The Supreme Court unanimously decided a case the other day, overturning patents for something obvious. I've not read the patent, but it would seem that this fits into the "Obvious" category. That the patented idea might also be a good one, and offer benefits may not justify the patent.
I also don't know whether it matters - it will depend upon whether the vendors who compete need this functionality and what the licensing will be. If it gives competitive advantage, but doesn't pay to fight, it will stand. If someone wants to fight, I suspect the patent will fall due to the court decision.
This is one of the first comments in this thread that approaches this conflict in a manner that I believe is appropriate. IF we accept that computers and the software that operates and runs on them have purposes and that among those purposes is products and businesses that make and sell those products: That computers and software are the means of production in capitalist entities, then these arguments are all capitalist competitive disputes.
Those who use these fruits of capitalism so support the operations of their own capitalist (or even anti-capitalist) endeavors don't usually care about the purity of the motives behind the sources of their tools. In fact, they presume that the usual human drivers for good or ill are at play. To simplify: it's about the money coming in to Novell and Microsoft and the money going out from us.
For Microsoft's and Novell's (and IBM and HP and 3Com and Sun and all the other companies) customers, the only thing that really matters is that these products work pretty much as advertised and deliver the solutions to the problems for which they've been purchased. True belief doesn't really matter.
This pissing contest is no more than the conflict between those who follow the gourd or the sandal. (If you don't get the allusion, you need to learn more about the history of religion and comedy.)
First, as an older person (58), my eyes too aren't what they once were. But I do perfer reading the screen for most things. Work stuff, newspapers, and so forth. I do print things out however. As an Editor and Writer, while making corrections and so forth is easier for my on the screen, making sure that the content referred to on page one that's on page 16 is correct is much easier on paper.
But these are all technical issues. There's one other big reason: Have you gone to the toilet with a laptop? Sure you can do it, but paper is much better. And you never know when you'll need an extra sheet!
It's an interesting idea, and all but the troll comments are to the point and even trolls are perceptive.
Most seem to be missing an important point. What's the company's business model? Free software with tech support for $500 per year? That's not a billion dollar idea. How about the point made that they intend to offer appliances and system blueprints?
So, it's not really about reusing your old PCs, except for really small companies, start-ups or 3rd worlders. Vyatta readily admits that ultimate performance and absolute reliability does require very careful selection of components and careful engineering. Can it be done with OTS components? I think so.
The product is essentially a Linux Kernel with a routing stack designed to run on an X86 processor based platform. Almost every network appliance I've studied over the past decade has been based upon the same concept. It's a recognized commodity HW plan, one that most companies are comfortable with, even if they're not aware of it.
The question is whether they can produce appliances and reference platforms (tested HW configs) that can be replicated and whether these devices can be sold for less than what a "Name Brand" router costs on E-Bay.
MAXIMIZE REVENUE Good guess. As someone else said, "Business 101"
Actually, in my discussions with Microsoft folks over the past couple of years, one concept has grown in importance. One that summarizes the 12 points - "Play nice with others"
There has been a growing recognition within Microsoft that they can't always win and the can't win every contest. But in those areas where they want to compete and eventually and hopefully win, if they can't win out of the box, they better play fair with the other kids or they won't be allowed to play. Microsoft can't take the ball, go home and sulk.
Winning in every contest is still a driving force at Microsoft. It should remain so, as it should for every business. Regardless of other factors, including the need to collaborate with competitors to provide complete technology solutions, it's a business imperative to want to win every deal and demolish the competition. OTOH, the best thing for every business is strong competitors who drive you to improve.
The worst case is what's happened to the US auto industry. For over a half century, Chrysler, Ford and GM really didn't compete on product. They competed for market share with products that were nearly identical - differentiating themselves by flash and marketing and price points rather than innovation and technological advancement. When macro-economic forces (oil shock of the 70's) awakened the US public to other possibilities, the innovative Japanese companies made their move and as we know the landscape changed completely. That the US makers still haven't figured it out shows how hard it is to actually compete. (This is a vast over simplification, intended to illustrate the value of true competition.)
What we're seeing now is the maturing of the PC industry. While Microsoft dominates as the OS platform (and Apple won the interface war - CLI vs. GUI), and X86 has won the processor wars (at least for the present - who knows what will emerge in the future?), desktop Linux (in several flavors) and Mac OS are both making their presence felt and are not considered as serious or worthwhile alternative choices for many more instances that even two years ago. Open Office/Star Office and web hosted apps are now considered viable alternatives to MS Office. FireFox (and Opera and Safari) are considered valid browser alternatives. Do these competitors have gigantic market shares, threatening the hegemon? No. But the obvious quality and utility of these and dozens of other examples has forces Microsoft (and Cisco and IBM and Oracle and any other major vendor faced with similar competition) to improve their products, their services and support, their marketing and sales methods and pricing and their willingness to "interoperate" with their competitors.
Microsoft, and all the major vendors, always PR that they're goal is to take care of their customers. At this moment in history, the way to do that is to; collaborate, interoperate, play nice with others. And the result of this supposed new go to market strategy is, as it should be:
MAXIMIZE REVENUE
I wish I hadn't used all my modpoints. What a ripe opportunity.
This is serious stuff. Here I am at almost 7PM, watching the news on TV, and I'm wasting my time at Slashdot!
Damn.
For your stated purpose you might find that upcoming boxes from Yellow Machine might be a good fit. Up to 3 GB and built-in streaming and mostly automatic discovery and automation. Pricing seems to be in line with hardware costs with what I, a genuine cheepskate, would consider reasonable.
The new models, about which I am writing, are starting to hit the market this month, with the really interesting ones coming in the fall and so forth.
This is not an endorsement, just information, as I have not yet tested the new boxes - I expect to received the current models in the next couple of weeks and will continue to evaluate them as they come out.
I agree. I haven't bothered to look, so forgive me if he's already commented, but I'm really curious about Bob Metcalfe's thoughts. He was an early advocate for charging for this kind of access - use more pay more.
Even though I didn't agree with him then and may not now, if he's not saying I told you so, his insights might be very valuable in the current context.
I hate to defend Verizon or any of the carriers, but come on. Competition in this business means giving your competitors all but free access to your very significant investment in cable, right's of way, poles, central and POP equipment, distribution equipment etc, for essentially free.
It's only competition if someone else is willing to go through the process of obtaining rights of way - today the biggest cost - and all the rest and competing directly. It's generally no in a community's interest to allow someone to run new power/phone poles, cables, etc for a new vendor. That's the reason cable and voice companies have monopolies today.
OTOH, that Verizon tends to rip us off... you bet. That they should have competition. Definitely. But their business model has changed significantly over the past decade and a half. They used to charge by the minute for their lines. Now it's all flat rate and fixed fees. They've had to completely rebuild their infrastructure and the deal with competitors such as cable, IP over power lines and soon long distance wireless and in cities, free WiFi
Get over it. In a few years, the whole equation will change again. The business models will once again need to be revised and new competitors will appear. This is a whole new world. The major carriers are still going to have to provide universal service, 911 and all the rest. They're still much more reliable than any alternative for POTS and the fact that you don't need electricity locally to make a POTS call is still a reason to keep a line no matter what you use for broadband.
Our personal thoughts about Microsoft, Pro or Con, are not that relevant in the larger scheme of things. If we look at Microsoft's total suite of products as a fairly well integrated (and improving) stack of platforms, tools and user interfaces for collaborative work, then the move to Software as a Service is both logical and perhaps ultimately the way everyone will go.
There are some many possible threads here that it's not possible to give a coherent discussion when I'm here at work, but here are some of the ideas that come to mind as an advantage of the concept from a somewhat Microsoft centric perspective:
Use the same applications on all devices (PCs, Macs, Phones, Game consoles, TVs, IPods, Things that haven't been invented yet)
For corporations only pay for software that's actually used, non a mass volume license that often includes wasted licenses.
Access to work from anywhere - Writerly and some of the competitors already offer a form of this
Smooth integration of multiple data types from almost anywhere into a document. Consider how complex linking content can be when you're doing it relative to your computer and its local (or LAN) storage. Now consider those links in a UDDI/XML/HTML Web
Shortness of time limits clarity on these ideas. Resolving them in our discussions here can be fun, but I think Microsoft should pay us for the privlege. Don't you?
These are all areas where Microsoft can bring a very rich user experience that will drive the competitors to greatly improve their offerings. It will also force Microsoft to be more open and accessible to other vendor's products, solutions and open standards. Resolving all the issues involved will take a long time. I've been involved with these discussions for over a dozen years now. I expect it will take another dozen for these things to work as well as we imagine them to.
There's another point that's been made by others too. Moving from a license per box to a license per use and even mostly free stuff business model will be painful. Look at Novell. One of their biggest revenue problems is that the move to FOSS has occurred more quickly than they expected driving revenues down faster than they'd planned and could adjust for.
Microsoft will feel similar pain, but is learning from all the pioneers how not to get shot in the back. It is what they are best at
It's not sports. It's sexual promiscuity. Back when teen sex was more mental that actual (post Sputnik 1950's and 1960's), science education in secondary schools was rising, the quality that education high and the subsequent advances from US scientists and engineers brought us the technologies without which I couldn't write this comment or even have the place to comment.
Now even nerdy kids get laid. Why focus on science?
I suspect that some of the impetus for this comes from Scientific Atlantic (now owned by Cisco). They make settop boxes and DVRs. Their DVRs are the ones supplied by Time Warner cable, and perhaps Cablevision. Among the products in their line are DVRs that can record up to two channels at a time for each of up to 4 set top boxes. This means that you can record and/or watch up to 8 shows at a time in your home.
I think what makes the broadcasters crazy is that this can have all sorts of effects on how ratings are captured, how advertisers pay, how TV shows are used. While they're talking about the IP issues, I think the real fear is not being in control of the economics of broadcasting.
As other have pointed out, from a consumer perspective, this technology is what those of us who watch lots of TV want. I have two DVRs, one on each of my 2 TVs, and wish I could see what was recorded on one unit on the other. I'm not alone in this.
It'll work out. We'll pay more. Get less. The american way.
You hit on the main reason for unions: collective bargaining with emphasis on collective. While not relevant in small companies, perhaps, having the negotiation leverage of collective bargaining is often the only recourse to not being exploited.
I've seen so many geeks happy to be making around six figures but working 90 hour weeks. They don't realise that their real wages are about 40% of their gross if they were to work a 40 hour week. They're being exploited. Period. Just like their ancestors were over a century ago.
There's a column by Tom Yager in the current (5/8/06 issue) of Infoworld that talks about this subject from an interesting perspective: that server based applications and virtualization of the servers and by extension the applications so that thin clients may be all that's required in certain applications.
I can't say whether your environment would benefit, but it's another way of looking at the question.
It seems that the issues discussed are resoved with some of the collaborative suites on the market. They're for business, not home use, but to a degree collaboration is a "work" thing.
I'm familiar (through research and a bit of testing) with three of these suites:
Oracle Collaborative Suite, MS Sharepoint and IBM Workplace. These all share certain similarities: They link messaging (e-mail, IM, Voice and in some cases FAX), document management, threaded discussions or forums, presense (where you are or whether and how you're connected) scheduling (calendars), web meetings and or teleconferencing, and so forth. Not every product has or supports every feature and they are mostly for larger organizations with deep pockets.
It would seem that we're asking the wrong question. It's not which single program is best for collaboration. It should be: what sort of collaborative work environment will meet one's needs? With good integration between components, the environment should enable collaboration with all the different sorts of persons/roles that we encounter allowing each user the liberty to use the tools that best fit their needs while not limiting collaborative access beyond security and privacy contraints set by policy and users.
Netflix, of course, doesn't have stores. But where I live, neither does Blockbuster. FWIW, Netflix especially caused my incredibly great local rental store to go out of business. So for my part of the world - Brookly Heights, in NYC - the options are pretty limited. For all intents and purposes running out to the store isn't that practicle.
OTOH, I do have Netflix (3 movies at a time plan) plus several premium cable channels, plus the premium On-Demand channels plus the pay per view and pay per view on-demand channels, plus DVRs. We also have a couple of hundred DVDs we've bought. While we too suffer from the occasional 500 channels with nothing to watch syndrome, it's not a big issue. If worse comes to worse, I can surf the web or even read a book!.
There is a trick to using these services. As has been mentioned, if you don't have the time to watch your little cache of films you don't see the price advantage of the subscription, so you have to turn over your films, or accept occasionally swallowing the month's fee.
As for NetFlix throttling excessive use - I think that 11 or so a month figure is accurate - what's the problem? They're doing it, they say, to prevent copiers from getting masses of disks and copying them and perhaps bootlegging them. They're only protecting themselves from an exploitation attack that damages their business. They may also be getting pressure from the studios too.
If you are watching a dozen movies a month with a plan that compensates them adequately, they won't bother you. I was going to say, "If you're watching a dozen movies a month, get a life!" But I watch far more than that myself. I think I have a life.
You don't state how many users you have, whether you're using the VPN for site to site or user access, but:
I just read about the Sonicwall SSL-VPN 200. Since its SSL it doesn't need a client installed on your users machines and is much easier to configure than the Cisco. For Windows users, there's even an applet that allows TCP/IP applcications to connect to their servers.
I've not tested it, but for $600 bucks it's not to bad a deal and Sonicwall has always made good hardware. If you already have a firewall, this could be a good bet.
We're using a low end Cisco PIX - the 510 with the Cisco VPN client. It works too. We generally only have one or two people connecting through the VPN at any one time.
Re:It ain't BusinessWeek's opinion...
on
Google's DNA
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You and several others comment on ""Google is actually the first company with a brand that is built entirely of stem cells: able to grow and develop into whatever form it sees fit."
I think you're missunderstanding the point of the "stem cell" metaphor: That most of the products/services that Google is offering aren't solutions themselves, but rather are means to solutions which remain in the hands of the users or perhaps more approrpriately, independent developers.
Google Earth is fun. Building applications on top of it, whether something as mundane as HBO's Sopranos marketing effort, or more interesting like the Nike jogging paths is what's interesting. All of these things subsist on a Google platform. In this case it's Google Earth. From another view it might be Maps, or Froogle, or..."
That's what the stem cell idea is about. Google is a platform vendor (See Dave Winer for the definition I'm using). In fact, extending the metophor, the Google brand is the platform and each nacent cell of a product/service are the meta-APIs of the platform.
FWIW, AMD has recognized problems with motherboards. Since they don't make them themselves there's lots of variation in design, capabilities and quality control. AMD and Radion and ATI have all initiated programs to bring better qualtity control and consistancy to motherboards for AMD processors.
Most of these issues are seen in server class rather than desktop class boards, but the problems are still there.
At this point, components and drivers are the main cause of system crashes on X86 boxes. The better the quality of the components the more reliable the computer. Remember, these problems may not appear to be hardware related too. They may seem to be caused by software - blame Microsoft!
In order to support the performance capabilities of the next generation of processors all of the components from the big ones like memory and NICs and Storage contollers, to the less obvious ones like mother board layer construction will need to be top-notch.
The aspect of this that's always annoyed me is enterprise purchasing. Buy a 100 or a 1000 or 10,000 PCs and you get 100 or a 1000 or 10,000 Windows Licenses. Installed.
But as an enterprise customer you don't want that individual key'd license. You want a bulk license that you can load onto the machines with Ghost or any other of the many tools for building uniform desktops. You therefore need to buy a Microsoft volume license of some sort.
You've paid twice for Windows.
Most companies either accept this or ignore it as a cost of business. But it does add about $150 to $180 per machine to the acquisition price. With a business PC costing well under a $1000 today, that's a big hit.
Just a gripe.
Functional Needs Analysis - or a product spec.
If I understand the original point and the comments correctly, the problem with most collaboration software is that it gets in the way of collaborating.
E-mail is comfortable, allows one to perform several tasks within a single interface and is relatively low impact for the end user. Most collaboration environments are the opposite.
Sounds like the ideal would be to enable the most wanted collaboration features within an e-mail client environment. Sort of like Lotus Notes? or Outlook on Exchange? But with more user (or corp IT) selectable features.
So the question aren't more complex collaborative tools successful, but why aren't we using all that processor power and 'smart' platform architectures to manage the collaborative requirements we may have within the software environments we're most comfortable.
I suggest that this is where Microsoft has been going with Office System. (I think it's called Office 2007 now.) Enabling groups to collaborate in organized (SharePoint Portal Server) or ad hoc (SharePoint Services) manners within the office suite of products they use whether Word, Excel, PowerPoint or their more complex and specialize brethren; Project, Visio, Access and so forth is a terrific goal.
From Microsoft's perspective the only way to get this to work transparently on the desktop for the average information worker (as opposed to knowledge worker - marketing speak that describes cultural attitudes towards people) is through a mostly proprietary architecture.
Being able to interact with MS Office System without having specific MS Client Programs or even MS Server Programs would be ideal. Microsoft should be more open on the APIs involved and abide by and contribute without control freakouts to open file formats to enable this accessibility. Microsoft shouldn't have to provide support to users and vendors beyond what's required for clean open-ness and a willingness to fix those things that don't work as expected.
Ahh my fantacies.
Actually it's not a ploy to sell more licenses, but to defend the license sales they've already made. Both MS and Intel/AMD realize that through virtualization they're going to sell less units. But if you can sell an OS license at $4K instead of $800 (the difference at retail of Windows Server 2003 Standard and Enterprise editions) you're making more than 4 times the revenue for what is essentially the same thing.
Similarly, Intel and AMD (and their OEMs) can make more profits from a higher end processor being used for servers in virtualized environments than they would from commodity processor based servers (read as single core vs. dual core with today's products).
In both cases the vendors know they're going to sell fewer units, but if they make more money for each unit, they may still make their numbers.
Conversely, this also lowers the acquisition cost delta between proprietary OS (Windows, Max OS X) and open source (Linux, BSD). If you can buy supported licenses for 1/4 the previous price you're used to and you purchase at least some supported licenses from Novell or Red Hat, the TCO argument gets harder to make from the Linux side and easier to obscure from the Windows side.
I've been studying these technologies for a while now. It's only recently that processor power has reached the point that an x86 powered computer had the processor performance to overcome the inherent design limitation historically imposed by design decisions made by IBM and subsequently Microsoft and Intel that can make use of all the power available in the processors themselves. For a multitude of reasons (off topic) this power is irrelevant to most home users and business users of pcs. More importantly this power is irrelevant to the majority of server purposes.
It's well known that most servers used in business are running at much less than 20% utilization levels. And that's with old boxes. This means that buying a new server with current technology results in a box running at levels as low as 5 or 10% utilization. Why bother? Enter virtualization.
With virtualization a single box can replace 4, 7 16, 20 or more servers. Not that good for IntelDellIBMHP etc, but great for you and me. Less electricity needed, less cables, less everything.
The only factor holding this back is licensing costs. If you can reduce those costs too, wow. Microsoft allows a single $4K Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition license to support up to four instances. If you don't have to pay extra for virtualization software, then the price starts to be very competitive with supported Linux licensing. More importantly it makes virtualization a standard way of doing things.
The real question is what happens to the open source community when the development of free tools like Xen loose their support fee value when competing with a more mature platform that costs the same thing. We're not there yet, but it will happen.
In a year or three.
or you will become what you appear to be. (Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night) If you look like a bum, you'll probably be treated like one. Unless you have an entourage and some fame (not notoriety).
It all has to do with comfort. If you have to meet with suits regularly, in their environment, they'll be much more comfortable if you look something like them. If nothing else its a sign of respect. If they're coming to your cave, and they're in a suit they'll feel out of place, too.
Business suits are actually egalitarian costumes. A dark suit, reasonably well tailored and clean, looks pretty much the same to all but the most fashion conscious. A $100 suit works as well as a $3000 one. (I won't go into the psychological affect of wearing a custom made suit.) If everone is waring a dark suit and a white shirt and a tie eveyone at least appears equal. Smoothes out the hierarchal and machismo affect.
BTW, I have longish hair (most of the time) a beard and prefer polo shirts and chinos. In fact I only own one suit, no sport jackets, and my ties are Garcia. I regularly meet with senior executives from major tech companies. I try, when I can to at least where a sport shirt instead of a polo.
Slashdot Mirror
The Supreme Court unanimously decided a case the other day, overturning patents for something obvious. I've not read the patent, but it would seem that this fits into the "Obvious" category. That the patented idea might also be a good one, and offer benefits may not justify the patent. I also don't know whether it matters - it will depend upon whether the vendors who compete need this functionality and what the licensing will be. If it gives competitive advantage, but doesn't pay to fight, it will stand. If someone wants to fight, I suspect the patent will fall due to the court decision.
This is one of the first comments in this thread that approaches this conflict in a manner that I believe is appropriate. IF we accept that computers and the software that operates and runs on them have purposes and that among those purposes is products and businesses that make and sell those products: That computers and software are the means of production in capitalist entities, then these arguments are all capitalist competitive disputes.
Those who use these fruits of capitalism so support the operations of their own capitalist (or even anti-capitalist) endeavors don't usually care about the purity of the motives behind the sources of their tools. In fact, they presume that the usual human drivers for good or ill are at play. To simplify: it's about the money coming in to Novell and Microsoft and the money going out from us.
For Microsoft's and Novell's (and IBM and HP and 3Com and Sun and all the other companies) customers, the only thing that really matters is that these products work pretty much as advertised and deliver the solutions to the problems for which they've been purchased. True belief doesn't really matter.
This pissing contest is no more than the conflict between those who follow the gourd or the sandal. (If you don't get the allusion, you need to learn more about the history of religion and comedy.)
Bravo. Well said.
First, as an older person (58), my eyes too aren't what they once were. But I do perfer reading the screen for most things. Work stuff, newspapers, and so forth. I do print things out however. As an Editor and Writer, while making corrections and so forth is easier for my on the screen, making sure that the content referred to on page one that's on page 16 is correct is much easier on paper.
But these are all technical issues. There's one other big reason: Have you gone to the toilet with a laptop? Sure you can do it, but paper is much better. And you never know when you'll need an extra sheet!
It's an interesting idea, and all but the troll comments are to the point and even trolls are perceptive.
Most seem to be missing an important point. What's the company's business model? Free software with tech support for $500 per year? That's not a billion dollar idea. How about the point made that they intend to offer appliances and system blueprints?
So, it's not really about reusing your old PCs, except for really small companies, start-ups or 3rd worlders. Vyatta readily admits that ultimate performance and absolute reliability does require very careful selection of components and careful engineering. Can it be done with OTS components? I think so.
The product is essentially a Linux Kernel with a routing stack designed to run on an X86 processor based platform. Almost every network appliance I've studied over the past decade has been based upon the same concept. It's a recognized commodity HW plan, one that most companies are comfortable with, even if they're not aware of it.
The question is whether they can produce appliances and reference platforms (tested HW configs) that can be replicated and whether these devices can be sold for less than what a "Name Brand" router costs on E-Bay.
MAXIMIZE REVENUE
Good guess. As someone else said, "Business 101"
Actually, in my discussions with Microsoft folks over the past couple of years, one concept has grown in importance. One that summarizes the 12 points - "Play nice with others"
There has been a growing recognition within Microsoft that they can't always win and the can't win every contest. But in those areas where they want to compete and eventually and hopefully win, if they can't win out of the box, they better play fair with the other kids or they won't be allowed to play. Microsoft can't take the ball, go home and sulk.
Winning in every contest is still a driving force at Microsoft. It should remain so, as it should for every business. Regardless of other factors, including the need to collaborate with competitors to provide complete technology solutions, it's a business imperative to want to win every deal and demolish the competition. OTOH, the best thing for every business is strong competitors who drive you to improve.
The worst case is what's happened to the US auto industry. For over a half century, Chrysler, Ford and GM really didn't compete on product. They competed for market share with products that were nearly identical - differentiating themselves by flash and marketing and price points rather than innovation and technological advancement. When macro-economic forces (oil shock of the 70's) awakened the US public to other possibilities, the innovative Japanese companies made their move and as we know the landscape changed completely. That the US makers still haven't figured it out shows how hard it is to actually compete. (This is a vast over simplification, intended to illustrate the value of true competition.)
What we're seeing now is the maturing of the PC industry. While Microsoft dominates as the OS platform (and Apple won the interface war - CLI vs. GUI), and X86 has won the processor wars (at least for the present - who knows what will emerge in the future?), desktop Linux (in several flavors) and Mac OS are both making their presence felt and are not considered as serious or worthwhile alternative choices for many more instances that even two years ago. Open Office/Star Office and web hosted apps are now considered viable alternatives to MS Office. FireFox (and Opera and Safari) are considered valid browser alternatives. Do these competitors have gigantic market shares, threatening the hegemon? No. But the obvious quality and utility of these and dozens of other examples has forces Microsoft (and Cisco and IBM and Oracle and any other major vendor faced with similar competition) to improve their products, their services and support, their marketing and sales methods and pricing and their willingness to "interoperate" with their competitors.
Microsoft, and all the major vendors, always PR that they're goal is to take care of their customers. At this moment in history, the way to do that is to; collaborate, interoperate, play nice with others. And the result of this supposed new go to market strategy is, as it should be:
MAXIMIZE REVENUE
I wish I hadn't used all my modpoints. What a ripe opportunity. This is serious stuff. Here I am at almost 7PM, watching the news on TV, and I'm wasting my time at Slashdot! Damn.
For your stated purpose you might find that upcoming boxes from Yellow Machine might be a good fit. Up to 3 GB and built-in streaming and mostly automatic discovery and automation. Pricing seems to be in line with hardware costs with what I, a genuine cheepskate, would consider reasonable.
The new models, about which I am writing, are starting to hit the market this month, with the really interesting ones coming in the fall and so forth.
This is not an endorsement, just information, as I have not yet tested the new boxes - I expect to received the current models in the next couple of weeks and will continue to evaluate them as they come out.
I agree. I haven't bothered to look, so forgive me if he's already commented, but I'm really curious about Bob Metcalfe's thoughts. He was an early advocate for charging for this kind of access - use more pay more. Even though I didn't agree with him then and may not now, if he's not saying I told you so, his insights might be very valuable in the current context.
I hate to defend Verizon or any of the carriers, but come on. Competition in this business means giving your competitors all but free access to your very significant investment in cable, right's of way, poles, central and POP equipment, distribution equipment etc, for essentially free.
It's only competition if someone else is willing to go through the process of obtaining rights of way - today the biggest cost - and all the rest and competing directly. It's generally no in a community's interest to allow someone to run new power/phone poles, cables, etc for a new vendor. That's the reason cable and voice companies have monopolies today.
OTOH, that Verizon tends to rip us off... you bet. That they should have competition. Definitely. But their business model has changed significantly over the past decade and a half. They used to charge by the minute for their lines. Now it's all flat rate and fixed fees. They've had to completely rebuild their infrastructure and the deal with competitors such as cable, IP over power lines and soon long distance wireless and in cities, free WiFi
Get over it. In a few years, the whole equation will change again. The business models will once again need to be revised and new competitors will appear. This is a whole new world. The major carriers are still going to have to provide universal service, 911 and all the rest. They're still much more reliable than any alternative for POTS and the fact that you don't need electricity locally to make a POTS call is still a reason to keep a line no matter what you use for broadband.
Our personal thoughts about Microsoft, Pro or Con, are not that relevant in the larger scheme of things. If we look at Microsoft's total suite of products as a fairly well integrated (and improving) stack of platforms, tools and user interfaces for collaborative work, then the move to Software as a Service is both logical and perhaps ultimately the way everyone will go.
There are some many possible threads here that it's not possible to give a coherent discussion when I'm here at work, but here are some of the ideas that come to mind as an advantage of the concept from a somewhat Microsoft centric perspective:
Shortness of time limits clarity on these ideas. Resolving them in our discussions here can be fun, but I think Microsoft should pay us for the privlege. Don't you?
These are all areas where Microsoft can bring a very rich user experience that will drive the competitors to greatly improve their offerings. It will also force Microsoft to be more open and accessible to other vendor's products, solutions and open standards. Resolving all the issues involved will take a long time. I've been involved with these discussions for over a dozen years now. I expect it will take another dozen for these things to work as well as we imagine them to.
There's another point that's been made by others too. Moving from a license per box to a license per use and even mostly free stuff business model will be painful. Look at Novell. One of their biggest revenue problems is that the move to FOSS has occurred more quickly than they expected driving revenues down faster than they'd planned and could adjust for.
Microsoft will feel similar pain, but is learning from all the pioneers how not to get shot in the back. It is what they are best at
It's not sports. It's sexual promiscuity. Back when teen sex was more mental that actual (post Sputnik 1950's and 1960's), science education in secondary schools was rising, the quality that education high and the subsequent advances from US scientists and engineers brought us the technologies without which I couldn't write this comment or even have the place to comment. Now even nerdy kids get laid. Why focus on science?
I suspect that some of the impetus for this comes from Scientific Atlantic (now owned by Cisco). They make settop boxes and DVRs. Their DVRs are the ones supplied by Time Warner cable, and perhaps Cablevision. Among the products in their line are DVRs that can record up to two channels at a time for each of up to 4 set top boxes. This means that you can record and/or watch up to 8 shows at a time in your home.
I think what makes the broadcasters crazy is that this can have all sorts of effects on how ratings are captured, how advertisers pay, how TV shows are used. While they're talking about the IP issues, I think the real fear is not being in control of the economics of broadcasting.
As other have pointed out, from a consumer perspective, this technology is what those of us who watch lots of TV want. I have two DVRs, one on each of my 2 TVs, and wish I could see what was recorded on one unit on the other. I'm not alone in this.
It'll work out. We'll pay more. Get less. The american way.
You hit on the main reason for unions: collective bargaining with emphasis on collective. While not relevant in small companies, perhaps, having the negotiation leverage of collective bargaining is often the only recourse to not being exploited.
I've seen so many geeks happy to be making around six figures but working 90 hour weeks. They don't realise that their real wages are about 40% of their gross if they were to work a 40 hour week. They're being exploited. Period. Just like their ancestors were over a century ago.
There's a column by Tom Yager in the current (5/8/06 issue) of Infoworld that talks about this subject from an interesting perspective: that server based applications and virtualization of the servers and by extension the applications so that thin clients may be all that's required in certain applications.
I can't say whether your environment would benefit, but it's another way of looking at the question.
It seems that the issues discussed are resoved with some of the collaborative suites on the market. They're for business, not home use, but to a degree collaboration is a "work" thing.
I'm familiar (through research and a bit of testing) with three of these suites: Oracle Collaborative Suite, MS Sharepoint and IBM Workplace. These all share certain similarities: They link messaging (e-mail, IM, Voice and in some cases FAX), document management, threaded discussions or forums, presense (where you are or whether and how you're connected) scheduling (calendars), web meetings and or teleconferencing, and so forth. Not every product has or supports every feature and they are mostly for larger organizations with deep pockets.
It would seem that we're asking the wrong question. It's not which single program is best for collaboration. It should be: what sort of collaborative work environment will meet one's needs? With good integration between components, the environment should enable collaboration with all the different sorts of persons/roles that we encounter allowing each user the liberty to use the tools that best fit their needs while not limiting collaborative access beyond security and privacy contraints set by policy and users.
Netflix, of course, doesn't have stores. But where I live, neither does Blockbuster. FWIW, Netflix especially caused my incredibly great local rental store to go out of business. So for my part of the world - Brookly Heights, in NYC - the options are pretty limited. For all intents and purposes running out to the store isn't that practicle. OTOH, I do have Netflix (3 movies at a time plan) plus several premium cable channels, plus the premium On-Demand channels plus the pay per view and pay per view on-demand channels, plus DVRs. We also have a couple of hundred DVDs we've bought. While we too suffer from the occasional 500 channels with nothing to watch syndrome, it's not a big issue. If worse comes to worse, I can surf the web or even read a book!. There is a trick to using these services. As has been mentioned, if you don't have the time to watch your little cache of films you don't see the price advantage of the subscription, so you have to turn over your films, or accept occasionally swallowing the month's fee. As for NetFlix throttling excessive use - I think that 11 or so a month figure is accurate - what's the problem? They're doing it, they say, to prevent copiers from getting masses of disks and copying them and perhaps bootlegging them. They're only protecting themselves from an exploitation attack that damages their business. They may also be getting pressure from the studios too. If you are watching a dozen movies a month with a plan that compensates them adequately, they won't bother you. I was going to say, "If you're watching a dozen movies a month, get a life!" But I watch far more than that myself. I think I have a life.
You don't state how many users you have, whether you're using the VPN for site to site or user access, but: I just read about the Sonicwall SSL-VPN 200. Since its SSL it doesn't need a client installed on your users machines and is much easier to configure than the Cisco. For Windows users, there's even an applet that allows TCP/IP applcications to connect to their servers. I've not tested it, but for $600 bucks it's not to bad a deal and Sonicwall has always made good hardware. If you already have a firewall, this could be a good bet. We're using a low end Cisco PIX - the 510 with the Cisco VPN client. It works too. We generally only have one or two people connecting through the VPN at any one time.
You and several others comment on ""Google is actually the first company with a brand that is built entirely of stem cells: able to grow and develop into whatever form it sees fit."
..."
I think you're missunderstanding the point of the "stem cell" metaphor: That most of the products/services that Google is offering aren't solutions themselves, but rather are means to solutions which remain in the hands of the users or perhaps more approrpriately, independent developers.
Google Earth is fun. Building applications on top of it, whether something as mundane as HBO's Sopranos marketing effort, or more interesting like the Nike jogging paths is what's interesting. All of these things subsist on a Google platform. In this case it's Google Earth. From another view it might be Maps, or Froogle, or
That's what the stem cell idea is about. Google is a platform vendor (See Dave Winer for the definition I'm using). In fact, extending the metophor, the Google brand is the platform and each nacent cell of a product/service are the meta-APIs of the platform.
FWIW, AMD has recognized problems with motherboards. Since they don't make them themselves there's lots of variation in design, capabilities and quality control. AMD and Radion and ATI have all initiated programs to bring better qualtity control and consistancy to motherboards for AMD processors. Most of these issues are seen in server class rather than desktop class boards, but the problems are still there. At this point, components and drivers are the main cause of system crashes on X86 boxes. The better the quality of the components the more reliable the computer. Remember, these problems may not appear to be hardware related too. They may seem to be caused by software - blame Microsoft! In order to support the performance capabilities of the next generation of processors all of the components from the big ones like memory and NICs and Storage contollers, to the less obvious ones like mother board layer construction will need to be top-notch.
The aspect of this that's always annoyed me is enterprise purchasing. Buy a 100 or a 1000 or 10,000 PCs and you get 100 or a 1000 or 10,000 Windows Licenses. Installed. But as an enterprise customer you don't want that individual key'd license. You want a bulk license that you can load onto the machines with Ghost or any other of the many tools for building uniform desktops. You therefore need to buy a Microsoft volume license of some sort. You've paid twice for Windows. Most companies either accept this or ignore it as a cost of business. But it does add about $150 to $180 per machine to the acquisition price. With a business PC costing well under a $1000 today, that's a big hit. Just a gripe.
Functional Needs Analysis - or a product spec. If I understand the original point and the comments correctly, the problem with most collaboration software is that it gets in the way of collaborating. E-mail is comfortable, allows one to perform several tasks within a single interface and is relatively low impact for the end user. Most collaboration environments are the opposite. Sounds like the ideal would be to enable the most wanted collaboration features within an e-mail client environment. Sort of like Lotus Notes? or Outlook on Exchange? But with more user (or corp IT) selectable features. So the question aren't more complex collaborative tools successful, but why aren't we using all that processor power and 'smart' platform architectures to manage the collaborative requirements we may have within the software environments we're most comfortable. I suggest that this is where Microsoft has been going with Office System. (I think it's called Office 2007 now.) Enabling groups to collaborate in organized (SharePoint Portal Server) or ad hoc (SharePoint Services) manners within the office suite of products they use whether Word, Excel, PowerPoint or their more complex and specialize brethren; Project, Visio, Access and so forth is a terrific goal. From Microsoft's perspective the only way to get this to work transparently on the desktop for the average information worker (as opposed to knowledge worker - marketing speak that describes cultural attitudes towards people) is through a mostly proprietary architecture. Being able to interact with MS Office System without having specific MS Client Programs or even MS Server Programs would be ideal. Microsoft should be more open on the APIs involved and abide by and contribute without control freakouts to open file formats to enable this accessibility. Microsoft shouldn't have to provide support to users and vendors beyond what's required for clean open-ness and a willingness to fix those things that don't work as expected. Ahh my fantacies.
Actually it's not a ploy to sell more licenses, but to defend the license sales they've already made. Both MS and Intel/AMD realize that through virtualization they're going to sell less units. But if you can sell an OS license at $4K instead of $800 (the difference at retail of Windows Server 2003 Standard and Enterprise editions) you're making more than 4 times the revenue for what is essentially the same thing.
Similarly, Intel and AMD (and their OEMs) can make more profits from a higher end processor being used for servers in virtualized environments than they would from commodity processor based servers (read as single core vs. dual core with today's products).
In both cases the vendors know they're going to sell fewer units, but if they make more money for each unit, they may still make their numbers.
Conversely, this also lowers the acquisition cost delta between proprietary OS (Windows, Max OS X) and open source (Linux, BSD). If you can buy supported licenses for 1/4 the previous price you're used to and you purchase at least some supported licenses from Novell or Red Hat, the TCO argument gets harder to make from the Linux side and easier to obscure from the Windows side.
I've been studying these technologies for a while now. It's only recently that processor power has reached the point that an x86 powered computer had the processor performance to overcome the inherent design limitation historically imposed by design decisions made by IBM and subsequently Microsoft and Intel that can make use of all the power available in the processors themselves. For a multitude of reasons (off topic) this power is irrelevant to most home users and business users of pcs. More importantly this power is irrelevant to the majority of server purposes. It's well known that most servers used in business are running at much less than 20% utilization levels. And that's with old boxes. This means that buying a new server with current technology results in a box running at levels as low as 5 or 10% utilization. Why bother? Enter virtualization. With virtualization a single box can replace 4, 7 16, 20 or more servers. Not that good for IntelDellIBMHP etc, but great for you and me. Less electricity needed, less cables, less everything. The only factor holding this back is licensing costs. If you can reduce those costs too, wow. Microsoft allows a single $4K Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition license to support up to four instances. If you don't have to pay extra for virtualization software, then the price starts to be very competitive with supported Linux licensing. More importantly it makes virtualization a standard way of doing things. The real question is what happens to the open source community when the development of free tools like Xen loose their support fee value when competing with a more mature platform that costs the same thing. We're not there yet, but it will happen. In a year or three.
or you will become what you appear to be. (Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night) If you look like a bum, you'll probably be treated like one. Unless you have an entourage and some fame (not notoriety). It all has to do with comfort. If you have to meet with suits regularly, in their environment, they'll be much more comfortable if you look something like them. If nothing else its a sign of respect. If they're coming to your cave, and they're in a suit they'll feel out of place, too. Business suits are actually egalitarian costumes. A dark suit, reasonably well tailored and clean, looks pretty much the same to all but the most fashion conscious. A $100 suit works as well as a $3000 one. (I won't go into the psychological affect of wearing a custom made suit.) If everone is waring a dark suit and a white shirt and a tie eveyone at least appears equal. Smoothes out the hierarchal and machismo affect. BTW, I have longish hair (most of the time) a beard and prefer polo shirts and chinos. In fact I only own one suit, no sport jackets, and my ties are Garcia. I regularly meet with senior executives from major tech companies. I try, when I can to at least where a sport shirt instead of a polo.