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Financials Indicate Microsoft Prepping for War
SpaceAdmiral writes "Microsoft has surprised analysts by forecasting significantly higher expenses in the next fiscal year, an indication that the company might be getting ready to do battle with its online rivals. According to analyst Eugene Munster of Piper Jaffray, 'It looks like Microsoft is going to war with Google.'" From the article: "According to Mark Stahlman of Caris & Company, the fact that Microsoft plans to spend significantly more in 2007 was an indication of renewed aggressiveness in its competitive strategy and an indication that the company was returning to the kind of actions it exhibited before the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit in the mid- and late 1990's. 'It's pretty clear that Bill is running the company again,' Mr. Stahlman said, referring to Bill Gates, 'and they are going to remake the business. They are being much more combative and much more strategically managed.'"
Business / Microsoft
Spot the dinosaur
Mar 30th 2006 | REDMOND
From The Economist print edition
Microsoft’s core business is under threat from online software
IMAGE
RECENT advertisements for Microsoft show office workers as dinosaurs, stuck in a bygone era. Aptly, it is an accusation that some are now making about the software company itself.
Microsoft earns more than half its $40 billion or so of annual revenue—and the vast majority of its profits—on just two products: the Windows operating-system and Office, a collection of personal-computer (PC) applications including word-processing and spreadsheet programs. Both, however, are coming under threat from new technologies.
The pressure Microsoft is facing in its core businesses is similar to one confronted by IBM—another firm that was once synonymous with computing. At the beginning of the 1990s IBM had to face up to the shift from a computing world dominated by mainframes to one dotted by personal computers. In this new world hardware became a low-margin commodity and Microsoft’s operating system took the privileged position. Today, Microsoft still dominates the PC market. But like IBM before it, today’s giant knows that its position is under threat.
The threat to Microsoft comes from online applications, which are changing how people use computers. Rather than relying on an operating system and its associated application software—bought in a box from Microsoft, and then loaded onto a PC—computer users are increasingly able to call up the software they need over the internet. Just as Amazon, Google, eBay and other firms provide services via the web, software companies are now selling software as a subscription service that can be accessed via a web-browser. Salesforce.com, the best known example of this trend, offers salesforce management tools; other firms offer accounting and other back-office functions; there are even web-based word-processors and spreadsheets. This lowers the economic and technical barriers to entry for firms wanting to compete with Microsoft, as well as diluting the advantages the firm gets from controlling how the computer works.
These huge shifts in computing take a very long time, because there is so much inertia in the marketplace—the idea of online applications has taken years to get even this far. Microsoft is still in a position that most firms would kill for. Its two main products—Windows and Office—remain fabulously profitable quasi-monopolies. Even if online applications and open-source software make rapid progress, Microsoft would retain a powerful and profitable position for some time.
For all that, however, online applications clearly threaten the way Microsoft makes its money. Its licensing agreements are geared for a world where software is a physical product, purchased on discs, and paid for at once or in regular instalments. But its online competitors charge each user a subscription: some like Google are even supplying software as a free online service, financed by advertisements. Last month Google acquired the firm that created Writely, a popular online word-processing program that is an obvious potential competitor to Microsoft Word.
Online competitors have also mastered quick development and deployment times that Microsoft cannot match. Meanwhile open-source software—developed co-operatively and distributed free of charge—is also gaining ground. George Colony, the boss of Forrester, a technology-research firm, believes Microsoft faces the biggest challenge in the firm’s history: “Bill Gates knows how to compete with anyone who charges money for products,” he says, “but his head explodes whenever he has to go up against anyone who gives away product
Vista will be out in 2007... doesn't an increased in spending by Microsoft reflect marketing they'd have for a new OS?
Or maybe they are just planning on migrating services to Linux? Where their announced expenses 5-20% higher than expected?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I predict that I'll make double current salary next year... F33R M3, Human Resources!!!
Bugmenot is your friend
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Or they could be spending more money on patents
Or they could be spending more money on developing Vista
Or they don't really think they have a chance in their feud with the European union after all...
There are more options than "prepping up for war"...
Their expenses will be related to building out their online services infrastructure and shifting their business strategy to it. There was a good article in Fortune recently about this shift.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Oh yeah, abso-freaken-lutely, we have a product that is going to change the world. Everyone will bow in awe of our power and bug-less software and wonder how in the heck they survived so long without our new product...
Same old, same old. vaporware and fud and threats to keep people afraid to switch away.
From the end of TFA:
This may of course change in the future, but I somehow doubt they can touch Google or Yahoo. The whole race for the crown is about the search based ads, not about who uses which search engine. So Microsoft has not only to get a lot of users to use MSN search as their standard search engine, they also have to convince all the advertisers that their system works at least as good or better than those from Google or Yahoo/Overture.
When Microsoft entered a market late in the past, they always could leverage their market position. It was easier to use the already installed IE then to download another browser, it was easier to use Windows Media Player than to download and install RealPlayer or Quicktime. If Microsoft had no leverage in the market, they used their money: They bought shares in cable companies, started cooperations with mobile phone makers or massively subsidized XBOX/360.
But what could they use this time? Desktop search integrated into Vista? Standard search in IE7? Lower prices for advertisers? Most likely all, but nothing will give them a real advantage. They will have to really compete and innovate this time, and that is not something they are good at.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
How does one get from the fact that Microsoft is planning on spending more money this year than last to the assumption that they must be going to war with Google? If this was Google, everybody would be trying to figure out what new product they were going to come out with (Goobuntu, GInternet, etc). I've got a pretty low opinion of Microsoft, but I try to stick with justifiable reasons to dislike them, not jump to the worst possible conclusion every time they do (or plan to do) something.
I've always pictured the color of OS zealotry as a sort of bright flamingo pinkish hue
The own a browser.
First round, they tried to steer the web in their direction. Fortunatly open standards kept things under the public's control.
IE7 they're starting to get a little better supporting stuff like AJAX, and PNG transparencies. What i'm seeing is a shift in Microsoft from "Let's make all the rules" to "Let's adopt everything".
Not a long comment, but that's my thoughts on their strategy.
If they plan to go to war, it's already started. Just look at MS Live, xbox, origami, etc.
On the other hand, I imagine marketing, shipping, supporting, and even patching a new OS that will be installed on the majority of the world's newest computers will increase costs quite a bit for a company. Let's not forget IE7 and Office Live either.
'It's pretty clear that Bill is running the company again,'
/. and their desktop outfitted with three screens.
It's true.
And to increase productivity, everyone at Microsoft now has their homepages set to
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I fully expect this to get moderated down, but this is great news. Increased competition is almost universally good for consumers. Now, all we have to do is persuade Google to release an OS and an office suite to compete with MS on *their* home turf.
Gee, I saw recently that Google's market share for search is up again and so is Apple's share in mp3 players. Firefox has a climbing share in the web browser market. Microsoft can't dominate every market it enters. As a matter of fact, here lately they've been getting their ass kicked a lot. Does anyone think the original xbox would have sold near that many units if MS hadn't bought Bungie and not allowed them to ship for Mac and PC at the same time as they had planned? Instead we had a very cool game that would only play on xbox. The only way MS wins is by manipulating the free and open markets.
More details on this and other news at 11am.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
The last time I remember them doing any real marketing for their OS was when Windows 95 came out. They didn't really market any of the other OSes all that much. I think the only reason they will have to market this one is because there isn't really any new features, and the old version is pretty stable. Also, the fact that you need a high powered computer to run the new UI (the only new feature) means that they're won't be a lot of people buying it off the shelf, only people who buy new computers. You don't have to market it to the person buying a new computer, because they are going to buy windows anyway, and the only version offered will be Vista.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Developers: We can use your help.
According to recent rumors, Bill Gates is purchasing a Bradley Fighting Machine. He believes that it will provide Microsoft a leg-up in their war with Google. When asked about the situation, Larry Page responded with "we don't make forward looking statements." He was standing in front of an M-5 tank.
In other news, Google has announced the release of the F-22 Raptor Beta(TM) program which allows for anyone with an internet account to remotely control an F-22 fighter. Anti-war groups have expressed a fear that teenagers remotely flying armed warplanes could pose a threat to world peace. Google responded by stating that the weapons systems are locked out except when over the testing range at Latitude 47.6 by Longitude -122.1.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Maybe even three.
1. More money to lobbyists and politicians
2. More money for lawyers in more lawsuits and appeals
3. Start paying down the fines in EU that won't go away any other way.
As much as MS is considered evil, this is a GOOD thing. We've been pooh-poohing MS on their inability to innovate, and how they've been resting on their laurels since Ballmer took over as CEO (yeah yeah, some of you might say since Gates took over...). Now, if they can actually "get in the game," spend money on actual R&D, they can actually compete with the likes of Google -- hence, we all win -- software devs AND end users. Competition is good for customers with better products. Competition is also good cuz it makes us software developers more in demand.
Exciting times. Exciting times.
Microsoft's share price fell 11% today after their profits went up by "only" 16%, to $3bn in the last quarter.
Something tells me they can afford those "significantly higher expenses".
Oh wait... They already are our overlords and they suck at it. Oh, nevermind!!!
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Apple owns the new generation of users and now they make the fastest Windows PC. Buying a has always been the best value but now it can run legacy windows software, too.
Here are the issues, pick anyone:
1. Launch the most expensive product in your history (in terms of development dollars)
2. Try to prevent nearly-free server operating systems from eating your lunch
3. Pay off the EU fine (just a paltry $700 million or so)
4. Launch a new version of your flagship application (Office Vista?)
5. Stem the losses from your flagship gaming appliance (Xbox360)
6. Make your Longhorn into steak
7. Continue to avoid the wrath of various litigation efforts, some which you will lose...
And there are many more, but these are sufficient to need to build a war chest, Google's success notwithstanding.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
They have Vista to push and advertise next year, or is that not important anymore.
I bet with Vista (and Office?) being released in 2007 they're expecting a big boost in profits. They're going to use that extra revenue, as they always do, to fund their other departments, all losing money. It's the same beast, just getting bigger.
Developers: We can use your help.
It wouldn't be so bad if the stock wasn't flat to declining over the past five years.
But the lack of growth means Microsoft is having to spend more and more of its large amounts of cash on:
1) Dividend increases
2) Stock buybacks
When you have around 10-11 billion shares issued to fuel your growth over the past couple of decades that ends up being many, many billions of dollars the company needs to keep spending every year just to keep shareholders from dumping the company and putting their money in real growth companies, like Google.
The Xbox project has been the number one financial sore spot for the company for the past five years. The financial press has been wondering when a grownup is going to take charge up there in Redmond and clean house for the company. It sounds like Microsoft is finally starting that process.
The days of the company throwing billions of dollars at marketplace failures like the Xbox and Xbox 360 are going to be coming to an end. Microsoft's core business monopolies are now no longer just being chipped away at but under direct assault. It will be interesting to see Microsoft awoken. The Ballmer era of the past five years or so has had the company acting like a aging and bumbling fool.
Just trying to imagine Ballmers internal speech to prepear for 'the war' :-D
I learned about bugmenot from a similar post years ago and use it regularly.
Man, you really need that seminar!
And Ballmer shouting, "I love the smell of Vista in the morning. It smells like victory."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Classic slashdot... Microsoft says they will be spending more money next year, so we get articles formulating elaborate stories about Bill Gates taking over the company again and using his monopoly to break anti-trust laws and kill the little guy, etc, etc.
This is just random bullshit speculation, might it just be that microsoft is in the middle of some of the largest product launches in their history, with SQL server, new development tools, a huge new Operating system, new web browsers, and a new website www.live.com.
I suppose it would just be too logical that they might be spending money marketing and supporting all these huge new endeavors.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Might they be getting an ok to market in China next year?
Using Linux was an unmitigated disaster. Things that seem like absolutely basic functionality don't work right. I spent literally 40+ hours poring over online forums trying to figure out how to get pieces of software to work right together. OpenOffice pops up random dialog boxes when you try to save to a file share, Flash doesn't really work right on Linux under Firefox, Evolution doesn't like having its email repository stored on a share, etc, etc.
Then there are the user interface difficulties. Windows and OSX are the only 2 OSes I'm aware of where companies actually have done meaningful user testing to verify what works and what doesn't. Gnome and KDE are nice window managers, but they're just not set up right for office tasks. Sure I can sit around and change everything from the icons' sizes to the taskbar size, but who wants to spend days configuring their computer like that?
And don't even get me started on file associations (what program runs when you double-click on a file with a given extension). No matter what I tried, I couldn't get Gnome to let me change the file associations for files on an SMB share. And, it's absolutely opaque how to change them for regular files too without resorting to editing text files in /usr/share/blahblah.
As for this perceived threat from webapps, I don't think Microsoft should be worried at all. Even the mighty Google knows that trying to reimplement MS Office using Ajax would be an absolute disaster. And, think about it. How would I make my scanner scan files into Word? Does Javascript have an Ajax routine "useScanner()"? How about if I want to fax something to someone?
Personally, I dislike Microsoft's monopolist tactics. But, I have to admit, Windows is a better office OS than Linux (Gnome or KDE), and it's not even close. It's just that simple.
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Where is it? It would be nice if they pushed another OS on their site to beat out MS.
Linux and the BSDs' are too complicated and fractured by a million distributions and has driver problems.
They'll make IE7 good enough and integrate search into their desktop. The default web search will not be Google or Yahoo, but will be Microsoft Live. It will be difficult to replace and most people won't, turning their 90% desktop monopoly into a 90% search monopoly. Ads can be figured out later. They don't have to be particularly good if they have 90% of the eyeballs because that's the important metric anyway.
They'll do the same thing with the Web 2.0 stuff. It will only work properly on IE7. You can already see this starting with their email services that degrade Firefox to backwards compatability mode (as if Firefox were still catching up to IE6, HAH). Expect this behavior across their Live product line.
MSFT took a hammering today as it lost 11% of its value today - it remains to be seen if this is a permanent fall or not.
l ?.v=4[/url]
[url]http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060428/microsoft.htm
Almost makes MSFT look like a value stock... (That is, if you can evalutate MS on technical merits and not knee-jerk "Linux r00ls M$ SuX0rs!!!" criteria.)
However, I personally wonder if Mac OS X won't take a larger chunk out of MS in the coming future... What do you guys see in the crystal ball for Microsofts Future?
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Or just buy them outright!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Let's face it, if a 'bug' in Vista prevents browsers from visiting 'www.google.com', or asks you 'would you like to try MSN search instead?' or just puts a popup like 'Warning: accessing this site may expose your computer to malicious code', then google is dead. Since Microsoft knows the USDOJ will let them do anything they want, I wouldn't put it past them. If google sues for billions of dollars after they go bankrupt, it is a small price to pay to preserve the monopoly.
What a great idea! Wars always solve problems! Like the war on poverty, or the war on drugs, or the war on terror! Well, I guess the one problem they always solve is how to get rid of extra cash...
Could it have anything to do with this?
/ 28/1331210
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Mar 30th 2006 | REDMOND
This was published just under 11 months ago. Has anything significant changed with Microsoft yet? Not that I've noticed. Vista still hasn't shipped. Apple hasn't gained anything significant in market-share, and is shrinking by some estimates. Dell still sells the most name brand PC's. The Sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. And Microsoft has billions of profits each quarter.
The upshot? When someone predicts what's going to be happening soon in immutable print, when I look back after a year I'd like to see that some of it has really and significantly happened. Until then, I don't take these predictions very seriously, since they always seem to assume that the world won't change significantly, and Microsoft won't alter their behavior -- neither of which can be relied on.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not a wrong conclusion at all...merely a premature one.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
When asked what was best in life, Ballmer responded...
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!"
March 2006 isn't May 2007, 11 isn't 1, and "months" isn't "month."
"an indication that the company was returning to the kind of actions it exhibited before the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit in the mid- and late 1990's"
You realise of coarse the last lawsuit was only holding for 5 years, which means Microsoft has free reign to do whatever it wants since the start of this year
Number 1 could be a good thing since they are in the group pushing net neutrality.
127.0.0.1 localhost
search.msn.com google.com
GSH: Let me hear your war cry!
SB: Developers!
GSH:Bullshit, I didnt buy it!
SB: developers, Developers! Developers Developers Developers Developers DEVELOPERS!!!!!!
GSH: Bullshit! Sound off like you've got a pair!
SB: I WILL FUCKING KILL GOOGLE!!!
GSH: Work on it.
April 28th 2006 - March 30th 2006 = 11 months? :-)
I think the money are mostly being spent on marketing. Considering how it has worked in the past it has never been about better products, just marketing that could make an eskimo buy a refridgerator.
HTTP/1.1 400
Dunno, when I brought up BugMeNot in other threads I got modded flamebait.
It seems n00bs with mod points don't read the fucking faqs and need to feel important by modding people down, and when they see "BugMeNot" rather than fucking googling they assume you're insulting somebody and act in accordance with their ignorance and inferiority complexes. But then, that's just my guess.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
.......Ballmer's crack about trying to kill Google has some validity after all. Well, good luck to them on that front. I suspect we'll see who the real fucking pussy is now! (Hint: It's not Eric S.)
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
It seems that Microsft are seen as a country. They go and negotiate with foreign powers (not just China), they can walk over the laws of the land and effectivelt defeat the American government, and now they're going to war!
Is this a sign that they are too powerful?
The SCO funding rounds have nearly ended, SCO is going down on their FUD about Linux infringing on their rights.
So Microsoft will have to find a new fledging company that they'll fund/donate/"buy licenses from" to start a new round of high-profile litigation. Maybe against Google, maybe again against Linux somehow.. SUN maybe?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
I couldn't get Gnome to let me change the file associations for files on an SMB share. And, it's absolutely opaque how to change them for regular files too without resorting to editing text files in /usr/share/blahblah
:)
I'm not sure if you're explaining this right, or maybe there's some bizarre bug I've never seen in years of using Linux, but file assocations have nothing whatsoever to do with SMB shares. What program to launch when a file is opened is controlled by your window manager/desktop environment (Gnome) - and to Gnome, a local file is identical to a file hosted on an SMB share. About the only issue you might run into is permissioning, as some filesystems (FAT32) don't support the same sort of permissions that your Linux machine might expect (might explain your issue with Evolution).
As to how to change this for "regular" files (and again, keep in mind that to your machine a file hosted locally is no different than a file on an SMB share), at least in KDE (and I assume still in Gnome) it's the same sort of process as in Windows - right click on the file, there's a property sheet with a fairly obvious method to change it. No editing of text files whatsoever. The only time you get into this is if something goes haywire, which is exactly what can happen on a Windows system - except there you fix it up in the registry.
I may not be the person to answer your other questions, however - to me the lack of proper Flash support is a feature
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Going to war or preparing for rising energy costs like everyone else? MSFT is a huge company. If energy costs rise significantly, be sure that the cost of running the company will rise significantly as well. Power for servers/lights/etc. Flights for employees to conferences/meetings. If energy costs were to rise very quickly, I bet they'd even roll out a program to help employees cope with rising transportation costs.
I haven't read either the financial report or the entire analyst reaction, but I'd say it's a premature analysis to say they're going to war.
chairs! I remember when GM advertisement showed a cheesy car salesman and all I could think off was they were parodying themselves. Now MS does the same with "dinosaurs". They really need to get a marketing clue.
The real shit is going to hit the fan this summer. The neocons are going for broke, because the only way out is total control. There is going to be an expanded war in the mideast, and another domestic terror attack, promulgated by the neocons. There very well could be the bird flu hitting hard as well, or another pandemic thing (like the ever growing mumps epidemic, something like that). We are one month away from another killer hurricane season, and not even close to recovering from the last one. The economy with the US dollar is in a freefall, they have pulled out the stops to make it *look* like it isn't, but man, it is. They are having to cook the books to make it look like inflation isn't that bad, they have had top change job descriptions to make employment figures look palatable, the housing bubble is about to pop, several really large entrenched blue chips are hovering at bankruptcy, hardly any airlines left showing any profit whatsoever, they keep dropping stuff from the consumer price indices to make it look good, several outside nations are making noises about going to an euro based reserve currency instead of the US buck, and the illegal immigration issue is GOING to result in some serious backlash all over.
What MS does or doesn't do this year is going to be page B stuff. People are going to be wondering how to freeking exist once oil cracks 100$ a barrel and keeps climbing. If Iran's oil is taken off the market due to war(highly probable now given todays UN moves), and the rest of the mideast oil goes up in price severely from war level shipping insurance, and a few other oil producers decide that they would rather sell their oil elsewhere (think to asia), then we are en-screwed. People are not going to be in any rush to drop coin on any new MS stuff-or new computers for that matter, they will SIT on what they have now and just patch it and deal with it. When daddy's check dissolves, mommy doesn't get new furniture and junior doesn't get a new game console and daddy doesn't go and buy a new car. It ripples through the economy, energy supplies are the big kahuna, software is tertiary at best, especially when for most practical purposes, people already have software that is good enough for the purpose. Home users won't go for it, and businesses will just tell IT to stick with what they have for another year or two, to see how things shake out.
That's my best guess based on actions in the news the past several months to this morning.
Certainly not Steve Ballmers statement back in September: "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google."
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Almost makes MSFT look like a value stock...
All my Linux opinions aside, what is there about Microsoft that would project any growth? Vista is late and has had most of the mildly interesting features stripped out. The Office suite is about as bloated and ridiculous as you could possibly make word processing and spreadsheets. I don't see much for revenue there. I don't know if the Xbox has actually made any money yet. There was a bunch of noise about Groove and Ray Ozzie a while back, but we haven't seen anything come from that yet. AdCenter is just getting started, a little late. The only thing anybody seems moderately excited about it is IE7 (oh, and the fact the godaddy converted to Windows Servers).
While Microsoft may be a value stock based on previous performance, the competency of their leadership as businessment and the tremendous resources available, I wouldn't make any such judgements on their technical merits.
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Or rather they prepare to take significantly higher expenses due to losses in litigation they have entangeled themselves in.
The future is in beta
Before switching to Firefox, I would, on an irregular basis, have IE just decide to send me to their search engine instead of to the site I typed into the address bar. For a while I thought I made a typo, but eventually I started getting susicious. So, just to make sure I was not insane, I copied the address that the browser said it could not find, and pasted it back into the address bar. Tada! It would work.
This was not just on my machine, but others too. I couldn't be the only one that has had IE hijack my session, could I?
That can step on you and crush you if you dont watch out.
They are back in 'crush' mode apparently..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
None of the above. This is just the projected expense of Balmer's office for new furnuture, mostly chairs :)
#3 is only 1/2 of their EU troubles. That fine includes a DAILY component. Only a couple million a day, IIRC, but still. Also, there have been noises of the EU preventing Vista deployment.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Did anyone bother to read the 10-Q Microsoft released today? Or any analysts viewpoints? Or is it more exciting to pull analysis out of your behind?
Supporting? Dude ... didn't Microsoft invent the concept of Asynchronous Javascript and XML with there XMLHTTP / XMLHttpRequest?
*sigh*
This is a stupid fucking meme. I wish it would die.
Many web developers used tricks with javascript and hidden frames to implement "AJAX" (another stupid fucking meme) long before Microsoft implemented XMLHttpRequest. Microsoft developers working on the web-based version of MS-Outlook were using those techniques, as well; they asked the web development team to implement XMLHttpRequest, which a *lot* of people wanted, as it simplified the whole process.
Microsoft did *not* invent AJAX.
But they did make it easier.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Microsoft is going to war led by the newcomer Ray Ozzie. An internal memo he wrote was released last fall calling for a dramatic shift in the way Microsoft operates in order to compete with online services.
r netServicesDisruptio.htm
http://www.scripting.com/disruption/ozzie/TheInte
Its pretty long, but it spells out where Microsoft is trying to go.
Shares in Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) slid more than 11 percent on Friday, their biggest drop in more than five years, after the software giant said earnings would be hurt by increased investments aimed at fending off rivals such as Google Inc. ... The move shocked Wall Street, which had hoped to benefit from the company's biggest product releases in years, with its Vista operating system and Office 2007 scheduled for January. ... "This is still a company that is extremely profitable. What people are worried about is whether that ever flows through ... to the benefit of shareholders, or does the company spend that money," said Charles Di Bona, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.
No doubt disspointing reviews of Vista and DRM'd content are part of the fizzle.
The long predicted downward spiral has begun. Employees are leaving for greener fields, product sucks and the competition is better. It will only get worse for them. They had their chance to fix things back when they promissed to take care of security four (five?) years ago. Instead of fixing, they wasted their time and energy with more anti competitive junk like Bitblocker, Paladium and lock box media. Their efforts to expand into the server market flopped and so will their efforts to expand into the kinds of services they derided back in 2000. Such a spiral could not have happened to a nicer company.
The Microsoft idiots thought they were going to come out swinging and are surprised that people are tired of being punched in the nose.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
my goodness, they have never been any good at making money from anything but microsoft windows and microsoft office so they had better start preparing for war. linux is getting traction all over the world and the odf( open document format ) is starting to show a hint of the fact that having to ask microsoft for permission to read and write your business documents is getting 'real' old.
so if microsoft really really wants to actually make a profit outside of its current profitable markets( desktop os and office apps ), they had better prepare for a battle to the end. as it is, they have to start spending their cash on purchasing their own stock to keep the price from falling and doing a reverse split.
and by the way, it is very interesting that the one quarter they cut their r&d budget in half( freed up 3.4 billion ), the following quarter showed some nice big gains in a bunch of those money losing divisions. this quarter, they are back in the red. when are investors going to ask about microsofts fancy bookkeeping techniques? investors should start asking some questions or think about jumping off that ship as it heads into the sunset.
i can see bill gates putting on the war paint right about now,
calling for his sword and shield.
he's definitely taking control of the company once again,
probably shifting focus from his humanitarian efforts to operating his company.
in a few years time, i imagine the company will have created several new large revenue streams, as well as bolstering the old ones.
About 2M euro per day ?
At the software company I work for...
Right. A software company. Of course you and your company SHOULD be comfortable on Linux.
But for the other 97% out there, Linux is just nowhere near ready for desktop use.
(and I am no MSFT fanboy, I just think it's better for a large proportion of the population. And apparently, I am not alone. They have 85% of the desktop market for a reason other than just being a monopoly.)
Different distributions have different strengths and weaknesses. Package installation is not one of Fedora's strengths, and never has been. For that, the title goes to Debian and its derivatives (Ubuntu, in particular). So because your mission is different, I think you might do well to look at a different distribution, like Ubuntu.
Dude. That is his point. There shouldn't be mission level granularity. It should just work for some things. I have had similar experiences and I only use linux for development or web-based applications. As far as using it for desktop, forget it. People have jobs, families, wives and girlfriends. Linux is the biggest double-work creation system in the world. Think of all the times people are recreating the exact same problems nearly simultaneously. There is energy being lost to the universe. Some day that will change, but it doesn't appear to be any time soon.
This does make me laugh!
As we all know, it is only a matter of how much money you spend; not a matter of what the corporate vision is, not a matter of how much integrity (what integrity?) and knowledge (technical, that is, what knowledge?) you bring to the game.
Riiiight! Microsoft will win this one too. NOT!
They are dinosaurs. But, unlike dinosaurs, they are aware of their passing, and rage, rage against the dying of the light! But, once again, they will do anything, anything ANYTHING except change their basic philosophy. And that spells their doom.
Feel free to flame; time will prove me right...
I think you are one of the few balanced Linux users in this place, and it is very telling that in not being 100% behind the platform you are being derided for it. I too use Linux in the server space, and I too have maintained a Linux partition on my desktop PC for a while, since 2001. I too have yet to find a distribution that fits my desktop needs, despite having put many hours in over the years, in search of desktop liberation. I think I have tried about five different distributions, often going back to newer versions of ones I had previously dismissed in the hope of useful bug-fixes. I think I have sat through about twenty desktop Linux installations in that period, and that is not a good thing in my case. I have a pile of useless, outdated Mandrake CD's (spanning v.6 to v.10), several Ubuntu & Kubuntu CD's, a couple of Knoppix CD's (I know, it's more of a recovery OS), a set of Slackware CD's (was getting desperate then), two sets of Debian CD's and a copy of the (useless IMO) Suse Personal edition.
Reading the responses to your post reminded me of what someone said in the recent topic of 'Linux Snobs' : he was a 'noobie' (god I fucking hate that term) and he explained how he couldn't get the smug pedantic twats to help him with anything, no matter how far he went in trying to help them help him.
He pointed out that it all changed when he changed tactics. He started trolling. He noted that when he criticised Linux, people were tripping over themselves to disprove his assertions, in the process actually yielding the advice he needed.
Don't bother being too forgiving or courteous in trying to get the help you need here, I say 'Troll, Troll and Troll some more'. If it's the only thing that yields help from them, however indirect, then go for it.
Last fall, I was approached by, basically, a headhunter working for a service I signed up for a long time ago. This individual was representing an employment service recruiting for Microsoft's MSN division. Essentially, what I was told about the division was that they were doing massive hiring for MSN. The motivation for hiring was to compete directly with Google's online services, according to the headhunter.
So, Microsoft's personnel expenses for MSN are going way up. The thing is, I was being contacted because they were looking for about anyone who could code at all. I have no computer science, MIS, etc. degrees, but I do have a bit of experience and did reasonably well in some online coding competitions a couple years ago. I was, however, by no means among the elite in the competitions. The individual calling me was honest about this, and he said that Microsoft knew they were not going to get all-stars for every position. It sounded to me like Microsoft was going to be hiring hundreds of employees to work on MSN.
I notice in the article that MSN was a money-losing division. I'm curious how that's going to get any better under the circumstances. They're hiring so-so coders to work in a division that's already losing money to chase after Google's services. That doesn't sound like a winning plan to me.
.. they are provisioning search parties to go out and find all the customers they are losing.
Have gnu, will travel.
No matter how much money you have without the winning product or the winning marketing solution, the more time you spend in a market just more means the more money you lose, as microsoft has proven over the last decade.
Over the last few years microsoft has been trying to copy already successful players in new markets but has only succeeded in losing money with out even showing signs of gaining the winning market share.
To win it has to be the first to market not the runner up and for that it has to find the winning products before the competition and until it can or at least replace or supplant it's current management with people who can, all it will do is demonstrate yet again what happens to a software company that can't create products outside of what originally made it a success.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well, to be frank, most of your problems would be mostly solved by using Kubuntu and KDE. For anyone who cares about things like Samba shares and file associations, GNOME is certainly going to be a pain. KDE, however, makes such things easy to use and configure.
GNOME is turning into the system for those afraid of right-click menus and checkboxes. I switched to KDE (on Debian, BTW), and I have never looked back.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I wouldn't reply to myself, but this came to mind, and I think it's worth posting.
Your account demonstrates the nature of choice in the Linux world. You compare FC and GNOME to Windows, while I compare Debian/Kubuntu and KDE. Both FC/GNOME and Debian/KDE are Linux, but only Windows is Windows. Your experience with FC/GNOME was poor, but my experience with Debian/KDE is great, and far better than Windows. One can try Linux several different ways, and not all of them may be better than Windows, so one may decide that Linux is still poor in these areas, while actually they may just need to try the right Linux combo.
2c
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I appreciate where you're coming from, but I personally feel a bit awkward hearing people refer to Windows as a "usable" OS. Ultimately it depends on your definition of usability, but there are plenty of occasions, imho, where Windows (and applications built on it) quite seriously fails to be usable.
They range from the user banging their head against the wall having problems figuring out how to do something, through to basic things that have been known for ages... such as putting the more important things for the mouse to access near the edges and corners of the screen. More than 10 years after the last revolutionary Windows UI (Windows 95 in my mind), Windows still tends to arrange for borders to be on the edge pixels, meaning a user has to spend a lot more effort getting the mouse to a correct position to click. Third party Windows applications are frequently less usable (in my mind) because they strive to mimic the Microsoft Windows way of doing things, usually to avoid losing a consistency aspect which is probably as important.
I'm definitely not trying to claim that most Linux based desktops are any better. I just don't think it's completely appropriate to say that Windows is "usable" because many people happen to be trained to use it to some degree and it has better application and driver support, at least any more than a few linux distros being more "usable" because they have a more integrated and stable way of distributing third party packages. I'd consider all of these things as also being important for making a lot of decisions about how appropriate an OS will be for getting things done, but they shouldn't be grouped with usability.
I'm looking forward to the new Office 12 UI, which I hear is revolutionary on the UI front -- I haven't had an opportunity to see the beta's yet. I'm also hoping that Vista does something to fix a lot of the very basic usability issues that are duplicated in every Windows app... although I was hoping that before both XP and Win98 were released. What I do know is that Linux provides a more useful expert-user interface for the way I like to work, and that's one of several major reasons that I prefer to use it.
I remember the early stages of OS X. It was neither exceptionally awesome, nor was it very familiar. I hated it. I think that must have been around 10.1. By 10.2, I gave it another chance, and it seemed sufficiently awesome to invest the time in it. As I became more familiar with it, more of the awesomeness was revealed. I haven't had to go back to OS 9 for the longest time, and when I do (to play a few games on my OS 9 bootable machine), OS 9 just seems painful.
I would guess that we'll see the same phenomena as more windows users switch to dual booting Macs. As the become more familiar with OS X, they'll boot into windows less and less.
It could be the same for Linux desktop UIs, but they need a sufficient level of awesome to even get people to give them a fair try out.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Actually, I personally don't need great growth in my portfolio. But then again my investing style involves picking undervalued companies that pay a good dividend payout and holding them for a long time for the dividend yield, I am not so much into "Buy Low, Sell High" as I am into "Buy and Hold". But that's just my style.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
That post title promised quite a bit more than the article delivered didn't it?
heh.. microsoft going to war. with who? china?
who do you think would win?
"Gnome and KDE are a different story. It's not just familiarity. It's the fact that they have serious bugs and problems that affect everyday users and make using them really hard."
"Just installing the thing and getting a good set of apps on it took about 8 hours. I followed a guide posted online. It worked well, but that's 8 hours I'll never get back."
And prior to that, he was imploring the zea^h^h^h community to be fair:
"How about instead of moderating my post as "flamebait", giving me some insight into how I'm wrong. To be clear, I *WANT* to use Linux as my desktop. I've used Linux for development purposes since 1995, and I'm a big fan of open source. I'm not trying to start a flamewar; I'm trying to understand how we could have a meaningful alternative to Linux."
And, though I'm not sure why I am arguing with someone called Jordan, here's what he started out by saying, many many posts ago:
"Using Linux was an unmitigated disaster. Things that seem like absolutely basic functionality don't work right. I spent literally 40+ hours poring over online forums trying to figure out how to get pieces of software to work right together. OpenOffice pops up random dialog boxes when you try to save to a file share, Flash doesn't really work right on Linux under Firefox, Evolution doesn't like having its email repository stored on a share, etc, etc."
"Things that seem like absolutely basic functionality don't work right. I spent literally 40+ hours poring over online forums trying to figure out how to get pieces of software to work right together. OpenOffice pops up random dialog boxes when you try to save to a file share, Flash doesn't really work right on Linux under Firefox, Evolution doesn't like having its email repository stored on a share, etc, etc."
In other words he is getting help because he has dared to be critical of The One True OS. They weren't 'just answering his question.' They had to have it squeezed and punched and trampled out of them.
"but then again, Linux itself is slowly becomeing "the man", so keep on fighting I guess."
Of course I don't think Linux is 'the man', the problem with Linux is not Linux, it is, wait for it Jordan... the fan-base.
My, how short memories are!
Every three to five years, out comes Chairman Bill on his WarHorse with the same, tired, old rallying cry, "We're remaking the business!"
Wasn't that the warcry for WindowsXP? DotWet?
But finally, perhaps, MS's shareholders are starting to wake up saying, "Hey! This sounds a tad familiar..."
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
Or it could just mean all those rumors of the need to rework the new windows again are actually true.
Besides I'd preffer MS to spend billions on R&D instead of billions on marketing their products to pointy haired bosses.
Think Deeply.
I used Mandrake linux with open office v1 and the mozilla suite for over two years as my deesktop OS at work. I never had any problems communicating with the windows users or doing my work.
I see a lot of small companies that are trying to conserve cash deploy linux as the desktop OS. KDE can function exactly like the Windows UI. Open Office for word processing and spread sheets. Thunderbird for email. CGIs running on Apache for internal inventory management or other business related software. It is cheaper for them to pay a unix admin than all the upfront costs of Microsoft solutions. And then they don't have to deal with licensing or virii.
It's something that Microsoft and numerous other companies didn't have to deal with in the past. Think: if Sony had put rootkits in pre-internet, how soon would word have spread?
Look at the whole SCO fiasco. It wasn't the old mainstream print media that did the real investigating, it was geeks doing blogging.
picking undervalued companies that pay a good dividend payout and holding them for a long time for the dividend yield
I didn't think Microsoft's dividend payout was that great to start with and with them pouring money into R&D it's unlikely it will get better. They have lost the tech community and they are starting to lose traction in the business arena that is waking up to the folly of spending money on useless upgrades. It's hard for me to see them as undervalued with the amount of competition in the tech sector and their lack of innovation, but I'm not an investing analyst...
Find coupons in Greeley
Now, let's see you do the opposite...export NFS and SMB shares from a Windows box and not spend $5,000 on the task. And keep your server up for more than 7 or 8 days at a time.
I'm not meaning to blast you, but I notice that a lot of the criticism of *NIX is that folks are having trouble setting up services that are damned near impossible or prohibitively expensive (or even completely unavailable) on Windows.
By the way, I'm a graphic artist who also does video/audio production and I'm finding, after 8 years of struggling to massage Windows into a usable system in my multi-platform workflow, that it just doesn't have the beans that Mac and *NIX have for doing serious publishing work or serious audio/video production. My partner, for example, can't play .wmv content on her Win2K box (and WinXP will not help here, it's even worse) because two or more of the numerous codecs we need to do production conflict with each other under Windows and the audio portion is screwed up. Ironicially, I have to play .wmv content on my Linux workstation for her to view. Our main publishing tools for Windows, QuarkXPress and InDesign, are warmed-over ports of their Mac versions and lack a couple of key features that would make Windows publishing just as easy as it is on the Mac. Even my Mac and Linux workstations have system-wide color management that most all software vendors agree upon and utilize, rather than the Balkanized mess that characterizes what Windows currently throws at the hapless user trying to do pro-level work.
8. Profit!!!!!
Funny how uSoft gets to explain, repeatedly, in courts _around_the_world_, how they manage to get to step 8 after going through steps 1-7.
I knew something was wrong with that picture. Nice 'shop though.
/ gates_howiwork_fortune/bill_gates_400.jpg
http://i.cnn.net/money/2006/03/30/news/newsmakers
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
Been a linux user for many years. Was originally an Apple][ user. You know, the five thousand dollar machine that sported a huge 14K....as in thousand bytes of RAM, NO hard drive, and 5-1/4 inch floppies that ran in separate drives that cost half a grand apiece!
Boy was I happy to get an IBM clone to use. If now had been then, we still would be using Apple]['s, only now the 'plus' ranks would be something like Apple][+++++. IBM would have not made the mistake of 'open sourcing' its motherboard and would still cost many thousands of dollars. IBM's creation of the OS/2 - PS/2 combination of hardware dependant software would have dominated the business world and gaming as we know it would have never happened for the IBM simply because in those days OS/2 sold for over eight hundred dollars in 1982 money. PS/2's went up steeply from there. As it was, the clone revolution brought computers to the masses, computer gaming spread it to homes and lured young people to computing. Copy protection was defeated by programs like 'Master Key' and others. Computing was free as in beer. The business software programs always had protection, but better competition then made them better, leaner, and faster. The clone revolution also created the frankenstein monster called micro$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Bill Gates was huckster who took a fifty grand legacy from his mother and bought the rights to the old
CP/M alternative operating system for Apple ]['s. He had it made into a simple operating system for IBM's new PC and was in the right place at the right time. He became a contractor for IBM and his higrade software that somebody else wrote became DOS 1.0. Later, IBM, hearing the success of Xerox PARC, did research into GUI's. The project was a collaboration between IBM programmers and Gate's Microsoft. Just about when the product was nearing some kind of readiness, Gates pulled out of the project and left IBM hanging. That was the second doublecross. Gates then took his 'share' of the collaborative work and had it worked on a couple of years more, secretly with a lot of 'vaporware' non releases and 'Windows' was the result. I have every release of windows that ever came out. Somebody suggested that the way that windows would succeed would be if it played games, did sound right, and sold for fifty dollars. That is exactly what Gates did with Windows95, the product that made him the billionaire he is today.
Windows has become fat on the inertia, ignorance, apathy and complacency of the American computer consumer. In marketing to the masses, programming has been de-emphasized to the point of disappearance.
GWBasic was a staple of clone DOS's. Basic was always part of a DOS and the early Windows' systems. Try to find it now! WinXP has become a bloated nightmare of a system that computer users are not encouraged to delve too deeply into. Understand the follow on products will make this discouragement mandatory, and spyware and data miners a permanent and onerous 'feature'. DRM, oppressive enough in Win2K, can barely be turned off in XP. I do not care for 'music', especially the raucous trash that is called 'music' these days. At least long ago, music was about and for the use of people. This leads me to the present day.
I found that my XP on my laptop was suddenly behaving strangely, so tried a 'chkdsk' command on the disk.
Microsoft had that wired, had found a way around my firewall and into this machine. I could not chkdsk that machine from windowsXP. Since the file system in XP is 'patchedNT', only windows can get into it for deep checking as micro$$$ maintains an 'off the books' set of 'file attributes' and manages files with it out of the reach of other operating systems for now, although that is changing as there are 'NT projects' that are working on the problems even if they have to stay a couple jumps ahead of the jackbooted gestapo that enforces our digital dark ages today. I was to find that even though I had supposedly turned off the automatic