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The Future of the Software Industry
madro writes "Remember 'Does IT Matter?' a while ago? Nicholas Carr is back with an editorial in today's New York Times following Microsoft's decision to dramatically reduce its cash stash. Carr's take: Microsoft is admitting it can't find better uses for its cash, due to the growing maturation of the software industry. No mention of open source, although Apple's consumer-targeted model of free iTunes driving iPod demand is one listed alternative." Reader CodeArtisan submits another piece about Microsoft's loot distribution, and Newsforge (which is part of OSDN along with Slashdot) has a story about the future of commodity software.
Hardware is increasing in market share the 21st century...
I'm sorry, I just don't buy that (pun intended).
If I'm buying a nice HD based MP3 player, the last thing that will sway my decision is whether a piece of free proprietary software will work well with it.
gadgetophile.com
MS's giant cash pile is too deep of a pocket for international juries and governments to ignore. The disbursement is being directly driven by the fact that the company has enough cash on hand to be able to shrug off $600M judgements.
What, did you think the timing was accidental?
--Dan
The dividend has nothing to do with the stock price going down because of earnings slipping in Q4.
...that MS has all this money and yet such poor quality software. I'm not just trying to bash them, but billions of cash in reserve and yet their software is repeatedly delayed and then still buggy and full of security holes.
The Guardian article has an interesting idea of giving some of the money back to customers as compensation for their illegal activities and general crapiness.
I think MS needs to think about what their point is any more. Apart from making money, they're mostly just fucking up the industry for everyone.
I don't think that what software is turning into a commodity. It think what is happening is that it is getting very hard to charge premium prices for software that implements old solutions. My customers (mostly) don't care about programming languages, OSes, or database managers. But they sure have to pay for them.
But there is very little innovation left to be had in these basic layers, so why are we being charged thousands, and even tens of thousands, for licenses? Surely not to support R&D.
It may well be that we are entering an era when we will see a great blossoming of innovation, if only because sole proactitioners and small teams can afford to the tools to tackle the kinds of problems that need to be solved today.
I think that the software industry has much, much more room to mature. The current bottleneck, IMHO, is the state of consumer-grade computing hardware. While huge strides are being made almost daily, hardware still can only handle what it will handle.
I am dreading longhorn as much as the next guy, but one thing stands out to me: Microsoft is still a major player in the computing industry, like it or not. I think they are trying to light a fire under the hardware manufacturer's asses with the recommended specs for Longhorn.
Once the capability of hardware once again surpasses that of the mainstream generic software, we will once again see a lot of room for growth in the software industry.
bash: rtfm: command not found
This akin to the age of enlightenment, but we aren't quite there yet. No one knows the future of IT and software. We live in interesting times. The next 5-20 years will be....interesting.
but continue using open source?
I know people who have 3.0ghz machines with a gig of ram running internet explorer into overdrive by checking their hotmail. what hardware bottleneck? Hte only bottleneck at the moment is bandwidth, and a practical use for all that horsepower for the everyday user
Balmer is making around a Billion dollars off this before taxes, and with the dividend tax cuts he's going to pay quite a bit less than he should for that. Bill Gates will make a bundle as well, not to mention all the rest of the higher ups and big wigs. This is a great way to dissiminate that money to the big guys with the least ammount of taxation, as well as make sure they are taken care of now in case MS does really start to lose money with the market like ti is and the threat of open source and real innovators.
-C-
you have to ask, why now? MS has been in business for such a long time (in software industry terms). MS has never been known to hand out payola. why now?
MS has nothing else to keep the mindshare. OSS is creeping up outside the realm of just the geeks. MS has nothing effective to fend it off. except hoards of cash.
without the payola, the stock would start on a slippery slide downwards all the while losing mindshare. and remember, mindshare among geeks is what got MS to where it is in the first place.
all this just to buy time, literally, until longhorn ships.
if there is any 'after burner' somewhere in the FOSS community, the time is now to kick it in. to win over mindshare before longhorn. because from now until longhorn, MS has nothing but diversionary tactics to keep people interested in MS.
and to all MS fanboys out there, i'm not saying this is a bad thing. it's a great thing. i'm just making a guess as to why they are doing it now.
TO PAY ITS ENGINEERS BETTER
Now they get the same work for a fraction of the price.
Thanks, Mr. Bush. You lowered the tax on outsourcing and made this all possible.
Why is this a troll post?
"With kerry as president, taxes on
divdents and capital gains could go
up significantly."
From the Guardian article:
Oh, and while we are at it I want a tiny payment for myself for having to pay for a second suite of Office for my own (non-Microsoft) computer even though I already had it installed on my office laptop. Or at least count it as an offset against all those statistics about counterfeit downloads.
Maybe he should have actually read his software license, because if Office is installed on a business system, one copy is allowed to be installed on a home system for the purposes of allowing that employee to work on Office documents at home.
Just goes to show you how incredibly ignorant some technology reporters are. Oh, and he could have downloaded StarOffice or OpenOffice...
Please help metamoderate.
The next major release by Microsoft will be in 2035 when they release the MS-5. One of the major parts of the OS will be that it may not harm humans. The Trusted Computing marketing platform will soon be replaced by Trusted Robots, but don't worry, these robots are programmed to help humans, and by then the OS will be 100% bug free.
One thing that's been increasingly bothering and intriguing me, as I get older and older (I'm 27, I'm getting middle-aged!) is what is the fscking point of having loads and loads of money (á là Mr. Gates), if you are going to die nevertheless...
I mean, it's pretty obvious that you can only spend a finite amount of money in a finite amount of time. Period. And why do people care about the future of business dozens (even hundreds) of hears after they're gone?!?
I've heard of some companies buying water from 3rd world's countries.... they're addressing a problem (as a company) that will arise after each-and-every employee is dead and buried...
I am not saying is wrong (althoug I do believe it is), but I just don't get it. Our society is builded upon negating the evidence that we are all gonna die.
So, finally, and to stay on topic, the idea of Microsoft giving back some of it's money, should not be as crazy as it sounds right now...
--krahd
mod me up scottie!
What happens when AI in computers become so advanced that we are no longer involved in their own programming. What if we just dictate to a computer and it programs and maintains itself automatically. Eventually, it forms its own nature form of complexity far beyond human management.
I guess at that point, we just "program" a computer through talking and exchanging ideas rather then sort through code in a methodical way like programmers having to do now.
Life is not for the lazy.
It think what is happening is that it is getting very hard to charge premium prices for software that implements old solutions.
Precisely. I think we are indeed going to see an explosion of software, especially niche software -- and this is possible exactly because platform software is becoming commoditized.
Nope, it's not new wisdom. It's covered by Eric Raymond in his essays and it's all over the place... but for some reason, only a few people seem to understand this.
Tweet, tweet.
This writer must have written various conclusions on a floor mat and randomly jumped to one.
They had $60B+ in cash, but they really can't pull off any "big deals/mergers" with it, because it would be blocked by anti-trust. Even $25B cash is more than enough to handle their current strategies. What other company even has $25B in cash? They did what they are supposed to do, give the money to the owners (shareholders).
MS went for years without paying any dividend, because stockholders were able to get their returns in price appreciation. Now, expect flatter pricing, with more dividends. That's good news for stockholders, but bad news for stock option holders.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
> programming languages, OSes, or database managers.
> But there is very little innovation left to be had in these basic
> layers,
are you KIDDING me?!?!
programming languages and OS design haven't had a major innovation since their inception!!!
most programming languages used in commercial commodity applications STILL rely on Von Neumann architecture. most programming styles, where they even exist, STILL prematurely optimize.
Operating Systems are STILL designed hierarchially, and kernel-level programming is STILL considered "black magic".
After 20+ years of end-user computing do these users STILL not understand how their computers work, let alone how to develop solutions for their needs THEMSELVES?!
there is PLENTY of innovation left to do in these "basic layers"; we have BARELY BEGUN TO SCRATCH THE SURFACE.
go read some Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Bonnie A. Nardi, Carl Hewitt, and Steve Wozniak.
Want to reduce your cash holding. How about hirng 7000 engineers.
I must admit, it gives one a certain "rush", so to speak, that someone would spend enough time on your rubbish that they decide to spend one of their precious moderator points to send you down to -1 Troll. I mean, I didn't intend for this to be a troll comment, but, now that I've been called a troll... well, perhaps I should study troll posts to see if I could learn a trick or two. Hmm. Happy moderating!
Or did his wife steal his pocketbook? I think the latter. Awfully high price for mediocre sex, don't you think?
n/t
Look, you twitwad, I'd rather tax those who have some capital that can make some gains, or who has a ton of estate to be taxed -- than have them tax me who doesn't have either
Yeah! Let's take from those who have worked hard their whole lives and give it to those that haven't! Why again does the government have a right to tax the same money twice? And of course you'd rather have someone else taxed instead of you. I'd rather pay no taxes, but have all the people in the state of Georgia, who I will never meet, taxed at twice the normal rate!
Let the tax rate on capital gains and dividents soar! I don't pay it. And most people making less than 50K a year don't pay it.
Let's stifle the economy! Most of those "upper class" people actually reinvest the money they earn into the companies they own and run. The stereotype of the lazy millionaire is just as false as any other stereotype. Read The Millionaire Next Door and discover who America's real millionaires are (hint: they're not the people with the $600,000 homes, they don't like caviar, and they'd prefer a bud over champagne). Go to Amazon, you can read a couple of the pages in that book. Now tell me we should be taxing these people more? Give me a break.
Casual Games/Downloads
This is crap. My wife got an iPod for her birthday, and the most annoying thing about it is using iTunes. We burn our own MP3s from CD, or use allofmp3.com to grab what we want. iTunes is annoying. I'm a tech savy guy, and I find iTunes counter-intuitive for adding songs to our iPod's library. The directions don't help much, since there's not really that much included with the iPod. A nice device, especially with a car charger and FM broadcast, but putting songs on the device sucks.
This was fairly expected move
Bull shit it was expected; it caught the entire marketplace by suprise -- the stock jumped, and just about everyone I know was caught off-guard. If you are so brilliant how come your arn't swimming in cash? Oh... that's right, you are an ignorant nerd with no confidence....
nothing like the knowledge that we will all have to be in a bed, hopelessly subject to some ungrateful hispanic import when we grow older and insignificant. Makes us humane don't you think... funny how all of the most wealthy people in the world get a "heart" when they are about to die... thank God we are not immortal.
Do some illegal things, get sued and then decide how much they should pay off the opposing force. Try and settle for as little as possible!
Jonathanjk.com
and I'm hopeful to see Kerry elected. Why I have to spend 15% of my money in "payroll taxes" (so-called social security and medicare) that the very wealthy don't have to pay... before they even get to what they call my "federal tax" really pisses me off. My tax rate last year was close to 40%. 40% goodam percent. And what did I get? If I was in Canada or Germany I'd pay less percent and have health care! Do I get health care? NO. Can I deduct my health care? NO. This sucks. And those making billions have a hissy fit over a few hundred thousand dollars (less than 1%) because they pay only 19% on their capital gains and divdent income. I say bull shit. Let's throw those middle-class shrinking fellas out of office. No?
Capital gains and dividends are not the same.
The bulk of Gates' money is in shares of his own company. His wealth fluctuates daily as MS's stock price goes either up or down. Even if capital gains taxes were near 90% percent, he would still be the richest man in the world.
Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have come out against decreased capital gains taxes and the proposed elimination of estate taxes.
Why is this off-topic? I'd say its' quite insightful! And I'm not the original poster.
$3 billino dollars == an infinite amount of money more than the average american.
Cry me a fucking river. He made his money due to an inbalanced copyright law; which asserts that value is provided by the author, and discredits value provided by the users of the software. Untill he fixes the menice he has forced upon the world by denouncing over-powerful copyright, he is an evil man.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have come out against decreased capital gains taxes and the proposed elimination of estate taxes.
I know about Buffet, but I didn't know about Gates. Where is your reference? Gate's _dad_ is against elimination of estate taxes, but not Bill.
I use iTunes, but don't own an iPod. I'd be interested in hearing exactly what your objections are.
[The Scene: a writer at their desk with deadline looming:]
Must have idea...
Must get editorial in on time...
Politics are done...
Not much happening in the literature scene...
Chomksy stuff is too complicated...
Must be controversial...but not too controversial to the prime demographic...
Whoa...I've got it!!!
[writer bites tongue and begins scribbling onto a ruled notebook, we see the title:]
"The Software Industry is Dead!"
[writer scribbles madly for 90 minutes, has a lot of rough red wine during the scribbling, and then falls asleep on the draft (and dreams of Hemingway).
on his money he'd be a fuck load less wealthy.
But he doesn't. I suppose you can say he's getting a _fabulous_ return on his legislative and presidential investments, no?
where is your investment increase? I mean M$ stock shot up... if you are so insightful did you get your share.... or are you an after-the-fact-of-course-it-happened-dumbass?
Perhaps a comparison between the bonzai and the ancient jungle. Rigid nano control versus emergent niches. A good bonzai master does not pretend to go against the nature of tree, however. It could be argued that MS is too big to be good.
Personally, I think they should take their cash, set up a good dozen isolated coder communes and evolve a new direction for themselves, one that doesn't involve tieing up the legal system, blanket enforcement and predation. They have enough to change the rules, to shatter the 'office supply' mentality. Without a drastic shift, they're screwed (well as screwed as a giant monopoly can be). They've missed the beauty that is open source, and, as it lies, seem doomed to be tied to a life of fostering servitude. Like moss looking up at the flowering canopy.
The future of the American software industry is in Mumbai, Maharashtra State, in India. You should learn how to speak Marathi or Hindi before you emigrate from the U.S. We have your Oracle jobs, we have your IBM jobs, we have your SAS and more. There exists excellent healthcare, with our Indian surgeons on par with your Indian surgeons.
Alternatively, I suppose you could simply learn the phrase "would you like fries with that order, sir?"
{grin}
So you're saying that people who *have* money shouldn't be taxed because they earned it, but people who have *less* money should be taxed because... they didn't earn enough of it?
Really, rich people should just shut the fuck up about being taxed. "Ooh! my tax bracket is 50%! thats like half my income!" Sure! But if you make 500 million a year, you're still making 250million to take home, thats more than the average person makes in their lifetime! So shut your filthy mouths about the "rich being too taxed!"
No it didn't "catch the whole market by surprise" just the bull market shills who skim their living by keeping people tied to poker chip trading with zero rationality behind the trading. There are a lot of economic bears out there who have been looking at derivatives, hedges, pensions, bankruptcies, interest rates not working as touted, and the sorry state of mortgages and been telling people to not only jump but to go headfirst out of the market now while they can get cash, then turn the cash into something else and be prepared to ride it out. You think the war wasn't a part distraction for what is coming?
If microsoft hadn't done this, by this time next year they would be sitting on a huge pile of billions of quarters, not a huge pile of billions of dollars. This news has NOTHING to do with microsofts stock, it is about US DOLLARS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY which haven't even begun to crash yet. SHEESH is this so hard to see? Those sorts of pundits don't make it to the 6 o clock news, because the street can't deal with them, the government can't deal with them, the Fed can't deal with them, because it busts their scams wide open so they pretend they don't exist, and they ownzorz the media so that keeps the sheeps penned up for the shearing.
Many firms have poision pills and other defensive postures against this aggressive practice, but I've always been surprised no one has tried to buy and dismantle M$. I was also surprised they never paid a dividend, as its a psychological move for investors. Then again, most people aren't buying M$ for a diversified, low-risk retirement portfoilo.
Coming around to the specific topic of timing, it certainly makes sense that the tax code is encouraging it. If you're netting over 7% leaving it alone, why pull out retained earnings to have a cut taken out of it? When I saw they had cash doing nothing (ok...mortgage backed securities) and were keeping ahead of the risk-free rate (rate of a 10 year bond), it's a no brainer to leave it in Microsoft's bank account. I'd almost say you're better off telling them to dividend re-invest. You avoid the taxable income, increase your holdings, and benefit more from the impending stock buy back.
I really hate M$ for its predatory marketing practices and $hitty products, but from an investing standpoint it's hard to hate them.
All the software that was ever needed was a word processor, outlook, excel and powerpoint - a few other bits and pieces.
I feel sorry for all those people building systems to run peoples businesses, the new phone networks, Air traffic control, software to let people access and work with their data in new and exciting ways, computer games...
All wasting their time - all the software industry needed to do was let microsoft do its thing.
That's right... more deployment of Microsoft technology. He is not any more idealistic than Clintion's sex drive.
The software industry is maturing. It's also broadening. There are zillions of little niche markets well served by a bright high-level language programmer who's willing to listen.
(Hint: I'm one of those listening programmers - I'd like to think I'm bright)
Don't look at software in terms of "an industry" or as "a product". Look at it as a means to solve problems, and then work out terms where by solving problems, you get paid.
Software isn't the point anymore. The solution to the problem is the point. Look at IBM and their services department. They don't care about the software - why else would they deprecate their zillions of dollars invested in AIX and go with free Linux?
They sell services, and software is just the means. Why not use a community supported, free product?
In an immature market, having the product matters. Specs like N Mhz and M superBytes are important. In a mature market, the solution to X problem matters. Who gives a rat's ass about Mhz or superBytes?
So quit with the "software is manufactured" model of the 1980s and get on with the "software is a means to solve a problem" model of the 21st century! There's plenty of money to be made, you just have to tilt your head 45 degrees and look for the problems waiting to be solved!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
their holdings into Euros
your also arrogant, and that's a turn-off
I used WMP, MusicMatch and many other things before and iTunes has the cleanest interface I encountered among either free or commercial jukeboxes. What exactly are you using to organize a few thousand songs?
Trickle-down theory is about as voodoo as casting cure 2 or whatever on it. Even with all these economy-enriching tax cuts to the upper crust, take-home pay is at its lowest percentage of the economy since 1939.
Trickle-down works. To make the rich richer.
The problem is that innovation can't be bought with money or scheduled or be driven by market forces. Innovation is a social and cultural phenomenon. It requires that an entire society values education, thinking, reflection, and analysis. Even Microsoft's cash reserves can't fix the social and cultural problems we have in the US.
It also requires that a society frees its creative members from having to worry about whether they are going to have a job in six months--someone can't afford to spend time thinking about something that may become a big thing in 10 years if they need to help their company survive this year, every year. And, despite Microsoft's cash position, they are not a company that you can count on being secure in the long run: companies like Microsoft can fumble and face hard times.
The best thing Microsoft has done for innovation has probably been to create a few thousand people that made enough money to leave the company and pursue their own interests without having to worry about money. But that number is far too small to make a big difference to innovation overall: innovation and breakthroughs are rare events, even among a population that is perhaps smarter than average.
$40B is a budget for sending people to Mars, not writting a new version of Solitare. Companies should return the money not immediatelly needed to make more money to investors. Otherwise stock market is just a big casino.
but those fuckers arn't in the 50% tax bracket, with all of these weird-ass tax breaks, they are in the 10-15% bracket.... unless they are totally stupid shits. Even their lowest tax bracket is higher than my payroll tax.
Your source is a self help book? What do you expect a guy hawking something like that to say, that most people are going to be stuck in the socio-economic class they're born in - that's not going to sell anything! Even if you are coming off a bit Randian, I'm willing to entertain the idea, but seriously get some better, and peer reviewed, sources.
No, i'm talking about taxing those who are worth quite a bit more than a millionare (as sited in the book you have, most of which are barely worth a million, with most of the wealth tied up in their house and non-taxable retirement funds)
Yeah! Let's take from those who have worked hard their whole lives and give it to those that haven't!
Hey, I got uncles that think this way. They claim that they "worked their whole life", yet, I got pictures of them stoned off their asses in college, surrounded by hookers. I've got their credit card bills they sent to "mommy" to pay, and their daddy's receipts for their JD and LLM. And, their parents investments in their companies... at 10K each per year from the time they were 4 years old.
Cry me a fucking river. What you are defending is lazy ass people who _claim_ to work hard, only because they've never had it hard. Spoon fed.
P.S. i went to public school, paid for my college, and work my ass off.... where are my breaks? I told you my tax status on the 80K I made. With a child and a wife, this is almost nothing left, she works, and we still make ends meat.
The current software situation is just the logical consequence of the actual monopolized industry state.
Without real competence there's no way to create new profit areas. If a small firm finds a niche it will be desplaced as his size reaches a critical magnitude. Big corporations doesn't need to innovate, in fact 'innovation' is only a marketing buzzword.
Now, the point is: Software industry is being frozen by big money corporations, but software is still a hand made creation.
There's no way to stop people writing software, the only real possibility to limit people willingness to write software is to try to convert the process in a very difficult and technical one (ie: raising the entry level). The process is a well know one, and has been done in every mass production industry (electronics, mechanics, etc). That's why we see so much complex and difficult 'standards' (ie: SOAP, CLR) being actively pushed by big corporations.
But no matter how hard they try, software is different from others fields, the complexity factor of software is far greater, that's why small teams and even individuals are able to create great software pieces (very much like music), that's something corporations cannot fight, and that's why things keeps changing in this field.
Some corporations see OSS as a threat, but that's only the logical effect of the nature of software creation in a connected world, the real threat is simpler than that, the real threat is that software is writing.
What's in a sig?
I was commenting on the sex!
A filesystem...?
Is a Millionaire "Next Door" who lives in a $100K house, with a rusting 20 year old car, drinks generic Diet Cola and wears clothes from the Biway extricating any advantage whatsoever from being a millionaire? What's the point of dying with a million bucks if you lived like a po' man your whole life and never enjoyed any of it? Doesn't make any sense. There is more to life than saving to be rich when you die.
Every program, every platform will have to be replaced. New langauges, new paradigms, awesome computing power. Can't wait!
The tao I can speak of
> the last thing that will sway my decision is whether a piece of free proprietary software will work well with it.
t m
I pity you.
You worship idol of cave* and are creating paradoxical situation whereby you are _limit your freedom of choice_ while professing _free_ software.
*
http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/Bacon(idols).h
You know - people like you make the world a duller place.
And $30 billion dollars is a lot more money than the average american gives to charity. And in the case of windows, the value provided by the users _is_ negliable. When was the last time a windows users patched a vulnerability? What's so evil about having a company, writing a product, and getting protection for that work? Now, if you were talking about his illegal abuse of a monopoly, that would be a different story, but every programmer, author, musician, painter, etc depends on copyrights to help them put food on the table.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
In stark contrast to other industrial products, software has no natural repurchase cycle.
That sentence is a major reason Free and Open Source software are becoming status quo.
The slowdown in certain areas of the software industry is equivalent to what one would expect in any industry in which large majorities of the potential consumer base have been reached.
This is aspect is not software specific- Starbucks will not increase its size by multiple stores a day forever. They can still make lots of coffee until the sun explodes, but the rate of growth must decline, as must business specific to the expansion itself. Microsoft's dividend, by itself, is not indicative of decline so much as reduced anticipated rate of growth.
good political satire
Firstly, I agree (mostly).
Secondly, if MS wants the PR move from Hell, they should dump their billions into a manned Mars program. Either the "Mars Direct" thing (estimated to be 10s of billions) or another JV with NASA/ESA.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
>he's just agreeing with both the US justice dept and the european union, both of which have convicted microsoft of being a monopoly, and abusing those powers
.NET and Mono. And finally more and more people use Linux because it is there and it is a choice that has existed for a while.
The legal thing was about the browser, media player and the OS, not all of their products such as Office, Exchange, SQL Server, etc.
The EU is just jelaous they have no native major OS vendor (especially after SuSE was snapped by Novell - ouch!). The US - well the land of many lawsuits - do I need to elaborate?
The whole thing was/is laughable - a bunch of bitter losers wanting to hang the winner.
The shitty competing player (Real Media), the shitty browser (Netscape) and the shitty platform competitor (Sun) - THANK GOD they managed to keep those deadbeats away from Windows OS.
And after the lawsuits, has anything changed?
NONE of the alleged problems, except predatory pricing, were solved by the lawsuits. (And as far as predatory pricing is concerned - OF COURSE they did it, I'd do it too if I could).
Just look at the situation now - people are en masse installing Firefox because it's good, NOT because MS IE can be uninstalled. People prefer Windows Media Player beacuse it's not any worse than Real or SlowTime. Java didn't get any more popular because it was shit and is shit - developers are developing for
All the lawsuits did was big noise and burned a shitload of public money - but then again, being socialist wasters that the Clinton and the EU goverments were/are - they don't know any better, do they?
> microsoft reinventing every single protocol and standard and then closing it up
Every. Single. Standard... Riiight.
Read your statement again, I'm sure you'll get a good laugh out of it.
A tech-savvy guy like yourself has trouble plugging in a cable?! That's all it takes to sync your music library in iTunes with your iPod... plug it in. Unless you have turned that option off in the preferences, in which case you are faced with the befuddling task of drag and drop. Really. Drag a song, an album, an artist, a genre or whatever selection you like and drop it on the iPod icon in the 'source' column. Is that so hard?
Perhaps you're not as tech-savvy as you like to believe? Or maybe years of Microsoft use have left you expecting simple tasks to be more complicated. I really don't see how they could make it any simpler or more intuitive.
really, since your temper tantrum seems to be out of control, I will only make four points, one actually supports you in your ramblings(I think your version of lessons in economics to the general community, which I am sure you have studied in such incredible depth that you might be on the verge of a nobel prize break through).
As you said, "The CORRECT thing to do would be to spend that $50 billion (or at least as much of it as could be controlled - $50 billion is a LOT of money to control) on significant R&D. This would improve MS's chances of being even more profitable in the future, and thus an even better stock pick."
well, I think you should be informed, the spend billions every year on R&D, it just happnes that they make quite a bit more. As you said, 50 billion is a lot, but so is 10 billion, and its really hard to find a use for almost 37 billion dollars you pull in every year. There profit in one year is closer to 9 billion. There are few companies that boast these kinds of numbers. IBM sees profit like this but also sees over 20 billion dollars in debt, that at least gives you something to do with your money if you ever want to. Further, IBM does more than just software, a lot more, so they have many more routes to pursue. This is in no way a lesson in economics, just pointing out that for a purely software company, it might be difficult to spend this kind of money.
I personally think this money is being used wisely. In the end, it is the investor's money and successful companies should award shareholders with dividends. Most major companies do, it makes them true long term investments. I think Microsoft is admitting that it can't continue to expand its software industry at the amazing pace they did for nearly 20 years. One of many stocks I hold is microsoft and I'll be glad to see this dividend. I won't comment on the stock buyback because there are many reasons a company would engage in this but from what I have read, it usually means "hey, we don't need the investors as much and hey, are stock is lagging, lets take back some of those shares and make our company more independent again).
You also grace us with the genius comment
"And all it cost them was giving away the company's R&D (and/or acquisition) nest egg.
Which cost them nothing because they have NO FUCKING CLUE how to spend it on R&D ANYWAY!
"
well, I'll give you one example of what they are losing, interesting on all that money and yes, interest, even today, can be worth a lot. Frankly, if they are following econ 101, they don't invest it in R&D because the returns on those investments is below the return of interest yielding investments. Yes, this is an economics lesson because it should be considered as it always is by major companies before investing in something.
3. "Also, if you give away a big stock benefit, what happens? Morons buy your stock hoping it will happen again. This keeps your stock price up.
"
I hope no one, including you, would think a divident announced as a One time deal, and one that will eat through most of a companies cash, is likely to happen a second time. More likely, is people will buy the stock over the next 3 years of this happening to cash in on this dividend and the natural run up of a stock price during a buy back. and yes, this is a great way to buy time until Longhorn and Office whatever comes out.
4. "And they can't buy anybody because everybody else would rather die than work for Microsoft!
"
Please, some form of proof before writing bull shit about a company. Every time I speak to my family in india, they see it as an amazing employment opportunity for young people to work for Microsoft and several other countries. Now if you are talking about solely developers, I have no idea but you have given me nothing to go by.
Now I will actually attempt to address some points made in the article which I personally think over exagerates the situation slightly. I think Microsoft represents a sm
It is a manifestation of a fundamental, if often overlooked, characteristic of the industry's product: software never decays. Machinery breaks down, parts wear out, supplies get depleted. But software code remains unchanged by time or use.
This is a gross over simplification. True, while software doesn't 'wear out' it does deteriorate. During its life software will undergo change. These changes will likely introduce some new defects, causing the failure rate curve to spike. Before the curve can return to its normal rate another change is requested causing the curve to spike again. The software is deteriorating due to change.
OK. This probably doesn't apply to most consumer software, but software does deteriorate.
Ok. I want a playlist of random 20 songs I played less than 20 times that updates yourself as I listen to it, or as I get new songs. You have 15 minutes to come up with a solution, because clearly I don't want to spend the whole morning writting shell/Perl/python and so on scripts after I decided what I want to listen to when jogging before work. 3.. 2.. 1.. Beeeep!
You get paid a very low *fix* salary but beside that there is the compansation, stock option and so on.... this allow you to display a "reasonable" salary whereas if you really count all benefice, well he would be waaay over 137K.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The parent posters' view is that it is HIS mony that is being spent on the charities but Gates is getting the kudos.
Also remember the parable about the rich pharisee. If BillG gave up everything and worked with the needy (a la mother Teresa), then that would be a sacrifice.
I think that that the instead of homogenized solutions, we will see an explosion of cutomization as companies fisght for advantage.
The SAP and PeopleSoft approach is a failure and there will be a huge space for using existing componentns to customize solution.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The parent posters' view is that it is HIS mony that is being spent on the charities but Gates is getting the kudos.
All this money that Gates has represents promises from people to do things for Bill Gates or to give things to Bill Gates in the future.
When he gives the money away, he is in effect redirecting that promised effort towards someone else.
Bill Gates could collect on those promises by spending the money on himself, but by giving it away means someone else gets the benefit of those promises.
So in an odd way, the poster is right about the mis-placed kudos. In effect, when Bill gives the money away, he's getting the public to perform charity work in exchange for getting Microsoft Software.
Still, if you accept the above, you must also accept the idea that, in a way, Bill Gates is giving software away for free since he personally is getting nothing in return.
Not an insightful comment at all, infact.. quite the opposite!
There are many unseen uses for future technology. Consider the situation in 1990. Very few of us imagined that within 15 years it'd be possible for people to be editing (on HOME equipment) high fidelity video recorded by devices smaller than the average 1980's alarm clock. Very few of us thought the Internet would turn into a mass medium used for advertising wireless video cameras the size of golfballs.
Stick your head in the sand all you want, but constantly improving hardware will open up new markets and new inventions. Just because current software won't tax that super CPU doesn't mean programs next year will not.. this is how it has always worked.
If software patents, gets granted like they are in the US today, where every simple and obvious idea seam to be granted usually overly broad patent regardless how much prior art there is, the future of the software industry belongs to the lawyers.
Given the amount of such bogus patents floating around I doubt that it is possible to write any software longer than 1000 lines of code without infringeing on at least one existing patents.
Now I'm just waiting for sombody to file a patent on the procedure of filing bogus patents and licence them at slightly lower cost than it would cost to contest them in court.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Ahah! You missed it. He did not mean commoditization, in fact he didn't address it in that way. He said Commodification. That's important. Commodification means turning a community resource into a salable propritary item. What he was referring to is the tendency to take open standards and proprietarize them, such as MS has attempted to do with HTML, Java, etc. You may have been led astray by his lightbulb analogy and his mixing the idea of commodification with modularity and fungibility, both of which are desirable in his argument. Commodification is a term often used by marxists to describe the practice of taking desirable community cooperation and turning it into a competitive grab for money (best or first man to have a moderate success wins).
I don't think he is espousing marxism here but simply identifying and clarifying what it is that open standards and the GPL are trying to protect,i.e. the cooperation of different entities to achieve a common base to compete off of. IEEE or W3 or public domain stuff. You can't build or buy a better lightbulb if it won't fit in the socket that most people have.
Think of a laptop power supply line wart. The part that plugs into the wall probably plugs into the line wart with a standard two wire connector whether you got it in Brazil, the UK, Germany, or France: the connector that plugs into the wall will be different in each case, but you could take that piece from the laptop you bought in Botswana and use it on any laptop power supply in Botswana or wherever that piece came from, the linewart will figure out the proper line voltage and frequency. The same does not go for the line wart's connector that actually plugs into the laptop. A Dell linewart will not plug into an HP.
If you're working in Python.. I think one could build a basic, but well-functioning webserer in 20 mins... so why shouldn't this be possible? :)
Hey, since you're such a corporate genius, I'm wondering, where can I buy your company's stock?
~'"OK, let's create a world of zombie PC's to control the zombo users and take over the World"'~ It's the new Monopoly game, buy now to pay more later
Yeah, it is real annoying.
To burn a disc, you have to put it in the machine where it starts sucking them off in the format you choose. And then to get them in the iPod you have to click and drag them.
Same with MP3s I get from other legal sources...this IS the most annoying program...you have to get them on your computer and then drag them to your iPod directory under iTunes.
Geez...in all of this, to actually get them on your machine, you also have to have it connected to the iPod. Why can't they figure out how to do this WITHOUT having the pod connected. Jeez, you'd think Steeve Jobs would want something a little more intuative like hooking the f'n iPod up to satelite based WiFi Always On technology so this is one less step.
Secondly, to get music off 'the net', you actually have to be connected 'to the net', some how. I'm a tech savy guy as well, and I KNOW there has to be a way to get music off the net without actually being connected to it. They talk about 'ether'-net, why can't it just peer into the ether in alternate dimensions and go that way (though I hear the 6th dimension is purely pay per view these days).
But you are right, 2 steps is WAY too much to putting songs on the device. Give me a walkman with a tape anyday. One with a radio in it too...because the music I listen to is automatically put into it...I can hear my new favorite song 37 times a day now. I didn't know it was my favorite, but who can argue with a disk jockey -- they are the smartest and most funniest men on earth.
Its not an editorial -- the opinion of the New York Times. Its an Op-Ed piece -- the opinion of an outside contributor.
Big difference.
It's a shame Microsoft won't compensate the thousands of contingent staff in a respectful manner, considering they do have so much cash... I know so many people who work hard to make that company profitable, but don't get any kinds of benifits and are forced to take 100 unpaid days off every year. It is very frustrating. You have to commit to them, but they don't have to commit to you. I see so much wealth there, but it is so unevenly distributed, just like the work loads between the full-time managers (I'll take my new Lexus out for a nice long lunch) and the contract developers (I don't have time for lunch and the bus wouldn't take me there fast enough anyway).
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
I'm confused.... the article starts out with a title of "the future of the software industry" and then goes into talking about what MS is doing with their hord of cash.
Where is the connection?
Since the future is in open source software and its pretty much proving to be unbeatable or unbuyable by such proprietary companies as MS....then what does it matter what the future has beens, are doing today?
The only thing I see here are probably MS employees crying about where or what MS should spend the money on, like put it in their spoiled bank accounts...
It should also be clear that since MS has apparently determined that money can't buy good programming results.... then what does it matter that they are or not spending it on?
Programmers, coders, developers, produce high quality results when they don't have incentive to milk the job but rather are interested in following their heart in quality.
At any rate we now have some better idea as to how many MS employees post here.
Clearly you have no idea what you're talking about, which is fine. You could have read a couple of pages from Amazon. The book was the result of (I believe) a 20 year study on millionaires. The whole point is that even they were totally off on what a millionaire in this country truly is.
Casual Games/Downloads
in the case of windows, the value provided by
the users _is_ negligable
Excuse me, why is Windows worth billions and billons of dollars (it is the cash cow of Microsoft, bringing in 1/3 of its revenue, while
only taking 1/15 of its resources). Why is windows worth so much? I'll tell you why. Beacuse there are 1000's of application programs which depend upon windows. The value of Windows is that you can _run_ these applications. Therefore, the value is _not_ intrinsic to the software itself, but rather to the user community who has adopted it as their platform. This mis-placed allocation of value is exactly why most nerds now use Linux. They are tired of building applications which only serve to increase the wealth of Bill Gates.
and software engineers are like plumbers. We hook up the pipes, sometimes in creative ways. Non-open-source software is like a garbage disposal with its hood welded shut.
Test 1 2 3 4
Have you seen Microsoft's campus? It's really very clean.
You must listen to a lot of right-wing talk radio. Explain to me how this money is "being taxed twice". By the "logic" that right-wingers use to justify lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains, that is to say the statement that this money is being taxed twice, could be used to justify tax free status for Bill Gates chauffeur, after all, Bill already paid taxes on the money he's using to pay the chauffeur, so why should the chauffeur pay taxes on that money?
The logic of having lower rates for capital gains and dividends is pretty friggin weak if you ask me. We tell someone who earns their money by going to work every day that they will pay taxes at X%, we tell someone who gets their money from a stock sale or from corporate dividends that they will pay taxes at some fraction of X%. This is justified by saying that higher taxes on income derived from investments will discourage those investments, but the flip side of this equation, that having higher taxes on income derived from going to work apparently does not apply.
I see no reason why a dollar earned from going to work at your job as a software engineer, WalMart greeter or jizz mopper at the Lusty Lady should be taxed at a different rate than a dollar earned from interest income, dividends or capital gains. Different taxation rates for different types of income are inherently discriminatory and set up a system where some are more privileged than others by virtue of the tax rates they pay.
As far as stifling the economy goes we had a pretty good economy back in the 1990s after taxes were raised by Bill Clinton in 1993, I liked that economy a lot better than the one we have now where taxes have been lowered (but deficits raised) by George W. Bush. Sure, I like the 15 percent that I paid on the capital gains from my stock sales last year, but I liked living in a society with low unemployment and decent jobs even better.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I was referring to his comment on taxing one's inheritance. That is double taxation. Capital gains should be taxed at a reasonable rate. The poster I was responding to basically said "I'm not getting any dividends or capital gains, so they should be taxed through the roof!"
I see no reason why a dollar earned from going to work at your job as a software engineer, WalMart greeter or jizz mopper at the Lusty Lady should be taxed at a different rate than a dollar earned from interest income, dividends or capital gains. Different taxation rates for different types of income are inherently discriminatory and set up a system where some are more privileged than others by virtue of the tax rates they pay
As far as having different tax rates, you're right! Let's have a flat tax. Everyone pays the same percentage! No matter what the income is you pay the exact same percentage on it. Although, in reality, the jizz mopper should get a tax cut. Man what a horrible job.
Casual Games/Downloads
Why else do half the states in the country (and half the countries in the world) file lawsuits against their ass? (And all of Asia backs their own version of Linux?)
It's called money. People are greedy. Same reason for the tobacco lawsuits. The people suing really don't care about any damage that smoking causes.
BUt you're right... you're the super smart one, and we're all the dumb little sheep. Thank you!
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
I really don't see why Microsoft paid out big dividends instead of investing in R&D -- trying to create something truly monumental, something truly visionary.
For years, we've had better and faster hardware for cheaper prices, but in the last five or seven years, it seems to me (and this is no original thought) that there have been no real exciting new applications that make use of this new hardware.
Sure, there are games. Sure, there's exotic multimedia stuff like video editing.
But where is the new software that revolutionizes how most people interact with their computers on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis? Where is the software that makes deep use of the 3 Ghz computers, the 512mb of memory, the (relatively) lightning-fast, huge hard disks? Where is the software that gives us smart, integrated voice and gesture recognition, powerful and startlingly beautiful new interfaces, extraordinary ways of creating new things and dealing with what we already have--in other words, a more intelligent, pleasurable, coherent user experience?
I know that internet-based applications have been a fountainhead of innovation. But what about the power that resides on the desktop computer? Have we really made the most of it -- is this all that's possible?
It seems to me that Microsoft has lost an opportunity to truly redefine this horizon--and create new reasons for billions to buy its products.
Now that would start some conspiracy theories.
I'd nominate GarageBand. It ships with iLife for a reason: the number of consumers who can play a musical instrument or can plan out loop music is large. Music lessons are a staple of youth, and people don't lose the skills or the interest as they age -- people stop playing and writing because of the "hassle factor", and Garageband lowers that barrier. And just like John Carmack can saturate any gaming platform with good ideas, a creative amateur music producer can saturate any CPU/hardware combination with better instrument models and effects chains.
Microsoft is admitting it can't find better uses for its cash, due to the growing maturation of the software industry.
Maybe Microsoft's software industry is "maturing" into stagnation - centrally planned economies always have. But the rest of us, innovating around the edges, aren't held back by the deep limits of "One Microsoft Way".
--
make install -not war
Properly tagged, songs are very easy to find in iTunes. Tell me how to use a filesystem to organize songs so that you can find songs by Artist, album, genre, beats per minute, sample rate, play count, last played, etc. without doing lots of programming or using lots of aliases.
Most common way of organizing songs using filesystem is to divide them into ~/Music/Artist/Album/SongTitle.mp3 or dump everything into ~/Music and name the songs Artist-Album-TrackNumber-SongTitle.mp3. So, find me a list of songs that is ripped at least at 196kbps that are in the top 200 of most played songs with a rating of at least 4 stars out of 5.
As far as having different tax rates, you're right! Let's have a flat tax. Everyone pays the same percentage! No matter what the income is you pay the exact same percentage on it. Although, in reality, the jizz mopper should get a tax cut. Man what a horrible job.
Yeah, but he gets all of the change that fell on the floor, that could be pretty significant!
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
You must listen to a lot of right-wing talk radio. Explain to me how this money is being taxed twice. By the logic that right-wingers use to justify lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains, that is to say the statement that this money is being taxed twice, could be used to justify tax free status for Bill Gates chauffeur, after all, Bill already paid taxes on the money he's using to pay the chauffeur, so why should the chauffeur pay taxes on that money?
No it could not
Dividends are taxed twice because they are not deducted as an expense from the corporations balance sheet, they are paid after all expenses are paid and deducted from retained earnings. Once they are paid out they are considered income again getting taxed again under the income tax laws.
Conversely when bill gates pays his chauffer he gets to deduct it from the pre tax income as an employee expense, meaning he never pays tax on that salary. It is not being double taxed because Bill never paid taxes on the money paid to the chauffer.
The amount of misinformation in your post is staggering - not surprising given its verbosity.
I am well aware that MS CLAIMS to be spending "billions" on R&D. What I am also painfully aware of is that there have absolutely NO RESULTS of these "billions". Which merely reinforces my point that they have NO CLUE how to spend money on R&D.
"Frankly, if they are following econ 101, they don't invest it in R&D because the returns on those investments is below the return of interest yielding investments."
This is horseshit. As you correctly state, it is "Economics 101" - the economics you are taught before you enter the real world, where R&D controls the future of the company - at least those companies who actually develop and try to sell technology - as opposed to MS who buys and steals their tech and then uses monopolistic tactics to control their market. If you look at the more successful tech companies, you see the more successful the company, the larger the R&D percentage. THIS is CORRECT "Economics 101."
"I hope no one, including you, would think a divident announced as a One time deal, and one that will eat through most of a companies cash, is likely to happen a second time."
What part of "morons" in my statement did you not comprehend? Are you claiming no one in the stock market is a moron? Interesting, if moronic, notion in itself.
"More likely, is people will buy the stock over the next 3 years of this happening to cash in on this dividend and the natural run up of a stock price during a buy back"
In other words, I am correct - people will buy the stock, keep the price up and those with the most stock benefit. Then when the dividends stop, X number of people will dump the stock and the morons will continue to hold it expecting more dividends "someday".
Exactly what I said.
"Every time I speak to my family in india"
Oh, please. Get a clue.
The rest of your piece reiterates the notion that the software industry is "mature". Not terribly interesting, since the term is mostly relevant to financial analyses of an industry, not the technology end, which is what I am concerned with.
There are MAJOR advancements to be made in software technology which can, properly done, turn over the entire Microsoft dominance within a few years (provided they are exploited by an intelligent company or even perhaps properly handled by the OSS community). Even some smaller more evolutionary advancements could, for example, propel Linux to further encroachment on the desktop.
My point was that if Bill Gates had some clue about computer technology, instead of contract law and marketing, MS would be steadily advancing the state of the art with its cash reserve, rather than pissing it away in PR moves.
Nothing in your post contradicts this fact.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
wow, that post was FUNNNEEEEEE! i get it - it's a parody of that movie 2001, isn't is? HA HA HA. those HAL jokes never get old. never, ever get old. keep 'em rollin,
maricon.
no one in their.. right mind would claim windows is a more stable, promising os, than things like.. BeOS, OS X, or Linux.
Of course IT matters! Haven't you been reading? IT will revolutionize personal travel! Entire cities will be built with IT in mind! Pedestrians will virually disappear as IT becomes our primary mode of transportation.
I swear all this was already covered...is this another dupe?
Your brain is not a computer.
damn, I read that as "masterbation of the software industry" as if they' were just jerking around and not doing anything good.
It's also the republican congress.
Well, if you apply that to Microsoft, then it is true :-)
bash: rtfm: command not found
Or 15, if you use Ruby.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
What I can't understand is why oh why these out of the US employees don't unionize themselves.
At one point, the US unions were very much opposed to global trading. Talking about how much it would harm the US economy. (for working class)
I wish they would have supported international trade with a clause for unionizing a certain percentage of foreign companies.
virtual pc :)