“IBM and Microsoft have been quietly busy behind the scenes for the last two years building a toll booth that could position the two companies to collect royalties on most if not all Internet traffic. While the technologies that form the foundation of that toll booth have yet to be officially recognized as standards by an independent standards body, the collective strength of IBM and Microsoft could be enough to render Internet standards consortia powerless to stop them.” Read the rest of the report at ZDNews.
IBM, Microsoft Plot Net Takeover
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except that the W3C recently had a desision that says that the protocols that they set as standards, if they are patented, must be available royalty free to all people who are implimenting and using the W3C standards.
so, that basicly means that IBM and MS will have to get thier way of doing business adopted by everyone if they want to collect money on it. I certainly do not think that the services modle will be anything major.
I mean what could you do with a service that you can not do with the web or your TV right now? and what level of lazyness must we fall to that we want information and applets delivered to us rather than having to go out on the internet and get them ourself.
With all the support IBM is pumping into linux I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t more than just hot air.
“except that the W3C recently had a desision that says that the protocols that they set as standards, if they are patented, must be available royalty free to all people who are implimenting and using the W3C standards.”
Like web designers adhere to W3C standards anyway. They never have. As soon as Netscape or IE implemented some new tag, designers jumped to use it, even if they weren’t W3C approved (and most of them weren’t). It has been that way since the beginning of the Web. That’s never going to change.
punkball how naive are you? You assume because ibm is backing linux that they’re “good guys”, when the truth is the main reason (imo) that they’re backing linux is to try and break ms’ stranglehold on the desktop os market. ibm is a 60 year old company, thats survived 60 years (I think its around there) because they’re just as cutthroat as any corporation out there. If this could make ibm money, they’d do it. They don’t care what linux and oss fans would say because their shareholders would be richer, and thats there goal. While we’re at it heres another newsflash, apple is trying to make money too, they don’t care about *nix (hell neither does redhat).
This may be a good thing because IBM has strong ties to Java in their server systems as well as a commitment to Linux so they should put some things back into the system for the rest of us. Most of all it will keep two strong players in web services. This will help keep MS from dominating too much with the .net scheme. In some ways this could really open thing up for competition as the servers will support both systems and undoubtably be able to transform data into one type or another based on the user. IBM doesn’t owe MS or SUN anything. IBM can’t be ignored anymore even though they don’t Own .Net or Java they are too big a customer and vendor and contributor to both to be ignored.
“punkball how naive are you? You assume because ibm is backing linux that they’re “good guys”, when the truth is the main reason (imo) that they’re backing linux is to try and break ms’ stranglehold on the desktop os market. ibm is a 60 year old company, thats survived 60 years (I think its around there)”
Genaldar is right about this. IBM’s main reason for backing Linux is to hurt Microsoft. After all, IBM got screwed over by Microsoft not once, but TWICE in the desktop OS market. First they got screwed when they bought DOS from Microsoft, (after the original author that Gates bought DOS from started screeming). Then they got screwed again when Microsoft pulled out of the OS/2 partnership. There is definately no love lost between Microsoft and IBM. If IBM could abandon Microsoft products completely, my guess is they would do so. Right now, they just don’t have that option. It would be corporate suicide if they tried. That’s probably why IBM is backing Linux. It allows them to depend less on Microsoft.
I have yet to see a Linux Desktop from IBM, nor do I expect to see one. IBM is not using Linux to brake MS its using Linux to brake other proprietary Unix companies (e.g. Sun, HP) by offering cheaper alternatives.
“I have yet to see a Linux Desktop from IBM, nor do I expect to see one. IBM is not using Linux to brake MS its using Linux to brake other proprietary Unix companies (e.g. Sun, HP) by offering cheaper alternatives.”
You can order desktops from IBM that ship with Linux preloaded. You can also order their Thinkpad A series with a Linux preload. In fact, they even give you Linux as an option when you are configuring your Thinkpad A on their web store.
The Evil Ones (IBM, build on the blood of Jews) It’s attacking both UNIX servers, _AND_ The Other Evil Ones (MS).
by offering cheaper alternatives.
Hmm, strange how they are ofton not cheeper then…
This option for the Thinkpad to come with Linux is not available worldwide though, I believe it is only in the US. But yes, it is an option IBM has been offering for some time.
IBM also worked on some nice embedded system for us geeks, a nice watch with voice recognition, a 320×240 tactile 256 gray shades LCD screen, 802.11b networking and many other goodies, all in a watch size.
20~24 hours battery life, comes with a charger to put it on during the night, sure to make your city life style a better place.
Check it out in xmas of 2002 with a nice price tag of 4 digits (or very close to).
And no, they aren’t running X on there, something like their own GUI I heard, but it’s definately running Linux.
Don’t you people even read the actual article, it’s IBM and Microsoft setting all those protocols WITHOUT Sun. And IBM pretty much runs the Java standards committee now (with IBM java vm’s coming to market faster than Sun when new java specs are finalized).
The problem with Sun and Oracle is that they have billionaire CEO’s who have an ego thing against Gates — clouds their judgments. When IBM talked about spending their billion dollar on linux — the money goes to AIX development (and since it’s POSIX and probably it will compile in Linux anyway) and mainframe systems. That’s probably 90% of that billion dollar went. Embedded linux at IBM — LOL — go and read the interview of the IBM guy who ported linux to S/390, the IBM lawyers won’t allow him to use embedded linux on commercial projects. (They will show you the linux watch because that will never be a commercial product.) Go to IBM’s website on pervasive computing (their technical term for embedded systems) and they will tell you that QNX is their preferred embedded OS (and showing up in actual IBM commercial products like the netvista thin clients in cruise ships and Chrslyer’s IBM/QNX/Motorola telematics systems).
Meanwhile, Sun actually goes out and spends millions of actual cash to buy staroffice — then they put a price tag on staroffice and everyone screams at them for anti-opensource.
People scream because they’re charging $100 bucks for a bad office suite (I’d rather use koffice then star).
“People scream because they’re charging $100 bucks for a bad office suite”
KOffice can compete with StarOffice on any level? LOL Give me a break! KOffice can’t even import or export Word documents correctly! And last thing I heard, the price for StarOffice 6 was probably going to be around $50 or so. You hardly have any reason to scream over this considering that you can’t touch anything even remotely equivalent from other vendors for less than $220.
“(I’d rather use koffice then star).”
And then you wonder why Linux can’t make a major dent in the desktop market and why commercial app vendors don’t develop much software for it? Very simple. Because of this very attitude of Linux users that think commercial software is evil and all software should be free. Commercial companies won’t develop for Linux because they know that all Linux users will do is complain that it costs money and is closed source and they won’t buy it anyway.
Esajas 5:8
I use windows and office 2000 99.9% of the time. I’ve tried star office for both windows and linux and while its close to ms office then koffice is, koffice was beter imo. but I have the luxery of using actual ms office when I want to be compliant I don’t have to rely on koffice’s 20% compatability and star office’s 50% compatability. My point was if I had to choose I’d choose koffice becuse while its less compatable I like its design better (btw I use .rtf not .doc so I could use anything, I just like office 2k the best so I stick with it).
“star office’s 50% compatability…”
I would say it is probably closer to 90% compatible. It even supports revision marks.
I’m sure it is closer to 90%, my point though is that when I need compatability I can go to ms office itself (it must have improved, but I was using a slightly older version of star office).
“I’m sure it is closer to 90%, my point though is that when I need compatability I can go to ms office itself (it must have improved, but I was using a slightly older version of star office).”
I can understand that. My problem is that I am a technical author who writes Unix related material. I often need to take screenshots from X or reference Unix commands and such. However, my publisher requires that I submit Microsoft Word files with revision marks enabled Although I *could* use Microsoft Word itself, it would be a major pain because it would require me to constantly save and reboot into a different OS anytime I needed an X screenshot or something. Because of this, StarOffice (and more recently OpenOffice) are practically a god-send for me. It allows me to to all of my work in Unix, including writing the manuscript. And MS Word compatibility is so good, my publisher can’t even tell I am not using MS Word. The revison marks are the primary area where almost every other Unix word processor I have tried besides StarOffice / OpenOffice fail the MS Word compatibility test. And the fact that I need this feature to do my job is why I can’t use K-Word or some other word processor most of the time.
Actually though, when I am not writing something that does not require MS Word comptibility, my word processor of choice is Abiword. The main reason I really like Abiword is that it uses XML as its native file format. So I can write documents in Abiword for example, and then easially work with those documents in things such as Python simply by using the XML modules.
“People scream because they’re charging $100 bucks for a bad office suite (I’d rather use koffice then star).”
I think this was my main point. You made the assertion that it is a bad office suite, but now you are sort of back peddling on that to say that you just prefer to use Microsoft Word when you need the compatibility.
StarOffice is really a very good office suite, and as I said, even if they were charing $100 (and I think the price will be a lot lower than that), it would still be a tremendous bargin compared to the $500 or whatever it is that Microsoft wants for Office Professional. Even Lotus SmartSuite retails for over $200. So reallly, people shouldn’t screem about Sun’s prices. It’s a bargin. Hell, it’s even cheaper than Microsoft Works Suite.
And besides, if you don’t want to pay for StarOffice 6, there is always OpenOffice.
IMO StarOffice is a bad suite. Whenever I used it I felt like I was using an imitation ms office. Thats why when I need compatability (and I was in linux) rebooting into 2k for ms office was my preferred method. I’m sure for someone like you it is a godsend, but what ms needs (yes needs) is competition, not a me-too application. Hell staroffice for windows even asks if you want it to be your default browser the first time you use it. btw I never back peddled, I said I prefer koffice and I do, I just admitted its possible that its compatability is higher then the last time I used it (I disliked it so much I didn’t even install it when trying linux distros that have it still bundled).
“IMO StarOffice is a bad suite. Whenever I used it I felt like I was using an imitation ms office. Thats why when I need compatability (and I was in linux) rebooting into 2k for ms office was my preferred method.”
“Hell staroffice for windows even asks if you want it to be your default browser the first time you use it.”
Have you tried StarOffice 6 / OpenOffice 6? There are quite a few changes. For one, it doesn’t install a browser anymore, so you don’t get asked this question. Also, the integrated desktop (which I think almost everybody including me hated) is history.
“I’m sure for someone like you it is a godsend, but what ms needs (yes needs) is competition, not a me-too application.”
Sure, but the *only* way that another product is going to provide competition for MS Office is if it is almost completely Office compatible, and if it works in a similar way. People don’t want to have to relearn how to do everything.
My example is a good one of why any product that wants to compete with Microsoft is going to have to be a “me-too” application. Basically, Word’s revision tracking is very common in any group work environment where more than one person is working on the same document. StarOffice / OpenOffice is currently the only word processor for Unix that does a good job of supporting this. Any word processor that does not support this feature (and in a way that is compatible with Word) will not provide serious competition because most serious writers will be unable to use it. Most serious writers will continue to be forced into using Microsoft Word because of features such as revision tracking that make it possible for writers, development editors, tech editors, and grammer editors to easily colaborate on the same document. (In writing, especially technical writing, there are usually four or five different editors supporting the author. Each editor has expertise in a different area.)
This is not to say that StarOffice does not have its problems. For most people who are not writing professionally, it is a pretty bloated application (as is MS Word), and as I said, even when I am writing, if what I am writing does not require group colaboration using Word’s revision tracking, my prefered application is AbiWord.