What I just don't get is that I hear this sort of argument all the time: "Until major manufacturers install it..."; "Until so-an-so, inc. opens their drivers up..."; "Until sucn and such video cards' documentation is released...";
To hear a lot of Linux advocates talk, it's simply a matter of "building it and they will come." So let's look at how this all hangs together:
There's a BUNCH of really smart people working on Linux.
According to many of those people, the big thing holding Linux back is that drivers for "closed" hardware such as video cards (nVidia, ATI) aren't available;
According to some of those same people, simply having a major manufacturer that sells preinstalled Linux on boxes
So why, for heaven's sake, has no enterprising geek:
Developed a completely open-driver, open-spec video card that can compete with the higher-end third-party cards available? Should sell like hotcakes, and help drive adoption of Linux, shouldn't it?
Started selling preinstalled Linux on boxes, and marketing it as fun, robust alternative to Windows? Again, should be an amazing success in business!
I'm serious here. There's a bunch of really smart people in the Linux community... if the only things holding Linux back are minor things like "nobody presently will sell it preinstalled... if they did, it would blow Windows out of the water," then how come nobody has done so?
You're partially right, but Linux wasn't made to be easy to use/learn. Functionality over user-friendliness. The ability for the program to do what it needs to do is considered more important than how easily the user can use the program - that can always be improved later, after the functionality is all there.
I'm asking this question in all seriousness, not trying to be a smartass, or spew flamebait or anything. But don't you think your statement quoted above implies that usability of Linux, for any but the most seasoned user, will always be a "moving target"? It seems to me that there's always going to be "another feature" that could be added, so do you foresee the people working on making Linux more usable always lagging a few steps behind? And if so, don't you see a problem with that? I mean, it's kind of like throwing a big party at your house with a great band & awesome food, and then not telling anybody what your address is, isn't it?
I'm genuinely curious what your take is on this... reading your other comments, you seem to know what the hell you're talking about, and you seem able to relate your opinions without resorting to the least-common-denominator/. responses like "Linux r0x0rz, U sux0rz n00b... l0l!"
In the paper you AND your employer sign verifying your employment before they give you the loan. Maybe not a term exactly- but certainly an implied expectation that you will HAVE a job to repay the loan, and they make your employer co-sign it.
Um. Employment verification is done to make sure that you're not obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently with no hope of repaying it. The bank has lots of little actuaries and statisticians crunching numbers, and they've found that -- based on a statistical analysis of past default / repayment data -- "MOST" people who have had a job for the last X years are "creditworthy" customers, who will, in all probability, be able to continue making the loan payments that they're signing on to make. The bank is not in the business of losing money, it's in the business of making money... so is this an unreasonable thing for them to ask? The employer simply says, "Yeah, he's worked here for the past 2 years." They're not making any guarantee that you'll continue working there for the next 48.
Agreed- so why verify employment to begin with? Why require two years employment with the same company before you even get the loan? The answer is because they expect you to keep making those payments on the 15th of the month- unemployment is no excuse.
No, the answer is that having been able to hold the same job for 2 years (not exactly that long a time to have held a job, really) makes you, statistically, quite likely to be able to continue making payments to the bank, and therefore you are a good investment, rather than a bad risk. Unemployment is an explanation for being unable to make a payment, but you're right -- it's no excuse. If you don't have sufficient cash reserves to weather a downturn in the market, and a couple months of unemployment, then you shouldn't buy a house. The bank isn't in business to lose money, as I may have already mentioned.
Let's be honest- with the 50% inflation in housing cost over the last 5 years, no American can afford the American Dream under "wise & responsible fiscal planning" anymore.
Depends on what you're calling the "American Dream," doesn't it? If the American Dream consists of a modestly sized house in a decent neighborhood, then it's quite possible to achieve that -- people do it every day on far less than the average IT worker makes. If the American dream consists of a 3000 sq ft loft on the upper west side, with a parking space for your ferrari and a helipad where your helicopter can pick you up to take you to your weekend home in the Hamptons, then no, most people won't achieve that.
NOBODY can afford the current housing market unless we all want to live in 8x10 shacks (and in many areas of the country, not even then!)
Yes, they can and do afford the current housing market, in LOTS of areas of the country. One of my friends & his wife, with a combined household income of about 55 - 60k/year, just bought a decent house about an hour outside of Boston, and they're quite comfortable and happy with it. Could they afford a place IN boston, or much closer to Boston? No, probably not. But it's *always* been expensive to live in/near the city. I don't know where you live, but I see young people successfully purchasing houses all the time around where I live.
But have you ever noticed that the so-called "American Dream" is based on stability (the newest home loans expect you to be in the same job for 50 years!), but American Jobs aren't?
Um. Where in their marketing literature do you see that one of the terms or conditions of the loan is that you hold the same job for 50 years?
I don't think it's unreasonable for a mortgage to demand that you to be able to make your payments for 50 years, if that's the term of the loan... but I don't think they're saying they expect you to stay at the same job, or with the same company for 50 years. How you make your payments is your concern, and as long as the bank gets their money on the 15th of the month, I don't think they really care who's paying you.
And let's be honest: if you take out a 50-year mortgage, you're probably stretching yourself beyond your means in order to afford a house you can't really afford given your current income level, and future income expectations. I've seen a couple friends get into trouble with some of the new-fangled ARMs and other niche mortgage products, and at the end of the day, what they're doing is stretching themselves to the limit with NO safety net in order to afford "more house". And that's not wise & responsible fiscal planning.
This is a really good point. Here's my Mac converstion anecdote:
My home PC that I used for about 3 years ran Windows XP; All in all, a reasonably good, if sometimes frustrating experience, to be honest. I'm not doing anything hardcore on my home system... email, web browsing, an occasional doc in word, quicken, itunes, instant messaging, web site maintenance, and some light-light-lite programming (mostly perl-based "use CGI;" stuff). At one point, I tried dual-booting it with Linux, to check what the state of the art was with Fedora Core 4. Linux was more frustrating in this sense -- I spent about three weeks configuring, searching Google for this-or-that error message, mucking about with drivers & upgrades, and finally got back to the state I was in with Windows -- it mostly worked, most of the time.
Then, my hard drive failed. Lucky me, I had backups... so no data loss. But at that point, I was thinking, "hmm... why not buy a new system, instead of replacing a hard drive in a 4 year old piece of hardware?" and I started looking around at Dell, HP, and then some of the Apple systems. When I saw how small and silent the Mini was, I was *really* interested -- my apartment isn't huge, and I'd like to use my space for more than housing computer equipment. And I have to be honest... after buying it, and getting converted over into the equivalent Mac programs, I haven't looked back, or even considered buying a new PC. The OS is stable, the applications that I use at home are available & work well (Mail, OpenOffice/x11, Firefox, Itunes, Quicken, Dreamweaver, Adium for IM, Skype...), and the system is silent, and takes up next to no space on my desktop. In short, I'm hooked because I don't have to fiddle constantly with security patches, configuration files, antivirus, hardware drivers, or anything else. I have more time to spend doing other things that are more fun & important to me.
Sure, I could have probably done some research and built a small form-factor Windows or Linux PC, but I would have spent TONS of time doing so (I am admittedly NOT a hardware guru, and so the research & work I would have done would have been considerable), and I would end up with the same windows & linux frustrations I dealt with previously.
And that's not to say that Mini is without its frustrations. But most of my frustrations so far have been a function of getting used to new keyboard shortcuts & importing data into new software. I like to think that I'm reasonably objective -- having used several Unix variants (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX), a couple Linux distros (Fedora Core, RedHat 6.x,7.x, Gentoo), and just about every release of Windows since NT 4.0, I don't think I qualify as a "cult of Mac" whiny fanboy. If you're not a gamer, and you don't enjoy fiddling with hardware and drivers, the Mini & OS X pretty much get it right, at least insofar as an "average" home user is concerned.
Profit is as profit does- they were looking at the short term rather than the long term.
Which I read as, "My project wasn't going to make any money for my company. But I'm bitter they pulled the plug because I wanted to finish it." Believe me, I sympathize -- I've been on projects that have been ultimately killed before, and it's always frustrating to see months of effort scrapped. But no manager or company in their right mind is going to kill a product that's commercially viable simply so they can make a quick 20k... not when the market for that product will make your company hundreds of thousands, or millions, or billions, in profit. That 20k quick hit stock sale would be worth MUCH more after releasing a blockbuster product.
Except for it was working in the beta test site- and in fact had increased profitability by 30% just by catching some wierd accounting that was going on.
And if that's the case, and not simple exaggeration-with-no-facts-because-it's-slashdot, then why would you not take the bull by the horns, recreate this project, and start marketing it yourself? If you wrote the code, and it was absolutely hands-down a killer app, then continuing to look for new corporate jobs when you had this money-making potential staring you in the face was pretty dumb.
Actually there's a third option you missed- a lesson I didn't learn until years later. By the stock market Any project that is not marketable within 4 months is a failure.
I don't follow your logic, but then... that's nothing new. I've seen wildly successful products that turn into complete cash cows for companies that took much longer than 4 months to develop. If you're saying that after 4 months of marketing and flogging a product, there's still no market for it, then you're probably right: a product that you can't GIVE away after 4 months of trying is a solution in search of a problem. In other words, a complete failure -- you haven't created anything that anyone finds useful. And if that's the case, then why *should* a company continue sinking money into a losing proposition? To massage your delicate ego, which has decided that any project you work on is great, and that if there's no market for it, it's because of bad marketing, stupid users, or some management conspiracy?
Because the bankruptcy court confiscated the sourcecode.
Which a smart, enterprising young man such as yourself could have offered to BUY (assets of a bankrupt company ARE often liquidated by the court to allow the creditors to recoup some of their lost money), or which a smart, enterprising young man such as yourself could have simply recreated. If the idea was that good, you could have easily brought it to market yourself, and made a fortune.
My apologies for conflating two of your separate storylines; but here's my understanding of how you've managed your career:
First Job! Killer App killed by PHB who wants a Miata!
2 weeks without job
Second Job! A year and a half of work, followed by layoffs!
Some time without a job
Third Job! Crappy Project for Six Months!
Fourth Job! 2.5 years of work, followed by unemployment!
Three Years of unemployment
Union only! I've given up.
That about covers it, no? It took you all this time to learn that the companies don't feel they "owe" you anything but a paycheck for as long as you stay productive, and if you start being a drain on them, or not contributing what they feel is enough, they'll send your sorry ass packing? And you're sitting there complaining about having no job, when since Job #1, a [according to you] great, killer, wonderful, profitable idea has been staring you in the face? Simply rewrite the source code, create a similar product, and go sell it. Create your OWN security... or to borrow a phrase that you're probably very familiar with given your/. i.d., "Workers control the means of pr
I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time swallowing your hard luck story.
If your project was destined for commercial success, and your company could have made a reasonable profit with it on the market, they wouldn't have pulled the plug on it. Have you considered the option that perhaps your product was simply no good, and:
either you just couldn't see it because you were so invested in the work that you were blinded to the simple fact that it was a solution in search of a problem?
or, your team was a bunch of arrogant prima donnas who figured you were going to rock the world, and ended up producing a crappy product that nobody would take for free, much less pay for?
If this product was truly destined for profitability, your PHB wouldn't have sold the product out for a measly 20k in profits to buy a fucking Miata, when that same stock would have been worth several times as much when your company's stock skyrocketed on the back of the success of your amazing new product.
Alternately, perhaps it is the case that The PHBs really were complete effing morons; In that case, they ran the company into the ground, and that's a hell of a shame, but if the project truly was a potential blockbuster, why not simply contact the developers who worked on it with you, start your own company, and bring the product to market? You'll make a killing, and can laugh at your PH-ex-B as you blow his doors off in your Ferrari on your commute back to your lovely home where your stunning wife & beautiful children live in complete comfort & security.
But yeah, I guess choosing 3 years of unemployment spent trying to find a unionized IT job is an equally reasonable response to handling the "money-sucking" responsibilities and the duty to your DNA that you seem to love talking about.
Two points that are fine semantic distinctions, but I think they're worth making in this discussion:
1. The UN & its Universal Declaration Of Human Rights does not "grant" rights -- my rights as a human are not the UN's, or anybody else's, to grant. If it's granted by someone, then that means someone has the "right" to take it away at their whim. Which makes what they've "granted" me a privilege. I don't recognize the UN's (or any government's) power to "grant" or "take away" *my* rights.
2. The UN's Universal Declaration of Humans Rights *recognizes* that humans have a basic right to earn their livings through productive work. It does not affirm that they have a "right" to a job, nor does it specify that everybody deserves a job. (Just because you have the "right" to vote, doesn't mean you HAVE to. In practice, what this means is that institutions should not (or may not, if your own government recognizes the UDHR as a binding part of its legal system) prevent you from obtaining a job based on your skills and abilities; Nor should you / may you be prevented from receiving reasonable compensation for doing that job. You have the *right* to work, and be productive. But nobody is obligated to *provide* you with that job, or pay you more than you're worth to them -- you must earn your job & your salary to gain it & keep it, all the UN UDHR simply states that nobody should be prevented by the government or other institutions from performing productive work if they choose to, or made to work as a slave for no pay.
ODF is the first opportunity for commercial and FOSS competition to break the Microsoft stranglehold on office formats.
And the only reason they had that "stranglehold" is because they spent the time and effort putting together a halfway decent Office package. What's at work here is called a network effect: the value of a product goes up in proportion to the number of people using it. If 90% of the people out there use Word, it's awfully difficult to get much use out of a non-compatible program, unless you deal strictly in hard-copy printouts. The only reason people have continued using Word is because -- until quite recently -- there really haven't been many *serious* competitors out there. As programs like KOffice, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, and others gain features and become more serious competitors, then yes, the formatting is a big deal. And what you see is this: ODF is winning, regardless of Microsoft's attempts to stop it.
I'll absolutely agree with you that the open standard is preferable for consumers, because everybody can use it, and it's a common interchange format. Companies like yours will benefit greatly, because you can export to a common format, and other people can edit that format. It makes the format more accessible to anybody who doesn't have the US$400 - 500 to spend on Office, which in turn increases the potential value of any Office document & program via the network effect... more benefit for consumers.
But to repeat myself -- what we can learn from ODF (and other successful open source projects) is that a good idea, and a technically sound idea, will tend to win in the marketplace in the long run. All of these projects are not succeeding because they're "anti-microsoft", they're succeeding because they're good. Microsoft cannot and has not squashed these "free" projects, because they can compete with Microsoft, and win on the merits of their usefulness. The fundamental point here (to the FOSS community in general) is: do what you do, and do it well... stop worrying about Microsoft. If your idea is good, and technically sound, people will come around to your way of thinking.
Quoted from link above, written by me earlier today in a discussion of ODF on slashdot:
[ . . . ] Until the FOSS community in general gets over this "victimized" stance they like to take whenever Microsoft attempts to compete with them, they're going to be perpetually hamstrung by ineffectiveness, and perpetually "almost great."
The success of ODF as a standard & in government adoption, as well as the examples of linux in the server space, perl, python, apache, ant, tomcat, and so many other FOSS products (my apologies if I've overlooked your favorites), should be seen as proof that the technically superior products DO tend to win out in the marketplace over the long run. Instead of screaming "Monopoly! Unfair competitive advantage! Illegal use of monopolistic practices!", open source advocates should simply go about their business, and make a better product than Microsoft can. There's plenty of examples... figure out what they're doing right, and apply those best practices to your own projects.
And let's be honest... if Microsoft said, "our products just aren't going to support the 802.11a standard (an open wireless networking standard) because it's too costly," that announcement would be greeted with a big yawn by most people. The only difference is, ODF is a cause celebre in the FOSS community, because lots of members of that community see it as a way to promote their own anti-microsoft agenda. Soul search a little, and read some of the comments people make here on slashdot... you'll see it's really hard to argue that that's not the case.
Thanks for providing me with an example of what I was talking about. Until the FOSS community in general gets over this "victimized" stance they like to take whenever Microsoft attempts to compete with them, they're going to be perpetually hamstrung by ineffectiveness, and perpetually "almost great."
The success of ODF as a standard & in government adoption, as well as the examples of linux in the server space, perl, python, apache, ant, tomcat, and so many other FOSS products (my apologies if I've overlooked your favorites), should be seen as proof that the technilcally superior products DO tend to win out in the marketplace over the long run. Instead of screaming "Monopoly! Unfair competitive advantage! Illegal use of monopolistic practices!", open source advocates should simply go about their business, and make a better product than Microsoft can. There's plenty of examples... figure out what they're doing right, and apply those best practices to your own projects.
And let's be honest... if Microsoft said, "our products just aren't going to support the 802.11a standard (an open wireless networking standard) because it's too costly," that announcement would be greeted with a big yawn by most people. The only difference is, ODF is a cause celebre in the FOSS community, because lots of members of that community see it as a way to promote their own anti-microsoft agenda. Soul search a little, and read some of the comments people make here on slashdot... you'll see it's really hard to argue that that's not the case.
I think releasing the plugin widely will (a) make the point that the OpenDocument goal isn't to kill Microsoft Office, it's to enable wide interoperability and allow competition in the office document space[...]
Wait... the goal of OpenDocument isn't to kill MSFT Office? Somebody better distribute that memo.
When MSFT offered to open up their OfficeXML format, it was "just another trick" from Redmond... when MSFT offered to submit OfficeXML to a standards body (ECMA), it was "just another delay tactic to cripple ODF". The terms of this "battle" really do seem to be pitched by many as an ODF versus MSFT issue.
Which is a crying shame, really. I agree with your statement -- it should be about fostering competition, opening up office documents to interoperability, and all that sort of warm-n-fuzzy stuff... but if you read through a lot of the discussions on this, it really is pitched in terms of Open Standards versus Microsoft. And I wonder what's going to happen when Microsoft decides that, to compete & make money, they'll support those open standards, and simply deliver an Office suite that is more reliable & more functional than the competition, because hobbyist programmers just don't feel like fixing all the outstanding bugs, because it's not as cool as a shiny new feature?
It's a hardware company, not a software company. And it's probably the largest semiconductor maker in the world.
Perhaps I'm missing something here. How is it Microsoft's fault that a hardware company you do business with keeps issuing critical patches & updates for their hardware? I'm sorry, but an occasional reboot cycle is not *that* onerous a task. I'd take much larger issue with the "largest semiconductor maker in the world" apparently being unable to get their shit in order enough to drop you a sane release that isn't full of holes & flaws needing constant patching & updates. From what you've told me, I'm simply unimpressed with the state of IT at these "fortune 100" companies, and the "largest semiconductor mfgr in the world." Yes, the reboot can be disruptive, and yes, Microsoft can improve that, I'll agree with you to that extent. But if you're constantly rebooting critical systems for ANY reason, that's a problem... and if the only reason you're doing so is because a particular hardware vendor keeps issuing firmware updates or something like that, then they really need to figure out a way to get their projects under control.
This isn't quite right. A better analogy is "well, you drive a Yugo, so you better be careful driving because the slightest bump in the road will cause the wheel to fall off and your car to crash and then promptly explode. I drive a Toyota, so I can drive on normal roads without constantly worrying about my wheels falling off or my car exploding."
No, that's not a better analogy. It would only be better if Windows, during normal operation, was prone to spontaneous crashes for no reason whatsoever. In practice, recent releases of Windows are reasonably stable, and reasonably reliable, if you take care of it properly -- much like a Hyundai. Linux may be better designed & more "safe" by default, but it still needs to be taken care of properly, and maintained properly, as well -- just like a Volvo. And just to remind you, since you seem intent on forgetting what you initially said:
"[...] why should I even bother being careful? [...] Unsavvy users can be as reckless as they want, and it's unlikely any serious harm will come of it."
Reckless driving will get you killed, injured, or in a lot of trouble no matter how well designed your car is. Perhaps you're a little safer in a Volvo than a Hyundai (or a Yugo), but you are not immune to harm, and reckless driving only compounds your vulnerability.
The reality is that most hardware is well-supported. Wireless networking cards are the big exception. New wireless cards really aren't very expensive, if that's the only missing piece.
You asked for a real example, and I provided one. Yes, most common "business class" hardware may be supported. My initial point stated that there were problems with both hardware drivers AND applications being unavailable for Linux, in response to your comment about "Well why don't companies just train their users in Linux instead of Vista, since Vista's so different from XP that it'll require training." What it boils down to is that most companies have a sizable investment in both their hardware & their applications, and if all they're doing is replacing Microsoft with Linux, and the two run on the same types of hardware, and cost about the same in terms of support, then you're looking at a very long return on investment phase for a company to invest the huge amount of time & effort in retraining employees, and reworking their internal infrastructure to be Linux only.
This is pure exaggeration and sensationalism. If the software you need is not available, then obviously you use the platform which has the software you need. I already went over this in my earlier message (my example was AutoCAD).
No more exaggerated or sensational than your claim of at least one, sometimes several, patches to apply to your system every week, and having to reboot after every patch or upgrade. I seriously want to know which software company you're working with that is dropping critical patch fixes every week, sometimes several in a week. I want to be sure to NEVER, EVER buy their products. Or could it be that you're just exaggerating for effect, still?
As for choosing the platform which has the software you need -- this is exactly my point. A conversion to Linux "just because we don't want to use Vista" is not a good enough reason to convert. If the software people need to run is written for Vista, then companies will continue using Vista. If a suitable alternative exists for Linux, then companies can consider Linux. "Just train them on Linux instead of Vista," is a very glib statement to make, and it sounds "just that easy," but it's really not when you start looking at the work involved.
Of course I don't, but why should I even bother being careful?
Wow. Just... wow. Your analogy is akin to saying, "Well you drive a Hyundai, so you better be careful. I have a Volvo, so I can drive recklessly." Recklessness + stupidity will always equal problems, regardless of your system's operating system. You may walk away from the crash in a little better condition, but you still cost yourself a metric fuck-ton of money, effort, and hassle with your recklessness.
This is really simple for anyone with a brain: you only buy hardware that is known to have Linux support. Get Intel Centrino, not some cheap-ass Orinoco crap. People already know that many cheap-ass devices have buggy Windows drivers that screw up their systems, so even in the Windows world it's smart to check out the hardware you're buying before just picking the cheapest option.
Once again, you miss the point by a mile. Let me spell it out for you: THERE IS AN EXISTING INVESTMENT IN HARDWARE that must be supported if a company is going to switch over to Linux on that hardware. Unless you're actually suggesting a company go out and buy 10 - 15 thousand new laptop systems so that they can switch? The simple fact here is that my company bought these wireless cards for about 5000 laptops that didn't have integrated wireless in them... if they switched to Linux, those wireless cards would cease to function. I'm sure if you went and talked to companies, there's a lot of similar stories that would block adoption of linux at many other places in similar ways. Now, the company COULD phase in Linux as it replaces systems, but then they're buying the cost of a protracted conversion, and the effort of maintaining two separate, interoperable infrastructures for their Linux & Windows systems, thus delaying any ROI even more.
Maybe not for many places, and maybe not overnight, but they'd be smart to start thinking about migrating, because their smaller competitors who aren't as invested in the MS infrastructure and lock-in will be able to switch much more easily and cheaply, and will have drastically lower IT costs because of it in time.
Of course they're *thinking* about migrating, I never said they shouldn't. It's this notion that sometime in the next 3 years, every company is just going to rebel against Microsoft products (which, for all their issues & eccentricities, *do* work just fine for most people,) and say, "No thanks, we've got Linux" which is, quite simply, a pipe dream.
As far as "drastically lower IT costs," I think the question is still up in the air as to which is lower cost to operate. I've seen studies that say Linux is hands down the cheapest, and I've seen studies that say Microsoft is hands-down the ch
Don't be an idiot. No one recompiles their kernels any more unless they really want to. This isn't 1999.
The point is & was that if the software a person needs to work is not available on Linux, then ALL a user will be able to do is engage in a pointless round of FOSS wankery. I know that "most" will not recompile their kernel today -- but "Look, I've got this great Linux system. It's Free & Open Source! What can I do on it? Weeeelll.... I'm waiting for them to install my software... it's being written now..."
MS's idea of "intuitive" is hiding menu options from you, so the menus are different every time you use them.
Exaggeration for effect, or you have the only buggy install of Office & XP that I've ever heard of. Yes, they hide "infrequently used" options. YES, you can turn that option off so that all the menu options are always available.
Of course, I have to apply security patches pushed by my IT department nearly every day, and to do so I have to drop everything I'm doing while the patch is downloaded and applied and then reboot after each patch, wasting lots of time.
If that's literally true, then your Windows admins are idiots. Tell me, what manufacturer is pushing out new security patches "nearly every day"? Certainly not Microsoft. I call bullshit on your claim. What's more likely is that once every few weeks, your system admins distribute a patch bundle via some automated push tool, and you MIGHT have to reboot then. But of course, that doesn't sound as incriminating for Windows, does it? And lord knows, no Linux app has ever been released with a security hole that needs to be patched after install on a user's desktop... right firefox?
And I have to watch out for signs at the security stations every day I come into work, warning about the latest email virus so I know not to click on any attachments that day until IT pushes yet another patch out to the antivirus software.
Funny... are you actually telling me you're a Linux evangelist who has to be specifically told not to click on attachments from people you don't know, or that you're not expecting? As for the antivirus updates, if your IT department is doing their job properly: 1) your a/v software should check for updates daily; 2) You should be trained to ONLY open attachments from trusted sources, and only then, when you're actually EXPECTING an email with an attachment from that person. I know I don't get very many unsolicited powerpoint presentations attached to emails at work. I really can't remember the last time a "big bad email virus" affected me at work. Probably Melissa, back in 1999.
What drivers is it missing that are needed in a corporate environment?
Well, for starters, my IBM Thinkpad's wireless card doesn't work under Linux. At all. My company chose to go with the Orinoco Gold PC cards for laptops without integrated wireless, and the chipset on my particular revision is, at least as of ~9 months ago, completely unsupported by any Linux distro or third-party driver. So that's one for starters... I'm sure that other people could name some others.
Applications: most people at work do most of their work with office applications: word processors, spreadsheets, etc. This is all covered quite nicely by Koffice and OpenOffice.org, both with support for the ODF open document standard mandated by the State of Massachusetts and drawing interest by many other national governments. OOo even imports and exports MS Office documents quite well. As long as your organization standardizes on ODF, you'll have the application support for most general tasks. The only reason applications might be a problem are 1) you need some specialized app that only works on Windows (e.g., AutoCAD), or 2) your management is simply addicted to MS's crackware and refuses to try anything different.
It's not a case of being "addicted" to anything. Look at what you just said: "As
Yay. We can retrain all our Windows users to use Linux. Maybe they can recompile their kernels and mess around with KDE eyecandy settings while waiting for the software they use on Windows to be ported?
To all of you Linux folks out there who have this dream that corporations around the world will wake up tomorrow, and decide to migrate to Linux en masse:
WAKE UP.
It's not going to happen anytime soon. Your pursuit of the windows desktop market will be a long, slow, uphill battle. Linux is NOT as "user friendly" as Windows is today; And by "user friendly", I don't mean "Wow, look, a GUI!" I mean, "Wow, look, a consistent, well-thought out, familiar, intuitive, clean GUI! Oh, and all my peripherals & software that I'm used to work, too!!!"
The simple fact is, Linux has a long way to go before "average" home users, and "average" corporate users will be able to use it. It simply doesn't have the application & driver support, and it doesn't present a compelling reason to change from Windows. "Linux != Windows" is NOT a good enough reason in most users' minds. Neither is "You can do all the same things in Linux that you do on Windows!"
I know that, for all the slagging Windows gets here, I have rarely had any issues with my Windows XP Pro system, from a security, usability, or stability standpoint. No more so than I had with Fedora Core 4, or Gentoo, certainly.
Yep. You're right. Because in the period between the release of OS/2 1.2 in 1989, and the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990, around which time the "divorce" of IBM & Microsoft occurred, I'm sure nobody at Microsoft spent ANY time thinking about what direction they wanted to take with their operating system. The whole thing was just a spur-of-the-moment decision gone horribly awry.
You've still failed to address the simple question of what happens when a particular body (for example, a government agency) mandates the use of ODF, MS Office doesn't support it, and someone else does? I'm failing to see how government contracts getting awarded to Sun, IBM, or some other vendor supporting an ODF implementation is just part of Microsoft's nefarious plan to profit by killing ODF.
I would hapily donate 99,9% of my net worth if I was left with a measly billion dollars.
Well, I guess that makes you a MUCH better person than Bill Gates. You're willing to donate 99.9% of the wealth you don't have. I'm sure your good intentions will help improve someone's life somewhere.
You really can't compare donations in percentages like this.
So what SHOULD we compare donations in? Absolute numbers? Okay, when's the last time you donated 29 billion dollars to charity over 5 years?
Okay, let's assume your hypothesis is true: Microsoft deliberately wrote crap code for OS/2 to push users towards the more pleasant experience of Windows. In that case, the crap code they wrote for a competitor's product (OS/2) drove business to their competing product (Windows).
Now consider your ODF-in-Office theory. By putting crap code in one of their flagship products, they will drive people to... what? Continue using their flagship product, but save in a different format? Give up Office completely and use OpenOffice, or some other competing implementation that allows them to use ODF without the hassle?
What you're failing to address is the simple fact that if MSFT wants government contracts where ODF support is a requirement, they'll be putting themselves at a huge disadvantage (or taking themselves out of the running completely) by refusing to support ODF, or supporting it in a way that frustrates or irritates users.
(And before someone comes along and says it, I'll strike pre-emptively: spare me the typical snarky slashdot-isms about how Microsoft already writes code that frustrates and irritates users. If there was an OS out there that didn't come with its own set of different irritations and limitations for users, it would displace Windows in milliseconds.)
Only the determined... or the people mandated to use it (remember that gov't market...), who will complain LOUDLY that Microsoft's tool is wasting their time importing and exporting... which will then prompt government agencies to tell Microsoft, "If OpenOffice can do it in 15 seconds and you can't, we'll use their implementation." Again, it amounts to dollars & cents... does Microsoft spend money pissing off customers by inserting a "if (doctype == "odf") { then sleep(600); }" statement in their code, or do they spend their money on other things?
My money's on them providing "acceptable" support of the letter of the ODF standard (I won't claim that they'll provide robust support for ODF, they'll do the minimum possible to support it), and offering extensions & tools that do other "WOW!" things, with the caveat: "t oh... you have to use OfficeXML to be able to use those features, since ODF doesn't support them..." -- they've submitted OfficeXML to ECMA, so I'm guessing they'll cram all sorts of stuff into their OfficeXML implementation, and the argument will boil down to OfficeXML as an ECMA standard versus ODF as an ISO standard.
You're right, no company would simply say, "Hey, let's switch over to Linux today!" But there's nothing preventing someone from porting that tool to work with OpenOffice on Windows... and a tool that converts from doc->odf and back would be a huge step towards lowering the barriers to a switch away from MSFT's proprietary formats.
Perhaps... but I don't think the future's as bleak as your fears. Consider:
1. ODF is now a defined ISO standard.
2. Since a critical aspect of XML is that you can check to ensure that it is well-formed *and* valid, it should be possible to determine if a given ODF document is compliant with the ODF standard.
3. Some government institutions and other ogranizations are mandating use of ODF for all "critical" documents.
Given items 1 & 2, if a standard-compliant ODF file does not render properly in Office, then Office is *demonstrably* broken. By definition, Office would not conform to the ODF standard.
Given 3, any company wishing to do business with a government institution that mandates this usage of ODF has a vested interest in making sure that the ODF files render properly in their software.
Given all three, any tool that wishes to have a crack at lucrative government contracts had better make sure it conforms to the standard... and I don't see Microsoft ceding that segment of the government market to OpenOffice & KOffice.
The other challenge is getting companies to upgrade to something with support for ODF, and start using ODF as an alternative to their entrenched investment in MS Office-format documents. My company does a pretty large amount of work with external vendors and institutions. If suddenly everybody at my company started using ODF, and trying to send documents to people outside the company in ODF, that would be problematic.
Something I don't know about, because I haven't really investigated at this point -- is there some sort of "batch" tool for.Doc ->.odf conversions? If not, that's going to be a huge advantage for the first "open" project that develops one... if I can only convert by file -> open -> file -> save as . . . repeated ad infinitum, then that's a big barrier to odf adoption in companies that produce literally thousands of.doc files *every day*.
Definitely didn't deserve a troll. But I think what you're going to end up seeing is Microsoft will simply support ODF in Office. Yes, yes, they've said they won't. But if they start losing customers to OpenOffice, KOffice, StarOffice, and other competitors that support ODF, you can bet your ass that Microsoft will add support for ODF, and put one of those little "Would you like to save this in the Microsoft Office Default Format, which offers significant advantages over the original ODF specification," nag screens in. Then they can claim complete standards compliance, too.
Microsoft as a company has never struck me as a suicidally dogmatic entity. If everybody demands it, and they start losing their shirt in the office productivity market, they'll adapt and do what they need to to stop the loss. Since they can't "acquire & retire" OpenOffice or other open source competition, they'll have to change their software.
That's free market competition... and that's good for us lowly consumers in the long run. Microsoft cannot "kill" ODF, unless it release a clearly superior competing technical standard.
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What I just don't get is that I hear this sort of argument all the time: "Until major manufacturers install it..."; "Until so-an-so, inc. opens their drivers up..."; "Until sucn and such video cards' documentation is released...";
To hear a lot of Linux advocates talk, it's simply a matter of "building it and they will come." So let's look at how this all hangs together:
So why, for heaven's sake, has no enterprising geek:
I'm serious here. There's a bunch of really smart people in the Linux community... if the only things holding Linux back are minor things like "nobody presently will sell it preinstalled... if they did, it would blow Windows out of the water," then how come nobody has done so?
You're partially right, but Linux wasn't made to be easy to use/learn. Functionality over user-friendliness. The ability for the program to do what it needs to do is considered more important than how easily the user can use the program - that can always be improved later, after the functionality is all there.
/. responses like "Linux r0x0rz, U sux0rz n00b... l0l!"
I'm asking this question in all seriousness, not trying to be a smartass, or spew flamebait or anything. But don't you think your statement quoted above implies that usability of Linux, for any but the most seasoned user, will always be a "moving target"? It seems to me that there's always going to be "another feature" that could be added, so do you foresee the people working on making Linux more usable always lagging a few steps behind? And if so, don't you see a problem with that? I mean, it's kind of like throwing a big party at your house with a great band & awesome food, and then not telling anybody what your address is, isn't it?
I'm genuinely curious what your take is on this... reading your other comments, you seem to know what the hell you're talking about, and you seem able to relate your opinions without resorting to the least-common-denominator
In the paper you AND your employer sign verifying your employment before they give you the loan. Maybe not a term exactly- but certainly an implied expectation that you will HAVE a job to repay the loan, and they make your employer co-sign it.
Um. Employment verification is done to make sure that you're not obtaining hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently with no hope of repaying it. The bank has lots of little actuaries and statisticians crunching numbers, and they've found that -- based on a statistical analysis of past default / repayment data -- "MOST" people who have had a job for the last X years are "creditworthy" customers, who will, in all probability, be able to continue making the loan payments that they're signing on to make. The bank is not in the business of losing money, it's in the business of making money... so is this an unreasonable thing for them to ask? The employer simply says, "Yeah, he's worked here for the past 2 years." They're not making any guarantee that you'll continue working there for the next 48.
Agreed- so why verify employment to begin with? Why require two years employment with the same company before you even get the loan? The answer is because they expect you to keep making those payments on the 15th of the month- unemployment is no excuse.
No, the answer is that having been able to hold the same job for 2 years (not exactly that long a time to have held a job, really) makes you, statistically, quite likely to be able to continue making payments to the bank, and therefore you are a good investment, rather than a bad risk. Unemployment is an explanation for being unable to make a payment, but you're right -- it's no excuse. If you don't have sufficient cash reserves to weather a downturn in the market, and a couple months of unemployment, then you shouldn't buy a house. The bank isn't in business to lose money, as I may have already mentioned.
Let's be honest- with the 50% inflation in housing cost over the last 5 years, no American can afford the American Dream under "wise & responsible fiscal planning" anymore.
Depends on what you're calling the "American Dream," doesn't it? If the American Dream consists of a modestly sized house in a decent neighborhood, then it's quite possible to achieve that -- people do it every day on far less than the average IT worker makes. If the American dream consists of a 3000 sq ft loft on the upper west side, with a parking space for your ferrari and a helipad where your helicopter can pick you up to take you to your weekend home in the Hamptons, then no, most people won't achieve that. NOBODY can afford the current housing market unless we all want to live in 8x10 shacks (and in many areas of the country, not even then!)
Yes, they can and do afford the current housing market, in LOTS of areas of the country. One of my friends & his wife, with a combined household income of about 55 - 60k/year, just bought a decent house about an hour outside of Boston, and they're quite comfortable and happy with it. Could they afford a place IN boston, or much closer to Boston? No, probably not. But it's *always* been expensive to live in/near the city. I don't know where you live, but I see young people successfully purchasing houses all the time around where I live.
But have you ever noticed that the so-called "American Dream" is based on stability (the newest home loans expect you to be in the same job for 50 years!), but American Jobs aren't?
Um. Where in their marketing literature do you see that one of the terms or conditions of the loan is that you hold the same job for 50 years?
I don't think it's unreasonable for a mortgage to demand that you to be able to make your payments for 50 years, if that's the term of the loan... but I don't think they're saying they expect you to stay at the same job, or with the same company for 50 years. How you make your payments is your concern, and as long as the bank gets their money on the 15th of the month, I don't think they really care who's paying you.
And let's be honest: if you take out a 50-year mortgage, you're probably stretching yourself beyond your means in order to afford a house you can't really afford given your current income level, and future income expectations. I've seen a couple friends get into trouble with some of the new-fangled ARMs and other niche mortgage products, and at the end of the day, what they're doing is stretching themselves to the limit with NO safety net in order to afford "more house". And that's not wise & responsible fiscal planning.
This is a really good point. Here's my Mac converstion anecdote:
My home PC that I used for about 3 years ran Windows XP; All in all, a reasonably good, if sometimes frustrating experience, to be honest. I'm not doing anything hardcore on my home system... email, web browsing, an occasional doc in word, quicken, itunes, instant messaging, web site maintenance, and some light-light-lite programming (mostly perl-based "use CGI;" stuff). At one point, I tried dual-booting it with Linux, to check what the state of the art was with Fedora Core 4. Linux was more frustrating in this sense -- I spent about three weeks configuring, searching Google for this-or-that error message, mucking about with drivers & upgrades, and finally got back to the state I was in with Windows -- it mostly worked, most of the time.
Then, my hard drive failed. Lucky me, I had backups... so no data loss. But at that point, I was thinking, "hmm... why not buy a new system, instead of replacing a hard drive in a 4 year old piece of hardware?" and I started looking around at Dell, HP, and then some of the Apple systems. When I saw how small and silent the Mini was, I was *really* interested -- my apartment isn't huge, and I'd like to use my space for more than housing computer equipment. And I have to be honest... after buying it, and getting converted over into the equivalent Mac programs, I haven't looked back, or even considered buying a new PC. The OS is stable, the applications that I use at home are available & work well (Mail, OpenOffice/x11, Firefox, Itunes, Quicken, Dreamweaver, Adium for IM, Skype...), and the system is silent, and takes up next to no space on my desktop. In short, I'm hooked because I don't have to fiddle constantly with security patches, configuration files, antivirus, hardware drivers, or anything else. I have more time to spend doing other things that are more fun & important to me.
Sure, I could have probably done some research and built a small form-factor Windows or Linux PC, but I would have spent TONS of time doing so (I am admittedly NOT a hardware guru, and so the research & work I would have done would have been considerable), and I would end up with the same windows & linux frustrations I dealt with previously.
And that's not to say that Mini is without its frustrations. But most of my frustrations so far have been a function of getting used to new keyboard shortcuts & importing data into new software. I like to think that I'm reasonably objective -- having used several Unix variants (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX), a couple Linux distros (Fedora Core, RedHat 6.x,7.x, Gentoo), and just about every release of Windows since NT 4.0, I don't think I qualify as a "cult of Mac" whiny fanboy. If you're not a gamer, and you don't enjoy fiddling with hardware and drivers, the Mini & OS X pretty much get it right, at least insofar as an "average" home user is concerned.
Which I read as, "My project wasn't going to make any money for my company. But I'm bitter they pulled the plug because I wanted to finish it." Believe me, I sympathize -- I've been on projects that have been ultimately killed before, and it's always frustrating to see months of effort scrapped. But no manager or company in their right mind is going to kill a product that's commercially viable simply so they can make a quick 20k... not when the market for that product will make your company hundreds of thousands, or millions, or billions, in profit. That 20k quick hit stock sale would be worth MUCH more after releasing a blockbuster product.
Except for it was working in the beta test site- and in fact had increased profitability by 30% just by catching some wierd accounting that was going on.
And if that's the case, and not simple exaggeration-with-no-facts-because-it's-slashdot, then why would you not take the bull by the horns, recreate this project, and start marketing it yourself? If you wrote the code, and it was absolutely hands-down a killer app, then continuing to look for new corporate jobs when you had this money-making potential staring you in the face was pretty dumb.
Actually there's a third option you missed- a lesson I didn't learn until years later. By the stock market Any project that is not marketable within 4 months is a failure.
I don't follow your logic, but then... that's nothing new. I've seen wildly successful products that turn into complete cash cows for companies that took much longer than 4 months to develop. If you're saying that after 4 months of marketing and flogging a product, there's still no market for it, then you're probably right: a product that you can't GIVE away after 4 months of trying is a solution in search of a problem. In other words, a complete failure -- you haven't created anything that anyone finds useful. And if that's the case, then why *should* a company continue sinking money into a losing proposition? To massage your delicate ego, which has decided that any project you work on is great, and that if there's no market for it, it's because of bad marketing, stupid users, or some management conspiracy?
Because the bankruptcy court confiscated the sourcecode.
Which a smart, enterprising young man such as yourself could have offered to BUY (assets of a bankrupt company ARE often liquidated by the court to allow the creditors to recoup some of their lost money), or which a smart, enterprising young man such as yourself could have simply recreated. If the idea was that good, you could have easily brought it to market yourself, and made a fortune.
My apologies for conflating two of your separate storylines; but here's my understanding of how you've managed your career:
That about covers it, no? It took you all this time to learn that the companies don't feel they "owe" you anything but a paycheck for as long as you stay productive, and if you start being a drain on them, or not contributing what they feel is enough, they'll send your sorry ass packing? And you're sitting there complaining about having no job, when since Job #1, a [according to you] great, killer, wonderful, profitable idea has been staring you in the face? Simply rewrite the source code, create a similar product, and go sell it. Create your OWN security... or to borrow a phrase that you're probably very familiar with given your /. i.d., "Workers control the means of pr
If your project was destined for commercial success, and your company could have made a reasonable profit with it on the market, they wouldn't have pulled the plug on it. Have you considered the option that perhaps your product was simply no good, and:
If this product was truly destined for profitability, your PHB wouldn't have sold the product out for a measly 20k in profits to buy a fucking Miata , when that same stock would have been worth several times as much when your company's stock skyrocketed on the back of the success of your amazing new product.
Alternately, perhaps it is the case that The PHBs really were complete effing morons; In that case, they ran the company into the ground, and that's a hell of a shame, but if the project truly was a potential blockbuster, why not simply contact the developers who worked on it with you, start your own company, and bring the product to market? You'll make a killing, and can laugh at your PH-ex-B as you blow his doors off in your Ferrari on your commute back to your lovely home where your stunning wife & beautiful children live in complete comfort & security.
But yeah, I guess choosing 3 years of unemployment spent trying to find a unionized IT job is an equally reasonable response to handling the "money-sucking" responsibilities and the duty to your DNA that you seem to love talking about.
Two points that are fine semantic distinctions, but I think they're worth making in this discussion:
1. The UN & its Universal Declaration Of Human Rights does not "grant" rights -- my rights as a human are not the UN's, or anybody else's, to grant. If it's granted by someone, then that means someone has the "right" to take it away at their whim. Which makes what they've "granted" me a privilege. I don't recognize the UN's (or any government's) power to "grant" or "take away" *my* rights.
2. The UN's Universal Declaration of Humans Rights *recognizes* that humans have a basic right to earn their livings through productive work. It does not affirm that they have a "right" to a job, nor does it specify that everybody deserves a job. (Just because you have the "right" to vote, doesn't mean you HAVE to. In practice, what this means is that institutions should not (or may not, if your own government recognizes the UDHR as a binding part of its legal system) prevent you from obtaining a job based on your skills and abilities; Nor should you / may you be prevented from receiving reasonable compensation for doing that job. You have the *right* to work, and be productive. But nobody is obligated to *provide* you with that job, or pay you more than you're worth to them -- you must earn your job & your salary to gain it & keep it, all the UN UDHR simply states that nobody should be prevented by the government or other institutions from performing productive work if they choose to, or made to work as a slave for no pay.
ODF is the first opportunity for commercial and FOSS competition to break the Microsoft stranglehold on office formats.
And the only reason they had that "stranglehold" is because they spent the time and effort putting together a halfway decent Office package. What's at work here is called a network effect: the value of a product goes up in proportion to the number of people using it. If 90% of the people out there use Word, it's awfully difficult to get much use out of a non-compatible program, unless you deal strictly in hard-copy printouts. The only reason people have continued using Word is because -- until quite recently -- there really haven't been many *serious* competitors out there. As programs like KOffice, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org, and others gain features and become more serious competitors, then yes, the formatting is a big deal. And what you see is this: ODF is winning, regardless of Microsoft's attempts to stop it.
I'll absolutely agree with you that the open standard is preferable for consumers, because everybody can use it, and it's a common interchange format. Companies like yours will benefit greatly, because you can export to a common format, and other people can edit that format. It makes the format more accessible to anybody who doesn't have the US$400 - 500 to spend on Office, which in turn increases the potential value of any Office document & program via the network effect... more benefit for consumers.
But to repeat myself -- what we can learn from ODF (and other successful open source projects) is that a good idea, and a technically sound idea, will tend to win in the marketplace in the long run. All of these projects are not succeeding because they're "anti-microsoft", they're succeeding because they're good . Microsoft cannot and has not squashed these "free" projects, because they can compete with Microsoft, and win on the merits of their usefulness. The fundamental point here (to the FOSS community in general) is: do what you do, and do it well... stop worrying about Microsoft. If your idea is good, and technically sound, people will come around to your way of thinking.
Quoted from link above, written by me earlier today in a discussion of ODF on slashdot:
Thanks for providing me with an example of what I was talking about. Until the FOSS community in general gets over this "victimized" stance they like to take whenever Microsoft attempts to compete with them, they're going to be perpetually hamstrung by ineffectiveness, and perpetually "almost great."
The success of ODF as a standard & in government adoption, as well as the examples of linux in the server space, perl, python, apache, ant, tomcat, and so many other FOSS products (my apologies if I've overlooked your favorites), should be seen as proof that the technilcally superior products DO tend to win out in the marketplace over the long run. Instead of screaming "Monopoly! Unfair competitive advantage! Illegal use of monopolistic practices!", open source advocates should simply go about their business, and make a better product than Microsoft can. There's plenty of examples... figure out what they're doing right, and apply those best practices to your own projects.
And let's be honest... if Microsoft said, "our products just aren't going to support the 802.11a standard (an open wireless networking standard) because it's too costly," that announcement would be greeted with a big yawn by most people. The only difference is, ODF is a cause celebre in the FOSS community, because lots of members of that community see it as a way to promote their own anti-microsoft agenda. Soul search a little, and read some of the comments people make here on slashdot... you'll see it's really hard to argue that that's not the case.
I think releasing the plugin widely will (a) make the point that the OpenDocument goal isn't to kill Microsoft Office, it's to enable wide interoperability and allow competition in the office document space[...]
Wait... the goal of OpenDocument isn't to kill MSFT Office? Somebody better distribute that memo.
When MSFT offered to open up their OfficeXML format, it was "just another trick" from Redmond... when MSFT offered to submit OfficeXML to a standards body (ECMA), it was "just another delay tactic to cripple ODF". The terms of this "battle" really do seem to be pitched by many as an ODF versus MSFT issue.
Which is a crying shame, really. I agree with your statement -- it should be about fostering competition, opening up office documents to interoperability, and all that sort of warm-n-fuzzy stuff... but if you read through a lot of the discussions on this, it really is pitched in terms of Open Standards versus Microsoft. And I wonder what's going to happen when Microsoft decides that, to compete & make money, they'll support those open standards, and simply deliver an Office suite that is more reliable & more functional than the competition, because hobbyist programmers just don't feel like fixing all the outstanding bugs, because it's not as cool as a shiny new feature?
Perhaps I'm missing something here. How is it Microsoft's fault that a hardware company you do business with keeps issuing critical patches & updates for their hardware? I'm sorry, but an occasional reboot cycle is not *that* onerous a task. I'd take much larger issue with the "largest semiconductor maker in the world" apparently being unable to get their shit in order enough to drop you a sane release that isn't full of holes & flaws needing constant patching & updates. From what you've told me, I'm simply unimpressed with the state of IT at these "fortune 100" companies, and the "largest semiconductor mfgr in the world." Yes, the reboot can be disruptive, and yes, Microsoft can improve that, I'll agree with you to that extent. But if you're constantly rebooting critical systems for ANY reason, that's a problem... and if the only reason you're doing so is because a particular hardware vendor keeps issuing firmware updates or something like that, then they really need to figure out a way to get their projects under control.
This isn't quite right. A better analogy is "well, you drive a Yugo, so you better be careful driving because the slightest bump in the road will cause the wheel to fall off and your car to crash and then promptly explode. I drive a Toyota, so I can drive on normal roads without constantly worrying about my wheels falling off or my car exploding."
No, that's not a better analogy. It would only be better if Windows, during normal operation, was prone to spontaneous crashes for no reason whatsoever. In practice, recent releases of Windows are reasonably stable, and reasonably reliable, if you take care of it properly -- much like a Hyundai. Linux may be better designed & more "safe" by default, but it still needs to be taken care of properly, and maintained properly, as well -- just like a Volvo. And just to remind you, since you seem intent on forgetting what you initially said: Reckless driving will get you killed, injured, or in a lot of trouble no matter how well designed your car is. Perhaps you're a little safer in a Volvo than a Hyundai (or a Yugo), but you are not immune to harm, and reckless driving only compounds your vulnerability.
The reality is that most hardware is well-supported. Wireless networking cards are the big exception. New wireless cards really aren't very expensive, if that's the only missing piece.
You asked for a real example, and I provided one. Yes, most common "business class" hardware may be supported. My initial point stated that there were problems with both hardware drivers AND applications being unavailable for Linux, in response to your comment about "Well why don't companies just train their users in Linux instead of Vista, since Vista's so different from XP that it'll require training." What it boils down to is that most companies have a sizable investment in both their hardware & their applications, and if all they're doing is replacing Microsoft with Linux, and the two run on the same types of hardware, and cost about the same in terms of support, then you're looking at a very long return on investment phase for a company to invest the huge amount of time & effort in retraining employees, and reworking their internal infrastructure to be Linux only.
This is pure exaggeration and sensationalism. If the software you need is not available, then obviously you use the platform which has the software you need. I already went over this in my earlier message (my example was AutoCAD).
No more exaggerated or sensational than your claim of at least one, sometimes several, patches to apply to your system every week, and having to reboot after every patch or upgrade. I seriously want to know which software company you're working with that is dropping critical patch fixes every week, sometimes several in a week. I want to be sure to NEVER, EVER buy their products. Or could it be that you're just exaggerating for effect, still?
As for choosing the platform which has the software you need -- this is exactly my point. A conversion to Linux "just because we don't want to use Vista" is not a good enough reason to convert. If the software people need to run is written for Vista, then companies will continue using Vista. If a suitable alternative exists for Linux, then companies can consider Linux. "Just train them on Linux instead of Vista," is a very glib statement to make, and it sounds "just that easy," but it's really not when you start looking at the work involved.
Of course I don't, but why should I even bother being careful?
Wow. Just... wow. Your analogy is akin to saying, "Well you drive a Hyundai, so you better be careful. I have a Volvo, so I can drive recklessly." Recklessness + stupidity will always equal problems, regardless of your system's operating system. You may walk away from the crash in a little better condition, but you still cost yourself a metric fuck-ton of money, effort, and hassle with your recklessness.
This is really simple for anyone with a brain: you only buy hardware that is known to have Linux support. Get Intel Centrino, not some cheap-ass Orinoco crap. People already know that many cheap-ass devices have buggy Windows drivers that screw up their systems, so even in the Windows world it's smart to check out the hardware you're buying before just picking the cheapest option.
Once again, you miss the point by a mile. Let me spell it out for you: THERE IS AN EXISTING INVESTMENT IN HARDWARE that must be supported if a company is going to switch over to Linux on that hardware. Unless you're actually suggesting a company go out and buy 10 - 15 thousand new laptop systems so that they can switch? The simple fact here is that my company bought these wireless cards for about 5000 laptops that didn't have integrated wireless in them... if they switched to Linux, those wireless cards would cease to function. I'm sure if you went and talked to companies, there's a lot of similar stories that would block adoption of linux at many other places in similar ways. Now, the company COULD phase in Linux as it replaces systems, but then they're buying the cost of a protracted conversion, and the effort of maintaining two separate, interoperable infrastructures for their Linux & Windows systems, thus delaying any ROI even more.
Maybe not for many places, and maybe not overnight, but they'd be smart to start thinking about migrating, because their smaller competitors who aren't as invested in the MS infrastructure and lock-in will be able to switch much more easily and cheaply, and will have drastically lower IT costs because of it in time.
Of course they're *thinking* about migrating, I never said they shouldn't. It's this notion that sometime in the next 3 years, every company is just going to rebel against Microsoft products (which, for all their issues & eccentricities, *do* work just fine for most people,) and say, "No thanks, we've got Linux" which is, quite simply, a pipe dream.
As far as "drastically lower IT costs," I think the question is still up in the air as to which is lower cost to operate. I've seen studies that say Linux is hands down the cheapest, and I've seen studies that say Microsoft is hands-down the ch
Don't be an idiot. No one recompiles their kernels any more unless they really want to. This isn't 1999.
The point is & was that if the software a person needs to work is not available on Linux, then ALL a user will be able to do is engage in a pointless round of FOSS wankery. I know that "most" will not recompile their kernel today -- but "Look, I've got this great Linux system. It's Free & Open Source! What can I do on it? Weeeelll.... I'm waiting for them to install my software... it's being written now..."
MS's idea of "intuitive" is hiding menu options from you, so the menus are different every time you use them.
Exaggeration for effect, or you have the only buggy install of Office & XP that I've ever heard of. Yes, they hide "infrequently used" options. YES, you can turn that option off so that all the menu options are always available.
Of course, I have to apply security patches pushed by my IT department nearly every day, and to do so I have to drop everything I'm doing while the patch is downloaded and applied and then reboot after each patch, wasting lots of time.
If that's literally true, then your Windows admins are idiots. Tell me, what manufacturer is pushing out new security patches "nearly every day"? Certainly not Microsoft. I call bullshit on your claim. What's more likely is that once every few weeks, your system admins distribute a patch bundle via some automated push tool, and you MIGHT have to reboot then. But of course, that doesn't sound as incriminating for Windows, does it? And lord knows, no Linux app has ever been released with a security hole that needs to be patched after install on a user's desktop... right firefox?
And I have to watch out for signs at the security stations every day I come into work, warning about the latest email virus so I know not to click on any attachments that day until IT pushes yet another patch out to the antivirus software.
Funny... are you actually telling me you're a Linux evangelist who has to be specifically told not to click on attachments from people you don't know, or that you're not expecting? As for the antivirus updates, if your IT department is doing their job properly: 1) your a/v software should check for updates daily; 2) You should be trained to ONLY open attachments from trusted sources, and only then, when you're actually EXPECTING an email with an attachment from that person. I know I don't get very many unsolicited powerpoint presentations attached to emails at work. I really can't remember the last time a "big bad email virus" affected me at work. Probably Melissa, back in 1999.
What drivers is it missing that are needed in a corporate environment?
Well, for starters, my IBM Thinkpad's wireless card doesn't work under Linux. At all. My company chose to go with the Orinoco Gold PC cards for laptops without integrated wireless, and the chipset on my particular revision is, at least as of ~9 months ago, completely unsupported by any Linux distro or third-party driver. So that's one for starters... I'm sure that other people could name some others.
Applications: most people at work do most of their work with office applications: word processors, spreadsheets, etc. This is all covered quite nicely by Koffice and OpenOffice.org, both with support for the ODF open document standard mandated by the State of Massachusetts and drawing interest by many other national governments. OOo even imports and exports MS Office documents quite well. As long as your organization standardizes on ODF, you'll have the application support for most general tasks. The only reason applications might be a problem are 1) you need some specialized app that only works on Windows (e.g., AutoCAD), or 2) your management is simply addicted to MS's crackware and refuses to try anything different.
It's not a case of being "addicted" to anything. Look at what you just said: "As
Yay. We can retrain all our Windows users to use Linux. Maybe they can recompile their kernels and mess around with KDE eyecandy settings while waiting for the software they use on Windows to be ported?
To all of you Linux folks out there who have this dream that corporations around the world will wake up tomorrow, and decide to migrate to Linux en masse:
WAKE UP.
It's not going to happen anytime soon. Your pursuit of the windows desktop market will be a long, slow, uphill battle. Linux is NOT as "user friendly" as Windows is today; And by "user friendly", I don't mean "Wow, look, a GUI!" I mean, "Wow, look, a consistent, well-thought out, familiar, intuitive, clean GUI! Oh, and all my peripherals & software that I'm used to work, too!!!"
The simple fact is, Linux has a long way to go before "average" home users, and "average" corporate users will be able to use it. It simply doesn't have the application & driver support, and it doesn't present a compelling reason to change from Windows. "Linux != Windows" is NOT a good enough reason in most users' minds. Neither is "You can do all the same things in Linux that you do on Windows!" I know that, for all the slagging Windows gets here, I have rarely had any issues with my Windows XP Pro system, from a security, usability, or stability standpoint. No more so than I had with Fedora Core 4, or Gentoo, certainly.
Yep. You're right. Because in the period between the release of OS/2 1.2 in 1989, and the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990, around which time the "divorce" of IBM & Microsoft occurred, I'm sure nobody at Microsoft spent ANY time thinking about what direction they wanted to take with their operating system. The whole thing was just a spur-of-the-moment decision gone horribly awry.
You've still failed to address the simple question of what happens when a particular body (for example, a government agency) mandates the use of ODF, MS Office doesn't support it, and someone else does? I'm failing to see how government contracts getting awarded to Sun, IBM, or some other vendor supporting an ODF implementation is just part of Microsoft's nefarious plan to profit by killing ODF.
I would hapily donate 99,9% of my net worth if I was left with a measly billion dollars.
Well, I guess that makes you a MUCH better person than Bill Gates. You're willing to donate 99.9% of the wealth you don't have. I'm sure your good intentions will help improve someone's life somewhere.
You really can't compare donations in percentages like this.
So what SHOULD we compare donations in? Absolute numbers? Okay, when's the last time you donated 29 billion dollars to charity over 5 years?
Okay, let's assume your hypothesis is true: Microsoft deliberately wrote crap code for OS/2 to push users towards the more pleasant experience of Windows. In that case, the crap code they wrote for a competitor's product (OS/2) drove business to their competing product (Windows).
Now consider your ODF-in-Office theory. By putting crap code in one of their flagship products, they will drive people to... what? Continue using their flagship product, but save in a different format? Give up Office completely and use OpenOffice, or some other competing implementation that allows them to use ODF without the hassle?
What you're failing to address is the simple fact that if MSFT wants government contracts where ODF support is a requirement, they'll be putting themselves at a huge disadvantage (or taking themselves out of the running completely) by refusing to support ODF, or supporting it in a way that frustrates or irritates users.
(And before someone comes along and says it, I'll strike pre-emptively: spare me the typical snarky slashdot-isms about how Microsoft already writes code that frustrates and irritates users. If there was an OS out there that didn't come with its own set of different irritations and limitations for users, it would displace Windows in milliseconds.)
Is this ~15 year example the most timely & relevant example you can think of? If so, I think you're really reaching for stuff here.
Only the determined... or the people mandated to use it (remember that gov't market...), who will complain LOUDLY that Microsoft's tool is wasting their time importing and exporting... which will then prompt government agencies to tell Microsoft, "If OpenOffice can do it in 15 seconds and you can't, we'll use their implementation." Again, it amounts to dollars & cents... does Microsoft spend money pissing off customers by inserting a "if (doctype == "odf") { then sleep(600); }" statement in their code, or do they spend their money on other things?
My money's on them providing "acceptable" support of the letter of the ODF standard (I won't claim that they'll provide robust support for ODF, they'll do the minimum possible to support it), and offering extensions & tools that do other "WOW!" things, with the caveat: "t oh... you have to use OfficeXML to be able to use those features, since ODF doesn't support them..." -- they've submitted OfficeXML to ECMA, so I'm guessing they'll cram all sorts of stuff into their OfficeXML implementation, and the argument will boil down to OfficeXML as an ECMA standard versus ODF as an ISO standard.
You're right, no company would simply say, "Hey, let's switch over to Linux today!" But there's nothing preventing someone from porting that tool to work with OpenOffice on Windows... and a tool that converts from doc->odf and back would be a huge step towards lowering the barriers to a switch away from MSFT's proprietary formats.
Perhaps... but I don't think the future's as bleak as your fears. Consider:
1. ODF is now a defined ISO standard.
2. Since a critical aspect of XML is that you can check to ensure that it is well-formed *and* valid, it should be possible to determine if a given ODF document is compliant with the ODF standard.
3. Some government institutions and other ogranizations are mandating use of ODF for all "critical" documents.
Given items 1 & 2, if a standard-compliant ODF file does not render properly in Office, then Office is *demonstrably* broken. By definition, Office would not conform to the ODF standard.
Given 3, any company wishing to do business with a government institution that mandates this usage of ODF has a vested interest in making sure that the ODF files render properly in their software.
Given all three, any tool that wishes to have a crack at lucrative government contracts had better make sure it conforms to the standard... and I don't see Microsoft ceding that segment of the government market to OpenOffice & KOffice.
The other challenge is getting companies to upgrade to something with support for ODF, and start using ODF as an alternative to their entrenched investment in MS Office-format documents. My company does a pretty large amount of work with external vendors and institutions. If suddenly everybody at my company started using ODF, and trying to send documents to people outside the company in ODF, that would be problematic.
.Doc -> .odf conversions? If not, that's going to be a huge advantage for the first "open" project that develops one... if I can only convert by file -> open -> file -> save as . . . repeated ad infinitum, then that's a big barrier to odf adoption in companies that produce literally thousands of .doc files *every day*.
Something I don't know about, because I haven't really investigated at this point -- is there some sort of "batch" tool for
Definitely didn't deserve a troll. But I think what you're going to end up seeing is Microsoft will simply support ODF in Office. Yes, yes, they've said they won't. But if they start losing customers to OpenOffice, KOffice, StarOffice, and other competitors that support ODF, you can bet your ass that Microsoft will add support for ODF, and put one of those little "Would you like to save this in the Microsoft Office Default Format, which offers significant advantages over the original ODF specification," nag screens in. Then they can claim complete standards compliance, too.
Microsoft as a company has never struck me as a suicidally dogmatic entity. If everybody demands it, and they start losing their shirt in the office productivity market, they'll adapt and do what they need to to stop the loss. Since they can't "acquire & retire" OpenOffice or other open source competition, they'll have to change their software.
That's free market competition... and that's good for us lowly consumers in the long run. Microsoft cannot "kill" ODF, unless it release a clearly superior competing technical standard.