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ESR Says as PCs Get Cheaper, Windows Will Die
james writes "Eric Raymond reckons Windows will be obsolete because people won't be able to afford it soon." Owning the OS gives MS too great of
an advantage. They'd sell the client for 5 bucks if
it meant that they could still control Office, the
server market, and the zillions of other markets that
their OS monopoly lets them crush.
It's beautiful to see that even the main Slashdot guy recognizes what a naive ass Eric Raymond is. Hey ESR, seeing as your predictions always turn out wrong, please go back to amusing us with your boasts of how rich you are. *cough* I mean were. ;-)
Oh lord.
More from an idiot who browses Slashdot with IE and enjoys trolling the waters.
First off, I don't think you even read the fucking article. You spewed off several sentences worth of drivel immediately after the story was posted.
Eric states that "'The only way to explain Microsoft's decisions over the past couple of years is to say that they know their packaged software business is doomed'". So please tell me where he's implying that the company as a whole is going to go bankrupt. Can't find it? That's because he says NOTHING OF THE SORT.
He's merely saying that their software monopoly just isn't viable as PCs continue to drop in price. Just look at how far ahead hardware is of software these days, and it's not hard to imagine a dirt-cheap PC being able to run most any computer program ever written at a useable pace.
He didn't mention a date. So I predict that ESR prediction will come true within 40 years from now.
... came the wonderful assertion that Windows is only as cheap as it is because Microsoft are such nice guys.
Their internal figures showed (they claimed) that the optimum price point was about $800. Sure, they'd lose most of their market to competitors or piracy(*), but they'd keep enough (in the lucrative corporate sector in businesses that are tied in) that they'd actually make more profit. Hands up who believes them.
(*) And now a bonus Piracy Pop quiz: If Microsoft lost 1 million x $100 Windows sales because they pushed the price to $800, how much would they claim that their losses to piracy would be:
Heck, maybe they should push the price to $100,000 a user, then they could claim to be losing trillions that they're rightfully owed, mostly in foreign markets, and the Dubyamint would have to step in and start kicking asses and taking names. Hmm, or perhaps we shouldn't put ideas like that in their heads.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.