getting the software to play nice with such a setup is not currently viable ...

It has been viable for over a decade. Plenty of groups have done it:

http://linuxgazette.net/124/smith.html

And Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/multipoint/

See the Wiki for more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat_configuration

Most interesting is Fedora 17 automatically enabling it when appropriate hardware is connected, which should mean RHEL7/CentOS7 will, too.

your $50 tablet is actually a fully-fledged computing device.

Yes, but as a "thick-client" it's a brutally low-end and very limited device. As a thin client, it's a high-end workstation, with huge amounts of memory, unlimited storage, etc.

And if a big market ever developed for thin-clients, you can bet these same tablet manufacturers would come out with even cheaper, stripped-down devices that are only good enough to be used as a thin-client. At what price point would you say it's a good idea? $25? $15? $10?

This is the first time I see anyone arguing that market domination by brand X (in any market) is good because of the network effect.

Since there's no anti-competitive, lock-in or monopoly aspect to Cisco's dominance, you'd be hard-pressed to claim that it is harmful. I specifically pointed out that the hurdle to switching to some other vendor isn't very high, just that a mix of different network equipment is anti-productive, even if there's some up-front savings to be had.

The dominance of brand X is good because its products are so idiosyncratic that you need a lot of people to use it so that you could have a pool of people from which you could hire someone to manage it.

No. Cisco's products are no more idiosyncratic than any other networking gear. And there's no networking gear out there which you can buy and not need someone to manage.

I'm not sure what particular logical fallacy this is but I'm sure there is one.

No logical fallacy, just you playing dumb (or are you playing?).

What was the problem with unloading Symphony on consulting support based upon LibreOffice? Given that this is a business they want to be rid of, I would expect they would not need to bolt proprietary stuff on to it any longer.

Regarding MariaDB support, I think you're correct that they're treating it as a competitor. This wasn't really the case for MySQL. IBM provided a supported version of MySQL.

The thin client model is ludicrous.

It can work, just as shared networking can work (but doesn't always). A $50 7" tablet as a thin client would certainly work, and you certainly won't be able to get a decent computer + monitor for that price. The only question is how much the monthly fee for the service will be. If it's not significantly more than the cost of internet access, I could see plenty of people being interested in buying-in to the service.

How about every block of 8 apartments share a single computer, with just HDMI and USB cables going to each room? Then the cost of computer access for each is only the price of a monitor, and they'll get full-speed access to the GPU for gaming and video playback. That's undeniably more economical than everyone buying their own computer, though it's not quite a traditional "thin client" model.

IBM is most visible around Apache OpenOffice. What they are doing around MySQL v. MariaDB is tacit support through inaction. They didn't turn to supporting MariaDB or another MySQL version when Oracle de-supported MySQL on IBM platforms. They did something similar during Oracle v. Google - they chose just that time to abandon the Harmony project and commit to Oracle's JDK.

How many Cisco certified people do you know that don't know anything about networking??

The CCNA was always an entry-level certification. Point me to a clueless CCNP or CCIE and I'll be surprised. Of course certification isn't a prereq for knowing what you're doing, either.

It's the brand name that makes them important and the brand name that makes these devices valuable.

There's definitely significant brand-name mark-up on their hardware, but that's NOT why Cisco is valuable. Cisco is dominant because of network effects... There are lots of people who know the Cisco ios CLI, and the intricacies of their specific product lines. This is in-part because Cisco is dominant, and it lends itself to more dominance, as saving a few hundred dollars on a switch isn't worth the retraining needed for your admin to learn to manage something different, or dealing with different support, billing, etc.

And to me the real killer is that networking is 99.999% about being protocol implementation faithful so ALL devices of all brands should do the same damned things.

Yes, and Windows and Linux can both serve web pages... Does that mean you'd just switch back and forth between them without a second thought? No, you'll stick with one or the other (whichever your IT staff is familiar with), until the benefits of the other become overwhelming, and are worth retraining or new hiring.

Cisco hardware only needs to stay inexpensive enough that it's not worth the hassle of using a different brand. If you've got a huge network, that's not the case, and a few percent savings will add up. But for smaller networks, the savings usually really isn't worth the hassle.

FWIW, I'm not a Cisco fan, but the business world isn't as irrational as you claim.

by Professional Develop (2957023):
Doesn't change the fact that Professional Develop is right.

LOL!

You forgot to click the "Post Anonymously" check-box. The internet is hard...

He isn't hiding from the rape accusation* - he he hiding from the US

No, he SAYS he's hiding from the US. It's a good way to get sympathy from those whose help he needs to stay out of jail.

(He believes Sweden to be acting as their proxy),

No, again, he SAYS he believe that. Meanwhile, the conspiracy theorists were claiming he'd be extradited to the US the LAST TIME Sweden had him in custody, but it didn't happen then, and I see no rational reason to believe it will happen next time.

**Manning, kept in solitary confinement for years without trial, then being tried at a secret court in which he isn't permitted to see the evidence presented against him.

Military personnel face a different justice system than civilians. Asange never enlisted in the US Military, so if he steps foot in the US, he'd be tried by the regular courts, with all the rights we've come to expect.

If I believed the US were trying to extradite me in connection with a major leak, I'd be packing my bags and buying a train ticket as far as I could go by cash.

Actually, it's more likely you'd be wearing a tin-foil hat, drinking heavily, and living under an overpass.

Pushing more traffic into Verizon's network than you pull, means that Verizon's users are requesting data from you.

Umm, no it doesn't. We're not talking about last-mile links here, we're talking about backbone. If I'm Cogent, and I need to get traffic from San Francisco to New York, I can dump that on Verizon's network (or anyone else I'm peering with) and their network will dutifully forward the traffic all the way to NY. The end-point could be AT&T, Comcast, or even another Cogent customer, but dumping it on Verizon's network saves Cogent money, not having to utilize their own backbone.

And this is exactly what Cogent has been repeatedly accused of doing in the past, by pretty much EVERY TIER-1 ISP. Here's just a few examples:

https://secure.dslreports.com/shownews/92749

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/10/31/peering-dispute-between-cogent-sprint/

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/level-3-issues-statement-concerning-internet-peering-and-cogent-communications-55014572.html

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/10/22/peering-disputes-migrate-to-ipv6/

http://www.cybertelecom.org/industry/cogent.htm

Your memory of IBM differs from my own.

I can't say I've had that much to do with them. HP, on the other hand, I could rant about for a while...

If they own the copyright, they are free to relicense a piece of data

Sorry to be pedantic, but replace "a piece of data" with "a work of authorship". If there isn't the creative work of a human being involved, it's not copyrightable. And then we get to this:

17 CFR 102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

And that means that even when the hand of man is involved, a lot of things are still not copyrightable.

Let's look at what Oracle is doing. I'll start the list of moves that appear to be intended to alienate the community around the very software they're promoting and cause the Open Source community to create viable forks that end up absconding with the product and its market. You guys contribute additional examples...

• Oracle v. Google regarding Java and the premise that APIs are copyrightable.
• Apache OpenOffice v. LibreOffice (which has a full-time negative publicity generator in Rob Weir).
• MySQL v. MariaDB.

IBM isn't known for dumb moves, but partnering with Oracle on this sure is one.

Bruce

It's partly because they're big, but it's also because they're cheap.