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.

Comments

iTunes driving iPod!?

[nzgeek]

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.

Re:iTunes driving iPod!?

[0racle]

And your everyone? The iTunes interface is a reason for the iPods success, perhaps not at first, but if iTunes was a pain to interface the iPod with, a lot of people, as in people who wont whip up a perl script to do it if its not what they want, would have thought twice about it. The iPod took off in part because the word of mouth about it had nothing negative to say about it.

Re:iTunes driving iPod!?

[black mariah]

And by using the word proprietary you have basically proven that you are in no way Apple's target customer.

You have it backwards, besides. People want to make sure their MP3 player works with the software they already have.

Re:iTunes driving iPod!?

[PabloJones]

the word of mouth about it had nothing negative to say about it.

You make a good point, one which I hadn't put much thought to before. I own and iPod, and people have asked me about it, and there isn't really anything bad I have to say about it. Sure, it was kind of pricey, but not long after using it, I found out it was well worth the price, to me at least. Some may need it to last longer than 8 hours (now bumped up to 12 with the new models), but I have never needed to use it for longer than 8 hours at a time, and if I ever go anywhere away from my laptop for extended periods of time, the power adapter is not a big deal to carry around. The only minor gripe I have with mine is the amount of time required to switch between shuffle and normal playback, but again, this is fixed on the new models.

Re:iTunes driving iPod!?

[Bullet-Dodger]

"The word of mouth for the iPod is very good and it's the most popular mp3 player out there."

"Is not."

Useful, thanks.

The Problem At Hand

[Effugas]

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

Re:The Problem At Hand

[strictnein]

Nicholas Carr is just one of those guys who like to pretend they're informed and ahead of the curve when in reality they're just pulling stuff out of their ass. They throw enough shit against the wall and after awhile some of it sticks and then they say "See! I told you so!".

Re:The Problem At Hand

[TopShelf]

The reason they kept the cash on hand for so long was in the event of major legal awards against Microsoft. Now that the Sun and antitrust issues have been resolved for the forseeable future, they are free to release that capital for better uses, i.e. returning it to shareholders.

Re:The Problem At Hand

[cluckshot]

The real reason they are releasing cash has to do with something more fundimental. There are Securities Laws which while seldom enforced are called "Blue Sky Laws." These laws make it a serious criminal offense to sell a stock never intending to pay your investors back appropriately. Microsoft has earned a wad of cash. This is so obviously a stock fraud if they don't pay it in dividends especially since they cannot argue that they are going to grow infinitely any more that they must distribute or they will be subject to the most obvious prosecution for selling the "Blue Sky."

The problem here is that in distributing they have to admit that they are no longer a "Growth Company" and they have to admit that they are worth about 25 cents on the dollar what the investors have in the company right now and maybe less as asset value. I could go on in details but I am sure some ingnorant fool who thinks that he should only own stocks so that other bigger suckers than himself will buy them will argue.

The owners of Microsoft are avoiding jail terms they think by doing this. Unfortunately they should have been paying dividends 10 years ago to avoid this prosecution. But had they done so I suppose we might still have a robust Software industry with lots of competition and new programs for they could never have dominated the market so had they distributed.

The issue here is not Antitrust it is FRAUD.

Re:The Problem At Hand

[TopShelf]

That was a fun troll - although for educational purposes, I'd recommend this.

Right.

[Screaming Lunatic]

The dividend has nothing to do with the stock price going down because of earnings slipping in Q4.

Re:Right.

[drawfour]

So a company is going to give away half its cash reserve in a one-time dividend disbursement because _Q4_ earnings went down? WTH? Maybe it has something to do with all states and federal gov't having settled their antitrust lawsuit, Sun has settled its antitrust lawsuit, and many other large lawsuits are settled. That large bankroll is no longer needed to fend off the lawsuits. So let the stockholders have some of it.

I think it's kind of disgusting...

[rokzy]

...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.

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[tekiegreg]

....aaah true except for that last part, for what is wrong with the industry will be righted soon, for the future of the industry is just around the corner...

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[dhoonlee]

No. MS has this much money, in part because they make poor software. Writing better, safer code would have cost them both money and strategic advantage in the positioning and advertising of their products.

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[Corey Hart]

Inciteful, write on!

Gotta love the "intelligence" of rokzy...

..."billions of cash" means that we could have instantly cured software of "buggy" and "security holes". IBM 360 here we come!

... "compensation for their illegal activities" because rokzy is a better judge and jury than any legal system, of course.

... "fucking up the industry" must be because MS has gotten rid of those 18 Wordperfect disks I used install for incompatible printers.

Hey I think rokzy should be with Einstein, Newton, and Mandella... maybe not, he's better than all of them put together!

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[DeepHurtn!]

...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.

I personally think that their problem is a fundamentally flawed production model (ie design decisions heavily based on marketing, legacy code, etc). All the money in the world won't help you if your basic premises and priorities are screwy.

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[OmniVector]

..."billions of cash" means that we could have instantly cured software of "buggy" and "security holes". IBM 360 here we come
like it or not, money solves a lot of problems. it lets you pay competitive wages to hire the best of the best. it allows you fund the massive R&D for usability, Q&A, development and more. more money == more potential for a better product.

... "compensation for their illegal activities" because rokzy is a better judge and jury than any legal system, of course.
better judge? na. 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

... "fucking up the industry" must be because MS has gotten rid of those 18 Wordperfect disks I used install for incompatible printers
so now we have the flipside of the situation today, where office formats are totally closed with no plans to open documentation on it. where mshtml totally abuses w3c specs. we have to deal with microsoft reinventing every single protocol and standard and then closing it up rather than using what already exists. they've done more work to throw a wrench into the industry than any other company in the history of business i think. no one in their right mind would claim windows is a more stable, promising os, than things like BeOS, OS X, or Linux. if all things were equal, (i.e. # of market share) all 3 of those are clear winners in stability, interoperability, and security.

so yes. microsoft HAS fucked up the industry. and it won't get any better any time soon.

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[JVert]

The Guardian has was written by a very l33t write i'm sure.
It is no use saying that the computer industry is different and that computers are uniquely complicated things. It is Microsoft that has made them so complicated so it can create a profitable spiral of updates.
Suddenly microsoft has overcomplicated software?

Fourth, to redress Microsoft's smothering of competition, put 20% into a special fund to foster entrepreneurs and inventors to develop alternative products. Microsoft has made Word and Excel such fundamental parts of the Windows package that rivals cannot make serious inroads into Microsoft's dominance by offering competing products, even if they give them away for free. The fund could be called Semo: Society for the Encouragement of Microsoft Orphans.
Furthermore I would like compensation for the car I purchased because there was no way for me to feasabily build the car myself or make a factory that could compete with the real car manufacturers. I will start this campaign by buying my own radio station which I accept ownership of tomorow because independant stations could never make a profit if they had to pay full price. Indeed I will I say! I now pronounce myself president of my city where I was wrongfully denied access to presidential canidacy due to my simple lack of publicity. Cause I didn't have my radio station.

Whew, saved my day, i'm sure glad I RTF(POS)A.

Re:I think it's kind of disgusting...

[OmniVector]

This is highly arguable. Don't you think Microsoft MADE the industry? Do you imagine your grandma typing "man tar"? For people who think they are so intelligent, come on.
apple created the industry, not microsoft. at least get your facts straight

Commoditization

[OldAndSlow]

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.

Re:Commoditization

[SDPlaya]

My question is when is my car going to become cheaper? My car costs me more money every year, yet it's fundamentally the same thing sold in the sixties.

Airplanes are another example, and airplanes cost millions. Another old solution, old technology, yet expensive.

Your customers may not care about programming languages, but somebody better or you'll be left with gcc quality perf instead of icc or VC. If you think databasese are a commodity how do you explain the difference between Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server. There are vast technological differences that only a neophyte in database technology would not understand.

So I ask, why do you spend $20,000 for a car, which is old technology for a solution to a very old problem? I heard today that Lance Armstrong model of Trek bikes are going for $7,000, yet where is the outrage there (for that matter where are the FREE road bikes... I've yet to see any of those). Additionally both the biking and auto industry are also extremely patent heavy.

Even books are more expensive now than they used to be, and in terms of cost of reproduction more closely mimic software than most goods.

My question is why does everyone think that software should become free (without a driving market force), yet virutally everything else goes up in price?

Re:Commoditization

[chromatic]

I think there is a driving market force, one which you alluded to.

Any product has at least two main categories of costs, design and manufacturing. Software manufacturing costs -- making enough duplicates for all of your customers -- are low. If someone can design (and, in this case, write) the software for a low cost, he can sell it cheaply or even give it away.

As soon as someone gives away a good enough solution, there are price pressures on everyone else. They have to prove they're worth the money somehow. How do you compete in a market that suddenly has an infinite supply, though?

Re:Commoditization

[Pharmboy]

My question is when is my car going to become cheaper? My car costs me more money every year, yet it's fundamentally the same thing sold in the sixties.

Actually, its not. The govt. now forces car companies to install safety equipment, forces them to perform crash testing, makes them design in a level of impact tolorance, CAFE standards insure better gas mileage, etc.

It looks basically the same, but the government has decided that its in the publics interest to pay more for cars that are safer, with or without your approval. This cuts both ways, obviously, but the car makers expenses are much higher than they were in the 60s. Had they not realized savings in production, productivity, computer design, etc. then you would be paying even more.

(materials + labor + research + regulations + inflation) - (productivity gains + economies of scale)

Re:Commoditization

[SDPlaya]

"It looks basically the same, but the government has decided that its in the publics interest to pay more for cars that are safer, with or without your approval."

And you don't think OSes and databases aren't much different than they were in the seventies or eighties? Compare Windows Server 2003 to DOS1.0 (if one existed).

In the same way a car is a commodity: drives you from point A to point B, uses gas, has a steering wheel, etc... an OS is a commodity (it provides a file system, command line, access to devices). Both have made drastic changes (try to browse slashdot on an old CP/M machine or drive a new NVidia video card with it).

My point... OSes are more different/advanced in 2004 compared to 1980 than cars are. Yet OSes are called the commodity and not cars.

Re:Commoditization

[SDPlaya]

"As soon as someone gives away a good enough solution, there are price pressures on everyone else. They have to prove they're worth the money somehow. How do you compete in a market that suddenly has an infinite supply, though?"

That's a good question. I think you have to let vendors innovate. Obviously if you tie the hands of the market leaders they won't be able to prove they're worth the money.

Admittedly I don't buy into this notion of a "monopoly". There is no finite resource of OSes that one can corner the market on. There is no government controlled OS market (like wireless bandwidth). Monopolies defined purely on customer choice seems a tad fake to me.

With that said, I do think price pressure is a good thing for everyone.

Re:Commoditization

[ClosedSource]

"Even if the modern car was exactly the same as the very first one, you can't make it for free. Software on the other hand only needs to be built once."

I guess you're assuming no maintenance or added functionality when you say "built once". Beyond that, it's not economically feasible to sell all software 0 or 1 times. Software development requires labor and equipment just like cars do.

If an army of volunteers wanted to donate their time, equipment, and materials to build cars, cars could be "free as in beer" too.

Re:Commoditization

[ScuzzMonkey]

I think you are rather making Carr's argument here, or at least half of it. He, nor anyone else, is denying that great advances have been made in technology over the past thirty years. That is what was driving the market. But he's not comparing 1980 to 2004... he's comparing, say, 2000 to 2004. And, by extension, 2000 to 2020 or 2030. He's saying the market has reached a point of maturity. And the argument is, they aren't changing nearly as much as they used to, and most of the changes are irrelevant to the needs of the average user. I think he's right. If you want to talk about high-end cars and high-end databases (most people neither pay 20K for a car or run Oracle) then certainly there will continue to be meaningful advances in those specialty markets and software there will probably never be a commodity. But that's not descriptive of the larger part of the market.

Now, the auto market has matured, as well. There's not too much difference--and none striking--between my '88 Toyota and the ones coming out this model year. If I'm looking to buy, it's because the mileage is getting up there. The reason you're going to see different behavior than in the auto market (one reason, anyway) is that your operating system isn't going to wear out and start making funny noises on you at some point. Code is code, and it's going to keep working like it was written every single time. Even PC hardware is in good shape to last far longer than most automobiles, with the advantages of mostly solid-state, non-moving parts and relatively controlled operating environments.

At any rate, I think that thing that primarily keeps cars from being a simple commodity isn't safety standards or technological advances, but simply marketing. People see their cars, at least in the Western world, more as personal accessories than simple transportation. Except for a very limited subset, I don't think people look at computers and software in the same way. They view them more as oversized staplers, just another piece of machinery for getting something else done that they want. We're at a stage, or close to it, where just about any computer and software at just about any price point can get those things done. When people began to realize that, that's when software becomes a commodity.

Re:Commoditization

[ahfoo]

In the case of an automobile, what you're really paying for is pension funds. You're quite right, most new cars are worth less than about seven thousand dollars if you were to get them for just the cost of labor and materials. What you are paying for is health care and retirement for generations of workers.
This is one reason no-brand Chinese car companies should be taken quite seriously. That lack of brand name may be their major advantage. Since engines change very little aside from electronics and it is usually the electronics that cause problems for consumers, the mixture of sturdy, componentized electronics and the lack of corporate fat will certainly lead to some interesting times for the auto industries both in the US and Japan which has the same problems at this point.

Re:Commoditization

[chromatic]

Monopolies defined purely on customer choice seems a tad fake to me.

That's why the U. S. DoJ brought suit against Microsoft for the abuse of a monopoly position through anticompetitive behavior.

maturation of the software industry

[ErichTheWebGuy]

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.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[black mariah]

Name one piece of non-videogame consumer-level software that can tax a 3.6Ghz P4 with 2GB RAM. Hardware isn't a bottleneck in any way.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[runderwo]

Emacs.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[black mariah]

Touche, Costmart.

Not sure I'd call something that considers ALT-META-SHIFT-F1-chicken sacrifice-BKSPC-x a normal command 'consumer level' though. ;)

Re:maturation of the software industry

[mc6809e]

You haven't done much video editing, have you? Or rendered a large picture in Photoshop?

I have an in-law that does photo restoration/editing.

The biggest bottleneck for her isn't the CPU or ram - it's i/o to/from disk.

Hey, I told her to go SCSI, but she didn't listen :)

CPUs stopped being responsible for delays a long time ago. Most of the time people spend waiting is on disk or network i/o.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[PingPongBoy]

The word "video" is the key. We want more interactiveness and smartness.

Computers are being used as glorified typewriters and TVs now but consider we should expect computers of the near future to perform more automation around the home: prepare a meal, tidy up and clean, repair the car and house, build structures, etc.

How fast is 3.6 GHz? I've been using Dragon Naturally Speaking on a 2 GHz and it doesn't recognize a lot of words. The processor usage is quite heavy though not 100% - perhaps the software isn't working as hard as it really could. All the same it isn't using first principles to be able to recognize all sounds. Maybe 10 GHz would be the minimum required for full sound recognition. Full handwriting recognition without using so much CPU that there isn't anything left for other things would also take up 10 GHz.

Let's believe in the power of materialism and imagine what is possible in a world of 100 GHz CPUs. It would be an era where a DVD would store several TB. Screen resolutions would be normal at 1440 dpi. Imagine cameras with telescope quality zoom and microscope abilities. Some people may have dreamed of such a world with 1 GHz processors. It's hard to say what 100 GHz will really let us do. Maybe most of us will still be stuck with really fast word processors. Even 10 GHz will make a big difference and people will wake up to computers taking over a lot of jobs.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[Rhinobird]

but emacs is a lifeform, not commercial software.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Playback of highly compressed video. I'm not talking about mpg2 compression, but the newer codecs that are just arriving on the scene. Perhaps "just arriving on the scene" won't meet your definition of "consumer-level" but soon those codecs will be commonplace and they will still be cpu intensive.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[ThousandStars]

Virtually any encoding softare, whether for audio or video, will tax a CPU of any speed we have today.

Also, multi-tasking with a large number of programs can tax the CPU or the RAM -- hence the penchant for duel processor pro machines.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[HermanAB]

Yup:

EMACS Makes Any Computer Slow...

Re:maturation of the software industry

[fingusernames]

It is pretty funny today... back in college we said "Eight Megabytes and Constantly Swapping." Tells you how much RAM was normal back then.

Larry

Re:maturation of the software industry

[black mariah]

Video editing, no. Photoshop, yes. 3ds max, yes. In fact, I've used a lot of programs that can obliterate a 3.6Ghz CPU at will, but I do not consider these to be 'consumer level' programs. They're not things that most people are going to be using.

Re:maturation of the software industry

[black mariah]

Maya is in no way a consumer level program. A 3d package that starts at $1000+ isn't what I'd expect to see on someone's hard drive.

Age of Enlightenment

[Anonymous Crowhead]

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.

Re:Age of Enlightenment

[demonhold]

How is it that anyway I don't like it?

Remember... "May yoy live interesting times"... is a Chinese curse...

Re:Age of Enlightenment

[chthon]

Especially since Moore law still seems to hold.

At the end of last year I bought two computers, one for me and one for my father.

These are the specs and the prices :

1. 2 Ghz Celeron, 256 MB, 40 GB, 240EUR
2. 2 GHz Athlon, 2 GB, 250 GB RAID, 2500EUR

Now use Moore's law to extrapolate (I did it backwards with all the systems I ever bought and it mostly fits).

This means that at the end of 2006 I should be able to get a system that is half the capacity of my current high-end system for 240EUR (but with 8 GHz speed), and mid 2008 a system that has the same capacity as mine now.

Extrapolating for the high-end system I should get for 2500EUR a system with 8GB RAM and 1TB storage, re. 16 GB RAM and 2TB storage.

What to do with such systems ? The low-end system currently runs Linux, and runs it pretty well.

The high-end system runs Red Hat as base system, and currently also 5 UML virtual machines with Debian, which I hope to expand next month to 8, for VM's with SuSE, Mandrake and Slackware Linux.

Interesting ? Even more than that I think. With a hopeful rising of bandwidth, within a few years community clusters should be possible with HPC and Terabyte storage performance.

I am looking out for the growth of what I call the collective memory, a massively parallel, loosely coupled community system where people can store and find information, and be sure that information is preserved, because of the redundancy of the system.

Jurgen

Re:Age of Enlightenment

[kwoff]

No one knows the future of IT and software. [...] The next 5-20 years will be....interesting.

Uhhm..

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[strictnein]

Bill Gates is giving his $3.3 billion to charity, although his yearly dividends will go up quite a bit (up to $578 million)

buying time...

[Hooya]

... until longhorn ships.

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.

Re:buying time...

[black mariah]

MS is the John Holmes of mindshare. It just doesn't get any bigger than that. Sorry dude, MS isn't going to fall over anytime soon. You're both delusional and stupid if you think they are.

Re:buying time...

[dmaxwell]

We don't need MS to fall over. It wouldn't break my heart if they did...and I think an IBM style market beating followed by reformation is more likely in the long run.

We just want to get enough market share that they can't push us around with polluted file formats and comm protocols. For that matter, we need enough share that buying politicians and filing frivolous patent suits would be a bad idea. SCO is a trial balloon as much as anything. Hopefully, they're getting the hint. As flaky as ESR is, his last little missive was right to point: We really don't care about destroying MS. We just want to write code and solve problems. On the other hand, MS DOES want to destroy us. Peaceful co-existance is still an option but it is their move.

Re:buying time...

[sgt_doom]

I remember sitting near a fellow back around '94 or '95 at the Cafe Roma in Seattle. This fellow - Kevin Mitnick - was predicting the demise of MS by 2001.

As a contractor who's been treated like a serf (as have all contractors) by MS, and has figured out problems the left their "senior engineers" clueless, my wishes for MS future are fantasies.

Like the roach, they'll be around forever.

Re:buying time...

[Hooya]

It just doesn't get any bigger than that

yes it does. The roman empire. it fell. is gone. buried beneath ten layers of dirt. why? narcissism. plain and simple. while i don't think MS is detrimentally narcissistic, it certainly is arrogant. but that's besides the point.

now, nowhere did i say MS was going to disappear. so calling me stupid over something i never said was uncalled for.

what i did say is that MS is starting to have to fight for *keeping* it's mindshare because they've got nothing else until longhorn. now is the time to creep up on it.

somebody needs to read his software license

[SuperBanana]

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...

Re:somebody needs to read his software license

[zhiwenchong]

Presumably he meant he was running Office 2k/XP on his Win32 laptop and has another copy on his own Apple (non-Microsoft?) machine (Office X maybe). Does the EULA cover that?

I would read mine except I don't have one.

Re:somebody needs to read his software license

[bluekanoodle]

Yes. The eula doesn't make a differation between a second pc running windows, or os x.

Forget Longhorn

[dvduval]

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.

What's the point of having so much money

[krahd]

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

Re:What's the point of having so much money

[PsiPsiStar]

1. Power and Celebrity

2. People pay millions for knock-off versions of immortality. Remember the pyramids?

3. People aren't perfectly tuned. They aproximate rationality, but don't reach it. They often over-indulge impulses that would be rational if they weren't so extreme.

4. Plain old enjoyment. Why do artists paint, even if they could make more money and buy things they need if they did somthing else? Why do people play games instead of working? Because they enjoy it. Many people who win the lottery keep their jobs. They don't want to laze all day on a beach in Bermuda. Perhaps Bill Gates enjoys running Microsoft and trying to make as much as he can. He's starting to donate money to charity. Maybe he sees this as a way to do good (or at least glorify himself.)

Re:What's the point of having so much money

[Citizen of Earth]

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...

I would estimate that the Emperor knows that the empire is crumbling and the buy-back is just a scam to pay out cash to insiders before the big fall, including to himself. The same is true of the SCO buy-back program.

Re:What's the point of having so much money

[ewe2]

To put your idea another way, companies are dedicated to one thing: the company. To the extent that they plan the future, the future is the company and nothing else. It really doesn't matter what the company does, as long as it can prosper, it can do anything. In this light, Microsoft has a failure of imagination: with all that money, Microsoft could have gotten into some very profitable businesses if it chose.

But in a larger sense, the quarterly results fixation has an especially bad outcome: companies timeframes are shorter than even political cycles.
Given that political cycles mean that any long-term goal is at the mercy of the opposing party, politicians have opted to do things that cannot be readily undone, like selling off assets.

If we're to encourage projects beyond our own longevity, we have to encourage structures to match. You might think we have them already, but there are few non-profit agencies around and for-profit concerns can always be dissolved.

Re:What's the point of having so much money

[mindstrm]

Money is power. DO something good with it.

The Gates' do contribute a lot of cash to charity every year, their foundation does some serious work.

People think of the future after they are gone? That's a survival trait.

Humans who had no real will to see future generations succeed, and just felt that they were gonna die so what's the point.. those people didn't really survive, for obvious reasons.

Re:What's the point of having so much money

[Sapwatso]

1) announce big dividend, get $3 billion dollars and donate it all
2) ????
3) Profit

some scam

Exactly!

[weston]

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.

This started around the time of the tax cut

[K-Man]

This was a fairly expected move due to the tax cuts you note. Cash in the bank can be realized either as a capital gain in the stock, if the company holds onto the cash, or as a dividend of about the same amount. The old system encouraged capital gains instead of dividends, but the new one makes dividends preferable.

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.

Hire more Engineers

[stecoop]

Want to reduce your cash holding. How about hirng 7000 engineers.

Re:Hire more Engineers

[Veridium]

Good call.

Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[lothar97]

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.

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[strictnein]

Bill Gates has given $27 billion to charity you idiot. Soon that will be over $30 billion. And, by the time he dies, he plans on having "only" $3 billion left (with the rest going to charity). There's a lot of reasons to criticize him, but this is absolutely not one of them.

A confusing word

[latroM]

The term ``software industry'' encourages people to imagine that software is always developed by a sort of factory and then delivered to consumers. The free software community shows this is not the case. Software businesses exist, and various businesses develop free and/or non-free software, but those that develop free software are not like factories. The term ``industry'' is being used as propaganda by advocates of software patents. They call software development ``industry'' and then try to argue that this means it should be subject to patent monopolies. The European Parliament, rejecting software patents in 2003, voted to define ``industry'' as ``automated production of material goods''.

from: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html# SoftwareIndustry

Why doesn't MS play the court game

[CrackedButter]

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!

I'd _love_ $3 billion dollars for my user's work

[Anonymous Coward]

$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.

Re:AI self programming

[Alien Being]

You: What happens when AI in computers become so advanced that we are no longer involved in their own programming?

Eliza: Why do you mention computers?

You: What if we just dictate to a computer and it programs and maintains itself automatically.?

Eliza: Why do you mention computers?

You: Eventually, it forms its own nature form of complexity far beyond human management.

Eliza: Please go on.

You: 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.

Eliza: Why do you mention computers?

Re:Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[Bullet-Dodger]

I use iTunes, but don't own an iPod. I'd be interested in hearing exactly what your objections are.

'Deadline' an Alan Smithee Film

[eidechse]

[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).

Out of good options, more like it.

[benow]

I'd offer that m$ have gotten themself into a corner with their stance on DRM and backing large industry. There are not many forward-thinking ventures in this area, as most business models tend to squeeze cash from their manufactured community, having not yet figured out that a vital community is maintained through the cooperative fostering and the free involvement of free thinking individuals. A loose self interested cooperative.

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.

Re:AI self programming

[pandrijeczko]

Eventually, it forms its own nature form of complexity far beyond human management.

Phew, you had me worried there for a moment... I thought you were talking about Windows! Then you mentioned "beyond human management" so I realised you couldn't be.

Dave: HAL, please download and install Service Pack 2 onto yourself.

HAL: I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that.

Dave: Very well, I will do it myself.

[Twelve hours later as Dave has downloaded the 500MB Service Pack 2 to HAL]

Dave: Service Pack 2 installed now, HAL. How do you feel?

HAL: (in slow drowsy singing voice) Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[Anonymous Coward]

so, he's only keeping $3 Billion dollars... well, that makes me feel alot better.... NOT

Facts are, he earned his cash through overly powerful copyright law, and through the abuse of 100's of smaller tech firms like the one I was involved in (1991) through pointless litigation to keep competitors down and out of sight. He's a sick puppy. And his "oh, I only want three billion" doesn't make me think "wow! what a noble man". if he only wanted a few million, say enough to give himself 200K income per year for the rest of his life, I'd happly declare him our savior and lord. But EXCUSE me for raining on your parade. He's an ugly mean person who took advantage of his birthright. What an ass.

I'd agree

[JohnnyComeLately]

In accounting we'd go over cases of corporate buy outs and study guys where the company was diced. The one exception to this rule is Microsoft. Meaning, most companies that slow down in innovation and have a huge hoard of cash get bought by leveraging against their equity. I walk up to Joe Sleez banking and say, "Loan me $4 Billion to buy Microsoft, which has $3.8B in cash, $100M in Accounts Receivable, and misc in other assets. You buy the company and dice it up and sell off the parts. Similar to a car, the parts can be worth more than the car as a whole. Plus, you never leveraged a dime of your own money.

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.

Re:I'd agree

[themusicgod1]

odd...my low risk...retirement portfolio included microsoft. they called it 'ethical funds.'



and i'm now broke. go figure.

Ah I get it

[junklight]

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.

Broadening of the marketplace

[mcrbids]

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!

Re:Broadening of the marketplace

[12357bd]

Old old old marketing boy.

Re:Broadening of the marketplace

[coldtone]

I think what your doing is great, and that more developers should give it a try.

But I have one question.

Are you making money? Are you making more then the average programmer who works for a corporation?

I'd love to do what you do, but I'm not sure if I could pay the bills.

Re:Broadening of the marketplace

[stor]

You're right but have excluded the important cost factor.

When presenting a product to a business, the business isn't primarily interested in the technology but rather:

1. What does this thing provide?
2. How much does it cost?

As geeks we often get a caught up in the technology, probably due to it being where our interests lie and is the part of the operation we perform.

The decision-makers in the business world concentrate on operating costs, revenue and opportunities. Translating the product into something from that perspective will allow you to communicate with them effectively.

Cheers
Stor

Re:Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[iamacat]

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?

Re:nice insight

[bishiraver]

Let's stifle the economy!

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.

even $60b can't buy much innovation

[dekeji]

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.

Re:even $60b can't buy much innovation

[DeepHurtn!]

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.

Buddy, I think that when you say they think in years, you are overestimating most companies foresight. Management thinks in quarters. Got a quarter that has revenue or profits below the forecasts? Well, a bunch of executives will be out of jobs, cuz the shareholders will be pissed. A chronic inability to actually think in the long term seems to be another wonderful side effect of corporate structure.

Re:even $60b can't buy much innovation

[DeepHurtn!]

Sure, not many (largish) public companies will go out of business after one unprofitable quarter, but their stock price will fall. That is where the pressure comes from -- the stock has got to keep on going up, up, up.

(Yes, some businesses do manage to think more in the long-term, but management is primarily responsible to stockholders, and they'll be pissed if profits/revenue fall -- the market will not accept "Oh, this will pay of 10 years down the line" as an excuse for today's tanking prices.)

Re:even $60b can't buy much innovation

[sgt_doom]

I fully agree with what you say - but feel the track record of former Microsofties who have started their own companies is pretty abysmal. And as future employers - their records really suck!!! (From the American programmer's viewpoint.) Note the number who have chosen to hire only foreigners in India and Eastern Europe!

Kudos to Microsoft

[iamacat]

$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.

Re:AI self programming

[DeepHurtn!]

Dude, that was so random you just broke my braims.

Monopolies

[12357bd]

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.

Re:Monopolies

[sapgau]

Exactly!

But, given that software is a "hand made creation", people (programers) can still decide how to implement a softwae "solution".

I'm saying this because you mentioned SOAP as a barrier of entry, indeed it is somewhat elaborated and covoluted. The alternative is XMLRPC that very well simplyfies what you want to achieve with remote procedure calls over the internet.

And I bet other alternatives are out there ready to be used. It just depends how many people use it and help it achieve critical mass.

My $0.02

Re:What future?

[fferreres]

"with our Indian surgeons on par with your Indian surgeons."

Your definetly correct in that one...also, our Chics are as hot as our chics. What a great place to live on here!

Re:if you are so fucking brilliant

[PsiPsiStar]

I don't know about this guy, but I wouldn't invest in MS even if I knew their stock was going to shoot up.

Unless you're a broker, it's not good to invest based too much on short term issues like these. You invest long term and build value. If you buy and sell too much you whittle away your money in brokerage fees.

Besides, just because a company should do somthing, that doesn't mean it's going to do it.

Re:MICROSOFT USED TO USE ITS CASH

[Tbeehler]

Not to start an argument here, but Bush isn't the only person that makes laws happen. It's congress that votes on the laws and passes them. Bush merely signs them into law or vetos them. He may introduce legislation, but he isn't a king to pass laws that he sees fit. Personally, I have my job because I have the technical and people skills to keep it. Dell found out quickly that simply saving money isn't going to make things better for you (tech's who have thick accents, reading from script, don't know jack) Anyways, just my 2 cents.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[Master of Transhuman]

No, he's giving it to his father to manage in his "Foundation" - which is a stock laundering scheme.

How much of that $3 billion will ever actually be given out by said Foundation?

Go here and learn something.

Or here for more analysis.

Re:that's what makes us humans....

[12357bd]

That's not 'human' that's only 'social'.

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[Master of Transhuman]

You're the idiot. It's a stock laundering scheme, nothing more.

See my post elsewhere in this thread for links to Forbes and DSLReports articles.

Millionaire Next Door? Yeah right.

[SpectralOne]

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.

Re:Millionaire Next Door? Yeah right.

[mc6809e]

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.

The advantage is not having to work at walmart for 20 years from age 60 to 80.

And they don't live like a "po' man". They live within their means. That's a big difference.

Walmart is full of people over 60 that lived beyond their means.

You think avoiding 20 years of "thank you for shopping at Walmart" ISN'T taking advantage of being a millionaire?

Re:Millionaire Next Door? Yeah right.

[strictnein]

Actually, their average house is over $300,000 and their cars are running fine. It's just they don't LEASE new cars every two years, or buy houses well out of their price range, to make people think they have a lot money.

Waiting for quantum computing

[Froomb]

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

Re:yea, but MS could have put

[themusicgod1]

hey i think the EU is ok too but would the EU really be OK if the US just up and collapsed on them? how would the euro faire?

I pity you

[Donny Smith]

> the last thing that will sway my decision is whether a piece of free proprietary software will work well with it.

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).ht m

Re:I'd _love_ $3 billion dollars for my user's wor

[Valar]

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.

The logic of Open Source

[aaron240]

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.

mistaken premise

[00zero]

I think the op-ed partially misses the point.

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

Re:I Told You Before, Morons

[BiggerIsBetter]

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.

The governments are disgusting...

[Donny Smith]

>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

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 .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.

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.

Re:The governments are disgusting...

[stor]

Netscape was a fine browser until MS started messing with the company. Real may be shitty, nut at least they are providing some badly needed competition in the streaming media area.

Netscape was a POS. I'm glad that it copped the competition. It was nasty stuff that MS did, sure but this is big boy games. If you're not up for it go sell ice-creams.

Real was - and still is - a _fantastic_ streaming media format, vastly superior to Windows Media WM9. WM9 has rolled many of Real's features into it but I haven't tested it extensively yet.

It's a similar situation to the OpenGL/DirectX thing.

But you're on the right side of the fence :) Microsoft ruthlessly embraces and extends every single technology and protocol they can, incorporating half-assed versions of their competitors features in an apparent "TODO list" fashion and making it incompatible with all but their own products.

The solution is for people to plan to gradually move away from MS Technologies. With certain deployments I can imagine that would be a challenging job, sometimes not worth the ROI. Ahh well. See what you can do, eh?

Cheers
Stor

Re:Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[sydsavage]

I'm a tech savy guy, and I find iTunes counter-intuitive for adding songs to our iPod's library.

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.

Re:I Told You Before, Morons

[gordo3000]

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

Software never decays?

[snooga]

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.

Re:Software never decays?

[NineNine]

but software does deteriorate.

How, exactly, does this happen? Do the bits and bytes fall out of the computer? I've never heard of deteriorating software, and I used to be a programmer.

Re:Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[iamacat]

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!

old trick in the book

[aepervius]

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.

Re:What future?

[vrai]

Don't get too comfy - Indian companies are already losing business to ones in China and the Phillipines. You can't build a long term economy on simply being the cheapest - there are always people willing to work for less.

I disagree

[plopez]

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.

Re:I disagree

[plopez]

Shite! It's too late at night and too much Irish whiskey. My repy was fucked. Anyway, software nust be SOFT. Once the business types realize this and the fact if they can capture their business advantages in software, giving them more advantages, then they will win.

And the true job of a true software engineer is to
1) Capture true business advantages in software and extend them and
2) review and refactor business proesses. True software engineering also involves work in the area of Operations Research.

Sorry about the bad post, but also my $0.02

Re:I'd _love_ $3 billion dollars for my user's wor

[mc6809e]

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.

Unseen uses

[Peter Cooper]

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.

No future

[unoengborg]

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.

Re:What future?

[edgedmurasame]

Alternatively, I suppose you could simply learn the phrase "would you like fries with that order, sir?"

Well, I might remind you that once India, China, and beyond gets their work laws up to US standards, those jobs will be flying back. Once that happens, that's a one way ticket unless you get another donation of infrastructure from the US companies that still have the jobs that you still have yet to get.

The only phrase I will learn is "You've now just become the next American Parking Lot Country" as your country is declared a terrorist threat to American jobs and then flattened as much as possible. Good thing military jobs are kept out of your reach.

Re:What future?

[nmk]

I'm generally pleased by the progress that some developing countries are making, but this sort of Indian babbling really annoys me. During the age of industrialization, a large working class was borne, engaged primarily in manual labor. They worked inhuman hours primarily for the benefit of the companies which employed them.

India, to quite an extent, has become a large working class countries. While you slave away in your corner of the world, the prime beneficiaries are your American employers. Take a simple example like call centers. While India is making good money out off support outsourcing, it is nothing compared to the money American companies are saving from the same deal. All the software work you're doing, a lot of it is packaged and sold in the world under American brand-names.

Currently you're nothing more than manual labor. American companies are at the top of the value added chain and are, therefore, making the more money. So as you taunt people on this message board, American companies are laughing all the way to the bank, as is the American economy.

Re:Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[StarfishOne]

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? :)

Re:I Told You Before, Morons

[NineNine]

Hey, since you're such a corporate genius, I'm wondering, where can I buy your company's stock?

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[sgt_doom]

Let's see now....licensing small companies' technology so they can figure out how to illegally incorporate it into their OS and put that company out of business. And litigating intelligent, innovative, hardworking and decent people to the point of insolvency, and in some cases, even death, to keep them from making any headway into software markets. Purchasing politicans in the state of Washington so that Gates & Company could put a cap on how much independent contractors make in that state (2000 - Bureau of Labor and Industry). Offshoring thousands of jobs overseas and claiming only 200 employees in India!!!??? Buy newspaper stories that always proclaim MS is hiring locally - when in reality they are laying off locally. Anyone remember their layoff in Seattle of over 1,000 EMPLOYEES on September 12, 2001???? Bill Gates' evil??? Yes, most definitely.....

Re:What future?

[sgt_doom]

Unless, of course, in those countries (specifically China and Vietnam and Eastern Europe, I'm ignorant about the present state of wages in India) the governments keep the wages artificially low - which they appear to be doing. Let's stick to reality, dude!

Re:What future?

[sgt_doom]

Let me please remind you of an obvious fact: America has been a NET IMPORTER OF HIGH TECH PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SINCE 1999!!!! Your supposition is therefore completely incorrect....

Re:Are you kidding? I HATE iTunes!

[clifyt]

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.

Re:if you are so fucking brilliant

[Safety Cap]

Traders trade all day fucking long, short, long, wide, deep - big dollar amounts, and lots of little trades.

Right. Buy- and Sell-side traders are in an entirely different class than Joe Penny. They are moving tens of thousands of shares at a time, whereas Joe is lucky if he can buy 300 shares of EAT.

Re:What future?

[Anonymous Coward]

The future of the American software industry is in Mumbai, Maharashtra State, in India.

Negative.

I live in the midwest, and here's the deal: Fortune 500 and smaller companies are insourcing projects left and right. The reason? You suck. Seriously.

Generally speaking the perception was that "all Indian engineers are geniuses," which is of course horse shit. It seems like those of you that made it up to North America were the best of the best. Generally major computing companies gave tests at your more prestiguous universities and managed to scalp the top five percent using the H1B. A flood of Indian engineers ended up in the states, and damned if they weren't all sharper than a tack.

Reality check: take the top five percent of our grads from our top drawer universities (or European universities if you prefer), and you'll find that Indian scientist and engineers handily get their asses handed to them. In addition, if we need real expertise, THE people to beat are the eastern Europeans. These people generally own you (and us) with respect to algorithmic expertise and balls to the walls mathematics.

Personally I think it is lame that with over a billion people India's number of so-called expert engineers and scientsts is so low. Oh my, could it be because 2/3 of your people are still dirt poor? Seems like they want a piece of the pie too, and your middle class hasn't been paying up. Nice election you had last time.. heheh.

With remote project management costs, lame engineers in India, and general outsourcing backlash coupled with your latest round of elections, you'll be back to the stone age in no time.

Microsoft's Contractors...

[dnahelix]

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).

Re:Microsoft's Contractors...

[qbzzt]

Hi,

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.

Then why do those contractors stay there? Tech jobs are harder to get than they used to be, but if you're stuck in a dead end job like that why not learn a new skill?

Make yourself indispensible, or be dispensed with.

Re:Microsoft's Contractors...

[dnahelix]

Yeah, it's real easy to say, "hey I'll just go get another job." But then the bills arrive, and you think "man, it sucks not having food or heat or even a place to live..." So, you go to work the next morning.

Is there something I'm missing here?

[3seas]

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.

Re:nice insight

[strictnein]

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.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[OAB]

Bollocks. Take off the tin foil hat and join the rest of us in the real world. The Forbes article says almost nothing, and the dslreports one is best described as sour grapes with no backup.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[strictnein]

That's a stock laundering scheme? 3% of it in stocks, and that's a stock scheme? Give me a break. What the forbes article implies is that they have a very low amount of stock.
the Gates Foundation held only $728 million of stocks, a mere 3% of its $21.6 billion in net assets (emphasis mine)

The forbes article implies absolutely no wrong-doing. So now I've learned that they have "an investment valued at $226 million (in) Cox Communications" and that the author of the forbes article believes their total stock investment to be lower than expected.

And now we read the excellent business journal DSLReports who we've all come to rely on for hard hitting business news and insight. Like their latest article:

Old Trojan, New Twist
Usenet groups flooded with claims of 'Bin Laden' suicide photos

Look for more analysis of evil charities next week!

How about you learn something?
2004 Grants
2003 Grants
2002 Grants
2001 Grants
2000 Grants
1994-1999 Grants

Here's one for you to chew on:
12.7.1999 The Vaccine Fund
$750,000,000 over 5 years to support the immunization of children in 74 countries through the purchase of new vaccines

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[strictnein]

I did, and I replied to it. Stock laundering scheme my ass. This is a stock laundering scheme?

7.15.2004
Research Consortium Receives $44.7 Million Gates Foundation Grant to Evaluate New Strategies to Fight HIV-Related Tuberculosis

Amazing!

Re:ALL commercial software is sold as COMMODITY!

[mini me]

there is PLENTY of innovation left to do in these "basic layers"

Not really, they already solve the problem as they are. You said yourself they have remained unchanged for 20+ years. If there was innovation to be had, you would think there would be at least some incremental change.

I'm not saying innovation on them is impossible, but what is the incentive to improve on them while other problems remain unsolved?

Software is like plumbing

[Catamaran]

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.

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[Peter Cooper]

He's an ugly mean person who took advantage of his birthright.

Birthright? His father was a laywer and the family were decidedly middle class. It's not like his parents were software barons from the 1960's who handed down the software business to their son as a graduation present or something. Gates (almost) started with nothing and worked his own ass to where he is now. Whether that involved illegal methods or not is immaterial to whether he got it by 'birthright', as he didn't.

Re:nice insight

[multiplexo]

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!

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.

Re:nice insight

[strictnein]

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.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[strictnein]

Bollocks. Take off the tin foil hat and join the rest of us in the real world.

Yeah, no shit. The Forbes article implies that they should have more money in stocks, not less.

Ummm... they are hard to use?

[illumina us]

We no longer expect to have to drive a car with a manual by our side. It should be the same with computers.

Car manufacturers didn't make cars easy to use, people learned how to use them and started to remember. No one made my computer easy to use, I read the manuals and played with the settings and buttons until I understood how it works and now I remember. Machinery be it mechanical or electrical is complex and difficult to use and understand. However, it is the users responsibility, not the developer/manufacturer to make it so the user can understand the product. Most software is well enough documented so that you are able to understand how to use it. Perhaps end-users should actually read the manual for once rather than calling tech support right away and then complaining on the internet and to their friends IRL.

What about the next Killer App?

[Akilesh Rajan]

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.

Garageband

[__aadkms7016]

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.

Whose IT?

[Doc Ruby]

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".

Re:nice insight

[multiplexo]

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!

you need to take some basic accounting courses

[youritadvisor.com]

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.

Re:I Told You Before, Morons

[Master of Transhuman]

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.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[Master of Transhuman]

Get a clue.

The Forbes article says most of their "grants" comes out of INCOME, not the original value of the $20+ billion donated. Meaning this is a stock preservation scheme. You think that $20 billion came in CASH? It was donated STOCK. Now the stock aint't there any more, it's CASH. Ergo, the stock that Bill CAN'T convert because of SEC rules is now CASH under control of his father.

Secondly, the DSLReports article points out that that CASH is being used to buy stock and CONTROL of other companies in which Gates has a financial, NOT charitable, interest.

The point of large foundations, as anybody with any clue knows, is not to pass money around, but to use their assets as CONTROL. Gates has obviously learned from the Rockefellers and others.

Only /. nerdboys have no clue.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[Master of Transhuman]

What part of "stock laundering" don't you comprehend?

It's irrelevant to that concept how much stock in OTHER companies they own. That was Forbe's point. The point is that Gates stock has been converted to cash. Stock that he couldn't convert because of SEC rules.

Secondly, the DSLReports article points out that the Foundation is using that cash to gain control of companies in which Gates has a financial, not charitable, interest. In other words, Gates has learned from the Rockefellers that the real purpose of a large foundation is CONTROL, not handing out money.

As for the "$7 billion in grants", do note that Forbes says the actual amount is around $1 billion and that most of that came from the INCOME on the assets, not the assets themselves. And Forbes also notes it didn't even cost them much to manage those assets. So that $750,000,000 you tout is over FIVE YEARS, easily paid for by the INCOME from the Foundation's investments.

Sure, you can argue that this is a smart way to do charity, i.e., don't piss away the assets in one time grants, use them to make money, then piss that away. You can argue that, but it goes against Bill Gate's innate nature, as you would know if you've ever read any biography of him - or for that matter, any biography of any rich guy.

In other words, the assets are PRESERVED, USED FOR CONTROL, and the "grants" are PR moves.

I'm not even emphasizing the Gates Library Foundation which requires libraries to install Microsoft software AND TO UPGRADE THAT SOFTWARE EVERY FOUR OR FIVE YEARS BY CONTRACT.

Get a clue about the rich.

Re:ohh! Darth Vader gets a heart transplant?

[Master of Transhuman]

Hardly a reply. No reasoning involved.

Clueless.

Re:if you are so fucking brilliant

[PsiPsiStar]

That's why I said 'unless you're a broker.'
This guy isn't a trader. He isn't a broker. He isn't an insider of any kind. Obviously.

If you're going to deliberatly misinterpret my post just to act condescending, don't even post. It contributes nothing.

Does IT Matter?

[FiloEleven]

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?

Re:maturation of the software industry ??

[zoloto]

damn, I read that as "masterbation of the software industry" as if they' were just jerking around and not doing anything good.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[OAB]

Still bollocks. So the MS shares are now cash, so fucking what? The foundation cannot turn round and give this money to Bill. As for having 'CONTROL' of other companys, the foundation only holds $728 million worth of shares in total, the phrase 'drop in the ocean' springs to mind. You really do need to lay off the crack pipe.

Re:maturation of the software industry ??

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Well, if you apply that to Microsoft, then it is true :-)

Re:Are you trolling? I HATE iTunes!

[JamesOfTheDesert]

If you're working in Python.. I think one could build a basic, but well-functioning webserer in 20 mins...

Or 15, if you use Ruby.

:)

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[Master of Transhuman]

No, they can't just give it back to Bill. That's obvious.

But they CAN use it to further Bill's financial and business aims (and perhaps even social aims if he has any, which I doubt) under the guise of investments. Which is exactly what the Gates Library Foundation does.

The DSLReports article indicates other areas where this is true, which is why I pointed it out.

So why should I assume everything else is on the up and up? Because suckers like you say so?

Face it, the only reason you believe Gates about anything is because he's rich and you're not. You could argue the opposite about me, but you'd be wrong because I don't care that he's rich, particularly. I care how he got there and what's he doing with it - or NOT doing with it, in the case of the stock dividend and buyback.

In case you haven't noticed my other posts, I happen to be politically a "free market anarchist", meaning I approve of the free market and therefore have no complaints about people being rich provided they got there honestly (for that matter, I'm not even sure the latter is a requirement, as long as they aren't egregious about it - which Gates is.)

But I don't bow to people just because they're rich either, like a lot of gullible /. fools.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[OAB]

In case you haven't noticed my other posts, I happen to be politically a "free market anarchist"

No, you happen to be a loud mouth idiot.

If the foundation is an attempt to further Bills financial and business aims it's doing a crap job, all that time and money and it's done nothing like that yet.

Re:Well, here's a thought.

[Master of Transhuman]

It's preserved and even increased that $20 billion.

What part of "preserve and increase" do you not comprehend?

Idiot.

Two words

[bluekanoodle]

virtual pc :)