It's called industry intelligence my moronic friend (backed by stats like this). Already Toshiba had captured virtually all of the presses hearts with the e series (because suddenly Pocket PCs weren't the "too-large" devices they had been), and now Dell has captured the hearts and minds of even more by offering sub-Palm pricing on far more powerful devices. Perhaps you're sitting in Palm headquarters fervently pretending that you're under no risk, but rest assured that sitting on your laurels for several years wasn't too wise.
As a sidenote, I find it absolutely hilarious that you try to pretend that I karma whored...in a post where I SAID SOMETHING PRO-MICROSOFT (or as another poster stated, I'm a "Microsoft fanboy"). Maybe you're near hear, but it's pretty much the opposite, and that usually ensures moderation obliteration. Indeed, I know that it's only a matter of time before some anti-Microsoft fanatics come in and stomp my post to -1, and I would honestly be disappointed if it didn't happen.
Palm, Handspring and Sony control 81.1% of the market. Compaq, Casio, and Dell (newcomer) combined, control 12.6% of the market.
Firstly, Dell's PDAs just came out and lowered the bar to even or lower than Palms (for a much, much more feature rich system). Secondly, your numbers are a tad out of date (not really that surprizing). Here we can see that PocketPC currently has 30% of all sales (the "market", if you will), versus compared to 48% for Palm. A tad different from your numbers. This was before Dell virtually halved the price of a PocketPC PDA.
Secondly, the "bloated and more expensive" is an outdated argument as well. Firstly something like the Toshiba e310 or e740 represent among the smallest PDAs available, yet they offer tremendous power. Dell's new PDAs, starting at $199, offer incredible value. And what's with the "proprietary" nonsense, Palm fanboy? And Palm ISN'T? Oh, right, proprietary=Microsoft in Slashdot speak.
Wow, Linux is being used in a product that Windows isn't even targeted towards.
Well that isn't entirely fair: Microsoft has made embedded operating systems for embedded and/or appliance markets for a while (at least four years), to mixed success. Personally I think they'll succeed eventually: Already PocketPC PDAs, a vision that was originally called bloated and overpowered, are absolutely storming the market (and the new ultra-low cost Dell ones pretty much ring the bell or doom for Palm and friend).
Of course all your petulant little rant has exposed is that you know absolutely nothing about Slashdot. You see, hundreds of thousands of people sign up for accounts (or, in cases such as yours, they sign up for several accounts so they have the "troll post-reply" account. You apparently were a little too dumb to realize you'd switched to your trolling account), but they don't post. Indeed if you had any truthful knowledge of Slashdot, you'd know that it's a very small cross-section of Slashdotters that post, and they often post prolifically. This idea that it's a random subsection of hundreds of thousands of people posting is just ridiculously laughable.
Secondly, it's damn funny what the defense has been. In the first post you, err, he firstly stated that Slashdot wasn't monolithic and therefore can hold contradictory opinions, but then hilariously refuted what I was saying anyways... So I take it from both defenses that it is illogical and foolish to both claim Microsoft's imminent demise from superior and freely available alternatives, and then to proclaim that they're an evil monopoly? Come on: Say it. Let's not beat around silly claims of false dichotomies or strawman arguments.
P.S. Slashdot moderation further parrots this hilarity. I can see that the grandparent post has been moderated up for saying that Slashdot is not monolithic, coupling it with some slurs such as "retarded". In any reasonable cross section that's called "flamebait", but her it caters to the sheeplike mentality. Mod that man up! (P.S. I just find it funny myself. I haven't had mod points on here in over a year, presumably because I moderated a non-pro-Linux post up because it was factual and even tempered).
Perhaps you missed the whole "prevalent argument" conditional put on that? The point, which you so stunningly missed, is that the majority of Slashdotters will in one story claim that Microsoft is a terrible monopoly that needs government intervention to be reigned in, but then in another story the majority (and yes it's largely the same group of people replying...I can recognize the UIDs in most cases) are claiming that XYZ products have the market cornered and Microsoft is running in fear (be in Linux, Postgresql, J2EE, etc). I have seen individuals claim these opposing perspectives countless times.
Retarded, irritating and whiney -- sure. You've proved that by combining a false dichotomy with a big flaming strawman. Cheers.
Firstly let me get the de rigueur insult in here: You suck eggs and your mother wears army boots! Save the insults for the next girl guides meeting moron because they just case you for the savage that you are.
Of course there is the small point that it's a real dichotomy (although I'm sure it gave you great pleasure to spout off "false dichotomy" and "strawman". Those goodies can be found hundreds of times by sheeplike Slashdotters such as yourself). You see a monopoly indicates that a company has exclusive control, with little competition, over a market or activity, yet here on Slashdot we learn that everyone is installing Linux, ESR is proclaiming that Microsoft will be gone in current_year+1, and technically Microsoft is purportedly outmatched by a competitor that is free, and available worldwide. You see those two opinions do not mix.
Slashdot is very confusing to me (not necessarily your post, but the conflicting most prevalent message). On the one hand Microsoft is doomed as the purportedly superior Linux/Apache/MySQL/Postgresql stomps its way into the hearts and mind of shops everywhere, but on the other hand Microsoft is an evil monopoly that must be stopped. These points are absolutely contradictory: If Microsoft is under an imminent threat by open source/freeware then they are not a monopoly.
Pick your prophecy people: If you claim in one post that Microsoft is doomed, then you must forever disagree with any claims that they are a monopoly.
It was quite the ripoff at something like $0.25 per couple of minutes.
Most people don't use these terminals to chat online or read Slashdot, but rather to connect to the company webmail, for instance, to check their mail. As such the average usage time will be just a few minutes. Obviously these boxes need to pay for themselves so the pricing goes accordingly (because these things are never saturated with person after person).
Would an artist rather have 1 million listeners, where 5% buy the cd, and maybe something else, or 10,000 loyal listeners, and no further audience.
While I see this having merit in a theoretical idealist world, if you look in any other discussion regarding online music distribution (the legal kind), there are countless highly moderated posts saying something basically like this: "I would buy music if I could pick and choose songs from various artists so I can have the good songs rather than all of the filler". What they're really saying, of course, is "I want to be able to only buy songs on the Top 40 being force fed to me which I am more than happy to slurp...oh, btw, P2P is great for small indy groups! [Just so long as someone else finds them first, promotes them to the point that they become cool and hip, and popular enough that I can pick out one of their `non-filler' songs to put on my compilation CD]". That is the sort of mentality that ensures that nothing but what Big Music is pushing as the next big thing will be eaten up by these people.
As a sidenote I'm not a goatee toting better-than-though listening to indy music: Most of the music I listen to is the same old stuff - Matchbox 20, Eminem, U2, etc. Yet I have long realized that just because the other 11 tracks on the CD aren't in the Top 40, they most certainly aren't filler (indeed, the unknown songs often are the most artistic and inventive).
Nah it just looks like it was a bogus link. The official login for this service is here. Note: Please do not mod me up people as I also linked this in another post.
By the same token the computer makers could claim that the Windows option is "free" when it's bundled, so if you return it they'll give you $0.00 back.
Speaking of the burger: My wife loves those little square dehydrated onions of McDonalds, so she often orders a cheeseburger without the meat pattie: It costs the same as a normal cheeseburger. Indeed I regularly get stuff without bacon (for health reasons) and again I don't get a discount unless they specifically made bacon an addon option.
Maybe it wouldn't be so slow if it were a partition and not a file residing in a file system.
Uh...effectively it is a partition as it's one large contiguous file. It isn't "lazy", it's practical (and far more versatile that forcingly dedictating a particular piece of hard drive to swap). Just because Linux does something one way doesn't make it the right way.
Re:This is GOOD for Sysadmins! NOT transferable
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Largo Loving Linux
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· Score: 1
How many times are you going to keep reiterating what I've already said? This criteria license actually specifically states that it applies to desktop operating systems (it also applies to new PCs, but I'll ignore that for now). How many more links are you going to provide specifically saying that they have criteria for new PCs for desktop operating systems? You keep adding your own disclaimers that it applies to servers as well, but not only have you not proven this IT IS NOT TRUE. Server licenses do not restrict it to a specific machine unless it's OEM, and even then that doesn't preclude you from upgrading the computer.
You also seem to be missing the point on the licensing costs: Many of the volume plans actually cost as much or more than retail, however they have other benefits like software assurance (version guarantees, basically) or easier license tracking.
P.S. the reason Microsoft has the disclaimers on the OEM upgrade is because of powerful agreements that they have with most VARs that they will not sell PCs without a Microsoft OS (because truthfully about 98% of the time someone will then install a warez copy of Windows on it), and it would create a conflict of interest and undermine their efforts and agreements if there were dozens of customers asking vendors like Dell for no OS on a DESKTOP machine when they have an existing agreement with Microsoft.
Re:This is GOOD for Sysadmins! NOT transferable
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Largo Loving Linux
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· Score: 1
What exactly are these links? The first two have to do with the conditions Dell imposes if a user opts to include an operating system, and the last links to a Microsoft text detailing the conditions regarding an OEMDesktop software installation for firms with a software licensing agreement with MS.
I have, I have! I was using it last night. Apparently, I tried to run too many programs at the same time. It warned me that it was increasing the size of my paging file, and then it started thrashing.
Obviously you're running with an insufficient amount of memory, or will you claim that other operating systems (probably Linux) somehow magically expand the amount of memory that your system has? Virtual memory, the memory hit when you run out of real memory, is slow and is only meant as a last resort before the apps start GPFing into oblivion (because most programmers don't both checking if memory allocations succeeded (but instead just presume they do). If your system is paging, then it's screaming out "stick more memory in me".
A 512MB DDR DIMM right now runs about $128. I personally run with 512MB (keep meaning to upgrade to a GB, but honestly I know that there'll be no performance improvements) and regularly have a development environment, a large database system, a web server, Opera + IE + even occasionally the resource-hungry Mozilla, a print/and file server, sometimes Limewire, and a copy of Quake 3 running the mod Urban Terror, and I've NEVER seen the paging file warnings. Indeed, my system runs smooth as silk with the hard drive sitting quietly biding its time.
While True Believers would find it hard to believe, there is absolutely no question that the fundamental design of Linux is inferior to Windows NT. From the microkernel design to the pervasive security infrastructure, NT/2000/XP is literally what Linux strives to be. Having said that, the implementation of NT left something to be desired: In a rush to add features, the robustness of the core system was oft neglected and the results were clear - A tremendous design can't protect against shoddy code within that design. Thankfully that is largely a thing of the past, and 2000 and beyond represent tremendously stable operating systems.
Re:This is GOOD for Sysadmins! NOT transferable
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Largo Loving Linux
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· Score: 1
uy Microsoft Server Products Retail !!!!!!!! Is this your advice? What an idiot you are?
Uh huh. Retail=Something other than OEM. It means "don't select the `Windows 2000 Server' radio button when ordering that new Dell Server". I'm including any licensing agreements with Microsoft in "retail". BTW: I'm not quite sure what your point is anyways- The cost different between OEM and retail is marginal, and between Software Assurance and retail is again marginal (indeed SA is often more expensive because it gives you multiple pieces of paper allowing you to run X number of the current software product, allowing you to upgrade as new versinos are released). Most organizations buy their licenses through a reseller consultant organization that keeps them current with their licensing needs.
If YOU the party of the first part, wants to remain legal with Microsoft, the party of the second part, NO server products are transferable from one machine to another under these 'special' licensing plans....and then...
All machines that a company buys from Dell have an OEM copy of a Microsoft product preinstalled.
No they don't. All of the client machines have a copy of a Microsoft product (depending upon the agreement that the VAR made with Microsoft), however the user chooses whether or not to add an OEM Server OS (and pays a hefty premium for doing so) to servers. Please feel free to confirm this (see http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp? customer_id=04&keycode=6W300&order_code=pe4600 ). You're grossly confusing client operating systems where there are restrictive licenses, with server licensing: They are two VASTLY different things. Server licenses generally work as a "you have 5 pieces of paper giving you Windows 2000 Server licenses, so you can have 5 servers operating at one time".
Microsoft ties the license of its operating system to the hard drive so we can't just upgrade our servers and install the operating system that we have already purchased.
Such a limit is only imposed if one purchased an OEM copy with their shiny new hardware, otherwise there are no such limits: Buy a retail copy of Windows 2000 Server and you can swap it between machines (and most certanily between hard drives) countless times. An OEM copy, a route that very few firms follow when they buy servers, is indeed EULA restricted to the machine it was purchased with, but it most certainly doesn't prevent you from upgrading the hardware and reinstalling it on the same machine countless times (indeed, any limitations are legal rather than technical).
I'm not sure about the direction with Windows.NET Server 2003, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Have you used Windows XP lately? Not to be a troll, but it really is faster and doesn't crash anymore... I installed it 10 days ago, and it's been up and running since, under heavy usage too, I might add...
XP is just a minor variation of 2000, which itself is a tremendously stable operating system. Indeed, I'd carry that back as far as NT 4 which also is an incredibly stable operating system, though some aspects that weren't as intuitive caused unnecessary reboots (for instance that the task manager wouldn't kill "with extreme prejudice", leading less-skilled administrators to presume that a reboot was the only cure when the command line kill command would save the day. Thankfully XP's task manager, and presumably.NET Server 2003, kills with extreme prejudice).
If indeed Microsoft were to respond to Linux, I see the likely response being the reduction in the cost of Windows Server licenses (perhaps making it up in software support agreements and such): Why would they move to the technically inferior design of Linux when they have a tremendously capable OS already? (I'm not trying to troll here, but the architecture and security plumbing of the NT series of OS' is tremendously good) Indeed, Microsoft is already leaning that way with a special version of Windows.NET Server for web appliances, presumably at a greatly reduced cost.
What an intelligent thing to say. And by the way, The period should go inside the quotes, not outside. "Blah, blah, blah, stupid insult." Not "Blah blah blah stupid insult".
Ah, good old pedantry: The final tool of desperation. I won't bother pointing out the horrific punctuation in your own posts (you know -- the old saying about glass houses).
And again you don't have a clue about what size of organization would use four processor servers. $40,000.00 is a lot of money period.
Uh huh. A 4-processor SQL Server system offers tremendous performance (I say this from actual experience, versus your "But I work in a company where there are some computer guys!" experience): A large multiwarehouse databasing and sales system could easily run from that. Of course you're trying to apply the economics of a small rag-tag shop (one which would NEVER have a 4-processor machine, much less need a 4-processor SQL Server) with big operations, and it's pretty weak.
You could run Linux and an Apache web server for $0.00 in licensing fees and have unlimited connections so don't tell me that the costs are a wash.
Your ability to miss the point is absolutely staggering. The cost of licensing when considered against the whole cost of an implementation (I know firms that spend tens or hundreds of thousands in payroll and consulting just CONSIDERING the options to make sure they make he right choices in their deployment) is trivial, and this is something that freeware fanatics such as yourself fail to understand as your run around proclaiming the vast advantage that freeware apps offer. Is your time and the time of your coworkers free? Is the hardware free? Is the consulting and maintenance and upgrades free? The original point was that TCO is a wash in most studies, studies which I trust far more than your "just believe me" rhetoric: There is no clear economic advantage to going with free software.
And yes, having a "graybeard" and twenty plus years experience gives me a big advantage. I know how to manage a datacenter I doubt that you do.
No you don't. I don't know you personally but I do know that your post reeks of absolutely staggering idealism and a lack of reality. I'm a pragmatist myself: It's the cold hard facts that matter, not some half-baked notions of how a free Commodore 64 out of a trash pile offers a great economic advantage to the operation. I've seen projects balloon GROSSLY over budget because some idealist proclaimed that there's no need to spend the money and instead they'll roll it themselves...months later and many magnitudes more than the original avoided cost in payroll, they finally concede and the original plan is renewed. It repeats itself endlessly.
As a sidenote, when I said "My anecdote beats your anecdote! My experience trumps your experience.", I should have instead ended that with an exclamation mark indicating the sarcasm that I was trying to portray.
Oh, uh, yeah. Well during MY support call they said "Eric Damron is a poopy head!".
Your "experience" certainly does NOT trump my twenty years of experience.
Granted your illustrious history with DOS 5 and cobol makes you a real expert in the world of Windows. Claiming graybeard status doesn't get you props here, especially when talking about relatively recent technology.
The fact that you appear to be clueless as to the costs of Microsoft licensees proves that...We purchase unlimited client licenses for our SQL server. It costs us $10,000.00 PER PROCESSOR!! So for a four-processor server we're looking at 40 grand. And that's just for the SQL server!
Wow, $40K! Gosh darnit that's crazy! Let's see: What sort of firm would need a 4 processor SQL Server license? Oh, right, the sort of firm that has tens of millions of dollars in payroll yearly. While it may amaze you as you contemplate how many Big Macs and Ding Dongs equals that $40K, in reality that is a drop in the bucket for the type of organizations that would need such a license. Hell, a 100-head organization with a $5 million yearly personelle charge alone (excluding all those other things) would easily get by with a single CPU version of SQL Server Standard: $5,000 (and that version bought 3 years ago would still be going strong, so per year $1666). Actually I'm a fan of using the per-connected-device CAL licensing to fully utilize powerful servers, but that's just an academic exercise right now.
I'm sure that the CEO is shivering in his boots every night as he contemplates that $1666/year database charge as he takes the $1700 express flight home from his $4000 business trip to look in on the IT crew playing solitaire at $1000 weekly each.
Linux servers are really no harder to maintain than Microsoft servers in fact due to their stability they are less troublesome....this is to be taken as wisdom, and then...
As far as your proclamation that NT 4.0 servers are stable enough never to need a reboot I say BULLSHIT! Under the advice of Microsoft we reboot at least once a month.
My anecdote beats your anecdote! My experience trumps your experience.
I don't need your personal stamp of agreement on my claim, however it's completely true nonetheless. Perhaps there is a specific scenario that requires you to "reboot once a month", however I highly, highly doubt that Microsoft "recommends" that (do you mind pointing out that whitepaper? "Reboot once a month"): They may recommend cycling particularly troublesome, memory leaking applications (such as Exchange in some variants which is an imperfect application) but there is virtually never a reason to reboot the server. Well, ignorance of the administrator is probably as good as a reason as any. "It's doing something funny and I never did nuttin'! [apart from twiddling with the settings in the network configuration] Reboot!". I once worked with a group of clowns that would actually reboot the server multiple times to see if their garbage custom software would work in some instances. "Ooooh...maybe this time!"
So, even if the cost of administrating them is a wash we still have licensing issues. Microsoft charges a HUGE amount for that.
While licensing costs seem to be all that the average Slashdotter can focus on, study after study has found that licensing costs are trivial in the grand scheme of things. A recent study pegged licensing costs as 5% of a yearly IT infrastructure. It isn't quite the trump card that the freeware society thinks it is.
Re:This is GOOD for Sysadmins!
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Largo Loving Linux
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· Score: 2, Interesting
assuming a modicum of competence on the MSCE's part, an assumption that is, as many here have pointed out repeatedly, is not one that is safe to make
Using the average wisdom of Slashdot is a perilous exercise. The average Slashdotter knows astoundingly little about Windows development, the Windows platform, or Windows administration, although they never fail to proclaim their mastery of the same.
If you are saving money because your staffing requirements are lower (in raw numbers of bodies), your licensing costs are lower, and your TCO costs are lower (all nearly always true with GNU/Linux or FreeBSD vs. Microsoft), you can pay a premium for really good people and have the benefits that brings along with tremendous savings.
Firstly, countless studies have shown that in the TCO game it is a wash: While the fanatics rally against any study that proclaims Windows the winner in TCO (it's amazing the fine-toothed comb criticism of studies that occurs when a they proclaims !(Linux) the winner of anything, versus the completely uncritical consumption and cult-like "just believe" that occurs with any study proclaiming Linux 'teh ownz'), the reality is that many respected, unbiased studies have found it to sway either way when filling similar roles. Linux/FreeBSD do not own the TCO in any unanimous way, but instead are appropriate tools in specific instances.
Having said that, I have found that many people confuse technology imposed scope limitations with TCO: i.e. A Linux shop has a small application set and has low TCO becauses users have the ability to A, and the server does B, versus a Windows-enabled engineering shop with dozens of in-house applications, dozens of third party apps (and the TCO that goes along with it), and countless different uses and configurations.
While at a prior organization I was responsible for a very heavily loaded application server hosting some monster loads and queries. This beast ran a huge SQL Server database in concert with a highly complex query engine, all on a low end Dell machine (a Dell PowerEdge 2400 with a couple of P3 667s). I actually even did development and testing on this production machine (ah the downsides of low cost development). Total crashes: ZERO. This was on NT 4, btw. Total exploits on this publicly accessible server: ZERO. I generally never touched this machine and it just purred along serving up pages for months on end to happy customers.
BTW: The witty will be prepared to proclaim that "Oh, then you must suck because there's a Microsoft patch requiring a reboot every other week!". About 95% of those patches, which I am informed of via Microsoft Security emails, have absolutely no applicability to servers running as front-line web servers with no untrusted interactive logons. The only ones who generally are rebooting their server once a week are the self-proclaimed "UNIX savvy" admin who's doing anything and everything to put themselves on a cross.
Oh, no way man, compared to Sage, MAS 90 is laughable garbage. No, wait, compared to Great Plains Enterprise edition, calling Sage complete is laughable.
Quickbooks is a complete business management system for small businesses, and obviously was never intended to be recommended for medium or complex multi-warehouse style businesses.
Slashdot Mirror
It's called industry intelligence my moronic friend (backed by stats like this). Already Toshiba had captured virtually all of the presses hearts with the e series (because suddenly Pocket PCs weren't the "too-large" devices they had been), and now Dell has captured the hearts and minds of even more by offering sub-Palm pricing on far more powerful devices. Perhaps you're sitting in Palm headquarters fervently pretending that you're under no risk, but rest assured that sitting on your laurels for several years wasn't too wise.
As a sidenote, I find it absolutely hilarious that you try to pretend that I karma whored...in a post where I SAID SOMETHING PRO-MICROSOFT (or as another poster stated, I'm a "Microsoft fanboy"). Maybe you're near hear, but it's pretty much the opposite, and that usually ensures moderation obliteration. Indeed, I know that it's only a matter of time before some anti-Microsoft fanatics come in and stomp my post to -1, and I would honestly be disappointed if it didn't happen.
Palm, Handspring and Sony control 81.1% of the market. Compaq, Casio, and Dell (newcomer) combined, control 12.6% of the market.
Firstly, Dell's PDAs just came out and lowered the bar to even or lower than Palms (for a much, much more feature rich system). Secondly, your numbers are a tad out of date (not really that surprizing). Here we can see that PocketPC currently has 30% of all sales (the "market", if you will), versus compared to 48% for Palm. A tad different from your numbers. This was before Dell virtually halved the price of a PocketPC PDA.
Secondly, the "bloated and more expensive" is an outdated argument as well. Firstly something like the Toshiba e310 or e740 represent among the smallest PDAs available, yet they offer tremendous power. Dell's new PDAs, starting at $199, offer incredible value. And what's with the "proprietary" nonsense, Palm fanboy? And Palm ISN'T? Oh, right, proprietary=Microsoft in Slashdot speak.
Wow, Linux is being used in a product that Windows isn't even targeted towards.
Well that isn't entirely fair: Microsoft has made embedded operating systems for embedded and/or appliance markets for a while (at least four years), to mixed success. Personally I think they'll succeed eventually: Already PocketPC PDAs, a vision that was originally called bloated and overpowered, are absolutely storming the market (and the new ultra-low cost Dell ones pretty much ring the bell or doom for Palm and friend).
Okay retard
Oooh, touché!
Of course all your petulant little rant has exposed is that you know absolutely nothing about Slashdot. You see, hundreds of thousands of people sign up for accounts (or, in cases such as yours, they sign up for several accounts so they have the "troll post-reply" account. You apparently were a little too dumb to realize you'd switched to your trolling account), but they don't post. Indeed if you had any truthful knowledge of Slashdot, you'd know that it's a very small cross-section of Slashdotters that post, and they often post prolifically. This idea that it's a random subsection of hundreds of thousands of people posting is just ridiculously laughable.
Secondly, it's damn funny what the defense has been. In the first post you, err, he firstly stated that Slashdot wasn't monolithic and therefore can hold contradictory opinions, but then hilariously refuted what I was saying anyways... So I take it from both defenses that it is illogical and foolish to both claim Microsoft's imminent demise from superior and freely available alternatives, and then to proclaim that they're an evil monopoly? Come on: Say it. Let's not beat around silly claims of false dichotomies or strawman arguments.
P.S. Slashdot moderation further parrots this hilarity. I can see that the grandparent post has been moderated up for saying that Slashdot is not monolithic, coupling it with some slurs such as "retarded". In any reasonable cross section that's called "flamebait", but her it caters to the sheeplike mentality. Mod that man up! (P.S. I just find it funny myself. I haven't had mod points on here in over a year, presumably because I moderated a non-pro-Linux post up because it was factual and even tempered).
Slashdot is not monolithic!
Perhaps you missed the whole "prevalent argument" conditional put on that? The point, which you so stunningly missed, is that the majority of Slashdotters will in one story claim that Microsoft is a terrible monopoly that needs government intervention to be reigned in, but then in another story the majority (and yes it's largely the same group of people replying...I can recognize the UIDs in most cases) are claiming that XYZ products have the market cornered and Microsoft is running in fear (be in Linux, Postgresql, J2EE, etc). I have seen individuals claim these opposing perspectives countless times.
Retarded, irritating and whiney -- sure. You've proved that by combining a false dichotomy with a big flaming strawman. Cheers.
Firstly let me get the de rigueur insult in here: You suck eggs and your mother wears army boots! Save the insults for the next girl guides meeting moron because they just case you for the savage that you are.
Of course there is the small point that it's a real dichotomy (although I'm sure it gave you great pleasure to spout off "false dichotomy" and "strawman". Those goodies can be found hundreds of times by sheeplike Slashdotters such as yourself). You see a monopoly indicates that a company has exclusive control, with little competition, over a market or activity, yet here on Slashdot we learn that everyone is installing Linux, ESR is proclaiming that Microsoft will be gone in current_year+1, and technically Microsoft is purportedly outmatched by a competitor that is free, and available worldwide. You see those two opinions do not mix.
Slashdot is very confusing to me (not necessarily your post, but the conflicting most prevalent message). On the one hand Microsoft is doomed as the purportedly superior Linux/Apache/MySQL/Postgresql stomps its way into the hearts and mind of shops everywhere, but on the other hand Microsoft is an evil monopoly that must be stopped. These points are absolutely contradictory: If Microsoft is under an imminent threat by open source/freeware then they are not a monopoly.
Pick your prophecy people: If you claim in one post that Microsoft is doomed, then you must forever disagree with any claims that they are a monopoly.
It was quite the ripoff at something like $0.25 per couple of minutes.
Most people don't use these terminals to chat online or read Slashdot, but rather to connect to the company webmail, for instance, to check their mail. As such the average usage time will be just a few minutes. Obviously these boxes need to pay for themselves so the pricing goes accordingly (because these things are never saturated with person after person).
Would an artist rather have 1 million listeners, where 5% buy the cd, and maybe something else, or 10,000 loyal listeners, and no further audience.
While I see this having merit in a theoretical idealist world, if you look in any other discussion regarding online music distribution (the legal kind), there are countless highly moderated posts saying something basically like this: "I would buy music if I could pick and choose songs from various artists so I can have the good songs rather than all of the filler". What they're really saying, of course, is "I want to be able to only buy songs on the Top 40 being force fed to me which I am more than happy to slurp...oh, btw, P2P is great for small indy groups! [Just so long as someone else finds them first, promotes them to the point that they become cool and hip, and popular enough that I can pick out one of their `non-filler' songs to put on my compilation CD]". That is the sort of mentality that ensures that nothing but what Big Music is pushing as the next big thing will be eaten up by these people.
As a sidenote I'm not a goatee toting better-than-though listening to indy music: Most of the music I listen to is the same old stuff - Matchbox 20, Eminem, U2, etc. Yet I have long realized that just because the other 11 tracks on the CD aren't in the Top 40, they most certainly aren't filler (indeed, the unknown songs often are the most artistic and inventive).
Nah it just looks like it was a bogus link. The official login for this service is here. Note: Please do not mod me up people as I also linked this in another post.
Check out this page listing the pilot locations on the right side. That's the official page for the service, as a sidenote.
By the same token the computer makers could claim that the Windows option is "free" when it's bundled, so if you return it they'll give you $0.00 back.
Speaking of the burger: My wife loves those little square dehydrated onions of McDonalds, so she often orders a cheeseburger without the meat pattie: It costs the same as a normal cheeseburger. Indeed I regularly get stuff without bacon (for health reasons) and again I don't get a discount unless they specifically made bacon an addon option.
Maybe it wouldn't be so slow if it were a partition and not a file residing in a file system.
Uh...effectively it is a partition as it's one large contiguous file. It isn't "lazy", it's practical (and far more versatile that forcingly dedictating a particular piece of hard drive to swap). Just because Linux does something one way doesn't make it the right way.
How many times are you going to keep reiterating what I've already said? This criteria license actually specifically states that it applies to desktop operating systems (it also applies to new PCs, but I'll ignore that for now). How many more links are you going to provide specifically saying that they have criteria for new PCs for desktop operating systems? You keep adding your own disclaimers that it applies to servers as well, but not only have you not proven this IT IS NOT TRUE. Server licenses do not restrict it to a specific machine unless it's OEM, and even then that doesn't preclude you from upgrading the computer.
You also seem to be missing the point on the licensing costs: Many of the volume plans actually cost as much or more than retail, however they have other benefits like software assurance (version guarantees, basically) or easier license tracking.
P.S. the reason Microsoft has the disclaimers on the OEM upgrade is because of powerful agreements that they have with most VARs that they will not sell PCs without a Microsoft OS (because truthfully about 98% of the time someone will then install a warez copy of Windows on it), and it would create a conflict of interest and undermine their efforts and agreements if there were dozens of customers asking vendors like Dell for no OS on a DESKTOP machine when they have an existing agreement with Microsoft.
What exactly are these links? The first two have to do with the conditions Dell imposes if a user opts to include an operating system, and the last links to a Microsoft text detailing the conditions regarding an OEM Desktop software installation for firms with a software licensing agreement with MS.
I have, I have! I was using it last night. Apparently, I tried to run too many programs at the same time. It warned me that it was increasing the size of my paging file, and then it started thrashing.
Obviously you're running with an insufficient amount of memory, or will you claim that other operating systems (probably Linux) somehow magically expand the amount of memory that your system has? Virtual memory, the memory hit when you run out of real memory, is slow and is only meant as a last resort before the apps start GPFing into oblivion (because most programmers don't both checking if memory allocations succeeded (but instead just presume they do). If your system is paging, then it's screaming out "stick more memory in me".
A 512MB DDR DIMM right now runs about $128. I personally run with 512MB (keep meaning to upgrade to a GB, but honestly I know that there'll be no performance improvements) and regularly have a development environment, a large database system, a web server, Opera + IE + even occasionally the resource-hungry Mozilla, a print/and file server, sometimes Limewire, and a copy of Quake 3 running the mod Urban Terror, and I've NEVER seen the paging file warnings. Indeed, my system runs smooth as silk with the hard drive sitting quietly biding its time.
While True Believers would find it hard to believe, there is absolutely no question that the fundamental design of Linux is inferior to Windows NT. From the microkernel design to the pervasive security infrastructure, NT/2000/XP is literally what Linux strives to be. Having said that, the implementation of NT left something to be desired: In a rush to add features, the robustness of the core system was oft neglected and the results were clear - A tremendous design can't protect against shoddy code within that design. Thankfully that is largely a thing of the past, and 2000 and beyond represent tremendously stable operating systems.
uy Microsoft Server Products Retail !!!!!!!! Is this your advice? What an idiot you are?
...and then...
? customer_id=04&keycode=6W300&order_code=pe4600 ). You're grossly confusing client operating systems where there are restrictive licenses, with server licensing: They are two VASTLY different things. Server licenses generally work as a "you have 5 pieces of paper giving you Windows 2000 Server licenses, so you can have 5 servers operating at one time".
Uh huh. Retail=Something other than OEM. It means "don't select the `Windows 2000 Server' radio button when ordering that new Dell Server". I'm including any licensing agreements with Microsoft in "retail". BTW: I'm not quite sure what your point is anyways- The cost different between OEM and retail is marginal, and between Software Assurance and retail is again marginal (indeed SA is often more expensive because it gives you multiple pieces of paper allowing you to run X number of the current software product, allowing you to upgrade as new versinos are released). Most organizations buy their licenses through a reseller consultant organization that keeps them current with their licensing needs.
If YOU the party of the first part, wants to remain legal with Microsoft, the party of the second part, NO server products are transferable from one machine to another under these 'special' licensing plans.
All machines that a company buys from Dell have an OEM copy of a Microsoft product preinstalled.
No they don't. All of the client machines have a copy of a Microsoft product (depending upon the agreement that the VAR made with Microsoft), however the user chooses whether or not to add an OEM Server OS (and pays a hefty premium for doing so) to servers. Please feel free to confirm this (see http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.asp
Microsoft ties the license of its operating system to the hard drive so we can't just upgrade our servers and install the operating system that we have already purchased.
.NET Server 2003, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Such a limit is only imposed if one purchased an OEM copy with their shiny new hardware, otherwise there are no such limits: Buy a retail copy of Windows 2000 Server and you can swap it between machines (and most certanily between hard drives) countless times. An OEM copy, a route that very few firms follow when they buy servers, is indeed EULA restricted to the machine it was purchased with, but it most certainly doesn't prevent you from upgrading the hardware and reinstalling it on the same machine countless times (indeed, any limitations are legal rather than technical).
I'm not sure about the direction with Windows
Have you used Windows XP lately? Not to be a troll, but it really is faster and doesn't crash anymore... I installed it 10 days ago, and it's been up and running since, under heavy usage too, I might add...
.NET Server 2003, kills with extreme prejudice).
.NET Server for web appliances, presumably at a greatly reduced cost.
XP is just a minor variation of 2000, which itself is a tremendously stable operating system. Indeed, I'd carry that back as far as NT 4 which also is an incredibly stable operating system, though some aspects that weren't as intuitive caused unnecessary reboots (for instance that the task manager wouldn't kill "with extreme prejudice", leading less-skilled administrators to presume that a reboot was the only cure when the command line kill command would save the day. Thankfully XP's task manager, and presumably
If indeed Microsoft were to respond to Linux, I see the likely response being the reduction in the cost of Windows Server licenses (perhaps making it up in software support agreements and such): Why would they move to the technically inferior design of Linux when they have a tremendously capable OS already? (I'm not trying to troll here, but the architecture and security plumbing of the NT series of OS' is tremendously good) Indeed, Microsoft is already leaning that way with a special version of Windows
What an intelligent thing to say. And by the way, The period should go inside the quotes, not outside. "Blah, blah, blah, stupid insult." Not "Blah blah blah stupid insult".
Ah, good old pedantry: The final tool of desperation. I won't bother pointing out the horrific punctuation in your own posts (you know -- the old saying about glass houses).
And again you don't have a clue about what size of organization would use four processor servers. $40,000.00 is a lot of money period.
Uh huh. A 4-processor SQL Server system offers tremendous performance (I say this from actual experience, versus your "But I work in a company where there are some computer guys!" experience): A large multiwarehouse databasing and sales system could easily run from that. Of course you're trying to apply the economics of a small rag-tag shop (one which would NEVER have a 4-processor machine, much less need a 4-processor SQL Server) with big operations, and it's pretty weak.
You could run Linux and an Apache web server for $0.00 in licensing fees and have unlimited connections so don't tell me that the costs are a wash.
Your ability to miss the point is absolutely staggering. The cost of licensing when considered against the whole cost of an implementation (I know firms that spend tens or hundreds of thousands in payroll and consulting just CONSIDERING the options to make sure they make he right choices in their deployment) is trivial, and this is something that freeware fanatics such as yourself fail to understand as your run around proclaiming the vast advantage that freeware apps offer. Is your time and the time of your coworkers free? Is the hardware free? Is the consulting and maintenance and upgrades free? The original point was that TCO is a wash in most studies, studies which I trust far more than your "just believe me" rhetoric: There is no clear economic advantage to going with free software.
And yes, having a "graybeard" and twenty plus years experience gives me a big advantage. I know how to manage a datacenter I doubt that you do.
No you don't. I don't know you personally but I do know that your post reeks of absolutely staggering idealism and a lack of reality. I'm a pragmatist myself: It's the cold hard facts that matter, not some half-baked notions of how a free Commodore 64 out of a trash pile offers a great economic advantage to the operation. I've seen projects balloon GROSSLY over budget because some idealist proclaimed that there's no need to spend the money and instead they'll roll it themselves...months later and many magnitudes more than the original avoided cost in payroll, they finally concede and the original plan is renewed. It repeats itself endlessly.
As a sidenote, when I said "My anecdote beats your anecdote! My experience trumps your experience.", I should have instead ended that with an exclamation mark indicating the sarcasm that I was trying to portray.
This was from a support call. $250 per pop btw.
Oh, uh, yeah. Well during MY support call they said "Eric Damron is a poopy head!".
Your "experience" certainly does NOT trump my twenty years of experience.
Granted your illustrious history with DOS 5 and cobol makes you a real expert in the world of Windows. Claiming graybeard status doesn't get you props here, especially when talking about relatively recent technology.
The fact that you appear to be clueless as to the costs of Microsoft licensees proves that...We purchase unlimited client licenses for our SQL server. It costs us $10,000.00 PER PROCESSOR!! So for a four-processor server we're looking at 40 grand. And that's just for the SQL server!
Wow, $40K! Gosh darnit that's crazy! Let's see: What sort of firm would need a 4 processor SQL Server license? Oh, right, the sort of firm that has tens of millions of dollars in payroll yearly. While it may amaze you as you contemplate how many Big Macs and Ding Dongs equals that $40K, in reality that is a drop in the bucket for the type of organizations that would need such a license. Hell, a 100-head organization with a $5 million yearly personelle charge alone (excluding all those other things) would easily get by with a single CPU version of SQL Server Standard: $5,000 (and that version bought 3 years ago would still be going strong, so per year $1666). Actually I'm a fan of using the per-connected-device CAL licensing to fully utilize powerful servers, but that's just an academic exercise right now.
I'm sure that the CEO is shivering in his boots every night as he contemplates that $1666/year database charge as he takes the $1700 express flight home from his $4000 business trip to look in on the IT crew playing solitaire at $1000 weekly each.
Linux servers are really no harder to maintain than Microsoft servers in fact due to their stability they are less troublesome. ...this is to be taken as wisdom, and then...
As far as your proclamation that NT 4.0 servers are stable enough never to need a reboot I say BULLSHIT! Under the advice of Microsoft we reboot at least once a month.
My anecdote beats your anecdote! My experience trumps your experience.
I don't need your personal stamp of agreement on my claim, however it's completely true nonetheless. Perhaps there is a specific scenario that requires you to "reboot once a month", however I highly, highly doubt that Microsoft "recommends" that (do you mind pointing out that whitepaper? "Reboot once a month"): They may recommend cycling particularly troublesome, memory leaking applications (such as Exchange in some variants which is an imperfect application) but there is virtually never a reason to reboot the server. Well, ignorance of the administrator is probably as good as a reason as any. "It's doing something funny and I never did nuttin'! [apart from twiddling with the settings in the network configuration] Reboot!". I once worked with a group of clowns that would actually reboot the server multiple times to see if their garbage custom software would work in some instances. "Ooooh...maybe this time!"
So, even if the cost of administrating them is a wash we still have licensing issues. Microsoft charges a HUGE amount for that.
While licensing costs seem to be all that the average Slashdotter can focus on, study after study has found that licensing costs are trivial in the grand scheme of things. A recent study pegged licensing costs as 5% of a yearly IT infrastructure. It isn't quite the trump card that the freeware society thinks it is.
assuming a modicum of competence on the MSCE's part, an assumption that is, as many here have pointed out repeatedly, is not one that is safe to make
Using the average wisdom of Slashdot is a perilous exercise. The average Slashdotter knows astoundingly little about Windows development, the Windows platform, or Windows administration, although they never fail to proclaim their mastery of the same.
If you are saving money because your staffing requirements are lower (in raw numbers of bodies), your licensing costs are lower, and your TCO costs are lower (all nearly always true with GNU/Linux or FreeBSD vs. Microsoft), you can pay a premium for really good people and have the benefits that brings along with tremendous savings.
Firstly, countless studies have shown that in the TCO game it is a wash: While the fanatics rally against any study that proclaims Windows the winner in TCO (it's amazing the fine-toothed comb criticism of studies that occurs when a they proclaims !(Linux) the winner of anything, versus the completely uncritical consumption and cult-like "just believe" that occurs with any study proclaiming Linux 'teh ownz'), the reality is that many respected, unbiased studies have found it to sway either way when filling similar roles. Linux/FreeBSD do not own the TCO in any unanimous way, but instead are appropriate tools in specific instances.
Having said that, I have found that many people confuse technology imposed scope limitations with TCO: i.e. A Linux shop has a small application set and has low TCO becauses users have the ability to A, and the server does B, versus a Windows-enabled engineering shop with dozens of in-house applications, dozens of third party apps (and the TCO that goes along with it), and countless different uses and configurations.
While at a prior organization I was responsible for a very heavily loaded application server hosting some monster loads and queries. This beast ran a huge SQL Server database in concert with a highly complex query engine, all on a low end Dell machine (a Dell PowerEdge 2400 with a couple of P3 667s). I actually even did development and testing on this production machine (ah the downsides of low cost development). Total crashes: ZERO. This was on NT 4, btw. Total exploits on this publicly accessible server: ZERO. I generally never touched this machine and it just purred along serving up pages for months on end to happy customers.
BTW: The witty will be prepared to proclaim that "Oh, then you must suck because there's a Microsoft patch requiring a reboot every other week!". About 95% of those patches, which I am informed of via Microsoft Security emails, have absolutely no applicability to servers running as front-line web servers with no untrusted interactive logons. The only ones who generally are rebooting their server once a week are the self-proclaimed "UNIX savvy" admin who's doing anything and everything to put themselves on a cross.
Oh, no way man, compared to Sage, MAS 90 is laughable garbage. No, wait, compared to Great Plains Enterprise edition, calling Sage complete is laughable.
Quickbooks is a complete business management system for small businesses, and obviously was never intended to be recommended for medium or complex multi-warehouse style businesses.