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Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe
prostoalex writes "A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there,' News.com reports. Europe will see a total of 1.2 mln paychecks thanks to the new operating system: 'In the six countries studied, more than 150,000 IT companies will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista in 2007 and will employ 400,000 people, IDC said. Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista.'"
Business will not be "upgrading" if it requires even more staff to admin Vista!
A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there
That's like saying hurricane Katrina was a boon to the New Orleans economy, as it instantly created thousands of search & rescue, demolition, rebuilding and emergency management jobs.
You can spin anything any way you like.
Microsoft placates to populous to try to pressure EU to stop suing them for monopolistic practices. Could this read any more like a spin piece to deflect from the EU lawsuit stuff?
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Or is it just an attempt to derail any European plans to charge them with more anti-trust violations since MS is helping their economy? I just don't see the point here.
Businesses are already overwhelmed by the costs of administering Windows, and the sad thing is, Microsoft makes Windows admins re-learn everything every few years because they change the One True Way to manage a network. They say they're trying to make things better, but it's the same problem with developing for MS platforms: everything changes every few years.
Vista is so complex that it's going to be a nightmare to try to get a handle on it. These new jobs are glaziers making glass for windows broken by boys throwing rocks. False industry, and a burden on resources. These people could be doing something productive but instead they'll be put to work holding Vista together.
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
Clearly these "companies [that] will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista" are ones that would have been doing the same with XP.
Same goes for those that "will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista." Because previously they were using XP.
Vista brings nothing to Europe, but this is just about the EU actually making a stand against Microsoft's illegal actions.
Having 650,000 people chasing around doing things that do not need to be done is *not* good for the economy unless the end result is that production is greater (over the whole economy) than the gain that could be made of the alternative use of their time.
Now while I could probably be convinced that Windows Vista has _some_ productivity benefits over current systems I doubt it's really that large. In many cases the net contribution of these 650k people is going to be in fact negative as their disruption and need to prove their own continued usefullness actually decreases productivity of society as a whole - fixing things that aren't broken for example.
Beep beep.
You sir, beat me to that punchline... Why the A/C?
I am d3matt
Does the study state the decline in jobs for XP related positions? I think it evens itself out in the end...
According to the article, from what I could tell the jobs were all just about upgrading hardware and software. There was no discussion about unique capabilities of Vista spawning whole new industries or applications.
If I were an IT decision-maker in Europe I might read this differently. Hmmm, 50,000 jobs is a lot of Euros. What exactly are we getting for that huge expenditure? Maybe we should think a little more carefully about doing this upgrade and consider the alternatives.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
If that were the case, it would be a boon to India's economy, not Europe's.
They are an orginisation attempting to make money with content including copyrighted material, which the copyright holders are legally entitled to recompense. But their business model is more like the modern day equivalent of a tv station, so they should be paying in a similar way to how tv stations pay for their use of copyrighted material.
I think you've confused marketeers with economists. Economists (at least the smart ones) ask a fundemnetal question:
This activity occurs at the expense of what?
Evert transaction occurs at the expense of another - if I buy a sweater then I don't buy a TV. You can't just look at any one action but need to look at the impact of that action.
Politicians and marketeers trumpet job creation - those pork barrel projects - they create jobs and pump taxes back into the economy (which I will use to buy more votes) - forget what the original taxpayer might have done with the nmoney had we not taken it in taxes; spent some percent running the government (a deadweight load of sorts) and actually put less back in then we took out.
If Vista makes companies more productive then they can create more jobs - if not then teh net effect is zero (or less because of switching costs)
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
for the companies that buy it.
If Vista makes companies more productive then they can create more jobs
...) That kind of job-cutting could fit in the Creative Destruction model of economics, which is a bit different from the parable of the broken window, I think.
I was going to take it a step further: shouldn't the more productive companies be able to cut jobs because they can produce the same output with fewer people? (Yeah, ok, I know this is a stretch for something like Vista, but it was someone else's fantasy to start
Still, I'm sure M$ would not have paid for a study that produced the headline "Vista to Cost 50,000 Jobs in Yerp".
You are so wrong. You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. Absolutely w/o computers. You would understand why the boom happened really: computer market stabilized, became commodity and business at large went from paper-based work flow to computer-based one. In fact, computers now allow small companies to increase business volumes: only because bureaucracy is magnitude cheaper now. Many small/private businesses were often running into NOT limit of productivity - but inability to book all orders properly. Now they can. Computers made that easy.
Though I hardly expect the average underage offsprings of computer era - which are made majority of /. readers /posters - to really understand what really computer and data networks did for small/middle/big companies. We already take all the goods for granted.
Just to give one example, especially important to USA with its large populace of public companies. Before computers came, public companies were really run by few people close to board of directors who have had slight majority of shares. For most of little/private investors it didn't made much of a reason to fly across continent just to participate in meeting/voting regarding some current maters. Now, with advent of computers networks, anyone with no matter how small share of company, can participate in voting - remotely & cheaply. That meant to the public companies whole a lot. Exec officers are now under more scrutiny, since large number of small investors really play role: sum of their votes often is large enough to influence decision making. The sum, to calculate before computers came, was impossible.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
So Vista will cost companies 2.5 billion Euros (50k employers at 50k Euro/each)
How is spending an additional 2.5 Billion Euro a good thing?
Or did they do this to draw away from the 5 Billion (100k new jobs) later in the article.
That 5 Billion is money that can't be spent on other things, is it really a good idea to flaunt how much vista is going to cost us?
You just need to be asked to run small company with all bureaucracy done on paper with typewriter. . . Though I hardly expect the average underage offsprings of computer era - which are made majority of /. readers /posters - to really understand what really computer and data networks did for small/middle/big companies.
I've been running small businesses since well before the MITS Altair was introduced. I've hand wired vacuum tube bistable multivibrators. As a child I learned to type on a Salvation Army Remington. I'm no disco era baby.
Since I not only run small businesses, but often do so as a sole propriator (or on a bonus basis when running someone else's) I see the money flowing out of my pocket. I know where it goes and I know what it buys me.
That's why I'm running Linux on a six year old box (which I will continue to run until it physically dies beyond repair) and will not be "buying" Vista.
God bless the personal computer and its many peripherals, but the fact that computers can be a financial advantage is not the same thing as saying that all money spent on computers confers such an advantage.
KFG
HAHA, I was thinking the same. This is an absurd conclusion. The money spent internally by companies trying to make the new version of windows work could be spent externally on money making pursuits. And actually grow the company, raise profits, benefit employees. Instead they are mired in an economic stalemate.
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
To be explicit: In the Broken Window fallacy wealth is destroyed because the window is broken. In the "Vista fallacy" wealth is destroyed because peoples' (users', sys admins') knowledge of their OS is broken.
You've gotta admire the spin though.
Actually it works now, as someone set up a redirect from the 'Parable of the broken window/' article to the 'Parable of the broken window' article on wikipedia. Sometimes the wiki software is a bit too pedantic.
Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe
Sounds like an army of IT workers supposed to assist Europe's migration to GNU/Linux...
If I was in the Bush family, I could pass nuclear physics by pissing out the window in the morning, or are you trying to claim that the Shrub got where he has without the help of family and friends in high places?