Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD? 283
walterbyrd writes "Linux Journal has published an article by Glyn Moody, about the Microsoft sponsored study: The Economic Impact of Microsoft Windows Vista (pdf). Apparently Moody feels that the economic effects of MS-Vista being delayed in Europe would not be as dire as Microsoft would have the world believe." From the article: "The implication is that the European Commission would be crazy to jeopardize these wonderful benefits by clipping the wings of this digital golden goose, or even grounding it completely. The white paper looks tremendously professional, and is filled with tables, bar and pie charts; it has suitably serious discussions of methodology, and even introduces a few measured caveats: who could doubt its conclusions? What makes this FUD so impressive is that this attention to detail obscures the sleight of hand that is going on here. The white paper may predict sales by the "Microsoft ecosystem" of over $40 billion in six of Europe's biggest economies, but what this figure hides is the fact that income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe."
Considering how long Vista's been delayed (Score:5, Funny)
Of course it's FUD... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Of course it's FUD... (Score:5, Funny)
How do you know? I didn't see any pretty certificates of authenticity with embedded security features...
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It's better than that! (Score:2)
Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD? (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless the title is referring to the piece of work a journeyman turns in to become a master craftsmen, in which case he's scaring me.
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I think that would have been 1976's an open letter to hobbyists [blinkenlights.com].
Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creati (Score:4, Insightful)
"How does it help?
Submitted by Bozikins (not verified) on Wed, 2006-09-20 17:58.
Why is it beneficial to anyone that a new operating system will require 100,000 new jobs to support it - couldn't they be better employed improving the human condition? Should we consider the parable of the broken Windows mentioned elsewhere ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_bro
"
If your not familiar with the broken window parable, follow the wiki link-perfect reply!
I was not aware of the broken window parable until just a few minutes ago, thus fell enlightened;It is a good day for me!
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1. Break Mr X window
2. Mr X buy a new window
3. Profit ?? -> No because Mr X money could have been invested into something beter. Actually the community is poorer of 1 window.
In this case that does not apply. Microsoft did not break anything. It produced something and the community may or may not decide to invest in it. You are not limiting the choice of anybody. The community is richer of one product.
"Why is it beneficial to anyone that a new operating system wil
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1. Break Mr X window
2. Mr X buy a new window
3. Profit ?? -> No because Mr X money could have been invested into something beter. Actually the community is poorer of 1 window.
In this case that does not apply. Microsoft did not break anything. It produced something and the community may or may not decide to invest in it.
Well, Microsoft pretty much controls how long an installation of XP is viable, since they are the source of all patches, not least of which security
Re:Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creati (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creati (Score:2, Informative)
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You see, it is has become wealth creation. Or would you say that if a single mother wouldn't have to take two jobs in order to pay for her child(ren) nourishment and education, there would be an abundance of possessions?
In related news, among the Top 400 Wealthiest People in the US, there is not a single millionaire anymore, on
Re:Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creati (Score:2)
Actually, it is wealth creation.
Yes, wealth moves, but it is also created. A tree is worth far less than the furnature that you could build with it. Sand is almost free, but silicon-based chips are worth several times their weight in gold. Gasoline is worth far more than the oil it took to manufacture it.
The point behind your statement is ultimately that someone has to be poor in order for another to be rich. As soon as people realize this is false, we may a
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The real point is that wealth is an entirely subjective term even if the use of currency makes wealth somewhat more universal. Ultimatly though, as the old saying "money can't buy you happiness" goes, a rich man is only wealthy if
It's called free exchange (Score:2)
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We measure value of things all wrong.
Re:ban the term wealth creation (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly! I remember the uncomfortable feeling I had when I sat in high school economics and heard the teacher lecture the class on the "creation of wealth". It was the exact same feeling I got when I sat in Sunday School while the teacher told us such things as "agape [Godly] love is far greater than carnal [animal] love" -- the feeling that an idea was, as my first software engineering professor would have called it, "highly suspect".
This whole idea of "creating wealth" seems to run counter to one of the most simple yet important folk sayings I've heard: "The money you spend on one thing is money you can't spend on any other thing." (Yes, I know it's possible to returned purchased goods for a refund, but even then there's a limitted return period -- and you may be charged a "restocking fee".) If we generalize the idea, we can say that "the resources you spend one one thing are resources you cannot spend on any other thing."
Now, *that* concept fits nicely with the basic physics principle that energy and matter cannot be created, only converted from one form to the other. Furthermore, if we presume that the universe began in a Big Bang and will eventually collapse in a Big Crunch, then time itself can be seen as a finite resource, one that must be spent carefully. (Heck, don't business people already believe that?)
So, if we view economics from the standpoint of physics / engineering / system theory, then an economy is a distribution system for delivering resources (goods and services) to all the different parts of the system, much as the blood circulation system in our bodies delivers consumable materials and non-consumable benefits (the immune system antibodies and phages are not meant to be consumed, yet provide a vital service to the body).
If we presume that the body is a closed system, then the body's total supply of resources at any given time is finite, and therefore an increase in a subsystem's demand for resources will result in a decrease in available resources for all other subsystems. (Think of what happens to you after eating a large, heavy meal: your digestive system needs so much blood to process the massive influx of food that you feel tired, lethargic, and barely have the energy to get up and plop yourself down in front of the TV / computer / whatever.)
Of course, in real life the body is not perfectly isolated from the outside world. However, in order to acquire the outside resources we need we must spend some of the resources we already have (energy, time, etc.) -- plus there is the chance that we not succeed, or will end up being injured or killed in the attempt (risk vs. gain). There is also the danger of being *too* successful, in which case we can become so bloated, so massively overgrown with resources (morbidly obese) that we will be easily outmaneuvered by smaller, more agile entities.
Then again, I'm no economist, so what the fuck do I know?
You need to study how fiat currency works. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your comparison to a sunday school theory doesn't hold much weight given that wealth creation is an observable phenomenon. If all that ever happened was wealth movement, then everyone else in the world ought to live in stone age conditions given the lifestyles of industrialized nations. Regardles
Re:ban the term wealth creation (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, unlike energy, wealth can be created and destroyed. Consider cookies, for instance:
I take some flour, sugar, butter, chocolate chips and other miscellaneous goods. The total value of these goods is only a bit more than a dollar.
Using them in various arcane ways, I craft, say, a dozen chocolate chip cookies, the likes of which anyone would pay $.25 and think it was a good deal.
So, we started out with about a dollar's worth of goods, and ended up with something like three dollars worth of cookies. There's now two more dollars worth of value in the economy, and it's all mine. This is what people mean when they say "wealth creation".
If I were to, instead, just set all those ingredients aflame, the world's economy would be poorer by about a dollar. That would be the destruction of wealth.
Of course, it's true that in a closed system, it would be impossible to create more than a certain amount of wealth. It's a good thing, then, that there's this big giant flaming ball of gas up in the sky spewing an unimaginable amount of energy in every direction, some of which fortunately falls on us.
In a more universal sense, you could make the case that there's only a certain maximum amount of wealth possible; however, reaching that would involve things like dyson spheres and asteroid farms.
Danger! (Score:2)
The proles are starting to think for themselves! Revolution imminent! Move your funds to Switzerland, climb aboard your yachts and set sail for South America.
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For customer:
Value of $X dollars: X
Value of Windows Vista: Y
For Microsoft:
Value of unsold copy: 0 (the plastic disc has essentially no value, if were were talking about a car it'd be non-zero)
Value of sold copy: X
Now, assuming Y > X (client actually wants to buy copy):
Before total value was: X (client) + 0 (MS)
Afterwards total value is: Y (client) + X (MS)
What just happened here?
X was wealth movement.
(Y+X)-(X+0) = Y was wealth creation. It shows up as two components (Y-X) for t
Why do we need it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course the artificial need for upgrade will generate some business for those who do the upgrades and those who sells the licenses, but then again I don't really see anyone their existing systems. At a certain point, people will choose to intall Vista instead of 2003 server or XP a
Re:Why do we need it? (Score:4, Interesting)
The sad thing is, all of this discussion is just preaching to the choir-the major influence (as usual) is "teh lusers"
P.S. To mollify the mad modders, we are all "teh lusers" outside our respective fields of expertise-ie: in an office enviorment I would be "teh luser", as I've done almost exclusively construction work most of my life- I doubt I could operate a copier withou having to ask for help fer christ's sake! (yes, this has happened to me before)
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I can't say for sure, but I'm willing to be that DX10 could've been programmed for XP. This is a case of the horse building a cart.
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This is true. In a free market, I could choose whatever operating system worked best for me. However, the operating system market is not free. It is a monopoly owned by Microsoft. When you have Microsoft successfully threatening hardware manufacturers with higher costs if they start offering Linux PCs, creating proprietary standards to leverage their domination of desktops, illegally bundling components to drive competitors out of busine
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Yes, you are.
There is a significant cost to switching to Linux, a cost that Microsoft is committed to increasing whenever possible.
There is also a significant cost in switching from Linux to Windows, if you wanted to do that.
The "cost" of switching to Linux has nothing to do with the "monopoly" of Windows, it has to do with all the other expenses that occur when you switch platforms, regardless of what they bot
Threat summarised... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft will delay shipping Vista to the EU until after SP1 this means European organisations will
1) Not have the "benefits" of learning about the early security holes
2) Not have the "advantage" of paying the launch list price, they'll have to wait until Microsoft slash prices as Vista doesn't fly
3) Have a mature support market to fall back on
4) More time to work out if its actually worth it
Brilliant, its like testing something dangerous on lab rats but we get to use Americans instead.
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If I were EU, I would ask "So you have been shipping us crap the entire time or what?"
Really, MS, I can believe it if you said that Vista was an incremental improvement and therefore delay an incremental loss to Europe. It has been mostly incremental improvements since you have been making OSes. You have made three releases that I consider groundbreaking: Windows 3.0->Windows 95->Windows 2K.
And even these delayed wouldn't have cost Eu
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So even PETA will be happy ;).
Hardware and open source quotes (Score:5, Interesting)
Just wanted to quote "As far as I can tell, the phrases "free software" and "open source" are not mentioned once in the white paper." I don't think I have anything useful to add. Commercial software is not a bad thing in itself, but you must evaluate the TCO [wikipedia.org] and ROI [wikipedia.org] when comparing software (including OS).
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America does not care about the environment. Their government doesn't, so their corporations do not care either.
Upping the hardware requirements will of course be harmful to the environment. Not only there is a need to discard perfectly working hardware to be able to run Vista, but the new higher-spec hardware also consumes much more energy. Watch the consumption of a suitable 3D card when compared to a plain 2D or
Mutilation of the English language (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, who thinks a report looks professional because it has pie and bar charts? If I see pie and bar charts, I think: business-school know-nothing bullshit.
This could backfire (Score:3, Interesting)
If I were an EU IT purchaser, or bean-counter, or CIO, this number would give me pause. It might get me to thinking if there was a better alternative. It might convince me to do a thorough analysis of the benefits of Vista relative to its enormous price tag. In short, this could backfire bigtime!
Reflection (Score:5, Insightful)
I challenge everyone to take 80% of the time they spend complaining about Microsoft and devote it to something else such as contributing to an OSS project.
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The majority of Slashdot respondants are so fucking clueless about anything technical that getting them to contribute to OSS projects will set OSS goals back by 10 years!
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Likewise, i would prefer if Microsoft would spend a tiny percent on the energy spent badmouthing its competition and spend it on fixing their utterly broken products. MS deserves every bit of bitching they get.
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That way they can spend 80% of their time arguing about how the code should be written, creating incompatable patches, and then complaining about that.
FOSS is great, but complainers are just going to complain about whatever they get. Non-complainers already do something about it.
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And they'd be expensive lattes.
(Shall I stop with the stereotypes now?)
MS one real innovation is FUD (Score:2, Funny)
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When is an OS "Good Enough" (Score:2)
There are still oodles of Win98 and Win2000 customers out there (& I have it on an old laptop as backup...works wonderfully fine).
Re:When is an OS "Good Enough" (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft will make sure that it has agreements with all major computer suppliers to have Vista installed on all newly sold PCs, and make XP available only as a special option (maybe at additional cost).
There will be notices like "Dell recommends Vista!" prominently placed on every product page.
Ordinary consumers will be wary if their new machine will work with XP, especially when it is indicated that this is not guaranteed.
So, even when consumers do not need Vista, they still will buy it. Just as they now buy XP even though alternatives are available.
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Hm, this sounds very familiar.... oh yes, it was precisely what Microsoft did to BeOS and OS/2 to effectively remove them from the market. It will be interesting to see what happens when they start applying their anti-competitive strategies against themselves...
MS and the future (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MS and the future (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is an important point-good insight, IMHO.
I just had a clent ask about alternatives to WinME (she did not want to pay for XP just to check here email and browse the internet). Her PC (Dell Demension 8200) had ME preinstalled, she had deleted the restore partition somehow thinking it would give her more HDD space, but could not figure out what happened to the storage space she had started with. (yes, it WAS that infested!)
I did my best to get her PC useable again, and gave her an Ubuntu Live cd to tryout. Two days later, I get this call from her:
"What would it take to install this Ubuntu thingy on my PC?-I really like it!"
Needless to say, I went right over and installed Ubuntu for her! w00t!!
I just don't see MS making as much of a killing on Vista that they are expecting/wanting- they have cut too many of the features that were toutewd when it was still Longhorn. (WinFS was the only one I had any interest in)
Now it seems that Vista is just WinXP SP3 with eye candy. I would rather see them release most of Vista as SP3 for XP, and use the time to finish Longhorn with all of the hyped features.
If it wasn't for my clients, I would ignore Vista completely, but I guess I'll have to download the "beta" mentioned earler on
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Windows ME really is a fucking piece of shit. For a few years I worked at an independent PC service and sales outlet that w
Lies, damned lies, and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, they have absolutely no justification for any of their numbers. For instance, on page 5 they claim, "In 2008, IDC predicts that 80% of Microsoft client operating systems shipped into enterprises will be Windows Vista." But they can't back it up!
They also admit they've only been looking at these numbers since 2002, so they've got no basis for comparison. In order for their 'study' to have any meaning, they'd have to compare it to the relative effects of the introduction of XP, compared to previous Microsoft operating systems. But they admit their data doesn't go back that far!
Their 'predictions' have as much weight as those you'd get from your local psychic.
You know (Score:2, Informative)
Increase staff by 50%? (Score:2)
dire? (Score:4, Funny)
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I for one know I can't wait to upgrade from XP for the stuff that can't be done easily with other options, since by now it is fairly obsolete.
It's all about costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Just point out that the entire article is entirely about additional costs imposed by Vista. There's no mention of benefits in that article. None. It's all about additional costs and planned obsolescence.
Mention that when talking to your local EU politicians.
soup's on (Score:2)
Goose? Dinner. Goose liver and German beer, anyone?
income for Microsoft ... (Score:2)
News flash -- income for ANY company selling a product is a cost to those who buy the product.
The issue is whether the consumer gets a reasonable deal for their purchase and whether they have any real choice in the matter. If the only choice one has in a personal computer, is a crappy PC, then there is likely some injustice involved.
Thankfully, we have choices -- plenty of them -- the persi
Three letters (Score:3, Interesting)
VAT
Seriously, how does the submitter think the US or Washington governments see any of Microsoft's money? Through taxation, of course! The EU gets to tax all of Microsoft's European transactions and European assets, just like everybody else.
If nothing else, 15%-25% of $40 billion isn't exactly something to sneeze at, which is what the EU will be seeing through VAT.
There are very valid reasons to doubt the magnitude of the impact a Vista delay may mean for the EU, but this... this is something an average teenager should be able to see through.
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Thereby creating another monopoly.
It's not a monopoly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source leads to open standards as well, and that is a critical issue now, especially with governments and business. A document you make today with open standards will still be readable for free any number of years from now.
Look at that reference in the latest vista candidate article, MS will still hose any other system you have on the disk, on purpose, if you go to install it(guru tweaking not applicable, I mean for joe regular). What would they do if it was the opposite on purpose? That's the different mindset we are facing, MS is their way or the highway,their monopoly status will remain and it will be serious folding money no matter what you are talking about, or FOSS which is primarily free and Free for the most part. A monopoly (note: a monopoly does not mean 100% when speaking legally) signifies abuse in the market place, as in "costs you money" with little recourse, then it becomes an abusive monopoly and starts to get into the illegal areas, which they have been provbven to have done. and it wasn't an accident either.
That's one of the main issues if you use the word monopoly as it relates to current business practices, abusive behavior leading to your wallet getting lighter. MS is saying if you don't stick to their monopoly expensive products it will cost you serious money, that's the FUD part, because STICKING with them costs you serious folding money, and for most purposes today, there is no longer a need. For some, yes, for most, no.
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Re:It's not a monopoly... (Score:4, Insightful)
I am more than familiar with the concepts and economics and laws involved, thanks for asking. I also am familiar with history, to see what happens, so yes, I'll stick with my over generalized opinion that monopolies usually evolve into an abusive situation, in the large and important industries anyway.
As to apple, I don't use them any longer, nor would I buy an iPod, I think it's way over priced for what it does (I am not their target demographic anyway, I get by quite fine with a cheap FM portable radio). I used to be an apple fanboy from the late 80s to the late 90s, but not now. Too expensive for what they do.
As to MS, I used to be a fanboy there as well, before I went to apple, I just stopped using them (3.11-95 era) when I saw their stuff was overpriced, insecure, buggy, and then I found out what a rat fink company they are. Their call to be nice and honest or be shady strong arm crooks,and I certainly didn't tell them to go down that path. They are convicted abusive monopolists, by various courts of laws in various jurisdictions, I think that's enough evidence to dis them and also to point out how incredibly greedy they are and that the abusive behavior never seems to end. I think some nice fat CEOs need to go to jail, but unfortunately our society concentrates on much lesser crimes when it comes to jail time. Personally, I think they should have had their corporate charter pulled long ago, along with any other company that accumulates a track record of serious large cash crimes. They'll chuck some common thief in jail after three felony convictions for *life*, yet corporations and their "leaders" seem to be able to just keep paying fines with corporate money,to the point now it's just a cost of doing business. Another example, I think whichever fatcat signed off on the sony rootkit should have faced however many thousands of counts of whatever computer hacking laws were violated in this or that area.
I just think big corporate stuff like that is wrong. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, against any honest businessmen or corporations, not a blessed thing, I just don't care for the crooks and weasels and am not even close to being shy about saying it out loud.
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Now that's a really weird thing to say, considering Macs have been as cheap as they are now...
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Err
Mono = one duo = two. It would be a duopoly which is half as bad. And if Apple and Linux could get a better market share it would become much more like a competitive market place.
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Someone aught to mod you up...
the American company Microsoft has no inherent right to do business in Europe and if Microsoft continues to break the rules here and abroad they can expect to be tossed aside. I, for one, welcome the time when real competition returns to the computer software OS marketplace.
Worth repeating. How come it is so hard to get a PC WITHOUT a Micro$oft OS in North America!!! That is like if I buy car I must use defective Firestone tires. The problem is that of all tech companies
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I'm in North America, and I'd gladly build you a great computer and put Linux or BSD on it. In fact, all of the computers I build come with Linux, BSD or no OS -- I don't have a license to pre-load Windows on them, and since I'm strictly small-time, I don't want to pirate it or pay big for Windows. Problem is, if you're posting on /., you can probably do the same thing yourself...
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True enough, I can and have. In fact 4 of the 6 I now own I built but they are getting old as the hills. The dual celeron ABIT died a few months ago and want to get a AMD X2.
Here is the issue, you can get one at Best Buy for less than I would for the parts to build the same thing. It will never run Windows... Suse and Solaris likely. So I guess I have to pay
Trollery via illogic (was Wow!) (Score:4, Interesting)
Mr Anonymous said: As for 'anti-competitive', what's that even mean? No one has a problem if Pepsi offers a lower price to a vendor in exchange for an agreement from the vendor to stop selling Coke products. But when a company captures enough of the market, suddenly that behavior is illegal?
Note that he's claimed that "No one has a problem" with paying a vendor to not sell a product.
My former boss did: he was a small-town conservative and regarded that as an attempt to bribe him to do something nether he nor his customers wanted to do. So whenever the pop or chip company drivers tried it, he'd throw them out of the store for 30 days, and post a sign on the racks saying why. You can imagine the consternation every time a new driver took over the route and trid to bribe Jack (;-))
The error here is saying "there exists no person who disapproves of X", when the true statement is "some people disaprove of X".
And, of course, "when a company captures enough of the market, suddenly that behavior is illegal" is very close to the definition of a monopoly. Logically, it might be stated "for any undesirable behavior X, which is dealt with by a free market but which is not ina monopoly, X is illegal when done by a monopolist."
Etc, etc, ad nauseam...
--dave
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Monopolies are almost always bad for the customer. A monopoly may talk about "innovation" and "invention" but they will limit change to the absolute minimum so as to maximise profit (real research and marketing is expensive s
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What "Anti-M$ FUD" ? FUD stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", while even you admitted that the claim "income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe" is a fact:
So tell me. What is this "Anti-M$ FUD" you
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While this may seem obvious to you, it's a fact that most proponents of intellectual 'property' in general prefer to utterly ignore.
They get a much more compelling argument if they say 'we can create X amount of wealth in your economy if you give us monopoly rights', instead of 'take X amount of money from everyone else and give it to us so we make more money'.
It may amount to the same thing, but the presentation is important.
See, as long as they can h
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Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
For starters, money spent on licenses doesn't stay in the EU; it goes back to the US. If it stayed locally, as it often does with smaller EU software shops, then it gets spent on salaries, growing the business etc and gets invested back into the local economy. Money going back to Microsoft US is basically money down the drain from the point of view of Europe.
Similarly, replacing currently working computers with more powerful ones, purely to run vista - and with all the extra power being sucked up with the pretty effects - is the broken windows fallacy [wikipedia.org]; i.e. money spent on new computers purely to run vista, with no other advantage is money that could have been spent on other areas instead. Also, most of the PC makers are not european, so the bulk of the money again goes out to the benefit of US and asian businesses, to the cost of europeans.
Finally, retraining and hiring lots of people to manage, maintain and use windows vista and office 12 (or whatever version it'll be) is only a benefit if they end up more productive at the end of it; if they are about as productive as they were on the old software, then the training costs are wasted money caused by being stuck on the windows treadmill. That money will go back into the local economy at least, but it could have been more productively spent on hiring people to expand the business and do new things, rather than just maintain the more complex infrastructure that nobody understands properly.
As the article says, european companies could quite happily spend the 40 billion on other things to grow their business, instead of spending it purely to stand still and get back to where they were but with slightly prettier graphics - something not particularly useful to business workers. If vista brings massive productivity benefits to people upgrading, fair enough - but that's not the reason they're talking about $40b, that's the money european businesses will need to spend (largely overseas) to get through it in one piece. Not a hugely compelling reason to upgrade, in my view.
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Most of it goes back to the US, yes. However, don't forget that MS does employ people in Europe, so some of that money will stay here in salaries. Also software (and the hardware to run it on) is taxable (at least in the UK), so some of the money goes
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
So let's see:
Looking at how 'fast' XP spread after launch, a massive buying spree just for the sake of upgrading is unlikely. Add to that hardware requirements (meaning simply upgrading your computer is not an option in far too many cases) and I would say people will buy Vista preloaded on PCs that would have been otherwise bought with XP anyway. Then this looks like MS issuing Win XP SP3 and calling it a major reason for 'new' cash flow. Now, given that MS is spinning "this is the cash flow we expect Vista to generate" into "this is the excess cash flow we expect Vista to generate and you'll never get it it you don't allow us to do whatever we like" I would indeed call it a major piece of FUD.
On the other hand, I don't see why MS should have mentioned F/OSS in this paper. Certainly one is not supposed to make a case for the opposition in such cases. My problem is with them grossly misrepresenting their own case.
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If I have two hundred and fifty dollars and I exchange it for an older violin worth two hundred and fifty dollars, I have a violin that can be resold for two hundred and fifty dollars, or maybe a hundred if I'm in a hurt, five hundred is am not.
I have exchanged my money for real wealth. Maybe even made an investment.
If I have two hundred and fifty dollars and exchange it for Vista, I: Go hungry.
Well, ok, that's a trade, not really cons
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Ok now on a more serious note, he could of been a bit more objective by not flinging the Anti-M$ FUD back the other way.
Who needs to spread FUD when the facts work just fine. Print out the EULA for MS Office and for Open Office.
Note the cost of installing MS office on your home network including your PC, your laptop, your wife's PC, your kid's PC and the same for Open Office. With a highlighter, highlight the portion of the EULA where it is specific on the number of machines it can be installed upon.
For F
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A quick google does turn up someone with that name working for a PR firm called Brodeur Worldwide in Boston. A coincidence?'
http://www.prfirms.org/findafirm/company_details.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why, does the US rip off the world with its tra (Score:2)
Tell you what, when the US starts getting as much from the rest of the world as it is giving in trade...
You were being funny were you not?
http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.htm l
Mind you Micro$oft is on the exports list, but that is only where they employ US people to produce the product. Like most things they are opening up offices in India and China which will reduce the US export component. Do most crypto offshore too I bet as not to get US law on their tails, or perhaps the NSKey (http://
Re: (Score:2)
You first point out the Microsoft is employing a lot of non-U.S. developers, and then complain that you can't get Linux because it's "world made"? The only reason you can't get a pre-installed Linux distro at Best Buy or Circuit City is because Microsoft has applied economic pressure (the same old tactics they've used for decades) to prevent that. It has nothing to do with whether it's "American made" or "World made", just that Windows is Microsoft
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I notice that the IDC report concentrates on only 1 thing:
Revenue of Vista.
Revenue of the Microsoft Ecosystem surrounding Vista.
I have no reason to doubt the numbers.
However, the author fails to state that one man's revenue is another man's expense.
So the author sees Vista simply as a stimulus to the economy.
However, another way to look at it, is in terms of productivity.
And return of investment of capital.
Th