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The Only Way Microsoft Can Die is by Suicide
Bitseeker writes "Robert X. Cringley's latest article is online. He opens with: 'When I wrote last week about my conclusion that the legal system -- any legal system -- is unequipped to change Microsoft's monopolistic behavior, I had no idea that within 24 hours, Sun Microsystem would be throwing in the towel, trading its so-called principles for $1.95 billion in cash. So I guess I was right. Only now, a few thousand readers out there expect me to blithely produce an answer to the problem of what to do to bring Microsoft into the civilized world. Well, I say it can't be done.'"
I think that the public needs to be more educated about the alternatives to the monopoly which controls the machines all around us, as well as about the monopoly itself and the harm that it does. Then again, there have been such attempts made on various scales, yet on the whole, apathy seems to be the victor.
Having said nothing important, I'll now go read the article.
well yes that was extreme, but you could start the insane taxes at about 66- 75% market share as the idea being that consumers can only get hurt by a company controlling that much. And in economics you do learn that monopolies are bad, they dont serve the economy well. Economist know that society gets the best value when there are many competitors for a given output.
Economics is not about the betterment of the few but the betterment of the whole. In most cases a monopoly doesnt benefit the whole. In some it does. Those are usually natural monopolies, such as utilities and governments.
If you had multiple electric wres coming into your home from different vendors then your energy prices would sky rocket because in order for the companies to all compete they would need to all build wires to all the homes.
So it is better to have a regulated monopoly.
Richard Stallman wouldn't.
In every one of these cases they caught up before the rest of the market could do anything about them.
I wouldn't call it catchup. What I would call it is leveraging a monopoly position to force a product (that's often inferior i.g. outlook express) onto customers whether they like it or not.
That's what they did with the browser by integrating it deeply with the OS. That's what they are trying to do with the media player.
Standard oil tried to do it with refineries and railroads. The movie companies tried to do it by owning the movie theatres.
The only difference between now and then is that then politicians had enough spine to stand up against it, and take action that would promote meaningful change.
It is questionable if the EUs recent actions will be effective because the fine, as large as it is, represents a very small part of Microsoft's fortune that they can afford to pay.
I do not see anything on the horizon that would change their current business practices.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Nobody ever really discusses computers? Notice how the media almost never has a story on the real details of Linux, Mac, Windows, Sun, Java, .NET, etc., even though hundreds of millions of people use computers every single day?
Some of the most entertaining television or radio is when a host detects that an interview/conversation is starting to become detailed and interesting (read: technical terms being used), and they raise their voice/interrupt/babble/act like a complete asshole/try to make it an unfunny joke in order to return the conversation to stupidity-land.
Part of the problem is the inability of society to think about something for more than a few moments, and also to "glaze over" (which is a bullshit excuse) whenever technical details are discussed.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
The difference is that that there are significant numbers of other cars besides GM cars and there are a significant number of other viable merchants besides Wal Mart. The difference is that automobiles represent technologies and economic systems that are past mature and on their way to becoming defunct. Comparing the situation with computers to cars and stores doesn't help anyone come to grips with a serious problem that has a large and growing negative impact on their cost of living. The only thing mature about the software industry is Microsoft's death grip on the consumers grossly distorted view of what Microsoft has done and can do for them. If you use computers then Microsoft takes your money whether you want them to or not. The believe that software is mature will take a serous dive when the death toll and overall cost from trashy software begins to enter the public consciousness. Computing technology and broadband communication will play a much bigger role in every aspect of our future than it does today. Computing technology is still in its infancy and a couple of people who don't give a flying f*&k about anything but control have you and me and everyone else by the doodads. Its not OK for the neurological system for planet earth to fall into the hands of the two greedy control freeks who now have enough money to buy and advertise themselves out of just about any conflict with the public interest. Promoting apathy with regard to this situation is not understandable.
I apologise in advance.. this is going to be long ;-)
;-) ) in that people want something that is easy to use. But the thing is that microsoft *defines* what is easy to use.
I think Mr Cringely has a clear view of things.. let me respond to some of the posts here (if I come over a bit opinionated.. please forgive me and put it down to my being an old and bitter IT hack..)
Jin Wicked is quiet right in what she says (that girls got sticking power.. I can remember her being lambasted by slashdotters over something.. but she's still here!
People are educated that the way microsoft products work is how computers work. Anything different is "unfriendly". I work in industrial automation. Many people who work in factories and warehouses cannot handle gui interfaces. The find them too complex. They want to type stuff in all the time! However.. these people are not regular computer users, hence the standard for gui interfaces is defined by office workers all trained that microsoft office is how computers work.
Hence.. anything that is going to compete with ms is going to have to follow the ms look and feel slavishly.. it doesnt matter if doing things in a new funky way is better.. people wont take the time to learn it. They will want to stick with what they know and what they know is microsoft.
But its not just the investment in learning that people have made.. its also.. as Jin points out.. the investments in software. Companies in particular own large amounts of expensive software that runs under ms. If an 'alternative' platform cannot run this software just as well as MS can.. then they arent interested.
People speak of security. I see someone saying that unless longhorn is secure out of the box (it wont be) then microsoft is in trouble. You are wrong. I wish it were so.. but no-one cares about security. No one understands security. Oh.. I'm sure everyone posting and reading on slashdot does. But we are a tiny elite people (an I.. for one.. have always wanted to be part of a tiny elite). Out in the workaday world most people do not know what slashdot is. Many dont really know what linux is and even fewer understand security. For them computers are magic, pure and simple, and I'm not just talking about mom and pop home users here. I'm talking about CORPORATE IT MANAGERS. Of the companies we deal with most have it departments full of 'point and click' it personel. These people might have an MSCE to their name.. but most of their knowledge comes from reading 'PcPlus'. They simply do not understand computers.. but they do so more than the rest of the company, and in the land of the blind..
These people care not one whit about security.. so long as nothing too disasterous happens to their network (and you know.. the amazing thing is.. most of them get away with it.. oh yes, they get hit by worms and viruses frequently.. but they always seem to recover). And as for their unencrypted WiFi networks.. dont get me started.
When longhorn comes out the issues of 'is it pretty' or 'does it have funky features' are vastly more important to its sales than 'is it secure'. People are quite happily using the monstrously insecure MS operating systems currently available.. why should they suddenly start caring with longhorn?
When longhorn comes out companies will be told that their current OS's are no longer supported.. and will race to upgrade to longhorn, as they will have no clear alternative upgrade path available. Their whole way of working will be so based around MS (viruses and all) that they will be quite unable to build an alternative infrastructure.. and they wont have the time anyway, they have a business to run dont forget. Home users may be more reticent.. but the big thing in the home market seems to be games.. and when you upgrade your computer to play the latest games, then you will also get longhorn pre-installed on it.
I see people talking about apple. I dont know if this is because I'm in the UK and things are diffre
>>4. Microsoft ignoring wireless, thin clients, etc.
Ignoring Wireless? They built it in to Windows XP. How long before that could their have been "ignoring" it? Every wireless vendor ever (except Apple) has released Windows support for their products. And Microsoft has had their own thin client product since the mid-90's.
The parent poster probably wanted to point to they ignorance over mobile wireless solutions. Never wondered why you need a thirdparty program to make use of bluetooth under Windows? Especialy since he also mentions thin clients etc.
Under basicly every other networked OS you can use the same computer simulatiously via remote login. (Yes yes, there are products and hacks that add that to Windows NT/2k/XP too)
Microsoft doesn't want people to see their PC+Windows as a center to their computer system, they want full blown Windows on every device. Why else didn't they promote their wireless remote-desktop handheld LCDs more?
... book an hour on the timesheet to "reading EULAs" each time you install software on a new machine.
But how can a techie hope to understand legalese? That stuff should be sent to the legal department for their approval prior to installation.
They'll read it, and will be sure to report up the food chain what $$$ making capabilities they've lost as a result of paragraph 56.
Rod Taylor
Cringley wants to end on a good note by suggesting that somewhere along the line something will happen and Microsoft will be too large to compete with some probably tiny but very agile rival.
That won't happen for the very reasons he spends most of the article enumerating. MS is hugely powerful at this point. MS is vastly wealthy. As Cringely probably correctly notes: MS can compete for a period of *YEARS* with others while making absolutely zero profit. Just let that one sink in a moment.
When thinking about these issues people make some common mistakes.
One of them is to mistakenly identify a corporation with having the exact same sorts of rights as do natural persons - and they don't! Corporations are fictitious persons that are legally created entities with specific benefits and obligations - those benefits and obligations are whatever we as a body politic write into the laws governing the creation of corporations. If any single corporation gets to a point where its practices are so anticompetitive and monopolistic that nothing but control after control must be implemented to stop it - then so be it. The corporation is not a natural person, we can do that.
The other mistake is to think that a corporate entity like Microsoft can be challenged by a few weirdo geniuses in a garage somewhere building some kind of "MS-killing" product. That won't happen either. Why not? Look at the history of Apple computers - that seemingly small and nimble rival has failed to take away from MS any significant market share. I'm not knocking Apple - to the contrary, I'm saying they make an objectively better product. But that doesn't matter. Read it again, because that's the big problem right there: it doesn't matter that a competitor has already produced a machine that is better! [N.B. This is a possibly subjective argument because lots of people will now argue issues like Apple's price point, whether it really is better, etc.] Microsoft's monopoly status has largely prevented Apple from gaining market share (and thereby also dropping its prices because of what is recovered by volume sales, putting huge profits into further innovation, etc).
A third problem is that people always make the error of thinking that large monopolistic corporations are necessary for technological advancment. Obviously, one could write a book about this subject, but in the main I'd suggest that the claim is simply false. Many things move forward incrementally because of research in numerous fields. Who might have suspected that Xerox might be investigating revolutionary ideas in computer technologies (as related to photocopy machines??!!!) but that those ideas could best be exploited by a then relatively small company called Apple Computers. Don't forget that *ONE* scientist had a dream about the structure of DNA. Sometimes all you need is one Einstein to keep moving things forward for a really long time - an no team of really bright physicists equals one Einstein.
Someone else has already made a comparison to Walmart, but it's worth repeating. These huge monopolies have more political pull and economic gravity than do most governments (amongst which I would personally include that tiny one we call the United States). To ignore that fact is supreme folly. We'll all end up working for corporations as our literal masters if we are not careful.
We have to take these HUGE corporate players out of the game, not just bench them or pretend they even give a shit about some weeny penalty they may have to pay. The way the business game works now is that the penalties are worked into the price of doing business any way they damn well please. Once you understand that, you will get the problem.
There are enough people who can. Let them do that. RMS doesn't let his opinions be clouded by the desire to be loved and understood by everyone. That may not be desirable in a PR person, but it sure as hell is in the person who founded the free software community.
As long as there are others to explain the advantages of Free Software to the people who care just about using computers, I say let RMS remain RMS.
Joe doesn't know any local linux geeks that'll come fix something for a 6 pack of Duff
Maybe if he tried offering Gunniess instead, he would get a better reception?
Oh come on, it's not like you haven't sat down with $RELATIVE_FROM_USA to fix $COMPUTER_PROBLEM and been offered something like crudwiser. Ick.
Refined tastes on technology need not imply a favoritism to non-domestic American beverages. But this is an important facet of software that people leave out: culture.
I view that whole problem with software is not about the number of machines installed. The problem is about people, attitudes and perceptions.
I feel that addressing the difference of community will be the single most challenging task facing popular adoption of tools like Linux. The OS installed on a user's computer is a choice of that user. It is up to you to change that user's attitude. They will put up with horrid quality when they don't know of a better alternative.
In my opinion culture clash between 'Joe Sixpack Windows-User' and everybody else is dramatic. Both the Apple and $FREE_OS communities like to view themselves as fringe or special groups. They celebrate their difference from the mainstream. Pure and unadulterated Windows users form a different community than the users of Apple or $FREE_OS products. They belive the tools they have work and work adequately. The common users are people who are sufficiently content with their pre-packaged choice to not look outside the beige box. Due to bad practices by Microsoft, they also form the largest community of individual personal computer users.
It has been said that the I.Q. of a group is the lowest I.Q. of the members of the group divided by the number of members of that group (think communication overhead when talking with slow people.) Fortunately for the 'Aunt Tillies' of the world, individual users can have quite a solid grasp of basic computer skills. Unfortunately, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance imply a lot of ineria.
While 'Aunt Tillie, CTO/CFO' grasps software quality, their grasp may be of the level of the average car buyer. This is a person who only needs to know about various cars during the rare purchase of a car. In the M$ dominated media of software boxes at your local $MEGA_MART, communicating the benefits of something like Linux or Apple over Microsoft products will require overcoming the established noise level of $ billions in marketing
This is why Microsoft is 50% marketing. This is why commercial Linux distributions are a Good Thing. This is why Apple is still here. The best hackers of the world have been excellent social engineers before anything else. It's time to put that 'social' part to a very good use.
Social engineering of the common man to want quality in software, rather than just settling for third best is possible. After helping run a student organization for Linux users for a few years, I have seen remarkable progress in the quality of various distributions. However, problems with GUI's, driver availability and application compatibility are but small technical hurdles that can be solved with adequate coding.
If you care about software quality then talk to you neighbor. Show off your computers. Maybe even offer them a Guinness while you watch DVDs on your PC with those neighbors. Get the word out.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."