157 comments on It's the Ecology, Stupid
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157 comments on It's the Ecology, Stupid
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Microsoft is very much dependent on the growth of the capitalist world economy as a whole, including its material infrastructure. The so-called information economy is a myth. What is all the information about? It's ultimately about keeping track of material matters and the financial superstructure that sits atop it. Without growth in this very material global economy Microsoft has no place to go. And the global industrial economy is not going to grow -- it can't, not much. It will shink.
Modern capitalism has evolved a vast and grossly parasitic overgrowth of bureaucracy, corporate and gov't. MS and other software giants mostly serve this cancerous bloat on the body politic.
Think about what the jobs have been. Finance, real estate, marketing, insurance, law. Even medicine is more about paper pushing than medicine. True, we still have the "defense" industry. We have actually significantly de-industrialized already, but in the wrong direction! We no longer produce anything (much) of real value.
We need to de-industrialize in a planned way in the other direction, that is toward localized, dense, sustainable, carless, mostly self-sufficient agriculturally based communities. I hope we are able to maintain a global electronic commons in that new era.
But even on narrower grounds, the trees didn't really begin to cry buckets until the computer came along. I was (and still am I suppose in some sense) a computer guy. The computer revolution is more than fifty years old and has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce paper consumption.
End of rant.
Then there is this, right my own back yard too!
Native Americans see unity as path to prosperity
This is their idea of prosperity?! @#%$%!!
Humanity is sooo screwed!
Ah; but do you have a Gambling "Industry"? We have one here in Australia, and we take it very seriously.
It gets an aweful lot of airtime. Almost as much as polly tishuns.
As you can see from my previous comment our
AborigenesNative Americans seem to have that industry well under control in their own nations, they even give tourist visas to the Americans who come to visit with their weekend passports.Granted there are a few nation states such as Las Vegas that are not under their direct control.
"It is important to note that currently there are 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States, not all of which have chosen to game. However, it is safe to assume that the tribal gaming industry will continue to grow in the near term, as new casino and resort developments are built by tribes and America's general passion for opportunities to gamble (Las Vegas, poker tours, Internet, etc.), continues to flourish. There are currently a number of lawsuits pending which challenge the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act on constitutional grounds (see e.g. Warren v. United States)"
As per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_gambling_enterprises
Its enlightening to read the PreHisory on Native American Gambling.....on that wiki.
Then the Supreme Court decision that set the wheels in motion.
Airdale-and the biggest casinos seem to be in the NorthEast
Airdale, I know you are right and hopefully not too many of those are planning on doing this either:
DaveByGolly on the InfoAge and others.
When you use MSFT as your model I see the issue somewhat differently.
MSFT should have been treated as IBM was by the Anti Trust laws regarding monopolistic behaviour and marketing yet for some reason they were given a pass many many times.
There products are absolute trash and engineered for one reason. To force you to buy their upgrades. Once PCs would run on 128MB of core. Now they require 2 gig to even get going.
Yet if you remove MSFT and replace it with Linux you will notice that you do not need all those resources. This is called 'open source' and was pretty much killed off by various means including out and out attacks.
I suggest the reading of ESR's 'The Chathedral and The Bazaar' for detailed insight into the unfilled promises of the rise of computing on the personal front and what 'might have been' except for the proclivities of MSFT and Co.
It was all marketing mumbojumbo and everyone swallowed it.
The world suffered. The net suffered and instead of a font of knowledge it became just another marketing scam/world.
Try to find a small bit of information. You will get 10,000 hits on those wanting to sell you that tidbit when all it is is information. Buried way way deep down might just be that little piece of info but you surely will not find it.
Devour the paper industry? Not til every last usuable tree has been processed into asswipe or worse. Junk mail abounds.etc...etc...
No need to gnash teeth and wail. Its over. We lost. They won.
Now 'just exaclty what are YOU going to do about it',,,whine or get off the gird and relearn what life is really all about?
Some will say''' LOOK he is typing this on a computer!!!!!! NO FAIR.
Yes but I could be typing it on a Linux based box with no cost in software and sitting next to a dead printer. In a smallish farm in the outback and gleaning some of the last 'dabs of free info' here on TOD and reading of what comes next. A righteous usage of computing, IMO of course.
Airdale-I mix technologies when appropriate and I think there could have been a better way but NOOOOOOO ,TPTB made their decisions, now I make mine AND I could do all this 'off the grid' and with free photons creating electrons,,etc....which I soon will if the devil donn't care and the creeks don't rise.....
MSFT also ran a fraudulent Ponzi scheme with the blessing of the US government but that is another story.
I am no fan of Microsoft, but Microsoft would not survive if their products were "absolute trash". The fact is that one reason Microsoft dominates the marketplace is the power and utility of their software.
Also, nearly all commercial software products require you to purchase upgrades and consume more hardware at some point. Hardly particular to Microsoft.
"Open Source" is alive and struggling not because TPTB killed it off - there's tons of "open source" software out there - but due to lack of end-user support and instability/incompabilities.
Microsoft dominates the marketplace because of well-documented anti-competition techniques - which if used by almost any other corporation would have resulted in all kinds of legal issues...remember Netscape?
The fact is that one reason Microsoft dominates the marketplace is the power and utility of their software.
Really?
Please do explain the anti-trust convictions then.
Absolutely false. The reason is that they drove one competitor after another out of business, and prevented others from ever getting off the ground. Businesses were formed with the idea of selling, not to the public, but selling out to MS. They used the exact same tactics J.D. Rockefeller, but in software.
There is however some truth to your complaints about open source. But I'm not going there now. Were already far from the oil patch. (My fault, not yours.)
Edit: I re-read your sentence above. Now I see the "one", in "one reason". So I have to back off the "absolutely false". The rest I still defend.
Microsoft is a law firm. They write software on the side----
Now back to Capitalism, and the need to expand indefinitely in a finite environment.
Anyone see a problem here?
Look around, how are things?
I disagree.
Anything that can be done by MSFT Office can be done with Open Office under Linux.
What you speak of it mostly gaming nonsense. Drivers for each thing that comes out. And I might add that there are those who work in scientific areas that must use Unix/Linux for good reasons.
Also one can actually 'alter' the code. Try that with MousyFailingSuksTerrible(MSFT) products or op system.
Airdale
As usual, everybody's half right.
Pro MS 1) MS operating systems are VERY GOOD at getting other software companies to operate well on them. I use a dozen critical applications which are only available on MS platforms, and which (finally with XP) do run very well on them. 2) Linux (Open Source) is great if all you do is surf the net, play games and write emails from home. (Also can be a useful lab environment for scientists). Start a project on how to run a multi-site multi-thousand-person company with it only..... (Hint: you can't get there from here)
Con MS 1) Their VB / .NET etc. crap is almost totally worthless. No creativity, not object oriented (VB), largely stolen from other software houses (Sybase) etc. etc. etc. 2) Most of their additions to the C+ world were crap designed to lock development into using solely their products.
Speaking professionally as an ISP [since 1994 100% open source], that's simply wrong. The net depends on open source and linux is a huge part of that. Best *business* decision I ever made was throwing my Windows PC out the window into the driveway years ago. Got a Windows PC then specifically to run some proprietary software - never made that mistake again.
cfm in Gray, ME
Does it depend on what you want to do and on how you work? I tried several linuxes and found they all were strongly dependent on mouse without keyshort alternative. And was unable to do all manner of adjustments (eg display settings) which were easy with win2000. Linux would be great if it was great.
RobinPC,
Well what 'distro' was you using and what GUI? There are several GUIs each with its own advantages.
Yes Linux is not something you obtain, load and start using without a learning curve but the benefits are beyond belief. You will leave Windoze in the dust.
But most are simply afraid to tread there.
As someone above noted..Linux/Unix rules the net. Under the surface that is. Try Apache(free) and then MSFT Server. Pay for one and not the other...Apache is world class. MSServer,,well its got some problems.
I can set up an Apache on one of my machines in an easy morning and be testing my web pages right away.
If you want to get with the newest go to Unbuntu.
Yes for the masses...who can hardly read anymore its Windoze. Who have a hard time formatting a HD. Or can't understand what a driver really is.
Airdale-do we want good code or mouseshit? I suppose its mouseshit all the way...and unless anyone remembers W2K? That was heart and soul IBM Warp. Or its forerunner. Who do you think invented virtual memory,wrote the first code? One guess. I was working on mainframe VM and MVS before Gates go out of his mama's diaper training. Like late 60s/early 70s stuff.
IBM didn't invent virtual memory or multi-user OS. Tymshare developed these technologies in the early 1960s, well in advance of IBM. As the business grew we installed and modified VM and MVS based on user requirements, but both systems were more expensive to operate and offered fewer features than our SD940s and PDP-10 XEXEC.
I tried several linuxes and found they all were strongly dependent on mouse without keyshort alternative.
This is small potatoes. I've been running Ubuntu at home for years, and have no issues. The amount of free software is truly mind-boggling, including word processors, spreadsheets, presentation, database, etc, etc.
Try Ubuntu 9.04; it's free.
I tried Ubuntu about 2-3 yrs ago, spent 2-3 hours not getting very far; impossible to change the screen resolution; gui much less convenient than w2000; lack of documentation. There might indeed be a ton of free software but how good is it, and even if it (some) is great, do I really want to spend 2 or 3 months fulltime just retraining myself from the list below (in order to find out whether). I know for fact there's nothing comparable to Ventura (which is why Microsoft conspired to clobber Corel because they were trying to do a linux version). And hardware not infrequently says "no linux--hard luck":
Printers, scanner, modems, iiyama, soundcard.
ventura, coreldraw, homesite, FTP, k-lite codec, MBM5, encarta, nero, sygate, distiller, acrobat, audition, rosoft recorder, media player classic, photopaint, access, excel, powerpoint, word, still more...
I repeat, linux would be great...
..
Yup, if you give up at the first hurdle, GNU/linux is not for you.
Ventura - fair point. Learning "the Unix way" and using TEX takes a lifetime. For simple work Scribus might do what you want.
Coreldraw - depends. Try Inkscape, or the drawing program in OpenOffice - much better than the one in MS Office. Of course no huge libraries of third-party graphics.
Homesite - no longer exists as a product - or has it been re-instated since '03? Could try running it under "WINE". There are other website development tools in Linux, but not much for the "home user".
FTP - came from Unix, if you mean classic FTP, client and server. I assume you mean a GUI FTP client, of which there are a dozen or more.
Sygate functionality is pretty much built in, but sometimes can take a bit of finding.
Acrobat distiller, excel, powerpoint, word, access. Try OpenOffice, but yes, at least till Office 2007, the Microsoft programs were more accessible to the casual and untrained user. Office 97 is the "high water mark" for me -- but I haven't tried 2007. Acrobat reader is available for Linux.
Nero: try K3B. I found it easier to use than the OEM Nero I got with my CD writer. Of course installing K3B means pulling in half of the K Desktop Environment, a few megabytes.
Photopaint: try Gimpshop.
Encarta? Seriously?
Sound apps - Yes. This is where GNU/Linux is weakest and takes the greatest amount of perseverance. Apple's MacOS X seems to be the best Unix-like system for home-studio multimedia.
I have to admit I "defected" from Microsoft in the windows 98 - ME horror years. I got sick of having my PC freeze on me with no way to stop the problem application. And, I liked problem-solving, so converting was fun. "What one fool can do, another can!" as they say. ;-)
Windows 2000 Professional is a tidy piece of code. XP is good too. They say Windows 7 will be good. I hope so.
Ubuntu is OK, but try PCLinuxOS if you ever want to try Linux again. Or, for old hardware (that old 486 laptop with 128MB of RAM) and light needs (email etc), Puppy Linux is great - it makes the old hardware speedy again, it has a Windows 95-like interface, and it seems to "know about" an awful lot of different accessories.
PS: I haven't paid attention to computer virus warnings in years. No need. :-)
I would vote for Mandriva and Ubuntu. I am using both right now. Try the LiveCD to see if you like it. Pretty much work straight out of the box.
Did somebody yank the world around 180? Suddenly MSWindows is the platform for serious business and Linux is the choice for grandma and the kids?
Somebody tell Blizzard, because they still won't release a Linux WoW client, yet they run their servers and internal development on Linux.
2) Linux (Open Source) is great if all you do is surf the net, play games and write emails from home. (Also can be a useful lab environment for scientists). Start a project on how to run a multi-site multi-thousand-person company with it only.
Bullshit.
Large software like SAP, Oracle and others have run on UNIX for years.
Plenty of multi site multi thousand person firms run on UNIX. An example of such a project would be Compiere/Adempiere, PostgreSQL, email, web servers, Alfresco.
But *DO* go ahead - cite actual failures.
Linux and Open Office may have features superior to Microsoft, but that doesn't change the fact that Microsoft does deliver (and has since DOS/Basic) a reasonably robust and feature rich system (OS and applications) that have met the vast majority of user needs, in advance (generally) of the competition.
You're talking nonsense about Unix, which was developed to timeshare "mainframes" among multiple users. The only thing inherent in Unix for scientific users is that a) universities adopted it, and 2) it was an alternative to expensive IBM systems.
Drivers? Who in their right mind, apart from OS and hardware developers, needs to write drivers? The beauty of the IBM PC, and to a certain extent Microsoft, was that they offered an OPEN system as compared to the Mac. You could easily add drivers for new hardware and support new applications. This is one reason why Microsoft/Intel established an early dominance in the computing business.
Hey son,
IBM DOS? Ever hear of it? I guess not.
Then IBM hired Gates to do some work. He took a hike not too long after that. We were already doing our version of windows. Had been internally for some time. Using light pens and other means.
You are missing history that you never knew about.
I happened to have worked in Development on the forerunners of the IBMPC. Do you think Gates wrote the BIOS for that as well?
Gates stole most everything he could get his paws on. This is well known and hardly contested.
If it hadn't been for IBM CEO John Akers ,Gates would have been a nobody.
Airdale-I ran IBM DOS on a IBM PC on which my requisition was personally signed by Don Estridge himself.I am speaking of the original document. That was very early. It cost me $4,000 and only had two 71/4 inch floppies. Then we could speak of Capt Crunch.
Gates came along later.
Wow, you're not only arrogant, but ignorant. I'll have to keep this mind when reviewing your other postings.
Let me clue you in a few things: I started programming computers when they were made out of transistors and had magnetic core memory (AN/UYK 5V). I key-punched RPG for the 1401. I programmed the first microprocessors starting with 8008. I had the earliest IBM PC (including a version running CPM) and the LISA on my desk. I worked with Doug Engelbart, the guy who invented the mouse.
So don't tell me what history I missed, pal, I was there.
Aww you probably had to get Airdale to make your 029 drumcards for you.
Ah, the 1401. You've probably seen a few things. You might enjoy some of the stories on The Daily WTF. Plus ca change...
Cheers.
It may seem marginally off track from the topic of hierarchy, paradigm and collapse, but let me connect Microsoft and Linux. Closed intellectual property vs open source. Enclosing the commons vs sharing. Profit vs gift economy. Sure, Microsoft meets the needs of the vast majority of user needs, but the same could be said of Apple. The difference is that Microsoft owns the market. That is by itself an adequate and sufficient justification for breaking up Microsoft.
And that doesn't even get me to the wonderful stuff the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does IF your poor country accepts the IP laws they want.
What worries me is that Homeland Stazi is running a lot of linux.
cfm in Gray, ME
Utban Eco,you are absolutely corect in that microsoft has a good product and good support.Most folks,excluding the people who are seriously into computers, don't have the foggiest idea why microsoft dominates.
they dominate partly for the reason because, as problem riddled as thier product is,it is pretty much backward compatible aaaall the waaaay back. you can almost always run anything old even from the days of dos on any newer ms system.try that on your overpriced mac.
another reason is that once you know windows, you can learn the upgrades pdq as new versions come out.
the biggy is of course that somebody dominates most industries,and microsoft,once they got out on front,had free sailing.virtually all new consumer/business software is windows compatible,cause that's where the sales are.IT instructors are very fond of sayiny that nobody is ever fired for selecting microsoft.
add the fact that almost any new computer savvy employee can walk into almost any business and sit down and go right to work as regards the office computers.BG was smart enough to price his near monopoly product high enough to get rich but low enough that nobody (much,so far)running a business can train employees on other systems for less than his liscense fees.
nevertheless i hope and believe that microsofts days are numbered for two main reasons.the first one is that the open source movement looks like it will attain critical mass and eventually the average small business or individual user will therefore be able to get cheap and easy formal training as in an introductory short course at a community college.I understand that once you can do windows, you can learn linux in less than half the time that it took to learn windows.somewhat more accomplished users can learn what they need to know online.
the other reason is that large organizations-governments in particular-are now willing to invest in the training necessary to break away from microsoft.a government clerk in brazil can be trained in linux at govt expense far more economically than brazil can pay microsoft from now until eternity.
as this expertise becomes more common, I think we will eventually see employment ads read "linux a plus" . We will then be within sight of the end of bg's monopoly.
OldFarmer you got a lot of errors in your beliefs about MSFT.
I won't go into all that but the MSFT vs Linux wars have been running for a loooooooong time and we know the winner is MSFT. They have the money, they have the students(who are given almost free stuff), and they have the market and lawyers as well. They will win.
And that nonsense about if you want to surf and email then use Linux.
Come on fella. How experienced are you with Linux?
Everybudda and kiddie uses 'portals'.
I can put up GUIs on Linux that you can't even believe. Multiple windows, multiple desktops, way way off the scale as far as MSFT technology.
I won't belabor the point. You are apparently not that much into what is under the cover as regards open source and Linux/Unix.
As I was working on a huge ATT WorldHqrs mainframe problem in Morrisville, NJ at Bells Labs,etc...I walked past Dennis Ritchies cubicle. Guy in charge of the mainframe software told me that a kid down the hall was creating something that would set the world on fire.
I had to see this. I did. He was coding up C. They were doing the early work of Unix. They were making a real difference.
But it all went mostly away. The world is MSFT. Long live the frigging world.
Airdale
Sure, but how many grandparents can do that? How many office-workers that aren't computer specialists? How many blue-collar workers that just want to write a few emails? Linux does a lot of great things, but being easy for beginners isn't one of them.
Microsoft is a predatory monopoly, but that doesn't mean alternative products are automatically better. The fact of the matter is that WindowsXP allows most people do perform the tasks they want more easily than Linux does, especially if they don't have a family member who can configure and troubleshoot for them.
Only a trivial fraction of people are, which is something that most Linux zealots appear to forget. For most people, a computer is just a tool, and they really don't give a damn about how it works or what else it can do.
Linux is great for power users, but they're not where the money is.
Couldn't agree more. The main problem with open source is the inherent instability of the development model. You can't design stable systems by committee. Instability also contributes to major support issues such as version incompatibilities, bugs, security holes, poor documentation, etc.
Linux does a lot of great things, but being easy for beginners isn't one of them.
Ubuntu 9.04 is arguably as easy as Windows. Try it and let us know.
Dead right Pitt. People want computers to make their lives easier not harder. As for Ubuntu being easy, you first have to install it (n I don't have the 4gb spare at the moment), whereas most Whinedozers just buy it already installed and couldn't install anything to save their life. This discussion reminds me of the man with a derailleur bike who absolutely insisted it could change gears while stationary (like my hub gear actually could).
Microsoft creates very clunky operating systems because their continued existence depends on it.
A ton of their kernel is for security issues, which is because of their popularity for being targeted.
The open-source movement has made Linux very robust while keeping it lightweight. Don't underestimate how many people are using Linux. I believe the number stands at around 30 million right now, which is not a small number. There are then a few more using other UNIX systems. Unfortunately these numbers seemed to have hit a plateau recently. I know lots of layman users who are unhappy with the performance of Microsoft products and have considered switching to Linux. Furthermore, I believe cloud computing will be Microsoft's downfall. People will buy supercheap machines for $5 or less that will run applications on servers and will pay a small monthly fee. Other companies are already way ahead of Microsoft in this, and this is debated to be why Bill Gates gave up, seeing the coming demise of his own company.
"But even on narrower grounds, the trees didn't really begin to cry buckets until the computer came along. I was (and still am I suppose in some sense) a computer guy. The computer revolution is more than fifty years old and has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce paper consumption."
At work, I program intranet applications (PHP/MySQL) that are primarily workflow apps meant for online only usage. When I roll out a new app for someone, one question (usually the first) is "How do I print this?"
The computer revolution is more than fifty years old and has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce paper consumption.
Well, actually, it did. I no longer save any of my work on paper - it's all on a USB flash drive. Incoming paper is scanned in and tossed. I only print things when other people insist on it.
Its just that a lot of people are more comfortable with familiar paper. An example of inertia in world views...