Re: VB or VC++?


Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
> On 28 Nov 2005 21:01:04 -0800
> spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> >
> > Richard Heathfield wrote:
> > > spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx said:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Richard Heathfield wrote:
>
> > > > Like Linux, whose availability in source form implies its instability?
> > >
> > > The implication is not evident to me. I currently run Linux and Windows at
> > > home, and find Linux to be the far more stable of the two, even though I
> > > use it far more (and thus give it more reasons to fall over).
> >
> > Yeah, but I am sure you are aware that a corporation is not a home, and
> > that home computing is different from Korporate Komputing.
>
> Yes and it is worth noting that large corporations who depend on
> user visible computing services often choose open source solutions eg.
> Google is based almost entirely on Linux and Yahoo almost entirely on
> FreeBSD. Then consider that the Apache web server is behind the majority
> of web sites - ie. chosen by companies that sell web hosting services
> and that IBM ship large mainframes running Linux under VM and I'm sure
> they're not for home use.

This was based on the attraction of a virtualized slave labor, eg.,
Linux was according to the SCO deposition made ready for prime time by
STEALING industrial-strength libraries from SCO, such that the LABOR
was free to IBM.

Unfortunately, not having to pay for the labor in code, together with
network externalities constituted in the fact that other companies are
using the "free" platform, forms a market failure which is in a
business case Free as in beer but not in speech: for IBM is then
constrained to talk as if it has a claim on Linux, taking credit in the
atmosphere of fear, uncertainty and doubt for being the only path to
"open" computing.

In other words: Korporate Komputing and other Korporate ventures are
never "rational" or justificatory of a paradigm such as Open Source at
the margin of primitive accumulation.

IBM was at this margin when Thomas Watson Sr. was jailed for sharp
market practices in 1912 because if he had not undercut Hollerith,
Watson and NCR would not have had a market.

Likewise, under Lou Gerstner nearly a hundred years later, IBM had hit
a wall in the form of declining sales and had to find a *** to
exploit.

Nothing about this rather sordid tale shows anything technologically
superior about Open Source.

>
> Contrary to your position corporate computing is far from uniformly
> behind Microsoft although I will grant that they do very well selling to
> corporations where the degree of internal technical understanding
> is low.
>
I see no greater technical understanding in Open Source for the simple
reason that it's all about artifacts and not about computing science,
and in far less time than Open Source, Microsoft produced an ECMA
compatible platform which is open in relation to customer needs.

That is, "open" is not a predicate, any more than existence was for
Kant. Instead it is a rather sloppy portmanteau word expressing a
complex relationship to the tools of production and success in surfing
network externalities.

It becomes a game as described by Keynes in which the judges of a
beauty contest select not the prettiest gal, but the gal who the other
judges think is prettiest.

> > What makes it different from home computing, or the libertarian fantasy
> > land in which entirely too many software developers dwell like gnomes,
> > is that it is a bureaucratized and administered world in which
> > Microsoft, as a business, is trying to pimp the corporation out of as
> > much money as possible by making products out of support events.
>
> Microsoft are not alone in this game, Sun and IBM do quite a
> good job of it too.
>
> > Boo hoo. This is better than realizing AT THE LAST MINUTE that the
> > corporation is running a source modified Linux and it is called the
> > Real World.
>
> If some other corporation (eg. Red Hat, IBM) modified the source
> and sold it with support then that's fine. If the corporation using it
> did so then presumably they have internal support for their chosen platform
> and once again that's fine.
>
No, it's not fine at all, because the promised "support" is a Nozickian
paradox (cf Anarchy, State and Utopia).

Nozick, a libertarian capitalist, confesses that laissez-faire provides
no practical or moral ground for paying one's debts, and an extended
warranty or service contract is for this reason a rapidly depreciating
asset in the real world, because it becomes in the interest of the
person making the promise to downsize the actual "support".

Furthermore if as in the SCO lawsuit, IBM stole the "modifications"
then it may not have the in-house expertise to modify them or support
them.

The whole situation stinks, and it may be better to hire some studly
Microsoft-certified goons and agree to pay Microsoft's prices, which in
fact significantly undercut other vendors.
> > If you don't like it, you need to understand that in fact societies
> > like Sweden have successfully enforced industrial policy as regards
> > software and hardware, in effect "forcing" companies to standardize
> > around non-IBM platforms in the past, while maintaining economic
> > growth.
>
> Thus proving that you don't have to follow the crowd to succeed.

Ahm the libertarian fantasy. The problem here is that WITHIN Sweden,
the Swedahoovians did just that, avoiding IBM to foster a Swedish
industry. They succeeded because at the time Fortran and Cobol sucked
and Algol didn't.
>
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