| last updated:07 Jun 2004 15:59 UK time |
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| JOS Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 06 Jun 2004) | View Other Weeks |
| Is the tide now going against Open source? | Sun 06 Jun | Albert D. Kallal |
| It is interesting, but about 2, or 3 years ago, it seemed that open source was going to change the world as we know it. Companies like Oracle, Sun, and the incredible IBM were all making waves, and jumping on the Open source band wagon. Announcements were occurring daily. However, I see a few trends, and a few problems right now. In fact, I am not only seeing Open Source loosing steam, but I am now seeing a backlash in the industry against OS. I am only being a messenger here, but I am getting a lot of feedback, and much of it is not very good for the OS community After all, business has the FINAL SAY on how successful software will be. I also should state that I do have software of mine running on Linux. (in USA, France, Italy, Germany, Canada. and likely a few other Countries I am not remembering just right now) I am not a dreamer, nor do I work on “hope” that things should be the way we WANT them to be. I try to see things as they are. Anyway, to me, what is REALLY important is the kind of feedback I am getting from companies and business that are using Open Software (OS) systems like Linux. There is some real serious problems. The first one is I am seeing is usability, and ease of use. Right now, some of the open source stuff is really starting to show its weak spots. You see, now that some companies were sold the open source bills of goods, then they now are also are now seeing the downsides. I was at the Tech Ed show in Edmonton on Wednesday, and during the lunch break I was talking to a long time client of mine. He is an accounting guy that over the years hired developers like me to help him build and integrate his accounting systems into vertical markets that he sells into. He is a typical VAR type software vendor. This VAR/owner of this company also does a good portion of software development himself. However, he is more accountant then hard core developer. Hence, this VAR also brings in subcontractors guys like me from time to time to help him with the more difficult coding stuff.. Anyway, he was complaining to me as to how hard some system administration stuff was on his Linux box. In fact, he actually said he wished he had went with windows NT (aka windows 2000 server). In his case, the D3 raining database system that his accounting software runs on can run on windows NT, or run on Linux. He went the Linux way. Some of my software also runs on Raining Data’s D3 multi-valued database system, and thus explains why my software is running on some Linux boxes around the world. Anyway, the first problem or complaint that this VAR guy had to me was his Linux support guy is ALWAYS coming in to tweak a whole bunch of settings (and, lack of standard settings for how things should be done seems to come up here!). Worse, is even simple things like setting up printers on the network requires this var to bring in a support guy. In other words, what is nearly automatic, and trouble free in windows is a royal pain for this var guy to manage. This is not really a question of having a good Linux admin, but the fact of setting up printers and stuff like that SHOULD NOT cause this fairly computer literate person to get stuck (and have to bring in a Linux pro all the time). He now wishes he went with NT. Of course, making this situation worse was here we are are Tech Ed watching some of the tech net demos and how MS server administration is SO easy as compared to Linux. So much so, that this guy is cringing. Without question, having known this guy for years, he would have little trouble with setting up printers for a windows server. (I sure I could too). However, setting up printers and drivers for Linux? (you are kidding ..right?). This is a typical business environment. There are a lot of companies in the 1 to 25 pc range that do NOT have a full time admin. These companies using Linux are experiencing more difficulty then they should. Further, the cost of finding people to come in and setup a printer etc is MORE then what the windows side is (lots more people can set a printer in windows!). Further, with stuff like the SBS (small business server…a instant business in a box server from MS, this case is even FURTHER in favor of using MS. You see, for these types of business, you got a typical server, and anywhere from 5 to 25 windows boxes. A good number of business of course go with a Linux box, but run windows clients (you got that killer application called samba, and real nice box of goodies do come with Linux). Up to this point, things seem ok with either choice. However, now that MS is pre-packaging the small business server, then you get virtually everything you need to run the business in a box. In fact, you get a sweet break on MS pricing of exchange server, and a bunch of other stuff. What is incredible is that this kind of offering was not done sooner! I mean, it has been, what 6 or more years that we purchase pc’s with the OS installed? In fact, when I look at the cost of SBS, you actually save A huge whack of money since you don’t even have to bring in someone to install, and setup a TON of software (the price break + not having to install and setup a huge amount software makes so much sense. Just saving the installing, and initial setup of all this software is worth a lot in terms of INITIAL support costs. MS really should call this Instant business in a box server. Of course, a business does NOT setup a server everyday, so this cost issue might not be too great. However, anyone who can turn on a pc can get SBS running. However, what is even MORE important here is the new CLIENT PC administration that these systems offer. You see, today, much of the cost of running a small business system is keeping the CLIENT PC’s updated. With SBS you can now manage software updates, and even software installs. I mean, why in the year 2004 do we actually send a tech around to each pc to install a new version of office, or stuff like a new version of Simply Accounting clients on each pc? In other words, MS is doing what it does best, and is leveraging their server products to work WITH THE windows desktop. This makes management of client pc’s VERY easy. This stuff is getting VERY slick. So, you got 35 pc’s hooked up to the server. You need to roll out new Excel, or whatever to the sales department. However, does your server let YOU manage all the pc’s, group polices, AND software installs? And virtually everything else you need to do from a central location? Hum, you still want to run Linux and samba now? Forget it! That Linux box will do NOTHING to reduce your client pc support costs. MS is going to kill Linux in the small business service market with this product. It is so slick, and it is easy to use. It is all pre-installed (sql server, web services, software updates, exchange server (mail etc. etc.)…the whole thing is “ready” to go. That var guy of mine would have been “ready” to go if he went with a sbs box. The real key here is the client pc management stuff. I will say that the pc management stuff is not quite as good as the big corporate edition of sms from Microsoft (sms = system management sever = a system to install and maintain software to all client pc’s in a large company. This system also manages windows update, and can save internet bandwidth by having client pc’s get their updates from internal servers..and not ms). So, the SBS does not have full SMS, but it sure the hell is nice. You get the ability to update software on each pc in your office. (good bye to that tech guy that runs around from pc to pc to pc to pc to pc to pc to pc to pc…). So, a real large portion of your costs are NOT the server, but CLIENT pc support. Products like SBS are winning big time. You have no idea how slick, and how cool some of the system management goodies that has been setup on SBS. Further, even general system admin stuff has been cleaned up, and made VERY easy to use with a lot more wizards. This means that those computer savvy business owners (or self appointed tech support guy from the accounting department can do this stuff). For sure, for more difficult setup stuff, these companies will STILL call in their tech support guy, but MOST of the time you can do this stuff on your own. (and, there is a heck of a lot more support guys in the yellow pages for windows if you need them anyway). And, I know for a fact that this VAR friend of mine I was talking to could EASLY install and setup and maintain printers for his network if he had SBS. Right now, he is not happy, and is spending WAY too much on support (he now regrets having chosen Linux). For those companies that got sold Linux to save money, they are now seeing REAL increases in software support costs. So, I am touching on two VERY important issues here: 1) does your SERVER system have a GREAT bunch of pc client management tools built in? 2) Can someone with not super server admin skills setup a printer and other stuff? And, before anyone gets on my case, you all know who Eric S. Raymond is. right? I have his book..and in fact purchased 3 hard copies. They are all currently lent out right now to my friends. To anyone who I lent the books….if you are reading this…I want my copes back!!!...they are hard cover editions! You can read what Eric has to say about setting up printers. and how he BLASTS the Linux community here: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html However, I had the above feed back long BEFORE I read Eric’s article. In other words, REAL business people I am talking to are now complaining about how difficult it is to do basic system admin stuff on a Linux box. They are complaining how they have to ALWAYS bring in tech support for stuff that is dead simple with a windows server. I remember how hard networking used to be back in the pre-windows days. However, this hardness sure made Novell a lot of money. I can now setup a small network of pc’s in my sleep. I assure you I am only some dumb developer, and not even close to being a network support guy…but that stuff is really automatic right now in windows. And, that Linux box??? That Linux box does NOTHING to save on client pc support (this is where SBS is really winning the battle). The next issue is one of help systems, and also one of user feed back: MS is now integrating their help systems with the on line communities. On-line help, and even systems to work with newsgroups are actually being integrated into MS help systems. Office is first, and other products are to follow (default help in office 2003 is on-line). What this means is that MS is using USER feedback (not developers ) to figure out where usability problems exist in their products. I can say from personal experience, the results in office 2003 are simply astounding. (the help for some stuff I used has NEVER been better, where as previous editions sucked). Again, this is all about the user experience, and how you can make things easy for users. It is no surprise that MS is MUCH better then Open Source for usability. However, MS is accelerating the use of on-line communities and integrated help systems into their products. What is critical about this process is that feedback is being feed to their usability experts on how to make their products work better. This usability system is much like the feedback system that open source uses to fix bugs. MS is thus harnessing the user communities out there in a MUCH better fashion then the open source guys. In fact, MS is using the VERY SAME model that makes Open Source possible! What is different here, is that MS is applying these concepts of connectivity to end users…and not ONLY to developers. Who the heck is going to start gathering these usability issues, and customer support issues for Linux? (they better wake up. as this is so important, that I see battle after battle being lost unless this issue is addressed by the open source community). And, MS is doing this help stuff with a well thought out plan. In my visits to Redmond, and seeing the sophistication on how they are integrating the internet, and customer support INTO their products, I am now actually beginning to realize that open source is not even in the same league in terms of delivering consumer products. MS is so out maneuvering the open source people by a wide margin on their own game of using the connectives of the communities at large. Open source seems to have zero response to this issues, and then wonder why they can’t make inroads into consumer software? The next issue I am going to deal with is the issue of software quality. To me, the Open Source model of bug fixing is rather IMPRESSIVE. Release often, and fix bugs in a rapid fashion. Further, the speed of software development is not hurried, and usually results in very high quality products. Bugs can rapidly be fixed by developers around the world (how the updates will get back down to the consumer is still a big issue. And, while developers can work on bug fixes…who, and how does a consumer of this software tell about the bugs? MS is again that MS is doing a better job on this feed back stuff that OS invented!). What about MS in this regards, and in terms of software quality? I remember reading stories about a us citizen called W. Edwards Deming. Mr. Deming is often credited with the rise of the auto industry in Japan. This man brought statistical quality control to the Japan auto industry (the north American industry did not listen to him….well, they now use all of his ideas in quality control to day). MS right now is going through a revolution that is likely LARGER and more important to the software industry then what the auto industry experienced. I can tell you from first hand when running office 2000 on a winxp box, it was not the most stable product I have used. In fact, I would rate the quality and stability of office 2000 as quite poor. Then a new release of office xp came out. The improvement of office xp is STUNNING. Again, I see clients all day, and talk to as many developers and people I can. Virtually all I talk to find a HUGE improvement in the quality of office xp (2002). What the hell happened to make this release SO MUCH better then office 2000? Answer: You see, MS is now integrating Dr Watson error reporting into most products. The results are amazing. Office XP is the first product released from MS that had fixes, and quality improvements based on the “send error reports” that Dr. Watson sends. So, while we might not like Dr Watson…it is a tool that is CONSIDERABLTY being expanded to other products. Soon it will be a standard part of ALL software products. A graph of errors in MS’s bank of servers that munches and crunches these Watson errors all day will look like: | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * The above graph is the kind of bug errors graphs the support teams look at all day. The most common and largest bugs are on the left. So, what happens if we fix the first 8 most common bugs in the stats curve above? Well, you don’t have much of a cure left to plot do you? Well, actually what happens is that they chop out the first 8 bugs fixed, and then you stretch out the curve to take up the above grab space, and then re-draw the curve again. You now get the same curve again, but the bugs you are fixing are of course of a much lower frequency. You attack the bugs at the top of curve again. The next graph you draw will look VERY MUCH the same as above. You do this over and over (this is actually what MS does in this case!) So, the curve looks the same. but you are working on a smaller set of bugs. You keep hammering this curve down, and all those pc’s all over the world are sending your HUGE bank of servers bug info in real time. In fact, MS will now even inform some software vendors that THEIR software is causing stability problems on windows! (again, who the heck is going to do that for open source?). I can tell you right now, that the quality of new products is soaring at MS. The increase in stability, and reduced number of problems is simply amazing here. The improvements I see in terms of this process is very noticeable to me in office xp. I am also seeing this in office 2003 now. This once again shows how MS is beating the open source people at their own game (that game is one of using users to gather bugs and problems, and then feeding them to a central location). It is just that MS has automated these software bugs systems right into their products, and again open source is being left so far behind. Where is the automated bug reporting systems for open source software? And, a even larger problem exists as to where will the bugs be sent? And who is the team that spends on all day munching and crunching these numbers with the huge bank of servers required to support the volumes that dr Watson generates? These built in feedback and error reporting systems is creating a revolution at ms, as they can now instantly see what the hell happened (why are people getting a gpf?). When MS has a problem, then they know real fast! Even more incredible, this bug process functions faster then what humans can do to gather these problems. Further, the REAL big issue here is how software interacts with other software. You might have a system problem, but that problem is ONLY due to the fact that you go a old version of sql server, and are running some weird virus protection system. MS plans even further bug integration into their systems. I see this as a quality revolution at least as large as what Mr. Deming did for the Japan auto industry. We are JUST now experiencing the first batch of products based on this process. In a few years, competitors that don’t do this will be left even further behind. This whole process can’t be built over night….and has taken MS quite a while to build. (this is a amazing lesson in software quality control). Another issue here is use of standards: One of real sticking points with propriety products like Office/Word has been the use of propriety document standards. While the open source community is STILL arguing what format to use, all of office 2003 has great XML support. You can now create a cool looking formatted word document on a 1981 ibm pc using gw-basic, and simply write out XML…word will load it. (and wow. does it work great?). Have you guys seen the cool xml support in word and Excel. Once again, MS is taking a open text format. and running with it. Many have commented that Open Office looks a bit old, and tired already (in the range of the older office 97). The real problem I see here is that the gap in terms of help, support, and new features like XML support is actually means that ms Office is stretching out the lead over Open office. By the way, what great new features does Open office have? (and, how does the help and customer feed back system work? And, what is open source doing with open office in terms of the REAL NEED to secure company documents? I just see the gap getting wider between MS Office, and open office. That was NOT the case 3 years ago. Open office seems to have lost it direction, and does not seem to know what road, or where the product should go. How can Open Office know where to go without a strong company committed to its future direction? Who is going add digital rights management to open office (ms has the plugs in now. and MANY companies are just waiting to have protected documents that you can’t take home, or email to competitors down the street (you might not like digital rights management, but I know a lot of companies that will go ape over the ability to protect their documents. Companies used to be able to protect their documents by limiting who had keys to the file cabinets). So, now we have Point Share services from MS that does this (and, it also integrates a whole bunch of workflow management into office also). Worse, is now the deal between MS and Sun means that Sun wants to distance it self from open office. I think most would agree that Sun opened sourced office as a tactic to just hurt MS and the office/windows franchise. Sun has NO intention of battling MS anymore. And, they have given up on this lets try and make MS hurt and bleed concept. Sun has too many troubles of its own, and it now needs, and wants peace with MS. The Open source community does loose with the MS/sun deal as sun is not so interested in Open Office as it once was. Hum, it looks like IBM might step in and take over Open Office (gee, what features did open office get via open souce after sun purchased the product anyway?). Mean while, while all this stumbling in open office is occurring, MS office just zooms aways with new great xml stuff, and the new digial rights via share point. And, also, lets not forget all the integrated help and bug feedback systems that MS now has in office to make the product even better next time around. So, just as people are starting to look at Open Office, things for the product don’t look that good, and Sun is not going to be much help anymore on open office. Between systems that support the desktop, and how MS is levering the MANAGEMENT of pc by their servers, and how they are using the Internet to improve both their quality, and the “users” experience is a long term issue..and will have long term effects in how the next versions of these software systems look. In the late 1970’s, things like structured programming came along to deal with the complexity of software. Then stuff like OO came along. Each time it allowed us to build more and more complex systems. Today, it is automated user feedback systems for BOTH bugs, and MORE importantly, feedback systems for USERS that use the product. These two concepts that MS is adopting is very much like Mr. Denning approach to quality control. And, more important, these tools allow ms to make the NEXT generation of software MORE complex then we can imagine now. And, look, the ms .net stuff is now finally coming of age. The open source community now needs a new model, or some serous updating to their existing model in terms of user feedback, and automated bug systems. The current open source model is being pummeled by MS right now. Times are changing and what worked 5 years ago for development of software will NOT work now. The industry is adopting new tools now just like we always did (structured program, oo etc). The general software community must start to adopt these new systems of integrating the customer into the software process, or they will loose big time. MS is now hijacking the BEST ideas that open source offers in terms of user communities…and running with it…. Once again competitors to MS are making really big mistakes…. Albert D. Kallal Edmonton, Alberta Canada kallal@msn.com http://www.attcanada.net/~kallal.msn |
| Sun 06 Jun | Tayssir John Gabbour | Sure, opensource is largely bullshit, and mainly exists because people aren't ready for Gnu. OTOH, putting software companies out of business is a Microsoft yardstick of success. Many 'opensource' groups have already claimed victory by accomplishing their goals. IBM claims to have profited from its opensource investments. Gnu claims wild success, and counts backlash as proof. Many skilled users never spend a penny on basic software like OSes and programming environments. Gnu and most opensource are making Microsoft bleed by accident. And it makes sense; Microsoft killed so many companies that the super-viruses are left, which can't really be killed. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Mike | WOW! That has got to be your longest ever post Albert. I enjoyed reading it. I especially liked 'While the open source community is STILL arguing what format to use' Well, their Unix guys. Arguing is second nature. Myself I am just wrapping up Mark Minasi's 'The Software Conspiracy: Why Software Firms Create Faulty Products, How They Can Harm You, And What You Can Do About It' It is a very interesting read. Basically the pc revolution is winding down. The leap from Dos to Windows was greater than from 95 to 98, etc. We are getting to the point where the best features to a lot of types of software are already discovered. According to him we are closing in on the time when competing on quality is going to matter. Microsoft does seem to be building in the architecture to do that. I also agree that most small businesses without a full time admin would be better off with Windows products, assuming they have someone qualified set up things like the servers and virus protection. You shouldn't need an admin to add a printer. On linux you need someone who can write printer drivers it seems. |
| Sun 06 Jun | hoser | Well, I'm still of the opinion that it all depends on what you're used to. You've brought up alot of anecdotal evidence - this and that - of how Linux is hard, yadda, but nothing specific. I'm integrating code into a 3rd party's VxWorks develpment environment, and they insist on doing development in Windows. Fine. It took them an entire day, expending the resources of several embedded software developers just to get VxWorks build to work on our code. Obscure nonsense? Hell yes. Specific to my situation? Absolutely. Much the same way as your Raining Data yadda, yadda, Linux tweaking app setting horror story goes. Onward... 'However, does your server let YOU manage all the pc’s, group polices, AND software installs? And virtually everything else you need to do from a central location?' HELLS BELLS! I can't even set up a reasonable policy such that I can permit my kids to run games and NOT install the latest virus/spyware across the entire friggin user/admin space of the game PC. 'you still want to run Linux and samba now?' Do it all the time. Even our church's secretary can handle that. Why is this hard? Set and forget. I can easily ssh in and config it from work when she has questions. 'I can tell you right now, that the quality of new products is soaring at MS. The increase in stability, and reduced number of problems is simply amazing here. The improvements I see in terms of this process is very noticeable to me in office xp.' Office is 10 years old for crying out loud. And its getting really, really good now!! Woohoo, have a party, let's go to Whistler! Fact is Microsoft is struggling outside Office/OS. Your particular view is very narrow, and perhaps in this specific view, Microsoft looks awesome. I can easily beleive that Microsoft and VARs can deliver great solutions from detist's office to an accounting firm of a couple hundred people. I can also believe that no one is going to take the time in OpenSource land to create an integrated solution to compete against Microsoft. It isn't that it cannot be done - it merely is a fact that no one cares. So what? Microsoft and its VARs can revel in their glory that this segment is squarely secure and so are their jobs. Again: goto Whistler and have a party. 'I just see the gap getting wider between MS Office, and open office. That was NOT the case 3 years ago.' Not I. Our office is fully in the Microsoft camp as far as the office suite goes. I use OpenOffice (except for one specific instance where tables and numbering were completely hosed, I had to make sure it wasn't OO that was screwed) and no one else knows the difference. We pass documents via email just like the idiots God created to do (never mind that we could use Perforce, but the Office crowd is TOO DAMN STUPID to figure it out, so we use email). Albert, your clients are MS centric, and thus so are you. So it should be. Software should be driven by requirements, and if MS fits those requirements best, then MS it should be. Just realize that what helps your clients does fit all. Additionally, open source software doesn't really care what Microsoft does or doesn't do. Its a non-issue. Perhaps Sun microsystems cares, and maybe IBM cares, but open source projects are not aimed at defeating Microsoft - which seems to be a premise of your argument. Open source provides... what open source provides. That's all. Don't like it? Move alond, nothing to see here. |
| Sun 06 Jun | hoser | Lots of typos. Hope you can figger the intent by context. Like does _not_ fit all. |
| Eric Sink -> Law #4: The Law of Perception | Sun 06 Jun | matt |
| This is so brutally true . . . In your closing paragraph regarding what product an ISV should construct. How do we discover the specific group of people w/ specific problems that are not being solved well by others? How do you avoid pigeon holeing your product to a specific group without a problem domain ? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Tom H | Market research is a big field, for this reason. Eric has pointed out something that's completely obvious... |
| Another evening wasted | Sun 06 Jun | Gwyn |
| Yeah, thanks Microsoft. Tonight my laptop has decided that to show Network Connection Unavailable. It then finds an available network, I select it, press Connect.... and ..... Nothing. A few seconds later a helpful little balloon pops up to tell me that a network is available should I wish to connect to it... So I do it again... and nothing. This repeats ad infinitum. Well until I nearly sling the bastard across the room. Laptop and wireless used to work fine but I changed the access point for a (newer and supposedly better!) model. Then the wireless coverage wasnt as good and XP Home used to drop out. Always had difficulty reconnecting drives etc. so I upgraded to Professional expecting it to be better. So, here I am having spent yet another evening wasting my time trying to work out why XP has got its knickers in a twist. When are you Microsoft clowns gonna pull their finger out of your arse and deliver some QUALITY????? When I press the connect button I do not want everything to just go quiet, I want you to connect or fail to connect and give me some sort of fucking error message. And youd better make it a useful one too. So now I figure Ill reinstall XP. Thats the usual solution isnt it? Some strange shit happens, you reinstall the operating system. Used to do it all the time with MVS. Did we bollocks! |
| Sun 06 Jun | Gwyn | Just reinstalled bits of XP. Now when I try to explore the network I get the really useful message box: 'Unable to browse the network' 'The requested resource is in use'. What the flying testicles is that all about? What resource? The network? I should hope it IS in use. Sadly not by me! |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | I'm curious as to why you thought XP Pro would be better able to connect to your access point than XP Home... The manufacturer-provided drivers for your wlan card are the same either way ;) Try right-clicking on your connection and choosing 'View Available Networks.' If you've configured your network for WEP security you'll have to give it an encryption key before it can connect. If not, you'll need to check the box 'allow me to connect to this network even though it's not secure.' If you're getting poor coverage from your access point, you can put together a home-made signal booster. It's basically a piece of tin foil wrapped around some styrofoam or cardboard, crafted in a specific arc to bounce more signal back towards wherever you want it. There are directions on the net somewhere if you google for it. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Pavel Levin | If you hate it so much, switch to something else. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Gwyn | I didn't think XP Pro would improve the connectivity but more that it would manage to keep a better track of what it's got, being as it's much more network oriented (e.g. you can log on to a domain) With XP Home I had a drive mapped to a share on a domain but of course whenever you start XP Home at some point it has to ask you for your credentials on the domain... but actually a lot of the time it would just say that the network share could not be found (this is whilst the wireless connection was working!) so I had to unmap and then remap the drive to EXACTLY the same location.. and that would fool XP and it would let me access it. Weird shit also happened whenever the wireless connection would break and then remake. I presumed XP Pro would better handle the network breaks and at least make some sort of effort to remember what it was doing before.. It seems to... but there are just other problems. It's all shit, it just comes in different flavours. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Gwyn | Switch to what exactly??? Unfortunately Windows is the most suitable platform for me so I have little choice Yes I hate it and yes I loathe Microsoft for their pathetic approach to quality. These guys have got a few billion dollars in the bank... I mean, exactly how may people would you have to employ to make sure that when something goes wrong you get a complete and accurate error message? It's not exactly rocket science. On the other hand I love .NET (but visual studio is a bit, well, shit) so it's not just a blanket dislike. It's appropriate. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Greg Hurlman | 'Laptop and wireless used to work fine but I changed the access point for a (newer and supposedly better!) model. Then the wireless coverage wasn't as good and XP Home used to drop out. Always had difficulty reconnecting drives etc. so I upgraded to Professional expecting it to be better.' So you changed the access point, and when connectivity degrades, you blame your OS? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | There are some differences in networking features supported by XP Home and Pro, but from a connectivity standpoint, they are the same. I've always found Windows File Sharing (aka SMB protocol) to be a bit futzy (or 'wonky' if you speak the queen's english). I don't even used mapped drives. If they are giving you a headache, just put a shortcut to \\server\share on your desktop instead. Honestly though, it's all relative. MS products in general are pretty usable. No one can be expected to write 100% bug free code 100% of the time. Just try firing up a linux box and configuring you're WLAN, then come back and compare that to how hard XP made it for you ;-) |
| Sun 06 Jun | Mike | More TCO, eh? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Craig Thrall | If you have the option of using the drivers/config software that came with your WLAN card, use them instead of the XP native config. I was having problems with my NetGear MA111 until I switched to using the NetGear software...now I've got a little NetGear icon in my system tray and it doesn't disconnect from the AP every two minutes. |
| Sun 06 Jun | JWA | Sounds like you have the iee.. whatever security turned on but your router doesn't support it. The symptoms to that are the constant dropping of the connection every five minutes or so. Google it and you'll find all kinds of info. Hope that helps, --Josh |
| What I love about bicycle racing... | Sun 06 Jun | hoser |
| Totally OT. So what. . In a stage race, each day is a new race. Someone will try to pull off the impossible, and might just do it. . Good coverage thanks to OLN (Im watching reruns of Tour de Romandie as I type) . Sportsmanship: watching Riis beome domestique for Jan Ullrich in the 1997 Tour de France. Riis win TdF in 1996. circa Team Telekom. . Knowing that dragging my fat ass up an out of category climb would be a significant life event. They do it routinely at speeds many people can only manage on flat ground. . Watching Tyler Hamilton win a TdF stage with a broken collar bone. . Paul Sherwin, Phil Ligget, and Bob whatizname? Great commentary. . Watching Virenque gamble and win a stage. . Wondering what young Spanish climber will challenge Lance this year. OH BABY. |
| Sun 06 Jun | zizgzag | I agree with the above wholeheartedly. I bought a TiVo last year just so I wouldn't miss a second of TDF coverage, i've enjoyed the fact that TiVo also picks up the Giro, Sea Otter, and other great events. Woot! Cycling. |
| End users' computers rant | Sun 06 Jun | Freelance tech support guy |
| I am branching out into computer support. Yesterday I picked up a PC from a home user that wouldnt start. (It was XP, and would only get to a blue screen with an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME message.) It was a damned Compaq with the usual !@^* dumbed down absolutely unhelpful recovery disk crap. Once I got it to boot, I checked it out with Spybot, Ad-Aware, Bazooka, and AVG Anti-Virus. Yee GOD. The damned box was absolutely *crawling* with bots, trojans, adware, viruses, etc. It took about 8-10 reboots and repeated scans with these tools to nail everything. My guess is that the spyware or some virus trashed some system files or even the file structure or caused a catastrophic shutdown with files still open and being written. I am just getting started doing this type of support (previous focus was the more desirable but dwindling SW development market). I guess Ive lived a sheltered life, keeping my computers behind NAT and firewalls, running Mozilla, and never trusting any popups that manage to get through. Any system that I control is orderly, sane, and well oiled. But... these people must have clicked on every, I mean every, single, friggin popup, ad, online coupon, banner, offer, and must have insisted on opening up every single email attachment. They must have read some article on end user internet security and deliberately set out to do everything that is not recommended. Of course, I will leave the best for last: this family shares a Road Runner connection with a hub, not a firewall, they do not even *know* about firewalls, and they had no anti-virus (they do now.) Their C: drives are probably just hanging out on their neighborhoods network segment, absolutely begging PLEASE, **PLEASE** MAP ME AND SHOVE SHIT INTO MY STARTUP FOLDER, MY OWNER HAS NO CLUE. My actual opinion: users should be required to be licensed in order to connect a computer to the public internet. Of course, because this kind of mess seems to be very common (the couple told me they had a *bunch* of friends who have similar problems) I am not above making a buck off it it.... There is NO way I would do this type of work for less than a consultants rate.... the idea of facilitating someones ignorance for less than a commercial rate seems obscene, as though youre facilitating wife-beating or drug trafficing. I now know why corporate tech support people are so pissed off and bitter. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Full name: | Welcome to users with adminitrator's rights! |
| Sun 06 Jun | Stephen Jones | --'I now know why corporate tech support people are so pissed off and bitter'--- Probably because they've got to work with people like you. Or because they're the typical generation X born losers that gripe on fuckedupcoder.whine. By the time the local doctor, personal trainer, aromatherapist, house hygiene consultant, feng shui expert, car mechanic and home finance consultant had been looking into different aspects of your, as far as they are concerned, hopelessly inadequate personal life, you would be feeling like the quivering mass of jelly you think your customers are. Face it, your customers are losers, but only because they have to pay a snivelling piece of sub-humanity like you. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | I agree that computer fix it guys should charge adequate rates. All the people in the not-so-nice above posting get paid handsomely for their services...so should you! Also, charging peanuts just encourages people to do stupid things to their computer (someone else will fix it!) However, we can't really blame them for their ignorance. I'm sure my car is begging for about a thousand things to be done to it, but hell if I know anything about it ;) FYI, tech support is all about the soft skills. If you're gonna do it for a while, better work on seeing things from the other point of view, or else you'll go mad. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Arnie | Mr Jones, are you serious with that tone? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Freelance tech support guy | >> Face it, your customers are losers, but only because they have to pay a snivelling piece of sub-humanity like you. >> Stephen Jones LOL! I love a good ad hominem flame. I am glad that internet distance makes you so brave, Stephen... and that you have ascended bodily into heaven and never experience exasperation. BTW, my discourse was regarding my work to avoid having to reformat their hard drive and lose their data and reinstall all their stuff... that is if I did the usual hamhanded 'simian IT support at the retail level' thing they would have a fresh copy of Win XP with no applications. Anyway. Don't get me wrong. I am respectful and courteous to prospects and customers. And I see some underlying factors at work. The main problem is that the PC market is filled with disinformation, that PCs are like toasters, no brain required, plug it in and use it and so what. My forte' is to deal with the people that are the casualties of this corporate irresponsibility. I do see the main problem: it's sort of a collusion between manufacturers of PCs who fail to provide decent user recovery resources beyond 'format the entire HD and lose all your work - IE, I had to use my own W2K Pro CD to use recovery console, which was absolutely not available in the Compaq dreck; Microsoft, with its head in the clouds marketing attitude that mundane user problems are not worth discussing; and utterly irresponsible broadband ISPs who do not attempt to educate their lusers on the importance of base firewall protection. I have a friend 3000 mi away with similar PC problems to these people. I would help him gratis if he were local. He tries to deal with retail stores and gets lied to and bullshitted continually. All the stupid f*ckwit kids working at Compusa and the like want to do is replace motherboards and bone the customer. My friend has NO trusted resource to use to solve stuff like this. I think I can make a living at this. But the level of chaos that vendors of PCs seem to thrive on to push their shit really apalls me. And they seem to prosper on an uneducated public. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | 'The main problem is that the PC market is filled with disinformation, that PCs are like toasters, no brain required, plug it in and use it and so what.' I disagree. I think the problem is that PC's *should* be like toasters, but aren't. Normal people don't want to play sysadmin. They want to write emails, surf the web, and send birthday cards to grandma. And we as technically educated people shouldn't expect any different of them. Now of course the utopia of problem free computing is a long ways off, and there are far too many individuals and entities out there preying on the PC user's incompetence, or simply ignoring their pleas for help. But be thankful for that, because when those things cease to be true, you'll be looking for a new career again ;-) |
| Sun 06 Jun | Mike | I think you should charge double the going corporate rate to fix home users machines for a few reasons. 1. Get that silly ass thought about lower TCO out of peoples minds. Maybe they won't pay big bucks. Well then have a S L O W pc and maybe try a mac cause you heard this doesn't happen to them. 2. You have to listen to them natter on about how their nephew could fix it in 10 minutes. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Tayssir John Gabbour | Unhappy during your boomtime, Freelance guy? Things are as they should be. The net is still in early-adopter stage, and the machines haven't yet caught up to the human admins for providing endusers with a good experience. I understand your point, but if you look at history, you are likely to see this state of affairs is correct. If you are not independently wealthy, make your clients happy and press your advantage while you still can. Let the internet suffer from these viruses and make itself stronger. |
| Software development in New Zealand? | Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman |
| For a while Ive been thinking about leaving the US to work and perhaps even settle down. Ive actually worked overseas before for a few years (back in the 90s) and enjoyed it more than living in the US. The US IT job market being in the crapper, as well as the patent fiasco, makes overseas locations even more attractive. To the New Zealanders out there, or anybody else whos lived there -- what are the software job prospects like? I notice that IT jobs are on the governments shortage occupations list, so apparently there should not be too many legal barriers to working there, but how realistic is it to find an actual job there? I would be willing to visit for 3-6 months while searching. And how long would it take to get permanent residency there if I wanted to settle down? ... I hope they dont jerk prospective immigrants around for 5-10 years like what is done in the US. I know that salaries are lower than in the US, but are salaries within that sweet spot where they are high enough to live comfortably on, yet low enough that jobs rarely get lost to outsourcing? Or is getting laid off every year or two a common expectation for software developers? What could a person with 10 years experience and a Bachelors in CS expect? What are salaries like compared to the cost of living? How expensive are cars compared to the US (US car prices can be found at http://www.edmunds.com) ... does the government slap on high import duties to cars? What would it cost to rent a 2-bedroom apartment or townhouse in a semi-decent area in a city like Auckland or Wellington? |
| Sun 06 Jun | My Cousin Vinniwashtharam | Do you like Kiwi fruit? |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | You should be moving to Bangalore. |
| Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman | The tech jobs in Bangalore may be plentiful. But for a non-Indian, Bangalore can never be as nice to live in as New Zealand. |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | Can't say unless you've been there, can you? Though, I must admit I've been only to the arse-end of the world and no lower! But, I do have a cousin who went, migrated to NZ and came back to Hyderabad after a very short stint. Then again different folks, different strokes. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Herr Herr | October 2002: The Economist magazine rated Melbourne, Australia as the #1 place in the world for ex-pats to live. Canadian and Scandanavian cities also rated very highly. New Zealand: Good things: Damn beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, great lifestyle, outdoors stuff, excellent quality food. Bad things: A long way from anywhere - measure the distances on your map, even 2000 km from Australia. IT industry: Don't know too much, but average wages in NZ are just about as low as they can get in the OECD countries. In fact, some jobs are already outsourced TO NZ! However the cost of living is cheaper too in parallel with the lower wages. But it is unrealistic to go to NZ to make your fortune. Lifestyle: On an IT wage you will be able to avoid a nice house in a nice area. Cheap second-hand cars imported from Japan are all the rage. Go for an extended holiday first. Check it out. You really can't get a feel by what I or anyone else says. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Craig | I am lead developer for a medium sized call center vendor in Auckland. The market in New Zealand is definitely slumped at the moment, post 9/11, Americas cup etc. Business confidence is also low, due to a non-business friendly goverment. But all that said and done, there still seems to a quite a few jobs going, the problem we have found is getting quality people. We are constantly looking for motivated C++ and VB people, but all I see though the door is dross. People cultter up thier CV's with every 10min job they did using whatever is the new buzzword tech, instead of providing a clean track record of achievment. |
| Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman | 'But, I do have a cousin who went, migrated to NZ and came back to Hyderabad after a very short stint.' 'Back to Hyderabad' ... suggests the person is Indian, correct? I was speaking from the perspective of a non-Indian. |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | Yes. Hence my last sentence. Enjoy your stay in Xena land! |
| Sun 06 Jun | no name | > I notice that IT jobs are on the government's 'shortage occupations' list The reason for this is that New Zealand, like Australia, is dumber than America. The governments are more easily sucked in by industry propaganda, such as skill shortages, and local workers are much less likely to complain. http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9737686%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html For an American, you would immediately notice the relatively superficiality of the IT industry, and the dearth of quality jobs. Just as an indicator, New Zealand doesn't even have its own air force anymore. It couldn't afford it, so sold all its Skyhawk jets. A recent survey in Australia reported 18 percent unemployment among programmers. New Zealand would be no better. Most IT work is branch office stuff, providing support. That's in both New Zealand and Australia. Most of the big organisations that might be half decent already send big parts of their work to India. There have drops in IT enrolments at universities, so the universities, government and incompetent local IT groups have agreed to stop talking about the problems and talk about the 'looming shortage.' New Zealand's a nice country to visit or raise sheep. |
| Sun 06 Jun | the grass is always greener | Obviously you're thinking of a one way trip, because every dollar you earn will be halved or worse should you decide to return to the U.S. |
| Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman | Yes ... either I'd spend about 3-4 years there, with the goal of enjoying and learning from the experience, while accepting that I won't save much, and then come back to the US ... or if I *really* love it (and perhaps found a good Kiwi woman!) I'd stay. |
| Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman | 'A recent survey in Australia reported 18 percent unemployment among programmers. New Zealand would be no better.' Is that actually true? NZ != Australia. |
| Sun 06 Jun | no name | Here's a story about the survey. http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/business/0,39023749,39116285,00.htm NZ is more of a backwater than Australia. I'm not aware of actual figures from that country, but can see no reason it would have more healthy employment figures. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | I don't know about Software but the music in NZ sucks: http://www.wingmusic.co.nz/listen.html |
| Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman | Even if New Zealand is more of a 'backwater' than Australia, there still could be better employment prospects for an experienced programmer in NZ, if there are fewer programmers competing for each job and/or the lower salaries mean that fewer jobs are lost to outsourcing. Those two countries are linked in many ways, but it's not necessarily accurate to extrapolate from one to the other. |
| Sun 06 Jun | aKiwi | 'Most IT work is branch office stuff, providing support. That's in both New Zealand and Australia.' I've worked in Wellington, New Zealand, for the past 8 years. I don't think its fair to say that most work is support. There was a lot of new development undertaken here in the late 90's. Its dropped off a bit now (as it has everywhere) and there is now growing interest in integrating existing packages and products rather than solving all problems by cutting brand new code. As for the comments about unemployment in Australia, and the implication that it would be the same in NZ, its worth pointing out that NZ and Australia have somewhat different labor markets, so it's not necessirly accurate to assume similar unemployment rates just because we're in the same part of the world. I suspect there may well be unemployed programmers in NZ, although I don't know any personally. But if you're good at your job, and have marketable skills (C# and Java at the moment), then you've probably got little to fear from unemployment. There seems to be good demand at the moment for C#/.NET skills. Unfortunately, one reason for that demand is employers' insistence on prior experience. I think they are turning away good programmers, who could easily learn those technologies, in their quest to find people with experience. Check out www.seek.co.nz to see the kind of positions currently advertised. >Bad things: A long way from anywhere - measure the distances on your map, even 2000 km from Australia. I'd second that. The modern communcations make the world seem smaller until you actually hop on a plane. Then you realise just how far NZ is from the rest of the world. E.g. approx 24 hours by 747 to reach the UK. As for questions about cost of living and salaries. I'd love to have a clearer understanding of that myself. But its really hard to make an accurate comparison. Compared to the US, the government pays a higher share of the costs for things like health care. So while salaries are definitely lower in NZ, living costs are also lower. As for housing prices, have a look at: http://www.leaders.co.nz/ |
| Sun 06 Jun | Prakash S | Norman: If your goal is the experience then give Bangalore a shot - it will not be as scenic as NZ/OZ but I guarantee that it will be an interesting experience. Whichever countries are in your list - visit them all, meet people in the same profession as you are in, talk to people with similar backgrounds... Cheers... |
| Sun 06 Jun | Aussie bloke | aKiwi > I..if you're good at your job, and have marketable skills (C# and Java at the moment), then you've probably got little to fear from unemployment That's what business groups and the (conservative) government say in Australia. |
| Sun 06 Jun | John Rusk | Positive news on the NZ job market, hot off the press: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2932274a28,00.html |
| Sun 06 Jun | T. Norman | 'If your goal is the experience then give Bangalore a shot...' I'm still single, and I do plan to have a social life. I am looking primarily for life experience, not work experience. With all the arranged marriages and other cultural differences, India ain't exactly the place to be for a single guy from the West. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Bridge climber | > Positive news on the NZ job market, hot off the press It's by a recruiter, you dill. Exactly how accurate or unbiased do you think that will be? There are plenty of those reports in Australia too. Do you not understand how these people try to manipulate markets? |
| Different pricing models | Sun 06 Jun | Owlen |
| Here is another pricing question; this one is about different pricing models. I have a product that I believe can bring value to small-medium companies. Im contemplating different pricing schemes. Since its a server-based software I have three different approaches that I could think of: 1. Sell the software – I can price it per server/user etc. This is somewhat of a heads on competition with other software packages already in the space. 2. Sell a server (with the software installed). A rack-mount box with the required hardware is relatively cheap, and it will allow increasing the price significantly. I believe that its reasonable for a bundled solution. It can also be more appealing to businesses that dont have IT personnel to put the hardware themselves, install the software etc. 3. Sell a service (lease/rent?). For a monthly fee Ill provide the server (as in #2), install it, and provide any maintenance needed through the year. If you have any experience with the latter two models, I would be thankful to hear regarding relevant pricing practices you are familiar with and how they were accepted in the market. Im also thinking that with the latter two models I can (should?) open-source the software. Do you think Im correct in the following assessments: - Service model might be too odd for the market to swallow. - An open-source software, can worry a prospective client, even if we all agree it shouldnt. - Whatever I decide, I should really choose only a single pricing model, because giving a user a choice is usually a deterrent for a customer. Thanks, Owlen |
| Sun 06 Jun | Oren | Consider carefully what type of support you will need to offer, and whether you're capable of it. If you sell a server then your customers will probably expect you to handle any problems the server may have (patch management, crashes, and even hardware failures). From the tone of your post it seems that you're an individual developer, so this level of support is out of the question. Selling a service is probably your best option. Use severs hosted at a premium hosting service (such as RackSpace); this will make fixing problems and other management issues much easier than if you host the server in your own office, because RackSpace will take care of many tasks for you, day or night. Open-sourcing your software is an orthogonal question to the pricing issue, but as usual if you do so then you'll have to work harder to generate revenues. Why do you think multiple pricing models is a deterrent? On the contrary; a combination of the ASP and software-only options may be your best bet. |
| Sun 06 Jun | no name | I've worked at two ASP-model businesses so far. It's been very rewarding, getting to work with some very smart & dedicated people. The bad parts about being an ASP are: 1) Customers are always demanding you add features 'just for them'. If you agree to this, you're in trouble when it comes time to migrate to a new version. 2) Revenue is very slow at the beginning -- until you make enough sales, you'll be deep in the red. 3) Some customers are control freaks and never quite trust you to manage their data reliably, so even though they sign with you, they're always demanding full data dumps 'just in case'. 4) When things break, they usually break in a big way. As a result, you've got all your customers yelling at you, not just one or two. The good parts are: 1) One code base means terrific economy of scale (the economics of software means that the 2nd copy you sell costs you next to nothing, and is almost all profit). 2) Recurring revenue (minimum length of a contract should be 12 months) means you can weather temporary downturns. The things you must do right in order to succeed: 1) Change management. You must plan what features will be released over the next 6 months -- and deliver them on time. They don't have to be large sweeping changes -- incremental change is what you want. 2) Customer contact. You need to stay in touch with them to find out what they need from you. Otherwise you'll find it's difficult to do your change management correctly. 3) Reliability. If you go down, nasty tricksy SLA clauses kick in, making you refund part of each month's revenue. 4) Data protection. It's not your data. Better make sure your app doesn't corrupt it. Also -- make sure your backups work (does your backup tool do online databases? In-use files?) 5) Integration. The customers are going to want to integrate it with their 3rd party applications, as if it were hosted in their data center. Better make sure you can do this. 6) Automate as much as possible. Adding/dropping a customer shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, apart from loading/unloading their existing data. Best of luck! |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | The model really depends on what kind of software it is. You said it's server based, but what kinds of loads will it need to handle? What kinds of communication does it use? Will it need to integrated with the customer's existing user-management directory (ie, Active Directory or the like)? What security concerns are there if it's accessed over the open net? If you deem that your software is capable of running outside the firewall, then the ASP route is a good one, for all the reasons listed above. But only if you can handle the data-management side of things. Keep in mind that all your options except the first one (selling just the software directly to the customer) have fairly high initial costs that you'll have to front. Rack space isn't exactly cheap if you're a one-man shop, and neither are servers. If you do decide to sell servers with your software, don't force the customer to buy one. They may already have existing servers they'd like to use. Choices are good... Also, plan for the event where a customer places an order for a server/software bundle, and then backs out. Can you afford to swallow that cost, at least until you can resell it to someone else? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | One more thought on this...your pricing model can change as your new company grows. If you're a one-man shop with 0 clients and 0 funding now, it's probably best just to sell a copy of the sofware -- lowest overhead. If someone needs a server, provide your services to help them select and purchase one, but make it clear that it's their responsibility to maintain it, unless they want to pay you for that too. When you start to approach the critical mass of being unable to support the number of installations you've sold, you should be making enough profit to rent some rack space without going in the hole financially. Sign up all new customers with the new hosted solution. Do some research w/ your existing customers and see how willing they are to switch to the new business model. Encourage them to switch, but don't leave them out in the cold. If you've sold them a server just for your software, offer to buy it off them -- you'll need a couple servers for your ASP model anyway, and they won't feel like you conned them into buying something they didn't need. |
| Partnership Agreements | Sun 06 Jun | Yellow Belly |
| Myself (Australian) and another developer (American) wish to create a partnership for a business. We would like to have some sort of contact written up to define what rights we each have in regards to the business. We dont have the capital to spend on getting an attourney or whatever to go over the contract, so modifying an existing one would be good. Is this safe? Were pretty good friends, and well probably never have to reach for the contract to prove a point, its just there as a better safe than sorry thing. Does anyone know of any existing partnership agreements, or templates, that we might modify? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Tom H | This is US law oriented, but has some good information. Search for 'Partnership' http://www.nolo.com |
| Sun 06 Jun | Philo | IMHO, you should look into forming a corporation. The big problem with partnerships is that you are each jointly and severally liable both to each other and to the purcahsers of your software. If, for example, you write a database tool that happens to wipe all the production data for a bank, the bank can sue and get your house. If you form a properly-funded corporation, then if the bank sues, it gets the corporate assets, but cannot touch your personal assets. You would have to form a C Corporation, since a US 'S' Corp cannot have non-US citizens as shareholders. My $.02 Philo |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | By the way, the fact that you are good friends is exactly why you *should* have a contract. It's always best to keep business and friendship clearly separate, even if you happen to share both. If your friendship should happen to decay at some point, you want your business assetts to be secure. And likewise having a contract which clearly states the terms of the business arrangement will also help preserve your friendship if the business goes down the toilet. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Brad | Write up an agreement. It's not because you don't trust each other or that your intentions are in any way evil. It just spells out all of the rules, like right to purchase partners shares, what are each members rights and responsibilities, etc. My partnership/investment agreement for an LLC ran about $800 US for a very reputable attorney, and it is money well spent. If you can't afford that kind of cash, you should probably reconsider your decision to go into business together (right now). |
| Virus / Trojan Weirdness | Sun 06 Jun | Bill Rayer |
| Hi At work Im running Windows 98 behind a hardware firewall (part of an Ayava phone system). The firewall permits only FTP, SMTP, TIME, DNS, HTTP, POP3, NNTP, and only if intiated from inside the firewall. In particular, IRC and SNMP are blocked. My machine is on a mixed LAN (Win98/2000/XP) which is set up so each PC can only see a shared folder on the server, and there are no shares on any of the other PCs. In theory an infection on any PC is limited to that PC and the shared folder on the server (which runs a/v software). My PC has www.grisoft.com AVG antivirus software which updates itself every two weeks, and the last update was on Wed 2nd June. I use outlook express for email, and have enabled showing of extensions for all file types. I know not to run attachments, and to delete executable attachments (*.scr, *.pif, *.txt .pif etc etc). Yesterday AVG resident shield detected a virus while I was browsing the internet. I disconnected from the LAN and the internet, rebooted, ran the AVG scanner which removed the viruses (there were 5). Two were found in the recycle bin (these were .scr files attached to spams I had deleted earlier), one was something called pup.exe and two were .cgi files. The .cgi files were interesting. They use wsh to set the browser home page to default-homepage-network dot com and smartbotpro dot net (dont go there). And *after* cleaning off the viruses, I noticed several new files I never installed: c:\installer\id53.exe install2.exe infamous_downloader.exe 0021-bdl94126.EXE CS4P028.exe silent.exe o.bat All these (apart from id53.exe) were on the desktop. I deleted all these and checked the \windows\all users\start menu\programs\startup folder was empty (it was). Also I checked the registry startup location (HKLM\ software\ microsoft\ windows\ currentversion\ run keys and id53.exe had put itself there also. So I checked all the run keys (run, runonce, runonceex etc) and removed it from there. After this I rebooted, re-scanned with AVG, searched the registry to ensure id53 had gone and everything is OK. But I am puzzled how this virus / trojan combination installed itself. The only things I did that were different yesterday were: - Viewed a spam in Outlook express (it looked genuine and had no attachments) - Accidentally went to oogle dot com instead of google.com. - Ran a new email list program (e-campaign from lmhsoft.com) to send two emails, both to myself. How can these actions install viruses or trojans? And what can I do to stop this happening in the future? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Tom H | In IE, use Tools->Internet Options->Security tab, select the Custom Level button and disable anything that looks like scripting (Java, Javascript, ActiveX, etc). Then in Outlook, Tools->Options->Security tab, select the Restricted Sites zone, and select 'Do not allow attachments to be opened or saved that could potentially be a virus' (sic) If you ever really need to save an executable file you'll have to temporarily change the settings, but remember to set them back. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Simon Lucy | If you've got AVG then enable the email filter for Outlook. I update AVG nightly. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Guy LeDouche | I don't think MS updates Win98 for security problems anymore, do they? Either way, there was an exploit in the latest IE version a couple months ago that could install code on your system even with scripting and activeX turned off. So if you haven't updated since then, that was probably the culprit. Otherwise, also realize clicking on links within HTML emails that have virus attachments usually point straight to the attachment (and thus execute it). That's how people get duped, it's not that they click on the paperclip and scroll down to 'message.scr' and decide to click it, they see http://www.freestuff.com or whatever underlined so think that's where the link goes. So make sure you have Outlook set to read messages as plain text. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Stephen Jones | What you often get are hyperliinks that in fact are pointing to an executable, since the text of the hyperlink is not the same as the underlying link. And the social engineers are getting good. One of the latest is an email form abuse@us.gov or something similar informing you that you have been placed on a US government list for surfing kiddy porn sites, and giving one of these false hyperlinks to click on. If I didn't hold the US government in total contempt, I might have been tempted to click on it. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Mike | Read the file o.bat. It ftp's down the other files. I had a user at our company get hit with the same crap. |
| Economics of Porting Software to other OSes | Sun 06 Jun | Matthias Winkelmann |
| In http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000051.html Joel argues that the costs of porting a Software to OS X have to be less than 10% of the original development costs because otherwise it would not make sense because that 10% is Apples market share. Id like to point out that this is flawed logic, because he is making connections that should not be made. For a business decision like porting software, there are really only two factors: investment and return. So if original development costs were 5 million, and costs of porting would be 1 Million (20%) and you could sell the software to 1 Million Mac Users at 2 $ each, it would be a bad decision not to do it, even though the costs of porting are 20%. This is a mistake often made. Consider the following: If you just bought a car for 20000$ and a book for 50$ and around the corner you find a show which offers the same car for 19960$ and the book for 30$ and you could return both the book and the car for a full refund, which one are you more likely to return? (Normally, you do this test with two groups. Usually, most would return the book but none would return the car). But in both cases you could have saved 20$ for the same amount of work. To get back to Joels text: It is also wrong to assume that you would get the same marketshare on OS X as on Windows. Since there is a lot less Software offered and Mac Users tend to have more money and work professionally, there is a real possibility that the market share would be significantly higher. Just some thought, enjoy your sunday. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | Yes there is an assumption to Joel's logic that the same percentage of Mac users would buy the software as the Windows version. This may be slighty flawed, but as a quick 'on the back of a napkin' calculation it's probably okay. You do know that Joel has actually ported Fogbugz to Linux and OS/X don't you. I wonder if the same percentage of users did buy Fogbugz on Mac and Linux as the original Windows port? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Leauki (Andrew J. Brehm) | I believe Joel's estimate of a 10% Mac OS market share already includes assumptions like "Mac users have more money" and "Mac users buy more software". The 10% are not the real market share but the value to work with in his calculation. Call it "effective market share" if you will. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Green Pajamas | Just consider the difference between the ratio of piracy in the Windows and Mac software PLUS the difference between the average purchase power of the Windows and Mac users. Porting software to target Linux wouldn't be as rewarding. But for Mac and Unix (the paid one) market. Yes. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Green Pajamas | Ofcourse it depends the kind of software. If Linux markets pays for it. Sure. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Emperor Norton | The original poster ignores the opportunity cost of porting to OS X. If Joel spends time and money writing a Mac version, he's not spending that time and money improving the Windows version or making new software. It's only a "bad idea" not to do the OS X port if (a) the OS X port will make money __AND__ (b) the OS X port will make MORE money than a comparable investment of time and money in another area. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Joe | To be fair, Joel's article wasn't really about the profitability of porting software. It was included as an aside to point out why REALBasic should be more VB-compliant (in order to reduce the cost of porting software to the Mac). In that context, it's not unreasonable to make an oversimplified assessment of the situation. Clearly if you're making a business decision like that, you'll have to weigh all the factors, including market share, opportunity cost, and strategy. There's no quick 'n easy formula... |
| conferences on 'The Left Coast' | Sun 06 Jun | I'm going back to Cali, Cali, Cali... |
| Anyone know of any upcoming conferences on The Left Coast? |
| Sun 06 Jun | ... | The Folsom Street Fair is a BDSM conference which will be in San Francisco on Sunday, September 26. ;-) What, that's not what you mean? Well, there are *hundreds* of developer conferences in California. Could you be more specific -- what kind of conference are you looking for? |
| Sun 06 Jun | hoser | The Freemont (North Seattle, WA) Farmer's Market is open 10-4 Sundays. Definitely lefty boho new age homoepathic mubo jumbo. Want some? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Bill Rushmore | JavaOne, if that's your thing. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Brad | Windows Embedded 2004 is in San Diego at the end of Junes, if that's your thing! http://www.windowsembeddeddevcon.com |
| Piracy can be good? | Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas |
| Do you think that software piracy can be a good marketing tactic? Just think for a moment, if Microsoft takes some serious measures to eliminate piracy from within the third world, they would all simply move to cheap alternatives. Most popular software was popularized by pirates. Plus, I went through this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_piracy But that doesnt mean piracy can be good for smaller software companies. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Mr. Analogy | Hmmm.... Option 1: India pirates Windows (as they are doing, according to a customer, from India, that I have). Microsoft makes $0.00 Option2: Microsoft prevents pirating and sells a little bit of Windows. Pirates switch to Linux. Microsoft Makes > $.00 I would think that SOME money is better than NONE. And I don't think that widespread adoption of Windows by pirates is going to reinforce the Windows monoloply as a desktop O/S. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Stephen Jones | Software piracy is a disaster for the smaller software companies. Take a look at what happens in countries where piracy is the norm among home users. You get Office for $3 so you don't buy Claris Works, or Lotus Millenium or Word Perfect Suite. You get Photoshop so why bother with Paint Shop Pro. Forget the home architect programs, off you go with Autocad to plan your kitchen extension (I've actually seen that happen). Then the best comes. Microsoft and Adobe announce that they are the most hit by piracy and that they are being robbed of tens of millions when if there was no piracy nearly all the money would go to their cheaper rivals. Back in the mid-80s I worked as a translator for a small advertising agency. The amount of money a company had to spend to send out free samples was incredible. Yet Microsoft and Adobe get all these campaigns for free, and on top of it can play the moral high ground and get their distributors branded as criminals. Microsoft wait until piracy has wiped their rivals out of the market, and then demand that the governments tighten up their act. Somebody once asked an top exec at MS if he would prefer people pirated Corel or Lotus or Apple instead of Windows. The look of horror on his face said all. |
| Sat 05 Jun | www.marktaw.com | I understand the point of the first person. Let's say you have someone who can't afford MS Office and pirates it. This piracy perpetuates MS Office as THE preferred platform to do business on, and you know that even if you do business with a third world country, that's the file format you should use, so you buy MS Office. |
| Sat 05 Jun | T. Norman | 'I would think that SOME money is better than NONE.' Maybe, but the cost of enforcing against piracy in such countries is probably much greater than the small increase in sales that would result from that enforcement. So if they're not getting your money anyway, they'd prefer you to choose their own software to pirate rather than increasing the market share of their cheaper competitors. |
| Sat 05 Jun | . | Apparently piracy is one of Microsoft's most effective weapons against Linux. Lots of organisations in developing nations aren't interested in Linux simply because Windows is better and is the same price. This actually makes me wonder why open sourcers make such a fuss about developing countries. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | Because its a infant battle ground. Get in good at the ground floor, and make the work easier for yourself. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Simon Lucy | There was a marketing mantra in the 80's that Visicalc became what it was because of piracy, because it was pirated it became ubiquitous. Whether this was true or not it could only have been true when the distribution of pirated products was hand to hand, largely on floppies. Once piracy reached bulletin boards, and then the Internet the means of distribution can overwhelm the publisher. This is even more true in music than in software, with CDs pulled before release because a pirate, leaked copy go onto the net before release date. |
| RDFS | Sat 05 Jun | Elmo |
| Im reading Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema Specification 1.0 from the http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-rdf-schema-20000327/ and i don´t understand one thing in graph Figure 2: Class Hierarchy for the RDF Schema is the rdfs:resource subClass of the Rdfs:Class or is the Rdfs:Class subClass of the rdfs:resource. Can someone explain this. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Da Car Guys | RDFS? RTFM!! |
| Sat 05 Jun | My Cousin Vinniwashtharam | ROFL!! |
| Sat 05 Jun | Anon-y-mous Cow-ard | Really? On the floor? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | I think W3C left Planet Earth quite a few years ago. Check out Joel's old article on Architecture Astronauts: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html By the way does anyone else think W3C is like Clive Sinclair? Sinclair had some big hits with his low cost home computers in the UK back in the early 80s. His machines we mostly used for games but Clive never really understood this and threw all his money into low end business machines like the Sinclair QL. I get the feeling that W3C doesn't really understand the web anymore and has gone off on the machine processing tangent. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Simon Lucy | Ummm, The C5. I'm not sure if that was an example of astrotecture (go I wish I'd coined that word), or just plain foolishness. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | Hey anyone remember the old computer game on the Spectrum "C5 Clive"? |
| Sun 06 Jun | Elmo | I can read myself that rdfs:class is a subclass of rdfs:resource, and the rdfs:resource is the type of rdfs:class but in the spets they say that RDFS:Cass cant be the subclass |
| Kiwis and Kiwi Fruits | Sat 05 Jun | Herr Herr |
| A kiwi is one of two things: 1) A kiwi is a person, who like myself, was born in New Zealand. 2) A kiwi is a flightless bird native to New Zealand, typically brown and about 30cm high. There is no fruit you can eat called Kiwi. It is Kiwi fruit! Got it? |
| Sat 05 Jun | RP | I've been using Kiwi to describe the fruit for so long it's going to be hard to change now. |
| Sat 05 Jun | matt | Yeah, and 'orange' is a colour. The thing you eat should be called an 'orange fruit'. Jeez, what difference does it make? |
| Sat 05 Jun | MediocreDev | Kiwis ARE fruits, in all meanings of the word... |
| Sat 05 Jun | Philo | No, you see the problem is that 'kiwi' is ambiguous - it can either refer to kiwi fruits or New Zealanders. See, one is a small, hairy fruit, and the other grows on trees... [g,d,r] Philo |
| Sat 05 Jun | Julian | In the US vernacular, a "kiwi" is a fruit. I hadn't heard the definition of "kiwi" as someone from New Zealand until I met a Kiwi in grad school. And she was also annoyed at people saying "kiwi" when referring to a fruit. |
| Sat 05 Jun | no name | An Enzedder was counting his sheep. '195, 196, 197, Hi honey, 198, 199...' |
| Sat 05 Jun | no name | Yeah! I'm one too. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Confused | So would a homosexual Kiwi also be a Kiwi Fruit? |
| Sat 05 Jun | Dennis Atkins | If you Kiwis don't like the name we in the States use for Chinese Gooseberries, you really have no one to blame but your own agricultural industry: http://www.localharvest.org/kiwis.jsp |
| Sat 05 Jun | rick chapman | Actually, the Kiwi appellation is a marketing triumph. Kiwis were originally called 'mouse apples.' To no great surprise, it was decided when creating the export strategy to come up with a more appealing moniker. rick |
| Sat 05 Jun | Rob | Let's not even bring up this UK company's marketing disaster ( http://www.mrbrainsfaggpts/com/faggot_family.htm ) when they tried to introduce their product to the American market. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Rob | ...and my typing disaster, change that to an o and a dot... |
| Sat 05 Jun | no name | > So would a homosexual Kiwi also be a Kiwi Fruit? No. That would be just sheep. |
| Sat 05 Jun | John C. | 'Kiwis were originally called 'mouse apples.' To no great surprise, it was decided when creating the export strategy to come up with a more appealing moniker.' Ah, yes, just as 'Patagonian toothfish' became the more savory 'Chilean sea bass'... |
| Sat 05 Jun | www.marktaw.com | Actually, you're all wrong. It's Kiwifruit - one word. http://www.kiwifruit.org/ 'Kiwifruit (then known as 'Chinese Gooseberries' or 'Yang Tao') plants were first exported to the United States in 1904, but it wasn't until 1935 that agricultural testing of the berries began.' 'New Zealand was already exporting kiwifruit to the U.S. while Heinke and Tanimoto were planting the vines. New Zealand kiwifruit was first served at Trader Vic's in San Francisco in 1961.' 'The history of the kiwifruit began in the Chang Kiang Valley of China. Called Yang Tao, it was considered a delicacy by the great Khans who relished the fruit's brilliant flavor and emerald-green color.' CALIFORNIA KIWIFRUIT TRADE TIMELINE 1904 'Yang Tao' (a.k.a Chinese Gooseberry, a.k.a kiwifruit) are exported to the United States. 1935 Agricultural propagation of kiwifruit begins in the United States. 1960 First 'Commercial' kiwifruit vineyards (nine vines) planted in California. 1962 West Coast produce dealer Frieda Caplan begins importing kiwifruit from New Zealand. 1964 An Oregon retailer, specializing in exotic fruit, places first U.S. retail order. 1966 A Gridley, Calif., grower establishes a nursery to cultivate domestic kiwifruit seeds. 1968 Vines are transferred from the nursery and planted on an acre of land. 1970 Harvest yields 170 tray and tray equivalents of California kiwifruit. 1977 Kiwifruit Growers of California (KGC) is formed. 1980 California Kiwifruit Commission (CKC) established. 1983 International Kiwifruit Organization (IKO) is formed. Current membership: United States, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, France, Italy and Japan. 1984 The Packer rates kiwifruit 'hot produce item of the year.' (excerpts from from http://www.kiwifruit.org/history.htm ) |
| Sat 05 Jun | sgf | And this is what the Internet was created for?
Nobody has a life anymore! We have the entire history of kiwi |
| Sat 05 Jun | Clay Dowling | That's not true. I spoke to the fellow next door just today. He said he didn't have any problem with Kiwi Fruits, as long as they weren't trying to date his son. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Mr. E. Lurker | The guy next door is a kiwi fruit. You _had_ to know that was coming. |
| Sun 06 Jun | DataMiner | And if any of you folks actually had a Kiwi girlfriend or wife, then you wouldn't be on this discussion board, but you would be lying on your bed (or somewhere), wondering how you got to be so lucky and how long will it take for you to be ready again... And, before you ask, she's out of town, visiting family, and I am going out of my mind... |
| Sun 06 Jun | Herr Herr | Hey, is that my sister/niece/cousin you are talking about? |
| What shareware model works today? | Sat 05 Jun | Alex |
| Since people are hating email spam, ads, especially popup ads, not to mention spyware. The author of Getright is simply giving it away and hoping some users will pay up. What works today? |
| Sat 05 Jun | Shareware Lou | You have a free version that's time or feature limited, with obvious but not annoying reminders to register, and make it easy to pay by clicking a button or link within the software. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas | Before you consider integrated solution from eSellerate (or anyother service) just make sure that you understand that changing them in the future wouldn't be easy. Once your software and their is coupled, it wouldn't be easy to just switch over. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Thanks | Basically it's like this. You work your ass off and make a good program. I'll take the time to download it and use it and not pay you. |
| Sat 05 Jun | matt | 1) Just give it away, with a polite and non-irritating reminder, which makes it easy (very easy) for people to pay. If I have to sign up for paypal I'm not bothered, for example. Bear in mind that people who are lazy, stingy or feel they can't afford to pay (eg students), will just go straight to astalavista.box.sk and search for a crack anyway, and that there's very little you can do about this, unless you want to spend more time developing machiavellian security measures than the app itself, and even then... 2) Perhaps a good idea would be to give away a decent fully functional app, but also sell a 'pro' version with lots of extra goodies. Trillian would be a good example of that approach. I think Winamp do that aswell actually? If it feels like there's anything 'crippled' about the non-pro version, though, that's likely to annoy/put people off. Things like arbitrary limits on things, nag boxes that can't be supressed etc. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | I have paid for the following shareware recently: WebDrive WinZip Textpad Beyond Compare Charles Web Debugger Citydesk Musicmatch So people (at least me) do pay for good programs. To be honest I'm probably more likely to pay for a program when it has a 30 day limit rather than a nag screen. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | > 2) Perhaps a good idea would be to give away a decent fully > functional app, but also sell a 'pro' version with lots of extra > goodies. I don't know about this? For example do you know anyone who has paid for Adaware Pro? I don't even know what is in the Pro version. Everytime I need Adaware I just hop online and download the free version, then leave the site. |
| Sun 06 Jun | George | I bought: Advanced Uninstaller Pro Diskkeeper Windows Commander |
| Sun 06 Jun | Phil | CityDesk UltraEdit PHPExpert TaskTracker and some others |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | I forgot to mention VMWare - that's some pretty expensive shareware too. |
| Google and IM | Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas |
| http://www.orkut.com is an online community that has something to do with google. Google with its email service and this online community might also look forward for the instant messaging market? With 1 GB email account, integrated community and instant messenger (and whatever). |
| Sat 05 Jun | . | ...and so on and so forth. Any reason why we should expect Google not to become another monopoly like Microsoft? |
| Sat 05 Jun | Craig | Google wont become a monopoly like Microsoft because switching from Google is a lot easier. Switching from MS is nearly impossible for most people. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Bill Rushmore | >Switching from MS is nearly impossible for most people. As someone who switches and works between several operating systems, it is getting much easier than it used to. A switch to Mac could even be done easily by the technically challenged. Linux could someday... |
| Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas | >Switching from MS is nearly impossible for most people. Means for masses. |
| Sat 05 Jun | . | Craig, how many search engines do you use for that really important and urgent piece of information? |
| Sat 05 Jun | JWA | '. ' - and what's your point? Are you decrying that fact that no one has figured out how to provide as good of a service as Google? That would be a fair sentiment. But no, it seems that you are complaining that they've become the best and therefore largest in their field and that this is somehow evil. So, what's your point? --Josh |
| Sat 05 Jun | Rob | Who can tell me why dogpile.com hasn't taken off? They've been around just as long as google, and provide meta-search results from google, yahoo and other search engines so by definition are 'better' than just google. Yet our site gets a total of zero search engine referrals each month from them (even though we're #1 on their list for our biggest keywords), and 90% from google? |
| Sat 05 Jun | . | Josh, nothing to do with being evil. Nor anything to do with doing a good job or not. My question and point was, leveraging one's prominence in one field to expand into other related fields will lead to a monopoly. We would all be using Internet Explorer for GMailing and GIMing and maybe even Googling. That a monopoly is right, wrong, good, bad or ugly is something we'll pick up later. But first, should Google move into the IM space, will it or will it not lead to a monopoly? |
| Sat 05 Jun | Philo | 'Monopoly' You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Philo |
| Sat 05 Jun | JWA | Philo's right - you are not using the term monopoly correctly. |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | Monopoly - 1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service 2. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity. 3. A commodity or service so controlled. 4. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled By expanding into IM, Email, Online Communities, Online Storage and so on by an Internet Search Service, that service will, excellent, honest, technically superb service, no doubt, have ' Exclusive control of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service' and will lead to 'Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled' by M/s Google Incorporated. Internet based email, search, IM, storage, news, covers IMO almost the full gamut of 'content storage, retrieval and communication' sector of the Internet. Which leaves only _content generation_ to the others. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | > content generation Google's way ahead of you. They bought Blogger last year. And the latest Google Groups in Beta allows you to create your own group. Kind of like Yahoo Groups. By the way I can't see how Microsoft or Google fit into the above definition of a Monopoly. Microsoft doesn't control Mac OS/X, Linux or FreeBSD. And Google doesn't control the internet. In both cases a new player can come along and beat them at their own game. A case inpoint is how Google came from nowhere and is now on Microsoft's radar screen. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Jorel on Software | There is more than one type of Monopoly. There are horizontal and vertical monopolies. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Bill Brown | Nope, you're not using monopoly correctly. 'Internet based email, search, IM, storage, news, covers IMO almost the full gamut of 'content storage, retrieval and communication' sector of the Internet. Which leaves only _content generation_ to the others.' A monopoly ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly ) occurs when there is no competition for production of a good or service. (I would argue that the only true monopoly is one enforced by governmental power, but that's not important right now.) In every service you mention, there are a boatload of competitors and alternatives. Internet-based email: Yahoo, Hotmail, .Mac, most ISPs offer web-based email, a quick search on SourceForge reveals many open-source web-based email clients available for download. Search: this space is so crowded that it would take awhile just to name the major players. IM: Yahoo, MSN, AOL, open-source Jabber. There's even a number of clients that integrate all of the above. Storage: lots of web-based storage out there, plus there's free storage on every computer. News: since Google News just aggregates news from other sources, there are still those other sources from which to obtain articles. Plus, all of the other major players in the portal biz offer aggregated news. Strictly speaking, Google could never become a monopoly unless all of these competitors disappeared and Google was able to erect insurmountable barriers to entry *for the Web*, which is a ludicrous hypothetical. |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | That is my point. If monopoly is the term used with MS, then monopoly should be the term used with Google (once Gmail, GIM, etc gets popular enough like MS Windows). The definition that is used to deny Google the status of a monopoly is not the definition used to apply the term to MS. PS: I picked up those definitions from Dictionary.com |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | I think you're mixing up 'monopoly' with 'most popular' - they're different. Microsoft were declared a Monopoly because they forced computer makers among other things to ship Windows with Internet Explorer or not get cheap OEM prices. I don't see Google forcing anyone to do anything - hence them not being a monopoly. |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | > I don't see Google forcing anyone to do anything - hence them not being a monopoly. Nor do I. And I hope not they do not in 2010. But if 'fiducary interests' are the prime and may be only motivators, then...... |
| Sun 06 Jun | Philo | 'Microsoft were declared a Monopoly because they forced computer makers among other things to ship Windows with Internet Explorer or not get cheap OEM prices.' Whoa. This is *completely* inaccurate. First of all, there is being a monopoly - that is having the power to fix prices or exclude competition. That is the Sherman Act definition, and it's the definition that matters. Now it so happens that the 'percentage of the market' held is generally a good indicator that a monopoly exists, but it isn't behavior that the law is created to govern. More interestingly, being a monopoly is not illegal. Abuse of monopoly power (or 'monopolization') is what the antitrust laws were written to control - that is using monopoly power to maintain or grow the company's market position. The big case was investigated 1990-1994, which investigated Microsoft's DOS licensing practices (this was the 'pay for every box shipped' license). Microsoft signed a consent decree with the Dept of Justice in 1995 which restricted licensing practices. Then in 1997 the Justice Department filed a complaint stating that MS violated the consent decree by requiring PC manufacturers bundle IE with Windows 95. This was the case that dragged out and continues to be negotiated to this day. Note that this wasn't a 'license for every box' but rather an insistence that to put a Windows 95 license on a box, they had to put IE as well. Also note that as an element of this case, the Justice Department had to show that MS was a monopoly, which they did by establishing the relevant market as 'consumer desktop operating systems' and showing that MS held over 80% of that market. This was not the main finding in the case - simply that if MS wasn't a monopoly, the case wouldn't have made it out of the starting gate; bundling isn't illegal if you're not a monopoly. The above is my personal attempt to simple walk through the factual timeline of the MS/DoJ cases. This post does not reflect any opinion or policy of Microsoft, Corp. Philo |
| Sun 06 Jun | JWA | I understand your confusion. The problem is that the term is generally misused. It is not illegal to have a monopoly on something - it is illegal to use the market leverage derived from that monopoly in one market to deny other competitors access to another. So, if Microsoft had the dominant PC OS and told hardware makers that they would only sell it to them if they agreed to install Internet Explorer and NO other web browsers, that would have been illegal as unfair competition. They had an effective monopoly on the OS market before that supposed deal, but after they were commonly referred to as a monopoly with negative connotations because the laws they may have broken were the anti-monopoly laws. That's the source of the confusion. In Google's case, they have little or no consumer lock-in with which they could even try to leverage unfairly, so I'd doubt they could if they ever wanted to. The real objection to your original sentiment was not your use of the term, but your underlying implications that one company being good at a lot of things was somehow bad for us, the consumer. --Josh |
| Sun 06 Jun | JWA | 'the laws they may have broken were the anti-monopoly laws' should have said 'anti-monopolistic laws' --Josh |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | More than monopoly it is mindshare that is really excruciating. Among many other things, my team writes text books. Computer Science text books for primary and secondary schools. It is really a pain, I mean an oedipal discomfort in the fundament, to explain that Computing is not Word Processing, Word Processing is not MS Word, there is such a thing as an OS that is different from Windows, that one can browse the internet without IE and send emails without OE. And that is to the teachers and some of my team members. Statements such as 'One uses Internet Explorer to visit websites' in the theory class is wrong when teaching 'The Internet'. Practicals in the lab. Ok. Most institutions, make that all, have Windows. But it has to be ingrained early that MS is just a company (don't make me rant about how no one here appreciates or even knows the cost of MS Software, piracy be thanked) and that Windows is one OS, good, popular, effective, no doubt, but only one of the many, and that Notepad is a text editor and Word a word processor and Excel a spreadsheet (and _NOT_ a tool to format text into tables). I do not want 13 year olds to learn 'googling' as a verb in place of 'searching the web' nor 'gmail' to be common noun in place of 'email'. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Philo | 'One uses Internet Explorer to visit websites' [shrug] If you find yourself fighting uphill to make this the proper 'one uses a web browser to visit websites' then just check with your corporate counsel - the examples you quote are trademark violations, and ones which really put the publisher at risk - check out the actions of Xerox and Coca-Cola in protecting their trademarks from becoming generic. I can't comment on whether or not it would be enforced in this case, but it should give you ammo to get where you want to go. :-) [this post is solely my opinion and does not reflect the policies of Microsoft Corp] Philo |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | Yes. I'm scheduled to meet one of the editors of the publishing house to sort this out. Either rework the syllabi or give us editorial leeway to decide on class work vis-a-vis lab work. |
| Sun 06 Jun | . | Oh! And this is not in the U. S. of A. That makes it easier in some ways and darned tough in others! |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | > Whoa. This is *completely* inaccurate. Philo I think *completely* inaccurate would be to state something like 'Microsoft were declared a Monopoly due to the price of bananas being fixed by them'. I was probably partially inaccurate - but hey, I'm not employed by Microsoft to astroturf on these forums, so I don't have all day to pour over the documents to understand the ins and outs of it. But suffice it say that IE bundling had something to do with Microsoft being labled a Monopoly. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Philo | No, absolutely not. As in 'not one iota of legal accuracy.' Your most recent post has other problems, too. First of all, my acquaintance with the Microsoft antitrust case has nothing to do with my employment. It's mostly a result of my following the case while I was in law school, and most notably in Antitrust class. 'that IE bundling had something to do with Microsoft being labled a Monopoly.' Okay, let's try this logically: Netscape sues Microsoft for antitrust violations in bundling IE with Windows. There are several elements to the alleged behavior: - The actor must be a monopoly - The alleged behavior must be based on the monopolized market (for example, bundling Spades with MS Bob would probably not be illegal) - The alleged behavior must be an attempt to harm competition or maintain monopoly power. Those are what are called 'elements of the crime.' If all the elements are not proved, the case fails - it's thrown out of court. So for the IE bundling case to even get out of the starting gates, the absolute first step necessary is to prove that Microsoft holds a monopoly - if they don't, then Netscape and the Justice Department don't have a case. So - an initial argument in the case was to define the market as 'desktop operating systems' and show that Microsoft Windows accounted for a large percentage of that market. Judge Jackson then held that Microsoft held a monopoly in the desktop OS market, so the case could proceed. Do you understand this had NOTHING to do with IE? It was a fundamental prerequisite to the IE case moving forward. Nor was it illegal in and of itself; it was the alleged behavior of a company holding a monopoly position that was on trial. Finally, FWIW, MS doesn't pay me to be here - I do this on my own time. (in fact I'm on vacation this week) Philo |
| Sun 06 Jun | Philo | ...and BTW, it's the lawyer in me that's annoyed by these legal misstatements, and the teacher in me that feels the need to straighten them out. :-) Philo |
| Sun 06 Jun | Jeve Stobs | Speaking of being on MS payroll, who here thinks Joel is a paid MS evangelist of some kind? Anybody notice how any post anti-MS gets deleted? And anybody notice how any deleted post still shows up for the original poster but is deleted for everybody else? (Try surfing through a proxy after all of the responses to your anti-MS post suddenly disappear, but your post 'remains' until you go through the proxy and see that actually it's gone). |
| Sun 06 Jun | Matthew Lock | > ...and BTW, it's the lawyer in me that's annoyed by these > legal misstatements, and the teacher in me that feels > the need to straighten them out. :-) And the nerd in you that needs to nitpick tiny details when they are tangental to the discussion ;) |
| 640K Should be Enough for Anybody | Sat 05 Jun | Matthew Lock |
| Just been surfing around old posts to alt.folklore.urban Imagine my suprise when it turns out that Bil Gates never said 640K Should be Enough for Anybody: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&selm=3110FD08.18D4%40pobox.com |
| Sat 05 Jun | Simon Lucy | He did say something about 2Mb being the desireable memory size, at a time when RAM was very expensive and he was trying to pitch OS/2. It was about the same time that he talked about a computer on every desk and a Microsoft Operating system on every computer. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Matthew Lock | More here: http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,1484,00.html |
| Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas | http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/humor.html |
| Sat 05 Jun | Philo | 'this column daringly offered free software into the millennium to anyone who remembers one thing Bill Gates ever said. We were taking issue with the notion advanced in the magazine that Mr. Gates is shaping this or the next century as a visionary leader, as opposed to just selling lots of software' LOL! So they consider people who *say* things more important than people who actually *do* things? Philo |
| Sat 05 Jun | Stephen Jones | No Philo, they just consider people who say and do things as more important than people who just sell things. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Chris Nahr | So in your world Microsoft didn't create Windows and Office, they're just "selling" them? |
| Sat 05 Jun | Tom H | How do you think Bill Gates will be remembered in the history of American business? Will he be mentioned with the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Henry Ford? I think so, whether you like Microsoft or not. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Rich Bastard | Actually Bill Gates did say 640K should be enough for anybody, but he was talking about employee stock options. HA HA HA HA |
| Sat 05 Jun | Mike | Yup cause some of those guys had monopolies too. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Stephen Jones | Depends what you mean by 'create'? If you are talking about a clear original idea that changed the direction of computing then, no, Gates didn't create anything. The GUI, the mouse, the Word processor, the spreadsheet, the relational database were all created by others, however good a job MS did of producing their version. Remember the original post was attacking the adulation of Gates from a 1997 interview (you know, one of these 'Bill Gates invented the Internet, PC, GUI etc' type articles). And you can't even compare Gates to Ford, because the Ford of software was Simonyi. Anyway, I'd have thought making tens of billions would surely be enough reward for what Bill has done well, without insisting on adulation as well. |
| Sat 05 Jun | www.marktaw.com | '640K Should be Enough for Anybody' Bandwidth? Coz it's taking me forever to download the new Harry Potter movie. (I'm joking) |
| Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas | http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates |
| Sat 05 Jun | Philo | 'And you can't even compare Gates to Ford, because the Ford of software was Simonyi.' You can't compare Gates to Ford, because while Ford's revolutionary ideas were adopted wholesale by business, Gates' ideas have been rejected by business. 'assembly lines mean your workers need less training, can be more closely monitored, and their work is more apparent' - good for management 'Treat your employees as people, make their worklife comfortable so they like staying at the office, encourage independence, tolerate mistakes, and kill off underproducing product lines quickly' - alien concepts management will never buy into. Philo |
| Sat 05 Jun | Warren Henning | Ford didn't invent the assembly line. He also wrote the book The International Jew, which was instrumental in turning millions of Germans on to anti-Semitism. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Tom H | I compare him to the other men because they all built their empires around a relatively new technology that they didn't invent, but within a couple of decades completely dominated their respective industries (steamboats, oil, steel, automobiles, and computers). |
| Sat 05 Jun | Stephen Jones | Dear Philo, If Microsoft built a car would you let your kids get in it? Dear Tom H., There is much in common between Rockefeller and Gates, particularly in the use of unfair business tactics, monopoly leverage and downright bullying though Gates hasn't resorted to murder and arson as Rockefeller did in the early 1870s. Rockefeller, like Gates also believed that the carrtels and unfair trade practices he set up were protecting both the consumer and the producer from the disastrous effects of short term swings caused by the free market. I strongly recommend 'Titan' by Ron Chernov, which is both well-written and sympathetic to Rockefeller. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Tom H | '...particularly in the use of unfair business tactics, monopoly leverage and downright bullying...' I'm not defending any of them, just comparing. In fact the term 'Robber baron' http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_075300_robberbarons.htm was coined to describe several of them. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Philo | 'If Microsoft built a car would you let your kids get in it?' Heh. I was on a development team about five years ago - we were all cowboys. On of the VP's asked during a demo 'would you get in a plane this team wrote the software for?' Our web guy said 'absolutely' After the meeting, the PM asked him about his answer - 'hey, if we wrote the software for the plane, it would never get off the ground.' (the PM wasn't happy) Would I let my kids drive a car built by MS? If we're talking about the current environment, and no other vendors being allowed to add software, then yes. Philo |
| Sat 05 Jun | Motown (AU) | 'I'm not defending any of them, just comparing. In fact the term 'Robber baron' http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_075300_robberbarons.htm was coined to describe several of them.' Not quite. Goes a bit further back IIRC. Raubritter (sp??) refers to the robber barons of medievil Europe. As remembered from Darklands (Microprose). Who says computer games teach you nothing ;-) |
| Sun 06 Jun | Myron A. Semack | The '640K should be enough for anybody' quote actually came from the president of Tandy during a magazine interview. Somehow, it got attributed to Bill Gates. I guess becuse few people exven remember Tandy today. Unfortunately, people have a hard time letting reality get in the way of a good story. If you search Google for that quote, you'll notice that the year next to Gate's name is different on most of the pages. Some say 1990. Some say 1985. Some say 1981. |
| Sun 06 Jun | xyzzy | I remember a quote by Bill Gates. Reported by Robert Cringley in his famous PBS special on the history of the computer. After a Comdex show a slightly drunk Gates shouted, "I want to get laid!" |
| Using free VC++ Toolkit? | Sat 05 Jun | Rob |
| I downloaded it because it seemed cool, but it seems like the build environment is totally fed. I can build the samples that come with it... but then I downloaded the Platform SDK and couldnt build any of those samples. I have had to copy nmake and lib into directories in the path and stuff, and it still doesnt work. I did this: 1) Install VC++ Toolkit 2) Install Platform SDK 3) Run VCVARS32 batch file from VC++ 4) Run SetEnv.bat from Platform SDK 5) Run nmake But then it cant find nmake.. and the only place I found nmake was in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin\Win64 Win64? I thought I was doing Win32. There is no Win32 dir, just WinNT, and that doesnt contain nmake, or lib (which it also failed to find). And when I downloaded it I noticed it said Windows Server 2003... did I download the wrong thing or something? And then I tried compiling other samples and they all gave weird error messages, and some warnings too. I guess I better go grab VS.NET from work... I guess this is their way of saying buy Visual Studio...? Anyone else have these problems? |
| Sat 05 Jun | yet another anon | I was bored, so I took the 1 minute to Google 'VC++ Toolkit nmake Win64' for you. Your answer lies here: http://www.wxwindows.org/lnk_msw.htm That will be $5, please. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Rob | Wow, thanks. I did google for answers, but I didn't hit upon those correct keywords. Does anyone else think it is odd that you have to do a little hacking to get everything to work together? I thought it would be easier than that... |
| Sat 05 Jun | Green Pajamas | Free software needs to be hacked. Isn't it the way how most of the free Linux-based software works? :p |
| Sat 05 Jun | Martin Beckett | You also of course free to use any other make. We use gnu-make under cygwin along with a script which builds the correct compiler flags so we can build our product on windows and unix using msvc, bcc32, mingw-gcc, gcc and intel icc. Doing daily builds with both MSVC and GCC is very good at finding obscure bugs. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Brad Wilson | NAnt (and presumably Ant, with some Microsoft-specific extensions) also include tasks to run the command line C++ compiler. That doesn't help you in building the SDK samples, but it's a better build environment than nmake. |
| Sat 05 Jun | Moe Hawke | >>'But then it can't find nmake.. and the only place I found nmake was in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin\Win64' In other words, Microsoft includes batch files which set environment variables but the batch files *DON'T* point to nmake, forcing the user to resort to various manual hacking to get things to work. So I guess the question is: Are they stupid, incompetent or just screwing with people? |
| Sat 05 Jun | Rob | Another thing that is missing is MSCVRT.lib and such. You have to download the .NET Framework SDK and then add the Visual Studio .NET 2003/Vc7/lib directory to your include path too. And that is free too of course... I applaud Microsoft for making these things available for free, they are excellent tools. But it seems as though if their goal is to get beginner's started (and therefore hook them on MS dev tools), they have fallen way short, because something like this will totally offput a beginner. So Microsoft is good at executing if they want to -- I guess that is not their goal at all. I wonder what the motivation behind this was? |
| Sun 06 Jun | g. | 'Are they stupid, incompetent or just screwing with people?' Maybe polishing up a command-line version of their compiler that people can download for free isn't their top priority. I'm going to take a wild-ass guess here and say that the people using a free VC++ download aren't the heavy-hitters on that platform. If you can't afford $100 or so for a commercial compiler, you're probably pretty small beans, and don't care too much about Windows development. Or at least the kind of Windows development that brings a lot of people with a lot of $$$ to Windows. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Rob | Then why release it at all? I thought the point was that they wanted to get beginners hooked. It's besides the point that beginner's aren't big time Windows developers. It is so that they might be later. This is analogous to Apple giving away lots of free computers to schools. They wanted kids to grow up on Apple and buy Apple as adults. |
| Sun 06 Jun | Tom | It could persuade more few free projects to compile on VS.NET, I suppose, by adding VC++ to the list of compilers you can legally get for free. And as it's alleged to be so standards-compliant, maybe it will displace comeau c++'s web front end as the compiler of choice for testing out the further frontiers of c++ templatism. This won't make them any money, I'm sure, but I doubt it will lose them much, and may just increase their standing slightly in a hearts'n'minds sort of way. |
| Men are from foo, women are from bar | Fri 04 Jun | Sathyaish Chakravarthy |
| HER DIARY Sunday night I thought he was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a bar to have a drink. I was shopping with my friends all day long, so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment. Conversation wasnt flowing so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk, he agreed but he kept quiet and absent. I asked him what was wrong - he said, Nothing. I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said it had nothing to do with me and not to worry. On the way home I told him that I loved him, he simply smiled and kept driving. I cant explain his behavior; I dont know why he didnt say, I love you, too. When we got home I felt as if I had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there and watched T.V.; he seemed distant and absent. Finally I decided to go to bed. About 10 minutes later he got up and went to sleep on the sofa. I still felt that he was distracted and his thoughts were somewhere else. I decided that I could not take it anymore, so I decided to confront him with the situation but he had fallen asleep. I started crying and cried until I too fell asleep. I dont know what to do. Im almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else. My life is a disaster. HIS DIARY Today, We lost the cricket match. |
| Fri 04 Jun | A Dingo Ate My Baby | Oh, it's weekend already... Dang how time flies. |
| Fri 04 Jun | Sathyaish Chakravarthy | Let me clarify two things: (1) I was reading in between there were some stupid posts around the weekend, and I didn't make those |