sort of an interesting way of looking at things. This change cost my company exactly $0, but it did cost me, personally, about 6 hours. The projects I'm working on are not going to be six hours late because of this. I simply worked longer.
Man, I don't think you were trying to be funny, but you totally just made me shoot semi-hot coffee out my nose.
Did you just launch into a giant math tantrum -- one so severe that it seemed appropriate to show your work -- to not only demonstrate but really drive home your point that, essentially, 7% is over and above the threshold of "a tad?" (I'll leave my seven percent calculation as an exercise for the reader)
Anyhow, it's all relative. I believe that 50GB is within the realm of a tad when considering a 750GB drive. Plus, we know in advance how much space we'll be getting, so it's really not difficult to select a drive that meets our requirements; it's not like we're selecting a custom size and paying per gigabyte. Besides, the "why is my hard drive not as big as the box said it would be" is one of the first great questions on the road to geekdom and complete social disorder. I look back on answering this great question for my bored and bewildered family members as a sort of rite of passage.
Only if you approach it from that particular angle. If you look at this from the point of view of a guy who's trying to convince his wife to let him purchase an extremely expensive 'video game player', then you're going to be asked why you *need* to pay that extra $200.:)
The 20GB model without cables or controllers is $499. Most of the extremely basic packages you'll find at the big retailers like Walmart and Circuit City will start at $725 or higher (connection cables, one controller, one game). Nobody is making up numbers, they're just saying what they're seeing at the store.
Contrast that with the XBox 360, which starts at $399 for the "premium" package. If you're at Walmart or someplace like that you're going to see premium packages with two controllers and a game at under $500.
Don't expect people to not be surprised by an unprecedentedly high price for a gaming console.
Sometimes it's hard to wrap the mind around new concepts. It's hard to break out of the mindset that a server consists of hardware running an operating system upon which some software services are operating. If that entire server concept -- hardware, OS, software -- is bundled up into one software image that can be running on any piece of hardware on the network, then we have to re-imagine what "downtime" means, or what our hardware requirements are going to be. The ability to zip entire "servers" around various pieces of physical hardware has some pretty significant ramifications, especially if they aren't tightly bound to data storage. If imagined and implemented properly, it could indeed mean reducing downtime considerably while realizing a lot of hardware savings.
For saps like me, virtualization is presently just a really, really, really convenient way to try out server software.
This article is useless as it exposes nothing that isn't painfully obvious. I don't think that there's an IT department out there deploying virtualization without realizing each image on a machine is going to be sharing hardware and bandwidth. These are the same considerations we are faced with any time we deploy multiple services on the same machine. What's most interesting about virtualization is its possibilities, not it's drawbacks which aren't terribly unique.
The whole world has moved on now that we've all figured out that our hard drives are going to be a tad bit smaller than we thought. Then again, the memory companies have helped to even things out. The last time I bought 1 gigabyte of RAM, I was pleasantly suprised to have received 73,741,824 extra bytes!
How about we all just pretend that we know what we're talking about when we say that our internet connection is "8 megs" or that our hard drive is "200 gigs" or that we have a "3 gig" processor. None of these statements are accurate, but we know what they mean and they're close enough for the sake of discussion.
There's nothing wrong with saying "mebibyte" or "gibibyte", aside from the potential for them to sound like a three year old trying to pronounce "megabyte" and "gigabyte."... well, and the fact that every single time you try to throw them into a general discussion somebody is going to call you on it. Every time. Every single time. It's patently obvious nerdiness, and somebody will always jump on it, and people like us will jump into the fray.
So you're talking to your uncle who's asking you, the family "computer genius", some questions about which memory module he should consider buying to upgrade his computer. You say something like, "well, I think that you should get at least two gibibytes total." Your uncle replies, "What's a gibibyte?" You proudly declare, "A gibibyte is 1,024 mebibytes, or two to the power of 30 bytes. Computers are binary machines, and memory is manufactured in sizes accordingly, not using base-10, which would yield 'megabytes' and 'gigabytes', which are 1 million and 1 billion bytes, respectively. Thus, when we talk about computer memory, we use mebibytes and gibibytes, even though manufacturers incorrectly use megabytes and gigabytes on their packaging."
Your uncle thanks you and after you depart he turns to your father and says, "what a douchebag."
Another reason to not use mebibyte and gibibyte or any of the baby-talk bytes, unless it's absolutely necessary, is that they're not recognized by Firefox's spell checker.
On your first point, Linux is still the most used operating system on web servers. It's also in third place in the realm of IT (based on 2005 server *sales*, CNET): #1, Windows: $17.7 billion; #2, Unix $17.5 billion; #3 Linux $5.7 billion (11%). Then when you factor in that Linux is often slapped out onto servers that a company has already purchased (low cost, good support for aging hardware, high functionality), I'd hardly agree with your assessment that Linux is rarely used on the server. It's not a big dog, but it's not rare. Desktop: you're right.
On your second point, I don't think that the Linux "experts" have an attitude problem. I do think that the "so-called experts" most certainly do. I'm always surprised by how calm and open-minded OSS developers seem to be when I listen to interviews on LUG Radio and such. In fact, they're usually all about getting down to business, and are highly self-critical. It's the forum fanboys that give the "community" a bad name, or think that there is some kind of actual community (maybe I just didn't get my ID badge?).
Well, it might be a tad more complicated than that.
First, we're all aware that there is some discussion about Microsoft using its position in the marketplace to lock people into Microsoft Windows. There might have been a lawsuit or two somewhere in the world:) They are certainly not uncomfortable using tactics that have been deemed unlawful (or at least they weren't uncomfortable in the past).
Second, Microsoft Office is and for some time has been the default Office suite. "Everybody" uses it.
What they've got here is an opportunity to potentially bolster their already dominant position on top of the *OS* market by dropping support for their *Office Suite* product on the competition's operating system. By dropping support for the Macintosh version of MS Office, they are putting Macintosh and its customers in a position that is worse than if Microsoft had never developed a version of Office for the Mac. In other words, they created an overwhelming need (real or perceived) for their product, offered it on multiple platforms, and then considered dropping the alternate platform after the software was well-established on that platform.
Could that be considered anti-competitive? Well, I think it can be argued strongly in both directions. Assuming that Office for Mac is a profitable product, and that pulling support for it would not only damage Macintosh but also the consumer (not only because existing Mac owners would be "stuck" without Office, but assuming that some choose to use a PC instead, it also harms consumers down the road by lessening the competition between platforms overall), I think that the argument is a little bit in favor of the anti-competitive side.
Now, if some government was to force Microsoft to develop a version of Office for some non-Windows platform for which a version did not already exist, then I would agree with your argument whole-heartedly.
When I read the article I wondered if they hadn't misrepresented the scientist in question. The article implies that he doesn't believe in the greenhouse effect, but then says that he discounts the effect of carbon dioxide. These are very different things.
When you tally it up, CO2 is only responsible for one third of one percent of all greenhouse gas. Figure in that human beings are not responsible for the bulk of C02 in the atmosphere, and it's suddenly much more plausible that a particular scientist might doubt the impact of human caused C02 on global climate.
Anyhow, scientist schmientist. Who is he, what are his credentials and reputation, and who's going to vouch for him?
Hmmm... and what is going to physically come in contact with your sword so that it actually feels like you're hitting something?...and how easy is it to eat hot pockets while wearing proposed helmet?
I think that tracking is the least of the problems faced when trying to implement VR, and really, is one that has already been solved and is used frequently in film and game production.
You're mostly correct about why the arcade died, but the only way to replace it is to come up with something that is just as novel and dynamic. Really, an arcade is just a big room... but it's loaded up with a lot of fun games and is generally a good place for nerds to hang out. At the VR arcade, you'd stand in line for an hour to play "Monster Whack" for ninety seconds. Laser tag, paintball, go carts, mini golf, and the like are all kind of cool to do every so often, but these places don't usually have the hang out factor nor the quick thrill factor that made the arcade successful.
I have one data-entry application written in VB that runs on about 8 dedicated machines throughout my organization. It's light on resource requirements so runs on older machines, but of course requires some version of Windows. For a while I've been thinking of porting the app to Linux in one way or another, without resorting to making it web-based (or re-learning Java), but have concluded it's just not worth the effort currently.
If this mono VB compiler works, I believe that I could port the whole app over in just a couple days, at which point I would be completely free to toss these single-purpose machines up wherever they're needed without having to hassle with licensing. Off the top of my head I think that the only Windows-specific code is opening and closing a few files and a couple registry writes. Not hard to fix.
Check into Simple Machines Forums (SMF). I haven't dug into it much, but by comparison, the code is a breath of fresh air... of course it could turn out to be shit as well.
I agree whole-heartedly with PDFCreator. This project has saved me a lot of licensing fees for Adobe Acrobat (for Distiller), and is much more user-friendly than the online converters.
Now if only there was an opensource PDF reader for Windows that was as "easy" as Acrobat Reader, but not as utterly crappy. (I'm half hoping that somebody will pop in here and say, "THERE IS!")
phpBB is a good candidate because it's popular, and in that regards is definitely successful. In my opinion it's pretty shoddy software that's difficult to manage, slow, has a poor stock featureset, and is a big flaming target in terms of security (whether the security problems are the fault of the developers or simply the result of its popularity can be argued). Although many years ago I recommended it highly, I stopped about two years ago, especially to my own web hosting customers...there were just too many script-kiddie security problems that required "under the hood" patching which was a problem worsened by the need to install 3rd party patches to provide features that everyone at the time expected (file uploading, for instance).
Version 3 appears to be right around the corner. I'm mildly interested to see if it's caught up to other packages like SMF. (unfortunately SMF isn't GPL, but its license isn't horribly restrictive. The code is better and lighter than phpbb 2.X IMHO as well)
Learing code = time. Libraries = hell.
on
Finding New Code
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· Score: 1
Two points.
First, in some cases taking a chunk of somebody else's code is a great time saver. It can be problematic, however, when the code doesn't do what you want and then you have to jump into it. Is there anything more painful than trying to understand somebody else's code? On rare occasions it's easy - good comments, good style, good structure. In most cases it's a pain in the ass, even if they've taken the effort to write good comments and nice code. In these cases one has to make the call on whether it would be easier to simply write their own code, using the 3rd party code as reference. Sometimes this is beneficial, especially if you're planning to maintain the code for a long time. In other cases it turns out to be a big waste of time. Magic eight ball, don't fail me!
Second, in the case of more "complete" code that you'll be linking to...this can lead to distribution hell. This is especially difficult for users of FOSS (and especially for non-Windows projects, simply because people are more apt to package an installer on Windows). Well, it's not difficult for the developer, it's difficult for the *user* when the developer says "oh, here's a library that I'd like to use...sure it's in alpha, and not part of most standard distributions, and relies on eighteen other packages that aren't part of most standard distributions, but it'll sure save me some time, so if the user wants to use my software, they can suffer like I have to suffer."
Choices choices choices. If you're going to insert code into your project, then it's up to you to decide if that code does what it should, and if you want to maintain it. If you're going to link to code, it's important to research first if your users have easy access to the libraries.
That said, there are no downsides to new ways of seeking out code. Just for research and learning it's always going to be a boon.
Yep, nothing new, nor exciting. Every couple years I find myself for some reason downloading a sidebar / widget program and spending some time getting it setup, only to eventually uninstall it because it just takes up space. Really, there is no information that I need to glance at so frequently.
And while i haven't scrolled down past your comment yet, I'm willing to bet there will be half a dozen people linking to some web-based OSS groupware project that doesn't even come close to what we get from Outlook + Exchange, and maybe two or three other pre-alpha projects that do promise to deliver the goods but don't currently do anything.
What really boggles my mind is that neither Outlook nor Exchange nor the combination of both are really that good. In fact, they feel very much like half-finished ideas - more like framework demos than good applications...and while heavy customization is possible, well, you go develop for Outlook and Exchange for just one week - if you haven't killed yourself after that week, then I'll consider changing my mind.
So why in the Linux world are we still kludging shit together like we're incapable of writing a new application from scratch? From the ground up, a brand new enterprise-level groupware client/server suite should be built - not in Java or PHP or Ruby - not kludged together out of eighteen other applications that have to be configured just right - not relying on protocols from 1975 to mimic the behavior of superior protocols. And let's get the user requirements from *actual business users* and not from the geek community. Oh yeah, and let's include real documentation and for the love of pete, don't be a bum and just write an interface for the configuration files already.
We've got nearly-compatible office suites, we've got the ability to run many Windows applications from Linux, we've got hardware support, we've got eye candy... why can't we have a good competitor to a retarded system like Exchange!?? It's not about Microsoft not publishing its standards. Reverse engineering is nothing new and if the motivation is there (e.g. removing DRM from a video), anything is possible.
I would say that the number of companies running Microsoft products for the executives while all the regular workstations run Linux is approximately: 0.
That's an interesting notion you have there, however. So it's a likely scenario that the CEO and higher-ups are idiots (use Windows) and the employees they pay are smart (use Linux) and essentially pacify them while they do the real work (pacify them with Windows + Exchange so they can email each other or whatever the hell CEOs really do)? Wait, this is an extremely common perception actually:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's sort of an interesting way of looking at things. This change cost my company exactly $0, but it did cost me, personally, about 6 hours. The projects I'm working on are not going to be six hours late because of this. I simply worked longer.
Man, I don't think you were trying to be funny, but you totally just made me shoot semi-hot coffee out my nose.
Did you just launch into a giant math tantrum -- one so severe that it seemed appropriate to show your work -- to not only demonstrate but really drive home your point that, essentially, 7% is over and above the threshold of "a tad?" (I'll leave my seven percent calculation as an exercise for the reader)
Anyhow, it's all relative. I believe that 50GB is within the realm of a tad when considering a 750GB drive. Plus, we know in advance how much space we'll be getting, so it's really not difficult to select a drive that meets our requirements; it's not like we're selecting a custom size and paying per gigabyte. Besides, the "why is my hard drive not as big as the box said it would be" is one of the first great questions on the road to geekdom and complete social disorder. I look back on answering this great question for my bored and bewildered family members as a sort of rite of passage.
Only if you approach it from that particular angle. If you look at this from the point of view of a guy who's trying to convince his wife to let him purchase an extremely expensive 'video game player', then you're going to be asked why you *need* to pay that extra $200. :)
The 20GB model without cables or controllers is $499. Most of the extremely basic packages you'll find at the big retailers like Walmart and Circuit City will start at $725 or higher (connection cables, one controller, one game). Nobody is making up numbers, they're just saying what they're seeing at the store.
Contrast that with the XBox 360, which starts at $399 for the "premium" package. If you're at Walmart or someplace like that you're going to see premium packages with two controllers and a game at under $500.
Don't expect people to not be surprised by an unprecedentedly high price for a gaming console.
Sometimes it's hard to wrap the mind around new concepts. It's hard to break out of the mindset that a server consists of hardware running an operating system upon which some software services are operating. If that entire server concept -- hardware, OS, software -- is bundled up into one software image that can be running on any piece of hardware on the network, then we have to re-imagine what "downtime" means, or what our hardware requirements are going to be. The ability to zip entire "servers" around various pieces of physical hardware has some pretty significant ramifications, especially if they aren't tightly bound to data storage. If imagined and implemented properly, it could indeed mean reducing downtime considerably while realizing a lot of hardware savings.
For saps like me, virtualization is presently just a really, really, really convenient way to try out server software.
This article is useless as it exposes nothing that isn't painfully obvious. I don't think that there's an IT department out there deploying virtualization without realizing each image on a machine is going to be sharing hardware and bandwidth. These are the same considerations we are faced with any time we deploy multiple services on the same machine. What's most interesting about virtualization is its possibilities, not it's drawbacks which aren't terribly unique.
The whole world has moved on now that we've all figured out that our hard drives are going to be a tad bit smaller than we thought. Then again, the memory companies have helped to even things out. The last time I bought 1 gigabyte of RAM, I was pleasantly suprised to have received 73,741,824 extra bytes!
... well, and the fact that every single time you try to throw them into a general discussion somebody is going to call you on it. Every time. Every single time. It's patently obvious nerdiness, and somebody will always jump on it, and people like us will jump into the fray.
How about we all just pretend that we know what we're talking about when we say that our internet connection is "8 megs" or that our hard drive is "200 gigs" or that we have a "3 gig" processor. None of these statements are accurate, but we know what they mean and they're close enough for the sake of discussion.
There's nothing wrong with saying "mebibyte" or "gibibyte", aside from the potential for them to sound like a three year old trying to pronounce "megabyte" and "gigabyte."
It's asinine because of the douchebag factor.
So you're talking to your uncle who's asking you, the family "computer genius", some questions about which memory module he should consider buying to upgrade his computer. You say something like, "well, I think that you should get at least two gibibytes total." Your uncle replies, "What's a gibibyte?" You proudly declare, "A gibibyte is 1,024 mebibytes, or two to the power of 30 bytes. Computers are binary machines, and memory is manufactured in sizes accordingly, not using base-10, which would yield 'megabytes' and 'gigabytes', which are 1 million and 1 billion bytes, respectively. Thus, when we talk about computer memory, we use mebibytes and gibibytes, even though manufacturers incorrectly use megabytes and gigabytes on their packaging."
Your uncle thanks you and after you depart he turns to your father and says, "what a douchebag."
Another reason to not use mebibyte and gibibyte or any of the baby-talk bytes, unless it's absolutely necessary, is that they're not recognized by Firefox's spell checker.
On your first point, Linux is still the most used operating system on web servers. It's also in third place in the realm of IT (based on 2005 server *sales*, CNET): #1, Windows: $17.7 billion; #2, Unix $17.5 billion; #3 Linux $5.7 billion (11%). Then when you factor in that Linux is often slapped out onto servers that a company has already purchased (low cost, good support for aging hardware, high functionality), I'd hardly agree with your assessment that Linux is rarely used on the server. It's not a big dog, but it's not rare. Desktop: you're right.
On your second point, I don't think that the Linux "experts" have an attitude problem. I do think that the "so-called experts" most certainly do. I'm always surprised by how calm and open-minded OSS developers seem to be when I listen to interviews on LUG Radio and such. In fact, they're usually all about getting down to business, and are highly self-critical. It's the forum fanboys that give the "community" a bad name, or think that there is some kind of actual community (maybe I just didn't get my ID badge?).
Well, it might be a tad more complicated than that.
:) They are certainly not uncomfortable using tactics that have been deemed unlawful (or at least they weren't uncomfortable in the past).
First, we're all aware that there is some discussion about Microsoft using its position in the marketplace to lock people into Microsoft Windows. There might have been a lawsuit or two somewhere in the world
Second, Microsoft Office is and for some time has been the default Office suite. "Everybody" uses it.
What they've got here is an opportunity to potentially bolster their already dominant position on top of the *OS* market by dropping support for their *Office Suite* product on the competition's operating system. By dropping support for the Macintosh version of MS Office, they are putting Macintosh and its customers in a position that is worse than if Microsoft had never developed a version of Office for the Mac. In other words, they created an overwhelming need (real or perceived) for their product, offered it on multiple platforms, and then considered dropping the alternate platform after the software was well-established on that platform.
Could that be considered anti-competitive? Well, I think it can be argued strongly in both directions. Assuming that Office for Mac is a profitable product, and that pulling support for it would not only damage Macintosh but also the consumer (not only because existing Mac owners would be "stuck" without Office, but assuming that some choose to use a PC instead, it also harms consumers down the road by lessening the competition between platforms overall), I think that the argument is a little bit in favor of the anti-competitive side.
Now, if some government was to force Microsoft to develop a version of Office for some non-Windows platform for which a version did not already exist, then I would agree with your argument whole-heartedly.
Um, water?
When I read the article I wondered if they hadn't misrepresented the scientist in question. The article implies that he doesn't believe in the greenhouse effect, but then says that he discounts the effect of carbon dioxide. These are very different things.
When you tally it up, CO2 is only responsible for one third of one percent of all greenhouse gas. Figure in that human beings are not responsible for the bulk of C02 in the atmosphere, and it's suddenly much more plausible that a particular scientist might doubt the impact of human caused C02 on global climate.
Anyhow, scientist schmientist. Who is he, what are his credentials and reputation, and who's going to vouch for him?
http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_Pub_Interface/raterisk/ rates23.html
"[2] Aside from the massive technical hurdles to coalescing DRM with all the disparate formats and stores, is that really the right step to take?"
Yes! That way I'd only need one tool to remove the DRM from my stuff. As it stands now, I have to use like two or three.
Hmmm... and what is going to physically come in contact with your sword so that it actually feels like you're hitting something? ...and how easy is it to eat hot pockets while wearing proposed helmet?
I think that tracking is the least of the problems faced when trying to implement VR, and really, is one that has already been solved and is used frequently in film and game production.
You're mostly correct about why the arcade died, but the only way to replace it is to come up with something that is just as novel and dynamic. Really, an arcade is just a big room... but it's loaded up with a lot of fun games and is generally a good place for nerds to hang out. At the VR arcade, you'd stand in line for an hour to play "Monster Whack" for ninety seconds. Laser tag, paintball, go carts, mini golf, and the like are all kind of cool to do every so often, but these places don't usually have the hang out factor nor the quick thrill factor that made the arcade successful.
Agreed.
I have one data-entry application written in VB that runs on about 8 dedicated machines throughout my organization. It's light on resource requirements so runs on older machines, but of course requires some version of Windows. For a while I've been thinking of porting the app to Linux in one way or another, without resorting to making it web-based (or re-learning Java), but have concluded it's just not worth the effort currently.
If this mono VB compiler works, I believe that I could port the whole app over in just a couple days, at which point I would be completely free to toss these single-purpose machines up wherever they're needed without having to hassle with licensing. Off the top of my head I think that the only Windows-specific code is opening and closing a few files and a couple registry writes. Not hard to fix.
Just upgraded to MS Office 2007 eh?
Please, the whole "CEO's personal laptop drives the entire IT department" argument is so Slashdot 2006.
Excellent. I missed this one the first time around. It explains a few things very clearly.
Check into Simple Machines Forums (SMF). I haven't dug into it much, but by comparison, the code is a breath of fresh air... of course it could turn out to be shit as well.
I agree whole-heartedly with PDFCreator. This project has saved me a lot of licensing fees for Adobe Acrobat (for Distiller), and is much more user-friendly than the online converters.
Now if only there was an opensource PDF reader for Windows that was as "easy" as Acrobat Reader, but not as utterly crappy. (I'm half hoping that somebody will pop in here and say, "THERE IS!")
phpBB is a good candidate because it's popular, and in that regards is definitely successful. In my opinion it's pretty shoddy software that's difficult to manage, slow, has a poor stock featureset, and is a big flaming target in terms of security (whether the security problems are the fault of the developers or simply the result of its popularity can be argued). Although many years ago I recommended it highly, I stopped about two years ago, especially to my own web hosting customers...there were just too many script-kiddie security problems that required "under the hood" patching which was a problem worsened by the need to install 3rd party patches to provide features that everyone at the time expected (file uploading, for instance).
Version 3 appears to be right around the corner. I'm mildly interested to see if it's caught up to other packages like SMF. (unfortunately SMF isn't GPL, but its license isn't horribly restrictive. The code is better and lighter than phpbb 2.X IMHO as well)
Two points.
First, in some cases taking a chunk of somebody else's code is a great time saver. It can be problematic, however, when the code doesn't do what you want and then you have to jump into it. Is there anything more painful than trying to understand somebody else's code? On rare occasions it's easy - good comments, good style, good structure. In most cases it's a pain in the ass, even if they've taken the effort to write good comments and nice code. In these cases one has to make the call on whether it would be easier to simply write their own code, using the 3rd party code as reference. Sometimes this is beneficial, especially if you're planning to maintain the code for a long time. In other cases it turns out to be a big waste of time. Magic eight ball, don't fail me!
Second, in the case of more "complete" code that you'll be linking to...this can lead to distribution hell. This is especially difficult for users of FOSS (and especially for non-Windows projects, simply because people are more apt to package an installer on Windows). Well, it's not difficult for the developer, it's difficult for the *user* when the developer says "oh, here's a library that I'd like to use...sure it's in alpha, and not part of most standard distributions, and relies on eighteen other packages that aren't part of most standard distributions, but it'll sure save me some time, so if the user wants to use my software, they can suffer like I have to suffer."
Choices choices choices. If you're going to insert code into your project, then it's up to you to decide if that code does what it should, and if you want to maintain it. If you're going to link to code, it's important to research first if your users have easy access to the libraries.
That said, there are no downsides to new ways of seeking out code. Just for research and learning it's always going to be a boon.
Yep, nothing new, nor exciting. Every couple years I find myself for some reason downloading a sidebar / widget program and spending some time getting it setup, only to eventually uninstall it because it just takes up space. Really, there is no information that I need to glance at so frequently.
Agreed.
And while i haven't scrolled down past your comment yet, I'm willing to bet there will be half a dozen people linking to some web-based OSS groupware project that doesn't even come close to what we get from Outlook + Exchange, and maybe two or three other pre-alpha projects that do promise to deliver the goods but don't currently do anything.
What really boggles my mind is that neither Outlook nor Exchange nor the combination of both are really that good. In fact, they feel very much like half-finished ideas - more like framework demos than good applications...and while heavy customization is possible, well, you go develop for Outlook and Exchange for just one week - if you haven't killed yourself after that week, then I'll consider changing my mind.
So why in the Linux world are we still kludging shit together like we're incapable of writing a new application from scratch? From the ground up, a brand new enterprise-level groupware client/server suite should be built - not in Java or PHP or Ruby - not kludged together out of eighteen other applications that have to be configured just right - not relying on protocols from 1975 to mimic the behavior of superior protocols. And let's get the user requirements from *actual business users* and not from the geek community. Oh yeah, and let's include real documentation and for the love of pete, don't be a bum and just write an interface for the configuration files already.
We've got nearly-compatible office suites, we've got the ability to run many Windows applications from Linux, we've got hardware support, we've got eye candy... why can't we have a good competitor to a retarded system like Exchange!?? It's not about Microsoft not publishing its standards. Reverse engineering is nothing new and if the motivation is there (e.g. removing DRM from a video), anything is possible.
Office Suite != Word Processor
I would say that the number of companies running Microsoft products for the executives while all the regular workstations run Linux is approximately: 0.
:)
That's an interesting notion you have there, however. So it's a likely scenario that the CEO and higher-ups are idiots (use Windows) and the employees they pay are smart (use Linux) and essentially pacify them while they do the real work (pacify them with Windows + Exchange so they can email each other or whatever the hell CEOs really do)? Wait, this is an extremely common perception actually