IT has always lost the battle. The margins always win: very IT manager should have to read some Hayek to learn how the margins always win, because they have information not known in the center. Having learned that, they could work on how to work with it, rather than against it.

Hank

>>Python was a non-starter in terms of UI: but with mobile UI now powered by the JS JIT (and shortly by the Pypy JIT), and a UI framework with a hundred developers and 10's of thousand of testers (Google Web Toolkit) able to be used with Python (through Pyjamas), there is now a viable alternative for business app development. And that alternative has stability. There will be at least two other alternatives using Python (Lianja; and QT Quick), so there's no issue of lock-in.
>
>Compared to Windows UI alone python is still having more complexity to deploy and test - the price of complexity/many OS targets.
>But now the added complexity IMHO is more than balanced by the benefit of run anywhere.
>
>>Given that Mono is a requirement for .Net to succeed and is now in flux,
>
>understatement of the day given that Miguel seemingly went to found his own [smaller] company...
>
>>given that MS's mobile story is still weak, given that college students are moving to Macs at a rate far greater than the general population (and today's report that Mac use in corporations is growing beyond expectation), given that the results of MS's mis-steps are reflected in market cap, there's a real question whether .Net/MS represents the stability we all seek.
>
>The stability is nowadays only in Word & Excel, Access is loosing ground IMHO
>[albeit me reading today about IT loosing the battle against Excel&Access due to speed in getting business processes implemented]
>Outlook is becoming the Notes of this century over here due to smartphone fragmentation - WP7/WinArm must fight here IMHO.
>
>regards
>
>thomas