A Former Microsoftie Forecasts Microsoft Doom 1015
Chris Holland writes "Jeff Reifman, a columnist for Seattle Weekly, has written a toe-curling editorial analysis of Microsoft's past and current missed opportunities, contrasted with its financial success, while covering in fair depth some of the most serious threats to their business model. Beyond the many choice quotes, I've found this article to be a very interesting read from somebody who has not only been on the inside, but also significantly developed his professional career thru Microsoft solutions."
In other news, (Score:4, Insightful)
Thru?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
THRU?!? What kind of site are you guys running?
How hard is it to keep these lazy-teenager abbreviations out of the stories?
ugh, propaganda disguised as an article (Score:2, Insightful)
I also love the later part of the article when this "Andrew" person expounds on how wonderful OS X is... compared to Windows98! wtf.
Hating MS is one thing, but at least be fair about it.
Assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to make the assumption that Microsoft got where it is today by having the best products. That's a big mistake. Even if we go back to it's roots and compare DOS with the other operating systems of the time, we see that MS was selling rubbish compared to what the others were.
MS got where it is today by being extremely agressive in defeating its competitors, mostly through business tactics than superior products.
Uh huh (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a case of dwelling on the negative. Another employee could write the completely opposite review of MS and it would be every bit as convinsing.
The problem with a comentary is that it is generally correct
In MS case, I'm sure they have done many things wrong and missed many oppertunities...yet they continue to make lots and lots and lots of cash. Therefore, this guy can say anything he wants, but it won't change the fact that MS is *definitely* doing things 'right'.
More like the Romans than the Nazis IMHO... (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest reason for saying this involves the fact that Microsoft is also too large to just topple outright, and there is too much of the industry tied up in Windows technology for it to just suddenly become irrelevant, not to mention all the legacy apps and documents that'll require continued support no matter what OS or technology eventually rises to new dominance (.doc, ferinstance.)
I guess that, even as an admitted Linux/Mac partisan, Microsoft isn't just going to die in some Nazi-ish 'Gates-eating-a-bullet-in-a-Redmond-bunker' gotterdammerung, as much as it will just become something else, and still hold sway to some extent after it does.
So yeah - out of the two examples you picked, I'd pick the Roman one as being the one most likely to come true.
Re:ugh, propaganda disguised as an article (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking from a guy who uses all OSs (Score:5, Insightful)
Every OS excels at something. Mac (still) excels at useability. UNIX stability. Windows excels at recognizing just about any piece of hardware or software I've thrown at it in the last 15 years.
If you think about it, Windows isn't THAT bad. I can't think of a single OS that runs the breadth of programs Windows does from so many years of computing. Sure, console apps still work the same in Linux as they did in UNIX from decades ago, and you can (sometimes) get Mac to run applications prior to OS 7, but there have been a number of times I've loaded up DOS programs from the 80s in Windows XP and was surprised they run more or less perfectly (even when the original app expected full control over the computer).
I think, and others can probably vouch for this, the allure of Mac OS in particular kind of wanes after a few weeks of using it. Again, excellent GUI, but there's definitely a feeling (misguided, I think) that Windows "has" to be bad because it's used everywhere. This doesn't translate to some other consumer products (PS2, anyone) so I'm not sure why geeks hate Windows in particular. Do we hate it because we perceive everyone else hates it (the same way people who use MacOS love it more because everyone else who uses it loves it)? Probably something to bring up in a psychology class.
I'm not a Microsoft fan, but, come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 98 was never a stable system (unless the only thing you compare it to is Windows 95).
The guy should at least give XP a shot (hell, even 2000)... infinitely more stable than any of the Windows 9x series.
The reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Because time and time again (and not just in IT), if you have someone with a significant market lead, they have a tendency to procrastinate because of the lack of threatening competition.
Microsoft doesn't need to fix these issues because there is no viable enough competitor which is affecting their market share enough to make them worry.
Re:ugh, propaganda disguised as an article (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, you and I must be running different versions. I have to multiple times, daily. It's not nessecarily the OS itself causing the crash, but for the last time: an application SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO BRING THE SYSTEM DOWN.
Re:News For Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a false perception. Not everyone on slashdot wants Microsoft to fail, or is predicting it. Just the most vocal members.
You don't hear from "pro-Microsoft" people, simply because the "anti-MS" people are louder, more 'righteous', and more willing to aubse their essential liberties in order to start a flame war.
I believe that most 'sane' geeks truly understand that Microsoft is a company, like any other, and performs under traditional company rules
But times are changing, and the discourse you may observe on these times, here at
I detest Microsoft. I haven't used their products in years, and I stopped purchasing anything that will in any way give them more control over the computing industry. But, if they were to change their ways, and demonstrate that as a group (rather large), they are capable of cleaning up their act, I would give them a second chance.
But not until "ms_windows.tar.gz" cleanly compiles, straight off the 'net, with my own compiler (not theirs)
stop running windows 98 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are Microsoft products so endlessly frustrating to use? Even techno-geeks like me get annoyed by Windows. I'm tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company's e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command--it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
It looks like the author needs to stop running Windows 98...
Seriously, what ridiculously mismanaged system is he running? I reboot my win2k and XP systems maybe once a month, if that.
How many startup services does he have that his reboot takes 10 minutes? On my 800mhz machine (ancient by todays standards) reboot is 2-3 minutes, tops.
Although I've stopped using outlook and IE, in favor of mozilla and thunderbird, in the few times I have to use the apps for compatibility, I never experience instability.
Yes, MS products aren't perfect, but I hate it when people dishonestly paint Window's systems as if they crashed every 10 minutes just to make their point that XXX alternate system is better. OSX is sweet. Linux rocks. But WinXP is also a great system.
Yadda, yadda, yadda... (Score:1, Insightful)
It sounds like the haters are still critisizing win98. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Similar to IBM years ago (Score:3, Insightful)
New competitive factors (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speaking from a guy who uses all OSs (Score:4, Insightful)
You site Mac "OS X [as having the greatest] usability, UNIX [the greatest] stability"....
OSX has a BSd base. Wouldn't that give OSX the greatest usability and many features from the system with the greatest stability? (Cause let's be honest even with the BSD base, unix it is not)
Where I think MAC OSX really beats out the competition is that it is finally a desktop *nix (kind of, stay with me here). Forever on /. I have been reading articles about *nix on the desktop. Is it ready? When will it be ready? How long until it's viable? Etc etc etc. Well here is a flavor of Unix that you can sit grandma in front of and she can have it mastered enough to do what she wants without any intervention from you. It's hands down more intuitive then any of it's rivals. Oh yeah and it's got a pretty sweet GUI.
What I don't get is the MAC bashing. In my experience MACs (pre-OS X) did not meet the claims. They crashed, and I didn't find it to be the greatest computing experience. I prefer windows to any pre OSX system. However, with OS X many of my issues were resolved, for example:
Lack of Software - now I can run any *nix app
Stability - *nix *nix *nix
Another issue I find is that Windows users know Windows, and well. (At least us /.'ers) For the people I know who are tech savy, to sit at a computer and not know what they are doing is frustrating. So instead of them saying "I should learn how to use this OS", they say "MACs suck, I hate macs. This is stupid." Etc.
I guess I'm asking why do windows users hate MACs? How many Windows users have used a MAC, and I mean used a MAC. Anyone have a founded reason? Or just "They're slow" - not true. "They're too expensive" - not going to argue, but maybe if they gave them out for free, and a pony....
Re:Nice treatise (Score:4, Insightful)
He didn't say he was a techno geek. He's a typical person trying to get his work done. And why does he have "get it" stable? Why isn't it already that way?
TAKE A COURSE IN MS OFFICE!
If he has to take a course to learn how to use bullets in a word processor, something's wrong with that software.
Re:Weak article (Score:2, Insightful)
Why are Microsoft products so endlessly frustrating to use? Even techno-geeks like me get annoyed by Windows. I'm tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company's e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command--it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.
IF YOU CANT USE WINDOWS, DO NOT CALL YOURSELF A COMPUTER EXPERT
It's not Microsofts fault he cant format a document in word, and that he installed Bonzi Buddy or some other bullshit that's crashing IE. The last time any version of windows refused to shut down for me was Win ME, and it was because of Creative's widely-known-to-be-shit soundblaster drivers conflicting with the onboard chip built into the motherboard.
I haven't rebooted the XP machine in my office in months. I come in, hack around all day in Vis Studio and SQL Server, and leave.
I'm just so tired of hearing this shit. A journalist computer expert who doesn't know how to do bullets in Word. Sheesh. Hell, if he can't use Word he won't be able to use OpenOffice either, since it works pretty much the same way.
I have no great love for Word. Clippy annoys me as much as anyone. But for crying out loud.
How about an article like this:
I built Samba against the wrong SSL libraries and now it segfaults when I try to auth against LDAP over SSL. I followed a cookbook to set up TLS so I don't know which file is the client cert, CA cert or what.
I also screwed around with my PAM config and now I can't log in! I really hate spending 10 minutes each day using my friends Windows box to google to remember how to start in singleuser mode and fix PAM to use
Therefore, linux really sucks and will be irrelevant real soon now.
I just hate this type of zealot idiocy.
MOD PARENT TROLL ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh no. Because surely if someone who spent 10 friggin' years at Microsoft has problems with the software he must be at fault.
Cause clearly in that many years he never would have had occasion to actually put in bullet text into a document before. And surely he'd never have occasion to double click on the IE icon and have it launch.
I cry horse-shit!! As much as the Microsoft fans and apologists would have us believe that Windows never apparently does something with no understandable reason, I would argue that for the vast majority of the rest of us random flaky behaviour is exactly what we've come to expect.
Over the years I've seen dozens of examples where all of the Kings Techo-Geeks and all the Kings Men standing around a windows box with bad behaviour finally decide to backup what they can and re-install the damned thing because *nobody* can come up with a plausible explaination for what the heck is happening.
Saying in sneering tones that he couldn't possibly be a techno-geek doesn't support your argument in any way.
A slight problem.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Though, granted, most gamers just pirate Windows anyway, so there wouldn't be TOO much revenue from it >)
Migrating files in one step (Score:3, Insightful)
Mr Reifman's curriculum vitae and cover letter were much too long-winded. Next candidate...
Re:First paragraph (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, my friend, is a *very* good point. During the time that your system is unusable, you still get paid, but you can't deliver. In an office where people earn > $ 100 per hour, reboot once a day (taking 10 minutes), and lose some time because an essential server is down for a few (let's say 2) hours total each week, that's more than $ 300 per person per week. I have been to such places; I'm not pulling this out of thin air. And that's not even taking into account the occasional virus.
Re:Missed opportunities (Score:2, Insightful)
10. Who'd do this ? It's Microsoft choice never to open their API, they won't do it because they own 95% of the market and then only 5% of the public, mostly people used to obtaining soft for free, would care.
I think what he's referring to is the ability of most OS X and Unix users to set up a new machine, copy their home folder/directory to it, log out, log in, and all you files and settings are magically moved from one machine to the other. One step machine migration: Copy.
Try that in Windows. With settings tied to registry entries, and applications that put settings files all over the place, copying the users "Documents and Settings" folder doesn't get everything. Plus with some poorly written apps saving files in weird places, and not being able to see them later, yeah, it's a pain in the butt.
Re:Nice treatise (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used Office pretty heavily, at the limits of its capability (judging by the increasing likelihood of crashing) to create 100+ page documents filled with dynamic and complext content.
I have not, in my experience seen any geekness or skill that can prevent a stylesheet from becoming fucked, or even to effectively unfuck it when it happens. All you can hope for is to notice when it does become fucked and restore from an earlier version of the document.
Re:Nice treatise (Score:4, Insightful)
I really just use my laptop for most tasks so that all my settings and files are available to me anywhere (besides, I just ssh into my office computer from home to work...).
The ability to wander from computer to computer and have everything you need to work automatically (whether it is really located on some other computer) is a fundamental, but soluble problem.
Doug
Did the author even attempt the math????? (Score:2, Insightful)
So even if MS lost ALL of their Windows and Office revenue they would still be doing better than most companies.
And they have 50+ billion in CASH.
How long could they continue full operations with NO revenue at all? A decade atleast - assuming Bill doesn't personally pick up the tab himself then we are looking at atleast 15 years. Don't expect to see MS going away anytime soon - if ever.
And what was superior to Windows 2.0? (Score:2, Insightful)
This success for Microsoft led to them developing more software to compliment their operating system... Microsoft was a name everyone recognized and "loved" because of it's windowing platform... so it's an easy leap for people to say "hey if Windows is good, why wouldn't office be?"
It wasn't until much later (late 90s) than MS started playing games with aggressive marketing tactics and forcing competition out of business. But then again, it wouldn't have had the money to do that without the huge number of sales that came with the release of Windows 95.
Some of His Suggestions (Score:2, Insightful)
* - These features have already been implemented, partially or fully, by other companies, including Apple, specifically .Mac [mac.com], Keychain [apple.com], and (can't find it right now) a software package that made switching from PC to Mac easier.
Re:Nice treatise (Score:5, Insightful)
payback time (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft tried to spread the delusion that no computer knowledge and background is neccessary to maintain a computer system while making it more and more complex.
Things have reached saturation point these days: every at-least-half computer-literate spends a significant amount of his business and spare time rescuing some system gone bananas.
The fact is that no open source, free as in beer or even proprietary software is much better than any M$ products. The only difference is that these (non-M$) product do not assume self-sufficiency, or praise themselves as the best thing delivered to mankind. Instead of planting the evil seeds of false expectations, it comes natural to people using these product that they need to master a certain level of skill or consult an expert. One knows what one pays for and one knows what one gets!
Microsoft, on the other hand, is simply not transparent. It takes hours of investigation by a computer professional to discover what combination of -khm-features- caused grandma's computer to "start acting funny".
I stopped doing unpaid PC-M$-Win support for my friends and relatives a few years ago, because it was driving me nuts. So, I prepared a one liner fend-off checklist instead:
1. Don't tell me - you are using Windows, right?
2. Who made you think upgrading your system is a good idea?
3. Everything worked fine until recently and gone bizzare for no apparent reason?
4. I have no idea how to fix or even use M$ Outlook. Simply make a choice between using email or running outlook!
5. Other browsers are just fine. When you run onto a site that only opens up in M$ explorer, guess again, who's to blame!
6. Face it - there is no help or anything either you or even a PHD in computer engineering/science can do.
7. Well, that's why Bill Gates is rich and we are poor.
I mean, how deep the world dropped - people started perceiving computers as problems that can only be miracleously solved by throwing money away every few months!
Hopefully, the demise of m$ happens before any kind of world disaster; otherwise, future archeologists from this or another planet will think the dominant planetary religion was playing some solitary card game...
Re:Nice treatise (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting tired of comments like this. Just because you derive some sick, deranged pleasure from knowing all the minutiae and strange behaviors of the software products you own doesn't mean that someone else does. Some folks just like to use friendly, intuitive software.
When people complain, Microsoft may choose to ignore them at their own peril. It's capitalism, baby. If they want to cater to the folks who like to "get their windows machine stable", that's fine. The rest of us have a fine selection of OS' to jump to.
If this gentleman uses OS X because he feels it is easier to understand and use, that's his perogative, and it is not a reflection of his skills as a computer user. In fact, I stand right beside him as a Mac OS X convert after years of staunch Microsoft support.
Some of us like to use the computer rather than wrestle with it.
Oh, and you can't tell me that you've never reformatted a windows box because it was just easier than trying to figure out what was wrong.
Sometimes, debugging the issue would take longer than a re-install. Sometimes, it is less costly to just rebuild rather than spend days comparing DLL versions, scanning through the registry, and all the other attendant menial tasks that come with debugging an unstable windows installation. Is it a bad driver? Bad device*? Bad registry keys? Conflicting DLLs? Bah. Who needs it.
Bottom line: When I use my machine, I want to get productive work done. I have better things to do with my time than be an administrator.
*I'm aware that Microsoft supports a "much wider range of hardware". I've heard that argument before. However, as a user, I'm not interested in what Microsoft chooses to support. I'm interested in a stable, easy-to-use machine with a decent selection of compatible periphals.
Re:Nice treatise (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I'm knocking Microsoft for XP needing a reboot after a patch. I just get worried every time I hear someone say that they hardly ever reboot.
$70 billion in assets should last a long time (Score:4, Insightful)
typical (Score:4, Insightful)
This guy isn't saying anything that an impartial industry analyst (granted, there may not be such a thing) couldn't figure out in a couple of months. The throwing away stock options for a dot com thing kills me, too. What a dumbass. $700,000 in MS stock is still $700,000.
Re:Stable Windows configuration? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice treatise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OS X Allure Does Wane (Score:3, Insightful)
Re #8. VLC is slow and ugly, and fails to playback video QT does fine with. Sorry, but QT wins this one for the media it can play. I have a G3-400 Powerbook. Try Cellulo if you really dislike QT's frontend.
Registry - root cause of instability (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the current XP based restore point creation does nothing better.
The
IIS 6.0 did that by abandoning all registry settings and moved to an XML file structure - Everything actually. DotNet has moved in that direction too.
Hopefully Longhorn will have a
Re:Nice treatise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nice treatise (Score:3, Insightful)
To MS, that is not a problem. Having a seemingly important certification easy to get is intentional. Mind share.
And that strategy is not uncommon: CNA and CNE certs from Novell, back in Netware 3.x days, were also intentionally easy to get. It is a double edged sword though: it has taken Novell years to regain respect for their certs.
Re:MOD PARENT TROLL ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh. That's funny--my parents, siblings, coworkers and acquaintances who are not tech inclined would disagree. Some of them would disagree vehemently.
This kind of attitude is prevalent at Microsoft--eye rolling and mutterings of "user error". At the end of the day this is your client base, though--if you sell to all the people, you need to support all the people.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft's $50 billion in the bank (or whatever it is) is a market inefficiency.
Re:First paragraph (Score:3, Insightful)
That kind of analysis is common, but not really true.
People who earn $100/hr are usually doing tasks that are abstract or creative, or of inconsistent required effort. Unlike factory or foodservice workers, the relationship between time input and value output is nonlinear.
A mental worker, for example, needs to spend some of each day just pondering outstanding problems- an activity that can proceed even though her PC is temporarily out of service. The hour following an interruption is usually more productive than the one that proceeded it... etc.
Nonetheless, this kind of false analysis continues (because it'd be difficult to be any more accurate). Lawyers use this to bill the same if they're on a cellphone while driving or at an office desktop. Virus damage reports use it to produce drastically excessive monetary losses.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit.
You, me, everyone has a right to profit from their labors. Microsoft can charge whatever it wants for it's crap. If you are stupid enough to pay for it, that's your problem.
Re:Speaking from a guy who uses all OSs (Score:3, Insightful)
The author's point was that Microsoft is not really innovating anymore. Even Longhorn doesn't seem to really be all that innovative and
Re:Uh huh (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy can say anything he wants, but it won't change the fact that MS is *definitely* doing things 'right'.
Almost-- and thus, you miss the point of what he is saying. "Microsoft has *definitely* done things 'right'" would be more accurate.
With Windows 95, it created an operating system usable by the masses, with new features that everyone really wanted to upgrade to-- Internet Access. Windows 98 added improved driver support, particularly for USB. Windows ME added diddly-squat... and it's sales were mediocre. Windows 2000 turned the NT branch into an almost-consumer usable product; Windows XP put a pretty coat of frosting on that, and marginally improved stability and usability.
From my understanding of the history of technology, the Windows OS has been paralleling the development of every other technological tool in history, software or otherwise. You come up with an idea for something to do a job; you get it into a marginally workable form, and people try it; you improve it, and if you get lucky and it's useful enough, eveyone beats a path to your door. You may even make a few more "new and improved" versions. But eventually, you have a mature piece of technology, like egrep, or the pocket knife.
And demand peaks-- because a lot of people HAVE one already, thank you, I'll use it until it wears out. Oh, there's a new Swiss army knife with Torx bits? Maybe I'll look into that when my current knife breaks.
Windows (mostly) works. What the bulk of the masses want to do, it can let them do. It could be more stable, but that's something people feel they should get for free with their CURRENT version-- making people pay for that is tricky.
Since the year September Never Ended, the number of people who want to have a computer has been on the rise. Multi-computer households aren't uncommon. But the number of new purchases is peaking-- and the second computer in the house is often a hand-me-down.
Microsoft is at a point where there isn't much more obvious "new and improved" to put on for the consumer, with both their Office and OS-- so upgrade sales will fall off. Instead of people upgrading OS every two to three years, they'll upgrade every five to nine-- by buying a new computer after the old one dies. Of course, M$ could stop supporting the older software... with bad consequences for (in turn) security for those machines using the software, performance for those networks connected to those machines, and network-dependent software performance for any current Windows machines connected to the network. Ooops.
The article isn't suggesting M$ will go away. What it does imply is that there may be a massive correction at some point in the not-too-distant future (I'd guess 5-10 years, but that's just me) that will cost it a large chunk (I'd guess ~65%?) of its current revenue stream and stock value, and that the measures it is trying now to protect its current revenue stream will make it more difficult to adapt to those leaner times.
(Of course, Apple is in danger of this trap, too. With the OS X.2, X.3, and now X.4 upgrades, it seems to be getting hooked on the upgrade revenue stream, and I'm not convinced users will remain enthusiasic. X.3 added two features of substance that my Mac users noticed and drooled over: Expose, and the return of color-coded files and folders. After seeing the price, of ten machines, two were upgraded for this.)
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a fine line, but an important one.
Win2K was as good as it got (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 2000 works for you. Windows XP works for Microsoft. "Updates are ready for download" (which can appear on machines with no network connection), tightly integrated IE, and more restrictive licensing terms, all make it clear that XP is optimized for Microsoft's benefit, not yours.
There's a good reason that most of corporate America is still running Windows 2000. It's one of Microsoft's most solid versions, probably the most stable one since NT 3.51.
If you're still running anything Microsoft prior to Win2K, upgrade to Win2K. If you're running Win2K, the next available upgrade is to Linux.
Re:IANAFW... (Finance Whiz) (Score:2, Insightful)
If let's say you have a $100,000 house that will be worth $110,000 next year (the math is easier). The simple return on the home is 10%. Also imagine that you have $100,000 in the bank.
If you pay cash for the home (equity financing for a business), your pre-tax and post-tax return is 10% (Assume you qualify for primary residence cap gains). Now imagine that you financed the home with 50% debt (and bought two homes). You gambled on a balloon payment and got a 5% mortgage. Over the course of the year your homes are worth $220,000 and you still owe 100,000. You paid 5% in interest or $5,000, but got $1,500 back on your taxes. However your $100,000 equity postion is now $116,500. And your retun is now 16.5%. Same investment leverage multiplied the return.
The curvature arises from the bank wanting additional interest as you start putting less capital into the mix. I doubt you would find a bank willing to loan at 5% if you wanted to buy a $10,000,000 apartment complex with $100,000 down. Also presuming that your first $100,000 is invested in the best home your 10th 100k might only go into a home that returns 5% or something closer to your cost of capital.
Here! Here! (Score:2, Insightful)
This article just lowers the signal to noise ratio and frustrates people looking for real news.
*Sigh*
Re:Nice treatise (Score:2, Insightful)
You freely admit XP for the crap that it is. No other OS subjects the end user to the need to constantly and promptly apply security patches.
It may not crash as much anymore but it's still a malware paradise.
A new PC running XP can be "rooted" as soon as it connects to the net: another Microsoft innovation.
Burglarize? (Score:3, Insightful)
Next thing they'll be calling burglars 'bulgarizers'...
I mean, if you're going to have 'burglarized', why not start doing the same to other words?
"Someone help me! I've been shooterized!"
"Yeah, I went into town the other day to do some shopperizing"
"We're not breaking even. We need some way to encourage more shopperizers into the store..."
Madness!
Re:IANAFW... (Finance Whiz) (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether or not this is the "best" decision actually depends on your risk tolerance - your scenario doesn't include the possibility that you might lose the job, and end up being liable for the loan without any way to pay for it. Borrowing money always involves increasing your personal financial risk.
Re:IANAFW... (Finance Whiz) (Score:3, Insightful)
On the flipside, if you take out a loan at 6-8% on that car, and you can make 8-10% on the money you saved by taking out the loan, you end up ahead 3% +/- because your interest payment on the car dwindles over time as you eat up the principal. Of course, this depends on market fluctuations, interest rates, and your ability to keep investments in the high percentage rates.
Like I said, sometimes it just makes sense to pay cash.
Re:in the dictionary (Score:2, Insightful)
English is NOT English and has not been since the day Dr. Johnson decided to write it all down. The entire point of the OED is to catalog how the language was used at that moment in time (thus the citations from texts.) (NB: I placed the PERIOD in the previous sentence inside the PARENTHESES because I'm a FREAKING MERKIN!)
Just because we "Yanks" are doing a better job of mutating "your" language than you are doesn't mean we're using it incorrectly. If you want to be a stuck-up git about your language then move your stick and your butt across the canal. They'd love you in France.
Re:Nice treatise (Score:3, Insightful)
The author said some other stuff that was suspect too. Near the end of the article he says Outlook 2003 wasn't much of an improvement, but I shift back and forth between that version, the 2000 version and the 2002/XP version all the time and I can tell you that 2003 is the biggest leap forward in usability of them all. Search folders rock, they're intuitive and the most important ones are already set up for you so you can use them right away. There are dozens of other tiny, but significant to usability features that permiate the app.
The author did some not-quite-right Mac boosting as well. OSX is a very good OS, but there are all sorts of frustrations for the switcher that he conveniently left out. Did he really not notice that common tasks require a different workflow than in Windows? Did he not notice that the shortcuts to do these things efficiently are no more obvious than they are in Windows? Or did he gloss? As a relatively new Mac user (1-year. OSX 10.28), I assure you he glossed. Does anyone really believe it's faster for a new user to get on the internet with a Mac vs. a new PC in 2004? That's ridiculous.
The problem with aricles like this is that people that know better about the Windows jabs and the other OS boosting are forced to call into question his judgement on other things as well. If he were more honest about these little things, I'd have more incentive to believe him about the big stuff.
TW
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, consider this. Someone owns a car worth roughly $3,000. He wants to sell it. Someone offers $3.000 for it, and it is sold. Who profits?
The answer is BOTH.
The guy who sold it obviously thought that $3,000 cash was more important to him than his car. So he made out good on the deal. If he didn't want $3,000 more than he wanted the car, he wouldn't have sold it.
The guy who bought it thought that the car was more valuable than his $3,000 cash. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bought it. So he made out good on the deal as well.
When you go to pay whatever you pay for a computer, you are getting something more valuable (the computer) than what you gave (the cash). The guy who sold it to you did the same. When Microsoft sells Windows XP to the retailer, they are giving away something less vauable to them than the cash they receive, and the retailer is getting something more valuable to them than the cash they gave out.
So in the end, everyone profits in free trade.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:2, Insightful)
No, the original statement is correct. No one has a right to profit. Everyone should have the right to pursue profit. This is a wholly different thing.
dress codes are not a human rights violation (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I don't want to work for a company that requires a suit either. Atmosphere is one of the things that I consider when interviewing for a job. I'm more than willing to take less money from a company with casual policies than from a rigid company.
What if some of those "other people" have an irrational distrust of people with dark hair and blue eyes?
That truly is an evil combination!
Small abuses may very well make it easier to perpetuate large ones. I haven't done enough research to form any conclusion on it and I don't plan to. I just don't want you to confuse things you don't like with human rights abuses. I hate peas but I don't think making your children eat peas is a violation of their basic human rights.
Life is full of shitty compromises.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone has a "right to profit".
However, a "perfect market" limits profits to near zero. With no barriers to entry in a business, which is a lot like "neglecting friction", competition will force prices down toward costs.
A 100% markup is only possible if the barriers to entry in the field are high, which they are in this case.
However, the barriers to entry are falling also. Once the OS or Office suite, or whatever are "good enough", the impetus for upgrades evaporate. At that point, competing products have a chance to catch up to the target of "good enough".
Microsoft is suffering from "good enough" now. As are hardware makers. Most people don't use much, if any, more capabiity than was available in computers/software in 2000. Microsoft is dependent on people buying a new computer (and, implied, a new OS and Office suite) every couple of years. This was a workable model until the computers got "good enough", and has been suffering since then.
Re:in the dictionary (Score:2, Insightful)
The OED lists thru (informal, chiefly N. Amer.) That's in the Second edition (1989).
The OED has never been about prescribing the use of our language, and such flagrant intellectual misuse of this awesome work of scholarship chaps my hide, hence this only-maybe-a-little-on-topic choice for my first
English is English, through is not spelled "thru", night is not spelled "nite", and there is no such word as "burglarize". The verb is burgle. Of course, you chaps in the colonies can do what you like with your language, but don't call it English !
The OED specifically rejects this bit of lingustic jingoism. The preface to the third edition (gradually being released on the the online OED), devotes a section to the attempts to increase the OED's coverage of the several varieties of English. It even has the interesting sentence, placing the UK varieties of the world's lingua franca in it's proper place:
Languages live thru change. Boxed in, they die. Who speaks Latin now?
Cheers,
Hank (who prefers through)
Re:Nice treatise (Score:2, Insightful)
Once that driver code is running, it can break the machine. Full stop. This is not yet-another-application, which Windows handles perfectly well.
Re:The bigger they are... (Score:3, Insightful)
The effect you are refering to is called 'cumulative radicalisation', and is currently in vogue with historians trying to explain how the progressive German societies of the 18th and 19th centuries could take such a right-handed turn to Fascism in the early 20th.
I still think you've Godwin'ed yourself here, but the premise is valuable to investigate regarding computer technologies. Cumulative radicalisation in this case is an effective method of reducing the 'barrier to entry' into other markets, once you're operating from a position of strength in one area. In Microsoft's case, its many areas.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Language Snobs (Score:1, Insightful)
A "funny accent" is different than talking like Jed Clampett [pcperspectives.com], or some gangsta. You can have a "funny accent" and still be edumacated. Christopher Lambert [imdb.com] has a "funny accent", but he doesn't sound like he's done without plumbing and books all his life.
I thought we were discussing proper grammar and usage of the English language, not speech inflections?
People judge you by how you communicate, how you dress, how you carry yourself. It's not ideal, but that's all people have to go on. If you're a gum cracking big haired Long Island girl in fishnet stockings and stilletto heels chances are you talk like it, even when your best friend puts you in a bridesmaids dress, you're still a "floozy" and everyone knows it by how you talk. That's how the world works. If said strumpet goes through enough schooling, graduates and makes it through residency, to become a surgeon, I guaranty the "funny accent" will still sound like Long Island / New Jersey, but it will no longer be filled with atrocious grammar, ignorant usage, and open-mouthed gum cracking.
If you have or plan to have children, it's important to accept this fact. One of the worst things you can do for a child's future is to let the child get away with poor grammar, slang, colloquialisms, etc.
Whether you're talking about the accent of Boston, London, Melbourne, or New Orleans, the mayor doesn't talk like the pimp on the corner 5 blocks away.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Profit is what you get over and above what you spent to get it. Getting profit is part science, part art, and part dumb luck. You have a right to try to profit. You don't have a right to make profits for no good reason.
It's the same as with getting a job. You have the right to apply for work and to be hired if you're the right candidate. You are not guaranteed to be the best candidate for a particular job.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice treatise (Score:2, Insightful)
As a self-proclaimed "computer hobbyist," i find the upgrade process for most open-source products MUCH easier than the convoluted, hair-pulling nail-biting windows process.
I don't enjoy upgrading. I enjoy playing with new features (I almost had a climactic event when I found OOo's "Export to PDF" function), but I HATE upgrading.
Hate it hate it hate it.
I've given up on windows. On my home network, i have a linux box for productivity and a $2000 game box. That's all windows is good for anymore, at least for me. I use the latest versions of MS software at work, and frankly, I don't see ANYTHING (with the possible exception of
Sorry for the rant, but every time I upgrade MS software, I spent lots of money and time for the opportunity to lose more data and functionality.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:2, Insightful)
I would also add that a right to property is something completely different from a right to profit from property.
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's wrong with making money? Don't you want (Score:4, Insightful)
You, me, everyone has a right to profit from their labors
Bullshit yourself. M$ only makes a profit because we, the citizens, give them some rights to control copying i.e. copyright law. We do this because we, the citizens, think we will get a fair return in terms of price competition and product improvement. The M$ monopoly is currently taxing the world $35,000,000,000 per year for ten pieces of software it largely wrote more than a decade ago. That is an atrocious tradeoff.
Intellectual property law is completely broken at the moment. M$ gets maybe 10,000 times the reward for writing the same software that another company might write. I don't mind 10-100 times the reward to encourage true competition and inovation but law which allows more than that is wrong and unfair. Yes, the world is unfair but that doesn't mean that in a democracy we the people should deliberately make it more unfair.
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It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Try two years, not a decade. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quarterly operating expenses were in the range of 5 to 8 billion dollars, two of which are advertising. Revenues for the same period were 7 to 9 billion. Research is down, advertising is up and administrative costs have increased sixfold! While they trumpet increased revenue, their net is down by almost half over a year ago from 2.1 to 1.3 billion. If tomorrow everyone switched to free software, Microsoft would be out of business in less than two years.
It won't happen like that, but that's more realistic than expecting them to coast for a decade. The migration to free software is already on and mainstream. It won't take long for the Microsoft PR machine to self destruct. With enough free software deployment, the inferiority of Microsoft's line will be apparent to everyone regardless of all the feel good "potential" adverts and the gravy train will derail. You don't have to have worked for the Soft for 8 years to see the problems Word, Lookout, XP and all have. The tipping point is close.
I wonder if SCO "investments" are marketing or administrative costs. Soon it will go into their investment losses.