Uh...so why will these services necessarily be too small for music or video? I can't think of any reason why that would be true - at least in the medium term. Storage is closing in on "free" (as in beer). A decent PC comes with 500 GB of hard disc space. Why can't MSFT or Google afford to offer a TB of storage for any user? The cost to them over time will be very low.
So, let me get this right. You suggest something sleazy MAY be going on but don't really have any proof. Hmm... Sounds a lot like the same dirty tricks that Republicans pull in political campaigns. Make an unsubstantiated claim and worry about the accuracy later because the claim itself does the damage. Sleazy.
The Quote: "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF."
What a rediculous statement. Bill Gates Sr. has not been involved with Preston, Gates, Ellis for years. For Perens to try to suggest some kind of MSFT connection with Abramoff via Preston Gates is silly and dishonest. He should be ashamed of himself.
Silly ISP to use Exchange this way. Exchange is more than capable of handling huge volumes. Microsoft runs on Exchange, duh, and they have more than 100,000 mailboxes. eBay has more than 10,000 email accounts running on Exchange with users all over the world. They run all of those accounts from three locations and cut the number of servers they needed by 70% with Exchange 2003. Look at http://download.microsoft.com/documents/customerev idence/11780_ebay_wss_case_study.doc for details.
By the way, MSFT coincidentally announced an Exchange Hosted Service offering that might be more appropriate for the ISP. For more details go to: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar0 6/03-29EHSPR.mspx
IBM is a services company that wishes it was a software company b/c software is more profitable. Trying to re-focus on software by getting customres to switch fom Exchange to Notes is...what's the word?...a joke. Exchange takes seats from Notes every day of the week. Thousands of them.
IBM is also a dinosaur. It's ironic that this campaign is beign announced a week or so after MSFT announced their "People Ready" campaign. IBM's message: leave it to us, we'll take care of you with our services arm and the software we cobble together from closed/open source. Microsoft's message: we believe peole are at the center of things. Enabling people to do more is what we (MSFT) are about. Talk about a contrast in visions...
More at http://notaprguy.wordpress.com/.
What Microsoft said last week is that they won't launch Windows Vista until after Christmas. By that they mean the broad public launch with the OS on millions of new PC's. They also said that they'll finish the code in the fall...about two weeks later than the original target date...but that date would not give their OEM partners and the retail channel time to get new systems with the OS ready for broad retail availibility. Rather than have a wierd mishmash of PC's running XP and others running Vista, they decided to delay the broad consumer launch until after the holiday. I'm sure the powers that be at MSFT aren't happy about missing christmas sales but this announcement is not a significant delay in the completion of the code.
They talked about moving to Windows and said, basically, that the costs roughly in line with Linux when you take into account administration/management costs and that MSFT was bending over backwards to meet their needs. They liked MSFT's customer service. They like ASP.NET because of the capabilities it provides. They like MSFT's vision and...most important of all...their customers liked the results when they used Windows hosting sevices.
They can ship gold disks to businesses as soon as Vista is done in the fall. But getting it pre-installed onto millions of new PCs and getting those PC's otu to retailers takes time. I guess they decided it would be better to have the entire channel filled with PC's runing Vista than having a wierd mix of Vista and XP systems.
I know I'm way late to this discussion and admit to not reading many of the 800+ posts but I did read yours: the first.:). First, I'll say that I'm a staunch democrat and no fan of GW. As a matter of fact, I pretty much dispise the man. That said, I'd take exception to one of your key points: "The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers..." Although many of the people who are getting the jobs that are being outsourced from teh US are getting abused b/c of lax labor and environmental laws, I'd bet that most of them think they're benefitting. The positive and largely unintended byproduct of oursourcding is that it will, over time, drive up the standard of living for billions of people in deveoping countries. Outsourcing is, in that respect, an eqeualizer. That doesn't mean it is all good but I personally think that Americans and others from developed countries live too high on the hog compared to the ROW.
Ummm... No, wrong again. You will still be able to view any content with Windows Vista. To view HD content in all its HD glory you'll need a new monitor.
You may notice that when you go to a "big box" retailer that sells PC's that more and more of the PC's are coming with Windows XP Media Center. The retailers like this b/c systems running Media Center are typically more powerful and, therefore, probably more profitable. MSFT likes this because they get a higher royalty for the Media Center version of Windows. I'd expect this trend to continue with Vista. More and more consumers will end up buying PC's with the media center version b/c of this.
This isn't rocket science or some nefarious plot on Microsoft's part. They're jsut doing what any good product company does: make it more attractive to buy the more expensive product and make more money in the process. Same as buying a car. Sure, you can buy the "base model" if you want but don't you REALLY want the model with the built in navigation system, satelite radio and electric seats?
This is easy to check. I just went to www.dell.com, clicked "Medium to Large Business" as my category and clicked on Blade Servers. The first server in the list is the PowereEdge 1855. Click on that and then hit "Customize." Scroll down to "Operating System."
At the bottom of the list is what they refer to as "No Operating System Microsoft Configuration." Quite honestly, I have no idea what "Microsoft Configuration" is and Dell doesn't say. But there is no price for no OS. All of the other OS choices (there are dozens including multiple flavors of Windows Server, RedHat Linux and Suse Linus with varying prices.
The bottom line is that if you want to buy a "naked" server from Dell it is easy and there is no additional price. If you want to add Windows Server, pay up. If you want to add a flavor of RedHat Linux, pay up. Etc.
Another post modded "Insightful" that lacks accuracy and insight.
SNIP
You know how much a typical *Linux* server costs? Right. In most cases, nothing. Sure, you can get Red Hat Enterprise and use a commercial Apache replacement and a commercial ssh, but that isn't what most Linux servers I'm aware of are running.
This survey includes hardware and software. If the software is no cost it doesn't really matter. If you know where I can new hardware for free, please send me the link.
Show me where I can buy a free Sun server and I'll be first in line. Last I checked it still cost thousands of dollars for decent Sun hardware. You're confusing things: this study combines hardware and software.
Show me how this manifests itself in the real world. Go to www.dell.com and go through the process of purchasing a new server (or servers) and show me how Dell somehow encourages sales of Windows. I just don't see it. What you say makes sense in theory but it doesn't play out that way in reality.
To be perfectly clear, Dell is NOT required to sell as many Windows licenses as they do boxes. That was a license scheme that got thrown out...can't remembert exactly but I think close to 8 years ago. As others have pointed out, you can buy a Dell system with no OS, with Linux flavors or with Windows...no questions asked and no extra hoops to jump through. Try it yourself. Go to www.dell.com and pretend to order a new server. There is no "pushing" of Windows taking place. Dell would royally piss off their customers if they did so.
Ok, I'll bite. Your argument is, in short: there are more Windows servers being sold because the old Unix systems running on big honkin' old Sun boxes. I believe you. But it's only fair. Those big honking Sun boxes cost 10 or 20 times as the Lintel boxes. If you spent $100,000 or much more on a big server from Sun you sure as hell use it until it's covered with cob webs. If you buy a $10,000 or $20,000 Lintel box you use it until it's ready to be retired and then you move on because you've amortized your costs. Maybe...just maybe...this is why IT is running toward commodity sytems and "big iron" is shrinking slowly toward nothingness.
Ok, show me one computer science course that is paid for by Microsoft. I'll wait here until you find one. Really. Still waiting...
This change is because it's now a two horse race: Windows Servers versus Unix/Linux. "Old style" unix is declining and Windows is grabbing that share. It has nothing to do with Microsoft buying their way into academia and hoping that that will turn into sales once those fresh young faces graduate and get jobs in IT... Gimme a break.
Insightful! Come on mods! This is...how shall I say it politely?...total garbage. MSFT would never require this in their agreements with OEM's for obvious reasons (if you're slow...it's because they'd get sued for teh DOJ and just about everyone else). OEM's would never do this because their in the business of making their customers happy and giving them what they want. I challenge you to call 5-10 OEM's and pretend to order a server and find ONE that says "sorry but you have to have Windows Server with that..."
Mods, please get real.
Unix servers on average cost significantly more than Windows servers. Even educated people seem to have trouble getting it through their heads that the cost of the cost of the software is not the most significant cost in setting up a server.
Also, I think you're right that you'll see more Windows servers but it's probably not because of more teaching facilities focusing on ASP.NET and the like. It's because IT decision makers (the people with the $$) are going with Windows for a whole variety of reasons (works for them, good TCO, good integration with the rest of their stack etc.)
Ok, I'll bite. The current Sharepoint is pretty clunky. I should know as I use it every day. Sharepoint in Office 12/2007 is greatly improved - I've seen it demoed (real code, not vaporware). One of the features that will enable some of the scenarios people are talking about in this thread is really good offline document support. One of the big problems with Sharepoint now is that it's pretty good for storing documents but you can only access them when you're (1) online and (2) have access to the network where the Sharepoint sits. With Sharepoint 12 you can take document libraries offline and sync when you're back on the network. Pretty cool.
That doesn't mean that I want a Web-based tool/app for document creation. All of the examples mentioned in the ZDNET article are pale imitations of good old fashioned Windows or Mac applications. For regular users of Word or PPT or Excel or Outlook or the non-MSFT versions will never (well, never say never but...) be willing to use web based versions for every day use.
Another comment modded "insightful" that is just plain wrong. There is no requirement that users have a special monitor to view "secure" windows media content. They have, apparently, put in some code that will not allow you to view high resolution (hi def?) content in its highest resolution without the new displays because of the risk of people ripping off the content in the high resolution format. You can argue with that if you want but the point is that this post is just wrong. Who modded it insightful? If you mod that insightful then you should mod this comment insightful too:
Linux will not allow you to view "secure" Quicktime movies without a special monitor. [
See, I said it therefore it must be fact and - of course - is also insightful.
I can just imagine Google's competitors being similarly subpeona'd and making the business case to cooperate with the government solely in the hopes that their cooperation forces Google's cooperation.
That's a pretty rediculous statement. By emphasizing the word "solely" you undermind your arument. Reasonable people (I know, few and far between on/.) could argue that MSFT and Yahoo might comply in the hope that if Google complies that they might gain insight into Google's trade secrets - but that's a stretch. But to suggest they'd comply SOLELY for that reason is silly. There are lots of good reasons to comply. I can think of a two obvious reasons: (1) by complying they might help the govt learn whether their anti child porn efforts are working (2) by complying they avoid unnecessary legal tangling with the govt
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Uh...so why will these services necessarily be too small for music or video? I can't think of any reason why that would be true - at least in the medium term. Storage is closing in on "free" (as in beer). A decent PC comes with 500 GB of hard disc space. Why can't MSFT or Google afford to offer a TB of storage for any user? The cost to them over time will be very low.
So, let me get this right. You suggest something sleazy MAY be going on but don't really have any proof. Hmm... Sounds a lot like the same dirty tricks that Republicans pull in political campaigns. Make an unsubstantiated claim and worry about the accuracy later because the claim itself does the damage. Sleazy.
The Quote: "It's interesting to note that Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist implicated in scandal with Republican Tom Delay, was employed by Bill Gates' dad's law firm "Preston Gates", a political proxy for Microsoft. Microsoft succeeded in lobbying both Republicans and Democrats to oppose ODF." What a rediculous statement. Bill Gates Sr. has not been involved with Preston, Gates, Ellis for years. For Perens to try to suggest some kind of MSFT connection with Abramoff via Preston Gates is silly and dishonest. He should be ashamed of himself.
Silly ISP to use Exchange this way. Exchange is more than capable of handling huge volumes. Microsoft runs on Exchange, duh, and they have more than 100,000 mailboxes. eBay has more than 10,000 email accounts running on Exchange with users all over the world. They run all of those accounts from three locations and cut the number of servers they needed by 70% with Exchange 2003. Look at http://download.microsoft.com/documents/customerev idence/11780_ebay_wss_case_study.doc for details.
By the way, MSFT coincidentally announced an Exchange Hosted Service offering that might be more appropriate for the ISP. For more details go to: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar0 6/03-29EHSPR.mspx
IBM is a services company that wishes it was a software company b/c software is more profitable. Trying to re-focus on software by getting customres to switch fom Exchange to Notes is...what's the word?...a joke. Exchange takes seats from Notes every day of the week. Thousands of them. IBM is also a dinosaur. It's ironic that this campaign is beign announced a week or so after MSFT announced their "People Ready" campaign. IBM's message: leave it to us, we'll take care of you with our services arm and the software we cobble together from closed/open source. Microsoft's message: we believe peole are at the center of things. Enabling people to do more is what we (MSFT) are about. Talk about a contrast in visions... More at http://notaprguy.wordpress.com/.
What Microsoft said last week is that they won't launch Windows Vista until after Christmas. By that they mean the broad public launch with the OS on millions of new PC's. They also said that they'll finish the code in the fall...about two weeks later than the original target date...but that date would not give their OEM partners and the retail channel time to get new systems with the OS ready for broad retail availibility. Rather than have a wierd mishmash of PC's running XP and others running Vista, they decided to delay the broad consumer launch until after the holiday. I'm sure the powers that be at MSFT aren't happy about missing christmas sales but this announcement is not a significant delay in the completion of the code.
They talked about moving to Windows and said, basically, that the costs roughly in line with Linux when you take into account administration/management costs and that MSFT was bending over backwards to meet their needs. They liked MSFT's customer service. They like ASP.NET because of the capabilities it provides. They like MSFT's vision and...most important of all...their customers liked the results when they used Windows hosting sevices.
They can ship gold disks to businesses as soon as Vista is done in the fall. But getting it pre-installed onto millions of new PCs and getting those PC's otu to retailers takes time. I guess they decided it would be better to have the entire channel filled with PC's runing Vista than having a wierd mix of Vista and XP systems.
I know I'm way late to this discussion and admit to not reading many of the 800+ posts but I did read yours: the first. :). First, I'll say that I'm a staunch democrat and no fan of GW. As a matter of fact, I pretty much dispise the man. That said, I'd take exception to one of your key points: "The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers ..." Although many of the people who are getting the jobs that are being outsourced from teh US are getting abused b/c of lax labor and environmental laws, I'd bet that most of them think they're benefitting. The positive and largely unintended byproduct of oursourcding is that it will, over time, drive up the standard of living for billions of people in deveoping countries. Outsourcing is, in that respect, an eqeualizer. That doesn't mean it is all good but I personally think that Americans and others from developed countries live too high on the hog compared to the ROW.
Ummm... No, wrong again. You will still be able to view any content with Windows Vista. To view HD content in all its HD glory you'll need a new monitor.
You may notice that when you go to a "big box" retailer that sells PC's that more and more of the PC's are coming with Windows XP Media Center. The retailers like this b/c systems running Media Center are typically more powerful and, therefore, probably more profitable. MSFT likes this because they get a higher royalty for the Media Center version of Windows. I'd expect this trend to continue with Vista. More and more consumers will end up buying PC's with the media center version b/c of this.
This isn't rocket science or some nefarious plot on Microsoft's part. They're jsut doing what any good product company does: make it more attractive to buy the more expensive product and make more money in the process. Same as buying a car. Sure, you can buy the "base model" if you want but don't you REALLY want the model with the built in navigation system, satelite radio and electric seats?
This is easy to check. I just went to www.dell.com, clicked "Medium to Large Business" as my category and clicked on Blade Servers. The first server in the list is the PowereEdge 1855. Click on that and then hit "Customize." Scroll down to "Operating System." At the bottom of the list is what they refer to as "No Operating System Microsoft Configuration." Quite honestly, I have no idea what "Microsoft Configuration" is and Dell doesn't say. But there is no price for no OS. All of the other OS choices (there are dozens including multiple flavors of Windows Server, RedHat Linux and Suse Linus with varying prices. The bottom line is that if you want to buy a "naked" server from Dell it is easy and there is no additional price. If you want to add Windows Server, pay up. If you want to add a flavor of RedHat Linux, pay up. Etc.
Another post modded "Insightful" that lacks accuracy and insight. SNIP You know how much a typical *Linux* server costs? Right. In most cases, nothing. Sure, you can get Red Hat Enterprise and use a commercial Apache replacement and a commercial ssh, but that isn't what most Linux servers I'm aware of are running. This survey includes hardware and software. If the software is no cost it doesn't really matter. If you know where I can new hardware for free, please send me the link.
Show me where I can buy a free Sun server and I'll be first in line. Last I checked it still cost thousands of dollars for decent Sun hardware. You're confusing things: this study combines hardware and software.
Show me how this manifests itself in the real world. Go to www.dell.com and go through the process of purchasing a new server (or servers) and show me how Dell somehow encourages sales of Windows. I just don't see it. What you say makes sense in theory but it doesn't play out that way in reality.
To be perfectly clear, Dell is NOT required to sell as many Windows licenses as they do boxes. That was a license scheme that got thrown out...can't remembert exactly but I think close to 8 years ago. As others have pointed out, you can buy a Dell system with no OS, with Linux flavors or with Windows...no questions asked and no extra hoops to jump through. Try it yourself. Go to www.dell.com and pretend to order a new server. There is no "pushing" of Windows taking place. Dell would royally piss off their customers if they did so.
Ok, I'll bite. Your argument is, in short: there are more Windows servers being sold because the old Unix systems running on big honkin' old Sun boxes. I believe you. But it's only fair. Those big honking Sun boxes cost 10 or 20 times as the Lintel boxes. If you spent $100,000 or much more on a big server from Sun you sure as hell use it until it's covered with cob webs. If you buy a $10,000 or $20,000 Lintel box you use it until it's ready to be retired and then you move on because you've amortized your costs. Maybe...just maybe...this is why IT is running toward commodity sytems and "big iron" is shrinking slowly toward nothingness.
Ok, show me one computer science course that is paid for by Microsoft. I'll wait here until you find one. Really. Still waiting... This change is because it's now a two horse race: Windows Servers versus Unix/Linux. "Old style" unix is declining and Windows is grabbing that share. It has nothing to do with Microsoft buying their way into academia and hoping that that will turn into sales once those fresh young faces graduate and get jobs in IT... Gimme a break.
Insightful! Come on mods! This is...how shall I say it politely?...total garbage. MSFT would never require this in their agreements with OEM's for obvious reasons (if you're slow...it's because they'd get sued for teh DOJ and just about everyone else). OEM's would never do this because their in the business of making their customers happy and giving them what they want. I challenge you to call 5-10 OEM's and pretend to order a server and find ONE that says "sorry but you have to have Windows Server with that..." Mods, please get real.
Unix servers on average cost significantly more than Windows servers. Even educated people seem to have trouble getting it through their heads that the cost of the cost of the software is not the most significant cost in setting up a server. Also, I think you're right that you'll see more Windows servers but it's probably not because of more teaching facilities focusing on ASP.NET and the like. It's because IT decision makers (the people with the $$) are going with Windows for a whole variety of reasons (works for them, good TCO, good integration with the rest of their stack etc.)
Ok, I'll bite. The current Sharepoint is pretty clunky. I should know as I use it every day. Sharepoint in Office 12/2007 is greatly improved - I've seen it demoed (real code, not vaporware). One of the features that will enable some of the scenarios people are talking about in this thread is really good offline document support. One of the big problems with Sharepoint now is that it's pretty good for storing documents but you can only access them when you're (1) online and (2) have access to the network where the Sharepoint sits. With Sharepoint 12 you can take document libraries offline and sync when you're back on the network. Pretty cool. That doesn't mean that I want a Web-based tool/app for document creation. All of the examples mentioned in the ZDNET article are pale imitations of good old fashioned Windows or Mac applications. For regular users of Word or PPT or Excel or Outlook or the non-MSFT versions will never (well, never say never but...) be willing to use web based versions for every day use.
Hilarous.
Here are a few. Searched on "Windows Vista and Monitor and DRM" http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12201 http://crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews. jhtml?articleId=167101066
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/hd cp-vista.ars
Another comment modded "insightful" that is just plain wrong. There is no requirement that users have a special monitor to view "secure" windows media content. They have, apparently, put in some code that will not allow you to view high resolution (hi def?) content in its highest resolution without the new displays because of the risk of people ripping off the content in the high resolution format. You can argue with that if you want but the point is that this post is just wrong. Who modded it insightful? If you mod that insightful then you should mod this comment insightful too: Linux will not allow you to view "secure" Quicktime movies without a special monitor. [ See, I said it therefore it must be fact and - of course - is also insightful.
I can just imagine Google's competitors being similarly subpeona'd and making the business case to cooperate with the government solely in the hopes that their cooperation forces Google's cooperation. That's a pretty rediculous statement. By emphasizing the word "solely" you undermind your arument. Reasonable people (I know, few and far between on /.) could argue that MSFT and Yahoo might comply in the hope that if Google complies that they might gain insight into Google's trade secrets - but that's a stretch. But to suggest they'd comply SOLELY for that reason is silly. There are lots of good reasons to comply. I can think of a two obvious reasons: (1) by complying they might help the govt learn whether their anti child porn efforts are working (2) by complying they avoid unnecessary legal tangling with the govt