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Paul Graham Claims "Microsoft is Dead"
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Apr 07, 2007 09:58 AM
from the don't-fear-the-reaper dept.
from the don't-fear-the-reaper dept.
netbuzz writes "He doesn't mean dead as in six feet under, but rather that the software giant no longer instills the kind of fear — particularly among entrepreneurs — that it did back in the day when it was making road kill out of companies like Netscape. Microsoft obits have been around for almost as long as the company, but Graham's stature, style and devoted following are likely to make this one a classic."
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Paul Graham Claims "Microsoft is Dead"
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It's not dead yet (Score:5, Funny)
(http://scwizard.livejournal.com/ | Last Journal: Friday January 13 2006, @08:59PM)
Re:It's not quite dead yet (Score:5, Funny)
"I'm getting better."
"No you're not; you'll be stone dead in a moment."
"I think I'll go for a walk."
"Look, you're not fooling anyone."
"I feel happy..."
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://pogson.6k.ca/ | Last Journal: Monday December 05 2005, @08:12PM)
It is too late now. They have burnt too many bridges. Even the hardware makers hate MSFT because they changed VISTA just enough to break all the drivers. Millions of school kids are experiencing the richness of GNU/Linux. Dell and HP are getting serious about Linux machines (maybe). The EU may realize that mega-fines are not enough and outright ban MSFT. Even Uncle Sam is discouraging the use of Windows for security. MSFT is like a long-necked dinosaur trapped in a tar pit. The brain is so small and so far away that it has not received the final BSOD yet. The body is cooling slowly because of the large mass to surface ratio.
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:5, Informative)
(http://danbirchall.multiply.com/)
We're talking about UNIX and VMS.
Welcome back to 1987, only with smaller boxen that fit with your decor and have slicker UIs. Oh, and the games are better, for the most part.
Oh, and remember how UNIX vs. VMS turned out?
(Unfortunately, it's harder to turn your old computer into a bar [glendale.ca.us] now...)
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:5, Informative)
That little microcosm pretty much defines the limits of the industries that evolved around the commercial computer-on-a-chip.
Thirty years experience in programming for the micro computer.
90% of the world's desktops. Development tools for the PC. An office suite, a server OS.
The U.S. Navy's Off-The-Shelf "Smart Ship" OS. [Stop thinking about the Cruiser Yorktown - decommissioned in 2004 - and start thinking about the Carrier Ronald Reagan, in service now]
Synonymous with PC gaming. Strongly positioned in console gaming. Mobile devices. Etc, etc.
How much more "in touch" do you need to be?
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.geocodeengine.com/)
That little microcosm pretty much defines the limits of the industries that evolved around the commercial computer-on-a-chip.
Thirty years experience in programming for the micro computer.
Thirty years experience in buying, stealing, licensing or otherwise acquiring other companies' programs and adding hack after hack to it to "increase" features and "fix" bugs.
That is probably how it should read. MS didnt write anything they currently sell. They acquired it and revised it and added stuff to it. There is a very very long list of all of MS' acquisitions someplace online listing them all - including every part of Office, the entire graphics engine (including DirectX), IE, the Windows GUI, The WinXP theme changes, DOS, Win16, IIS, Exchange, and on and on. Acquired and added to by MS.
Yeah, maybe that qualifies as programming... but to me, the programmer is the person who wrote the apps to begin with... the work MS did is called modifying - which is done by programmers as well... but the way you have it worded makes it sound like MS actually programmed the stuff they sell.
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh huh...
That is how an entrepreneur thinks.
What is most important to Microsoft when making acquisition decisions? People are the most important factor in any acquisition. Microsoft looks for talented engineering teams with vision and passion and experienced management teams. Second is technology and IP that can add value to an existing Microsoft product. Third is the opportunity to acquire stand alone products for existing customers. Examples include Visio, Hotmail, and Vermeer. Another, more rare, decision point is the opportunity to enter whole new markets. Great Plains and PlaceWare are excellent examples.
How does Microsoft decide to acquire rather than build internally? This is the toughest question in any acquisition discussion. Microsoft has thousands of very talented software engineers that can build just about anything. How can you justify paying hundreds of millions or even billions for something a team of 30 engineers could build in a year or two. That translates to about $12M of development cost versus a huge acquisition cost. Technology is not the issue here. It is all about marketing channels, sales expertise, and market leadership in segments where Microsoft is not strong.
It comes down to this; if the company in question has a product that is squarely in the domain of an existing Microsoft product than the valuation is a small premium over the internal development cost. If the company has market leadership in a new product space or market segment than the valuation goes up significantly.
Entrepreneurs should remember this. The "barriers to entry" are most often market position, not technical brilliance. I have heard start-ups say "we have a two year lead on our closest competitor". In fact, I have said it myself at previous start-ups. I was wrong. Most technologies can be replicated by a talented engineering group within a year or less. Many times a similar technology can be licensed immediately and a new product shipped within months.
Many start-ups have failed by focusing too much on their technology and not enough on the value they bring to customers and the channels they use to service the customer. Many times the early innovator fizzles, and a "fast follower" comes in and makes all the money. "Microsoft will acquire my company" [typepad.com]
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:4, Informative)
This is probably better than coming up with a badly designed API and having it flop.
Wikipedia has a list [wikipedia.org] of 60 companies acquired since 1994, along with investments in another 160
That compares similarly with (Yahoo's acquisition list [tomokeefe.com] and Google's acquisition list>/a> [wikipedia.org]
All corporations perform acquisitions. Microsoft's real crime is bundling (if not mashing) their applications with the OS (Internet Explorer as one example) and demanding that hardware vendors bundle Windows OS with all desktop/laptop systems.
Re:Its a suicide (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me start off by appologizing for this comment. I don't know why, but I am in a nit-picking mood and so I post...
Microsoft is killing Microsoft. They decided that they owned the developers and then they tried to milk them. It was only a matter of time that those who brought home the bread and butter would begin to let go and go somewhere else. It worked that way for Apple before them.
I bought an Apple II and upgraded the 48k memory to 64k way back in the stone age of computers. Then I decided to do some serious business programming and found that Apple owned programmers. They said if you want the chore done, hire Claris Works. Well I wasn't rich enough for them so I found a machine (Microsoft) OS that I could get data on.
Coincidently, I too started programming on an Apple II and eventually went to IBM PC development about the time that Borland sold their Turbo series of compilers. However, I just don't understand what point you are trying to make. Apple never owned me, and neither has Microsoft. I don't remember ever being "forced" to use (or even using) ClarisWorks. By the way for the young people out there, using ClarisWorks (which was for the early Macintosh) to program back then would be like using Microsoft Access to program today. The only reason I move to the IBM PC was because people tended to use the same computers at home that they had in the office (not to mention 80 columns of text and a hard drive - or hard card). I still have fond memories of the Apple II.
After microsoft came out with Visual Studio, I think developer support from Microsoft has been second to none. Of course, they are ensuring that you use their public API and not the ones that they themselves use. Overtime, I think this is becoming a non-issue. (Yes I know I criticize Microsoft in an earlier post, and I still think Microsoft is guilty of many sins, but overcharging for a compiler suite is not one of them.)
Well I wasn't rich enough for them so I found a machine (Microsoft) OS that I could get data on. That by the way was a difference produced by an Industrial Spy at IBM. When the PC came out the earliest design was stolen by a Japanese spy who had clones on the market ahead of the release.
WTF? Back in the 80's, I worked part-time selling those pieces of crap made by Sanyo. Those silver boxes were relatively sleeker than the "boxy" XT, but its compatibility was lacking. It was during this time, a distinction was made between PC compatible and MS-DOS compatible. I don't remember Sanyo coming out prior to the IBM PC, but it was initially more prevelant than IBM due to its cheaper price and IBM insistance of only allowing authorized retailers to actually sell thier product. Eventually IBM loosen this requirement. Oh the days of going to the local Entre' computers and looking at the ridiculously priced computers.
The PC market didn't really take off until the Compaq portable was released. This had more to do with the BIOS being independently developed using clean room techniques and allowing a sudden market of PC clones to materialize (line Bear PC, AST, Toshiba, etc). The abundance of more compatible machines finally killed off the POS Sanyos.
Only a few years ago, I noted that I could pay a horrid price for Visual Studio because I was an American but had I lived in China or India, MS had versions for sale at less than 1/10th the US price. Often they distributed in their development centers for free. This made me pay for my competition. That is a business model doomed to die. If I pay the price I pay for the end of my business. Figure this one out.
What's to figure out? Other than your point... After the introduction of Windows, Microsoft's compilers were always inexpensive when compared to what the competitors had to offer. I think today, they even have a "free" version. I don't know how China or India figured in your argument, but if I was making a Chinese or Indian wage the compiler, even at 1/10th the US price, would still have the same
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.gridslammer.org/)
Have you tried Ubuntu? Your argument might have been true at one time, but it doesn't hold water anymore. Ubuntu is actually easier to install and manage than Windows, and installing software is waaaaay easier with their point and click Add/Remove Applications interface. It even trumps Vista in the eye candy department when you install Beryl. The only advantage Windows has at this point is availability of various popular applications and games, and that gap is steadily narrowing.
The truth is, most users have no loyalty to Windows; their loyalty is to applications. As the Linux application market matures (and it is, rapidly), arguments against migration dissolve.
Thad
Make the bad man stop, please (Score:4, Informative)
(http://dugger.notsoevil.net/)
http://marius.scurtescu.com/node/85 [scurtescu.com]
Indeed, the same package shows up in Ubuntu repos from Dapper onward (as the first link describes):
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_package
It seems that TortoiseSVN has problems with Vista. I haven't tried the svn nautilus integration yet, but there's no bugs filed against it. If you run into any, please do file a report. Personally, I choose to use editors that have SVN / CVS support built in. But I suppose some web developers may prefer a seperate client or something.
In my own experience, Windows has been about as bad as Linux with hardware. Vista's nvidia are only slightly better than Linux's with regard to suspend: instead of locking up during suspend to RAM, it fails to initialize the video on restart. Equally unusable, really. Feisty's due to make some changes with nvidia that should help alleviate restricted drivers like the nvidia closed source binary. I think it's important to stress that Linux is first and foremost an open system. If it also serves as a usable system for people who don't care, and continues to be that way, I'm willing to attribute that to the openness of the system, and so much the better. But as much as open source considerations get in the way of the user experience, they are a second class citizen in my sight. Linux makes a fantastic hacker's system.
For example, FUSE is a great idea that has several great examples with few / no comparable in Windows. Daemontools in Windows lets you present a file as if it were a cd in a drive. FUSEISO does the same thing for windows, though the GUI aspect is not quite finished. FUSE presents this mount globally, without the need for applications to know about it. And it doesn't require significant user privileges. But the greatest part about FUSE is that it's the core to several components, like gmailfs, and sshfs, ftpfs, you name it. NTFS support was written this way with good success. There's fuse modules to present Doom WAD files as a directory. There's one to access your blog. In contrast, whatever technology daemon tools is using remains cloistered.
So yea, there's a learning curve, but I'm not gonna start advocating compatiblity with Windows programs to solve it. Downloading crap from random internet sites is the modus operandi of Windows software distribution, and it's crazy insecure. Ubuntu takes the steps proprietary software can't, packaging and distributing tested and signed versions of software, without including spyware (unless you count popcon
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.gridslammer.org/)
Very nearly so. Via apt repositories, most refined and stable applications (certainly the most popular ones) are available with a click. Furthermore, all the dependencies are automatically sorted out. That is a Really Big Thing when it comes to ease of use for the non-technical user. This is one of the main reasons I consider Ubuntu 'easier to use' than Windows. The other is that the naming of menu items and layout of admin UI components is more intuitive IMHO.
The lack of a stable ABI means lack of commercial applications, and a big waste of open-source debelopers' time on unnecessary porting and building. I still can run the Win32 applications published ten years ago, and even DOS applications published fifteen or more years ago--I call that an advantage.
I've been using both Windows and Linux almost since the origins of both, and my experience just does not match yours. The Linux API and ABI have remained very stable, usually more so than Windows. Just look at how much Vista breaks backwards compatibility to see what I mean. Do google search on the term 'DLL hell' for earlier examples. Even when Linux libraries do rev and break compatibility with binaries, it is often easily fixed by installing a 'legacy support' package (easily done with the point and click package management. But of course the whole point with Linux is that you don't have to run old binaries anyway; your package manager handles dependencies and keeps everything in sync as upgrades become available.
Sure, if you live on the bleeding edge and compile apps from source, you can run into troubles, but the whole point here is that the typical user is not going to do that (nor do the have to anymore). They can stick with the apps within the repositories and still have a huge library of to choose from, all easily installed and upgraded with a mouse click. Commercial software vendor that want their stuff to reach customers just need to put them in an apt repository or CNR or some such. This is the new model for software distribution, and Linux is way ahead of the game here.
Furthermore, this is not just my opinion as a computer guru; I've dropped Ubuntu in front of newbies and gotten very favorable responses. Yes, you have to make sure you select compatible hardware, and yes, you can't just run to to Best Buy and grab any old shrinkwrap software to run on it... but the same is true of a Mac and yet people still manage fine with those.
As long as there is not a free alternative to Windows (and I doubt its possibility, given the technical and legal obstacles), I do not see the decline of Microsoft Windows in the near future.
Perhaps not, but Windows does not have to tank for Linux to be a viable desktop. For a great many people, it is a better option than what they have now. Perhaps not if you play a lot of games, but certainly for Internet surfing and office productivity and such it is a stable, friendly, virus free alternative.
I'm not saying Ubuntu Linux is problem free, but lets be honest here, neither is Windows (there certainly seems to be plenty of problems reported with Vista). Linux has a few areas where it really shines compared to Windows. That includes security, stability, software installation, and now days even ease of use. But, hey, its free to try out, so I encourage people to be their own judge on this. Maybe it won't be for you... but then again you might be pleasantly surprised.
Re:It's not dead yet (Score:5, Funny)
It Depends, Really (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://p3net.net/)
Microsoft cannot eptly launch new things (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just the thing. The article is saying Microsoft has the power to do this, but not the ability. It used to be that Microsoft could look at a small product, and just announce they were doing something similar "due out soon" and that company was dead.
Now if Microsoft said "Oh, we're working on that" the effect would not kill a company. And there is a good chance that even if Microsoft did do all the work to build a new product, it would take them some time to deliver and being a Microsoft 1.0 product, it would suck - giving a small company pelnty of time to get a product through a few iterations, and have a good head start.
Microsoft does not have the ability to compete with quick and intelligently targeted iterations anymore.
The article sounded credible until I read. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:4% of what? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The article sounded credible until I read. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you define "segments that matter"?
Re:The article sounded credible until I read. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
The real trend in the server room is to commodity x86 servers, not Windows. Of course, Windows has benefited from that trend, but Linux has benefited more, and both have benefited by taking share from bigger iron.
The creative sectors in computing are in academia, start-ups, and the high-end of the hobbyist community. These people define what we will be doing in 5-10 years. Every important new trend of the last 20 years has come out of this sector, including the Internet and Web itself. 20 years ago, most people in this sector used Microsoft OSes, because the IBM PC platform was the most open and hackable platform for expressing their creativity, and Microsoft had the hackable OS of choice for that platform. 10 years ago, Unix and Unix-like OSes were making inroads, but the Microsoft PC was still cheaper and easier to work with in most respects. Today, the PC is still the hackable hardware platform of choice, but the difference is that there are better hacker-friendly OSes to run on it. And not just one, but at least four (counting Linux, OS X, BSD, and OpenSolaris). Meanwhile, Windows is becoming less hackable, with all of its protected paths and DRM and unnecessary levels of complexity that even Microsoft can't seem to keep sorted out.
Seriously, when Apple makes an OS that is more friendly to hackers than yours is, you know you've taken the wrong path.
Look at it from Graham's Perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.nymar.demon.co.uk/)
I think that tells you a lot about Paul Graham's everyday environment. He's working with startups, he's trying to put together teams of the bright and innovative, and what he's finding is that most of these people are not using Microsoft software.
I suppose you have to allow for a bit of statistical bias there. Since Mr, Graham is (presumably) involved in selecting these people, it's entirely possible that a subconscious selection criteria might be "doesn't do windows" or something similar.
Even so, I think he's got a point. How much of that market share is down to corporations who bulk-order generic beige boxes based on buying guidelines that are fifteen to twenty years old? How much is down to private homes where someone wanted to "get a computer" without realising there was a choice, or where the major criteria was that it should be "the same as the one at work".
It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that the Microsoft market share among the up-and-coming wave of computer innovators is actually very slim. And if that is in fact the case, Microsoft should indeed be worried.
Re:Look at it from Graham's Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
More importantly, buying guidelines that say "we need Office, therefore we need Windows", "it's what everyone else uses", "it's the industry standard", "we don't want to retrain everyone on a completely new system"
All of those points have some merit, but none of them are insurmountable. On the other hand, the managers who fear retraining hassles the most are the ones who haven't figured out that it's possible to put e-mail somewhere other than your inbox, that resizing a picture in Word does not reduce its file size, that file != folder, and that an effective presentation does not consist of 120 slides with copy-pasted paragraphs and tacky clip art.
Totally stupid, ......and typical. (Score:5, Interesting)
You see, eventually these folks, flush with their startup money have to evolve into businesses with CUSTOMERS. This is the moment when all their foresight, vision and knowledge gets kicked in the ass by the reality of their target audience, who whether they like it or not, are generally using Windows in one form or another. I see this all the time. Awesome ideas, cool marketing strategies, beaten senseless by a a few basic questions: "This is cool, but will it work with Exchange? No? Damn, we cant switch. Sorry." "You mean we cant SSO with this?" Or "Okay, but can I control this through GPOs or can we LDAP it with Active Directory? No? Damn. Sorry, we cant switch."
No, Microsoft is not doing anything intreguing, but I think that for the moment(though not too much longer) they have enough entrenchment to fight off all but the most innovative of ideas. Microsoft can still zap Apple any time they want by stopping MS Office development on the MAC. This will change too, but if your business docs are in nothing but Word and Excel, you are not going anywhere soon.
One of the reasons for the dotcom bust was that too many startups never got around to the thought of what their customers WANTED, thinking that they could just convince them that their idea was so cool, so sweet, that they would just jump on it, without business considerations being a factor.
Its just like parental pride in a newborn baby. No matter what it looks like, they think the child is beautiful, when in reality, it could be a hideous creature and they would never know it.
If you are an Entreprenuer who believes that they have a target market large enough to pay back their VC without some form of Windows compatibility, they are headed for a fall, just like all the others before them. You dont find a Google every day of the week.
Nothing lasts for ever (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.phcomp.co.uk/)
netcraft (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.cafepress.com/lehk | Last Journal: Wednesday July 25, @12:50AM)
Microsoft isn't dead... (Score:5, Funny)
Not Yet (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://hackerkultur.blogspot.com/)
Microsoft is dying (Score:4, Funny)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Redmond company when analysists confirmed that Windows market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all serious users desktops. Coming on the heels of a recent survey which plainly states that Windows has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be Steve Jobs to predict Microsofts future. The hand writing is on the wall: Microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Microsoft because Microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for Microsoft. As many of us are already aware, Microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that Microsoft has steadily declined in market share. Microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Microsoft is dead.
Fact: Microsoft is dying
Not dead, but irrelivant (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday November 05, @01:51AM)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
What killed the dinosaurs? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dangercollie.com/music/)
I think Microsoft's fatal flaw is summed up in this quote:
Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.
And they never will. That's why they won't be able to adapt to changing climate conditions in technology and the nimble little warm-blooded creatures they barely notice will thrive and ultimately outlive them.
I mean look, they haven't even gotten rid of Ballmer yet. As long as he's on top it's going to remain the same stodgy old company it is now. MSFT reminds me of some 40 year old guy who thinks he's cool hitting on his daughter's college friends. He's the only one who doesn't realize he's creepy and pathetic.
Because MS has a new strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Small companies don't fear being squashed by MS because that's not their primary game plan anymore. They have achieved the dominance that phase of their company wished for. Now, the new paradigm is to be acquired by them. MS doesn't innovate anymore, they assimilate. [wikipedia.org]
There are thousands of small start-ups that have this as their primary goal. Get a good idea, build it up to where it shows up on some large company's radar, then be acquired by them. Then, retire. And MS is a leader in this area.
I Claim (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://booktextmark.mozdev.org/)
It's not dead, (Score:4, Funny)
Barbed wire (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a time 5 years ago that if MS released a technology, now matter how bad, would become the de-facto standard for no other reason than MS released it. MS has yet to do anything new in about 2 years that has become the supreme technology just because they blessed it. Their game of catchup with Google has yielded nothing powerful. Their strategy has been mostly centered around Windows Live, which has yet to garner any real interest. All their Web 2.0 stuff is massively better than what they were releasing 5 years ago (their mapping software isn't half bad), but I've yet to interact with someone who's excited over it. I know a lot of web developers who get a boner over the Google maps API though. Even their desktop software hasn't yielded anything terribly popular. People will keep using Windows and Office, but be extremely slow to adopt any of their new technology.
I guess the real nail in the coffin is that there's no single company for MS to set their sights on. The entire web is surpassing them, not just Google. Google is giving important direction and acting sort of as a leader for the industry, but I see just as many interesting things coming from outside of Google as in. How can MS compete with that? They can keep trying to break IE as much as possible, but even there they are being forced by the market to become more standards compliant.
I don't think MS will just go away and they probably will be relegated to Windows and Office until those are slowly chipped at. The OS market will one day reach the maturity hardware has and there will be standards and most common software will be written in cross platform toolkits. It will happen so slowly that we'll step back and say "Remember Microsoft 15 years ago?" just as we are saying today "Remember Microsoft 5 years ago".
The desktop is dead?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
I can see inherently Web-centric applications (email, searches, etc) as migrating to the Web -- but for things like word processing, circuit simulation, and (most dramatically) video editing, I can't imagine how running these over the Internet is going to work, let alone make them Better. Even with the new fiber-optic cable they just finished burying here.
Do I just not "get" it? Why should I use Web-based applications when OpenOffice works just as well? Why complicate things by introducing more points of failure (the whole Internet connection chain of devices, software, and protocols) into the mix?
Re:The desktop is dead?!? (Score:5, Interesting)
But word processing? I doubted it myself, but I really like Google Docs and Spreadsheets - it allows me to work on certain things on any computers without dragging files around - and I can collaborated on a word document or spreadsheet with a ton of people without a ton of file swapping happening - I just have to invite who I want to look or give them read/write access - and I can see their revisions easily.
That is the unhyped, 0 buzzword reason I like it.
Not dead but changing (Score:4, Interesting)
If you say "using a Web interface" instead of "putting applications on the Web" then there is a great advantage, at least for corporate applications. And it was in great part Microsoft who made it that way.
A typical example is a project I did a couple of years ago. There was an application in Access, about 2000 lines of code, that was a nightmare to maintain. Every time one of the 100+ users changed some configuration in his computer, the support people had to figure why that application had stopped working. I was given that application with detailed instructions: "fix this shit".
So I rewrote it, to a PHP application in a Linux server running Apache and a Postgres database. People now use it in several different browsers, with no problem at all. You can even tweak PHP to send Excel spreadsheets, by making Internet Exploder believe an HTML table is a spreadsheet and run Excel to open it.
You are right that CPU-heavy applications like video editing will remain at the desktop computer, but I see a definitive trend for most enterprise applications to migrate to Web-centric applications.
50 Billion and an army of Lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
They can always wake up, decide to toss out the old OS code, or run it in virtual mode, then build a brand new OS from scratch. Maybe this time, they can let Cutler run wild without without the need for backward-compatibility and make something worth looking at? As Vista is quickly becoming this decade's Windows M.E, Microsoft is going to have to consider taking the big leap.
In the mean time, they can still just sue the crap out of any entreprenuer, right or wrong, because there are few with that kind of cash and time on their hands. Most if not all would just settle, giving Microsoft access to their inventions anyway.
Shows that MS marketing is effective (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be a mistake for any company to think that Microsfot is dead.
Microsoft is Dying (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.slashdot.org/)
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered microsoft community when IDC confirmed that microsoft market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 97 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that microsoft has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict microsoft's future. The hand writing is on the wall: microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for microsoft because microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for microsoft. As many of us are already aware, microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Windows is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long timeWindows developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Microsoft is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Vista leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Vista. How many users of windows are there? Let's see. The number of Vista versus windows xp posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Vista users. Vista posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of windows xp posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put windows at about 80 percent of the microsoft market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 WinXP users. This is consistent with the number of WinXP Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Hotmail, abysmal sales and so on, Windows NT went out of business and was taken over by the Vista team who sell another troubled OS. Now Windows Vista is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that microsoft has steadily declined in market share. microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, microsoft is dead.
Fact: microsoft is dying
Credit Linux a bit, it prevented total monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr)
In the mid-90's, when NT stabilized and swiftly sank the whole Unix workstation market, and started putting out real server products that slowly shut down Novell and Banyan, it began to look like Microsoft would soon own all levels of computing. From their secure base of total desktop ownership, they could leverage control of workstation, small server and soon, no doubt, large server markets. And on the other side, Windows CE was going to take over all the TV set boxes and music players and microwave ovens. Nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of a company that, like IBM, was not another fish but rather the Sea itself.
There was nothing that the minicomputer and Unix workstation companies like DEC and Sun could do to hold back the tide - Microsoft was cheaper software, had the unstoppable advantage of running on cheaper commodity hardware, and again, the desktop that could be tweaked to only work right with one server.
Then Linux came along, operating more efficiently on the same cheap commodity hardware and with even cheaper software. It shut them out of monopoly in the server market. Sure, they have a presence, but only as another competitor, not as a monopolist. And Linux is where everybody went for entertainment appliances, CE is a *minor* competitor there.
That left Microsoft with a monopoly ONLY on the desktop and no way to take over anything larger or smaller.
Forgot to mention, they never took over the web (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~branderr)
It also looked, around the time of the Netscape-killing, that Microsoft would inexorably make the Web an MS gated community. That internal corporate web apps would all surely be ASP (and then,
But between MySQL, PHP, Python, et al, and of course Java, an alternative held together that relegated Microsoft web solutions to merely another competitor - a strong one, maybe, but not a monopoly that can dictate the whole game. It was some years where it all seemed to hang in the balance, maybe MS would eventually grind them all down. Around the time most people felt that LAMP was here to stay and Java had a well-entrenched community of its own, Firefox came up out of Netscape's grave and started nibbling down IE's market share even on Windows.
That's when I realized that MS was in a box. A big, big box full of money, sure, but still, it had met its limits.
If Microsoft is dead (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention release diseases like Vista...
They never got nicer and were ignored. (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://yro.slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/177855 | Last Journal: Sunday November 04, @10:56PM)
FTFA, and yes an instant classic:
All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
Slap, how truth stings. It's been over for a while, but people don't realize it because M$ spends about a billion dollars a month telling the world they are number one. Even grandmas are seeing through it.
Re:Who is Paul Graham? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://obsidianrook.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 16, @01:48AM)
He got rich writing lisp code. You don't think that's an impressive trick? Try it sometime.
The trouble -- in my opinion -- is that he got rich at his second job, which means he doesn't really have a very wide experience. He's always happy to give you advice on how to become rich exactly the way he did, but doesn't seem to be even conscious of possibilities like (a) maybe a lot of his success was luck, finding an angel to sell out to (yahoo) in the middle of Bubble 1.0 and (b) maybe some of us don't particularly care about getting rich. Some of my heroes are rich guys, but on the other hand I wouldn't object to be being "successful" like Richard Stallman or Tim Berners-Lee.