I told you Linux was going to dominate the future...

[voidmain]

Ignore everything on this page:

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/SiliconInsider/SiliconInsider_021210.html

Except for the last coupla sections most notably section #7:

 

quote:
6. Intel vs. AMD

Twenty years ago, I would have given this feud six months. And yet, largely due to the heroic tenacity of Jerry Sanders, little Advanced Micro Devices is still challenging mighty Intel for leadership of the microprocessor business.

Every couple years, AMD almost dies. And then just when you count it out, like now, the plucky firm comes roaring back and steals even more market share from Intel.

Lately, however, there have been some interesting changes. The great feuding kings, Grove and Sanders, are gone. Meanwhile, in the last two generations, largely because Intel has been distracted by too many side projects, AMD has managed to produce a better chip. And, thanks to the passage of time, the landmark "Intel Inside" marketing campaign has lost much of its punch: Owning an AMD Athlon-powered PC is no longer the stigma it once was.

   Winner: AMD. Intel will still dominate the industry (though its market share will fall by the year), while AMD will increasingly own the public's imagination.

7. Windows vs. Linux

Time is on Linux's side. Every Microsoft success is cause for a few more million customers to fear its hegemony. And every Microsoft failure reinforces competitors' belief that it can be taken down. Finally, Microsoft is on the losing side of the same game it played to defeat Apple: The big monolithic dinosaur that tries to control the landscape inevitably loses to the mob of tiny heterogeneous mammals that scurry about looking for any and every opportunity to survive.

Working against Microsoft, too, is the fact that it has not been able to successfully crush any computer operating system market except PCs

[DJ]

good article (methinks    )

Dj

[slave]

quote:  Winner: Linux. And that will mark the beginning of the slow end of Microsoft's dominance of the high-tech world.

*in Mr. Burns voice*

Eeexcellent.

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

While i do hope it will happen, 4 paragraphs don't cut it for me.

ALso rather than have MS DIE completely, i would like them to be around as a former shadow of itself, maybe make simple software like Office, which is good software you have to admit, its just the OS that bothers me.  I would run Office on Linux if i could,  while i have OpenOffice and i use Kword, they both are not as polished.

[voidmain]

I have no problem using OpenOffice in place of Microcrap office, and neither does the rest of my family. Office is one of the *first* things that need to go because of proprietary file format lockin. You sound like you are still hooked on the Microsoft crack.

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

Ouch...thats nasty Void Main.

While i agree the MS Office Formats are bad, there would be no harm in using MS Office if they supported other formats IF they did fall sometime in the future.  I'm assuming a situation where the OS fails and all they have let of any worth is the Office suite that has to support open formats.

Basically they end up taking it from everybody.

Don't imply that i am on the MS crack, if OpenOffice was any good, i wouldn't have to use MS Access and MS visio for College.  While i know there is an alternative for Visio (kivio) its interface is crap compared to visio and its light years behind.  I'm afriad i don't have time to learn a program that takes longer to use just so i satisfy other people and proclaim i use opensource.  At the moment i will go with whatever will get the job done in the shortest time.

Because of OpenOffices infancy i only use Writer and Calc BUT the only MS products i HAVE to and DO use is Access(student 2000 version) and Visio (cracked 2002 version) and WinME (copied).

While i do dislike MS and its policyies, i won't convince myself that they don't actually have a good product in the form of MS Office.

[voidmain]

I'm sorry but you just showed an even stronger case that you are hooked on their crack. Like a crack addict you have gone to great lengths, including breaking the law. Why jeopardize yourself like that? It's not worth it. What school would require Microsoft Access? That's worse than crack. By the way, I didn't mean to offend you, and I still don't.

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

Okay okay, i can see what you are saying ot me, but how would you solve my situation then, i need some of this software for the short term?  I don't have

[voidmain]

What do you use Visio and Access for, could you give samples of some of your work? I'll look over them this afternoon. I used to use Visio extensively for network maps and flow charts etc. But I have found that you can make some pretty decent stuff with other tools just as easily. The last company I worked for was hooked on Access and they always tried to use it for more than what it was capable of.

I have *so* many problems with using Access. It they are using it to teach you about databases then I strongly disagree with your school. They should be teaching you about *real* databases. To learn about real databases PostgreSQL and MySQL would be far better as they are much more like the high end database systems out there. Access seems to be best at quick little personal databases but when you start sharing these databases it's a nightmare. In addition to those, StarOffice from Sun does come with a database system which is comparable to Access. It is not free, but it's not Microsoft, and it's certainly a lot cheaper (maybe not the school version, but when you get out into the real world you don't get the school crack that Microsoft is pushing).

But again, these are things schools should be doing. Teaching you how to think for yourselves and how to save your future company money. And schools used to develop their own software/applications/operating systems. Wonder what ever happened to those days?

If you can give me some specific examples I'll look them over this afternoon and see what I can come up with. If there are no acceptable alternatives then I would suggest at least you pay for what you do use. Don't get into the habit of pirating software, it will come back and bite you later on down the road.

[Crunchy(Cracked)Butter]

I use Visio for creating DFD's, but like i said there is Kivio, i could use it but like i said time is an issue.

Access on the other hand is something more tricky.

I am creating a database for a hotel which can involve designing an interface as well for it.  The database isn't what you interact with but the UI instead, Access is used by the hotel this project is for as well thus the compatability issues i have.  His copy has to be workable with my copy and so forth crap and there is the user issue as well.  Training isn't part of his costs because it is only the manager that is using it, but i cannot have a situation where he is off for work and somebody else needs to use it but hit a wall because its not Access.

I suppose i could finish off the DFD to show you what will be going on, do you want that?  I'll finish it now and then email it you for your perusal?

[lazygamer]

So what I wanna know is, how long do we have to wait  before Linux becomes very mainstream?

[Faust]

quote:So what I wanna know is, how long do we have to wait before Linux becomes very mainstream?

One of the main obstacles to this would have to be that for most ppl changing the OS over is too much effort so they stick with the OS they got bundled. Since this is windows this is a bad thing - but apparently now Sun is selling purple colored linux budget pcs -  

quote: Suns purple box will go head to head with the dominant windows white box.

Becoming very mainstream may not be very far away... especially if other companies emulate Sun and/or if their release is wildly successful.

[preacher]

Interesting article voidmain, but if linux and amd truly win, that would void the previous comments about Microsoft vs.AOL, because as all linux users know, there is no way that we will run microsoft applications. Also if Dell wins, how can AMD win? Dell doesnt use AMD processors in their boxes.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by ThePreacher:
Interesting article voidmain, but if linux and amd truly win, that would void the previous comments about Microsoft vs.AOL, because as all linux users know, there is no way that we will run microsoft applications. Also if Dell wins, how can AMD win? Dell doesnt use AMD processors in their boxes.

It's why I said ignore the first part of the article.        But seriously, some predict when that time comes Microsoft will have no choice but to port their software to Linux:

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-976755.html

And Dell can change processors like you change your underwear (I hope you change your underwear). It wouldn't take any more than about ten dollars worth of R&D budget to yank the Intel out and throw in an AMD. Hell, even I could do that. Dell is nothing more than a reseller, they pick up and drop companies all the time (3com, HP Printers vs Lexmark, etc).

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Crunchy(Cracked)Butter:
I use Visio for creating DFD's, but like i said there is Kivio, i could use it but like i said time is an issue.

Does Kivio take more time to use than Visio? I also use a utility called "Dia" which isn't as mature looking as Kivio but it does work for quick and simple diagrams. And Kivio comes with a limited set of stencils where Dia has quite a few more sets to choose from. What I found out is, the Dia stencils also work with Kivio (most, not all but if you know how to tweak them you can get them going, they are nothing more than XML and pixmap files).

If you find Visio necessary because you just can't make the others work for you then I don't know of any other free apps that are better than Kivio/Dia.

   

quote:
Access on the other hand is something more tricky.

I am creating a database for a hotel which can involve designing an interface as well for it.  The database isn't what you interact with but the UI instead, Access is used by the hotel this project is for as well thus the compatability issues i have.  His copy has to be workable with my copy and so forth crap and there is the user issue as well.  Training isn't part of his costs because it is only the manager that is using it, but i cannot have a situation where he is off for work and somebody else needs to use it but hit a wall because its not Access.

I suppose i could finish off the DFD to show you what will be going on, do you want that?  I'll finish it now and then email it you for your perusal?

Access is a real peeve of mine, some of the reasons you exactly mention. With Access you must have the exact version of Access that the person you are sharing with has or you will screw it up for the both of you. And like I said, it's ok for a single person database but get more than one person working on it or let it grow too large and you are in for a lot of trouble.

I particularly do not like the proprietary nature of it (as you might have guessed would be my view). If possible I prefer to do the database in PostgreSQL, make it web based using Apache/PHP so if the entire department needs to use it they can. This may sound like a lot of work but I find the learning curve to where you can create a database and an interface is about the same for both.

Once you have overcome the learning curve of both, creating and writing an interface takes about the same amount of time. The web based version oviously only requires a browser to use it. In fact you can connect your Access GUI to your PostgreSQL database using the ODBC drivers. So you can use the pretty Access GUI, or use it from your browser from anywhere over your network or even the internet on any operating system and it's fast.

Now you might say with Access you can easily take a copy of the database with you and work on it at home without having to be connected to the server, and that is true to an extent. You could add write a simple import/export routine to your existing Access database to import the data from the Postgre database into your Access using the ODBC drivers.

But for quick simple little things Access is fairly easy. If nothing else if it got to the point where you were considering moving it to MS SQL Server I would highly recommend that you look at and consider PostgreSQL or other open source SQL databases.

And believe it or not there is an Access knockoff GUI for PostgreSQL and it seems to work well, but I still prefer doing all my database work under a web server. The flexibility can't be beat. See pgaccess:

http://www.pgaccess.org/index.php?page=NewPgAccessEnglish

[ December 11, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]