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Microsoft's Future
cyberkine writes: "The Economist has an interesting article on Microsoft's technology strategies that ends with a very astute comparison with IBM's downfall and resurrection in the wake of its own antitrust battles. 'Microsoft's biggest underlying fear is that it will become like IBM - --a company that still has a strong business but no longer sets computing standards.'"
There are boxes in my shop with uptimes of years.
Mainframe admins strive for DECADES of uptime.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Has Microsoft ever actually set any computing standards? IBM did: the punched card, half-inch magnetic tape, and the entire PC architecture, among others. It was a self-confident company that wasn't afraid of competitors building products that implemented standards it had set. (I'm not suggesting it competed fairly, ethically or even legally, BTW.)
.net into standards. But I can't think of any accepted standard of which you can say, "Microsoft created that standard and gave it to the community".
But Microsoft? It's contributed to standards initiated by others. It's tried to detract from standards initiated by others (Java). It's currently trying to make C# and
At first glance, the graph titled 'Redmond Blues' looks like it's showing a decline in Microsoft's earnings. However, the real numbers are quite the opposite - the graph shows how many percent increase the earnings have had since last year, and it is of cours natural for the curve to fall (since an $2.5 billion increase from $25b is only 10%, while an $2.5 billion increase from $6 is almost 60%).
But somehow they have warped the statistics (intentionally?) to make the curves more grim.
To their defense, it is stated clearly in the text of the article, but the subtle difference between text and graphics might be hard to spot.(Especially since it's easier to think up a conclusion from a curve than a paragraph of text)
After September 11th, while every other media source was running the usual watered down stories presenting simplistic views of the situation (everything from the geopolitics of the situation to any possible bioterror threat), the Economist has been consistently running articles examining the situation in depth [economist.com] and not trying to present its readers with some beautified and doctored picture of what's really going on to give people a warm fuzzy fealing inside or capitalise on the shock-value *cough*CNN*cough*.
And you know what? It's nice having a publication which doesn't treat you like an idiot or a child. Or one which isn't 90% adverts. Or only tells you what you want to hear.
You can bash Microsoft, but you don't bash The Economist. :)
The Economist happens to be one of the most trusted publications around; they have a well-deserved repuation for being right. You can pretty much guarentee that any article by them is well researched and as accurate as they come.
To be brutally frank, the kind of articles you find in the Economist [economist.com] are far beyond what you typically read on /. in terms of complexity, subtlety and breadth of vision, without the usual journalistic bias and bullsh*t you find in a lot of other places - particularly online.
What I find most ironic about the Economist is they usually do a lot better job at picking the important (tech) stuff [economist.com] than most of the tech publications; best of all - they've usually picked it out months before it's mostly ignored by the likes of Wired.
If more people read the Economist, the world would be a better place.
It is still in very early development, so I wouldn't suggest you go out and run it (except for purposes of testing and debugging), but if you are looking for a worthy project to contribute to, consider this one.
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
From what I remember, IBM invented SMB, though MS contributed a lot to it shortly thereafter (would have been 1987). Also, the "goodness" of this standard is debatable. ;-)
As for RTF -- ugly!!!
That leaves DHCP
Years ago I thought I knew computers. Then, in a very short period, the hardware I was accustomed to became obsolete, and the software outdated. I managed to adapt, but learnt a lesson: no platform lasts forever. Make sure that whatever knowledge you have is also relevant to the next platform.
Many people I meet seem to think computer equals PC, and operating system equals microsoft. The Intel/Microsoft platform becoming as obsolete as, say, punched cards, does not strike them as relevant or even possible. Having used PC's all their lives, they assume PC's will be there forever. It is my personal opinion these people will be in for a shock at least once during their lifetime. They have never seen the industry shift to a new platform in their lives, and are quite unprepared for such an event.
Yes, I started off using punched cards on a mainframe. But I have not forgotten the lesson I learnt then: no platform lasts forever. And while I use Intel/Microsoft in daily life, I try to be prepared when the next change occurs. I play a bit with non-Microsoft operating systems, and keep abreast of non-Intel processor architectures.
Please accept whatever platform is market-dominant right now, but make sure that when change occurs - and it will occur at least once in your lifetime - you are fully prepared to move on.
IBM was the computer company from the end of WW II until the late seventies. They got a good racket^H^H^H^H^Hbussiness going with punch cards and card machines and then early computers.
The IBM anti-trust trouble started in the sixties and the goverment finally dropped its suit in '82. Read the story of IBM and Ahmdal to see how IBM did not play nice.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The DHCP protocol specification, and the first implementation were not written by microsoft, or in cooperation with microsoft.
As for SMB, i think that DEC Pathworks, and IBM LanManager both predate microsoft's SMB implementation.
AFAIK, it's sort of vaguely possible to run a Linux box (probably other OSs like BSD too) as a very thin client. You put a minimal OS (say, the Linux kernel, DHCP or BootP, and NFS utils) on a ROM, boot from it, and network-mount a NFS drive as the root partition. Upgrading and network troubleshooting become impossible though, and you need LAN-like connectivity to the NFS server.
Having said that, the general-use networked computers at my college (Macs and Win2K PCs) have a full OS and basically nothing else (they use a Netware server for apps). I don't know about the Macs (there are only a couple and I haven't used them) but the PCs take longer than they should to log in and ages to get enough network connectivity to run apps (and because Windows likes running services on login rather than on boot, this happens once per user...) Once they're running and have refreshed their list of what software they can get at, they're reasonably fast.
Personally, I much prefer installing software and knowing I have a working copy of whatever app on my hard disk...
What are you talking about? Please locate any occurence of "Microsoft" in Section 5 of the below document:
RFC1541
--How so? Well, look at their taxes. They don't pay any tax on profit because they report no profit.--
Well, checking their financial reports for the last 3 years shows they paid more than 30% of their Revenue as tax. Check the audited financial statements.
-- How? They claim the value of stock options used to pay employees as expense. Between that and cash outlays, they are losing money, and have been for years.--
Actually, what is claimed as a liability is the money reserved for income tax payments on exercised options. Options are considered compensation, but the amount of the compensation cannot be determined until they are exercised, therefore Microsoft has to hold money in a long term liability account to cover the expense of the exercising of options as they occur.
--The stock market is not a source of investment for them, but primary revenue.--
Actually, they lost money on investments this year but still have a positive Net Revenue (i.e. Profit).
-- They are being supported by the wishful thinking of their employees, who still think the stock will resume its growth, and so are willing to accept stock options as pay.--
Microsoft pays salaries on par with the leaders in the industry, and gives employee great benefits as well. The fact that they grant options in addition to that is even better.
I was watching TechTV during the Backstreet Boys segment of the Concert for New York and they were doing a special on MS's "House of the Future". I'm sure we've all heard Bill Gates rather (or is that downright?) stupid idea of networking a TV to a Clothes Dryer so that the TV will tell you when your clothes are done. I suppose it's too much to hear the big loud buzzer or just go back after the amount of time you set the timer for, but they now have what could be the most annoying idea ever. Apparently they want to have a microwave that has a barcode reader. You have to scan all your products and the microwave connect to the internet and automatically sets the time to cook the item. Is it just me or is that the stupidest idea ever?! Is it really that difficult to read the label and type a three digit number? Are we not supposed to eat if the network goes down?
I for one hope MS dies long before it sets our living standards, or I might just have to move out of my house into a wigwam.