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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: file formats [Re: Question about your KPresenter's review]
From:       Rob Landley <landley () trommello ! org>
Date:       2002-03-15 23:15:16
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On Friday 15 March 2002 11:39 am, Vadim Plessky wrote:
> On Friday 15 March 2002 12:39, Rob Landley wrote:
> |   On Friday 15 March 2002 02:01 am, Catherine Olanich Raymond wrote:
> |   > > Windows is still costs money. Unless MS starts giving away Windows
> |   > > and MS Office for free - it's doomed to loose marketshare.
> |   >
> |   > I see your reasoning, Vadim.  But things are different now than they
> |   > were when the Mac was the better, more expensive system.
> |
> |   Microsoft was on the winning side of the macintosh vs PC war because
> | the hardware fought all its battles for it.  Commodity hardware vs
> | proprietary hardware, with two propreitary operating systems on top.  On
>
> But, Apple could license its OS (and in fact was licensing it for a couple
> of year) - but could not manage the process.
> The fact that Apple lost its battle is due to the bad management at Apple,
> not because MS was too predatory...

Apple could have chosen a different business model, sure.  But they didn't.  
They saw themselves as a system manufacturer selling both hardware and 
software as an integrated unit.  Hence the commodity hardware half undercut 
the software side, where they were more successful.  (How much of their 
software they could have made work on an EGA PC video card through an ISA bus 
in 286 extended mode is an open question.  Probably more than Microsoft, 
sure, but when Paul Allen left and took the Xenix strategy with him, Gates 
didn't have a technical agenda to push so he let himself be led around by the 
nose by IBM for five years doing OS/2...)

They licensed the OS towards the end, yes.  But you'll notice they basically 
did that as a "hail mary" pass in response to Windows 95.  (Power Computing 
certainly could have gone another way than it did.)  They gave microsoft an 
11 year headstart to clone the macintosh (in large part due to an internal 
power struggle between jobs and the board of directors (whom sculley and 
amelio were representatives of the mindset of).  Jobs gave too much of his 
company away to investors in the 70's to maintain control of it in the 80's.  
Gates still owned well over 40% of the outstanding shares of microsoft stock 
when Windows 95 shipped, nobody could challenge him.  His decisions were 
often wrong, but they were made and implemented without endless 
second-guessing and hedging by a committee.)

This whole can of worms is a bit off-topic for this list.  (I've mentioned 
I'm writing a computer history book?)  Yes reality's usually a lot more 
complex than a one-paragraph summary.  (There are several good books on the 
subject: IBM's side is covered in "Big Blues", microsoft's in "Accidental 
Empires" and a bit of the early stuff in "Hackers".  I still have copies of 
"Gates", "Hard Drive", and "Fire in the Valley" to read.  And of course 
there's about five books on Apple.  Plus a LOT of websites and old issues of 
Byte and PC World (currently in storage while I finish moving)...)

> |   As cathy pointed out, the american hardware market is now reaching
> | saturation levels.  If we want to catch people while they're switching
> | hardware, we have to focus on laptops.  The desktop market is saturated
> | to
>
> Hopefully, sutuation is different here. :-)
> brand-name PCs (IBM, Compaq, HP, DELL) account only for 15% of the PC
> market, and local-assembled PCs account for 85%. Some of them are coming
> with pre-installed Linux.

Cool.  The entrenched competition never got as entrenched oveseas.  Both the 
Amiga and OS/2 did noticeably better in Germany than in their country of 
origin, and Linux is certainly following suit (SuSE being one of the few 
desktop Linux distributions.  Mandrake being another.  Both, interestingly, 
preferring KDE over Gnome...)

> | the point of collapse, and users are going to switch entirely to laptops
> | shortly.  The desktop form factor will be pushed upmarket to become
> | server systems.  In a couple years you'll just plug a big flat panel
> | display, full-sized keyboard, and rat into your laptop (which has a
> | built-in UPS, expansion through USB and pcmcia, 802.11b wireless
> | networking...)  Price is just a question of economies of scale, so
> | laptops will become cheaper when their volume passes desktops.  You can
> | already get new laptops for just under the magic $1000 mark, and as a
> | result they've pushed desktops under the $500 mark where they can't
> | really afford to do any R&D...)
>
> None of major PC vendors doing R&D.
> All PC assembling is outsourced, motherboards are standard and developed in
> Taiwan, manufactured on mainland China.
> And IMO PC vendors should go now to $300 mark, followed by $200 (without
> monitor) Than people will by PCs just like consumables :-)

There's a ways to go yet before we hit the $74 VCR at Sam's Wholesale club, 
which contains approximately the same amount of electronics, case, 
connectors, and power regulation (and more moving parts) compared to your 
average computer.  On the other hand, no R&D has been done in the VCR world 
(barring the copy-prevention stuff funded by hollywood and forced down 
manufacturer's throats via liberal "campaign contributions"...)

When did the phrase "campaign contribution" replace the word graft?  And why 
do even hackers call it "copy protection" when it's actually "copy 
prevention"?  The way to PROTECT a copy of your data is to make backups...

> | the laptops will be running windows.  (It's a big opportunity we're
> | missing in the switch to laptops.  How many laptop hardware manufactuers
> | are offering Linux preinstalled?  How many corporate customers want a
> | desktop without a usable word processor?)
>
> we should blame lazy/unprofessional managers at those corporations here.

No, they just think differently.  There's actually three major points of 
view, and most people fall in between.  Long ago in another life, I wrote a 
series of articles on the difference between the hacker, nine-to-five worker, 
and corporate management mindsets way back.  Unfortunately, the Motley Fool's 
website seems to be down.  (Gee, what a suprise...)  You could just go read 
Chapter 12 of accidental empires, that would probably give you the gist of 
it...

> How many of those PC manufacturers know *what* exactly their customers
> using? None. Thye try to pretend that thye know everything, but in fact
> they know nothing.

It's not a question of what people end up using, it's a question of 
preinstalls.  We'll never get the home user's desktop without the software 
coming preinstalled.  Corporate IT departments install their own stuff, they 
just want to AVOID having to pay for a preinstalled version of windows 
they're not going to use.  (Even if they reimage the boxes with a 
site-licensed version of windows, sometimes they have to pay for the windows 
license that comes bundled with the system...)

> The only exceptions are niche markets, like Sun server/workstations or IBM
> mainframes. That iron is so expensive that you can afford to know your
> customer needs, track those needs, make special offers/upgrades, etc.
> For regular PCs - manufaturers do not care how you use them.

Try getting tech support for a machine you've reimaged with Linux.  Even if 
the motherboard caught fire...

> |   I'd also like to point out that there's tons of books available in HTML
> |   format online.
> |
> |   Hasn't exactly knocked off the conventional publishing industry. 
> | (Linux Journal's website doesn't seem to stop people from subscribing to
> | the dead tree version, either.)
>
> Interesting. I personally found that I do not read computer magazine
> (printed versions) already for 3 or 4 years.

I haven't subscribed to any since the commodore 64 days and Compute's 
Gazette.  (Not counting Computer Shopper, which is the only magazine I ever 
subscribed to for the ads.)  I stopped reading computer magazines long before 
the web was a factor, largely because they were all talking about the 
macintosh or Windows, and I wasn't interested.

That said, I do get the occasional printed copy of stuff it a headline 
catches my eye...

> And those which I am still getting: I am getting for free, as many computer
> magazine tend to offer "free subscriptions" to the leading IT companies.
> Especially when those companies advertise in these magazines:-)

Yeah, I've picked up a bunch of copies of stuff at LWE, ALS, various LUG 
meetings.  (Acronym saturation has been reached.  ASHBR.)

> |   2) The BSD guys don't advocate Linux either.  But some of them use KDE.
> | So why care about Linux support, why not just support BSD?
>
> Indeed. Problem with BSD that you will have problem finding boxed version
> Boxed Linux distributions are much more common.

BSD isn't interesting.  It's far too easily co-opted.  I wrote a rant about 
THAT too, which LinuxToday did actually publish attached to the end of a link 
to Caldera's Ransom Love being stupid, which happens so often I'm not sure it 
counts as news...

http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-05-10-002-20-PS

> |   3) Alan Cox doesn't advocate KDE, he's a Gnome user.  (And his wife's
> | on the Gnome board of directors.)  He's written more actual Linux code
> | than
>
> Cool!
> Do you suggest my wife should join KDE League?.. :-)

Go for it.  (Does she use KDE?  We need all the non-geeks we can get trying 
this stuff and giving us the advantage of a non-geek mindset.)

> | Linus has, so why advocate something other than he does?
> |
> |   What does this argument have to do with ANYTHING?
>
> In fact, most people using KDE, or advocating KDE - do it for fun.
> So, putting any commrecial meaning behind it is useless - it doesn't work.

Sure.  But if you don't want to see KDE succeed, just admit it. :)

If you're going to advocate something, you might as well be effective...

> |   Freedom is a good supplemental argument, but as a main thrust it has
>
> Many people can easily sacrificy freedom in some "specific"
> conditions/timeframe.
> Like what we have seen after Sep.11.

Another can of worms argument, and I've got to go to dinner.  However, 
remember your Ben Franklin quotes.  Those who give up essential liberty for a 
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.  Remember also 
that quote is over 200 years old and plenty of people still aren't 
listening...

Rob

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