Topic: Bad move for intel?

[Just plain old Punisher]

What exactly do you mean by "easy to use"? 

If you mean that Linux doesn't assume that you're a moron and that it's creators know everything that you should and shouldn't do with your computer, than you're correct.  If you mean that Linux isn't as easy for a Windows user to use because it doesn't work exactly like Windows and you have to learn the differences, then you're correct.  If you mean that it is more difficult to accomplish normal computing tasks on Linux if you have about the same level of know-how on Linux as you do on Windows regardless if you're a guru or just an average user, than you are sadly mistaken. 

Just try out a Live CD Linux distro with KDE, like Slax, Knoppix, Mepis, or kubuntu and you'll see just how easy it is to use Linux.  Without any Linux background and with only a simple working knowledge of common Windows programs, I can guarantee that you'll be able to use office programs (Open Office), browse the internet (Mozilla, Firefox, and Konqueror), use an email client (kmail and Thunderbird), chat (gaim and kopete), burn CDs and DVDs (K3b), watch videos (mplayer, xine, kaffeine), listen to music (amarok, JuK), create 2D artwork (GIMP), create 3D artwork (blender), and many other things that you can do with Windows without any real difficulty or serious learning curve. 

And for those who aren't afraid of using a command line, you'll find that once you get comfortable with it, it's much faster and easier to use sometimes than looking around for the right icon or the right menu or panel in the GUI.  You can't say the same about Windows. 

Also, if something doesn't work right, it's a lot easier to fix it in Linux than in Windows.  For instance, I was having trouble with Blender recently after I installed it.  Whenever I clicked on the icon, it tried to open but never did.  I opened up the CLI and typed "blender" and it told me exactly what was wrong.  I needed to download a dependency.  I downloaded the package for the dependency and installed it and everything worked fine.  If I had the same problem in Windows, who knows if I would've ever figured out how to fix it.

Just to make things a little easier for Punisher.

Just out of curiousity Punisher what things do you find too difficult under Linux vs Windows?  Or perhaps just less easy?

There aren't anywhere near as many applications available for Linux as there are for windows. Games too. And device drivers.

Look, sure, you may like being able to recomplile the kernel whenever you feel like it, but most people just don't need to.

Linux is a nitche operating system. It will have it's market share, and most likley won't get too much bigger.

[Bonk]

So this begs the question:

Should modern businesses strive for mediocrity rather than excellence? Adequate goods and services instead of quality ones? For if your product or service is too good it will dominate the market and you will be punished.

No wonder you always hear people saying they don't make them like they used to... This is a disturbing trend.

[Just plain old Punisher]

And where do you buy your clothes and shoes?

[Nemesis]

Should modern businesses strive for mediocrity rather than excellence? Adequate goods and services instead of quality ones? For if your product or service is too good it will dominate the market and you will be punished.

Microsoft has never been known for quality.  If they were selling based on quality why was it that the ad campaigns for Win98 included how much more stable it was than Win95?  Then they did the same with XP versus Win 98 and Win2000.  Already they are going on about how Vista will be more secure than XP.  If they have been competing on qualtiy then why are they knocking the quality of their own prior products?

How did Microsoft beat DR-DOS?  By quality?  No by forcing PC manufacturers to pay per computer for MS-DOS if they wanted to sell it at a competitive price.  Since DR-DOS was therefore the price of DR-DOS + the price of MS-DOS when preinstalled DR-DOS was priced out of most of the market.  Then they used the "infamous" incompatible OS notice in their Windows beta to dissuade companies from supportting software on DR-DOS even though DR-DOS was compatible.

How did Microsoft beat BeOS?  By quality?  No by forbidding companies that sold preinstalled Windows from installing BeOS dual boot and once again forcing the per computer license to make BeOS appear more expensive just like they did to DR-DOS.

How did they beat out Lotus SmartSuite and Perfect Office?  By quality?  No by threatening to raise prices for DOS and Windows if they sold Office Suites other than MS Office bundled with their computers. 

Then of course there is the false advertising and false statements to the press.  Telling Novells customers that Novell might be leaving the network server market for example.  Citing a study showing Linux was 10x more expensive to run than Windows (the study compared Linux on a mainframe to Windows on a dual Xeon) is another.  Calling open source software viral, communist and anti-American as well.

These are the type of behaviours that have caused Microsoft to lose court battle after court battle.   Microsoft uses compulsion against the distribution channels to force the appearance of higher prices for the competitors products while ensuring that no matter what the customer actually wants to buy Microsoft gets paid.

I wish that Microsoft would compete using quality and honesty rather than compulsion and deception.

[Nemesis]

There aren't anywhere near as many applications available for Linux as there are for windows. Games too. And device drivers.

Games I will agree with you they are not yet "there" though that does show signs that things are slowly changing.  Other applications are available in enormous variety ranging all over the landscape.

Device drivers can be a pain, but they do improve and will continue to do so as long as Linux grows in market share.  They can also be a pain on Windows. 

Look, sure, you may like being able to recomplile the kernel whenever you feel like it, but most people just don't need to.

Never had to recompile a kernel myself.  Most people should never need to.  Those who do are probably the same types who wish they could do it on Windows.

Linux is a nitche operating system. It will have it's market share, and most likley won't get too much bigger.

Tell me if Linux is no threat why does Microsoft spend so much effort trying to fight it?  Just what is its niche?  They are dominant on the top 500 super computers, strong on servers and slowly growing on the desktop.  Penetration into embedded devices is on going but I don't know just how successfully. 

There is 1 super computer in the top 500 running Windows.  Microsoft subsidized it.

You might want to check out this link

Top Server Market Findings

    * Year-over-year unit shipment growth of 10.9% – the lowest unit growth in more than two years – reflects moderating unit growth in the volume server segment, more difficult compares, and a shifting product mix.

    * Linux servers posted their 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with year-over-year revenue growth of 45.1% and unit shipments up 32.1%. Customers continue to expand the role of Linux servers into an ever increasing array of workloads in both the commercial and technical segments of the market.

    * Microsoft Windows servers showed strong growth, as revenues grew 14.3% and unit shipments grew 10.9% year over year. Significantly, quarterly revenue of $4.1 billion for Windows servers represented 33.5% of overall quarterly factory revenue, as customers deploy more fully configured Windows servers for server virtualization initiatives.

    * Unix servers experienced 2.5% revenue growth year over year; however, unit shipments declined 8.7% when compared with 1Q04. Worldwide Unix revenues of $4.3 billion for the quarter reflect continued IT investment in this server market segment with particular strength in the high-end of the market.

Notice the relative growth rates.

Right now in Massachusetts a critical battle is being fought against Microsoft by the State government.  This is not a fight directly over Linux or Open Source software but over file formats.  The important aspect is that if the State wins and makes the conversion to an open standard file format for Office software they will have broken the proprietary lockin to MS Office.  Once the Office software lockin is broken and open formats are chosen then it becomes easier for the desktop to change to another OS. 

You see Massachusetts understands that what is important is not the program or the OS but the data.  So long as your data is locked into someone else's proprietary data format you are their hostage.  Massachusetts has decided to be a hostage no longer.  Once they have freed themselves companies that deal with them will be required to use the same data formats when dealing with them.  This will encourage those companies to free themselves as well.  Assuming Massachusetts is a success then other states will follow suit.  With each state and city breaking the Microsoft lockin the ability of other OSs to compete on the desktop will be enhanced.  That is why Microsoft is fighting Massachusetts tooth and nail.  They see the beginning of what just may be an avalanche that will sweep them away. 

Microsoft is afraid.  They have seen the road ahead and they believe in Linux.

[Just plain old Punisher]

Servers are always a small percentage of the total market. You'll notice the overall growth of the Linux market share has probably only grown a percentage point or two.

Linux is behind Mac, and mac is behind windows.

[Bonk]

Punisher, to satisfy your curiosity, I buy my clothes at Mark's Work Wearhouse and I got my last pair of shoes at Canadian Tire. 

Nemesis, I was not trying to defend windows product quality (You know I'm firm believer in QNX or FreeBSD when it comes to a quality OS) but rather exploring the idea in general. It seems to be the trend that if your products are successful you are punished, I do not think that this is a good thing.

[Mr_Tricorder]

Punisher, to satisfy your curiosity, I buy my clothes at Mark's Work Wearhouse and I got my last pair of shoes at Canadian Tire. 

Nemesis, I was not trying to defend windows product quality (You know I'm firm believer in QNX or FreeBSD when it comes to a quality OS) but rather exploring the idea in general. It seems to be the trend that if your products are successful you are punished, I do not think that this is a good thing.

If your products are successful because they are the best choice on the market, they you shouldn't be punished.  If your products are truly better than your competitor's products and you can beat them on quality and price on an even footing, than you shouldn't be punished.  However, Micrososft is pushing inferior products by slanting the playing field as much in their favor as possible.  What they do is unethical and many times illegal.  They are not being picked on just for being successful.  They are rightfully being punished.

[Nemesis]

Nemesis, I was not trying to defend windows product quality (You know I'm firm believer in QNX or FreeBSD when it comes to a quality OS) but rather exploring the idea in general. It seems to be the trend that if your products are successful you are punished, I do not think that this is a good thing.

It is not success that gets you punished.  It is the means of that success and what you do with it.

Lets start with MS-DOS.  How did it become dominant?

IBM goes to Microsoft and asks them to create an OS for the as yet unmarketed IBM PC.  Microsoft agrees even though they can't actually produce it because Gates knows of a company that has such an OS and he believes he can cut a deal, he does.  Microsoft licenses QDOS as MS-DOS and sublicenses it to IBM as IBM PC-DOS.  IBM choses to ship a copy with each PC and Microsoft is paid accordingly.  Along come the clones and they need a DOS that is compatible with IBM PC-DOS so they make deals with Microsoft where they pay per PC.  At this point there is no problem as people are buying the machines to run the same programs as run on the IBM PC under PC-DOS.

The next phase is where Microsofts success begins to unravel.  Digital Research creates DR-DOS.  Any large PC distributor who wants to offer DR-DOS alongside MS-DOS finds that they must pay Microsoft per machine which means that DR-DOS cannot compete because Microsoft has control of the market place.  There is no free market for DOS competitors.  This is where Microsoft goes wrong.  By controlling the market and excluding competitors they have violated the law.  If they had charged per MS-DOS sold and Digital Research had gone belly up due to lack of demand Microsoft would not have been in trouble.

There is more but it is all in the same vein.  Now on to the next phase - expanding the monopoly.

How did Microsoft Office achieve dominance?

Firstly Microsoft is alleged to have lied to competitors to convince them not to push their Word Processors onto Windows early on.  If this indeed happened it allowed Microsoft the time to create their own Office software on Windows before the competition. 

The next phase utilized the per PC payments for DOS/Windows.  Sell a competitors Office software and Microsoft boosts the per PC cost of DOS/Windows by enough to make up for the "lost" profits of not selling MS Office.  At this point Microsoft is using their illegally maintained OS monopoly to illegally obtain a monopoly in a related field.  Once the Office monopoly is illegally achieved using the OS monopoly to maintain it is illegal and that is what they did.

Other violations of Monopoly law:

Blocking PC manufacturers from installing competitors software.  Specifically done with Netscape and BeOS.

Making changes to Windows to damage the operation of competitors products.  Definitely happened in a Windows Beta to dissuade people from supporting DR-DOS.  Rumoured in other cases.  At least one internal Microsoft memo saying that they would make changes to Windows to harm the PalmOS so that WinCE would do better in the market place (after testifying in court that they never did and never would do such things).  At least one case of falsifying evidence in court.

In essence the success of Microsoft was maintained and extended by means that can be considered extortion, sabotage and blackmail. 

[Nemesis]

Servers are always a small percentage of the total market. You'll notice the overall growth of the Linux market share has probably only grown a percentage point or two.

It is one of the most lucrative sectors as well.  The strength of Linux in this field also gives the lie to the Microsoft claims that Linux is a "toy" OS.  A toy OS would not be a good server OS.

Microsoft has also worked to change the way the desktop clients communicate with the servers to make it harder for competitors to make servers to work with Windows (there is that illegally using  your monopoly to exclude competition again).

Linux is behind Mac, and mac is behind windows.

I haven't seen any credible numbers recently but the last ones I did see showed Linux just ahead of Mac.   The reason I say credible is that some organizations produce "reports" that say what they are told to say.

Two things to remember about Windows/Linux market shares.  The old per PC licensing deals mean that many machines running Linux are recorded at the retail level as running Windows even though they were never active as a Windows machine.  The other of course are all the machines running free versions of Linux don't get counted either.  These things tend to increase the apparent numbers for Microsoft and decrease them for Linux.

[Bonk]

QNX and FreeBSD both beat Linux as a quality server OS hands down.    Red Hat and Fedora make me want to puke, they're the ones MS is concerned about and to be honest I think they are as bad a product as MS in how they pander to the masses.

[Mr_Tricorder]

I can understand your sentiment towards Red Hat and Fedora, especially because of my own very short and limited experience with Fedora Core 4.  However, there are people who love them and really like the fact that you don't have to become a computer geek to use them.  Just like any other piece of software out there, some people swear by them and some people swear at them.

All of the different Linux distros, FreeBSD (and all the other BSDs), QNX, and other open source OSes are like a family.  They tend to help each other out and generally speaking what's good for one is also good for the others.

If you prefer running FreeBSD or QNX as a server over Linux or Windows, you should be perfectly free to do so.  The linux crowd won't stop you.  However, Microsoft's goal is to shut down any non-Windows OS that exists on the same kind of platform that Windows does.  That means that Microsoft has a problem with your preference to running FreeBSD or QNX and will do what it can (short of making Windows more stable and better quality) to make them a non-viable option.

[Nemesis]

An anti-Microsoft site that I found earlier today.  I haven't found any errors in things that I already knew about but there are other areas which are beyond my knowledge, especially quotes.  People on both sides may find it interesting to see what those who are really rabidly anti-Microsoft are saying.

[GE-Raven]

I am a network admin. 

We run a Novell/Groupwise Network
We also run Windows as our Main IIS and Sql Server.
We are an educational institution.

Windows is as big as it is for one main reason.  It works!  They have a huge budget for making the support of their product easy for a small department.  Most people are already familiar with it.

Sure I toyed with Red Hat nine a few years back, interesting, fun, lots of nifty little tools for fun network stuff.  All "free".   It was also enough to convince me that I would NEVER switch my end users to anything open sourced.  If I have a problem with MS Word I can look up tons of company supported documents, I can then use utilites designed for patching, updating, installing, uninstalling, etc.  I can basically support 500 workstatins with a functional staf of 4 (Helpdesk, Computer tech, and Net tech).  Sure I could do many of these things with open source, but at the end of the day the very fact it isn't "supported" by anyone because no one is paid to support it, means I will never use it.  If something doesn't work I want a vendor  and a company that is responsible to make it work.  (You would be amazed at how responsive even Microsoft is when you buy 500+ licenses of their OS, Office Suite, and other programs)

I get so tired of hearing about unfair practices.  I have seen tons of competitors that have been able to "on up" MS.  The normal result that company gets a healthy buyout by MS.  Win/Win.  They get rid of a better competitor, I get better stuff from a good company.  If Microsoft gets "too expensive" then compaines (especially small ones) will move.  My wife works at a place that uses open office (except for all the secretaries that flat out refuse).  However as my brother happens to be the tech there I can tell you they spend a hell of a lot more money on a tech department (that is larger than ours though supporting less than 1/5 the number of computers) then they would have just buying the licenses of the software.

In the end MS is a monopoly because the people want it that way.  We LIKE the software, and it works!  It isn't too hard to learn, we know who to call when it breaks, and it has the bonus of everyone knowing it because it is a monopoly.

There will always be a Niche market for all sorts of things.  If I wanted to make a free Tivo device, I would take the time and check out the options in the Unix/Linux world.  However I would be cheaper off buying a Tivo. (Considering what I think my time is worth).  That being said I still do something just for fun, and I still love the fact I made a nintendo controller work on my pc.

So as a computer savy guy that has NEVER taken a class in computers, I will say that sometimes things are succesful because they deserve to be so.  Do I think that MS might do some "questionable practices"?  Probably, but no more than the local meat market.  And an OS can't kill me.

GE-Raven

[Bonk]

I wholeheartedly agree with your analysys of MS, but Novell/Groupwise? (ack! runs screaming from thread... Novell gives me the heebie jeebies even worse than Norton)

Its a shame you experimented with RedHat and not FreeBSD or a true Unix for which the documentation base is huge and really requires no support because it works intuitively and reliably.

In summary:

MS: 
Novell:   

FreeBSD: 
RedHat:   

[Bonk]

OK, this is getting frigging ridiculous:

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9C46B7CD-67E3-46E6-A23F-6C6BEF6A1DD3


Why don't Sony and Alpine sue Ford for including CD players and radios in their automobiles?

I knew that the DoJ had set a dangerous precedent with the whole netscape thing... now anyone and his dog is free to milk the MS anti-trust cash cow...

Its absolutely stupid, If I were Bill at this point I'd be tempted to pull the plug on the works; shutdown MS altogether and retire on some isolated Carribean island.

Then what would these complainers do with their applications developed for windows? Write their own OS and development system? I think not, or they would have done so already.

Its a frickin load of crap I tell ya....

Hmmm maybe the easiest way for me to get rich is to write a half assed piece of software that MS already produces, then launch an anti-trust suit? 

 

edit: Personally, I'm much more concerned by stuff like Oracle trying to aquire MySQL... 

[Bonk]

Sure I could do many of these things with open source, but at the end of the day the very fact it isn't "supported" by anyone because no one is paid to support it, means I will never use it.

http://www.lemis.com/grog/Documentation/CFBSD/

[Bonk]

Lol, I only now realised what the original topic was really about.

My aunt asked me to scope out skype for her. After reading their terms and agreeements, and learning that it is from the makers of kazaa, I strongly reccomended that she should not install it for the continued protection of her privacy and the security of her PC.

AMD should not be concerned. I'm pretty confident that the strings attached to skype will prove too much for its longevity. (though I do have a tendency to underestimate the herd mentality of the general public...)

[Mr_Tricorder]

... though I do have a tendency to underestimate the herd mentality of the general public...

"Four legs good.  Two legs baa-aa-aad."

--George Orwell, Animal Farm

Every time someone mentions herd mentality, I think of this.  It's a pretty accurate description.

[Nemesis]

Skype hacked (link) to disable Intel dual core detector and it works fine on AMD.  As expected this was just a ploy to exclude AMD from part of the server market.