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Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD? 283

Posted by Zonk from the handcrafted-by-fuddsters dept.
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."
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Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD? More

Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD?

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  • Considering how long Vista's been delayed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:26PM (#16176343)
    You would've expected a global economic meltdown by now.

  • Of course it's FUD... (Score:4, Funny)

    by plague*star ( 731804 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:27PM (#16176359)
    But it's Genuine Microsoft FUD!

  • Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Snarfangel ( 203258 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:30PM (#16176381) Homepage
    Isn't that a bit like saying "Rembrandt's Masterpiece of Art"? There are so many to choose from, each one brilliant and unique in its own way.

    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.

  • Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:32PM (#16176403)
    It's wealth movement.

    • Re:Yeah, someone should ban the term wealth creati (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rts008 ( 812749 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:14PM (#16176729) Journal
      A poster on the linked page (http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000097) gave the best possible reply, IMHO:
      "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_brok en_window") to be significant?
      "

      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!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gutnor ( 872759 )
        The idea of the broken window is in short
        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

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          The idea of the broken window is in short
          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
    • Yeah, when everyone knows it's not creation, it's evolution :oP

    • Yes, because as we all know, it's a perfectly zero sum game. There's the same amount of wealth today that there was 10 million years ago. Nothing new at all has been created. If I'm doing good, someone else must therefore be doing bad, which makes me a bad person.
      • In the short term yes, it is a zero sum game. In the long term you're correct. Wealth creation is a vastly and inappropriately overused term.

         
      • I can't believe this has been modded troll. Please, mod parent insightful or funny (depending on your view) and go mod down all those posts (not only in this story nowadays!) that easily address the "broken window fallacy" in a few lines. There has been serious debate on these issues, please let's stop pretending that we understand economy just because we've taken a class at engineering school.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ElMiguel ( 117685 )
      The wealth being moved must have been created somehow, isn't it? Where do you think it comes from?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yokaze ( 70883 )
      As English is not my native tongue, I looked up the word on Merriam Webster, and look what I found [m-w.com]

      1 obsolete : WEAL, WELFARE
      2 : abundance of valuable material possessions or resources

      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

    • [it's not 'wealth creation,] It's wealth movement.

      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
      • It is all subjective though based on what 'value' you assign to everything. A tree might be worth more to a modern westerner when made into furniture, but a caveman would have prefered the raw tree so he could make fire out of it or in the case of a fruit tree, pick fruit from it.

        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
        • There isn't an overriding definition of value. We each assign it in our own way. To a furniture manufacturer, a chair has very little value (since they have more chairs than they can use). So they exchange the chair for for something else (usually money) which they feel has more value than the chair. But the person who bought the chair didn't get ripped off. They felt that the chair had more value than whatever they exchanged for it (usually money). I the end, both parties gained form the exchange, an

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by killjoe ( 766577 )
        Yes. A fish swimming in the ocean has no value, a fish cut into a tiny piece and placed on a bed of rice is worth five bucks. This is why the ocean is being depleted of fish.

        We measure value of things all wrong.

    • Re:ban the term wealth creation (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zenhkim ( 962487 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @03:44PM (#16177447) Journal
      > It's wealth *movement*.

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It shouldn't take an economist to look at the world today and compare it to the world a hundred years ago to recognize that wealth has indeed been created through trade, innovation, and exploitation of resources.

        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)

        by IICV ( 652597 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @05:07PM (#16177975)
        This won't get modded up since the article is too old, so I'm just posting it for your elucidation.

        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.

    • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      They happen simultaniously:

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is not that I am scared of new programs and technology, but why do we need it? What can we do better with Vista that we can't do today? Except from gamers that have to upgrade to use the latest features in their graphic card.
    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)

      by rts008 ( 812749 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:32PM (#16176901) Journal
      Unfortunately, where Vista will get it's foothold is by way of the likes of Dell, eMachines, HP, etc. when Joe Sixpack buys a new PC with Vista preinstalled. This tactic is what got MS to where they are now, and I don't see them slacking off in this department lately.

      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)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by FyRE666 ( 263011 )
        You're not alone with copiers. I've worked in offices for a fair few years, and since most of them were as a programmer, I've never had to use a copier, and honestly don't have a clue how to use one! Once day I'll get caught out, I'm sure!
    • Except from gamers that have to upgrade to use the latest features in their graphic card.

      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.

  • Threat summarised... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:37PM (#16176443) Homepage

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 )
      I'm still waiting to hear what is so amazing of Vista over XP SP1?

      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

    • Brilliant, its like testing something dangerous on lab rats but we get to use Americans instead.

      So even PETA will be happy ;).

  • Hardware and open source quotes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lord Satri ( 609291 ) <alexandrelerouxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:41PM (#16176467) Homepage Journal
    FTA: "As the paper itself mentions, half of this cost is down to the hardware." Sounding obvious, I don't see the need of new hardware as innovation. On the contrary. If you need to buy new hardware, it's a cost to the consumer and a cost to the environment. Vista (or any other OS) having higher hardware requirements is 'bad' news. The broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org] was linked in a previous /. article. Would be interesting to take Vista impact and view it from a GPI [wikipedia.org] point of view.

    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).
    • It does look suspiciously like the broken window fallacy. I would not argue that Microsoft delaying Vista would be a benefit to the economy either in the guise that money is better spent elsewhere, that's the same fallacy applied in the reverse direction. I would suggest letting the market decide where their money should go. In a sense, an EU-forced delay may be restricting competitiveness in an excessive manner. As much as I don't like Microsoft's tactics, I am not convinced that the EU's judgements we

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 )
      If you need to buy new hardware, it's a cost to the consumer and a cost to the environment.

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:43PM (#16176473)
    I don't know if his technical arguments are correct, but what the hell was the author thinking when he wrote: "clipping the wings of this digital golden goose"? The golden goose was so called because it laid golden eggs. Its ability to fly is totally irrelevant to its value. In fact, one would WANT to clip the wings of a golden goose to keep it from escaping the farm. Way to mangle a perfectly good metaphor.

    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)

    by LaughingCoder ( 914424 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @01:59PM (#16176601)
    The white paper may predict sales by the "Microsoft ecosystem" of over $40 billion in six of Europe's biggest economies

    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)

    by TrappedByMyself ( 861094 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:03PM (#16176627)
    Wow, hit Slashdot for the first time today and surprise surprise, its the daily MS bitching thread.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's the last think we want.


      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!

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ewl1217 ( 922107 )
        That's hardly true at all. Just look at this page (http://kde.org/support/ [kde.org]) from kde.org. It lists many ways to contribute to KDE, including giving donations, contributing artwork, promoting KDE, finding and reporting bugs, documenting and translating programs, and more. That doesn't involve anything overly-technical for your average user; it mostly only takes some time and dedication.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by catbutt ( 469582 )
      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.
      I challenge you to only participate in discussions that are interesting to you and that you consider worthy.
    • "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."

      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.
    • 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.

      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.
  • they have taken it to completely new levels. they are so far off the scale the world lacks the tecnology for instruments that can actually measure it
    • Nah ... politicians the world 'round polished that particular skillset to a fine gloss centuries ago. Microsoft is just taking a few pages from their book.
  • If users of all types, just say "Windows XP is good enough for what I do", then MS can say what it will and VISTA will not sell to the people who really don't need VISTA.

    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)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:44PM (#16177017)
      It is not going to work that way.
      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )
        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)


        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)

    by grapeape ( 137008 ) <mpope7 AT kc DOT rr DOT com> on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:31PM (#16176895) Homepage
    So far Vista looks to be more beneficial to the Linux and MAC communities than MS. I have already been asked by one of my larger clients to look into "alternate" solutions after their company president read an article about hardware requirements and panicked. So far I have seen nothing that really benefits the end user other than yet more "wizards" to make things more complicated for those that already know what they are doing and a pretty interface that puts enough of a resource drain on the system to require otherwise unneccesary upgrades. I guess in the long run MS can depend on "retiring" support on 2003 and XP to force users towards Vista but I dont see nearly the amount of voluntary upgrading as MS seems to expect.

    • Re:MS and the future (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rts008 ( 812749 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:58PM (#16177153) Journal
      "I guess in the long run MS can depend on "retiring" support on 2003 and XP to force users towards Vista but I dont see nearly the amount of voluntary upgrading as MS seems to expect."

      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 /. and run it on VMWare so I can help some of my older clents. (not client's age- how long they have been clients!)

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by zenhkim ( 962487 )
        > 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!)

        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)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:33PM (#16176917) Homepage
    I've actually downloaded the PDF, and I've been reading through it. It's only 16 pages, and there's a hell of a lot of white space. There's also a lot of space taken up with a bunch of rather unimpressive bar charts.

    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)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 )
    Including bar and pie charts labeled "pure flowing bullshit" would still make any phone-flipping corporate hairpiece fuck nod their head and say "it supports our core synergies."

  • Vista deployment will result in a 50% growth in IT employment. Yeah, I can sell that to my management.

  • dire? (Score:4, Funny)

    by marktwells ( 1005125 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:41PM (#16176985)
    This is quite amusing. If the effects of delaying vista are "dire", then the obvious conclusion is that XP doesn't work. Satisfactorily....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shados ( 741919 )
      Well, yeah. After what...5+ years now or something? While it can still do the job, even in the *Nix world, after 5 years a large amount of people need to consider an upgrade (assuming they don't do incremental ones anyway).

      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)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday September 24, 2006 @02:58PM (#16177155) Homepage

    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.

  • to jeopardize these wonderful benefits by clipping the wings of this digital golden goose, or even grounding it completely

    Goose? Dinner. Goose liver and German beer, anyone?

  • "... but what this figure hides is the fact that income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe."

    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)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Monday September 25, 2006 @01:44AM (#16181435)
    "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."

    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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