"From my humble point of view, the IT industry is not one industry, but a relationship of connected industries. "
Ah! Major light-bulb-over-head time (coupled with a "Doh!"). Sort of like the quote about "computer science" not being a single discipline. I think I'm going to stuff your observation back into my QotD file to get posted on its own later.
Re: Political bias?
From my humble point of view, the IT industry is not one industry, but a relationship of connected industries.
We have:
- commodity components (chips, ram, etc)
- commodity assemblers (pc's, scanners, printers)
- mass software (Microsoft, Quicken, etc.)
- Industrial components (massive raid arrays, medical chips, signal processors)
- industrial assemblers (routers, medical equipment, massive computers)
- industrial software (accounting systems, radar systems, factory system)
- artisan software (shareware, small cooperatives)
- local software (small business)
- custom applications (web pages, web games, small markets)
- information publishing (web pages, encyclopedias, etc.)
- research
- small merchanting and servicing (your local computer store)
- mass merchanting and servicing (BestBuy, CompUSA)
- accessories
- massive cooperative ventures (Linux, free stoftware)
Damn, I'm not even done the list of niches. You get the idea. Oversimplification = Not Useful to a Meaningful Discussion
Re: Political bias?
Ah! Major light-bulb-over-head time (coupled with a "Doh!"). Sort of like the quote about "computer science" not being a single discipline. I think I'm going to stuff your observation back into my QotD file to get posted on its own later.