[News] [Rival] Signs of Weakness in Vista: Microsoft Does Clearance Sale
Roy Schestowitz
,----[ Quote ]
| Under terms of “The Ultimate Offer,” testers can go to any retail or online
| store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for full
| price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista Ultimate
| Upgrade product key.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
Two licences, not two products. They try to make software seem like a loaf of
bread.
Recent:
Interesting comment from CompUSA
,----[ Quote ]
| Every single one of them he said was returned from consumers... and that they
| (CompUSA) couldn't ship them back. As he heard, Microsoft wasn't giving
| credit back for unsold or returned copies... and didn't want the returned
| figures made public... He wouldn't say that every single one of them
| exchanged for a copy of Xp, he didn't know if that was true. So, I asked how
| many boxes did they have. Same glare, followed with a "You do not want to
| know" type statement.
`----
http://zerias.blogspot.com/2007/12/interesting-comment-from-compusa.html
Related:
Windows Vista: Sold but not deployed
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft says it remains happy with enterprise sales of Vista -- however,
| the software behemoth acknowledges that many businesses which have bought
| Vista licences are yet to deploy the software.
`----
Currys group blames Vista for poor sales
,----[ Quote ]
| DSG, the group behind Currys and PC World, has warned that poor sales of
| Vista could slash its profits by around £20 million.
`----
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/131507/currys-group-blames-vista-for-poor-sales.html
DSG continues retailer woes
,----[ Quote ]
| DSG, the company formerly known as Dixons, became the latest British retailer
| to report a drop in profits for the summer months today. But it wasn’t all
| down to the rotten weather – this time it was also Microsoft’s fault.
`----
http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/newsalerts/article/748756/dsg-continues-retailer-woes/
Dell casts doubts on Vista
,----[ Quote ]
| Dell today revealed that it will restore the option to use Windows XP on
| some of its home systems, marking a potentially damaging blow to
| Microsoft's hopes for the newer Windows Vista.
|
| [...]
|
| While a popular request through the company's IdeaStorm website, the
| choice was substantially outnumbered by requests for pre-installed
| Linux, US-based technical support, and other features -- pointing to a
| larger general demand for the change. The turnaround may be a reflection of
| an overall backlash against Vista, observed IDC analyst Richard Shim.
`----
http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/04/19/dell.casts.doubts.on.vista/
Lenovo offers downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP
,----[ Quote ]
| My colleague Stian just sent me this interesting link regarding my
| experiences with Windows Vista. Since I assume the link will NOT have the
| visual appearence it has right now for very many more hours (days) I've
| created a screenshot of how it looked when I went into the site.
`----
http://jaxed.org/lenovo-offers-downgrade-from-windows-vista-to-windows-xp.blog
Windows Vista kicked out of Olympics PCs
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft's latest version of Windows is too risky to implement for the
| important computers managing the 2008 Olympic summer games in Beijing, said
| the event's computer supplier and sponsor Lenovo.
`----
http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/08/08/no.vista.on.olympic.pcs/
Acer: PC industry 'disappointed' with Vista
,----[ Quote
| Acer president Gianfranco Lanci became the first major PC manufacturer to
| openly attack Microsoft over the Windows Vista operating system in the
| Financial Times Deutschland on Monday.
|
| Lanci said the operating system was riddled with problems and gave users and
| businesses no reason to buy a new PC, according to the report. Taiwan-based
| Acer is the world's fourth-largest PC manufacturer, after HP, Dell and
| Lenovo.
|
| "The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista," Lanci said.
`----
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=9579
The End of the Vista Experiment
,----[ Quote ]
| Over a year ago, I bought a new computer. This was a carefully considered
| decision, as I don't change computers that often and so try to get something
| I will be satisfied with for as long as possible.
|
| [...]
|
| But as far as my desktop OS, yesterday I reinstalled XP on the silent
| machine, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be trying Vista again until I
| hear some really, really good things about Service Pack 2. Basically, I'm
| done experimenting with Microsoft OSes for at least a year and a half.
`----
Sinister Midget
> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| Under terms of “The Ultimate Offer,” testers can go to any retail or online
>| store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for full
>| price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista Ultimate
>| Upgrade product key.
> `----
>
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
>
> Two licences, not two products. They try to make software seem like a loaf of
> bread.
This is for other reasons than just to treat it like a commodity:
1. They get to count it as 2 copies sold. Not just shipped, /sold/.
That's so they have something they can use for a semi-answer to
questions about the real count being in-use. It's still dishonest, but
it's harder to pin down. This is all part of their famed strategy of
keeping the wool over the investors' eyes so confidence remains higher
than it really should be.
2. This isn't a real reason for doing it, but it's a motivation to the
buyer (any buyer dumb enough to fall for it): the user can go twice as
long before having to call the mothership and say "Mother, may I?" when
they need to keep reinstalling, or when they have to activate several
times just for adding or changing minor hardware pieces.
--
Divorce - Transition from a duet to a duel.
Rex Ballard
> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Under terms of "The Ultimate Offer," testers can go to any retail or online
> | store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for full
> | price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista Ultimate
> | Upgrade product key.
> `----
Following the link
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
The deal is only available to MSDN subscribers, who were supposed to
stop using their Beta versions of Vista about 6 months ago. It seems
that many of those writing "Rave Reviews" of Vista didn't actually
have legal copies of the product.
Microsoft gets to do something really wierd. They were able to counts
all the beta copies given to MSDN subscribers as "Shipped Licenses"
since they were shipped by Microsoft to the subscribers. Now they are
able to triple that count by offering the 2 for 1 deal to MSDN
subsribers, allowing Microsoft to claim 3 "shipments" for each of
those MSDN subscribers.
Notice that Microsoft isn't offering "Free" versions, they are
offering duplicate licenses, but supposedly, the second license is for
the "Test" machine (MSDN subscribers are supposed to use a different
machine for testing than the one they use for actual work, but
Microsoft doesn't enforce that very well. It does protect Microsoft
from the liability of having some MSDN tester going ballistic in the
media because they lost all of their work files when some Beta version
provided by MSDN trashes their hard drive.
Remember that MSDN subscribers pay up to $1500 per user per year,
depending on corporate discounts, level of membership, and other
pricing and discount factors. Microsoft uses them as their beta
testers, in exchange for free "samples" which they are supposed to put
on a machine that is to be used exclusively for "Testing" purposes.
Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
Pardon me if I'm underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
Antonio Murphie
"Rex Ballard" <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> On Jan 1, 3:11 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Under terms of "The Ultimate Offer," testers can go to any retail or
>> online
>> | store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for
>> full
>> | price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista
>> Ultimate
>> | Upgrade product key.
>> `----
>
> Following the link
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
>
> The deal is only available to MSDN subscribers..... Pardon me if I'm
> underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
I agree. Roy Schestowitz once again LIES^h^h^h "manufactures" news stories
to fit his agenda instead of accurately reporting the truth.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
amicus_curious
"Rex Ballard" <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
> announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
> years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
> another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
> them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
>
> Pardon me if I'm underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
>
understanding of the program. The retail copy of Vista Ultimate is for
those who are not subscribers with access to the released products.
Subscribers get the released stuff as part of the package. The people who
did the Beta testing did not pay anything for the Beta products and they
were time locked at the outset. The two for one is for unrestricted use of
the two licenses, I believe.
If you have a subscription, you can have any platform product in any
language and as many as needed. A single key is only good for 10 instances,
and even that is way more than needed anymore with the proliferation of
virtualization in the test labs.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
> announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
> years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
> another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
> them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
Heck, I'm still 'testing' a copy of Win2000 I got with my MSDN
subscription (back when I had one). I haven't turned the system
on in months, and I'll likely just scrub the drive one of these
days, but it is handy to keep around to occasionally test cross-
compiles on. I wonder, am I violating my license? I never
remember any expiration discussed in the License when I installed
it, so I assume I'm still legal.
Thad
--
Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had
all the ingredients on the label.
Roy Schestowitz
> Rex Ballard <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
>> announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
>> years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
>> another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
>> them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
>
> Heck, I'm still 'testing' a copy of Win2000 I got with my MSDN
> subscription (back when I had one). I haven't turned the system
> on in months, and I'll likely just scrub the drive one of these
> days, but it is handy to keep around to occasionally test cross-
> compiles on. I wonder, am I violating my license? I never
> remember any expiration discussed in the License when I installed
> it, so I assume I'm still legal.
>
> Thad
Using Windows is always legal, even if you pay just $1. Microsoft's charge for
Windows depends on one's wallet capacity. The company relies on 'piracy' where
it's not able to earn a sell. If they took away you copy of W2K, would you use
Windows at all? If not, Microsoft wants you to be
a 'pirate'.... /THEIR/ 'pirate'. Mind highlight below.
Governments Must Reject Gates' $3 Bid to Addict Next Billion PC Users
,----[ Quote ]
| "Microsoft's strategy of getting developing nations hooked on its
| software was clearly outlined by Bill Gates almost a decade ago," said
| Con Zymaris, CEO of long-standing open source firm Cybersource.
|
| Specifically, Bill Gates, citing China as an example, said:
|
| "Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but
| people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though.
| As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to
| collect sometime in the next decade."[1]
`----
http://www.cybersource.com.au/press/gates_set_to_addict_next_billion.html
Microsoft Happy with the Evolution of Windows Vista Piracy
,----[ Quote ]
| But the truth is that Microsoft is happy with the way Windows Vista
| piracy is evolving. Is there a catch to this? No. The fact of the
| matter is that Windows Vista has delivered a heavy blow to
| software counterfeiters. The reason for this is the new Windows
| Genuine Advantage security mechanism integrated into the
| operating system.
|
| You may not notice this on the surface. On the surface, the
| Internet is crawling with Windows Vista cracks, hacks and
| workarounds. On the surface, every Windows Vista edition has
| been cracked and is available for download via peer-to-peer
| networks. But this is not the true extent of Windows Vista piracy.
`----
Hypocrisy off the port bow!
,----[ Quote ]
| Admiral Holleyman of the Bull Shit Association dares claim that our craft
| makes his skainsmates lose (that's the opposite o' win, for all ye
| spelling-retarded coppocias) $11 billion US dollars every year. Hoy-day! A
| flight of fancy I've ne'er seen before such bardleture came before me! Such
| presumptuous posy overflows my yellow bile. As if every man of the
| brotherhood would actually buy the programs he pirates! Bah! Next, I wager
| he'll be so bloody daft to presume that blokes should actually read a license
| agreement, the likes o' which have never been, and may yet never be enforced
| in full.
`----
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/364
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | GPL - Global Programmer's Law
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Mem: 515500k total, 444704k used, 70796k free, 4344k buffers
http://iuron.com - next generation of search paradigms
SW
> Using Windows is always legal, even if you pay just $1.
Have you ever used Windows 2000 or Windows XP?
Rex Ballard
> Interesting comment from CompUSA
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Every single one of them he said was returned from consumers... and that they
> | (CompUSA) couldn't ship them back.
This is not new. Microsoft started this practice back with Windows
95. Later, Microsoft even began to provide the financing (called
"Flooring" in retail jargon), and eventually offered interest free
financing. The deal was that the retailer had to accept a minimum
commitment, in exchange for a substantial discount, which Microsoft
would finance - interest free. This allowed Microsoft to claim
"shipments" to the stores in it's Securities Exchange filings. This
was critical to NT 4.0 and Windows ME, both of which did not actually
SELL very well in retail stores, but were shipped to stores who had
accepted minimum commitments. In most cases, they were given very
deep discounts, as high as 70%, in exchange for the minimum
commitments, which means that even if 2/3 of the inventory was
returned, they could still "break even".
The other part of the deal was that they were only allowed to discount
the boxes a certain amount, usually no more than 20%. So the
retailer would buy 10 million boxes, for $30 each, and sell them for
$169 each, even though the MSRP was $199. The catch was that CompUSA
would take 10 million, Staples would take 10 million, Office Max would
take 5 million, and so on, allowing Microsoft to claim "Shipments" of
30 million in the first 30 days, even if 2/3 of the inventory was
still sitting in storage, or was in the form of "commitments" that
haven't actually been delivered.
> | As he heard, Microsoft wasn't giving
> | credit back for unsold or returned copies... and didn't want the returned
> | figures made public...
A legitimate request, given that Microsoft was offering them copies at
wholesale prices that were often as low as the OEM prices. If they
pay $30 per copy, and sell for $150/copy, that's a profit of $120/
copy. Even if 50% are returned, or unsold, that's still an average
revenue of $70/copy and a profit of $40 per copy. And all Microsoft
requested, was that returns not be "entered into the books". Sure it
was a gamble for the store, but if it was as popular as Windows 95,
Windows 98, or Windows XP, they had the ability to make some huge
profits over the year.
> | He wouldn't say that every single one of them
> | exchanged for a copy of Xp, he didn't know if that was true. So, I asked how
> | many boxes did they have. Same glare, followed with a "You do not want to
> | know" type statement.
I think an even bigger problem for CompUSA was that so many of the
Vista machines weren't capable of delivering the advertized Aero-Glass
features shown on television commercials. It was a pretty clear-cut
case of fraud, and since CompUSA had a liberal return policy, they
were getting back a LOT of machines that had Vista Home Premium,
DirectX/9 video cards (not good for Vista OR Linux), and couldn't
replace them with machines that worked "as advertized".
There were even people at many of the stores who were trying to get
Aeroglass to work on the display machines, and being told, either by
the sales people, or by other frustrated customers, that these
machines didn't support Aero-Glass. Microsoft slit it's own throat on
this one.
Best Buy hasn't gone out of business, but the computer section has
fallen into severe disrepair. Vista boxes are locked into a cabinet,
Vista display shelves are sitting with empty "holes" where the display
machines used to be, other machines are marked "Special price -
DISPLAY ONLY", and many of the available machines where there were
boxes below the shelves, were boxes that were torn open, obviously
returns.
Staples has an inventory and up to date displays, but almost all of
the machines on display are "Linux ready" and are displayed in a way
that lets you determine this for yourself. Even the prices of the
machines preloaded with Vista Ultimate have dropped to $900, from
almost $1600 when Vista was first released. Even so, it's pretty
obvious that you are paying at least $300 just for Vista Ultimate.
How much of that profit is going directly to Microsoft?
> http://zerias.blogspot.com/2007/12/interesting-comment-from-compusa.html
>
> Related:
>
> Windows Vista: Sold but not deployed
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft says it remains happy with enterprise sales of Vista -- however,
> | the software behemoth acknowledges that many businesses which have bought
> | Vista licences are yet to deploy the software.
Remember that many of those who have "bought" Vista licenses, were
actually
"Support Contracts". They had been promised automatic upgrades, and
Microsoft gave them Vista, without raising their support contract
rates, in hopes of getting them to accept the excess shipments. The
tactic worked. Remember, the "shipment" simply involved granting
"permission" to install Vista and have it authenticated using a volume
license manager server that was authenticated by Microsoft. The VLM
server tracks which licenses are attached to which PCs. Ironically,
even though Microsoft knows that Vista was not deployed (reported by
the VLM servers), they claimed the "shipments" by automatically
granting permission to install Vista on the PCs of every employee.
This would mean that Microsoft may have overclaimed as much as 70% of
it's Vista "shipments" since these were never deployed. Ironically,
most of these "overships" expire within a year after their original
shipment. For example, OEMs have to meet their commitment levels, but
cannot sell them or get direct credit (returns) in the previous year.
Instead, Microsoft adjusts the discounts on the next year's order,
offering deeper discounts in exchange for even higher minimum
commitments.
The crazy thing is that even though chip makers are freaking over low
chip volumes, PC makers are undewhelmed by the demand for Vista, and
have had to deeply discount even laptops to levels even lower than
prices at which XP machines were sold a year ago. And yet Microsoft
is claiming 40% increases in volumes, revenues, and profts, most of
which were financed by Microsoft's interest-free flooring plans.
> http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Windows-Vista-Sold-but-not-...
> Currys group blames Vista for poor sales
The retailers have really been taking it on the chin. Microsoft isn't
the only company who offers deep discounts in exchange for minimum
commitments. Other companies like HP, Sony, and E-Machines also use
similar tactics to get reliable revenue streams. They offer deep
discounts, as much as 1/2 off, in exchange for minimum commitments.
The problem is that when the the retailers get stuck with excess
physical inventory that isn't selling, it's often better for them to
simply take the penalty and stop selling PCs.
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | DSG, the group behind Currys and PC World, has warned that poor sales of
> | Vista could slash its profits by around £20 million.
> `----
>
> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/131507/currys-group-blames-vista-for-poor...
> Dell casts doubts on Vista
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Dell today revealed that it will restore the option to use Windows XP on
> | some of its home systems, marking a potentially damaging blow to
> | Microsoft's hopes for the newer Windows Vista.
Microsoft seems to be between a rock and a hard place. Dell has been
saying that "most" of the PCs they have been selling via web are being
ordered with Windows XP. Microsoft wants to stop shipments of XP at
the end of the year (january 30th), and has already extended the XP
option to June 30, 2008.
Microsoft is starting to experience the same kind of pushback they
experienced when they tried to terminate support for NT 4.0 and force
customers to upgrade to Windows 2003. Many customers simply switched
as much as they could to Linux, and Microsoft's server counts went
down. The only thing keeping their count up was the need for
excessive redundancy and lack of scalability. Linux and Unix servers
often perform multiple functions on a single server, and because Linux
is more efficient with memory, it's possible to put more virtual
servers on the same amount of hardware. Microsoft has finally,
reluctantly, started to support virtualization, but since Windows eats
more memory and CPU for graphics, user interfaces, terminal servers,
and remote access, each virtual machine tends to be much larger,
meaning that fewer servers fit on a single server.
It looks like Vista is having similar problems. Customers are
refusing to upgrade, and the harder Microsoft tries to push the issue,
the more open the resistance and dissatisfaction with Vista becomes.
Reviewers are openly declaring "I'd rather have a Mac". More and more
of the OEMs are making more and more of their product line "Linux
Ready". If the courts let the judgement lapse, there is a good chance
that OEMs will even be bolder.
Remember that Dell has also been watching their order chain. Since
most of the Web order customers are ordering their PCs with XP rather
than Vista, it's probably even more telling than a "suggestion box".
> | [...]
> | While a popular request through the company's IdeaStorm website, the
> | choice was substantially outnumbered by requests for pre-installed
> | Linux, US-based technical support, and other features -- pointing to a
> | larger general demand for the change.
This could be more significant. It seems that more and more customers
are willing to forego Windows Vista entirely and switch to Linux
exclusively if Microsoft attempts to discontinue Windows XP under the
XP licensing terms. Vista is simply too bulky, too resource
inefficient, and offers too little incremental value to customers who
are loyal to their iPods, Antivirus, and need AntiSpyware. These
third party products have gained the loyalty and trust of perhaps
hundreds of millions of customers, and Microsoft's attempts to "shut
them out" may have triggered a more open backlash, since these loyal
customers are seeing THEIR ox being gored.
Meanwhile, companies like Adobe, Borland, and Sun are becoming much
more aggressive about their support for OS/X and Linux. The irony is
that it's actually very easily to generate an OS/X application from a
Linux application, while it is very difficult to create reliable,
fully functional, fully compatible applications using "Microsoft"
application programming interfaces, languages, and tools.
> | The turnaround may be a reflection of
> | an overall backlash against Vista, observed IDC analyst Richard Shim.
There seems to be a backlash against Vista at all levels.
Retailers hate it, they are losing money and have had to take huge
write-downs on Vista Home Premium machines, Vista Upgrades, and vista
documentation.
Customers seem to hate it - they seem to be willing to forgo the
convenience of immediate gratification and opt to go shopping via Web
order services, or even telephone orders, to get machines with Windows
XP rather than Vista.
OEMs hate it, because Vista prices have not held. In fact, Vista PC
prices have fallen BELOW the prices for similarly equipped Windows XP
machines, even though they have nearly double the RAM and CPU
bandwidth.
Software Vendors hate it, because they have had to spend $millions
rewriting software for vista, getting the proper certifications, and
distributing and flooring new inventory, and have not seen a huge
surge in sales or funded upgrades. Many corporate customers have
either requested unfunded upgrades, or have simply refused to install
Vista on ANY machines. Some companies have even BANNED the order of
new machines with Vista, insisting that machines be ordered with XP -
or not at all.
Employees aren't happy. Many companies are holding back upgrades,
refusing to upgrade new machines until they can decide how the want to
chart their upgraded path. Some companies are now expecting employees
to fund their own upgrades, such as external hard drives and
additional memory - rather than order new machines.
There seems to be a clear trend in favor of "Linux Ready" machines,
which means that very few machines will be capable of running Vista's
Aero-Glass. Instead, all Vista means is that the machines will run
slower. Even upgrading the machines beyond 2 Gigabytes is not
supported without upgrading the software.
Keep in mind that all Intel Duo and Turion/64 X2 machines have the
capability to run DUAL 64 bit processors, and Linux can fully exploit
these capabilities without making any sacrificed.
> http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/04/19/dell.casts.doubts.on.vista/
> Lenovo offers downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP
Lenovo is one of the vendors who never stopped offering XP. Many
people even scrambled to get PCs with XP before it stopped being an
option, and Lenovo has continued to offer XP as an option ever since.
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | My colleague Stian just sent me this interesting link regarding my
> | experiences with Windows Vista. Since I assume the link will NOT have the
> | visual appearence it has right now for very many more hours (days) I've
> | created a screenshot of how it looked when I went into the site.
According to the cited article, Lenovo is willing to offer purchasers
of Lenovo systems who got their machines with Vista the ability to
downgrade to Windows XP at no additional charge. I'm not sure if this
means that you can download an ISO image, or if they will send you an
XP installation disk.
> http://jaxed.org/lenovo-offers-downgrade-from-windows-vista-to-window...
I also noticed that more PC magazines are offering CDs or DVDs that
include "XP Recovery Images" which are intended to let XP users
reinstall XP, but can also be used by Vista users to install XP.
> Acer: PC industry 'disappointed' with Vista
>
> ,----[ Quote
> | Acer president Gianfranco Lanci became the first major PC manufacturer to
> | openly attack Microsoft over the Windows Vista operating system in the
> | Financial Times Deutschland on Monday.
Acer has been a major producer of "Linux Ready" machines almost since
it's inception. It's not insignificant that they have been making
bigger profits, while Gateway, who has pretty much always gone
"Windows Only" was on the verge of watching it's stock be delisted
because the price had fallen below $1 per share just before Acer
offered to buy Gateway. It's possible that Acer will be doing with
the Gateway stores what Apple has been doing with it's stores, but in
this case, it will be offering Acer machines pre-loaded with Linux
which can be seen and taken for a "Test Drive" in their stores,
without fear of reprisals from Microsoft.
> | Lanci said the operating system was riddled with problems and gave users and
> | businesses no reason to buy a new PC, according to the report. Taiwan-based
> | Acer is the world's fourth-largest PC manufacturer, after HP, Dell and
> | Lenovo.
As I pointed out before, Acer has always been "Linux Friendly" and
this has been a critical element of their success. Many Linux users
have purchased Acer machines simply because Acer machines run Linux so
well. This is significant since Acer has now grown to become the
fourth largest PC maker, and one of the few "Pure PC" companies. Dell
had to go into the HDTV business to sibsidize their PC business. HP
had to subsidize their PC business with revenue from printers and
other "tie-in" sales. Even Lenovo was originally IBM, who subsidized
the PC business with revenue from consulting and support. Even today,
Lenovo depends on their support and warranty sales to subsidize their
PC revenues. Fortunately, the Thinkpad line is so reliable that they
don't lose much money on that market.
> | "The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista," Lanci said.
> `----
> http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=9579
Microsoft has a big problem. They put out a new version of Windows
which is as unpopular as Windows ME or Windows NT 3.1 or NT 3.5.
Microsoft has no "vapor-ware" that is credible, especially after the
mess they made of the Longhorn Vaporware.
To make matters worse, Microsoft has a direct competitor in the form
of Apple, who is making record profits, can't keep up with demand, and
has even reduced it's advertising because they can't keep up with
demand, even at prices nearly triple those being charged for
comparable PCs.
And at the same time, Linux has created the opportunity for PC makers
to establish their own brand identity. Dell is offering Ubuntu, HP is
offering SUSE, and IBM is offering Red Hat on their intellistation
workstations. Even though most of the machines are shipped with Vista
or XP, the message is clear - "buy my PC and you can be running Linux
in less than an hour".
Yet even today, none of these OEMs are willing to take the risk of
putting Linux on their Retail machines, even though the retailers are
hurting worse than anyone. I wouldn't be surprised if the retailers
cancelled their orders for Vista machines and demanded machines
preloaded with Linux - as a way to generate higher profits from retail
PCs.
One thing seems to be crystal clear. Vista is not doing well in the
retail market. End users don't like it. Corporate users don't like
Vista much either.
The big problem for Microsoft, is that the "boost" in year-over-year
sales where Vista sales caused an increase over the previous year's
stale XP sales (along with customers scrambling to buy XP systems
while they were still available).
Microsoft has been funding their sales channels, including OEM,
Retail, and even corporate channels, but at the end of the year,
actual Vista deployments are far less than what these channels paid
for. Revenue was far less than expected. Vista deployments are far
lower than expected. The problem is that the bill is due. Will
Microsoft simply "write off" the excess funding? Will they somehow
roll the receivables into this year's quotas and minimum commitments?
Will they attempt to "force" deployments?
If Judge Kollar-Kotelly drops the antitrust judgement, and lets all of
the terms of the settlement lapse except for the disclosure
requirements, will Microsoft try to push even harder? Will OEMs cave
in to another 25 years of Microsoft monopoly? Will Corporate
customers fork over $millions or even $billions in additional revenue
to Microsoft for Vista and Vista support?
Or is there a real possibility that the OEMs, corporate customers, and
Retailers decide that this is the time to act and openly defy
Microsoft. Many organizations and corporations are beginning to
formally or informally adopt Open Document Format, along with
supporting software such as Open Office and Star Office. IBM is
releasing Lotus Notes 8 for both Windows and Linux, and is including
an ODF compliant Office Suite as part of the package. Ironically, the
IBM version does not provide the best support of Microsoft Office
formats.
Microsoft might even find itself "locked out" of the market, depending
on companies like Sun for patches, that will allow older versions of
Office (but probably NOT Office 2007) to access and review ODF
documents.
FireFox is also giving IE a run for the money. Even when Microsoft
released IE7, most customers have opted to stick with IE6 and/or use
FireFox rather than upgrade to IE7.
According to:
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm
IE7 is still less than 30% of the browser market, with IE6 being
another 30%
Gecko based browsers (FireFox, Mozilla, Netscape) is anoter 30%.
KHTML (konqueror) is as high as 4.3%.
Another site
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
Shows IE7 at less than 20% and FireFox at over 26%.
Also interesting, even though only about 10% of the browsers using
with Linux identify themselves as Linux - Vista is only 4.75% while OS/
X is 4.56%, and Linux is 1.77% which means that even without
calculating the "other" segment, OS/X and Linux have combined to beat
Vista in the marketplace.
Another 2.16% was "other" which was also probably Linux. Again, this
is a survey of IP addresses, not uniquely identified PCs, but it does
represent 16 million visits to almost 7,000 sites. Though it only
counts the last 25,000 page-views.
This survey may also be skewed by the fact that most Linux users use
Squid, which caches most of these page views, while Windows tends to
at least "tally" the views.
Rex Ballard
> "Rex Ballard" <rex.ball...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> > On Jan 1, 3:11 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
> >> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
> >> ,----[ Quote ]
> >> | Under terms of "The Ultimate Offer," testers can go to any retail or online
> >> | store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for full
> >> | price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista
> >> | Ultimate Upgrade product key.
> > Following the link
> >http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
>
> > The deal is only available to MSDN subscribers..... Pardon me if I'm
> > underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
>
> I agree. Roy Schestowitz once again LIES^h^h^h "manufactures" news stories
> to fit his agenda instead of accurately reporting the truth.
Actually, all Roy did was put an interesting headline on the story.
All he did was quote the cited article, and provided the link.
Some other possible headlines might have been
"Microsoft Milks MSDN users for More Licenses and $$"
or
"Microsoft Doubles Down on Vista Gamble".
or
"MSDN users - your Vista Ultimate license has expired, now you gotta
pay - double".
As it was, I think the theme of all of the articles was best covered
by the headline provided by Roy.
Rex Ballard
> "Rex Ballard" <rex.ball...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
> > announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
> > years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
> > another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
> > them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
>
> > Pardon me if I'm underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
>
> You are apparently not an MSDN subscriber, else you would have a better
> understanding of the program. The retail copy of Vista Ultimate is for
> those who are not subscribers with access to the released products.
> Subscribers get the released stuff as part of the package. The people who
> did the Beta testing did not pay anything for the Beta products and they
> were time locked at the outset. The two for one is for unrestricted use of
> the two licenses, I believe.
I used to APPROVE MSDN subscriptions. I never got one for myself
because there were too many restrictions on information I already
had. Still, I was acutely familiar with the licenses and their terms
and restrictions.
Some things may have changed, but as I recall, these were Microsoft
DEVELOPER Network Licenses. They were intended to be used exclusively
to help DEVELOPERS who wanted to write and test software for
Microsoft's newest and latest platforms. They were allowed to use the
provided software on DEVELOPMENT systems only, not production systems
or even systems used for other personal or business uses.
> If you have a subscription, you can have any platform product in any
> language and as many as needed. A single key is only good for 10 instances,
> and even that is way more than needed anymore with the proliferation of
> virtualization in the test labs.
It depends on the kind of subscription you have. Corporate customers
have to pay on a "Per Developer" basis.
Still, Microsoft isn't really ugly when it comes to enforcement. They
tend to turn a blind eye to developers, especially developers who
really have put hundreds of hours into promoting Microsoft products,
developing new software for Microsoft, and often influencing key
decision makers into painting themselves into the corner with
Microsoft's "Glue" products, while Microsoft paints the side closest
to the cash register and the exit. In many cases, these developers
had helped Microsoft net several $million in revenues and profits, so
quibbling over a $200 license for Windows was just silly.
Which is what makes Microsoft's Generous "Offer" even more
surprising. Apparently, Microsoft has decided it hasn't gotten enough
from their MSDN developers this time around. They haven't been able
to convince CIOs and CTOs to upgrade to Vista en masse. They haven't
been able to convince business managers to scuttle their Linux servers
and replace them with Windows 2003. They haven't been able to derail
plans to order machines that run Linux and force corporate procurement
departments to purchase "Windows Only" machines.
Microsoft would never take such actions unless they were really
struggling for revenues and license counts.
Microsoft is also looking at more successful competition from OS/X and
Apple, Linux, including IBM, Novell, Red Hat, and Ubuntu. There are
even several Linux businesses who are doing very well at expanding and
generating very healthy markets for Linux and related software.
Microsoft's problem today isn't a single huge competitor that wants to
take 50% or more of the entire software market for themselves, it's
hundreds of competitors, all willing to charge a fraction of what
Microsoft charges, provide better support, and are only going after
little piece of the market. Many are quite happy making a few hundred
million dollars on less than 100 million users. There are a few
companies that are willing, and able, to make $billions, but even
then, they are making that money by offering services with clearly
observable value, rather than attempting to squeeze more and more
revenue while offering little additional value in terms of real
productivity, reduced effort, new revenue, or other forms of return on
investment.
It's a bit like how Levi's ended up going from the only blue jean
maker, to one of thousands of vendors, many of whom provided better
fit and style and often at lower cost and/or better comfort.
amicus_curious
>
> I used to APPROVE MSDN subscriptions. I never got one for myself
> because there were too many restrictions on information I already
> had. Still, I was acutely familiar with the licenses and their terms
> and restrictions.
>
by your own admission here. Do you do everything this half-assed? No
wonder you are out of a job.
Linonut
> ..., and often influencing key
> decision makers into painting themselves into the corner with
> Microsoft's "Glue" products, while Microsoft paints the side closest
> to the cash register and the exit.
Sniffing the "Microsoft Glue"?
> Microsoft would never take such actions unless they were really
> struggling for revenues and license counts.
>
> . . .
>
> Microsoft's problem today isn't a single huge competitor that wants to
> take 50% or more of the entire software market for themselves, it's
> hundreds of competitors, all willing to charge a fraction of what
> Microsoft charges, provide better support, and are only going after
> little piece of the market. . . .
>
> It's a bit like how Levi's ended up going from the only blue jean
> maker, to one of thousands of vendors, many of whom provided better
> fit and style and often at lower cost and/or better comfort.
Microsoft Blue Jean <grin>
--
GNU/Linux rox, Tux!
DFS
> Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
> announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
> years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
> another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
> them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
>
> Pardon me if I'm underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
Any of the paid MSDN Subscriptions found here
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx are a far, far,
far better deal than $0 for every bit of OSS software in the universe.
DFS
> Actually, all Roy did was put an interesting headline on the story.
Lies are not 'interesting' - except maybe to other liars. wink.
> All he did was quote the cited article, and provided the link.
And attach a lying subject. That's all he can do.
Based on his years of continual lies about MS and Windows, I have NO DOUBT
WHATSOEVER that Roy Schestowitz will falsify medical research data if he
goes into that field.
> Some other possible headlines might have been
>
> "Microsoft Milks MSDN users for More Licenses and $$"
> or
> "Microsoft Doubles Down on Vista Gamble".
> or
> "MSDN users - your Vista Ultimate license has expired, now you gotta
> pay - double".
>
> As it was, I think the theme of all of the articles was best covered
> by the headline provided by Roy.
You want a real clearance sale? Let us know when MS allows one of their
recent operating systems to be sold on an endcap for $1.99 (as Microcenter
Duluth GA did with Suse).
Linonut
> The crazy thing is that even though chip makers are freaking over low
> chip volumes, PC makers are undewhelmed by the demand for Vista, and
> have had to deeply discount even laptops to levels even lower than
> prices at which XP machines were sold a year ago. And yet Microsoft
> is claiming 40% increases in volumes, revenues, and profts, most of
> which were financed by Microsoft's interest-free flooring plans.
Rex, is anyone writing a book about this stuff? I know it all can't be
true (can it?), but if even 1/8th of it has a factual basis, this would be a
fascinating exposé on the desktop computing industry.
--
GNU/Linux rox, Tux!
DFS
> Actually, all Roy did was put an interesting headline on the story.
Lies are not 'interesting' - except to other liars.
> All he did was quote the cited article, and provided the link.
And attach a lying subject. That's all he can do.
> Some other possible headlines might have been
>
> "Microsoft Milks MSDN users for More Licenses and $$"
> or
> "Microsoft Doubles Down on Vista Gamble".
> or
> "MSDN users - your Vista Ultimate license has expired, now you gotta
> pay - double".
>
> As it was, I think the theme of all of the articles was best covered
> by the headline provided by Roy.
You want a real clearance sale? Let us know when MS allows one of their
recent operating systems to be sold on an endcap for $1.99 (as Microcenter
Duluth GA did with Suse 8.1).
DFS
It's all Rex Ballard bullshit. If you want information on chip sales, go to
a reputable source like the Semiconductor Industry Assocation:
http://www.sia-online.org/pre_release.cfm?ID=457
Rex goes to BestBuy and sees a sale on one laptop model that runs Vista and
"concludes" all OEMs are deep-discounting because nobody wants Vista. Right
next to that sale system is a non-sale system running XP and he "concludes"
XP is an upgrade to Vista. And since that XP laptop might be able to run
Linux, he concludes the manufacturer build it to be "Linux Ready" and is
proof of manufacturers' supporting Linux.
On top of that weirdness, he continually concocts 'facts' about MS marketing
out of thin air (from July 2007):
> Remember, even at "full price", Vista is
> about $30/copy to the big OEMs who make minimum commitments to buy 1
> million or more windows licenses per year. And this is with none of
> the additional restrictions.
>
> The average Vista machine has already dropped in price by as much as
> $500, and some "high end" models have dropped as much as $1000 per
> machine. Many models are already selling below cost less than 6
> months after the release of Vista - BECAUSE they are "Vista Only"
> machines. They are just trying to get rid of them before they are
> completely obsolete.
>
> Microsoft's offers of discounts of $5/license if you use a DirectX-10
> card, $5/license for advertizing Co-Op (giving Microsoft control over
> content and placement of ads), and $5/license for exclusive control
> over the boot sequence - don't seem so attractive when you realize
> that accepting that $15 discount could cost you $500/machine in
> profits.
>
> Of course, in the short term, if the OEMs don't take these discounts,
> and pay a premium of $2/machine for the option of offering XP for
> another year, then Microsoft will actually get more revenue per
> machine. It could be Microsoft's best year ever.
He made up every number and claim in the above 4 paragraphs. He calls it
being a 'Visionary for the Linux community'.
amicus_curious
<tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
news:6icq45-...@tux.glaci.com...
> Rex Ballard <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
>> announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
>> years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
>> another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
>> them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
>
> Heck, I'm still 'testing' a copy of Win2000 I got with my MSDN
> subscription (back when I had one). I haven't turned the system
> on in months, and I'll likely just scrub the drive one of these
> days, but it is handy to keep around to occasionally test cross-
> compiles on. I wonder, am I violating my license? I never
> remember any expiration discussed in the License when I installed
> it, so I assume I'm still legal.
>
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa948864.aspx
When a subscription expires, do the licenses terminate or are they still
valid?
MSDN subscriptions have a perpetual license, so subscribers can still use
the products received with their MSDN subscription after their subscription
has expired.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
> From the FAQ:
>
> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa948864.aspx
>
> When a subscription expires, do the licenses terminate or are they still
> valid?
>
> MSDN subscriptions have a perpetual license, so subscribers can still use
> the products received with their MSDN subscription after their subscription
> has expired.
Thanks, thats good to know.
jebblue
> From the FAQ:
>
> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa948864.aspx
>
> When a subscription expires, do the licenses terminate or are they still
> valid?
>
> MSDN subscriptions have a perpetual license, so subscribers can still
> use the products received with their MSDN subscription after their
> subscription has expired.
This is cool, the license for everything on my Ubuntu system is perpetual
too, plus, no one cares if I use it for test, development or production.
--
// This is my opinion.
Roy Schestowitz
The trolls would not like that. You see, with a book, they can't reply/comment
to attack him and/or his message. I agree with Linonut. This would make an
interesting eBook at the very least. At least all of that stuff is online
somewhere. The trolls' aggressive response tells how fearful Microsoft is of
these writings.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Windows: backward-compatible, even for viruses
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Mem: 515500k total, 444624k used, 70876k free, 1788k buffers
Roy Schestowitz
> On Jan 1, 12:26 pm, "Antonio Murphie" <the-murp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Rex Ballard" <rex.ball...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>> > On Jan 1, 3:11 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>> >> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
>> >> ,----[ Quote ]
>> >> | Under terms of "The Ultimate Offer," testers can go to any retail or
>> >> | online store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version)
>> >> | for full price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary
>> >> | Vista Ultimate Upgrade product key.
>
>> > Following the link
>> >http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
>>
>> > The deal is only available to MSDN subscribers..... Pardon me if I'm
>> > underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
>>
>> I agree. Roy Schestowitz once again LIES^h^h^h "manufactures" news stories
>> to fit his agenda instead of accurately reporting the truth.
Scott Douglas (in the mood for being called "Antonio Murphie"),
Microsoft cannot do "Clearance Sales" on something like /software/, let alone
sell it directly. This makes it very obvious that it's a somewhat humourous
title, so it's not deceiving. I suppose you never saw headlines like:
"Apple Jumps in the Pool"
or...
"Apple turns to Selling Carrots"
or...
"Apple Shuts the Door on Retailers"
You're taking it too literally, don't you? Check your humour meter. I think
it's broken.
> Actually, all Roy did was put an interesting headline on the story.
>
> All he did was quote the cited article, and provided the link.
>
> Some other possible headlines might have been
>
> "Microsoft Milks MSDN users for More Licenses and $$"
>
> or
>
> "Microsoft Doubles Down on Vista Gamble".
>
> or
>
> "MSDN users - your Vista Ultimate license has expired, now you gotta
> pay - double".
>
> As it was, I think the theme of all of the articles was best covered
> by the headline provided by Roy.
They are just trying to hurt credibility in order to 'embargo' people. They use
stereotypes and repeat them baselessly in a Big Lie fashion (smear/slander
gig) in order to have people look the other way.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder"
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Load average (/proc/loadavg): 0.32 0.46 0.94 3/158 31869
http://iuron.com - semantic search engine project initiative
Roy Schestowitz
> Meanwhile, companies like Adobe, Borland, and Sun are becoming much
> more aggressive about their support for OS/X and Linux.
This is actually very true and it says a lot. Adobe said it would not support
Windows Vista (unless you buy the very latest version of their software). A
couple of weeks ago, Adobe released the new Flash player for Linux and Windows
simultaneously, which is very rare. It also began it's gentle approach towards
the open source world by donating a project.
Companies have begun looking ahead, and they cannot foresee Vista as a common
carrier that will be wisely deployed. The version /after/ Vista? Maybe. But
mind you, it's all cumulative, so the next version of Windows is just a Vista
derivative. It will have the same bad DNA and people will be diasappointed. I
guarantee you that people will stick with XP even when Windows 7 is out
(probably around 2010). Unless of course they have already moved to GNU/Linux
(KDE 4.5? KDE 5.0? GNOME 3.0?) or bought a Mac...
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Useless fact: sheep outnumber people in NZ
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 24.6%us, 4.0%sy, 1.0%ni, 66.3%id, 3.7%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
http://iuron.com - semantic engine to gather information
amicus_curious
"jebblue" <n...@n.nnn> wrote in message
news:477ae1b9$0$24321$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
that.
chrisv
>* Rex Ballard fired off this tart reply:
>>
>> It's a bit like how Levi's ended up going from the only blue jean
>> maker, to one of thousands of vendors, many of whom provided better
>> fit and style and often at lower cost and/or better comfort.
>
>Microsoft Blue Jean <grin>
Are those the ones with the holes in the pockets, so your money, keys,
etc just falls-out? 8)
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all know
> that.
Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
continue to post in this forum?
Rick
You are a liar.
--
Rick
Roy Schestowitz
\____
> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>
>> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all know
>> that.
>
> Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
> continue to post in this forum?
Fear.
(and the money Microsoft pays him, in one form or another)
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Watch your step, that soapbox is very slippery
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Mem: 515500k total, 298268k used, 217232k free, 9184k buffers
amicus_curious
<tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
news:r6ls45-...@tux.glaci.com...
> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>
>> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all
>> know
>> that.
>
> Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
> continue to post in this forum?
>
is true?
amicus_curious
"Rick" <no...@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:13nnbpc...@news.supernews.com...
Rick
You are a liar.
--
Rick
Peter Köhlmann
If not true, you are incredibly stupid to post your dishonest crap
--
This problem was sponsored by Microsoft
amicus_curious
"Peter Köhlmann" <peter.k...@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:flgdr5$okh$01$1...@news.t-online.com...
In your opinion, perhaps, but if it were not for that, you would not have
any opinion on anything at all that you were capable of discussing, so be
grateful.
Peter Köhlmann
Idiot
William Poaster
> ____/ tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com on Wednesday 02 January 2008 14:54
> : \____
>
>> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all
>>> know that.
>>
>> Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
>> continue to post in this forum?
>
> Fear.
>
> (and the money Microsoft pays him, in one form or another)
amicus_curious aka billwg, or Bill Weisgerber has been doing this shill
service for M$ for years, & always in the same *extremely* dishonest way..
--
It takes time, this. One slight error in any of my thirteen billion
calculations and we'll be blasted to smithereens.
Here we go, then: 10, 9, 8, 6, 5--
--Holly - Red Dwarf--
Linonut
> amicus_curious wrote:
>
>>> If not true, you are incredibly stupid to post your dishonest crap
>>
>> In your opinion, perhaps, but if it were not for that, you would not have
>> any opinion on anything at all that you were capable of discussing, so be
>> grateful.
>
> Idiot
> --
> This problem was sponsored by Microsoft
Apparently, so was the idiot.
The Ghost In The Machine
<w...@pclos2007.eu>
wrote
on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:47:45 +0000
<hr2t45-...@amd64.archimedes.eu>:
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> ____/ tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com on Wednesday 02 January 2008 14:54
>> : \____
>>
>>> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all
>>>> know that.
>>>
>>> Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
>>> continue to post in this forum?
>>
>> Fear.
>>
>> (and the money Microsoft pays him, in one form or another)
>
> amicus_curious aka billwg, or Bill Weisgerber has been doing this shill
> service for M$ for years, & always in the same *extremely* dishonest way..
>
That, plus he's wrong anyway. Microsoft cares about Linux; why else
would the Halloween papers get leaked out? ;-)
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
GNU and improved.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
amicus_curious
"William Poaster" <w...@pclos2007.eu> wrote in message
news:hr2t45-...@amd64.archimedes.eu...
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> ____/ tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com on Wednesday 02 January 2008 14:54
>> : \____
>>
>>> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all
>>>> know that.
>>>
>>> Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
>>> continue to post in this forum?
>>
>> Fear.
>>
>> (and the money Microsoft pays him, in one form or another)
>
> amicus_curious aka billwg, or Bill Weisgerber has been doing this shill
> service for M$ for years, & always in the same *extremely* dishonest way..
>
asked before, but all I ever got was some anonymous claim. Is that the
average depth of your understanding in other areas as well?
amicus_curious
"The Ghost In The Machine" <ew...@sirius.tg00suus7038.net> wrote in message
news:8v6t45-...@sirius.tg00suus7038.net...
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, William Poaster
> <w...@pclos2007.eu>
> wrote
> on Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:47:45 +0000
> <hr2t45-...@amd64.archimedes.eu>:
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>> ____/ tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com on Wednesday 02 January 2008
>>> 14:54
>>> : \____
>>>
>>>> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We
>>>>> all
>>>>> know that.
>>>>
>>>> Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
>>>> continue to post in this forum?
>>>
>>> Fear.
>>>
>>> (and the money Microsoft pays him, in one form or another)
>>
>> amicus_curious aka billwg, or Bill Weisgerber has been doing this shill
>> service for M$ for years, & always in the same *extremely* dishonest
>> way..
>>
>
> That, plus he's wrong anyway. Microsoft cares about Linux; why else
> would the Halloween papers get leaked out? ;-)
>
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
>
hair-splitting, but perhaps you are not. I can only say that, in marketing
parlance, anything less than 1% of the magnitude of a market leader's share
is equated to zero, since it is zero for any useful purpose. Now admittedly
it is not really zero, but it has the same effect. Whether Microsoft
wishes, from an abundance of caution, to worry about Linux or not is not the
issue. Microsoft does not buy OS platform software, they get it for free
(as in beer). Since no one, in terms of people who buy things, is using it
on the desktop, one can safely say that no one cares.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> I am curious as to where you obtained this incorrect information. I had
> asked before, but all I ever got was some anonymous claim. Is that the
> average depth of your understanding in other areas as well?
I'll admit I also assume you are billwg just based on your writing
style and the positions taken. The only difference I see is that
you capitalize. Really, it doesn't matter to me one way or the
other.
Linonut
> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>
>> I am curious as to where you obtained this incorrect information. I had
>> asked before, but all I ever got was some anonymous claim. Is that the
>> average depth of your understanding in other areas as well?
>
> I'll admit I also assume you are billwg just based on your writing
> style and the positions taken. The only difference I see is that
> you capitalize. Really, it doesn't matter to me one way or the
> other.
It is all verbiage anyway.
--
GNU/Linux rox, Tux!
The Ghost In The Machine
<AC...@sti.net>
wrote
on Wed, 2 Jan 2008 16:03:18 -0500
<477bffaf$0$2965$ec3e...@news.usenetmonster.com>:
No, they do not. It cost millions to develop Internet
Explorer alone -- millions in development, testing, deployment,
and administration costs. This cost is reflected on their bottom
line.
Of course the benefits of IE far outweigh the costs. These benefits
include:
- eviscerating Netscape's then-shareware browser sales market, eventually
resulting in Netscape being sold to AOL (and now being dumped)
- monopolizing the browser market
- allowing for some non-standard constructs that can be easily leveraged
by Microsoft tools, but not so easily by non-Microsoft ones
- additional profits from selling those tools
As you can well see, Microsoft has a clear winner here.
> Since no one, in terms of people who buy things, is using it
> on the desktop, one can safely say that no one cares.
Very true; no one should care about Linux. It's immaterial.
So why did this happen?
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
Useless C/C++ Programming Idea #992381111:
while(bit&BITMASK) ;
Rex Ballard
> amicus_curious <A...@sti.net> wrote:
>
> > I am curious as to where you obtained this incorrect information.
> > I had asked before, but all I ever got was some anonymous
> > claim.
It seems that most Pro-Microsoft contributors to COLA tend to post
from anonymous identities, it's not possible to respond via e-mail,
because the addresses aren't legal, and they tend to provide very
little information about their own credentials, while insisting that
Pro-Linux posters provide a complete resume full of credentials, then
claim that the accomplishments listed in the resume or biography are
false.
When you are willing to provide a substantial biographical background,
along with the other Pro-Microsoft posters in this newsgroup, it will
be much easier to sort out the "real people" from the nymshifting
trolls who seem to change identities for the sake of slipping through
kill-files.
> > Is that the average depth of your understanding
> > in other areas as well?
Another classing WinTroll tactic (WinTroll being a pro-Microsoft
poster posting in COLA). Take one statement which can't be proven or
disproven, then using that as the basis for assuming that all
statements made by the poster in ANY of his posts must also be
inaccurate, misleading, or fraudulent.
> I'll admit I also assume you are billwg just based on your writing
> style and the positions taken.
Billwg and Amicus are both articulate posters who take a great deal of
time and effort to provide an well reasoned argument in favor of
Microsoft's interest in this Linux Advocacy group.
I find their posts very interesting, sometimes informative, and always
worth a well worded and well reasoned response.
However, I do notice that each has a different style and a different
area of expertise. Billwg is very good at articulating the Microsoft
"policy" and "tactics", and often uses the same wordings and phrasing
as Bill Gates himself. Amicus is more like a corporate lawyer, and
very good at distinctions of law and legal interpretation.
It's like those who see any "Linux doesn't work on my PC" and assume
it is Flatfish. Flatfish very carefully researches the hardware he
presents, and knows that the software he specifies it the article are
not supported by current Linux distributions, and documented as
unsupported. So many of these other posters do not provide enough
detail about the hardware to even determine whether the software is
actually supported or not.
> The only difference I see is that you capitalize.
That can be a significant differenc.
> Really, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.
I have much more respect for anyone who posts a web site or other
background information, and lets us know about his credentials.
When WinTrolls post to COLA, it's "fair game" to assume that they are
either unemployed bums collecting disability, shills working on
Microsoft's payroll, or drunken high school punks who have never done
a real day of work. Since they provide no credentials whatsoever,
these are valid assumptions. It is valid to assume that they don't
want to share their credentials, because it would become obvious that
people who have no qualifications, are criticizing highly skilled
professionals who have a well documented track record of contribution
to the industry.
> Thad
> --
> Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid...
> Unlike the other brand, it had
> all the ingredients on the label.
By the way, feel free to share your web link and other credentials
related links in your postings. This could help your credibility.
Rex Ballard
http://www.open4success.org
Rex Ballard
> Rex Ballard wrote:
> > Given that many MSDN subcribers have been paying since the first
> > announcements of Longhorn, they have paid up to $9,000 ($1500 for 6
> > years) for "test" software, and now Microsoft wants them to fork over
> > another $300-400 for Vista Ultimate, for which Microsoft will give
> > them a "Free" copy of Vista Ultimate - "For testing".
>
> > Pardon me if I'm underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
>
Great links. Let's see the membership prices:
Visual Studio Team System With MSDN Premium - $10,939
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition with MSDN Premium -
only $5,469
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition with MSDN Premium
- also $5,469
Test Edition - also $5,469
Database Edition - $5,469
It appears that all of these prices are "per person".
So DFS did you pay for that package out of your own pocket?
Of course, this is for ONE YEAR, but renewals are available for about
1/2 price.
> are a far, far,
> far better deal than $0 for every bit of OSS software in the universe.
I supposed if you are letting someone else pay the bill, and they
aren't taking it out of your paycheck, and you have a guaranteed fixed
income, then you might be right.
I get a bunch of IBM software, but when a client wants to use one of
the OSS or "Community" editions for prototyping, development, and
production, it's often much easier to go with that than to try and
convince him to fork over huge amounts of cash for every single
developer before he has seen a dollar of revenue - especially since
this small amount of software fee is eclipsed by the labor costs of
customized integration projects.
Ironically, when we start talking about production systems, and they
are looking at having real revenue within a few weeks or months, they
suddenly get much more interested in reliability, security,
scalability, management tools, and compliance with corporate and
industry-wide IT standards that are not vendor specific.
We can prototype using Eclipse, MySql, and Ubuntu Linux or Windows,
but when they get more serious about connecting real custotmers, they
suddenly want WebSphere, DB2, and either Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
SLES, or AIX.
DFS
> On Jan 1, 5:27 pm, "DFS" <nospam@dfs_.com> wrote:
>> Any of the paid MSDN Subscriptions found
>> herehttp://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx
>
> Great links. Let's see the membership prices:
>
> Visual Studio Team System With MSDN Premium - $10,939
>
> Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition with MSDN Premium -
> only $5,469
>
> Visual Studio Team System 2008 Architecture Edition with MSDN Premium
> - also $5,469
>
> Test Edition - also $5,469
>
> Database Edition - $5,469
>
> It appears that all of these prices are "per person".
>
> So DFS did you pay for that package out of your own pocket?
I did. It was the OS subscription in 2004, and it only cost me $390 after a
rebate - then I deducted it as a business expense.
> Of course, this is for ONE YEAR,
The licenses are - or at least were in the past - perpetual. No renewal
necessary, unless you want to keep up with the latest MS software for the
best price.
> but renewals are available for about 1/2 price.
They tried to get me to pony up $899 for the renewal. I never have.
>> are a far, far, far better deal than $0 for every
>> bit of OSS software in the universe.
>
> I supposed if you are letting someone else pay the bill, and they
> aren't taking it out of your paycheck, and you have a guaranteed fixed
> income, then you might be right.
No conditions necessary. The programs included in any MSDN subscription
make amateurish OSS slopware look foolish. And everyone knows it - that's
why hardly anyone uses Linux, even for free.
> Ironically, when we start talking about production systems, and they
> are looking at having real revenue within a few weeks or months, they
> suddenly get much more interested in reliability, security,
> scalability, management tools, and compliance with corporate and
> industry-wide IT standards that are not vendor specific.
Who's "they"? 'Cause it seems to me much of the world runs on production
Microsoft systems that are reliable, secure, scalable and generate real
revenue.
> We can prototype using Eclipse, MySql, and Ubuntu Linux or Windows,
> but when they get more serious about connecting real custotmers, they
> suddenly want WebSphere, DB2, and either Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
> SLES, or AIX.
OK. Or they can use IIS, SQL Server and Windows Server.
"Oracle and Microsoft experienced [database market share] growth rates above
the industry average at 14.9 percent and 28 percent, respectively, while IBM
trailed in terms of growth with an 8.8 percent revenue increase in 2006."
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=507466
Linux Losing Market Share to Windows Server
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2207368,00.asp
Linonut
> No conditions necessary. The programs included in any MSDN subscription
> make amateurish OSS slopware look foolish. And everyone knows it - that's
> why hardly anyone uses Linux, even for free.
Pffffffft. Oh crap, I've got lo learn to put down the coffee cup when
reading a DFS post.
--
This sig has expired. Please reactivate your sig by paying $0.25
and entering the 30-character activation key that will be emailed to
your account.
Sinister Midget
> * DFS fired off this tart reply:
>
>> No conditions necessary. The programs included in any MSDN subscription
>> make amateurish OSS slopware look foolish. And everyone knows it - that's
>> why hardly anyone uses Linux, even for free.
>
> Pffffffft. Oh crap, I've got lo learn to put down the coffee cup when
> reading a DFS post.
DuFuS would do well teaming up with C-64 nostalgists. They can get
together and trade tales of how their preferred platforms will once
again rule the world (while the world simultaneously rues any
possibility that those platforms might move to dominance).
--
Behind a great man, there's a woman preventing him from being greater!
High Plains Thumper
> Linonut claimed:
>> DFS reply:
>>
>>> No conditions necessary. The programs included in any
>>> MSDN subscription make amateurish OSS slopware look
>>> foolish. And everyone knows it - that's why hardly anyone
>>> uses Linux, even for free.
>>
>> Pffffffft. Oh crap, I've got lo learn to put down the
>> coffee cup when reading a DFS post.
>
> DuFuS would do well teaming up with C-64 nostalgists. They can
> get together and trade tales of how their preferred platforms
> will once again rule the world (while the world simultaneously
> rues any possibility that those platforms might move to
> dominance).
I am not so sure about that. Some of those nostalgics wrote
programs and patches in assembly language, which is becoming a
lost art. One can even do structured programming techniques (a
must for ease of debugging and maintenance) in assembly.
Back 25 years ago, I helped a mate write one to clear the screen.
Commodore BASIC did not have graphic language extensions, so
one had to write his own. Doing pokes into memory was slow. A
simple machine language program poked into a REM statement and
called by EXEC did it in a flash.
Talking about efficiency, Linux Beryl 3D desktop extension IIRC
takes only like 2 MB, which is very efficiently written. It will
run on hosts whereas Vista's 3D GUI requires considerably beefier
and resource rich hardware.
--
HPT
Rex Ballard
> Rex Ballard wrote:
> > On Jan 1, 5:27 pm, "DFS" <nospam@dfs_.com> wrote:
> >> Any of the paid MSDN Subscriptions found
> >> herehttp://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa718657.aspx
! Great links. Let's see the membership prices:
| Visual Studio Team System With MSDN Premium - $10,939
| Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition - only $5,469
Architecture Edition - also $5,469
Test Edition - also $5,469
Database Edition - $5,469
> > It appears that all of these prices are "per person".
> > So DFS did you pay for that package out of your own pocket?
> I did. It was the OS subscription in 2004, and it only cost me $390 after a
> rebate - then I deducted it as a business expense.
So you didn't pay for it out of your own pocket, you paid about $200
and let the tax payers pay about $190 (assuming you are in 38%
federal bracket and 7% state bracket - like I am).
Don't feel too bad though, about $30 billion of Microsoft's annual
revenue is "tax deductable", which means that Microsoft gets about $12
billion from the tax payers.
Of course, since Microsoft is a monopoly, they can set their prices as
high as they want, especially since the only people who pay retail are
people on the road whose computers crash the night before the "Big
Presentation".
Very generous of the Gates foundation to give back $2 billion/year in
"charity" such as money laundered PACs, other bribes, and some
inoculations to influence the "honest" politicians who can't be bribed
directly.
> > Of course, this is for ONE YEAR,
> The licenses are - or at least were in the past - perpetual. No renewal
> necessary, unless you want to keep up with the latest MS software for the
> best price.
I'm not sure Microsoft would appreciate your abuse of MSDN, and
certainly not your promotion of such abuse by others.
| but renewals are available for about 1/2 price.
> They tried to get me to pony up $899 for the renewal. I never have.
You're one of the most active pro-Microsoft voices in COLA, I'm
surprised they didn't just give you the MSDN renewal. Of course,
since you don't publish any way to actually contact you, they can't
can they?
You're underpaid by Microsoft. You should be getting more.
I know, you make lots of money writing VB dialogs for SQL Server.
> >> are a far, far, far better deal than $0 for every
> >> bit of OSS software in the universe.
Looking at the package, even the $11,000 package only has about 130
applications included. Sure, the MSRP for all of that software would
be $30,000 or so, but then again, who pays MSRP for personal
workstation software anyway?
Remember, this is the Microsoft Software DEVELOPER Network, all of
these applications are for DEVELOPMENT only, not for production.
With Linux, say SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, I get about 4000
applications for $50 per year. Even Red Hat Enterprise Desktop gives
me about 3000 applications for $150 per year.
> No conditions necessary. The programs included in any MSDN subscription
> make amateurish OSS slopware look foolish. And everyone knows it - that's
> why hardly anyone uses Linux, even for free.
But you've already said above that you decided NOT to pay for the
renewals, so apparently it's NOT such a good deal, even for you.
> > Ironically, when we start talking about production systems, and they
> > are looking at having real revenue within a few weeks or months, they
> > suddenly get much more interested in reliability, security,
> > scalability, management tools, and compliance with corporate and
> > industry-wide IT standards that are not vendor specific.
>
> Who's "they"? 'Cause it seems to me much of the world runs on production
> Microsoft systems that are reliable, secure, scalable and generate real
> revenue.
I'm talking about CTOs, CIOs, and high level executives who are
responsible for the entire system throughout the entire life-cycle.
Generally, the Windows portion is about 10-20% of the total project.
When you are paying consultants $80-$100 per hour, or off-shore
developers $25/hour, the software is a smaller portion of the total
project budget.
Microsoft software has it's place, but you need to make sure you have
more redundancy, that each server is dedicated to a specific function,
and that you can recover completely from even the most bizarre kinds
of crashes. Most of Microsoft's high availability benchmarks are
based on lots of redundant servers.
Normally, the "Mission Critical" servers are either mainframes or
commercial UNIX servers, though I have been seeing more clients
requesting Linux on blades. Linux and UNIX let you put multiple
applications on a single server. In addition, virtualization lets you
put multiple "servers" on a single multi-core server. The nice thing
is that if one of the CPUs fail (fan goes out), the remaining CPUs can
pick up the load. If you have 32 CPUs in an SMP or NUMA
configuration, and one of them fails, you only see a 1/32 or slightly
over 3% degradation in performance.
With Windows, you have two full servers working with one in "hot
standby" - you can't have more than 50% of the capacity, and if the
demand is in bursts, you might be using as little as 10% of the
capacity 90% of the time.
There are utilities such as VMWare that let you put multiple servers
on a single machine using virtual machines, and they can even help you
move those virtual servers from one physical PC to another. Of
course, Microsoft's licenses limit this ability, but Linux licenses
allow, and even encourage such uses.
> > We can prototype using Eclipse, MySql, and Ubuntu Linux or Windows,
> > but when they get more serious about connecting real custotmers, they
> > suddenly want WebSphere, DB2, and either Red Hat Enterprise Linux,
> > SLES, or AIX.
>
> OK. Or they can use IIS, SQL Server and Windows Server.
The problem is that if they start with IIS, SQL Svr, and Windows, they
have painted themselves into the corner before they have even
started. If they find that they need scalability, reliability,
capacity, and performance of Linux or UNIX, they have to double their
development effort.
If they start with a multiplatform language like Java, use tools that
generate industry standard SQL, and use UML for modeling and code
generation, they can start their development on their Windows
workstation, use a Linux VMWare image to confirm platform
independence, and then migrate it to a Linux or UNIX server and scale
from a cell phone or PDA to a Mainframe.
> "Oracle and Microsoft experienced [database market share] growth rates above
> the industry average at 14.9 percent and 28 percent, respectively, while IBM
> trailed in terms of growth with an 8.8 percent revenue increase in 2006."http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=507466
IBM's revenue model is gradually shifting. More of their revenue is
coming from consulting, outsourcing, support, and they look for many
ways to get as much "bang for the buck" for each engagement. This can
include off-shoring, use of development software such as Rational
Software Architect and WebSphere wizards to move from diagrams to code
more quickly, open source applications and tools such as PERL for "ad
hoc" functions such as log analysis and performance analysis as well
as many production tools. And there is code re-use. With each
project, the solutions are reviewed for what can be reused, purged of
the proprietary information, and in some cases, used to generate
wizards, accelerators, adapters, and plug-ins, for the commercial
applications.
IBM also contributes to a number of Open Source projects. In fact,
IBM was has been contributing to Open Source Software since 1983 with
Project Athena
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Athena
Even before that, IBM was contributing to Nasa's Mercury mission in
1961
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/space/space_chronology2.html
And in 1890, IBM was a contributor to the Census
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/census-tabulator.html
Though to be accurate, it wasn't IBM at the time, it just became part
of IBM (who previously made grocery store scales).
> Linux Losing Market Share to Windows Serverhttp://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2207368,00.asp
This is an interesting article, and probably quite accurate, but
doesn't really reflect an accurate picture of the market.
Linux "Server" sales are slowing for a number of reasons. Microsoft
has been raising their prices, which increases revenues. Microsoft
servers are gobbling more and more memory, which means you need more
and bigger servers. Microsoft introduced a 64 bit version of Windows
2003, which gobbles even more memory and CPU.
Linux "servers" often have more CPUs. Linux Blades now often include
two quad-core processors, which means it's more like 8 CPUs, and often
at 2Ghz or more per core. Virtualization means that a single
"server", in terms of unit count, can be loaded with more virtual
machines. Linux servers have much smaller footprints on a "per
server" basis. In addition, Linux servers can often run multiple
applications on the same physical or virtual server, and still have
reliable performance. Proper load balancing can make it possible to
spread applications and loads very efficiently without requiring
redundant or "stand-by" systems.
Many Linux servers are also getting pretty hefty. HP, Sun, IBM, and
even Dell, now have servers with as many as 64 quad-core processors,
all capable of running virtual machines that run either Linux or
UNIX. IBM Mainframes can support thousands of virtual machines
running Linux. There are top-of-the-line Z-900 systems that run as
many as 100,000 "servers" under Z/VM.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has finished forcing NT 4.0 users over to Windows
2003. There was a huge migration of NT 4.0 servers to Linux when
Microsoft started demanding that customers upgrade to Windows 2003 but
they also audited CALs and usually ended up reccomending Enterprise or
Data Center Edition at several thousand dollars per CPU. Many
companies moved applications written in Java to Linux, which ran on
the old NT 4.0 hardware. But most of those NT 4.0 to Linux
transitions have been completed.
When a company knows it wants Linux servers, they often opt for
blades, SMP servers, or even mainframes, and then put lots of virtual
servers on them.
The other problem is that many developers are now using Linux Desktops
or desktop virtualization instead of Linux servers for development and
unit testing. This can eliminate the need for a dedicated set of
servers for development systems, or reduce the need to just the unit
test platform, since the server no longer needs to have the compilers,
tools, and design utilities on the server.
The other problem in the measurement is that more and more Linux
servers are being replaced with Linux Appliances. These days, you can
replace a Linux server used as a storage server with a Linux appliance
such as an NSLU2 storage controller, or even a large storage array
controller that can manage a bay of 16 to 32 SAS drives. Most of
these storage controllers are powered by Linux or Unix, but not
counted as "servers".
The same thing is happening with other popular Linux server functions
such as firewalls and routers and VPN gateways. I remember when we
had to set up IPSec virtual gateways using dedicated Linux boxes.
Today, it's just a feature of the Cisco routers, along with the SSL
encryption of the links.
The other problem is that most of these appliances reduce the need for
server horsepower and memory for such things as disk buffering,
routing, encryption, and graphical management.
Meanwhile, Microsoft still ties a great deal to their monolithic and
monopolistic control of the entire server. Each server has a huge
overhead for the graphical management interface. Each server has to
manage the NTFS storage organization. Backups are are very tricky
because open files are usually locked and can't be backed up. There
are other features of Windows 2003 servers that also eat memory,
gobble disk, suck up network bandwidth, and spin CPU cycles. Then
there are the problems with DLL Hell, which means that each server
usually has to be dedicated to a single function.
Third party software on Windows is an even bigger problem. Microsoft
loves to send updates, but doesn't test most of those updates with 3rd
party software and software developed on anything other than Visual
Studio. An application that worked yesterday could be broken today
because of a Microsoft security patch. Most companies screen the
patches, test them carefully before deploying them to production
servers, and make sure that they have a fail-over server in case the
patch blows things up in production. All of this increases the server
counts even further.
Let's say I need a Web Server, an Application server for
transformation and business rules, and a database. So now I need 3
servers. But then I need redundancy for automatic fail-over, which
means I need 6 server. But I need a disaster recovery system, which
means I'm now up to 12 servers. I also need a test system that is
exactly like the production system for testing patches before I deploy
them, which means I'm now up to 18 servers. But then there are the
auxiliary functions like load balancing (6 more servers), security
gateways (6 more servers), and network support such as DNS, Routing,
WINS, and Active Directory servers (6 more servers). So we are now up
to about 36 Windows servers. All this to do the work of 2 UNIX or
Linux servers. And remember, the licenses alone for each of these
servers can exceed $20,000 per CPU and each server is typically 4
CPUs. So we have 144 CPUs or CPU cores, which means you need to cut a
check for at least $2.88 Million just for the Windows licenses. Add
to that, the cost of the application licenses (data center editions or
Enterprise Editions), and you could top out at over $4 million just in
software royalties. This does not include any consulting to get the
application built, to get performance, to get reliability, to get
security, or to get everything integrated to the rest of your
enterprise data systems.
The thing is that if the appliance servers are running Windows, they
get counted as servers, but if they are running Linux, they are just
"Appliances" and not counted as anything.
On the other hand, lets go to Linux. I can use a 19 inch rack 6 foot
tall, and install 4 blade racks in that cage, and each cage can hold
16 blades, and each blade can hold 2 quad-core processors. That's a
total of 512 processors, but it gets counted as 1 server in many
surveys. The blades can have up to 8 gigabytes of RAM each, so we
have 512 gigabytes of RAM, but it's 1 server. And the blades have
interfaces to SAS or Fibre Channel storage arrays, which you can put
on a separate rack, each of those racks can hold about 12 bays, with
16 drives per bay, so that's 192 drives, and at 300 GB each, about 50
tarabytes of storage, but that's an "appliance", so it doesn't get
counted as 12 servers.
Now, if I compare this to the typical Windows server, with dual 500 GB
SATA drives, and 4 CPUs per server and 2 gigabytes of RAM per server,
I would need at least 128 Windows servers to get the equivalent
performance of that 1 Linux "Server".
And of course, the TCO on that one Linux "server" will be higher on a
"per server" basis, but for the same amount of functionality, the TCO
of the entire solution will be about 60 times higher, because those
Linux boxes are managed using automatically triggered scripts, while
each of those Windows servers requires daily monitoring by hand, and
weekly routine maintenance, which has to be done by hand.
There is also a much lower cost in terms of power consumption,
cooling, physical infrastructure, and support. If you use virtualized
servers, it's also easier to manage deployment, and you need fewer
back-up devices, since you only have to boot the virtual image on the
backup server, rather than have to custom configure backups for each
server.
The biggest market for Microsoft servers is small businesses with 2-3
employees who just need "generic" solutions, and need something they
can share between the team.
For that purpose, it's a good fit. You can use a basic server
license, you don't have to learn a new operating system (Windows 2003
is similar enough to Windows XP that you will feel comfortable), you
only need to back up the data directory, and you can usually back it
up to an external USB drive (which might be powered by Linux).
Of course, you might also be able to get Linux appliances to do the
same work. Use that Linksys router, and that NSLU2 Storage
controller, and you now have shared storage without the "server". Of
course appliances don't get counted in the server surveys, so it's no
skin of Microsoft's nose, and it means that a Linux server doesn't get
counted, in the case above, it's 2 Linux servers that don't get
counted.
This reminds me of the days when TCP/IP was becoming very popular, but
Novell wanted to maintain it's claim that it was the leader in
networking. They came up with a term colled "Network Operating
System" and carefully defined it to exclude practically everything but
NetWare servers.
Microsoft seems to be using the same tactic with these server
surveys. Remember, market research surveys are a form of "Benchmark",
and since Microsoft's licenses require Microsoft's prior written
approval for all benchmarks, Microsoft can revise, or reject any
benchmark to make it less damaging to the brand. If Microsoft can
look at the raw numbers and say "those aren't servers, those are
appliances and shouldn't be counted", or "that isn't 128 servers,
that's 1 server", they can make the numbers be anything they want. If
the original author doesn't agree, Microsoft can then say "well then,
you can't publish". At that point, they can't even use the Microsoft
Windows trademarks in their article. Since, in most cases, if the
article isn't published, or delivered in time for the deadline, with
all the approvals, the writer doesn't get paid. It tends to make the
writer a bit more "flexible" to Microsoft's redefinitions.
Great reference - maybe I should have split this into two responses.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
> When WinTrolls post to COLA, it's "fair game" to assume that they are
> either unemployed bums collecting disability, shills working on
> Microsoft's payroll, or drunken high school punks who have never done
> a real day of work. Since they provide no credentials whatsoever,
> these are valid assumptions. It is valid to assume that they don't
> want to share their credentials, because it would become obvious that
> people who have no qualifications, are criticizing highly skilled
> professionals who have a well documented track record of contribution
> to the industry.
Yeah, I am continually amused by winvocates who try to preach to
me about the nature of Linux and OSS and the business world when
I've been active in all of those communities for more than a few
years and seen first-hand what they're about. For example, trolls
who try to claim that Linux is not growing when I'm out there in
the business world seeing it with my own eyes. Dude, don't even
try to convince the guy in the pool that the water ain't wet!
> By the way, feel free to share your web link and other credentials
> related links in your postings. This could help your credibility.
I've on occasion posted details and links regarding my experience
in the tech world, and even gotten grudging acknowledgement from
winvocates that I know what I'm talking about because of it. I
would do it more, but I like to coat my usual pompous arrogance
with a veneer of false humility. ;)
Actually the easiest way to find out a bit about my history
is to just search on my full name (I've revealed it a few times
in this forum). A google search on 'Thad Phetteplace' turns
up quite a few hits, and I am rather certain I am the only
person with that name. Much of it is archived copies of
posts to various forums, including the Linux Kernel Mailing
List. You can also find articles I've written for LinuxToday
and NewsForge and a few other random essays. There is
probably a link to my main website (www.glaci.com), but it
is shamefully empty while under renovation at the moment. You
might also find some info about my big Halloween Charity Bash
that I throw every year (open invite, so bring a food donation
and stop in next party if you find yourself in Milwaukee).
The conversations with amicus are particular amusing, because
he likes to talk like he is some sort of business and finance
expert, but is not forthcoming with any actual experience in
those fields. My experience can be verified by visiting
the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions web site
and searching on GLACI, Inc. You will see that it has been
incorporated for more than a decade with me as the owner and
president. I've actually been preparing balance sheets,
profit and loss statements, etc for quite some time, so I
know how to read the quarterly and annual reports when
someone like MS publishes them. He posts links to documents
showing exactly the drop in cash reserves and shareholder
equity that I've been talking about and doesn't seem to
realize he has made my point for me.
As for other qualifications, I've seen similar amusing posts
from people trying to tell me about trademarks when they
obviously don't know what they are talking about. If you
go to the US Patent and Trademark Office web site and search
on 'SkillTrek' you can verify that I've recently been through
the process, so I know a bit about what I'm talking about
there also. I've also got quite a bit of experience with
contracts and license agreements, OEM arrangements, and so
forth. I developed, marketed, and sold the first web server
software for Novell Netware back in the mid 90's (under
the names GLACI-httpd and GLACI-SecureServ if you care to
google it) before becoming the OSS Linux guru I now play
on the interweb. This gives me the perspective of having
seen the software marketplace from both the commercial/
proprietary as well as open source sides of the fence, and
not just as a cog in the corporate machine.
I also co-founded an ISP (long since bought out) and authored
three of the chapters in the early versions of the Red Hat
Linux Bible (including the one on Security). You could
probably verify that by going to Amazon.com and searching on
'Red Hat Linux Bible 7'. I should be listed as a contributing
author or at least in the acknowledgements. I also wrote a
chapter in 'Connecting Netware to the Internet', but I have
no idea if that is even available any more.
I've also lectured on the topic of computer and Internet
security at a few business conferences and been a guest
lecturer at the local university a couple of times, but
that is more difficult for me to prove... no trace of it
on the web as far as I know.
If you want to see some of the code I've written, you can
visit www.gridslammer.org and download the droidwars or
blig games. They've been rather neglected lately but I do
plan another blig release soon. I'll also be placing a few
open source tools I've developed back on the the GLACI or
SkillTrek websites when I get around to updating them.
OK... so there are my qualifications to blather away on this
forum like some sort of know-it-all. Maybe the wintrolls will
cut me a bit more slack now, but somehow I doubt it.
>:)
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
[ gratuitous deletia ... ]
>
> Microsoft software has it's place, but you need to make sure you have
> more redundancy, that each server is dedicated to a specific function,
> and that you can recover completely from even the most bizarre kinds
> of crashes. Most of Microsoft's high availability benchmarks are
> based on lots of redundant servers.
>
> Normally, the "Mission Critical" servers are either mainframes or
> commercial UNIX servers, though I have been seeing more clients
> requesting Linux on blades. Linux and UNIX let you put multiple
> applications on a single server. In addition, virtualization lets you
> put multiple "servers" on a single multi-core server. The nice thing
> is that if one of the CPUs fail (fan goes out), the remaining CPUs can
> pick up the load. If you have 32 CPUs in an SMP or NUMA
> configuration, and one of them fails, you only see a 1/32 or slightly
> over 3% degradation in performance.
>
> With Windows, you have two full servers working with one in "hot
> standby" - you can't have more than 50% of the capacity, and if the
> demand is in bursts, you might be using as little as 10% of the
> capacity 90% of the time.
I'll jump in just to say Rex's description fits pretty well with my
experience in the ISP industry. We've found that you generally
need more Windows servers to satisfy a smaller number of customers
compared to using Linux on the same hardware. IIS does fine with
static web page serving, but anything dynamic seems to burn a lot
more CPU cycles than the equivalent task on Linux. Windows seems
to fall over itself when you start throwing in a very diverse job
mix and it needs to context switch a lot. Also, the Windows servers
tended to consume more admin time as many tasks were only accessible
via GUI applications and not as easily automated or scripted. I
realize MS has been working to address those issues in more recent
versions of Windows Server... but most of my clients simply dumped
their Windows servers and went totally Linux rather than wait for MS
to get it right.
> Meanwhile, Microsoft has finished forcing NT 4.0 users over to Windows
> 2003. There was a huge migration of NT 4.0 servers to Linux when
> Microsoft started demanding that customers upgrade to Windows 2003 but
> they also audited CALs and usually ended up reccomending Enterprise or
> Data Center Edition at several thousand dollars per CPU. Many
> companies moved applications written in Java to Linux, which ran on
> the old NT 4.0 hardware. But most of those NT 4.0 to Linux
> transitions have been completed.
Yup, I was in the trenches doing some of those migrations when it
was in full swing.
[ more gratuitous snippage ... ]
>
> Great reference - maybe I should have split this into two responses.
Rex, you bring new meaning to the word 'verbose'. :)
Sinister Midget
> Sinister Midget wrote:
>> DuFuS would do well teaming up with C-64 nostalgists. They can
>> get together and trade tales of how their preferred platforms
>> will once again rule the world (while the world simultaneously
>> rues any possibility that those platforms might move to
>> dominance).
>
> I am not so sure about that. Some of those nostalgics wrote
> programs and patches in assembly language, which is becoming a
> lost art. One can even do structured programming techniques (a
> must for ease of debugging and maintenance) in assembly.
No disagreement there. I /liked/ the C-64. I had 4 of them at once.
But they aren't going to make a comeback and sell another 5 million to
home users.
MS seems to be past it's heyday, too. Rigor mortis just needs a little
more time to become so evident that even the armchair medical experts
(tech press, Windummies, DuFuses, Quooks, Timmies, etc) won't be able
to deny the state of its death.
--
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
amicus_curious
<tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
news:qgkv45-...@tux.glaci.com...
are a one-man show with a rather spotty record of on-time filing your
papework and annual fee with the State of Wisconsin, eh? Don't they charge
a penalty for failing to file an annual report and then re-instating? If
you could get Linonut to be your CFO, I bet he could at least keep up with
the regs while you whistled and worked!
You should at least get a lawyer to be your registered agent, then you would
know what to do if someone might want to sue you for infringing on
Microsoft's patents.
Now how this qualifies you to pass judgement on MSFT's balance sheet and
financials, I will never understand, unless you weren't kidding about the
pompous arrogance part of your makeup. I believe that your statement was to
the effect of MSFT not having any revenue growth or some similar
disparagement and, of course, you are all wet.
It is kind of cute to see you schmoozing up to old Rex, though. If Rex
would break his long-winded posts into smaller pieces, the sheer quantity of
his and your work could rival the Shestowitz/Kent axis and would give us
something else to poke some fun at. What do you say?
> As for other qualifications, I've seen similar amusing posts
> from people trying to tell me about trademarks when they
> obviously don't know what they are talking about. If you
> go to the US Patent and Trademark Office web site and search
> on 'SkillTrek' you can verify that I've recently been through
> the process, so I know a bit about what I'm talking about
> there also.
Filed in 2000, first commercial use at the end of 2006. You are not so
quick out of the blocks either, eh? Did it take that long to get up the
scratch to pay the lawyer? Why bother to pay the fees and the shyster for
such an insipid effort anyway? Who do you think would want to poach on this
sort of thing? It is paranoia like that that drives the FSF loonies.
I've also got quite a bit of experience with
> contracts and license agreements, OEM arrangements, and so
> forth. I developed, marketed, and sold the first web server
> software for Novell Netware back in the mid 90's (under
> the names GLACI-httpd and GLACI-SecureServ if you care to
> google it) before becoming the OSS Linux guru I now play
> on the interweb. This gives me the perspective of having
> seen the software marketplace from both the commercial/
> proprietary as well as open source sides of the fence, and
> not just as a cog in the corporate machine.
>
I bet you know the work-for-hire parts inside out at least.
> I also co-founded an ISP (long since bought out) and authored
> three of the chapters in the early versions of the Red Hat
> Linux Bible (including the one on Security). You could
> probably verify that by going to Amazon.com and searching on
> 'Red Hat Linux Bible 7'. I should be listed as a contributing
> author or at least in the acknowledgements. I also wrote a
> chapter in 'Connecting Netware to the Internet', but I have
> no idea if that is even available any more.
>
> I've also lectured on the topic of computer and Internet
> security at a few business conferences and been a guest
> lecturer at the local university a couple of times, but
> that is more difficult for me to prove... no trace of it
> on the web as far as I know.
Did you get paid? It conly counts if you get paid, you know.
>
> If you want to see some of the code I've written, you can
> visit www.gridslammer.org and download the droidwars or
> blig games. They've been rather neglected lately but I do
> plan another blig release soon. I'll also be placing a few
> open source tools I've developed back on the the GLACI or
> SkillTrek websites when I get around to updating them.
>
> OK... so there are my qualifications to blather away on this
> forum like some sort of know-it-all. Maybe the wintrolls will
> cut me a bit more slack now, but somehow I doubt it.
>
Well, compared to rick and 7 and chrisv and peter and many other, you are a
giant around here. But that just makes you a target. Got any academic
qualifications?
The Ghost In The Machine
<fardb...@gmail.com>
wrote
on Thu, 3 Jan 2008 15:12:54 -0600
<mnvv45-...@clark.harry.net>:
The reports of MSFT's demise are greatly exaggerated,
presumably. After all, we're talking a corporation that is
making over $54B of revenue and $14.88B of income a year,
with no debt and 23.3% quarterly year-on-year earnings growth.
This is not to say Windows is any good from a technical
standpoint; it's pure crap. However, it's highly
profitable crap...and I for one have no idea how we'd
unseat this monster, especially if Bill Gates sees a
threat to his business and runs to someone like George
Bush for protection (President Bush being highly notable
for protecting the oil industry; presumably he'd protect
any sufficiently big industry that makes money, and
Microsoft is pretty big; it's about 15% of XOM's revenue
and 38% of its income).
The good news: Microsoft has proven itself quite proficient
at shooting itself in the foot.
The bad news: it has a lot of feet and no one seems to
even notice or care, except for this bunch here in COLA
and an occasional freeware blogger. Viruses? No problem;
just buy AV software. Deficiencies? No problem; get
some shareware. Sluggish machine? No problem; get a new
one with a more "modern" OS such as Vista. Isn't setting
people's expectations wonderful? Oh, don't forget to
register your copy of Vista, citizen; it's for your own good.
As for the C-64...I played with it for 5 minutes or
so once. I can't say it was that impressive except that
it was instantly on, ready to go from the moment one hits
the power switch. (The same could be said for many other
machines -- the TRS80 and the Apple ][ also come to mind.
The Amiga didn't quite make it but was very close.)
ASUS finally has partially replicated that experience for
the masses, allowing a browser within 5 seconds or so on
the P5E3, as I understand it.
Presumably Microsoft is still working on it. We'll see
this "innovation" maybe a few years from now. Never mind
that Linux already has it, as a proof of concept.
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
Useless C/C++ Programming Idea #2239120:
void f(char *p) {char *q = p; strcpy(p,q); }
Linonut
> If you could get Linonut to be your CFO, I bet he could at least keep up with
> the regs while you whistled and worked!
Keep my name out of this, pecker head.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> Well, I am nothing if not curious and I took a look. It would seem that you
> are a one-man show with a rather spotty record of on-time filing your
> papework and annual fee with the State of Wisconsin, eh? Don't they charge
> a penalty for failing to file an annual report and then re-instating? If
> you could get Linonut to be your CFO, I bet he could at least keep up with
> the regs while you whistled and worked!
Yup, been late on the annual report as often as not, but
fortunately it is only a $15 fine when it happens. I've been more
reliable since they started accepting the reports electronically.
I also file extensions on my taxes most years. Make what you will
of that. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm running a small
business. I am the sole owner and one of only two full time
employees. We have a few part timers and subcontractors. I hire
lawyers and accountants and such on a time and materials as needed
basis. It means I wear a lot of hats and consequently sometimes
get behind on the bureaucratic drudgery, but it is also why I have
such a breadth of experience in running a business.
> You should at least get a lawyer to be your registered agent, then you would
> know what to do if someone might want to sue you for infringing on
> Microsoft's patents.
I already have a couple of lawyers on retainer (one for real
estate issues and the other for trademark and contract issues).
I am fully capably of retaining legal counsel as needed and have
done so on various occasions.
> Now how this qualifies you to pass judgement on MSFT's balance sheet and
> financials, I will never understand, unless you weren't kidding about the
> pompous arrogance part of your makeup. I believe that your statement was to
> the effect of MSFT not having any revenue growth or some similar
> disparagement and, of course, you are all wet.
I said that decreasing cash reserves during a time of modest growth
was not sustainable (or something to that effect). MSFT's balance
sheets show exactly that. Their growth has been good but not great,
and they've gone through much more of their cash reserves than that
revenue growth can replace. If that money had gone to purchase
assets that increased shareholder equity it would be a different
story, but they did not, and MSFT's financial filings (that you
yourself provided no less) show that.
And yes, as owner of a corporation, I am responsible for quarterly
and yearly filings including balance sheets and profit and loss
statements, which makes me more experienced at reading those documents
when other companies publish them. Granted, I hire an accountant for
much of the work, but with three years of managerial cost accounting
at University and my own financial future on the line, you can be darn
sure I take a direct hand in the business paperwork and understand
every line the financial documents.
Again, this is where you get to trump my experience with your own
tale of entrepreneurism. We wait in breathless anticipation.
> It is kind of cute to see you schmoozing up to old Rex, though. If Rex
> would break his long-winded posts into smaller pieces, the sheer quantity of
> his and your work could rival the Shestowitz/Kent axis and would give us
> something else to poke some fun at. What do you say?
Knock yourself out. I rather enjoy our digital jousting otherwise I
wouldn't bother to stick around. Believe it or not, I would gladly
sit at the pub and share a pint with any of the COLA regulars and
retain no ill will over any of the insults that are thrown around
here.
> Filed in 2000, first commercial use at the end of 2006. You are not so
> quick out of the blocks either, eh? Did it take that long to get up the
> scratch to pay the lawyer? Why bother to pay the fees and the shyster for
> such an insipid effort anyway? Who do you think would want to poach on this
> sort of thing? It is paranoia like that that drives the FSF loonies.
And this is no doubt where you will reveal to us the trademarks you
have acquired, making you much more qualified to pontificate about
the process.
But honestly, you are correct that SkillTrek has been slow out of
the gate. Still, its a sweet mark and I don't regret snarfing it
up when I did. We do actually have some really cool CBT technology
in the works, though it is beginning to rival Vista in development
delays. >;)
>> I've also got quite a bit of experience with
>> contracts and license agreements, OEM arrangements, and so
>> forth. I developed, marketed, and sold the first web server
>> software for Novell Netware back in the mid 90's (under
>> the names GLACI-httpd and GLACI-SecureServ if you care to
>> google it) before becoming the OSS Linux guru I now play
>> on the interweb. This gives me the perspective of having
>> seen the software marketplace from both the commercial/
>> proprietary as well as open source sides of the fence, and
>> not just as a cog in the corporate machine.
>
> I bet you know the work-for-hire parts inside out at least.
Yes, I've done plenty of work for hire, but the web server
software mentioned above was not that. It was my intellectual
property from start to finish, and I was in charge of the entire
product life cycle, including marketing and OEM relationships.
It was sold internationally, so I even had to deal with
customs and foreign currency exchange. We were actually
prompted to develop Internet based delivery of the product
because of a postal strike in Slovenia.
Again, I would love to hear about the companies you've
founded, the products you've developed and marketed, the
product licensing deals you've directly negotiated. I mean,
its easy for you to throw stones at my admittedly small
business... but what have you done that makes you so
qualified to pass judgement?
>> I've also lectured on the topic of computer and Internet
>> security at a few business conferences and been a guest
>> lecturer at the local university a couple of times, but
>> that is more difficult for me to prove... no trace of it
>> on the web as far as I know.
>
> Did you get paid? It conly counts if you get paid, you know.
Heh, you would say that, wouldn't you. I think I was paid
a very modest honorarium for a couple of the conferences, but
it was done more for the exposure with potential business
clients, and in that sense it paid off. The guest lecture
bit at the university was for free and was admittedly more a
favor for a friend.
> Well, compared to rick and 7 and chrisv and peter and many other, you are a
> giant around here. But that just makes you a target. Got any academic
> qualifications?
Just a BS in CS from UWO (or UW Zero as we used to call it).
I also used to have a bartender's license, but I've let that
lapse. I still make a damn good Gin and Tonic though. ;)
amicus_curious
<tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
news:9hf055-...@tux.glaci.com...
>
>> Now how this qualifies you to pass judgement on MSFT's balance sheet and
>> financials, I will never understand, unless you weren't kidding about the
>> pompous arrogance part of your makeup. I believe that your statement was
>> to
>> the effect of MSFT not having any revenue growth or some similar
>> disparagement and, of course, you are all wet.
>
> I said that decreasing cash reserves during a time of modest growth
> was not sustainable (or something to that effect). MSFT's balance
> sheets show exactly that. Their growth has been good but not great,
> and they've gone through much more of their cash reserves than that
> revenue growth can replace. If that money had gone to purchase
> assets that increased shareholder equity it would be a different
> story, but they did not, and MSFT's financial filings (that you
> yourself provided no less) show that.
>
generate decent revenue but growth has been flat. " Whereas growth has been
double digit forever and they are at $50B after all, which is a lot of
weight. They had way too much cash for their needs and they gave it back to
the stockholders, which is a reasonable thing to do. Again, they are not a
bank or an investment company or a holding company, they are a manufacturing
company and cash is not such a good thing to have in that business, but you
probably wouldn't understand.
> And yes, as owner of a corporation, I am responsible for quarterly
> and yearly filings including balance sheets and profit and loss
> statements, which makes me more experienced at reading those documents
> when other companies publish them. Granted, I hire an accountant for
> much of the work, but with three years of managerial cost accounting
> at University and my own financial future on the line, you can be darn
> sure I take a direct hand in the business paperwork and understand
> every line the financial documents.
>
Seems pompous and arrogant to me. If you are the sole owner, who are you
writing reports to? Your sole employee? Is she related by marriage?
> Again, this is where you get to trump my experience with your own
> tale of entrepreneurism. We wait in breathless anticipation.
>
Well look at it this way. Your experience is no qualifier for asserting any
truth to your audacious statements about Mr. Gates' company's cash horde.
With all the claims around here regarding the sure demise of Mr. Softee in
the near term you all have to find some sort of augury in the tea leaves
that it is happening, after all, it has been almost 10 years since the USofA
and EU took up the gun to chastise MS and they have only managed to triple
in revenues and quadruple in profits under that siege. My personal business
experience, I believe, would give me a higher level of qualification than
you, but still hardly of the Warren Buffet caliber, so there is no real
point in mentioning it.
Also, there is nothing to be gained by revealing so much personal
information as to bring about your identity here. You are silly to do what
you have done, but are relatively safe since the Microsoft proponents are at
least coming from the conservative and conventional side of things. To
expose oneself to the rabid sorts who live on the OSS side of the tracks is
inviting too much hassle and anonimity is requisite.
>
> Knock yourself out. I rather enjoy our digital jousting otherwise I
> wouldn't bother to stick around. Believe it or not, I would gladly
> sit at the pub and share a pint with any of the COLA regulars and
> retain no ill will over any of the insults that are thrown around
> here.
>
Well that is interesting. A cheesehead talking like a Brit. But I am sure
that they still drink beers in bars in your town. As to insults thrown, it
is easy to dismiss them if you have no respect for the thrower.
One interesting thing that comes to mind regarding the identity crisis that
Shestowitcz brought up from some anonymous lurker from the old NYT forum
where I and a New York financier/venture guy and the late Dr. Weissgerber, a
civil engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati, jousted with
the anti-MS crowd is that the good doctor's brother or uncle or somesuch
operated a pretty nice restaurant in the Milwaukee area under their family
name that I visited on several occasions before the Kearny & Trecker company
vanished from the manufacturing machinery scene.
Well, I am not so much throwing stones at your puny business as I am
pooh-poohing the notion that it qualifies you to pass any judgement on
Microsoft's business operations and financial decision making. If you were
to go to work for a very large company, you would probably see the
difference to be so vast as to give you a clue. I have operated a very
small business doing system development with a handful of people and gave it
up after a few years as being too much work for the profit. It is much more
rewarding and effective to just be a part of an effective team in a big
company that can swing a billion bucks around and get somthing done in a big
way. Microsoft, to me, is the major leagues and a winner at that. You can
fiddle around with some cheapskate client and sell him some software to run
on Linux, but next year, who will remember?
>
>> Well, compared to rick and 7 and chrisv and peter and many other, you are
>> a
>> giant around here. But that just makes you a target. Got any academic
>> qualifications?
>
> Just a BS in CS from UWO (or UW Zero as we used to call it).
> I also used to have a bartender's license, but I've let that
> lapse. I still make a damn good Gin and Tonic though. ;)
>
University of Western Ontario? That's what Google gave me. As to G&T, that
wouldn't seem to be the hard part of bartendering. There must be more too
it.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> Which is a silly enough idea, but you added a ways back: "MS continues to
> generate decent revenue but growth has been flat. " Whereas growth has been
> double digit forever and they are at $50B after all, which is a lot of
> weight. They had way too much cash for their needs and they gave it back to
> the stockholders, which is a reasonable thing to do. Again, they are not a
> bank or an investment company or a holding company, they are a manufacturing
> company and cash is not such a good thing to have in that business, but you
> probably wouldn't understand.
OK, I'll grant you that 'flat' was a bit much given their recent
quarters, but growth has still been modest compared to the rate
they are depleting cash reserves, which is the point I've been
driving at. In business, when your cash reserves are shrinking,
you should be showing a matching increase in non-cash assets or
at least projections showing appropriate ROI on the expenditures.
Getting rid of cash just because you've got 'too much' is not
exactly a wining strategy and I expect management had other
other reasons for their actions.
> Seems pompous and arrogant to me. If you are the sole owner, who are you
> writing reports to? Your sole employee? Is she related by marriage?
Now I really must assume you've never owned or operated a
corporation. Financial reports are a legal requirement, for
tiny little s-corps as well multi-billion dollar publicly
traded companies. The reporting requirements are less when you
are smaller, but you still need to generate balance sheets,
profit and loss statements, depreciation schedules, etc and
attach them to your taxes at the very least. Even if there
was no requirement, you would be foolish not to generate them
just to know the state of your business.
>> Again, this is where you get to trump my experience with your own
>> tale of entrepreneurism. We wait in breathless anticipation.
>>
> Well look at it this way. Your experience is no qualifier for asserting any
> truth to your audacious statements about Mr. Gates' company's cash horde.
> With all the claims around here regarding the sure demise of Mr. Softee in
> the near term you all have to find some sort of augury in the tea leaves
> that it is happening, after all, it has been almost 10 years since the USofA
> and EU took up the gun to chastise MS and they have only managed to triple
> in revenues and quadruple in profits under that siege. My personal business
> experience, I believe, would give me a higher level of qualification than
> you, but still hardly of the Warren Buffet caliber, so there is no real
> point in mentioning it.
Unlike some others on this forum, I've never claimed the imminent
demise of MS is upon us, quite the opposite actually. I've repeatedly
said that they continue to have a large install base, strong
profits, substantial cash reserves, and a proven ability to adapt
to market conditions. What I have claimed is that they are facing
a tougher fight now than in the past, and the need to spend and give
back some of their cash reserves reflects that. Look, I think
paying out dividends was the right thing for MS to do, but lets
be honest, it was about preserving share value and not an act of
altruism. It doesn't mean MS is imploding, it just means they
are now a 'mature' company and cannot depend on huge growth to
keep the stockholders happy. My point was, and continues to be,
they cannot continue to pay out dividends or buy back stock at
the rate they have been for long without completely draining their
cash reserves or taking on debt. That is a mathematical certainty
when you examine their financial statements. That means future
dividends will likely be smaller, and that will likely add downward
pressure on their stock price.
> Also, there is nothing to be gained by revealing so much personal
> information as to bring about your identity here. You are silly to do what
> you have done, but are relatively safe since the Microsoft proponents are at
> least coming from the conservative and conventional side of things. To
> expose oneself to the rabid sorts who live on the OSS side of the tracks is
> inviting too much hassle and anonimity is requisite.
My identity has been public for some time... I have too unique a
name and too much history on the net. No point in going stealth
now. So far I've not had any problems with cyberstalkers or
anything like that, perhaps because I'm usually rather polite and
respectful. In truth, I've probably been a bit more condescending
and rough toned with you than I am usually prone to, but I trust
you understand I don't mean anything personal by it. Maybe I'm
spending too much time in the COLA echo chamber. All the vitriol
is starting to seep through even my thick skin.
> Well that is interesting. A cheesehead talking like a Brit. But I am sure
> that they still drink beers in bars in your town. As to insults thrown, it
> is easy to dismiss them if you have no respect for the thrower.
Comes from having a Brit girlfriend I guess. On the matter of respect,
I try to give everyone the proper measure, and tend to just not deal
with those I don't respect. The fact that I continue to argue with
you should say something. :) I certainly respect that you have strong
opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. If I've recently
strayed toward attacking you personally rather than your arguments,
I apologize. I violate my own principles when I do that.
> One interesting thing that comes to mind regarding the identity crisis that
> Shestowitcz brought up from some anonymous lurker from the old NYT forum
> where I and a New York financier/venture guy and the late Dr. Weissgerber, a
> civil engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati, jousted with
> the anti-MS crowd is that the good doctor's brother or uncle or somesuch
> operated a pretty nice restaurant in the Milwaukee area under their family
> name that I visited on several occasions before the Kearny & Trecker company
> vanished from the manufacturing machinery scene.
Yes, there are some really good restaurants in this town. The
Balistrari family operates several nice ones, including one
in the same building where why old offices used to be (we
ate lunch there alot of course).
> Well, I am not so much throwing stones at your puny business as I am
> pooh-poohing the notion that it qualifies you to pass any judgement on
> Microsoft's business operations and financial decision making. If you were
> to go to work for a very large company, you would probably see the
> difference to be so vast as to give you a clue. I have operated a very
> small business doing system development with a handful of people and gave it
> up after a few years as being too much work for the profit. It is much more
> rewarding and effective to just be a part of an effective team in a big
> company that can swing a billion bucks around and get something done in a big
> way. Microsoft, to me, is the major leagues and a winner at that. You can
> fiddle around with some cheapskate client and sell him some software to run
> on Linux, but next year, who will remember?
I'm not passing judgment on Microsoft's decisions; I think the
recent dividends and stock buybacks were the right decision
given the circumstances. I've simply been observing that such
a large drop in cash reserves without a matching increase in
shareholder equity is not something to be thrilled about. It
simply reflects the reality of the tougher market and stronger
competition that they are facing.
Personally, I prefer the diversity of challenges and freedom
that being my own boss gives me. There are hassles, yes, but
also rewards. I might make more money as middle management in
some massive corp, but I doubt I'd be happier. To each their
own I guess.
> University of Western Ontario? That's what Google gave me. As to G&T, that
> wouldn't seem to be the hard part of bartendering. There must be more too
> it.
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Gin and Tonic just happens to
be a favorite, not the limit of my bartending skills.
Later,
Linonut
> amicus_curious <AC...@sti.net> wrote:
>>
>> Well, I am nothing if not curious and I took a look. It would seem that you
>> are a one-man show with a rather spotty record of on-time filing your
>> papework and annual fee with the State of Wisconsin, eh? Don't they charge
>> a penalty for failing to file an annual report and then re-instating?
>
> Yup, been late on the annual report as often as not, but
> fortunately it is only a $15 fine when it happens. I've been more
> reliable since they started accepting the reports electronically.
> I also file extensions on my taxes most years. Make what you will
> of that.
You've just been slimed by "Slimer".
>> I bet you know the work-for-hire parts inside out at least.
Careful you don't get mired in the slime, Thad.
> Yes, I've done plenty of work for hire, but the web server
> software mentioned above was not that. It was my intellectual
> property from start to finish, and I was in charge of the entire
> product life cycle, including marketing and OEM relationships.
amiscum is not an honorable debating opponent, in my opinion.
chrisv
>If I've recently
>strayed toward attacking you personally rather than your arguments,
>I apologize. I violate my own principles when I do that.
But he's a bald-faced liar and and unashamedly selfish and immoral
person. I think a person like that deserves *no* respect.
amicus_curious
<tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
news:145155-...@tux.glaci.com...
>
> Now I really must assume you've never owned or operated a
> corporation. Financial reports are a legal requirement, for
> tiny little s-corps as well multi-billion dollar publicly
> traded companies. The reporting requirements are less when you
> are smaller, but you still need to generate balance sheets,
> profit and loss statements, depreciation schedules, etc and
> attach them to your taxes at the very least. Even if there
> was no requirement, you would be foolish not to generate them
> just to know the state of your business.
>
only want an annual filing fee and any name change of officers or agent and
I doubt that WI is any different. There is no need for any financial
information in those filings. The only thing that needs filing is the 1120S
and K1's with the IRS which are super simple if you are the sole owner. If
you are depreciating anything at your level of activity, you should fire
your accountant.
With their current dividend level, exclusive of the 3 bucks a few years
back, they are making a lot more profit than they are paying out. They have
some $40 billion of buyback and tender offers going and that accounts for
the cash. They will stop doing that when they run out of excess cash
certainly, but that is not so bad. They simply sell more shares to
re-generate it if needed. There's a pretty lively market in MSFT stock.
>> Also, there is nothing to be gained by revealing so much personal
>> information as to bring about your identity here. You are silly to do
>> what
>> you have done, but are relatively safe since the Microsoft proponents are
>> at
>> least coming from the conservative and conventional side of things. To
>> expose oneself to the rabid sorts who live on the OSS side of the tracks
>> is
>> inviting too much hassle and anonimity is requisite.
>
> My identity has been public for some time... I have too unique a
> name and too much history on the net. No point in going stealth
> now. So far I've not had any problems with cyberstalkers or
> anything like that, perhaps because I'm usually rather polite and
> respectful. In truth, I've probably been a bit more condescending
> and rough toned with you than I am usually prone to, but I trust
> you understand I don't mean anything personal by it. Maybe I'm
> spending too much time in the COLA echo chamber. All the vitriol
> is starting to seep through even my thick skin.
>
Well, look at 7, chrisv, rick, peter, poster, etc., would you ever trust
them with anything?
>> Well that is interesting. A cheesehead talking like a Brit. But I am
>> sure
>> that they still drink beers in bars in your town. As to insults thrown,
>> it
>> is easy to dismiss them if you have no respect for the thrower.
>
> Comes from having a Brit girlfriend I guess. On the matter of respect,
> I try to give everyone the proper measure, and tend to just not deal
> with those I don't respect. The fact that I continue to argue with
> you should say something. :) I certainly respect that you have strong
> opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. If I've recently
> strayed toward attacking you personally rather than your arguments,
> I apologize. I violate my own principles when I do that.
>
I don't know that you have done that, I really do not notice much, there is
so much of it here that it fades into the general noise. The only time
that I really see it is when someone is responding to a particularly witty
or telling post with the COLA ostrich move, i.e. "Liar" or "Troll" or
"Asstroturfer" or similar. Then anything is a fair retort if I want to
bother. On the other hand, admin knowledge of a tiny consultant for hire
sort of business is not very pertinent to mega-corps and is sort of pompous
and arrogant.
Gosh.
amicus_curious
"Linonut" <lin...@bollsouth.nut> wrote in message
news:k4qfj.44880$N67....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
>
> amiscum is not an honorable debating opponent, in my opinion.
>
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> I will admit to not knowing what Wisconsin wants exactly, but most states
> only want an annual filing fee and any name change of officers or agent and
> I doubt that WI is any different. There is no need for any financial
> information in those filings. The only thing that needs filing is the 1120S
> and K1's with the IRS which are super simple if you are the sole owner. If
> you are depreciating anything at your level of activity, you should fire
> your accountant.
Section 179 expenses currently max out at $125000 and has been
substantially lower not too many years ago. In the early days
of my business I had some servers and network equipment that
crossed the line and needed to be depreciated. Nowadays it is
mostly commercial real estate. Yeah, depreciating the buildings
can come back to bite with capital gains if I sell the property,
but with recent cuts in the CG tax rate and the fact that I am
hanging into the property as rental income makes that less of
a concern. Besides, there are loopholes like the Starker
Exchange that can protect against that.
In related news, I'll probably be dropping off COLA for a few
days. I have to fly back to Milwaukee and buy a warehouse. :)
> With their current dividend level, exclusive of the 3 bucks a few years
> back, they are making a lot more profit than they are paying out. They have
> some $40 billion of buyback and tender offers going and that accounts for
> the cash. They will stop doing that when they run out of excess cash
> certainly, but that is not so bad. They simply sell more shares to
> re-generate it if needed. There's a pretty lively market in MSFT stock.
This is pretty much what I have been saying, though perhaps I put
a bit more of a pessimistic spin on it. Selling stock to raise
operating cash will indeed put downward pressure on the share price
which is what I said the longer term result would be of reducing
their cash pile and paying smaller dividends. Note that 'downward
pressure' does not necessarily mean the stock price goes down, only
that it will be lower than it would be without that pressure.
>
> Well, look at 7, chrisv, rick, peter, poster, etc., would you ever trust
> them with anything?
They are all welcome at the Halloween party, as are you if you
happen to be in Milwaukee at the time. :)
> I don't know that you have done that, I really do not notice much, there is
> so much of it here that it fades into the general noise. The only time
> that I really see it is when someone is responding to a particularly witty
> or telling post with the COLA ostrich move, i.e. "Liar" or "Troll" or
> "Asstroturfer" or similar. Then anything is a fair retort if I want to
> bother. On the other hand, admin knowledge of a tiny consultant for hire
> sort of business is not very pertinent to mega-corps and is sort of pompous
> and arrogant.
Well, I probably would never have had the stones to go into business
for myself if I wasn't a bit arrogant. The thing is, my experience
goes beyond just the typical consultant for hire thing, even if that
is still were much of my revenue comes from. I've a decent chunk
of direct software product sales under my belt, stuff we designed
developed, marketed, and sold ourselves. Had I been a more
experienced business person at the time, I might have even licensed
the stuff to Novell and walked away with a pile more in royalties
(I had discussions with Ransom Love about exactly that back before
he left Novell and founded Caldera). As it was, I did negotiate
OEM and sub-license deals, and I was eventually in direct
competition with some pretty big companies (including Novell
itself). There is no doubt I made mistakes in the early days of my
business, but I also learned a lot during that time period, which is
why I feel more qualified to pontificate about the software industry
than if I was just the consultant for hire you describe, certainly
more than if I was just another employee in another mega-corp (though
I was that also before striking out on my own).
Enjoy your weekend,
Linonut
Doesn't matter. I don't want to get slimed, Slimer.
<shudder>
Linonut
I've come completely around to chrisv's view on amiscum. He's a slimer.
Rex Ballard
> <tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
>
>
> >> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all
> >> know
> >> that.
>
> > Nonesense. You obviously care a lot about Linux... why else would you
> > continue to post in this forum?
>
> is true?
Probably not, you're only posting an average of 4 messages per day,
and many of those are very short.
Microsoft does have salaried employees who work on strategies to help
discredit Linux, but most of Microsoft's incentives for bloggers and
other supporters seems to be limited to "free" software.
When I was interviewed by Microsoft, they offered me a 20% pay cut,
and stock options at a price that was nearly twice the current price.
Sure glad I didn't take the job. :-D When you look closely, there
were a lot of people who got MSFT stock options starting in 1998 who
really got screwed.
If you got options in 1991 and exercised them before mid 1994, you
also got burned pretty bad.
In terms of portfolio, AAPL has done much better than MSFT since 2000.
Could it be that Microsoft's time has come to an end? Or at least
it's power as a monopoly?
Jim Richardson
Hash: SHA1
Not relevant. Attacking someone rather than their arguments isn't about
respect for them, it's about respect for yourself.
We all make mistakes, and that one is certainly one I make from time to
time, but it *is* a mistake. Make no mistake about it :)
(not to claim Thad did that, just commenting on the above)
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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
I'd explain it all to you, but your brain would explode.
chrisv
> chrisv <chr...@nospam.invalid> wrote:
>> tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com wrote:
>>
>>>If I've recently
>>>strayed toward attacking you personally rather than your arguments,
>>>I apologize. I violate my own principles when I do that.
>>
>> But he's a bald-faced liar and and unashamedly selfish and immoral
>> person. I think a person like that deserves *no* respect.
>
>Not relevant. Attacking someone rather than their arguments isn't about
>respect for them, it's about respect for yourself.
>
>We all make mistakes, and that one is certainly one I make from time to
>time, but it *is* a mistake. Make no mistake about it :)
>
>(not to claim Thad did that, just commenting on the above)
Well, I usually do explain or show *why* he's a filthy lying rat...
8)
Rex Ballard
<ew...@sirius.tg00suus7038.net> wrote:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Sinister Midget
> <fardblos...@gmail.com>
> wrote
> on Thu, 3 Jan 2008 15:12:54 -0600
> > MS seems to be past it's heyday, too. Rigor mortis just needs a little
> > more time to become so evident that even the armchair medical experts
> > (tech press, Windummies, DuFuses, Quooks, Timmies, etc) won't be able
> > to deny the state of its death.
> The reports of MSFT's demise are greatly exaggerated,
> presumably. After all, we're talking a corporation that is
> making over $54B of revenue and $14.88B of income a year,
> with no debt and 23.3% quarterly year-on-year earnings growth.
Don't forget that $25 billion in cash and short term investments.
They also have a $4 billion advertising budget that buys a lot of good
press. In addition, they use their control over trademarks very
aggressively to control almost $20 billion in OEM advertizing budgets.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer own a huge percentage of the company, and
only if State Street and Vanguard agreed together that Bill or Steve
should go, could they be fired, which means that ever if they commit
criminal acts and admit them in court, they are pretty pretty much
immune. Microsoft spends nearly $1 billion in legal fees and $2
billion in settlements each year, most of which goes to settlements of
lawsuits involving criminal activities such as fraud, extortion,
sabotage, blackmail, obstruction of justice, and collusion.
Microsoft could probably continue to pump $5 billion/year into funding
it's revenue stream for a few more years if they think it will help
them retain their monopoly control over the market.
> This is not to say Windows is any good from a technical
> standpoint; it's pure crap.
Windows has always been technically inferior to competitors, including
Mac, OS/2, Solaris, UnixWare, and Linux. On the other hand, it's
"good enough" to maintain their monopoly control, when they can strong-
arm OEMs into excluding competitors by making it too expensive not to
do so. It's "good enough" when they can get CIOs to force every
employee to use Windows, often to the exclusion of all others, by
threatening these CIOs with license audits, including CALs for servers
and other expensive audits.
> However, it's highly
> profitable crap...and I for one have no idea how we'd
> unseat this monster,
Go through my postings in the COLA newsgroups, and my links and
archives at Open4Success. There is a strategy, it is being
implemented, and it is working.
Linux is doing the right things right. They have worked to make it as
easy as possible for Windows users to take Linux for a "test drive"
without having to wipe out Windows. This has gotten progressively
easier each year. In 1993, you had to repartition your hard drive,
install Linux in the new partition, and boot either Linux or Windows.
Today, Windows users can boot into Linux using a Live-DVD and a "thumb
drive". They can also install VMWare Player and a Linux "Appliance"
and have a LInux desktop running in a few minutes with no installation
effort. Magazines like PC world are even offering the Linux
appliances on DVD now.
Linux then makes it possible to run Windows applications from Linux.
They can use WINE, or desktop virtualization to run Windows from
Linux. This makes it easier for Windows users to make the transition
from Windows as the primary desktop OS to Linux as the primary desktop
OS, yet they can still have all the capabilities of Windows as well.
Linux provides as much driver support as possible, and lets customers
and OEMs alike know what devices, such as DirectX/10 will NOT be
supported by Linux. They also make it easy to use those Live-CDs or
Live-DVDs to boot Linux on a machine they might purchase (or purchase
in quantity), and determine immediately whether it will run Linux or
not.
Linux Distributors work with OEMs to formulate public announcements as
to which of their products are "Linux Ready". In some cases, the OEMs
even announce that Linux is "available" for that line of PCs. This
allows them to monitor the sales of Linux hostile vs Linux Ready
systems and adjust prices appropriately. When they start to see that
"Linux Ready" PCs are more profitable than "Window Only" PCs, more
computers will become Linux ready.
Linux encourages distributors to maintain their diversity, while
maintaining a common standard framework (LSB). This will allow OEMs
to create a wider range of offerings from $100 kiddie laptops to
$3,000 power-user laptops.
In additon, Linux opens up new markets that were "under the radar" to
Microsoft. Linux distributors worked with companies like Dell, HP,
IBM/Lenovo, and others, helping them ship lease-return laptops too old
to run modern versions of Windows and Office, to 3rd world countries,
or give them to extremely low-income families, where they could be
quickly, cheaply, and easily loaded with legal Linux licenses, and
given to these most needy users.
These users then had the chance to learn how computers actually work,
rather than just how to play video games. The result being that they
became more motivated to study science, math, English (primary
language of the Internet), and communication skills, including social
sciences, art, music, and literature. This better trains them to
learn about business, engineering, politics, and economics. Their
close ties to extremely poor communities enables them to lift up other
members of those communities, creating a whole new market for PCs in
general.
> especially if Bill Gates sees a
> threat to his business and runs to someone like George
> Bush for protection.
It's ironical that George Bush's "protection" may have actually done
more harm than good. The court case illuminated Microsoft's RICO-like
practices, their strong-arm tactics, and their illegal activities, and
ties them directly to the highest ranking executives at Microsoft.
The lack of enforcement of the settlement has led the industry, and
regulators in other countries to become much more determined to break
the Microsoft Monopoly, without setting up a new monopolist. This is
one of the reasons that the OEMs are so interested in Linux rather
than SCO Unix or Solaris.
The case has also made Microsoft's competitors, past, present, and
future, much more determined to break the monopoly as well, and adopt
a more "open" technology framework. Apple adopted BSD Unix, and
showed the world that UNIX could be made user friendly, then put those
user friendly UNIX systems on retailer shelves. From there, UNIX
powered Macs have been showing up everywhere, especially places like
Starbucks, Airports, and other places where executives want a
reliable, secure, and useful system they can take on the road and to
meetings.
> The good news: Microsoft has proven itself quite proficient
> at shooting itself in the foot.
Microsoft has "bet the farm" several times, and lost. They lost with
Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5. They spent $billions developing it, and had
to spend $billions more to come up with Windows 95 before the market
started a mass migration to Linux.
They lost with Windows ME. They tried to come up with a "Linux-proof"
operating system that would lock out competitors by requiring hardware
with drivers that only Microsoft could license, they tried to extend
the Windows 9x franchise into the 21st century. And it backfired.
From 1998 to 2001, Linux became much more popular, and PC buyers hated
ME so much that they often demanded refunds for their PCs, or even
paid as much as $100 per machine to "downgrade" to Windows 98.
They almost lost with XP. When Microsoft tried to "force feed" XP
into the corporate market, many corporations issued directives for
CIOs and CTOs to formulate plans that would allow the corporation to
stop paying Microsoft, even if it meant switching to Linux.
And it looks like they lost with Vista. In this case, OEMs paid as
much as 50% more to upgrade Vista computers to XP, and many companies
have pretty much told Microsoft that if they try to drop support for
XP, they will start putting Linux on Retail shelves. Many
corporations have not just delayed adoption of Vista, they have banned
Vista completely. Many have stated that they have no plans to upgrade
to Vista, which would indicate that if Microsoft attempts to shut down
XP, they will be ready to switch to Linux or Unix.
> The bad news: it has a lot of feet and no one seems to
> even notice or care, except for this bunch here in COLA
> and an occasional freeware blogger.
It's more like the Linux mascot, the Penguin. Remember, Emporer
Penguins lay and hatch their eggs and raise their young in the most
hostile part of the planet, to protect them from predators. They wait
until the ice melts, and by the time their young have lost their down,
they are ready to go into the sea as some of the fastest swimmers in
the world. Emporor Penguins, even young ones, "fly" through the water
at almost 45 miles per hour. These birds then spend 5 years in the
water, getting really really fat, before they make the 75 mile trek
into antarctica.
Linux is similar. Linux was developed and evolved as open source
software, free of the economic pressures, limitations, and budgetary
restrictions that limit the development of commercial applications.
Thousands of applications were generated, and encouraged to compete
with each other by the distributors, who included everything they
could in their distribution media.
Linux, and the OSS applications then infiltrated the marketplace
covertly. Linux distributors didn't promote many specific
applications, but instead encouraged users to compare and choose for
themselves. Linux was distributed freely, and the revenue came from
those who wanted support. To be profitable, the distributors had to
test, patch, and contribute to the OSS to keep their costs down, while
still providing valuable upgrades, documentation, and configuration
support, which created their revenue streams.
Linux users were often the first to use high speed internet, because
they wanted the ability to download these upgrades and distributions
as quickly as possible. Downloading 2 gigabytes worth of updates over
a 28 Kb/sec dial-up connection just wasn't going to cut it.
Linux distributors were very creative at using new distribution
channels. Getting a software product onto retailer shelves had
reached the point where a minimum of $10 million was required just to
get one cardboard box out to one national franchise. The Linux
distributors found other ways to get their product distributed.
They offered downloads, and packaged the downloads so that it was easy
and convenient to download a very robust distribution quickly, and it
could be installed easily. This also created more demand for high
speed internet.
They utilized CD-ROM burners, encouraging users to burn freely
distributable CD-ROMs and give them to 30-40 of their closest
friends. Many distributors even encouraged their customers to throw
"Install Parties" helping new Linux users get their systems installed.
They utilized USB drives and Flash memory, which allowed them to
quickly distribute their goods to lots of new customers.
They used Live-CDs and Live-DVDs, in combination with the USB drives.
This allowed Linux distributors to boot from a CD or DVD, but use the
external drive or flash drive for personal files and configuration
files.
Rather than have the OEMs create special machines exclusively for
Linux, the Linux community created drivers for every device they could
get specs on. In many cases, it was difficult to get secret codes
such as USB and PCI device and vendor codes, but when Microsoft double-
crossed it's own "partners", they often voided contracts that included
nondisclosure agreements. In other cases, the community was able to
probe, catalog, and document these codes.
The result is that more and more PC models became "Linux Ready" and
Linux was installed by USERS rather than OEMs. In essence, Linux was
like the little penguins swimming under water at blazing speeds, but
mostly not visable to the usual predators.
Even when Linux was adopted by the OEMs, it was mostly "below the
radar". The server market grew at radical rates, and today, it's
nearly impossible to use a PC on the internet without accessing at
least a few Linux or UNIX servers each access. This gave Linux a
chance to establish a very solid reputation with corporate IT
managers, and eventually even the CEO and COO. Even the non-geeks
liked the fact that Linux was easy to get, scaled well, and integrated
well with their other corporate servers. At the same time, Linux
established a reputation in large corporations of being reliable,
secure, efficient, easy to manage and maintain, performing well, and
in general having very low Total Cost of Ownership and very high
Return On Investment. With all of these satisfied customers, even
Microsoft's "Fast Facts" or "Fast with the Facts" benchmarks and
studies weren't having an impact. IT managers didn't need benchmarks
and surveys, they could look at their own budgets and service records.
Linux also became very popular with smaller OEMs who produced Linux
"Appliances". Companies like D-Link, LinkSys, NetGear, Nokia, Belkin,
started creating Linux powered routers, hubs, firewalls, WiFi hubs,
printer hubs, and storage controllers. Even though they didn't have
the little penguin on the box, the industry was aware that these were
Linux boxes, and the consumers were buying.
Soon, Linux and Unix were being integrated into new consumer products
including DVRs, HDTV tuners, HDTV TVs, Digital cable tuners, Digital
Satellite devices, DVD players, and even VCRs.
A nice side effect of the success of Linux is that Open Source
Software became more widely accepted and trusted. Mozilla, FireFox,
Gaim, Pidgin, Open Office, and numerous other Open Source applications
have been ported to Windows, usually by using Red Hat's cygwin
compatibility library (lets Windows users run Linux OSS apps) and
platform independent Java.
Of course, these new OSS apps are establishing open industry-wide
standards and many companies who have gravitated to industry wide
standards, such as those that made the Internet a universial medium
for business. New standards such as Open Document Format are becoming
popular largely as a result of the success of Linux, OSS, and Internet
Open Standards.
> Viruses? No problem; just buy AV software.
Not exactly. Keep in mind that globally, businesses lose as much as
$300 billion per year in primary and secondary damages related to
viruses. Antivirus software and AntiSpyware software actually catches
the malware AFTER it has been pulled in. But when you do a little
root cause analysis, it turns out that most of these malware programs
are pulled in by ActiveX controls, MicroViruses, and embedded OLE
objects embedded in MS-Office attachments. A company will spend
$millions, even $billions setting up firewalls, antivirus,
antispyware, spam filters, other security measures, only to have the
entire security system breached by someone who uses Outlook e-mail to
preview an e-mail file that contains embedded HTML which contains
embedded ActiveScript which pulls in ActiveX controls or Attachments
with embedded malware OLEs, and suddenly you have a highly secured
workstation sending out confidential company information via e-mail,
smtp, or http.
Microsoft keeps promising better security, but they absolutely refuse
to give up their back-doors. Vista was supposed to be totally
secure. Instead, Vista has turned into a Nightmere.
> Deficiencies? No problem; get some shareware.
IT managers are getting much more touchy about shareware. It seems
that most of the copyright violations found by watchdogs like BSA -
are unregistered shareware. All it takes is 10-20 people downloading
WinZip and not paying the registration fee within the 30 day time
limit to leave yourself open to the choice of 20 years in federal
prison, or signing a BSA settlement, and a blanket agreement with
Microsoft that covers everything they publish. In essence, it's
blackmail. The CIO is being threatened with prison for the acts of
the company's employees.
Open Source, on the other hand, with Licenses that explicitly state
that the software can be downloaded and used, and can be freely
distributed, often gets loaded into a corporate archive, so that
employees can load it directly. The corporation then usually makes a
donation to the organization that supports the sharware, or gets a
support contract from a company who will forward a portion of that to
the OSS supporters.
Many companies are also doing "give-back" by allowing, even
encouraging, their employees to submit and support shareware. They
are encouraged to do it as individuals, to avoid liability for the
company, and they are warned not to pirate someone else's software and
submit it as OSS, but they are often rewarded for their "Give-Back" or
"Industry Leadership".
> Sluggish machine? No problem; get a new
> one with a more "modern" OS such as Vista.
Appearantly that isn't working so well. If you buy a bigger machine,
with 4 times the RAM, that's 4 times faster, and has 4 times the drive
capacity, Vista will end up being SLOWER than XP on the older machine.
If you get a DirectX-10 card, you might get some nifty graphics, but
it won't be faster than XP. Vista won't be more secure than XP with
3rd party security software from McAffee or Symantic. Vista won't be
more reliable than XP, and third party software will probably NOT run
as well on Vista.
Perhaps this is why so many PCs, even when they are displayed on the
retail shelves with Vista Home Premium, are being purchased with
Windows XP. Perhaps this is why so many machines displayed with
Vista, use cards that DON'T support DirectX-10, but use cards that
support OpenGL instead.
Even the game writers have opted to use wrapper libraries that convert
OpenGL calls to DirectX calls on XP, than write custom applications
written directly to DirectX. In many cases, if the Video card
supports OpenGL natively, the game can bypass the wrappers and go
directly to the card driver via the OpenGL library.
> Isn't setting people's expectations wonderful?
The problem is that there is nothing that will make a mob turn ugly
faster than unfulfilled expectations. If you promise them bread and
give them gruel, they will behead you.
> Oh, don't forget to
> register your copy of Vista, citizen; it's for your own good.
How many fingers do you see on my hand? Four? Bzzzzt.
Now that you have finished screaming, try again. Five? Bzzzt
That's correct, but that's not what you actually see is it? IT's only
what you think I want to hear.
Orwell's 1984. I particularly liked the movie. Richard Burton was so
good as the thought police.
> As for the C-64...I played with it for 5 minutes or so once.
My dad had one. Of course, by then, I was programming for CP/M, and
shortly after that I was using UNIX. C-64 looked SO Primative in
comparison. When I finally got a PC with MS-DOS, all I wanted to do
is switch it to UNIX somehow. Unfortunately I had to wait almost 10
years to convert a PC to UNIX.
When Windows 3.0 came out, I was using a Sun SparcStation as my
primary workstation. Windows was stone-age compared to SunOS 4.0. In
fact, even Windows XP doesn't have many of my favorite features of
SunOS 4.0. And by the time I got to Slackware 2.0, I liked it better
than Solaris.
> I can't say it was that impressive except that
> it was instantly on, ready to go from the moment one hits
> the power switch. (The same could be said for many other
> machines -- the TRS80 and the Apple ][ also come to mind.
It was ready if you didn't have a floppy drive. If you had a floppy,
it took a while for it to get up to speed.
> The Amiga didn't quite make it but was very close.)
I liked the Amiga, and the Atari ST. Both were great computers, but
didn't have memory management units, so they couldn't run UNIX or OS/9
68K. The DRI/GEM system was very nice, but the resolution was still
very low for a windowed system (it was better than MS-DOS, but still
only 640x480 in Color. It had a black and white 1024x768 mode, but it
was interlaced at 70hz and many people disliked the jitter that came
from the interlace.
DRI released GEM for MS-DOS at the same time, and Microsoft freaked.
They were still trying to get the bugs out of Windows 1.0, and here
was GEM, fully operational, and could run on top of either MS-DOS or
DR-DOS. I think DR-DOS even had real multitasking by then.
> ASUS finally has partially replicated that experience for
> the masses, allowing a browser within 5 seconds or so on
> the P5E3, as I understand it.
You get a "hot" display in just a few seconds, but at least the OLPC
still seems to take a few seconds to load applications from the flash
into the RAM. Still, both Linux and Windows have good "sleep" modes,
which makes it much easier to "fire-up" without having to go through a
lengthy reboot process. The difference is that Linux actually LIKES
to go weeks between reboots. Windows still has memory leaks, file
lock-outs, and other issues that make it almost mandatory to reboot
your PC every 2-3 days. I was surprised when I got a warning because
I hadn't rebooted Windows in 48 hours.
> Presumably Microsoft is still working on it. We'll see
> this "innovation" maybe a few years from now.
I think they said that was supposed to be in Vista. They were also
working on getting it into the PDA operating system. They are
supposedly working on some sort of OLPC type operating system as
well. The problem is that they can't come up with an operating system
that will only need 4 gig of flash storage, including all applications
and personal data.
> Never mind that Linux already has it, as a proof of concept.
Linux can boot from USB flash drives or SD-RAM drives if you have them
and your computer supports booting from them. Since there is no
latentcy and access times can be as fast as 20 megabytes/second
sustained rate on Linux, (as opposed to 40 MB/sec burst 300 KB/sec
sustained rate for Windows on a 5400 RPM IDE drive).
> --
> #191, ewi...@earthlink.net
Rex Ballard
http://www.open4success.org
Jim Richardson
Hash: SHA1
nah, the why is in his head, and is unknowable, but the *how* can be
shown :)
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--
Jim Richardson http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering. 'Supernatural' is a null
word.
-- Lazarus Long
William Poaster
Conversley, would amicus_curious/billwg/Bill Weisgerber trust Hadron Quark,
Scott Nudds, Clogwog, waterskidoo, Dr. Groundax, Ok, snit, Nedd Ludd,
Qualig, Flatfish & DFS with anything?
> They are all welcome at the Halloween party, as are you if you
> happen to be in Milwaukee at the time. :)
Many thanks! :-)
Next time I'm in Kansas, I'll try & get over there.
<snip>
--
<Holly>: It takes time, this. One slight error in any of my thirteen billion
calculations and we'll be blasted to smithereens. Here we go, then: 10, 9,
8, 6, 5--
<Rimmer> Holly, *where's* 7?
--Red Dwarf--
DFS
> I've come completely around to chrisv's view on amiscum. He's a
> slimer.
I've not once seen billwg lie like some cola "advocates" do regularly.
You're obviously mad because of his insulting, disdainful tone. Can't say
as I blame him: this is Linux and OSS and cola "advocates" we're talking
about.
Linonut
> Linonut wrote:
>
>> I've come completely around to chrisv's view on amiscum. He's a
>> slimer.
>
> I've not once seen billwg lie like some cola "advocates" do regularly.
Then you have not been reading his bullshit.
Like you, he tends to make claims about Linux and related tools without
having used them sufficiently, but at least /you/ do not slink away when
called on it.
> You're obviously mad because of his insulting, disdainful tone. Can't say
> as I blame him: this is Linux and OSS and cola "advocates" we're talking
> about.
His tone is merely another rhetorical device used to keep the
"conversation" going.
High Plains Thumper
> The End of the Vista Experiment
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>> Over a year ago, I bought a new computer. This was a
>> carefully considered decision, as I don't change computers
>> that often and so try to get something I will be satisfied
>> with for as long as possible.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> But as far as my desktop OS, yesterday I reinstalled XP on
>> the silent machine, and it doesn't look like I'm going to be
>> trying Vista again until I hear some really, really good
>> things about Service Pack 2. Basically, I'm done
>> experimenting with Microsoft OSes for at least a year and a
>> half.
> `----
>
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=221497
I found this quote from the article of interest:
[quote]
Also about a year ago, I was setting my dad up with some new
software that involved a Java applet for printing postage. His
machine, which was ancient but still quite functional, took so
long to load and start this applet that we thought it had hung. I
decided it was time for a new one, went to Costco and bought what
they had, which was a Gateway dual-core Vista machine. It was all
preconfigured and preinstalled so it seemed to work fine -- but
kind of sluggish considering what a huge improvement in hardware
it is over his previous machine. Dad complained about the new UI
for awhile but eventually got used to it. One thing I notice is
that his disk seems to be working all the time -- Vista
performing mysterious tasks in the background. So yes, it works
for him. It's tolerable. But it also seems like we're going in
the wrong direction; progress either slowed or going slightly
backwards. You don't really get a sense of any big improvement in
the OS, which isn't surprising since they ripped all the
interesting stuff out (the new file system, etc.). The chrome is
prettier, but that wears thin fast. And in exchange, you get
software compatibility problems.
[/quote]
Vista is like trailering a new motorcycle to Sturgis: All
chrome, pretty as the dickens but little riding (good poseur
material).
Time for others to try Linux and Beryl 3D desktop. Beryl is
written as a several megabyte binary, performance is sparkling
and without bloat.
--
HPT
Roy Schestowitz
I have it running at home with a very-end PC and no GPU!!
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Computers are useless. They only solve problems"
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
16:00:04 up 27 days, 4:48, 4 users, load average: 0.63, 1.14, 1.38
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine
Mark Kent
There's no honour amongst thieves. They would be trying to stab each
other in the back. Or the side, or the front. It's what they do.
>> They are all welcome at the Halloween party, as are you if you
>> happen to be in Milwaukee at the time. :)
>
> Many thanks! :-)
> Next time I'm in Kansas, I'll try & get over there.
>
><snip>
>
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
Kelsey Bjarnason
> "jebblue" <n...@n.nnn> wrote in message
> news:477ae1b9$0$24321$4c36...@roadrunner.com...
>> On Tue, 01 Jan 2008 18:12:02 -0500, amicus_curious wrote:
>>
>>> From the FAQ:
>>>
>>> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/aa948864.aspx
>>>
>>> When a subscription expires, do the licenses terminate or are they still
>>> valid?
>>>
>>> MSDN subscriptions have a perpetual license, so subscribers can still
>>> use the products received with their MSDN subscription after their
>>> subscription has expired.
>>
>> This is cool, the license for everything on my Ubuntu system is perpetual
>> too, plus, no one cares if I use it for test, development or production.
>>
> Well it has always been the case that no one cares about Linux. We all know
> that.
This, in a group where there are many people who obviously care about
Linux, in a software world where Linux is being widely deployed on
everything from embedded systems to supercomputers, obviously by people
who care what they're using.
Do you *enjoy* being an ignorant tit?
Kelsey Bjarnason
On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:03:18 -0500, amicus_curious wrote:
> I would have thought that you were too cerebral for such superficial
> hair-splitting, but perhaps you are not. I can only say that, in marketing
> parlance, anything less than 1% of the magnitude of a market leader's share
> is equated to zero, since it is zero for any useful purpose.
You really are thick, aren't you? Or are you just unbelievable dishonest?
Or both?
A million copies of Linux, downloaded for free: zero percent market share.
One copy of Windows, sold for $199; 100% market share.
According to your "thinking", Windows is leading in such a comparison.
I'll leave it to your obviously overstrained mental processes to figure
out why, in that scenario - and thus in your "1% of the market leader's
share" - your drooling idiocy is, in fact, drooling idiocy.
amicus_curious
"Kelsey Bjarnason" <kbjar...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:cs6855-...@spanky.localhost.net...
You seem to like that word, "drooling", eh? But you are just showing more
and more ignorance of reality. Who cares a fig about market share anyway?
Answer: Anyone who is planning a market promotion strategy, for one. Also
sometimes people deciding to invest in a product line development. Now in
the case of Microsoft Windows, nothing that happens with Linux is ever going
to affect their go to market strategy. Linux has zero share as far as its
effect on what Microsoft might do. Further, whatever product line
investments are planned by Microsoft, the Linux share has zero effect.
Linux is a flea. It has no ability to direct any market, including servers.
You think of technology and ignore the other 99% of the equations. You are
a techno-fool.
Kelsey Bjarnason
On Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:38:28 -0500, amicus_curious wrote:
> more and more ignorance of reality. Who cares a fig about market share
> anyway? Answer: Anyone who is planning a market promotion strategy, for
> one.
Yes, they're going to care about market share, but they're going to grasp
something you obviously don't: market share is insufficient to determine
profitability.
> development. Now in the case of Microsoft Windows, nothing that happens
> with Linux is ever going to affect their go to market strategy.
Gods, you really are a fucking moron. There you go completely ignoring,
again, the simple fact that the presence of competing products available
for free has to factor into the decision. Microsoft knows this, I know
this, others know this, everybody except you and a couple of other
Wintrolls know this, leading to the obvious question: why are you so
mentally challenged you can't figure this out, when everybody else has?
Oh, right, I forgot; you're complete twit.
Hadron
> [snips]
>
> On Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:38:28 -0500, amicus_curious wrote:
>
>> more and more ignorance of reality. Who cares a fig about market share
>> anyway? Answer: Anyone who is planning a market promotion strategy, for
>> one.
>
> Yes, they're going to care about market share, but they're going to grasp
> something you obviously don't: market share is insufficient to determine
> profitability.
Here's half a clue to stop the draft in your huge empty head : Market
Share in conjunction with pricing has a HUGE influence in determining
profit and future growth/profitability..
>
>> development. Now in the case of Microsoft Windows, nothing that happens
>> with Linux is ever going to affect their go to market strategy.
>
> Gods, you really are a fucking moron. There you go completely ignoring,
> again, the simple fact that the presence of competing products available
> for free has to factor into the decision. Microsoft knows this, I
> know
MS Don't know this. If and when Linux becomes a real threat "for free"
then MS will indeed address this. Who knows? Maybe they'll be "for free"
for a while too?
> this, others know this, everybody except you and a couple of other
> Wintrolls know this, leading to the obvious question: why are you so
> mentally challenged you can't figure this out, when everybody else has?
>
> Oh, right, I forgot; you're complete twit.
Oh look! Kelsey Bigheadson calling people thick again. You sure have a
high opinion of yourself for someone who is a tape monkey and is still
incapable of keeping a Windows server running.
amicus_curious
free" that they would not do absent any existence of Linux? Explain your
theory, if you have one. My own view is that you are the twit and ignorant
to the extreme in regard to any practical business strategy here.
tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com
>
> Gods, you really are a fucking moron. There you go completely ignoring,
> again, the simple fact that the presence of competing products available
> for free has to factor into the decision. Microsoft knows this, I know
> this, others know this, everybody except you and a couple of other
> Wintrolls know this, leading to the obvious question: why are you so
> mentally challenged you can't figure this out, when everybody else has?
There is absolutely zero doubt that MS has adjusted their product
features and pricing in reaction to growing Linux popularity. Greater
command line and scripted management capabilities in Windows Server
are almost certainly a reaction to Linux, as are numereous changes
to their license terms and pricing accross their product line. Heck,
MS makes no secret of having a Linux lab for competitive analysis...
or are they running those Linux systems just to play Tux Racer?
Linonut
> Well then, what would Microsoft do differently with Linux "available for
> free" that they would not do absent any existence of Linux?
1. Dump $3 versions of Windows XP in "emerging geographies".
2. Offer a Microsoft Shared Source "Initiative".
3. Pay a front corporation $16.6 million for a "UNIX license" to
help fund the corporation's attack on IBM using Linux.
4. Pay $700 million to Sun Microsystems for resolving "antitrust issues"
and another $900 million to resolve patent issues, and to
collaborate technically to help fend off the Linux barbarian (and
get Sun out of the EU actions against Microsoft).
5. Wallpaper the Internet with an anti-Linux "Get the Facts"
campaign.
6. Travel to Munich to try to convince the city fathers to accept a
low-ball bid to stave off a "Linux conversion".
> Explain your
> theory, if you have one. My own view is that you are the twit and ignorant
> to the extreme in regard to any practical business strategy here.
And now let's toss Google into the fray!
--
The increasing percentage of Vista isn't growth -- it's molting.
Hadron
> Kelsey Bjarnason <kbjar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Gods, you really are a fucking moron. There you go completely ignoring,
>> again, the simple fact that the presence of competing products available
>> for free has to factor into the decision. Microsoft knows this, I know
>> this, others know this, everybody except you and a couple of other
>> Wintrolls know this, leading to the obvious question: why are you so
>> mentally challenged you can't figure this out, when everybody else has?
>
> There is absolutely zero doubt that MS has adjusted their product
> features and pricing in reaction to growing Linux popularity. Greater
> command line and scripted management capabilities in Windows Server
> are almost certainly a reaction to Linux, as are numereous changes
> to their license terms and pricing accross their product line. Heck,
> MS makes no secret of having a Linux lab for competitive analysis...
> or are they running those Linux systems just to play Tux Racer?
Yeah Thad. What have I told you before about talking about games eh?
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/cmr07/review.html?sid=6172751
And that's only an average scoring game. But one I like.
DFS
> There is absolutely zero doubt that MS has adjusted their product
> features and pricing in reaction to growing Linux popularity. Greater
> command line and scripted management capabilities in Windows Server
> are almost certainly a reaction to Linux, as are numereous changes
> to their license terms and pricing accross their product line. Heck,
> MS makes no secret of having a Linux lab for competitive analysis...
I'm in agreement, but I have to wonder why an "illegally maintained
monopoly" (per various cola idiots) that can force Windows onto everyone's
computers (per various cola idiots) feel the need to institute such
competitive actions?
Linonut
Because Microsoft is /finally/ feeling competitive pressure in operating
systems. From /free/ software.
I see signs of MS changing its attitude slowly to be more willing to
live with OSS as part of the environment. I hope that attitude grows
and maintains. There's no reason at all that Microsoft cannot support
total interoperability. They've got the monopoly (still). Even with
other products available, most will still continue to choose the
Microsoft name.
And, if Microsoft does adjust, maybe they can stabilize their platform
long enough to make it a general platform, instead of the
one-service-at-time-massaged-by-a-team-of-admins that it seems to be, at
least where I work.
Hadron
> * DFS fired off this tart reply:
>
>> tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com wrote:
>>
>>> There is absolutely zero doubt that MS has adjusted their product
>>> features and pricing in reaction to growing Linux popularity. Greater
>>> command line and scripted management capabilities in Windows Server
>>> are almost certainly a reaction to Linux, as are numereous changes
>>> to their license terms and pricing accross their product line. Heck,
>>> MS makes no secret of having a Linux lab for competitive analysis...
>>
>> I'm in agreement, but I have to wonder why an "illegally maintained
>> monopoly" (per various cola idiots) that can force Windows onto everyone's
>> computers (per various cola idiots) feel the need to institute such
>> competitive actions?
>
> Because Microsoft is /finally/ feeling competitive pressure in operating
> systems. From /free/ software.
>
> I see signs of MS changing its attitude slowly to be more willing to
You see signs? What like MS working with Novell? Well spotted!
> live with OSS as part of the environment. I hope that attitude grows
> and maintains. There's no reason at all that Microsoft cannot support
> total interoperability. They've got the monopoly (still). Even with
What about Roy trying to stop it?
"Boycottnovell" ring any bells?
It's not MS who have to adjust. It's OSS loonies who need to accept
their current place and do their best by it.
amicus_curious
"Linonut" <lin...@bollsouth.nut> wrote in message
>* amicus_curious fired off this tart reply:
>
>> Well then, what would Microsoft do differently with Linux "available for
>> free" that they would not do absent any existence of Linux?
>
defense mechanisms that do not have much to do with their ongoing product
evolution.
> 1. Dump $3 versions of Windows XP in "emerging geographies".
>
I don't recall that this had anything to do with Linux. It was a minor
attempt to obtain some revenue from areas where there was none and wholesale
piracy was the norm. It is a demonstrable fact that people in backward
areas will simply steal Windows in lieu of adopting Linux.
> 2. Offer a Microsoft Shared Source "Initiative".
>
Another defense mechanism that simply responds to the market. OSS isn't
solely Linux, you know.
> 3. Pay a front corporation $16.6 million for a "UNIX license" to
> help fund the corporation's attack on IBM using Linux.
>
Microsoft has a very large business interest in cohabitating with Unix and
even Linux in the server area and obtaining missing license coverage at such
a cheap price was an obvious move anyway. You could say, absent Linux, that
SCO would have had no case to start with, but that is still server market
and not desktop, which is what this is all about.
> 4. Pay $700 million to Sun Microsystems for resolving "antitrust issues"
> and another $900 million to resolve patent issues, and to
> collaborate technically to help fend off the Linux barbarian (and
> get Sun out of the EU actions against Microsoft).
>
More server issues and nothing to do with Linux either.
> 5. Wallpaper the Internet with an anti-Linux "Get the Facts"
> campaign.
>
> 6. Travel to Munich to try to convince the city fathers to accept a
> low-ball bid to stave off a "Linux conversion".
>
Server stuff again. Also a confusion between sales tactics and marketing
plans.
amicus_curious
<tha...@tux.glaci.delete-this.com> wrote in message
news:2t4b55-...@tux.glaci.com...
> Kelsey Bjarnason <kbjar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Gods, you really are a fucking moron. There you go completely ignoring,
>> again, the simple fact that the presence of competing products available
>> for free has to factor into the decision. Microsoft knows this, I know
>> this, others know this, everybody except you and a couple of other
>> Wintrolls know this, leading to the obvious question: why are you so
>> mentally challenged you can't figure this out, when everybody else has?
>
> There is absolutely zero doubt that MS has adjusted their product
> features and pricing in reaction to growing Linux popularity. Greater
> command line and scripted management capabilities in Windows Server
> are almost certainly a reaction to Linux, as are numereous changes
> to their license terms and pricing accross their product line. Heck,
> MS makes no secret of having a Linux lab for competitive analysis...
> or are they running those Linux systems just to play Tux Racer?
>
marketing functions. The idea of "market share" affects marketing strategy
and product positioning in the market. Knowing where, when, and how to
out-spec your competitor in a sales situation is a sales tactic.
Sales of technical products mostly involves showing a prospect that your
solution is better than the other guy's solution. Of course, in the server
arena, Linux is a lot more of an issue than it is on the desktop and the
financial impact of various functions is more marked. Microsoft clearly
works diligently at being able to show that they are a better choice than
mainframe, Unix, Linux, or even Netware in situations where that is true.
Knowing where you have an advantage and can thus succeed is valueable since
you can simply focus on those situation and not bother as much in areas that
you know you are disadvantaged. Sales guys have known this for a long time.
Linonut
I see nothing in your response to counter any of my bullet points.
It sounds like the usual amicus_curious tap dance away from the firm
tackle.
The Ghost In The Machine
<AC...@sti.net>
wrote
on Mon, 7 Jan 2008 21:25:28 -0500
<4782df1f$0$2892$ec3e...@news.usenetmonster.com>:
Well, for starters, Microsoft would not have a need to
subtly attack Linux as a fearsome competitor to their
business model... ;-)
Some of the attack methods, of course, attempt to denigrate
Linux's status as a fearsome competitor:
[1] Buggy. When pressed on the notion of buggy one might reply
here that "it doesn't work the same way as Windows does".
Clearly Windows is the standard here, since it's not beholden
to, among others, ANSI/ISO, W3C, and IETF.
[2] Arcane text commands that look like a mixture of Cool Whip,
insect legs, and word salad. The far preferable method of
specifying commands (including scriptable variants) is to
use lots of arcane dialog boxes that look like a mixture of
Pac-man, insect legs, and shadow boxing -- a clearly preferable
method.
[3] Not able to support all of the neato kewl devices that will
have Microsoft Windows Vista drivers in the very next patch
release, which is about 6 months from right now; never mind
that Linux can support most of them with a little work, that's
not important to the Casual User.
[4] Totally incapable of running intuitive modern applications
that actually work.
[5] Insecure, dangerous operating methods because Firefox has a lot
of small patches instead of patches every month; since a lot
of small patches obviously means Firefox is less secure, Microsoft
wins. (Or does it?)
[6] The result of diseased minds because Linux wasn't created by those
who wear nicely pressed Armani suits while coding. Clearly,
Armani suits convey magic during software development.
Variants of these attacks surface here from time to time.
Instead, Microsoft might focus on true innovation instead, such
as any or all of the following:
[1] Replacing HTML with a variant of Visual Basic. Clearly,
this is a win for Microsoft, as it not only allows for
dynamic webpages anywhere, vastly increasing both
bandwidth and processing and requiring bigger, beefier,
pricier servers (with bigger, beefier, pricier operating
systems to match), but it also keeps Seattle warm
in the winter.
[2] Incorporating DRM into coffee makers. The logic here
is reasonably simple; coffee makers would run Windows
Vista Mobile Edition, and since they are therefore
required to play all sorts of neat HD-DVD movies [*],
they need DRM. Ditto for toasters, refrigerators,
light fixtures, and phones (mobile or non-mobile).
[3] Contracting with the music and movie makers to ensure
that, whenever a song or movie is downloaded, that the
name of all other titles on the computer is uploaded
back to the vendor, allowing for seamless checking of
copyrighted material.
[4] Lobbying for Congress to ensure [3] is enshrined into law,
to protect the record companies...erm, I mean, the consumers...
from those evil nasty pirates -- then suing the hell out
of anyone who even suggests that they might copy a disc
for a friend to enjoy...
[5] Additional lobbying to ensure that only Authorized Operating
Systems get put onto desktop PCs -- and guess who decides
what is Authorized.
[6] Fixing bugs in their authoring software so that IE renders
Web 2.1 [+] pages properly, while Mozilla fights through
a nightmare of hodgepodgeish, non-standard stuff and ultimately
throws in the towel, much like Netscape did long ago.
Microsoft. Where did you want to be led today?
[*] there are a couple of issues; for starters, HD-DVD doesn't
appear to be gaining all that much popularity, and coffee
makers usually don't include players of either stripe as
an add-on. But those are of course minor details.
[+] Web 2.0 with DRM, which includes such things as AJAX/DHTML,
Silverlight, ActiveX, and other such Microsoft innovations.
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
People think that libraries are safe. They're wrong. They have ideas.
(Also occasionally ectoplasmic slime and cute librarians.)
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Jerry McBride
>
> "Rex Ballard" <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>> On Jan 1, 3:11 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>>> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | Under terms of "The Ultimate Offer," testers can go to any retail or
>>> online
>>> | store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for
>>> full
>>> | price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista
>>> Ultimate
>>> | Upgrade product key.
>>> `----
>>
>> Following the link
>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
>>
>
>> The deal is only available to MSDN subscribers..... Pardon me if I'm
>> underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
>
>
> I agree. Roy Schestowitz once again LIES^h^h^h "manufactures" news stories
> to fit his agenda instead of accurately reporting the truth.
>
>
>
Asshole! Roy didn't write the story!!! PLONK!
--
Jerry McBride (jmcb...@mail-on.us)
Roy Schestowitz
____/ Jerry McBride on Wednesday 09 January 2008 00:38 : \____
Shills appear to be engaged in a smear campaign putting words in my mouth now.
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/01/07/mistake-bruce-byfield/
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Vista: Windows XP with bling-bling, nothing else
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
03:00:03 up 29 days, 15:48, 4 users, load average: 1.13, 1.25, 1.23
Antonio Murphie
"Jerry McBride" <jmcb...@mail-on.us> wrote in message
news:rkhd55x...@supertux.my.domain...
Jerry McBride - Another linux using dumb fuck.
Do show me EXACTLY in the article where it says "signs of weakness in
Vista" because "Microsoft does a clearance sale"
WHAT??? You can't find this. Could it be because your fellow retard and
paid shill Roy Schestowitz pulled this headline out of his ass?
The Ghost In The Machine
<them...@gmaill.com>
wrote
on Tue, 8 Jan 2008 22:25:36 -0500
<478432fd$0$26117$8826...@free.teranews.com>:
>
> "Jerry McBride" <jmcb...@mail-on.us> wrote in message
> news:rkhd55x...@supertux.my.domain...
>> Antonio Murphie wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> "Rex Ballard" <rex.b...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:32f0f09c-d46d-4230...@f3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>>>> On Jan 1, 3:11 am, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>>>>> Microsoft offers a Vista two-for deal
>>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>>> | Under terms of "The Ultimate Offer," testers can go to any retail or
>>>>> online
>>>>> | store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for
>>>>> full
>>>>> | price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista
>>>>> Ultimate
>>>>> | Upgrade product key.
>>>>> `----
>>>>
>>>> Following the link
>>>> http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1071
>>>>
>>>
>>>> The deal is only available to MSDN subscribers..... Pardon me if I'm
>>>> underwhelmed by Microsoft's generousity.
Ditto, especially since the "second one" is an upgrade. Microsoft
has an interesting INNOVA~1 here, but not in the technical sense.
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree. Roy Schestowitz once again LIES^h^h^h "manufactures" news
>>> stories to fit his agenda instead of accurately reporting the truth.
The truth is that Microsoft Windows Vista is selling
reasonably well, but businesses are hesitant about
deploying it in their internal infrastructures.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Asshole! Roy didn't write the story!!! PLONK!
>
> Jerry McBride - Another linux using dumb fuck.
>
> Do show me EXACTLY in the article where it says "signs of weakness in
> Vista" because "Microsoft does a clearance sale"
>
> WHAT??? You can't find this. Could it be because your fellow retard and
> paid shill Roy Schestowitz pulled this headline out of his ass?
>
I'd like to see where Roy used this headline. The original head of this
thread subtree -- Message-ID: <2610869.i...@schestowitz.com> --
doesn't show it.
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
Linux. The choice of a GNU generation.
Windows. The choice of a bunch of people who like very weird behavior on
a regular basis, random crashes, and "extend, embrace, and extinguish".