Slashdot Mirror
Strategy Shift In The Air For Microsoft
mrdaveb writes "In the face of a declining market for MS Windows and MS Office, Microsoft's recent statements and acquisitions point to a future in which .NET is a key driver behind a strategy which will see Windows CE devices taking the limelight. This article explores the problems which Microsoft face in maintaining their stranglehold, and their likely route to keeping Windows on top."
What Microsoft really needs is some way of ensuring that software wears out at a similar speed to hardware
It gets me wondering why consumer is willing to pay $4999 for a Plasma TV that has a specific (say 20,000 hours) lifespan, but can't stand paying a $49 software that has an expiry date.
Hardware used to last for 10-20 years (like old radios), but hardly live past 3 years nowadays, yet consumers are rushing out buying and replacing gadgets every day.
I guess the main influence is Open Source and freeware, which sort of prevent major software makers to gang up on consumers.
Wear & Tear on hardware is by nature, Wear & Tear on software is by design, and people can choose against that design, but not many people can break nature's monopoly.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Microsoft will never change their strategy.... It's always going to be keep the markets cornered, and allow as little interoperability as possible.
Please, try not to sound so stupid...
See what everyone else is doing.
Copy it, tying it to your own IP, proprietary architecture and co-opting it to erode better strategies and make it your own.
Bundle it.
???
Fail to Profit!!!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They want as much software as possible to be distributed in potentially multi-architecture .NET, so they can try again at NT for Alpha, and this time, actually have two or three third-party applications to run...
j/k
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Ermmm. Yech.
This whole thing with distributing load to other cells... Isn't the latency going to be a factor in anything except batch processing?
I think we can all safely say that no matter how successful, or not, microsoft will be in the years ahead, the millions of users trained from birth to believe that windows id the worlds only operating system are unlikely to move en masse to the alternatives.
May the Maths Be with you!
Now enter the US postal service. You try setting up a small time mail service in your city and go to jail. You try using FedEx for what the Postal Inspectors deem regular mail, and you go to jail. Similarly, if you try to stop paying into the government retirement system and start your own with higher returns.... guess what happens? Or what if you try to open your own liquir store in Virginia or Pennsylvania across from a state run ABC. Jail.
We throw this monopoly term around way to much without acknowledging the difference between a natural, earned monopoly and a violent, coercive one.
- Microsoft has had the Office no-upgrade problem for a long time...
- .NET was specifically developed to (appear to) run multi-platform (or was this an accident on the part of microsoft?)
- The first full release of .NET was in 2002... The beta period was long before that...
- Of course MS wants development for WinCE/PocketPC to be as easy as developing for the deskptop... Perhaps that's why you can write a PocketPC/WinCE program right on MS Developer Studio?
- Yes, Microsoft would want everyone to rent out Office instead of buy a perpetual license. Every app developer wants that. Remember ASPs (Application Service Providers)?
This article sounds like its written by someone who just got into computers and is just finding out what's gone on for the last 5 years...
"a future in which .NET is a key driver behind a strategy which will see Windows CE devices taking the limelight"
.NET pretty much heralded this...
This is a new strategy? I thought the release of
Earn a free iRiver
How can they compete with a free as in beer and free as in speech product?
With MS's onerous DRM and EULAs? Yeah, right.
Personally I would just like to see Microsoft do something really well for the first time. They seem to take the approach I use at University: Do it as quickly as possible and put effort in where it can be seen. This is not what I would expect when it comes to a commercial product, and only works for proof on concepts. Now 21 years later, it's pretty clear Windows isn't a POC, so buck up and give us something we can really love. (For more information, visit www.apple.com)
What makes the article's author think that alternative Operating Systems are putting a stranglehold on Microsoft? Seriously, could someone give a link to these numbers, because I didn't see any in the article, and without it I have a bit of trouble believing the assertion.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
I've been wondering about this for awhile. Microsoft's overall strategy has always been to be the mediator between your computer/data and you. At the beginning this was DOS, then it became Windows on top of DOS. Then Office to get to your business data, etc; Netscape was a major threat because they could usurp that position and allow you to get to your data through the web browser on a PC without needing a MS product. .NET is the ultimate implementation of this strategy. If they can really make it run anywhere: PCs running Windows, OSX or Linux on various hardware flavors AND on palms, consumer electronics devices, etc; Then they'll have succeeded in making a standardized "glue" layer between you and the hardware.
.NET and you have practically the same scenario as you have today except now Windows(.NET) runs anywhere.
.NET license...
Next port Office to
Linux? OSX? Windows? Bah, who cares, so long as you're running a
Win CE devices are going to continue dropping in price as they become more common. There's no way Microsoft is going to be able to earn anywhere near the margins they make in the PC business on a $100 cell phone, and there's no reason why hardware makers in the competitive electronics marketplace won't switch to open source (i.e. free) alternatives in the not too distant future in order to make their products more competitive. It's not like there's a huge inventory of Win CE software out there that absolutely must be run on these portable devices.
If MS is betting the future on CE devices, dump your MS stock right now while it's still worth something. MS remains a one trick pony, and their one trick is their OS monopoly in the PC marketplace. In spite of their billions, they've never been able to dominate any other industry and they never will because they're incapable of innovation. Their entire culture involves around theft, acquisition and intimidation. Expecting Microsoft to compete in a more open marketplace and win would be like expecting the Mafia to get into the automobile manufacturing business and compete with Toyota. They aren't structured for that kind of business, have no aptitude for it, and their strong-arm techniques only alienate customers and potential partners.
"Microsoft's profit is currently focussed on two major products - MS Windows and MS Office. Both of these are in decline."
/. can one of the most profitable companies in the world with record profit and revenue for this past quarter be considered in decline. I'm not saying I approve of how they do it, but it is funny how FUD can go both ways.
Only on
Perhaps millions of Americans, but it's a big world, and a lot of third-world countries are modernizing on open-source software. I think Microsoft is destined to be an America-only thing, like football.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
He wants his article summary back.
When a consumer is buying a plasma at Best Buy (for example), I don't think in fact they are buying a TV with a life of 20,000 hours. I think they have no idea that is the case, and as far as they are concerned that TV should last for years and years.
I do not think that yet people are fully bought into the notion of device failure in a year rather than ten. After all, people are used to the TV's they had before which did last perhaps ten years or so (that was the case for my last TV, even really a bit longer than ten years).
People still get refrigerators that last for a while, and other appliances they probably plan to keep as long as the house.
I think also there's a function of money where people expect for hosuehold electronics/appliances to last longer as the cost increases. Certainly a lot of people expect this of cars, preferring to keep a car ten years or longer and assuming it will hold up.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I could have sworn the title said:
"Stinky Shit In The Air At Microsoft"
I need more caffeine.
Pretty Pictures!
I've seen much more evidence that .Net is dead than that it's the future of Microsoft's strategy. This whole article sounds a lot like someone came up with a pretty theory and then tried to find facts to match.
PocketPC, Windows Mobile Edition, and everything else that runs on it, suck too.
this is doubtful...
Amazing magic tricks
MS has screwed up so many times in the handheld arena, but now the technology is getting to the point where maybe they can get their bloatware to work: i. mobile devices are getting powerful enough and cheap enough; ii. 3G and effective wireless netweorking are getting to the stage where they are reasonable as mobile data carriers.
MS has been losing money in mobile for many years. This might give them an edge in the future.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It's a nice conjecture, but I don't really see MS getting all that hyped about Cell when it's more likely that they see it as a competitor. After all, you don't have to be using WinCE to take advantage of the distributed architecture.
.NET VM isn't going to auto-parallelize code after all.
Furthermore, Cell isn't a general purpose CPU. In fact, it may be slower for general purpose computing than today's CPUs. According to the Ars Technica article posted earlier today, they trimmed a lot of the out-of-order execution logic out of the main PowerPC component to make room for the SPEs and to let it be clocked faster. It also seems to only have a single FPU on it -- a logical move since the SPEs are vector FPUs primarily. Code not optimized for Cell (which is going to be a limited subset of multimedia applications) will run slower. The
Overall, I don't see MS trying to abandon x86 for Cell any time soon since x86 multimedia processing power is more than enough for most consumer applications. While Cell may take off for games, it's not going to make Office or Explorer run any faster.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
They said the same thing about lotus 123 back in the 80's and early nintes, whats lotus's share of the spreadsheet market now?
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
You try setting up a small time mail service in your city and go to jail.
How do you mean? Do you have examples?
Courier services, or even inter-city FedEx/UPS would all seem to be examples of "setting up a small-time mail service". Yet they get by.
I don't understand when the Post Office has ever strong-armed anyone who was doing something similar, though I am open to the possibiliy if you have a link or two.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We don't NEED a new bug ridden Microsoft OS or Office suite. Microsoft is starting to see what the rest of the computing world has been dealing with for the last couple years.
The industry is stagnant and there are now tons of 1 ghz machines out there that will run any old os and suit most people just fine. Business is starting to smarten up. I pity those guys that bought into the Microsoft subscription service. How much longer for Longhorn? I don't think they're getting their monies worth and I doubt they would continue the subcription the next time.
The sooner Microsoft dies a horrible death, the happier I'll be!
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
"For Microsoft, fiscal 2004 was a great year, marked by strong growth and development of exciting new technologies. All of our businesses grew during the year, increasing total revenue by $4.65 billion, or 14 percent, to $36.8 billion. Profit margins from continuing operations improved, particularly in our emerging businesses."
"Our Information Worker (home of office) business continues to grow, with a 17 percent increase in revenue during 2004."
and
"Client revenue increase was driven by a 14% growth in OEM licenses and 16% growth in OEM revenue on increased consumer PC unit shipments in the first half of the fiscal year and growth in business PC unit shipments in the second half of fiscal 2004. " " So in summary... MSFT Revvenue +14% Office Revenue +17% Windows Revenue +11%
flamebait.
that there's no truth to the rumors of an air shortage.
No, thank you for calling... and not reversing the charges.
(Opens can of Perri-Air)
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How will getting everyone to standardize on .NET save Microsoft? An open-source version of it (Mono) already exists, so unless Microsoft's licensing terms are better, I don't see how this will lock people into anything Microsoft-specific.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
I'm in the middle of learning to create a program on a windows CE device. Since it's going to be used to aquire data I figured it would be nice to install some form of DB on it. Sure enough there is SQL 200 CE for the ce .net devices. So Here I am thinking this is great I'll install that and away we go. 1 day later I'm still working on that install.
.Net installed and I really can't complain about it. Best IDE I've ever used hands down.
.Net on CE devices may work nicely but the hours of hoops to jump through just to get started is a real pain in the ass. By far the best part of this exercise has been visual studio. I added the necessary parts as a reference and away it goes.
First I already have visual studio
Second I know that I need SQL server to replicate the DB's with so I head off to MSDN and grab it.
500 or so meg later and I burn it to a CD(my media versions of the subscription haven't arrived yet) and start the install. Installation doesn't appear to do anything. After messing with it for a bit I remove it. Remove the desktop edition, and remove the old sql client tools. run the install again and it works. Fine I can live with that.
So I install sql 2000 CE It tells me that I need sql 2000 SP1 installed. I assumed that the newest version on MSDN would have the service pack installed already but I would be wrong.
So 430 meg later I have downloaded SP2 (sp1 is rolled into it) and another 120 or so meg and I have SP3. Install those. Reinstall sql CE. I get further but I now need to install IIS so that the two can comunicate. It didn't come preinstalled on this XP pro SP2 PC so I get to track the program down, set it up then get the database installed then I can get back to the 20 minute tutorial I was following.
Deploying programs to the device is trivial. If all the rest of the software was at the same level as visual studio I wouldn't be using linux as my desktop at home.
Basically, they bought VirtualPC so their future customers, running on some non-x86 processor, can run legacy x86 Windows programs along side their .NET-based programs. The detail being that of course, the .NET-based apps are running in a ( licensed ) Microsoft operating system environment. As an added bonus, the OS used in VPC is yet another licensed MS operating system! Even _more_ software sales for M$!!
It's just the M$ way of _not_ betting the farm on x86... which is the true point of .NET, at least according to this guy.
Hey, they're not stupid at M$, they just like *MONEY*!!!
The fact that this post is modded informative shows there are people out there who will buy anything a company sells.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Once there is a viable alternative to MS on the desktop, MS is doomed.
When that finally happens is the question, not if. And given MS's history of failure in markets other than their monopoly, I wouldn't bet too much on them surviving much past their monopoly being shattered.
It doesn't seem like a new strategy to me, I think the heralding of it as an official strategy is when Office is ported to .Net. I don't recall seeing signs of that though...
.Net. Still seems like it would be a bother to port, and additionally if it has too much native code you've not really gained any benefits.
One interesting aspect is that it seems to me the whole support for unsafe code and for differnet languages is perhaps all to make it easier to port Office to
The funny thing is that other companies seem to have a head start in porting office to other systems. Open Office from a desktop standpoint, and on the Blackberry they already let you download and modify some Office documents right on the handheld. Perhaps they are a little late to this party.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The article forgot one key thing. Now that Software Patents are scheduled to be made into law in Europe (as per today's slashdot article), Microsoft will then unleash their Patent attack on Open Source Software (as per the HP memo which was leaked last year).
The FUD and fallout from this ought to help keep Microsoft on top for many years to come.
All this hype about the Cell processor keeps talking about it being distributable. This is a mater for the OS, not the architecture. The Cell processor sounds like a cool chip (especially with it's stream processors), but a new architecture is neither nescesary nor sufficient to do distributed computing.
I think if MS wants to do per-CPU licensing, customers are going to be displeased when multi-core chips come on the market or more manufacturers start making systems with multiple moderate power CPUs. Distributed load-sharing will make it even worse.
Per-concurrent-user licensing the market may accept, but per-CPU would be hard to sell in a market where "CPU" is ill defined or blurred.
their hardware is pretty nice. (keyboards, mice, etc.)
.NET has been around for a while, but it finally might be beginning to pick up. The w3schools stats for February* have included .NET as an OS platform, with a small, but rising share. Perhaps MS are looking for the same (initially slow) take up of IE6 or XP.
Of course, the real news is that Firefox has hit 20%, with other non-IE taking the total to over 25%. Yeah, I know, "lies, damn lies and statistics, and all that", but it should mean the end of IE only sites, when it can be shown that they are turning away 1 out every 4 site visitors.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
Put all that money, straight away, into hardware, Billy-boy.
.. when you can get a $99 PDA with its own C compiler, you've got a totally different computing market than it was in the 70's, 80's, and 90's ...
.. 'tis the only path.
Its getting so that any $10k-startup or so can print their own boards and get their apps out there, sub-$500 like, and this means that the division between soft and hard-ware is fading. Hardware prices are matching 'software prices'
Xbox2^H360^H^H^HWhatever, XBox-Portable, XBox-Handy, XBox-Roomba
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
"One approach which they periodically try is to move software onto a subscription model - you pay a flat fee for access to the latest version of a particular application."
I bet you can't find an convert tool for Office 2003 or OpenOffice to read ProWrite Plus 1.0 documents.
I'm still waiting on a company that offers software with staying power. We get a new version of Windows every year or two, and a new version of every *nix/BSD every 5 months. I'd be lucky to not have to redo my system configuration every time a new version of whatever OS comes out and decides to wipe out my old configurations. Plus there's the downtime. When are we going to see a kernel that can be upgraded while the system is still in operation and serving up webpages for happy customers? I don't want to have to take my websites down for half an hour every time there's a new kernel out or a new security patch for x and y applications.
I'd just like to see some software that runs for ten years straight without any need to upgrade or convert to a new format. And the same goes for hardware. How long can I trust my P4 and AMD Athlon 64 systems to run before their circuits degrade. By that point I'll have to buy a new computer that probably won't be supported by Windows or the current Linux distros and all my old software won't run on the next best thing. I'm going to have to start writing my resume, financial docs, journals, and everything else in xml+css so I can trust it'll work on .NET and all the other new standards.
About Longhorn. It was supposed to be the Great Leap Forward for Microsoft and yet most of the cool features have either been pulled for future releases or being backported to XP. This will probably be the first version of Windows where there is very little incentive to upgrade from the previous version for most of Microsoft's users.
The absolute worst thing that could happen to Microsoft would be for Windows to lag in sales. So much of their company rides on the success of Windows and Office that if one of those gets badly damaged it would have very damaging results for the entire company.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Dammit. I run code I find in sigs, and you know what? My memory WAS full of llamas! Then I realized that I was using the server with our Spanish database.
It takes a different set of skills to GET dominance than it does to keep it. Also, naturally, once you're number one, everyone is taking a shot at you, not just a few people.
Ask a football coach.
Vote Quimby!
Yeah,
I really think the analysis in the parent article is pretty darn weak.
I mean, come on, who really thinks MS is going to jump into bed with the Cell (i.e. PowerPC) chip?
It seems as though the author kinda forgot that MS's arch-enemy IBM holds the strings on the PowerPC chip. IBM isn't Intel and IBM has been burned badly by MS before.
---- Go ahead, mod me down, I'll just post it again and you lose your mod points.
Noone is forcing you to use Microsoft Products, nor are they forcing you to continue monitoring every marketing decision they make.
.Net into it's framework - thanks to the growing popularity of RSS and syndication methodologies - so anyone could have guessed that would be their next move.
However, the fact that you are giving them that much attention means that the alternatives are weaker than either the sum of its parts or the whole combined: Microsoft has a superior product line in terms of Operating System and Office Suite software.
There are cheaper alternatives out there, but the reality is thier interfaces are weak and flawed compared to Microsoft.
XP has been the most stable operating system that Microsoft has ever released, and they don't even get credit for not shoving Longhorn down our throats prematurely. Instead, they get rediculed for not forcing an upgrade when one is not needed.
Longhorn will integreate features of
Microsoft has a stranglehold because people like the poster continue to give them credit everytime they blink, sneeze or cough the wrong way.
Brooklyn.
I (still) say that Microsoft is being forced into changing their application delivery model by Google. What choice do they have? What happens when Google rolls out a word processor, spreadsheet, and a dozen other "Office-like" apps all of which run right in your web browser, and they offer it all at a really, really competitive price per user (especially to businesses), and Microsoft is still selling clunky old CDs?
Look at it this way... Which would you rather have: this or this? One of them comes on a CD, and becomes outdated very quickly unless you continously patch and upgrade it. The other is just a URL that you type into a browser, and you can let them (Google) worry about keeping it up to date.
If I had two identically priced and featured products and one was running on .Net and the other JME, I would not even think twice about selecting latter.
.net. It seems that .net is for the little guy's who are too cheap to spend the money on an enterprise product.
There are many in the world who have had enough of the instabilities and insecurity of microsoft software who will do just the same. Just look at the ratio of enterprise applications running on java vs
Time to buy those Options on Microsoft Stocks.
JsD
[karma=(moz+nix+ooo)-ms]
Seems to make some sense, but not so much from a $$$ angle. Mac OS X, for example, uses an emulator to run Mac OS 9 apps on OS X, which was necessary since the new system is not backwards compatible with the old one at all.
Microsoft seems to be looking to use Longhorn as an opportunity to break free from the backwards compatibility that affords them little room for flexibility in how they can implement changes, and now they can do so via the same emulation idea Apple succeeded with in their transition to OS X.
I don't see how this will double their licensing fees, and I think it would be a big mistake for them to break compatibility with XP, 2000, NT, 98, etc. without providing a built-in (ie. included in the OS) bridge to help people onto the new platform. And whether they make Longhorn compatible with non-x86 processors, I don't see how that really changes any of the above.
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OCO is Loco
You've got the pro-MS talking points down pat, and you've been spouting them for a while.
A natural monopoly is an industry where the most efficient production is through a monopoly. This means Municipal water supply, electricity distribution, local telephone service, public postal services, etc.
Microsoft's monopoly came about mostly by their exclusive contracts with hardware vendors, agressive bundling, and buying up competitors. This is the antithesis of a natural monopoly.
First of all, what is considered standard first class mail? It seems like FedEx and other companies have letter-sized cases for just this sort of mail.
The point about the mailboxes is a really good one, though aren't other companies allowed to use mail slots? It seems like that only matters for personal mail.
The last blurb was rather interesting, though at the end it would seem to argue against what you are saying with the ending "other mail companies--more intent on making a profit than making a point--kept a low profile and flourished.". What other companies are they talking about here? It seems kid of like that one guy basically was out to shut down the post office, and that in turn caused him problems he might not have had otherwise. I'm not saying that was right at all or that perhaps he was basically illegally forced out of buisness, but I;m not sure it totally goes to proove you cannot set up a seperate mail service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What IBM has in store.
The other side of the coin. nfrastructure, virtualization and RFID-WebSphere integration initiatives may seem like separate developments, but analysts say they are merely different skirmishes in a much bigger war that is all about gaining control over the corporate data center environment. In some of these ongoing battles, IBM is clearly ahead. In others, Big Blue currently finds itself on the ropes.
I wish I had time to RTFA but the post itself brings up an interesting question: If .NET, Microsoft's one-up on Sun's old architectural coup, is now Redmond's repsonse to trends threatening its dominance
[A] Sun's reaction to Microsoft's ubiquity and its anticipation of declining market for its workstations and its earlier [than MS] grasp of what the WWW would do to the software world was to make java the languange and eventually J2EE the hardware independent platform.
[B]And if, as the post suggests,
Then isn't history sort of forcing Microsoft to go down the same dubious track as Sun?
I for one welcome Microsoft to the war for mobile OS supremacy...There are already players in the field that many of us perfer to CE and there are enough of us writing OS code for-profit and for-the-common-good and mainly enough of us who remember the lessons of competing with Microsoft that if this is the first volley, I don't think the winner is foreordained.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
This is just another PT Barnam special; it'll put more immature code onto the streets, require we buy new, bigger, faster computers, and still have viruses (or purchase of the latest companies would be meaningless) and it'll be the same old thing.
Sure, it's pretty, and sure parts of it (like printing services) work very well. But it's still that same old plantation on which we all have lived. And those of us without courage to fight it will live there until they close, and beyond.
Guys, don't think for a MOMENT this is the promised land we were promised ever since Win3.1, it's not.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Ok, so the whole article seemed to pivot around the notion that the biggest problem Microsoft has is that consumers are not upgrading their software fast enough to improve current market returns. Yes, "Many organisations are still using Office '97 - an 8 year old release - and see no compelling reason to upgrade."
Organizations are using Microsoft products, and are not switching (to other Microsoft products). Sounds like a net zero change in market share to me.
Yes, Linux is expected to close in on Windows in a couple of years. From a 90% dominance today, to a projected 58% dominence. Oh yeah, only if you count dominance on PDAs. You see, Microsoft has 48.1% of the PDA market in Q3 2004, with Palm at #2 at 29.8%, and is expected to decline.
In the browser usage stats, Microsoft is dropping, with a 64.9% share, compared to up and coming FireFox at 20%. The problem is, FireFox looks like it hasnt gained any share since it peaked in Nov 2004. That's the best I could find for FireFox, since other studies put Microsoft's Internet Explorer at around 92.9 % dominance worldwide. Its very hard to get any two companies to agree on stats, because they're both approaching the question with different agendas.
But desktops, well, the statistics for Microsoft and Linux are all over the place. Last spring, Microsoft had 93% of the worldwide desktop market in their corner, but was still fighting (in Jan 2004) the business side to upgrade to the latest and greatest MS products. Microsoft really starts to cry in the server market, where IBM via Linux are barrelling through to win. Except Microsoft still has 59% of the server market, 3:1 today and 2:1 on projected Linux share. This was one of the few business statistic sites that actually had hard numbers, and even there, desktop stats appear pretty stale.
In conclusion, from browsing through Google, people have been making these same claims on market share dominance since 2001, "Linux is the up and comer, watch out!" and noone seems to ever back up their sides with hard numbers... nothing that actually shows a survey on how Windows:Linux ratios that actually shows Linux having a chance... every year, "we're coming to get you, this year is our year!" Maybe its because for all the talk, Linux really is a niche market after all...
It is all about margins vs. scale. Microsoft will of course make more off a PC than a phone, but how many PCs do you have in comparison to other things in your home (phones, tvs, stereos, cameras, etc)?
By the way, PCs are getting cheaper too so that is going to put downward pressure on the price of bundled copies of Windows...
Makes me think about this search:r amming
http://www.google.com/search?q=E911+prog
And this Movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116839
...but oh well. And I did RTFA, along with the summary. There's a very good reason I don't use quotes very often, and thats to try to prevent this sort of thing from happening, where I see and think of a word and an idea in an article, and use them together, then the author comes at me about it as if I directly quoted it. But you are right, of course, it doesn't say what I said it said. But, I think the point is still there, in the first sentence, and the following paragraph no less: "Microsoft's profit is currently focussed on two major products - MS Windows and MS Office. Both of these are in decline. "Windows is increasingly facing competition from alternative operating systems and the next version, Longhorn, is not due out until some nebulous future date which recedes with every press release. To make matters worse, upgrade cycles are getting longer. The majority of Windows sales are those bundled with a new PC. Fewer PC upgrades translates to fewer Windows sales." If you aren't saying that other operating systems are causing a problem for Microsoft, which is the cause of them needing to change their strategy, I don't know why you chose to use the first sentence you wrote. I'm sorry I interpreted what you said more strongly than it actually was. They are facing competition, but I don't see it having any significant impact on them. Don't bite my head off next time, give me a fair chance, and I'll give you a fair chance.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
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Sales GROWTH has slowed to 5.6% - the sales did not decline at all, in fact sales increased by 5.6% for Windows / Office
/. crowd just pulls fanciful ideas out of the air and claim them to be facts to support their view of the world.
How can the OSS community accuse MS of spreading FUD when the article was not only FUD but making a totally untrue statement - "In the face of a declining market for MS Windows" - a 5.6% increase is not a decline.
Im no MS fan but it really gets me when the
OK, Ill beat you all to it too - Im a M$ troll astroturfer on the M$ payroll, as is anyone who says anything positive about M$ even if true.
Don't we so quick to dismiss theft, acquisition and intimidation.
... but just out of my poor memory I remember that they used to have far bigger, really obscene numbers.
If the numbers you are quoting are true they look like the numbers of a consolidates, stable company.
Those numbers (in percentages) had been going down and there are hugh pressure in the market to find alternatives to MS.
Linux in the coporate world and perhaps the mini Mac in the personal market are going to challenge seriously MS's dominance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Seems to me, the general trend in PDAs has been to get more and more expensive. You can buy them for $600+.
Sure they could probably sell the equivalent of a Palm III for $20 if they really wanted to, but the trend is to add more and more features, the price creeping higher and higher.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
...may be just to lobby in Washington DC to "bend" and create laws in their favor. Why fight for control when you can have the government help you at the expense of your tax dollars.
Life is not for the lazy.
When the hardware becomes too slow, you buy a copy of the software that comes with a faster chip
Wait, didn't IBM operate like that? Oh, its too slow, oh I see, you need an upgrade, more disk space.....
THe more things change, the more they remain the same.....
Oh, Gates! Remember the Big THree Auto Makers? Where are they now?
If MS would just package up their software as debs and use apt-get to handle their installs, you wouldn't have those problems.
Or, you could just give up on that WinCE idea and stick to Debian. Linux is worth what Microsoft's stuff costs, and more.
See what I've been reading.
Seems to me, the general trend in PDAs has been to get more and more expensive. You can buy them for $600+.
Only because the market for PDA's is dwindling. PDA features have moved on to cell phones and integrated PDA/Cell devices. Simple Palm-based PDAs can be had for $99, but there's little market for electronic organizers these days, with Treos and Blackberrys to be had. And as more manufacturers enter that space, expect price competition to grow fierce, putting additional pressure on the cost of the OS the devices run.
yes, but I think the point is that Microsoft sees that embedded electronics are taking off at a rapid pace. if home automation/convergence ever takes off, the embedded OS market will be HUGE.
consumers only have one pc (usually. maybe two)
however, I've also got a
cell phone
music player (iPod)
radio
router
stereo
gaming console
tv
coffee maker
fridge + other kitchen appliances
digital camera
You see, even if Microsoft charges $5 per license to run CE on some embedded device which has a $10 microcontroller, they're still making the same profit per person as they would otherwise be making. sure, the profit per product is lower, but their total revenue stays positive.
the real question is if hardware developers will want to pay the $5 to gain access to all of the nice APIs CE will provide them with. By not having to write firmware code from scratch, companies save a bundle on R&D. Advanced chips for embedded devices have been available for quite some time now at a not-unreasonable cost (especially considering the tiny demand) -- the big problem is spending the R&D money to actually develop software for these chips.
my wireless router has more processing power than my PC did 5 years ago -- it runs embedded linux. and I can guarruntee that the CPU didn't make up a huge portion of the router's $50 MSRP pricetag.
really the only big tech company that ISN'T jumping on the embedded bandwagon is Apple. They seem pretty focused upon turning the PC into a 'true' multimedia hub, and they've been doing a damn amazing job at it. even embedded linux has a huge following -- I can almost promise however, that CE is easier to develop for than linux, as CE was designed for tiny underpowered machines and has the appropriate APIs to deal with that.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You're probably not even replying to the author. He would be Dave C, not Dave B. Dave B is just the person who submitted the article to slashdot...
Fair enough. You have a good point, but I don't think it's really Open Office, etc holding back MS Office sales - it's more peoples reluctance to keep paying the high prices. Especially paying to upgrade having already paid once for an older version of MS office.
Perhaps people look at open source and it makes them angry when they next have to pay an arm and a leg to MS - even if they aren't really serious about switching to Linux, etc.
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale
It is all about margins vs. scale. Microsoft will of course make more off a PC than a phone, but how many PCs do you have in comparison to other things in your home (phones, tvs, stereos, cameras, etc)?
Oh I agree - that's the conventional wisdom, that MS will make up in volume what it loses in margin. I think that's a load of hooey, though. Margins in the electronics business are razor thin, even compared to the PC business these days, and there's absolutely no reason why these devices need access to MS-specific software. Phones, TV's, stereos and cameras can work perfectly well running software written on Linux or some other OSS (i.e. free) alternative. RIM's Blackberry has proven you don't need a portable version of Outlook to do e-mail on a pocket device. These devices are all about simplicity, which is the very antithesis of the Microsoft model with Windows and Office of adding more complexity with each release. People don't want a TV or a phone that's complicated - they want one that works.
By the way, PCs are getting cheaper too so that is going to put downward pressure on the price of bundled copies of Windows...
And we're already seeing cheap PCs coming with Linux as a result. Expect to see that trend accelerate, especially overseas where most of the real growth in the PC market will take place over the next decade.
It's not like MS will go bankrupt tomorrow, but their growth is certainly going to be curtailed at some point, and they haven't yet developed an effective Plan B to milking the Windows desktop monopoly, in spite of numerous attempts (XBox, Win CE, etc.).
They'll probably just buy the next big thing, whatever that is, unless whoever comes up with it is so huge they can't buy them (i.e. IBM).
I'm all for emerge or apt-get
.Net, DOS or proprietary. CE .net seemed like less of a dead end.
The job requires a small handheld device with a full keyboard a fair amount of space and a fair chunk of processor on it. This is not a pocket PC or PDA type application, the hardware that this will have to work on in $3000- $4000 per unit.
In the end I haven't found a single manufacturer that builds units like this that run linux. Trust me, I'd love to be paid to work in linux, but the hardware says it's windows CE
Now that I think about it I'm curious to see if what I write will work at all with mono in the end or not. Perhaps I'll give that a try this weekend.
You see, even if Microsoft charges $5 per license to run CE on some embedded device which has a $10 microcontroller, they're still making the same profit per person as they would otherwise be making. sure, the profit per product is lower, but their total revenue stays positive.
Except that isn't going to fly in the electronics market, because the margins are tiny, the devices frequently cheap (under $200) and the competition is fierce. How much are the CE API's worth to you when coders can be had in India and China for a pittance? Will it cost you $5 a device to code your own firmware from scratch? Doubtful. And that assumes you even need to do it from scratch - if you're a huge company like Samsung, you may already have some of that code completed for other devices. Also, the more devices you sell, the lower the cost of software development per device. This will motivate the electronics giants to develop their own software based on OSS (free) platforms, instead of paying a $5 a device tax to a potential rival like Microsoft.
well, I saw "dave" and pingwales.co.uk, where the article is from
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
Indeed. To get a little off track....I think, ironically, that for opensource to succeed in the markets in which corporations dominate, they need to actually spend some money. For instance, taking donations to get advertisements on TV encouraging people to switch to linux, for x y and z reason. I would have fallen over laughing, but recognized the great effect of an open source Linux ad during the superbowl(too expensive unfortunately). I also just had an idea, and that would be to form a nonprofit company for the sake of Opensource. I'm out of my realm of expertise, though, so I'll stop there
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
It's happening in hardware all the time. Example: the new Pentium 4 dual core processor. The Extreme Edition will have Hyper-Threading on the dual cores, while the regular desktop edition won't. Do you think they designed two different sets of masks, especially given how limited the market is for the EE? Of course not. Like the Intel 486SX chip was initially, expect the desktop chips to be EE's with HT disabled before packaging. It is cheaper to produce a single type of chip and cut a lead afterwards, than design and produce two different chips.
The only reason for a second type of chip would be if the non-HT chips was substantially smaller in die-size, which isn't likely as long as both chips contain the same amount of cache. Compared to the cache, HT real estate is minor.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
With the goo inside so you couldn't mess with them easily. The only problem is, do you want to use a pulse-dial phone which probably hooks to a four-prong adapter rather than a modular plug? If so, i'm sure you could get one easily.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Let's just say that Microsoft no longer sells Office, but instead it 'rents' it for a short period of time. Who's gonna pay a subscription to Microsoft? I will keep using Windows XP + Office 2003. It's enough, I don't need more.
I seem to remember hearing Microsoft play that tune before - that the reason PCs are too expensive is because of the hardware.
Which product has nearly ZERO incremental cost of production, and which one has true cost for each and every unit sold?
Which company posted record profits, and which companies have razor-thin profit (or loss) margins?
The only way Microsoft is going to achieve the model of "hardware for free, buy the software" is when they produce both, and GIVE away the hardware and subsidize its costs through their software. They aren't even doing that for the X-Box.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Natural, you say? Microsoft never falsified evidence or broke laws to maintain their monopoly?
(See the DR-DOS case for information)
I've got nothing again natural monopolies. Campbell's soup is a natural monopoly (owning something like 80% of the market.)
Campbell's however, doesn't try 'cut off Progresso's air supply' when Progresso comes out with a new product.
(Your example of Standard Oil sucks, btw. Go look up recent anti-trust litigation. Try ADM for example.)
I'm still thinking it's far more likely that they did it so have a support path for people with DOS and win3/9x apps, then drop problematic legacy support in their current OS. VirtualPC does give them security against changing from x86 too though, so there's no penalty anyway.
As a side note, the NT 4 kernel also ran on Alpha, and I recall it could emulate x86 WinNT apps already.
Oh I agree - that's the conventional wisdom, that MS will make up in volume what it loses in margin. I think that's a load of hooey, though. Margins in the electronics business are razor thin, even compared to the PC business these days, and there's absolutely no reason why these devices need access to MS-specific software.
Of course nobody needs to use MS software, but it is clearly an area in which they are willing to compete. I would say they have an initial advantage over many other competitors.
Phones, TV's, stereos and cameras can work perfectly well running software written on Linux or some other OSS (i.e. free) alternative.
And they can also work running Microsoft software. And to suggest that it is 'free' for a company to use OSS is just ridiculous. Additionally in a competitive environment it is necessary by the terms of the GPL to release at least part of the software they write for the device (this is of course another thorny issue). Really the only issue is setting the right price and making it easy for device manufacturers.
RIM's Blackberry has proven you don't need a portable version of Outlook to do e-mail on a pocket device. These devices are all about simplicity, which is the very antithesis of the Microsoft model with Windows and Office of adding more complexity with each release.
This is a completely ridiculous statement. Microsoft aims to empower people with new capability through software. In a PC environment this means adding additional complexity and using the new power of modern PCs to do things that would be considered wasteful in other contexts. If a lightweight device running simple software empowers users in a way that is valuable and marketable then Microsoft will do it.
People don't want a TV or a phone that's complicated - they want one that works.
Which is why if Microsoft competes in that marketplace that is what they will have to deliver to customers.
And we're already seeing cheap PCs coming with Linux as a result. Expect to see that trend accelerate, especially overseas where most of the real growth in the PC market will take place over the next decade.
And take note of the current strategies Microsoft is looking into to make the cost of Windows less significant on cheap hardware or in other countries. You are forgetting that the only reason that Windows is not on these machines is because of cost, not because the people buying the machines don't want Windows.
It's not like MS will go bankrupt tomorrow, but their growth is certainly going to be curtailed at some point, and they haven't yet developed an effective Plan B to milking the Windows desktop monopoly, in spite of numerous attempts (XBox, Win CE, etc.).
Clearly it is impossible to continue the incredible growth that Microsoft has had without moving into new markets. I am not convinced that OSS poses as significant a threat to Microsoft as many in here would like. I see the marketplace becoming more competitive which is a great thing for the consumer, and even if growth stops at some point the company can and will continue to make money...
They'll probably just buy the next big thing, whatever that is, unless whoever comes up with it is so huge they can't buy them (i.e. IBM).
Maybe a public postal service is naturally a monopoly (why would a government fund two?), but as can be seen from the rise of FedEx et al, logistics is certainly not a natural monopoly. Arguably, no industry is a natural monopoly: it all depends on how you define the industry.
The underlying story in that analysis, unaffected by its predictive likelihood, is that the WinTel cartel might be broken. The article makes much of the rise of the Cell CPU (IBM/Sony/Toshiba), and the ability of MS to produce new SW for it, rather than new Intel CPUs. .NET's CLR and some recent PPC cross-execution MS acquisitions all position MS to produce code that can run elsewhere, a direction MS hasn't moved since the NT/Alpha project was folded years ago.
.NET is already more interoperable on, say, Linux with, say, Mono, that kind of HW/SW lockin might be diappearing for good. The simple arrival of a Mac as preferred development platform for (PPC) Xbox shows that the hegemony game has changed. Next we await an escalating move from Intel, like a Linux (-only) kernel patch that actually lets us use our x86 hosts in massively parallel arrays across the Internet, preempting both the Cell PR and the .NET PR to that effect in this article and elsewhere. We might have followed the Force through the darkness, and into the light, after all.
All that follows Intel's growth in the Linux market. Linux runs on many CPUs that aren't Intel, but most Linux installs are on Intel, thereby displacing copies of Windows and the rest of its lockin environment. The WinTel alliance, that for years fed each company on the other's monopoly, might be dysfunctional already past the point of no return. That in itself was such a powerful anticompetitive setup, that its loss might represent the greatest opportunity for Linux and other OS'es. Since Microsoft's strategy so far seems to be a cross-platform approach, and since
--
make install -not war
Many use TV like people used to use radio; as a background distraction. This is especially true when someone is at home all day e.g. housewife or retired.
So try the TV running 10-16 hours per day contineously. Thats only 3.5 to 7 years life from that 20 000 hrs!
Surur
Information is the location of things. Computation is moving things around.
The author suggests that Microsoft is moving to hardware independence with .NET apps running on the upcoming Cell processor and VirtualPC to run old non-.NET software. The Cell processor is a joint product of IBM, Sony, and Toshiba. It's hard to imagine Microsoft getting into bed with longtime foes IBM and Sony, while kicking Intel out from under the sheets and onto the floor.
Also, the author suggest that Microsoft has a version of NT4 that could be used on the allegedly PowerPC-compatible Cell. This flies in the face of what Microsoft has been doing for the last 3 years in developing the next version of Windows code-named 'Longhorn' which is being developed for x86 and x86-64 rather than PowerPC.
The author seems to be attempting to create the idea that Windows will run on Cell but that is not in anyone's plans and is not likely to ever be, unless the Cell performance is much better than even its hype. The Cell design seems to be adapted entirely to real-time processing of massive amounts of data rather than as a competitor for x86 processors, and will likely find applications in video devices, cameras, scanners, printers, copiers, automobiles, and similar embedded device applications rather than general purpose desktop computers.
Shouldn't that be,
In the face of yet another fabulous year, MSFT has once again shown that if you want to make money, you have to CHARGE money !
MSFT made more money than anyone in the world.
The main problem is that VirtualPC is excruciatingly slow, even on a G5 Dually (compared to an x86 PC of the same GHz).
:D
There's just too much overhead in the x86-PPC codec... I'd estimate that VirtualPC is about 1/4 of the speed of a real PC. I wouldn't want to be Microsoft betting the farm on using the VPC code in a transitionary phase... because it wold force people to stay with x86 to get any decent performance out of their applications.
In this case, I think they just bought it because it was offered to them at a cheap price, and seemed to be a natural fit. Connectix is a venture capital group that develops products and then sells them off... I'm really surprised that they held on to VirtualPC for as long as they did.
I am stoked that Microsoft is developing VPC however, because now they can hook it into those sekret API's (sssshhhh).
So why did you download SP2 if you were then going to install SP3? SP3 includes all the fixes in SP1 & SP2 - I can't think of a single instance when MS service packs weren't cumlulative.
And yeah, IIS doesn't come preinstalled on XP - it's part of that whole security thing.
Your biggest complaint seems to be
a) you had to install some software, and
b) you didn't read the readmes to find out the prerequisites for those bits of software.
WinFS won't be shipping with Longhorn. Avalon, Indigo, .NET, and more either already exist or will be made available for Windows XP.
The only reason to upgrade, it seems, will be to have a Direct3D visual interface?
Declining market?? Typical linux bias! Maybe declining server market share or declining ability to automatically upsell versions, but not declining market in desktop windows or MS office. Not domestically, and especially not worldwide. This guy makes a big old logic jump based on his personal bias when he says that.
Read jack phelps dot net
True, true. But I'm sure if anyone can speed it up, Microsoft can. ;)
Cheap MS jokes aside, they should be able to achieve some significant speed improvements, being the developers of the original and not some external reverse-engineering company. I suppose this is slightly limited/dependent on the emulation type though as well (ie. processor emulation, API emulation, etc.).
I wonder how much Apple was able to speed up whatever emulation engine they bought (assuming it was bought...).
No doubt. :)
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
So did the American auto makers, where are they now. Give it time, M$ will fade into the background.
Of course nobody needs to use MS software, but it is clearly an area in which they are willing to compete. I would say they have an initial advantage over many other competitors.
How do you compete with something that's free? Will they give CE away? What happens as the current cash cows - their desktop OS and Office - mature, or are bumped down in the marketplace by OSS alternatives (as is happening to IE right now with Firefox)? How long will they be able to afford to just give CE away? Will there even be any takers? Will other major electronics firms want to be held hostage to Microsoft's whims?
And to suggest that it is 'free' for a company to use OSS is just ridiculous.
Except it is free. There may be development costs involved in coding your own device drivers and firmware and such, assuming you can't purchase or don't already have such code, but those costs can be spread out over the number of devices you intend to sell, potentially resulting in far lower costs per unit than the fixed $5 (or whatever) per-unit tax Microsoft wants to impose on CE devices. Plus, you've just gained valuable experience writing that code, experience you can use on other devices your company makes down the road.
Microsoft aims to empower people with new capability through software.
If you want a ridiculous statement, that's one for the record books. Microsoft aims to extend their desktop OS and Office software monopoly to every market they enter, as it's the only way they know to reliably make money. They've flopped miserably when they've attempted to compete outside their single sphere of influence. Microsoft represents the antithesis of empowering people through software - they want to trap customers in their proprietary environment, and make it as costly as possible to leave. This behavior has been noted, and is one of the reasons why IBM has been so successful to date selling Linux to enterprise customers, who have grown weary of being left to Microsoft's tender mercies.
If a lightweight device running simple software empowers users in a way that is valuable and marketable then Microsoft will do it.
Then why did RIM have to come out with the Blackberry? Why didn't Microsoft release software for a device like that? I'll tell you why - because Microsoft has never developed a "lightweight" or "simple" piece of software. They may have bought a few products which met that description, but they're incapable of developing such a beast.
And take note of the current strategies Microsoft is looking into to make the cost of Windows less significant on cheap hardware or in other countries.
What, give Windows away? Because that's what it's going to take to compete with OSS in the third world, where labor is incredibly cheap. The only reason why MS has more than a 1% marketshare in the third world is thanks to piracy. As they continue to clamp down on that, they'll only drive more and more users to OSS. Users who will in turn churn out more and more OSS software, expanding the base of OSS programmers. All at Microsoft's expense.
Do you seriously think the Chinese government wants to be dependent on Microsoft? They aren't as stupid as we are. Operating systems are way too fundamental a bedrock of modern industry to leave in the hands of a single foreign corporation, especially one in what will inevitably become a major competitor as the century progresses.
Again, I don't think any of this dooms Microsoft to the poor house, but their growth is about to be rapidly curtailed and they may even begin to enter a long, slow decline over the next decade.
having gone back and checked the service packs you may be correct that SP3 includes SP2. I can't find any evidence either way however I do know that SP3 consists of 3 files to update different parts, and combined they are not as large as SP2 so I have my doubts that it contains everything in the other one.
And yes my complain is that I had to install some software.
Having heard for so long how hard linux is to install software in I'm horrified by the "easy" windows installation. A real package management system would go a hell of a long way in this OS. And I really do hope that longhorn corrects whatever is forcing reboots after an install. I'm always rebooting it seems.
Under these circumstances, I would wonder if the Cell is not more of a threat to Microsoft than a chance -- a PowerMac with a Cell processor running OS X "Tiger" (already everything that Longhorn hopes to be, if you believe the Apple fanpersons) would seem more realistic in the short run than Longhorn on the Cell. And IBM and Apple already know how to play with each other from PowerPC days.
All in all, I can't say I'm too impressed with the article's logic. Then again, I've just had a very, very large pizza, so maybe it's me...
You said:
"I bet you are a dirty hippy..."
How did you get rated a '4' for this abusive post? Are you using multiple accounts or something?
Why does paying 37 cents for a stamp make you so incredibly angry?
Your post completely misses the points I made. I suggest you go back and reread what I wrote.
Meta-moderators are going to have a field day with whoever modded your abusive post up.
Oh heck, I have him set as a "friend". Well, that's easy to fix.
I should choose my "friends" more wisely.
...for now and the foreseeable future:
Embrace (=copy, as in new technologies)
&
Extend (=introduce proprietary extensions on said copies and thereby lock out any competitors, as in MS Kerbos, Windows, IE, Dos, etc. etc.)
for case studies, review MSFT product history for past, oh 15-25 years. not bashing, just fact.
The article states, as a central premise:
.Net architecture seems like a sensible (more generality) and well-executed improvement over Java ideas.
"What Microsoft really needs is some way of ensuring that software wears out at a similar speed to hardware. Unfortunately for them, although fortunately for the consumer, it is quite hard to build planned obsolescence into software."
WTF? That is utter nonsense. The Windows security model dates from before ubiquitous internet. It was not designed for a modern threat level and has NOT been adequately updated to deal with it. It does not get any more worn out than that.
The article makes it out that Microsoft's problem is that there is no market for innovation in operating systems. Bullshit. There is a huge market for innovation. Just look at all the features Apple is adding to MacOS (quartz extreme, spotlight..) and look at how the Linux Kernel continues to improve (real time support, reentrent kernel, massive multi-CPU scaling and clustering, constant time scheduler, ever more platforms). Microsoft's real problem is that their Windows development operation has become so bloated and inept that they can not supply timely improvements. They have not kept up with the competition or with the hackers, and are only falling further behind. And most of the "innovative" features announced in Longhorn seem to be inspired by OS X.
This does not seem to be a problem with Microsoft generally. They do execute well in other areas. IMHO Halo and the Xbox are good products, whatever their profitability. The
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
(sigh) You're confusing mobility with applicability. The web-page-as-an-app concept works with or without an internet connection, because (A) you can cache the page (and therefore make it mobile) or (B) you can serve up the page locally. Of course, there's Microsoft's answer, which is Avalon...
...But in the Open Source movement, a counter-arguement would be XUL with callbacks to some other language. XUL is a step in the right direction (platform-independant, XML-based GUI) but it needs additional technologies to "round it out" and make the concept of a "portable software stack" happen.
You save space (which is important in CoLo pricing). You use resources more efficiently. When one one of the other instances is relatively idle, a busy instance can use up those CPU cycles (not true with separate hardware).
I'm told, that if it doesn't exist, it will at some point in the future, that you can migrate instances from VMWare install to VMWare install while it's running. Thus you can migrate running instances from Machine A to Machine B. Down hardware A, do whatever upgrades are needed under the hood, migrate the instances back.
It's a relatively novel way to compete with LPAR's (or whatever the Mainframe speak is for that).
It's very, very impressive technology from what I've been told. Using it in conjunction with racks full of blade servers I'm told is the way to run an incredibly high density setup in a very flexible way and reliable way. I'd really like to try it at some point, if only because we have machines that sit 95% idle. I'd like to combine 3-4 of them onto a single machine (especially for services where they are simple to implement redundant backups: LDAP, SMTP, DNS, DHCP). Just setup a second machine doing pretty much exactly the same instances in the backup mode. It'd free up a ton of hardware that right now we are tying up so that the failure of one machine doesn't affect the rest of the services.
Kirby
Hmmm...I can't either. I can, however, start with the stuff that got WORSE. Like Bloat/Nag-ware, etc.
Embedded electronics is the next big thing, but I don't see MS on this platform taking off in a big way. CE just don't cut it in terms of efficiency, and when doing embedded software, efficiency is king. Remember, you've got much less power on your device, but you still have to achieve similar things to when you were programming on the PC. Come to think of it, it's a little like programming for the 286s.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those that know binary, and those that don't.
..competing against product without such. I think reliability of cars is a good example of this. American car companies didn't give a shit about reliability in the '70s and nearly got killed by the Japs.
Consumers are not stupid and don't like to be abused.
There simply is no compelling reason to use a subscription system over openoffice, unless someone threatens you with physical harm.
Personally, I think Microsoft purchased VPC because of their XBox division. XBox2 is going to be PowerPC based, and Microsoft probably wants backward compatibility with XBox. VPC is the perfect solution - it already has a fast x86-on-PowerPC emulation engine.
"What Microsoft really needs is some way of ensuring that software wears out at a similar speed to hardware."
I thought they already had that...
In fact, for anyone with a brain, their software wears out in about twenty minutes after installation...
Some of it wears out before being downloaded...
Some idiots said recently there wouldn't be another Microsoft any time soon.
I prefer to hope there won't be the CURRENT Microsoft some time soon...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
(There doesn't seem to be anyway to combine the Journal entry along with comment prefs in the same URL. Go slashcode!)
Nobody will ever need more than one case of air.
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Here's the link for SP3. And here's the statement from that page: "Because SQL Server service packs are cumulative, SP3a includes all fixes from previously released Service Pack 1 (SP1), Service Pack 2 (SP2), and Service Pack 3 (SP3). SP3a can be applied to an original installation or to one where SP1, SP2, or SP3 was previously applied.". Just to alleviate your doubts.
As to package management, I'm sure they could make it easier (e.g. web links on the install screen, prerequsite checkers), but it's not actually that hard.
Toast R Oven
I've been working in the MS world for quite a while now. I won't deny that it is frequently irritating, but .NET is a genuinely good product. My experience with java is limited (some JSP development, primarily under Tomcat), but it was uniformly very frustrating.
How do you compete with something that's free?
By providing something with a lower total cost. Putting aside any opinions on the quality of either alternative, you would have to agree that although it is possible to get 'free' water by lapping it up out of the gutter, it might be a better proposition to spend money and get something decent. So the way you compete with something that is free is to simply provide as much of a benefit over the free product as the cost at which you are selling it.
Microsoft represents the antithesis of empowering people through software - they want to trap customers in their proprietary environment, and make it as costly as possible to leave.
I don't really know where to begin with this. It may be difficult to migrate away from Microsoft software, but why would you expect this to be a particularly important concern for them. The truth is that they are in the business of selling software to people and those people buy the software because they believe it enables them to get the job done. Your view that the world is full of helpless retards that only use 'inferior' Microsoft software on their PCs because they have been unfairly 'trapped' by the evil empire is childish and a world away from the truth. I have both used and developed in various flavors of Windows and Linux, and I can say that in general my experience on Windows has been far superior and has enabled me to work far more efficiently.
Then why did RIM have to come out with the Blackberry? Why didn't Microsoft release software for a device like that? I'll tell you why - because Microsoft has never developed a "lightweight" or "simple" piece of software. They may have bought a few products which met that description, but they're incapable of developing such a beast.
Simple minded zealots sprouting unfounded crap like that are the single biggest threat to open source software. There are thousands of highly skilled and well paid developers at Microsoft, and I would have far greater confidence in their ability to write good software than many other groups. They have often missed oppourtunities in emerging markets, but this is not to say they will not compete in the future. See MSN Search, and the challenge they are now putting to google. You look at the XBox as a failure but they are a new player and already well established. Look at the amount of money spent on a single game (Halo 2) in such a short period of time.
While you can flippantly discard any of these pushes into new markets, I can assure you that Sony and Google do not do the same. It is clear that Microsoft are in a powerful position and have a great oppourtunity of executing in many markets, and it is completely foolish to dismiss them outright becuase of your own petty prejudices.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
:D
:x Then you start to realize that a great many people probably believe this crap.
;) It was already obvious before this article was even accepted how comical it was vs how accurate/useful it was. LOL
I'd post the relevant facts on this, but there have been more than a few posts already in this thread, I just had to get my own laugh in.
OMG this is hilariously funny.... for a few minutes anyway.
To one of the responses that says the same thing I am (market share vs decline in sales INCREASE) the OP even stated something about not understanding market share vs profits....
SIMPLY PUT:
Microsoft is still experiencing ANNUAL profit INCREASES (to say nothing of market share), but it just wasn't as big this last year as the year before. That does not in any way indicate that there is a declining market for Windows. >.>
OMG get a clue!
Also, in case anybody read this far.... notice that the mod that actually let the article up (timothy) even put it in the "look-out-that-carrot's-loaded" dept.
I wanted to develop for my Microsoft Smartphone. I installed VS2003 from a MSDN CD.
it worked.
I wanted to develop for GNOME. LUCKLY there was a webpage listing the files i needed. I had to download and compile half a dozen libaries. but some where not some didn't work. After a few hours I found a page with a list of the libaries which were known to work together. by the time I had a working enviroment I had over a gigs of compiler generated files. I didn't even try and get a DB going. egat - scary.
see my point here?
As a professional CE engineer, and an eMVP, I know better than most the install whoes of working with CE, but linux is no bed of roses either. been there done that. If you want to work with cutting edge tech, you will need to spend sometime updating you machine, thats the same with linux and CE/Windows Mobile.
Riki
www.embeddedfusion.com
"Maybe with some divine intervention, the next version of Microsoft's OS will actually be good." - Linus Torvalds
You see, even if Microsoft charges $5 per license to run CE on some embedded device which has a $10 microcontroller, they're still making the same profit per person as they would otherwise be making. sure, the profit per product is lower, but their total revenue stays positive.
Well, the article was discussing something more along the lines of IBM's Cell processor and some form of "dynamic, UPnP Beowulf cluster" of sorts. But, regardless, a couple things are certain at this point regarding hardware. Future hardware will be:
1.) Nearly free (as in: how much are you willing to pay for a 4-function calculator?)
2.) Disposable (think: old cell phones)
3.) Extremely small
4.) Universally compatible (various wireless standards, USB, UPnP, etc.)
So now we need software to run on all these tiny disposable devices. By this time, nearly all applications will use various forms of thin-client technology. (graphics rendered locally, etc.) Wireless Internet access (both on and off the "grid") will be fast and ubiquitous. So whether you are accessing your home data center or a corporate mainframe (which fits in an ATX-sized case..) or a hosted application residing halfway across the world, your means of interfacing will be small lower powered devices that don't get in your way. In such a world, there is no room for Windows. All basic software will be 100% free and commoditized because profit margins demand it and nobody will want to waste time reinventing wheels that have been perfected. Most people won't even know what an operating system is. All common-use software will also be free -- the kind of stuff you'll serve locally from your home data center. The rest will just be a highly rich and evolved Web. (think of where Google will be in say 5 years.. then think along the lines of: SVG + homogenized multimedia formats)
I'll put my bet on 10-15 years for the complete obsolescence of the consumer PC and 20 years for 95% of the world's software to be free and commoditized. Beyond that, we're talking about the stuff of SciFi.
"It's not like there's a huge inventory of Win CE software out there that absolutely must be run on these portable devices."t
.NET because they will be hunted down and killed if they don't.
yeah I just had a look through some sites:
www.smartphone.net
www.coolsmartphone.ne
www.airfagev.com
these guys are skirting the plug whole, compared of linux phone apps, ummm.. here: http://freshmeat.net/browse/1038/
game over microsoft!
"Their entire culture involves around theft, acquisition and intimidation."
your right! developers are scared, they are only using
"they've never been able to dominate any other industry"
"Expecting Microsoft to compete in a more open marketplace and win"
good point, look how they have been blow out of the water in the PDA/console market. when i go down to my local computer store they only stock one or two yellowed devices in the bargin bin. Linux is kicking their ASSES! have you seen how many PDA and consoles there are for linux!
riki
"Maybe with some divine intervention, the next version of Microsoft's OS will actually be good." - Linus Torvalds
>How do you compete with something that's free?
By providing something with a lower total cost.
Well then, good luck to Microsoft! The per-unit cost of Windows CE is going to have to be miniscule to compete with open source operating systems and software developed in-house by electronics giants like Sony and Matsushita. These companies will sell tens of millions of units, all no doubt based off code they've developed in-house and recycle from project to project. That will allow them to spread the cost of development over zillions of units. They may be willing to buy Win CE instead, for maybe 25 cents a unit, to slap into microwaves and remote controls, but I don't see that adding much in the way of profit to Microsoft's bottom line. Indeed, Microsoft would be lucky to make enough to pay for all the support those manufacturers will be likely to demand.
Microsoft, king of bloatware, is also going to find itself in competition with other vendors in the embedded OS space, like Wind River. They may find it more difficult to knock those guys off than it was to bump of players in the PC space like WordPerfect and Netscape.
Putting aside any opinions on the quality of either alternative, you would have to agree that although it is possible to get 'free' water by lapping it up out of the gutter, it might be a better proposition to spend money and get something decent.
Only if the solution you have to pay a per-unit tax on ends up being cheaper per-unit than some OSS / in-house solution. That might be the case for limited production runs, or for devices whose requirements outstrip the current capabilities of OSS. The problem for Microsoft is that as open source operating systems grow increasingly sophisticated the percentage of non-PC devices whose needs can't be addressed by OSS are going to continue to dwindle.
And in some cases paying for Windows CE would be like paying for gutter water. If a device doesn't need most of its capabilities, you're just adding on bloat and instability, plus a per-unit tax which does nothing to enhance your company's intellectual capital, and makes your product less competitive in the marketplace.
people buy the software because they believe it enables them to get the job done.
No, people buy *PC* software from Microsoft because it works with either the applications, with the data files or with the operating system they already use. There's absolutely no reason for those customers to prefer a Windows CE microwave or a Windows CE cell phone over one running Linux or BeOS or AmigaOS or whatever. In that space the consumers are going to weigh the price/performance of the device and make a decision. Right now when given a choice - for example in the PDA and cell phone market - consumers seem to be going with non-MS based alternatives at least as much as they are with the solution involving MS. All of this in spite of the fact Microsoft is by far the largest player in that space, and has poured hundreds of millions into developing and promoting Win CE. As with the console marketplace, Microsoft has certainly established itself as a presence, but hardly as a profitable one. If they're to transition to the post-PC future, they're going to need a product that can stand on its own merits. Not only has the market determined that Win CE isn't there yet, the direction the market seems to be headed in looks to marginalize Win CE even further.
Your view that the world is full of helpless retards that only use 'inferior' Microsoft software on their PCs because they have been unfairly 'trapped' by the evil empire is childish and a world away from the truth.
Nice strawman you're blowdrying there with all that hot air. Pity I never said that.
Simple minded zealots sprouting unfounded crap like that are the single biggest threat to open source software.
How is it "simple minded" or "unfounded" to point out that Microsoft totally and completely missed th
You can also use the native win ce databases. Much less overhead than having to install SQL CE on the client... here are some examples...
l = /library/en-us/wcedata5/html/wce50conmountingandun mountingadatabasevolume.aspm /search?hl=en&lr=&client=fire fox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=wince+v olume+database&btnG=Search
http://builder.com.com/5100-6373-1064551-2.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?ur
http://www.google.co
Linux market share is growing, and since all market shares must add up to exactly 100%, someone else must be declining
I think BSD is the name you're looking for.
They do execute well in other areas. IMHO Halo and the Xbox are good products, whatever their profitability.
The Xbox I can't bring down because from everything I hear, it is a good product, BUT Halo is a different story. Halo is not their's. It is the zombified product of Bungie which has been incorporated by Microsoft. I give it two years until Microsoft has gotten through shuttling that-which-was-once-Bungie throug its corporate digestive tract and turned it into shit. They won't turn out another Halo ever again. Wait for it.
Write some MS-bashing "article", submit to Slashdot - voilà, instant "fame". I distantly remember the days when slashdot wasn't overloaded with dupes and trash
Considering the FA hardly mentions Windows CE I think the poster's conclusion is a bit unbalanced. Most of the article witters on about Cell processors and Intel's attempt to move away from i386 architectures.
I think that's funny 'cause NT was their business /
educational OS, and now it seems poised to take over the entertainment center.
And one reason why Mono has so rapidly surpassed the open-source Java projects - .NET is just much nicer to program in.
Xenu loves you!
That was also the true point of NT (remember NT running on Alpha and PPC?), according to some guys a decade ago. Support for non-Intel platforms was nixed just in time for the first version of NT that reached significant market share. (They're not stupid at M$, they just like *MONEY*!)
Sounds sucky. Unfortunately, that seems par for the course WRT PDAs and embedded devices.
I underwent a similar experience with my first attempts at developing for Palm OS. I'm a big fan of Palm but really, the getting-up-and-running process was a bitch, that first time around.
Yes, improvements are in process -- Palm OS 6 is easier to develop for, PalmSource is developing an Eclipse-based primary IDE for Palm OS to act as an alternative to prc-tools/CodeWarrior, etc. I'm sure MS has similar improvements in the pipeline.
But, given that the first vendor with a truly easy-to-use and easy-to-understand toolchain is going to really take marketshare from its competitors, I've no idea why it's taken them all this long to get moving on the issue..
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Interesting read. The mamoth x86 code base is not just MS's legacy ... its ours.
Imagine the future where you buy an x86 "plug-in" to your Cell-based computer to run older apps; all newer .Net or Java apps get JIT'ed the first time you run them, then are fine. And you do this on your XBox.
Man, I hate it when the Air crashes and I get the Blue Face of Death!
That totally depends on the distribution, distributions such as debian or gentoo will let you install an app and all it's dependencies with a single command.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
My company is deploying to the field an application suite designed to run on Windows. There's a tablet form-factor Toughbook that handles the job more than adequately for about $4000 per unit. Since the application is GIS oriented, the built-in GPS unit on the Toughbook means that users don't have to connect to an external GPS.
As for running linux, I haven't tried it, but since it's a fairly standard laptop, you could probably do it. It would still be usable even without the touch screen since there's a keyboard too.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
Yea, I've heard that too, and it makes plenty of sense... but that's basically the server version of the same concept, isn't it?
What was somewhat new and interesting to me here was the 'Win32 compatability layer for Longhorn and future non-x86 platforms' concept. Intuitively the idea makes sense ( you can get VirtualPC for WindowsXP right now and run DOS or Linux or Windows98 on it, why not bundle some of that ability with a future OS ) but I hadn't seen it so clearly stated before, especially not as a desktop-user backwards compatability solution.
I'd buy that except for one little detail.
Have you ever tried to play a graphics-intensive game in VirtualPC ? Don't. "Fast" isn't the word I'd use in that context. "correct" and "useable" are even dubious.
Perhaps since there's only a single platform that they're targeting, they can do some special coding to translate GPU commands to the new platform, but... VPC doesn't do that kind of thing right now, and screen-drawing performance suffers greatly as a result. I think that use would take a lot of work... and the word is that XBox2 won't be backwards compatable, which I believe. If there were plans for XBox2 to be backwards compatable, don't you think MS would have said so by now? Sony has said the PS3 will be backwards compatable, why wouldn't M$ announce that if it were doing the same?
Microsoft products worked well and worked together, and they were bundled at lower prices than the competition. That isn't insignificant. Their success is rarely technology related, but it's hardly an accident. In life, there are only 2 keys for every success: ideas and execution. Other companies had better technology (or plans), but no one executed better than Microsoft.