Just came back from a conference with guest speaker Bill Gates. Gates touched a number of subjects and we quickly report and comment on them below.The conference took place at the beautiful ex-SGI Computer History Museum building (last year’s story on CHM, make sure you visit the museum if you are living in the area or you are passing by).
Bill Gates started by talking about speech recognition and how this is the next big evolution in the input systems. He also talked about malware and that even himself has to run Ad-aware in order to keep spyware away from him home computers. In fact, he believes that malware is even worse than viruses, because they transmit through downloadable applications that have them embedded in them on purpose. He expects that Microsoft will include anti-malware/spyware software soon on Windows.
Gates believes that connectivity is a very good thing and while this creates new dangers, everyone needs to get extra education on the subject on how to secure or behave on such interconnected environment. He believes that the real WiFi generation is just starting now.
Answering the question about hackers crack DRM and other secure technologies, Gates said that it’s always possible to crack anything. However, it is better to have such technologies around and hope for the best, rather than not publishing online music or movies just out of fear that someone will crack their security. In the first case you have some piracy and some sales, on the second case you only end up with piracy.
On ITManagerJournal’s question about how Microsoft is going to compete with the 50% Linux sales on new servers, Gates replied that “my numbers are different, depending where you are getting them”. He also said that MS has seen many other competitors, including IBM & OS/2, Borland, Apple etc and have survived them all, and he doesn’t see something different with this competitor. He did say though that “fast forward 10 years, the two leading OS technologies will be Linux and Windows” hinting that most others (Sun, Mac?) will be eclipsed from the main business scene.
Gates also mentioned that Linux is taking over Unix, not Windows. The problem with Unix is that the OS companies involved (SGI, Sun, IBM, HP, SCO) never managed to get together and adhere to common standards and direction, he said. When a Unix brand would get a bit better than the other on a particular thing, the others would “conspire” behind its back to bring it down. It’s this fragmentation and lack of business relationships that has destroyed Unix to the rival Linux (our editorial).
As to how Microsoft is going to beat Linux according to Gates, it seems to be via its software’s value, rather than the price. Bill Gates is trying to create software that needs little maintainance and little support. By doing so, he hopes to cut down the number of IT administrators needed on companies (a good admin costs overall up to $200,000 per year for a given company here in the Bay Area, for example). On the other hand, Linux rivals (e.g. Red Hat) are making money primarily by support calls and require capable administrators. Gates hopes to elliminate this need.
Regarding the point that Linux is catching up in market share with Windows on small/poor countries, Gates said that countries are evolving quickly. He said that a few years ago Hong Kong, China or Taiwan were not big Windows buyers, but now, as their economy & business sectors evolve, they are catching up with Windows orders made in the US. He expects more small countries to be able to evolve in that way, and he also said that Microsoft will be adjusting prices for these countries so that the Windows prices there will make more sense and be more affordable.
As for consumers, in these same countries Windows piracy is high. In other words, Windows is free for some of these people. And so is Linux. Having two products that are essentially “free” in one way or another, it all comes down again to the actual value of the software.
Special thanks to Jean-Baptiste Queru for the picture.
“A good admin costs up to $200,000 per year”
Where, as I have never seen an admin paid this high. Maybe the Director of IT or the VP of IT, but never an admin.
Let me know who’s paying this much so I can go to work for them….
Let me know who’s paying this much so I can go to work for them….
He just said that they can cost that much. He didn’t say that anyone hires them
while reading the article and posts i’ve been installing
linux (red hat 9.0) on a system of mine. its time to take
the jump into … the unknown.
i agree with one thing gates said
for linux to grab mass appeal it has to start with the basics. consumers. the people who want the best product at the best price. that price being free if possible. start with a easy to use music / multimedia center which could span multiple platforms and file formats. when i say easy to use iam talking easy to use for *normal* people, not people who have coded for years or are jedi masters in digital form. if you want people to use linux build them a playground. from there they’ll learn to explore on thier own.
start with the kids.
ps *sorry for the bad manners but… i’m new to the net*
please please please i need help !!!
i need really good media on the following subjects:
-navigating the net like a pro
-learning linux
-security security security
-and if you’re cool some good shirow stuff!
for linux to grab mass appeal it has to start with the basics. consumers.
I disagree. It has to start at companies, then move its way to the consumers.
Starting at consumer level means that you need the support of a huge amount of third party developers. It means ports of all kind of software, most importantly games.
I mean, look at the home computers in the 80’s and yearly 90’s, Amiga, Atari etc. They had almost all of the consumer support. Why did they go away? Because they didn’t have corporate support.
When companies started to seriously use PCs with Windows and DOS, consumers started to do the same, because they wanted to use whatever they used at work (don’t ask me why).
So I really can’t agree with you there. The consumer market is much harder to penetrate, simply because people doesn’t care enough about technical benefits. And the economical benefits aren’t enough if they pirate Windows anyway.
I do think however, that it would be a good idea to start using linux at schools.
I don’t think linux is too hard to use for regular users though. It’s harder than BeOS, but it’s not harder than Windows. It’s just the fact that people are used to Windows that makes it harder to use.
I totally think it is wrong to “adjust” prices for other countries for copies of Windows, just to make it more affordable there, why the fuck don’t Billy-Boy “adjust” the goddamn price here in the good ol US-of A and make it much more affordable to us Americans? He’s American, he should be more concerened with American interests first, other countries second.
Sorry if I offended any non-americans out there, but that just needed to be said.
As far as linux: well as of now linux is a better alerternitave to Windows by-far, now what we need is more companies (hardware & software) to have better support for Linux, IMHO: in 10 years Linux will have surpassed Windows by a million-percent if more folks used and supported Linux. Not on just the enterprise server either, but home users as well.
“my 2 cents”
I think it would be a good idea for Microsoft and IBM to release DOS, Windows up to ME, OS/2 and the office and programming environments connected with then as proprietary freeware (NOT open source because a lot of this technology
contains code and products sublicensed from others. Unlike most open source advicates I do recognize the problems of opening up a product that has codes under multiple proprietary licenses in it)
They would not even have to re release the products themselves if they no longer have copies of them. Many computer users have old Windows, DOS, Visual Age Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual Age C++, Old Office and other Microsoft and IBM OS/2 software lying about doing nothing. All Microsoft would have to do is rescind the single computer license on these products and replace it with a LEGAL Freeware/Abandonware license and they would find their way to the internet quickly enough.
Microsoft and IBM could also put the following restrictions on such Freeware/Abandonware’s use.
1. They cannot be used as OEM OSs in new computers but ONLY
on older machines that have lost their original OS or on computers already owned by the downloader or purcasers of CDs containing the products in multi boot systems or in Virtual Machine Software such as VmWare, Win4Lin, Microsoft Virtual PC, Serenity Virtual Studio (when it comes out of Beta and becomes an official “gold” product), Bochs and similar “computer” simulating software.
2. Obsolete programming and development environments could continue to be used commercially under the Freeware/Abandonware license but ONLY by small Shareware developers Not by large Business concerns.
3. Obsolite office environments can be used commercially
by small Mom ‘n’ Pop businesses, churches and charitable concerns under the Freeware/Abandonware license but not large business concerns.
Here now is a list of the products I think should be considerted for this Freeware/Abandonware status.
DOS:
MS DOS, all versions to 6.2
MS Windows 16 bit, All versions to 3.11
MS Windows 32 bit, All versions to ME
MS Quick BASIC, All vwersions
MS Quick C, All versions
MS BASIC development sustem, all versions
MS C/C++ Development System, all versions
MS Visual Basic, all versions (including the DOS one) up to
version 6
MS Visual C++, all versions up to Version 6
MS Office, all versions up to Office 97
IBM OS/2, all versions up to warp 4.
IBM Visual Age Basic for Windows and OS/2, all versions
IBM Visual Age C/C++ for Windows and OS/2, all versions.
This Freeware/Abandonware status for software that even the companies involved considers obsolete would have the following affects on the companies some of which are relavent to this topic.
1. Bill Gates and IBM could finally get rid of the Business Software Allience. (It’s current existance now is largely built on enforcing single computer licenses on obsolete products with Product Activation actually being the main license enforcer on their current products.)
2. Both companies can jettison support costs on obsolete software they are still supporting in a way that would be acceptabe to most computer users. (Trading support which most never use for the Freeware/Abandonware license’s privelege of unrestricted installation on multiple computers or software VMs provided the use restrictions I’ve already outlined are kept.)
3. The negative view that users, especially “geek” have of Bill Gates would change overnight and that can only help Microsoft in the long run (which he is still identified with even though Steve Ballmer actually runs the show now).
Hmm? I don’t think he’s one bit concerned about the people in any country. I think he’s concerned about loosing sales to linux and piracy, that’s why.
You know why people can’t afford it in those countries? Because their money isn’t worth as much as your money, making it way more expensive to them compared to the americans.
It’s not about making it cheaper, it’s about charging the same price as in the US so that people can afford it.
He doesn’t care about your interests, not as an american, not as a human being. Unless it’s somehow threatening the economy or foothold of his company.
As the major UNIX and Linux providers said linux and unix have their place.
Linux will always be a better dedicated file server. Cost of deployment for fileserver only parts + admin costs.
Cost of a windows Fileserver parts plus cost of OS + firewall and antivirus subscriptions. I can administer a samba fileserver without training. Just a book on security in hand.
This is prob. the first time I’ve really understood and agreed with Mr. Gates. In his quote about software in the east being available for free (either by design or by bootleg)…..
As for consumers, in these same countries Windows piracy is high. In other words, Windows is free for some of these people. And so is Linux. Having two products that are essentially “free” in one way or another, it all comes down again to the actual value of the software.
Yeah, that’s about it. When both products cost the same, the market will figure out which it likes the best… Good luck to you Mr. Gates, I hope that 10 year from now we meet again…..
Bill knows darn well that Linux isn’t going to be the only other OS arround. What he’s trying to do is to get everybody else out there to gang up against Linux.
Man,
I guess it is a bad thing to be a Windows admin, because if Microsoft has their way, there will no longer be a need for us professional admins. That is a bad thing, for sure. Of course, Microsoft has yet to make much of anything better that significantly.
DOS was easier than Windows 3.11 to administer, because it had less features, Windows 3.11 was easier than 95, 95 than 98, let us not talk about ME… then the NT line, NT4 was a nightmare, for sure. 2000 got better, XP got confusing and full of holes and few easy to configure options, without having to spend a few hours researching, 2003 just got worse, as usual, because I think they added a feature, which means they have to change the way the things you use work (such as shutdown and restart… simple tasks… for example).
And now we are on to Longhorn. It is going to revolutionize and ‘over-simplify’ the world of ‘computing’. Well, actually, it is going to vastly confuse and complicate computing, the only thing it offered was WinFS, which is now a farse of a no-show. Microsoft seems to think that the years of wait for Longhorn is worth a faster search capability to find your own files. Hmm… FindFast worked, and so does indexing. OH, hmm.. an index is like a database, though rarely containing too much information, unless you have it written well enough (Be’s BFS comes to mind, and Linux’s more advanced file system options).
Essentially, Microsoft is going to add more and more confusion, which will make admins more and more neccessary.
BUT, Microsoft wants and NEEDS big business behind them, so they can still their money, regardless of what will become and obvious lie.
Oh, and BTW Mr. Gates, in ten years, it will not be Linux vs Microsoft, it will be something new altogether. It will not be a two-man race, this is a movement against you, open your freaking eyes.
Where did I mention Linus or Richard in my post? I’m not saying they care more about me. I’m just questioning why Gates would care about american people more than any other costumer from a business point of view.
Please stick to commenting what I write and lay off the drugs. You are obviously seeing things that aren’t there.
I guess it is a bad thing to be a Windows admin, because if Microsoft has their way, there will no longer be a need for us professional admins.
Well, a lot of jobs in the past has been replaced with new technology. The good thing is that the new technology often creates even more jobs
I wouldn’t worry though. Admins will be needed anyway. But I think that he means that he wants to make the knowledge requirements smaller. Meaning that you’d have more competition when youre looking for a job.
2 Billy & Intel:
relax, new OS IS under development. That is why we are here.
We will release it no later than Long Horn.
Meanwhile, boys from wintel, play a game with Linux and *nixes.
Sincerely Yours, Group of development of ….( TM name is banned by our internal security department).
wow, that must be a heck of a new super-OS for the company developing it to work off a dial-up connection
That’s beauty of Open Source, is that it doesn’t matter what Linus or Stallman think of you. If you have enough skills, money, and/or determination you can get your stuff in there, as opposed to propietary [sic?] software where you’d need to jump through alot of hoops and bureaucracy to get anything included.
microsoft is where it is today because of its focus on the business. apple had/arguably has the best pc for home users, and look at the relative market share now. companys want cheap, fast, and good enough. thats how microsoft won, and thats how linux will win. keep in mind that microsoft hasnt won these os fights on technological merits, they have won them by being the low cost alternative, and attacking the competition from the bottom up. what will be interesting to see is if windows gets relegated to just home desktops, or if they get out of the os business all together.
keep in mind, windows is no longer the cash cow of microsoft, that is now ms office. microsoft realised that its much easier to get people to get on the office upgrade treadmill then the windows one, and they havnt looked back. thats not to say that windows isnt important, but its important to them the same way IE is, not so much as a product in itself, but a way to control the standard technology in a given field.
A Dutch scientist claimed to have discovered a compression
algorithm with which it would be possible to store up to
64 complete movies (dvd not divx) on a 64 kb smartcard.
He showed some people ( Bankers, IT professionals) his foundings with a demonstration.The device he carried had the size of 5 packs of sigarettes, and was able to play 16 complete movies from as said a 64kb smartcard.Big international electronic firms had allready promised him
multi million dollar contracts.Two days before he would sign
such a contract (’99) with a firm he was found dead.
Since then the source code was never found neither was his
demonstration device.
Imagine what such a invention would mean for the (IT) society worldwide.You wouldn’t have to buy faster hardware for the next twenty (probably more) years.The data bandwith
not on the net improves but allso inside every electron switcher (PC ..).
Seems that youre a little confused as well.
x86 machines were actually quite expensive compared to a lot of alternatives. and I think that’s partly why they were taken more seriously by the industry. I mean, a big gray expensive box has to mean serious business
Compared to the “toy” machines that was small, cheap, fast, had better graphics and sound. Sadly they got marketed as game machines, when in fact they could do so much more.
Companies were looking for a way out of the fragmented UNIX market, and Billyboy took the opportunity to say “Hey, I got this crappy OS for you that doesn’t have half of the features UNIX has and it looks different enough. Let’s make it the new standard. There’s no need to worry about clones, I’ll shoot all trespassers.”
The Amiga for example would have been a much better product to act as the saviour. It was both cheaper and technically superiour. But commodore just never took that opportunity.
MS Office has always been more important to them than Windows. Without Office, they wouldn’t have come this far.
I don’t know about the upgrades though. I know several companies and regular consumers who just doesn’t see the need to upgrade their Office anymore. It’s good enough, and they don’t use 1% of the features anyway. So why bother?
The same goes for a lot of software titles these days.
They need to think about how they will be able to handle a significant smaller cashflow, or else they’ll crash hard.
Just look at the cellphone industry in europe. They spend a huge amount of money building a new net that no-one asked for. Just because they thought that it would keep up the cashflow from a few years ago. Instead of realising “well, people don’t buy as many phones these days, we’ll have to cut down on things.”
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2004…
You aren’t serious right?
{Just look at the cellphone industry in europe. They spend a huge amount of money building a new net that no-one asked for. Just because they thought that it would keep up the cashflow from a few years ago. Instead of realising “well, people don’t buy as many phones these days, we’ll have to cut down on things.”}
Well this year people have send more sms messages then ever.
The new net has nothing directly to do with the current cellphone sales as well with the expected increase in paid
traffic due to the new features of the UMTS network.
Cell phones are like printers, the device itself doesn’t
cost much,being outweigthed by the calling costs.
Being a entrepeneur is sometimes having the guts to risk
something.
Being a entrepeneur is sometimes having the guts to risk
something.
Does it also mean that you should ignore everything in the name of market research?
I haven’t heard one single person saying that they want to watch movies in their cellphones for example.
They are trying to create a need for sure. They simply have to considering how much money they spent on the new net. But few people are buying it, even with the heavy marketing.
Instead, they could have lowered the calling costs, something that they used as a strong argument (at least around here) about 10 years ago, when heavily promoting the GSM net.
It went something like “Once we have paid off the costs of the GSM net, the rates will drop and cellphones will become cheaper to use than regular phones.”
Well they could have kept that promise and provided something that a *LOT* of consumers wants, or they could invest money in a new net and force it onto people.
Hmm, I guess the latter sounds more reasonable.
I would predict that people using Linux are more flexible in terms of OS’s in general and that we will see a new desktop OS that combines Linux’s license and price with a more unified API, for instance Syllable, (yeah I know it isn’t there yet but we are talking about ten years from now), could unify the positive aspects of Linux and Windows to provide a killer desktop, fresh unified and easy.
Not reasonable but more likely:-)
Well at least a generic driver for each mainstream peripheral device that works.A la vga driver for video cards, not a pretty picture to watch but enough to work with .
@rain, the compression story is true.
x86 wasnt more expensive. IBM PCs were quite expensive, but once the cloning began the price dropped to the point where it was/is quite a cheap platform. That is the biggest reason that apple lost to x86, its also the biggest reason that linux is getting adopted so quickly in the server room. on the quality side, x86 chips really arnt that great (at least when you compare the archetechture to others with similar power) but if you want the biggest bang for your buck, its x86 all the way. this was once called “wintel economics”.
your sort of right about the DOS thing, but what you are talking about is the pc revolution, started by apple, which made computers affordable to the common person. while DOS did replace quite a few UNIX workstations, it was used more in roles that computers werent traditionally considered too expensive.
windows predates office, which took quite awhile to win over wordperfect to become the monopoly it is today. its only in the last few years that office has become the main cash cow for microsoft.
upgrades are a very big problem for microsoft as a whole. but they have had much more success with office then with windows. about half the windows users use xp, which is a four year old os now.
as for the cellphone analogy, i would say that you are right with office, wrong with windows. theres only so much in the way of features you can do in an office suite, and their yearly major upgrades are pretty redicules. but compare xp to osx just in technology and features, and youll see windows has some catching up to do, at least on the desktop front.
such a compression system is mathematically impossible. There’s been a long history of such scams, not one of which has ever been demonstrated under verifiable conditions. Some people have gone to extraordinary lengths to fake such technology (including a guy who ran secretly ran coax cables across a *ravine* to fake one “unfakeable” demonstration). You can find a lot of entertaining information on the subject at http://www.dansdata.com/ (scan the old Letters columns).
(including a guy who ran secretly ran coax cables across a *ravine* to fake one “unfakeable” demonstration”
heh 🙂
btw, five cigarette packs is rather large. you could probably fit 16 movies on one of the new generation of ipod-type movie players if you kitted it out with an 80GB hard disk, and it’d be a lot smaller than five cigarette packets…
sure, it wouldn’t be “running from a 64kb smartcard”, whatever that means (the concept of fitting an entire movie into 4kb is patently ridiculous, so you can’t mean the movies are actually stored on it), but who gives a hill of beans what it’s running from? Functional result is identical but better.
Yep, let’s eliminate more job’s 😉 Raise the prices of our software while laying our employee’s and hire cheap labor in India. Great! Sounds Good Too Me! ;-( Sounds like a product I will want to buy.. Of course how will we all buy it if we have no jobs? Hmm,,?
I had a couple of thoughts on reading this article:
1) Fragmentation didn’t kill UNIX in the way that Bill argues. Instead, it fragmented the R&D that went into building the kernels and libraries, and this in turn has made proprietary UNIX *expensive.*
2) Admins don’t need a dumbed down abstract interface. They need a flexible set of tools which they can use to build complex business systems. Maybe Bill thinks this is supposed to be the programmer’s job? Hate to break it to you but most UNIX admins have some programming skills.
3) If Linux starts really gaining marketshare, it could cause a sudden collaps in Windows due to the same reasons that UNIX is declining and without the hardware lock-ins.
Yep, let’s eliminate more job’s 😉 Raise the prices of our software while laying our employee’s and hire cheap labor in India. Great! Sounds Good Too Me! ;-( Sounds like a product I will want to buy.. Of course how will we all buy it if we have no jobs? Hmm,,?
Cry me a river. No job is 100% secure. Buggy whip producers were also pissed because the car was going to put them out of business. I guess we should make the administration of a computer system 2x as hard as it is now so businesses have to hire another admin for everyone they have now. Sorry, but you don’t have a right to dick around with a computer all day and get paid for it.
There’s only one small problem this inventor gave the demonstration in ’98, i don’t know if there allready existed
storage devices like the apple i-pod back then.
There’s only one small problem this inventor gave the demonstration in ’98
I doubt that there ever was a demonstration really.
I thought so too, will likely have been yet another scam.
It’s hard to believe from a mathematically point of view.
However in Great Brittain they have discoveredsomething more likely: a way to make dvd’s store > 400 GB, which will at least take 5 years to pruduction stage, they think.
x86 wasnt more expensive. IBM PCs were quite expensive, but once the cloning began the price dropped to the point where it was/is quite a cheap platform.
It depends on what you compare it to. Even no-name x86 boxes were many times more expensive than for example an Amiga, especially if you consider that the Amiga was faster, had better sound, and much better graphics.
Technologically, x86 was a huge step backwards.
But as I said, Commodore never took the opportunity to enter the corporate market in a serious way. Which is a real shame.
windows predates office, which took quite awhile to win over wordperfect to become the monopoly it is today. its only in the last few years that office has become the main cash cow for microsoft.
Windows didn’t become very popular until version 3.11 though, and by then MS Office and Works was taking over that market IIRC.
But was Windows ever the main cash cow for MS? I doubt it, but I’m not sure.
upgrades are a very big problem for microsoft as a whole. but they have had much more success with office then with windows. about half the windows users use xp, which is a four year old os now.
Yeah, but upgrading one application is a lot easier than to upgrade the whole system, so that’s understandable.
But it really isn’t economically sound for most people to upgrade Office anymore. Why would a company spend a huge amount of money on something they don’t need. Because they can?
The same goes for hardware these days. Computers today are faster than what most people need for normal desktop use. So there’s really no need to upgrade to faster hardware, only replace it if it breaks.
The software and hardware companies just have to realise that they won’t have that kind of heavy cashflow that they once had. They made their products too good
oh, and XP was released in 2001 afaik. So it’s not 4 years old yet.
yeah, my point was rather that it’s a bit of a silly “miracle” invention, as now you can do it perfectly easily and better with normal, existing technology
the DVD thing is true. It works by having multiple surfaces at the bottom of the “pit” that the laser reads and having each surface store a bit, instead of just having one flat surface. Theoretically it can increase storage on this type of optical disc by about 20x. In the lab they have about a 10x improvement for DVD, which gets you 180GB or so on a dual-layer double-sided disc. You could also, I guess, theoretically apply it to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, which would get capacities into the hundreds of GB…
actually, at any given point, the cutting edge of x86 technology always had plenty more pure CPU power than Amiga or Atari or any other home-oriented computer technology. Those platforms had good audio and graphics as they were more a kind of hybrid between PC and console technology – like consoles, they had dedicated chips for graphics and audio (which handled common 2D game graphic operations like sprite transformations in native hardware). The game-oriented home computers were pretty much doomed by the combination of dedicated games consoles and 2D-accelerated PC graphics cards; that wiped out their niche.
another neat thing about that technology, unless I’m missing something, is it would seem to massive increase the potential transfer rate at any given rotation speed.
I’m sorry but I find it hard to believe that a 25Mhz 80386 had “plenty more pure CPU power” than a 25Mhz 68030.
I’d like some benchmarks to prove that please.
I’ll have to pull out my very old computer magazines then
. I’m not entirely sure you’re comparing contemporaneous systems, but I’ll have to check.
Yep, I think I’m right.
Looking at this timeline – http://www.convergence.org/platforms/amiga/timeline.html – no 68030-based Amiga was released until 1990. The 486DX was introduced at 25MHz and 33MHz in 1989. At the time the 68000-based A500 and A2000 were released in 1987 the 80386 had already been available for two years. (It was still bloody *expensive*, of course, but I did qualify that I was talking about cutting-edge PC hardware in my original message).
Don’t you want any variety or would you prefer a MS pyramid?
And you (and Bill) don’t have the right to say that a system administrator with a more than ten year experience is useless because the eyecandy windows wizards let any dumbhead that goes around the street pretend to be able to do his work.