Linux Spurs MS Price Cuts

jimb writes "Yahoo! reports: 'What's happening is that Microsoft sales reps have been instructed to be on the lookout for any businesses that are migrating some of their machines to the Lindows OS,' Yankee Group analyst Laura DiDio told NewsFactor. 'If [the sales reps] think there's a real threat of some pretty large numbers of defections to open source, they can request authorization from Microsoft higher-ups to offer steeply discounted pricing."' I wonder how many businesses will now start pondering aloud the possibility ... I'm sure OS X is on MS's mind as well.

Comments

I learned my lesson

[ekrout]

Before I finished up my studies at Yale Law School, I had to study the details of Microsoft's settlement agreement.

Specialized price cuts are strictly prohibited by order of the government of the United States of America.

I urge any Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) here to report these crimes if Microsoft representatives try to make you "an offer you can't refuse".

Sure, you may save a few thousand dollars, but you're helping Microsoft break the law.

Re:Selective discounting?

[SerpentMage]

They did it again... They weaseled out yet again...

Judge Jackson was right!

How many "dead" bodies in the software industry does the DOJ actually need to do something?

Re:Selective discounting?

[Badanov]

Microsoft is considered a manufacturer and as such is forbidden by federal law to offer discounts only to certain customers. Any discounts they offer must be to all or they cannot offer them

Re:Still a high profit margin

[AndroidCat]

I hate to let you in on a dirty secret, but almost all retail sales are marked up 100%. (I would have used a much much higher figure for Microsoft, but I had to match the 50% discount figure of the story.) I did Point Of Sale stuff for a while and got a look at the real figures for a number of chains.

x. Profit, Oh Yeah! (When they do make a sale, to be fair.)

Re:Price of Linux drops to compete!

[Asprin]

Wrong equation.

Percent off means subtracting a certain percentile of the old price.... you put the new price on the rhs, which resulted in a divide by zero error.

new = old - (%off/100)*old


Wrong equation?!?!

Witness Algebra:

new = old - (%off/100)*old
(new - old) = - (%off/100) * old
(old - new) = + (%off/100) * old
(old-new)/(old) = (%off/100)

Which yields:
%off = 100* (old-new)/(old)

which is my equation, except for (possibly) a negative sign, which I conveniently discounted by using abolute value bars to avoid starting a flamewar about whether a discount should be positive or negative.

Now, if you want to get pedantic, subtracting a percent from the original price is what my equation does because:

(old-new)/(old) = (old/old) - (new/old) = 1 - (new/old)

Originally, I scaled it by multiplying by 100 to format the result as a more "traditional" percentage, but the 1 here indicates 100% of original price and the (new/old) is the percentage to which you are referring.

Now, having cleared *that* up, for those of you coming up with ridiculous (and/or satirical) criticism of my NAN result, (any-number-including-possibly-zero)/old is ALWAYS undefined (i.e., Not-A-Number) if old is zero. This is not debateable. The only way around this is to REDEFINE what happens if old=0, (creating a new function that does what you want it to do there). Hopefully, you discover that there are non-constantly-zero algebraic expressions for old and new that produce a finite limit as old,new -> 0 and use THAT as the value there. (Note that if the limit as old->0 goes to +/-infinity, you can't make the function continuous). However, since old and new in this case *are* constants, this doesn't work either!

CRIMINY! WHAT ARE THEY TEACHING YOU PEOPLE IN MATH THESE DAYS -- FEELINGS?!?! IT WAS A LAME ATTEMPT AT A STUPID JOKE, WHICH I REGRET FOR HAVING CAUSED SO MUCH HYSTERIA!!!!

SOMEBODY MOD MY ORIGINAL POST (AND THIS ONE) AS TROLLS SO I CAN GET ON WITH MY LIFE AND STOP GETTING MESSAGES ABOUT THIS!!!!!

...please?...