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Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD?
walterbyrd writes "Linux Journal has published an article by Glyn Moody, about the Microsoft sponsored study: The Economic Impact of Microsoft Windows Vista (pdf). Apparently Moody feels that the economic effects of MS-Vista being delayed in Europe would not be as dire as Microsoft would have the world believe." From the article: "The implication is that the European Commission would be crazy to jeopardize these wonderful benefits by clipping the wings of this digital golden goose, or even grounding it completely. The white paper looks tremendously professional, and is filled with tables, bar and pie charts; it has suitably serious discussions of methodology, and even introduces a few measured caveats: who could doubt its conclusions? What makes this FUD so impressive is that this attention to detail obscures the sleight of hand that is going on here. The white paper may predict sales by the "Microsoft ecosystem" of over $40 billion in six of Europe's biggest economies, but what this figure hides is the fact that income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe."
You would've expected a global economic meltdown by now.
But it's Genuine Microsoft FUD!
Isn't that a bit like saying "Rembrandt's Masterpiece of Art"? There are so many to choose from, each one brilliant and unique in its own way.
Unless the title is referring to the piece of work a journeyman turns in to become a master craftsmen, in which case he's scaring me.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
It's wealth movement.
Deleted
It is not that I am scared of new programs and technology, but why do we need it? What can we do better with Vista that we can't do today? Except from gamers that have to upgrade to use the latest features in their graphic card.
Of course the artificial need for upgrade will generate some business for those who do the upgrades and those who sells the licenses, but then again I don't really see anyone their existing systems. At a certain point, people will choose to intall Vista instead of 2003 server or XP as their standard client or server package.
Microsoft will delay shipping Vista to the EU until after SP1 this means European organisations will
1) Not have the "benefits" of learning about the early security holes
2) Not have the "advantage" of paying the launch list price, they'll have to wait until Microsoft slash prices as Vista doesn't fly
3) Have a mature support market to fall back on
4) More time to work out if its actually worth it
Brilliant, its like testing something dangerous on lab rats but we get to use Americans instead.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I know you are trolling, but no company inherently deserves to make money. Monopolists who engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior especially do not deserve to make money. Europe should puts its $40 Billion behind an open source operating system and see the real benefit of spending money on something that gives you back real returns, not just returns to Microsoft's coffers. In summary, the American company Microsoft has no inherent right to do business in Europe and if Microsoft continues to break the rules here and abroad they can expect to be tossed aside. I, for one, welcome the time when real competition returns to the computer software OS marketplace. As it is, Microsoft sits on its laurels and just expects people to buy Vista no matter how shitty and bug-laden it is.
FTA: "As the paper itself mentions, half of this cost is down to the hardware." Sounding obvious, I don't see the need of new hardware as innovation. On the contrary. If you need to buy new hardware, it's a cost to the consumer and a cost to the environment. Vista (or any other OS) having higher hardware requirements is 'bad' news. The broken window fallacy was linked in a previous /. article. Would be interesting to take Vista impact and view it from a GPI point of view.
Just wanted to quote "As far as I can tell, the phrases "free software" and "open source" are not mentioned once in the white paper." I don't think I have anything useful to add. Commercial software is not a bad thing in itself, but you must evaluate the TCO and ROI when comparing software (including OS).
Animoog.org
Also, who thinks a report looks professional because it has pie and bar charts? If I see pie and bar charts, I think: business-school know-nothing bullshit.
Europe should puts its $40 Billion behind an open source operating system
Thereby creating another monopoly.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
The white paper may predict sales by the "Microsoft ecosystem" of over $40 billion in six of Europe's biggest economies
If I were an EU IT purchaser, or bean-counter, or CIO, this number would give me pause. It might get me to thinking if there was a better alternative. It might convince me to do a thorough analysis of the benefits of Vista relative to its enormous price tag. In short, this could backfire bigtime!
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Wow, hit Slashdot for the first time today and surprise surprise, its the daily MS bitching thread.
I challenge everyone to take 80% of the time they spend complaining about Microsoft and devote it to something else such as contributing to an OSS project.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
What "Anti-M$ FUD" ? FUD stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", while even you admitted that the claim "income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe" is a fact:
So tell me. What is this "Anti-M$ FUD" you are talking about ?
But a nice attempt to discredit a factual statement with an appeal to ridicule nonetheless.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
According to the information in the pdf file the author was someone named 'akotsopoulus'.
a sp?AgencyID=9&city=95&qid=-1
A quick google does turn up someone with that name working for a PR firm called Brodeur Worldwide in Boston. A coincidence?'
http://www.prfirms.org/findafirm/company_details.
Take a look at this Microsoft Vista demo. What would you call it? FUD? Is this the technology that will compete and beat OS X Leopard?
Since MSFT cannot show the first thing anyone would want to know about Vista, i.e., whether productivity improvements (if any) justify its adoption, they focus on the nebulous and easily fudged economic impact. By this criterion, we can say anything, e.g., with its hundreds of billions of dollars of economic impact, the war in Iraq is a huge success.
Monopolists who engage in illegal anti-competitive behavior especially do not deserve to make money.
Illegal, anti-competitive behavior? So what if Microsoft's behavior is "illegal"? During the prohibition era, alcohol was illegal. Legal and illegal often have nothing to do with right and wrong. As for 'anti-competitive', what's that even mean? No one has a problem if Pepsi offers a lower price to a vendor in exchange for an agreement from the vendor to stop selling Coke products. But when a company captures enough of the market, suddenly that behavior is illegal?
Why do consumers think they are entitled to competition? Companies are not entitled to a lack of competition. What makes consumers so special? Aren't companies and consumers just groups of people, who all have the same rights? Sometimes there's only one buyer, sometimes there's only one seller. Neither side is entitled to more buyers or more sellers.
the American company Microsoft has no inherent right to do business in Europe
Why not? Business is just peaceful, voluntary behavior between individuals. What makes Europe, or America, think they have the right to violently intervene in the market? Make no mistake, that's what anti-trust laws are -- threats of violent against any big company who dares to use the same peaceful tactics that smaller companies use.
As it is, Microsoft sits on its laurels and just expects people to buy Vista no matter how shitty and bug-laden it is.
Blame the consumers; nothing prevents them from buying a Mac or installing Linux. They simply choose not to.
"For a company to make money, it costs consumers money."
While this may seem obvious to you, it's a fact that most proponents of intellectual 'property' in general prefer to utterly ignore.
They get a much more compelling argument if they say 'we can create X amount of wealth in your economy if you give us monopoly rights', instead of 'take X amount of money from everyone else and give it to us so we make more money'.
It may amount to the same thing, but the presentation is important.
See, as long as they can hide the actual cost they dont have to justify it, nor will the public and politicians question why these specific costs give so little value for the money.
I mean, how would it look if they had to justify a cost of $40 billion of what is essentially public funding and produce something that can barely compete with free opensource software? That'd buy a lot of healthcare, education or infrastructure, were those resources spent elsewhere instead.
"Thank goodness we have guys like this to point out these secrets of the Economy."
With the amount of willful ignorance and intentional misdirection going on among the IP related lobbyist crowds, unfortunately it does seem necessary.
A poster on the linked page (http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000097) gave the best possible reply, IMHO:
k en_window") to be significant?
"How does it help?
Submitted by Bozikins (not verified) on Wed, 2006-09-20 17:58.
Why is it beneficial to anyone that a new operating system will require 100,000 new jobs to support it - couldn't they be better employed improving the human condition? Should we consider the parable of the broken Windows mentioned elsewhere ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_bro
"
If your not familiar with the broken window parable, follow the wiki link-perfect reply!
I was not aware of the broken window parable until just a few minutes ago, thus fell enlightened;It is a good day for me!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Yeah, when everyone knows it's not creation, it's evolution :oP
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
Countries around the world currently have for the most part Windows XP, and a certain amount of claims to assets at their disposal (in other words known as cash).
We can limit the discussion to the _wealthier_ segments of society, on the assumption that poor or even average-income people and companies will not upgrade as their current system works well, and if they are going to buy a new computer, the money they spend on Vista would otherwise have been spent on Windows XP.
Typically these two groups (individuals and companies/organisations) would channel these assets in many ways - consumers might buy iPods for them, or food or clothes, or entertainment products. These are people with decent disposable incomes, after all. Companies might invest it, or pay it out to shareholders, or spend it on acquisitions (in which case it would go partially to investment bankers, partially to shareholders etc). Since we are talking about wealthy companies, they would typically transfer it to research, or IT, or bonuses, or corporate actions people.
When Vista is introduced, they would instead spend a large part of this on IT personnel (I would think actually much more than the software cost) (note: or they could spend it on whippings for the current ones), and a good portion of it would go to Microsoft, which also happens to be overseas.
One way to imagine this to be a benefit to Europe would be if Vista increases future productivity. Essentially, that going forward, people will be able to finish tasks quicker, be more productive, IT maintenance will be easier, etc. I don't think this is likely to be the case though. Still, possible.
One way to think of it as a 'benefit' could be in the form of income redistribution - all the cash that would otherwise go to some bits of society (those that wealthy companies typically pay money to) would instead go to IT people and Microsoft. Conceivably, it could in theory be that the companies would hire lots of unemployed people for their IT work, possibly increasing their skillset in the process.
It does matter a bit that some of it goes to the US however - the Microsoftians or their dependents are less likely to spend it on UK goods than they are on US goods (i.e. not a perfect match of £1 - £1 more purchases), so it would probably affect the exchange slightly. Meaning, importing stuff from any country could be slightly more expensive for us, and other countries could find our stuff comparatively cheaper. Of course, the impact depends on the size of the money flows.
Of course, there's plenty of ways you could argue it would NOT be a benefit - you could say that e.g. a construction company would be better off transferring the cash to a materials researcher which would again increase the domestic skillset than to Microsoft/IT department - or, that people spending cash on mergers & acquisitions means rich bankers get more cash which they spend on luxury aircraft which are built by companies which do cutting edge research which. oh.. phew. Or they could spend it on ice statues of Michelangelo's David. I would maybe even think there could be somewhat more likely not to be.
Bottom line: It's too simple to say that it's definitely negative, it's a change with a cascade of consequences. I'd maybe think those consequences are more negative than the alternative though - but on the other hand - maybe there are intangible benefits to people being exposed to new IT systems? Difficult to say. The problem with economics is that there's no 'end client'.
It's not even so much that, but when buying a brand name computer, I can't really get away buying a computer without subsidizing MS with another license fee.
they have taken it to completely new levels. they are so far off the scale the world lacks the tecnology for instruments that can actually measure it
...if everyone gets to own it in the FOSS way. Two different beasts in this discussion, even though it's all about software. There are just so many ways to build a system now with FOSS, and with various degrees of cost from free as in beer to expensive, that it is doubtful any one system or way or pricing level will ever become dominant like MS has become, and being open, you can't get locked in, in the same manner. Here's an opportunity for europe-say-to only drop 5 billion on mass adoption of FOSS, and save the other 35 billion to use in other areas.
Open source leads to open standards as well, and that is a critical issue now, especially with governments and business. A document you make today with open standards will still be readable for free any number of years from now.
Look at that reference in the latest vista candidate article, MS will still hose any other system you have on the disk, on purpose, if you go to install it(guru tweaking not applicable, I mean for joe regular). What would they do if it was the opposite on purpose? That's the different mindset we are facing, MS is their way or the highway,their monopoly status will remain and it will be serious folding money no matter what you are talking about, or FOSS which is primarily free and Free for the most part. A monopoly (note: a monopoly does not mean 100% when speaking legally) signifies abuse in the market place, as in "costs you money" with little recourse, then it becomes an abusive monopoly and starts to get into the illegal areas, which they have been provbven to have done. and it wasn't an accident either.
That's one of the main issues if you use the word monopoly as it relates to current business practices, abusive behavior leading to your wallet getting lighter. MS is saying if you don't stick to their monopoly expensive products it will cost you serious money, that's the FUD part, because STICKING with them costs you serious folding money, and for most purposes today, there is no longer a need. For some, yes, for most, no.
If users of all types, just say "Windows XP is good enough for what I do", then MS can say what it will and VISTA will not sell to the people who really don't need VISTA.
There are still oodles of Win98 and Win2000 customers out there (& I have it on an old laptop as backup...works wonderfully fine).
It wouldn't be an economical monopoly though, as anybody can brand and sell the code.
You know what FUD stands for, but you don't seem to know what it means.
Here's a hint: FUD doesn't have to be false. It can be factual.
So far Vista looks to be more beneficial to the Linux and MAC communities than MS. I have already been asked by one of my larger clients to look into "alternate" solutions after their company president read an article about hardware requirements and panicked. So far I have seen nothing that really benefits the end user other than yet more "wizards" to make things more complicated for those that already know what they are doing and a pretty interface that puts enough of a resource drain on the system to require otherwise unneccesary upgrades. I guess in the long run MS can depend on "retiring" support on 2003 and XP to force users towards Vista but I dont see nearly the amount of voluntary upgrading as MS seems to expect.
Obviously money has to change hands somewhere, but its the details that are important.
For starters, money spent on licenses doesn't stay in the EU; it goes back to the US. If it stayed locally, as it often does with smaller EU software shops, then it gets spent on salaries, growing the business etc and gets invested back into the local economy. Money going back to Microsoft US is basically money down the drain from the point of view of Europe.
Similarly, replacing currently working computers with more powerful ones, purely to run vista - and with all the extra power being sucked up with the pretty effects - is the broken windows fallacy; i.e. money spent on new computers purely to run vista, with no other advantage is money that could have been spent on other areas instead. Also, most of the PC makers are not european, so the bulk of the money again goes out to the benefit of US and asian businesses, to the cost of europeans.
Finally, retraining and hiring lots of people to manage, maintain and use windows vista and office 12 (or whatever version it'll be) is only a benefit if they end up more productive at the end of it; if they are about as productive as they were on the old software, then the training costs are wasted money caused by being stuck on the windows treadmill. That money will go back into the local economy at least, but it could have been more productively spent on hiring people to expand the business and do new things, rather than just maintain the more complex infrastructure that nobody understands properly.
As the article says, european companies could quite happily spend the 40 billion on other things to grow their business, instead of spending it purely to stand still and get back to where they were but with slightly prettier graphics - something not particularly useful to business workers. If vista brings massive productivity benefits to people upgrading, fair enough - but that's not the reason they're talking about $40b, that's the money european businesses will need to spend (largely overseas) to get through it in one piece. Not a hugely compelling reason to upgrade, in my view.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I've actually downloaded the PDF, and I've been reading through it. It's only 16 pages, and there's a hell of a lot of white space. There's also a lot of space taken up with a bunch of rather unimpressive bar charts.
The problem is, they have absolutely no justification for any of their numbers. For instance, on page 5 they claim, "In 2008, IDC predicts that 80% of Microsoft client operating systems shipped into enterprises will be Windows Vista." But they can't back it up!
They also admit they've only been looking at these numbers since 2002, so they've got no basis for comparison. In order for their 'study' to have any meaning, they'd have to compare it to the relative effects of the introduction of XP, compared to previous Microsoft operating systems. But they admit their data doesn't go back that far!
Their 'predictions' have as much weight as those you'd get from your local psychic.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Including bar and pie charts labeled "pure flowing bullshit" would still make any phone-flipping corporate hairpiece fuck nod their head and say "it supports our core synergies."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
This Vista will be enormously expensive to European economy. Only in six largest countries MS Vista will need $40 billion to get it going. I'm not impressed if this is what we wanted.
Nice troll. A little thick with the "so whats."
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Vista deployment will result in a 50% growth in IT employment. Yeah, I can sell that to my management.
This is quite amusing. If the effects of delaying vista are "dire", then the obvious conclusion is that XP doesn't work. Satisfactorily....
The EU has no business whatsoever telling anybody (even MS) what software they should be allowed to sell. It's not like the software contains child pornography or was made with prison labor.
The only reason the EU's considering blocking it is because of complaints from companies that MS is going to cut off their lucrative antivirus/PDF business. These guys just have to face the fact that they're in the buggie whip business, and have no right to complain about horseless carriages.
The worst one I think is Adobe. They have an almost absolute monopoly over the fixed-format portable document market with their PDF viewing and creating software, yet they complain to the EU when MS tries to create its own format. That's like Standard Oil complaining about GM going into the gasoline business!
Although the whitepaper may be stupid FUD, the whole reason they had to make it in the first place is stupid. Symantec and Adobe need to get off their asses and start making better software. Maybe if Norton AV didn't cause more crashes than viruses, and if Adobe PDF viewers didn't take half a minute to start up, people wouldn't have a reason to switch to the versions of their stuff that comes with Vista.
dom
Yes, because as we all know, it's a perfectly zero sum game. There's the same amount of wealth today that there was 10 million years ago. Nothing new at all has been created. If I'm doing good, someone else must therefore be doing bad, which makes me a bad person.
This is not a troll. Where are we on this front? How many jobs or how much economic activity would Linux have produced by now?
Last I checked, we were spending alot more than we were making selling to other countries through-out the world. That is, at least, what the economists here in the US would have us believe.
Tell you what, when the US starts getting as much from the rest of the world as it is giving in trade... then I will feel bad about Europeans spending a little money to have an OS that was created in the US. Until then though, stop whining about spending money on a product that is made in the US. There is always linux if you so desire.
Just point out that the entire article is entirely about additional costs imposed by Vista. There's no mention of benefits in that article. None. It's all about additional costs and planned obsolescence.
Mention that when talking to your local EU politicians.
Should Europe sue MicroSoft for delaying their economy?
Must be. The google results have gone now.
The same report has a PowerPoint attachment that proves beyond doubt that a group of core Linux developers have attempted to procure radioactive material and aluminum tubes suitable for creating weapons of mass destruction! Nuke the commies I say!
I find it funny that the Slashdot community complains about "The FUD coming out of Redmond", when there are orders of magnitude more anti-MS FUD coming out of these very same Slashdot pages.
You would think that a community of people that like to think they are "smarter" than everybody else out there would be able to notice this.
Weird...
Is it just me that "MS eco-system" statements scare? I mean, isn't usually ecosystems very diverse?
The wealth being moved must have been created somehow, isn't it? Where do you think it comes from?
Keep trying, you can even get to writing sensible trolls.
Just think, if it weren't for the insecurity of Windows, you wouldn't have companies such as Symantec, Trend Micro, or Mcaffe. Not only that, but the jobs created by those corporations would be null and void.
So let's see:
Looking at how 'fast' XP spread after launch, a massive buying spree just for the sake of upgrading is unlikely. Add to that hardware requirements (meaning simply upgrading your computer is not an option in far too many cases) and I would say people will buy Vista preloaded on PCs that would have been otherwise bought with XP anyway. Then this looks like MS issuing Win XP SP3 and calling it a major reason for 'new' cash flow. Now, given that MS is spinning "this is the cash flow we expect Vista to generate" into "this is the excess cash flow we expect Vista to generate and you'll never get it it you don't allow us to do whatever we like" I would indeed call it a major piece of FUD.
On the other hand, I don't see why MS should have mentioned F/OSS in this paper. Certainly one is not supposed to make a case for the opposition in such cases. My problem is with them grossly misrepresenting their own case.
Mr Anonymous said: As for 'anti-competitive', what's that even mean? No one has a problem if Pepsi offers a lower price to a vendor in exchange for an agreement from the vendor to stop selling Coke products. But when a company captures enough of the market, suddenly that behavior is illegal?
Note that he's claimed that "No one has a problem" with paying a vendor to not sell a product.
My former boss did: he was a small-town conservative and regarded that as an attempt to bribe him to do something nether he nor his customers wanted to do. So whenever the pop or chip company drivers tried it, he'd throw them out of the store for 30 days, and post a sign on the racks saying why. You can imagine the consternation every time a new driver took over the route and trid to bribe Jack (;-))
The error here is saying "there exists no person who disapproves of X", when the true statement is "some people disaprove of X".
And, of course, "when a company captures enough of the market, suddenly that behavior is illegal" is very close to the definition of a monopoly. Logically, it might be stated "for any undesirable behavior X, which is dealt with by a free market but which is not ina monopoly, X is illegal when done by a monopolist."
Etc, etc, ad nauseam...
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Sorry, I believe it's not that simple. That 100g of Oil, various metals and other materials that is worth few cents to some is worth few bucks as iPod to somebody else. It's not zero sum. We add value to stuff with our work. That's why our wealth today is much bigger than it was hundred years ago. IANAE but it's not zero sum game. But ofcourse it is not a secret that the biggest profit is made in money migration (trade) than in money creation (production).
You see, it is has become wealth creation. Or would you say that if a single mother wouldn't have to take two jobs in order to pay for her child(ren) nourishment and education, there would be an abundance of possessions?
In related news, among the Top 400 Wealthiest People in the US, there is not a single millionaire anymore, only billionaires (1E9).
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
[it's not 'wealth creation,] It's wealth movement.
Actually, it is wealth creation.
Yes, wealth moves, but it is also created. A tree is worth far less than the furnature that you could build with it. Sand is almost free, but silicon-based chips are worth several times their weight in gold. Gasoline is worth far more than the oil it took to manufacture it.
The point behind your statement is ultimately that someone has to be poor in order for another to be rich. As soon as people realize this is false, we may all start creating our own wealth.
Latewire
It's pretty obvious from the last major Microsoft OS release, WinXP, that when Vista is released, it will be LOADED with dangerous bugs, holes at various ports, nasty places for genius script kiddies with ill-intent to exploit, and generally NOT be ready for public release. The poor people of the USA will be the unwitting BETA testers for this new software. It is, in fact, WISE for the EU to avoid Vista until at least the second major release (for those who are determined to stay with MS, for whatever reason). There really is no threat. And, with so many municipalities already migrating to Linux for government work, MS can boycott all they want. The major bunch that would be inconvenienced would be the "gamers" who want the newest bells and whistles. Tsk.
It is all subjective though based on what 'value' you assign to everything. A tree might be worth more to a modern westerner when made into furniture, but a caveman would have prefered the raw tree so he could make fire out of it or in the case of a fruit tree, pick fruit from it.
The real point is that wealth is an entirely subjective term even if the use of currency makes wealth somewhat more universal. Ultimatly though, as the old saying "money can't buy you happiness" goes, a rich man is only wealthy if he considers his money the most important thing to him; a younger, poorer but happier man might legitimatly also consider himself the more wealthy.
> It's wealth *movement*.
Exactly! I remember the uncomfortable feeling I had when I sat in high school economics and heard the teacher lecture the class on the "creation of wealth". It was the exact same feeling I got when I sat in Sunday School while the teacher told us such things as "agape [Godly] love is far greater than carnal [animal] love" -- the feeling that an idea was, as my first software engineering professor would have called it, "highly suspect".
This whole idea of "creating wealth" seems to run counter to one of the most simple yet important folk sayings I've heard: "The money you spend on one thing is money you can't spend on any other thing." (Yes, I know it's possible to returned purchased goods for a refund, but even then there's a limitted return period -- and you may be charged a "restocking fee".) If we generalize the idea, we can say that "the resources you spend one one thing are resources you cannot spend on any other thing."
Now, *that* concept fits nicely with the basic physics principle that energy and matter cannot be created, only converted from one form to the other. Furthermore, if we presume that the universe began in a Big Bang and will eventually collapse in a Big Crunch, then time itself can be seen as a finite resource, one that must be spent carefully. (Heck, don't business people already believe that?)
So, if we view economics from the standpoint of physics / engineering / system theory, then an economy is a distribution system for delivering resources (goods and services) to all the different parts of the system, much as the blood circulation system in our bodies delivers consumable materials and non-consumable benefits (the immune system antibodies and phages are not meant to be consumed, yet provide a vital service to the body).
If we presume that the body is a closed system, then the body's total supply of resources at any given time is finite, and therefore an increase in a subsystem's demand for resources will result in a decrease in available resources for all other subsystems. (Think of what happens to you after eating a large, heavy meal: your digestive system needs so much blood to process the massive influx of food that you feel tired, lethargic, and barely have the energy to get up and plop yourself down in front of the TV / computer / whatever.)
Of course, in real life the body is not perfectly isolated from the outside world. However, in order to acquire the outside resources we need we must spend some of the resources we already have (energy, time, etc.) -- plus there is the chance that we not succeed, or will end up being injured or killed in the attempt (risk vs. gain). There is also the danger of being *too* successful, in which case we can become so bloated, so massively overgrown with resources (morbidly obese) that we will be easily outmaneuvered by smaller, more agile entities.
Then again, I'm no economist, so what the fuck do I know?
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
No, those companies would still exist. Symantec (Norton) and McAfee predate Windows, not sure about Trend Micro offhand. Rather than creating patches and bandaids to broken software they would instead be creating software that actually added value and creating a net gain.
The proles are starting to think for themselves! Revolution imminent! Move your funds to Switzerland, climb aboard your yachts and set sail for South America.
Stick Men
Thanks for summing it up... That is exactly what I thought, but you said it better.
Vista brings nothing to Europe.... It will be a money drain. Of course, staying with WinXP will be difficult. Look at what happened to Win2000. They basically dropped it like a hot stone. It's only one or two years older than XP, you know.... The same will happen with Vista, and I hope that in Europe opensource will overtake. Alas, I do work in the "real world" and that's not how it will happen :-(
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
In the short term yes, it is a zero sum game. In the long term you're correct. Wealth creation is a vastly and inappropriately overused term.
Deleted
It is surely dual core FUD... Windows Genuine Advantage FUD.... which is Windows Vista Premium Ready.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It shouldn't take an economist to look at the world today and compare it to the world a hundred years ago to recognize that wealth has indeed been created through trade, innovation, and exploitation of resources.
Your comparison to a sunday school theory doesn't hold much weight given that wealth creation is an observable phenomenon. If all that ever happened was wealth movement, then everyone else in the world ought to live in stone age conditions given the lifestyles of industrialized nations. Regardless of the hyperbole used by anti-capitalists and others with anti-west agendas, that is not the case.
Look up the word "sarcasm" one day, ok? And creating (printing or minting) money does not create wealth, only moves it into the hands of mint/printing press owners.
The idea of the broken window is in short
... do they improve human condition ?
1. Break Mr X window
2. Mr X buy a new window
3. Profit ?? -> No because Mr X money could have been invested into something beter. Actually the community is poorer of 1 window.
In this case that does not apply. Microsoft did not break anything. It produced something and the community may or may not decide to invest in it. You are not limiting the choice of anybody. The community is richer of one product.
"Why is it beneficial to anyone that a new operating system will require 100,000 new jobs to support it - couldn't they be better employed improving the human condition?"
What about Designer Clothes, McDonald, iPod,
Why western civilisation, as a whole, produces so much wealth and at the same time billions are poor. Couldn't our society be better employed improving human condition ?
Vista being delayed will have such an economic impact on european countries...
It actually might have the opposite effect and be beneficial for Europe. Look at the employment growth! Soon, Microsoft will need to have so many people work on it to feed it you will not find a single person at McDonalds! (MSCE - McDonalds Sanitary and Culinary Engineer).
Put yourself in their place. They have been challenged on both sides of the pond. Once again, the EC is challenging them. Linux is eating away at them in the embedded space and servr space. Linux is threatening them in the with the OLPC initiative. VISTA is late, as are MOST software projects (including Linux ones). Their stock has been flat since crashing in 2000.
What would you do?
When I got my MBA, one thing learned was that ANY press is good press. If just a few in the EC believe this, it has been worth it for them. Such a study will cause their competitiors to spend money and energy challenging them -- and MS has the money, staff, etc. They have become kings of FUD, but many people believe what they read, regardless of source (like most of the recent news reports about IRAQ).
Dude, how many lower lips do you have?
Jokes aside, I know for a fact that I'll be a lot happier if vista is delayed around here until the worst bugs and kinks have been worked out of it. I never liked the EC but it's looking better by the minute.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but the European Union is a sovereign entity, not a 51st state. Boohoo, EU is giving money to MS' competitor, cry me a bloody river. You know what? It's OUR money, not yours. We even have the right to stop buying MS altogether, even ban it within EU borders, just like cocaine, and demand that our CS industry switches to Linux. We certainly have the right to impose import tariffs and/or quotas on MS software. And we damn sure have the right to spend our (OUR!) money on developing an alternative and superior OS that won't contain any NSA backdoors.
That's value, not wealth.
You can add value by using raw materials to create something more sophisticated, but it does not create wealth, only more value.
And value, that's a different thing. Value is not constant, it's subjective. I would pay 5 Million USD for a bottle of water if I was dying of thirst in a desert, but I would not pay even 10 USD for a diamond necklace in similar circumstances. Yet, people in different circumstances pay those prices reversed, some pay 5 M USD for diamond necklace and 10 USD for a bottle of water. What is the absolute value of these things? Why didn't I pay 5 M USD for the diamond necklace if I were offered such a thing in the desert? I needed water more, it had a higher value to me.
So it becomes not so easy task to assign.
You can create value. Wealth is not created, it's something different. Value and wealth are not one-to-one.
So the linux journal prints an article with the inflammatory title "Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD". This article contains a couple of paragraphs and does not go into any in depth rebuttals at all. It only makes the obvious claim that 40 billion in income for people who stand to profit from Vista == 40 billion spent by their customers. If this article were a post on slashdot and the word Microsoft was replaced with that of another company I would expect it to get modded as a troll.
Err
Mono = one duo = two. It would be a duopoly which is half as bad. And if Apple and Linux could get a better market share it would become much more like a competitive market place.
For starters, money spent on licenses doesn't stay in the EU; it goes back to the US. If it stayed locally, as it often does with smaller EU software shops, then it gets spent on salaries, growing the business etc and gets invested back into the local economy.
Most of it goes back to the US, yes. However, don't forget that MS does employ people in Europe, so some of that money will stay here in salaries. Also software (and the hardware to run it on) is taxable (at least in the UK), so some of the money goes to the government, too.
it could have been more productively spent on hiring people to expand the business and do new things
Chances are, it'll be spent by the training company to expand their business, and for them to do new things.
I'm just playing devil's advocate, to an extent - I don't buy MS's claims either. However, I'm not entirely convinced that things are quite as you describe them either. I agree with the overall point though, that the EU would be better off buying EU-produced software. That's not entirely practical right now, though...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
She's in HR, listed as the recruiter. Obviously not the correct person.
If we don't need an upgrade because XP does everything we need, why try to encourage migration to Linux or whatever other system?
It's strange how any OSS vs. Windows thread has plenty of "Because XP doesn't do ___" arguments, but when it's Windows vs. Windows there seems to be no shortage of "We don't need to upgrade from XP" comments.
Not that Vista will correct every problem with XP, but is there truly nothing new in Vista other than Aero?
I can't believe this has been modded troll. Please, mod parent insightful or funny (depending on your view) and go mod down all those posts (not only in this story nowadays!) that easily address the "broken window fallacy" in a few lines. There has been serious debate on these issues, please let's stop pretending that we understand economy just because we've taken a class at engineering school.
Are you suggesting that M$ should have a monopoly on FUD?
This won't get modded up since the article is too old, so I'm just posting it for your elucidation.
Anyway, unlike energy, wealth can be created and destroyed. Consider cookies, for instance:
I take some flour, sugar, butter, chocolate chips and other miscellaneous goods. The total value of these goods is only a bit more than a dollar.
Using them in various arcane ways, I craft, say, a dozen chocolate chip cookies, the likes of which anyone would pay $.25 and think it was a good deal.
So, we started out with about a dollar's worth of goods, and ended up with something like three dollars worth of cookies. There's now two more dollars worth of value in the economy, and it's all mine. This is what people mean when they say "wealth creation".
If I were to, instead, just set all those ingredients aflame, the world's economy would be poorer by about a dollar. That would be the destruction of wealth.
Of course, it's true that in a closed system, it would be impossible to create more than a certain amount of wealth. It's a good thing, then, that there's this big giant flaming ball of gas up in the sky spewing an unimaginable amount of energy in every direction, some of which fortunately falls on us.
In a more universal sense, you could make the case that there's only a certain maximum amount of wealth possible; however, reaching that would involve things like dyson spheres and asteroid farms.
Huh! Ever used their software?
Someone aught to mod you up...
the American company Microsoft has no inherent right to do business in Europe and if Microsoft continues to break the rules here and abroad they can expect to be tossed aside. I, for one, welcome the time when real competition returns to the computer software OS marketplace.
Worth repeating. How come it is so hard to get a PC WITHOUT a Micro$oft OS in North America!!! That is like if I buy car I must use defective Firestone tires. The problem is that of all tech companies Micro$oft donates the most so enforcing US anti-trust laws goes by the wastebasket. So I too welcome the return to a free market.
I recently wrote HP and got this:
Dear xxxxx xxxxxxxx: Thank you for contacting Hewlett-Packard. To the best of my knowledge, HP has no plans to begin offering desktop or notebook PCs with anything other than a Microsoft operating system. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Accessories and consumables for your HP products can always be purchased directly from Hewlett-Packard in Canada, please visit our web site at: [snip, the rest was sales jargon...]
Yet HP sells them with Linux in China.
They happen simultaniously:
For customer:
Value of $X dollars: X
Value of Windows Vista: Y
For Microsoft:
Value of unsold copy: 0 (the plastic disc has essentially no value, if were were talking about a car it'd be non-zero)
Value of sold copy: X
Now, assuming Y > X (client actually wants to buy copy):
Before total value was: X (client) + 0 (MS)
Afterwards total value is: Y (client) + X (MS)
What just happened here?
X was wealth movement.
(Y+X)-(X+0) = Y was wealth creation. It shows up as two components (Y-X) for the buyer, and (X-0) for Mircosoft.
In business, you normally call that wealth, with consumers you usually call it utility (because we measure so many other things other than money). What happens when you buy a burger at McDonalds? There's a transfer of wealth, but utility is created - your utility of that meal is greater than the utility of the cash, otherwise you wouldn't have bought it. That is the way pretty much ever non-forced transaction works. Even with things like the broken glass paradox paradox it is the same - you had the choice to leave the glass broken, but the value of having it fixed exceeded the value of leaving it broken.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Printing money allows people to more easily exchange goods and services. Fluidity adds extra utility - hence it is creating wealth. How much would things be worth to you if you could never sell them again. How much would they be worth to you if you had to barter for them? Things that save us time and effort allow us to enjoy what we have more, and do more, which means that the value of stuff we own and stuff we know goes up.
And it could have been provided as a plug-in for OS/2 Warp. It wasn't. It won't be.
Oh, NOW you tell me....
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm in North America, and I'd gladly build you a great computer and put Linux or BSD on it. In fact, all of the computers I build come with Linux, BSD or no OS -- I don't have a license to pre-load Windows on them, and since I'm strictly small-time, I don't want to pirate it or pay big for Windows. Problem is, if you're posting on /., you can probably do the same thing yourself...
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Tell you what, when the US starts getting as much from the rest of the world as it is giving in trade...
You were being funny were you not?
http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html
Mind you Micro$oft is on the exports list, but that is only where they employ US people to produce the product. Like most things they are opening up offices in India and China which will reduce the US export component. Do most crypto offshore too I bet as not to get US law on their tails, or perhaps the NSKey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY) is still in there but with a name change.
In any case, it is good that not all countries tolerate monoplistic anti-competative practices such as common with Microsoft. Not too many people would argue Microsoft, then Linux, then OS/X (Apple) are the most popular OSes in order. Then how come I can only get #1 and #3 from Best Buy or Circuit City? Is it because Linux is World made and not American made?
The idea of the broken window is in short
1. Break Mr X window
2. Mr X buy a new window
3. Profit ?? -> No because Mr X money could have been invested into something beter. Actually the community is poorer of 1 window.
In this case that does not apply. Microsoft did not break anything. It produced something and the community may or may not decide to invest in it.
Well, Microsoft pretty much controls how long an installation of XP is viable, since they are the source of all patches, not least of which security patches. In a sense, Windows "breaks" when Microsoft want it to break. Then again, you're buying it with a support window, so you can't really claim to have been fooled unlike the broken glass parable.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Is it because Linux is World made and not American made?
You first point out the Microsoft is employing a lot of non-U.S. developers, and then complain that you can't get Linux because it's "world made"? The only reason you can't get a pre-installed Linux distro at Best Buy or Circuit City is because Microsoft has applied economic pressure (the same old tactics they've used for decades) to prevent that. It has nothing to do with whether it's "American made" or "World made", just that Windows is Microsoft made. And, actually, Linspire and other distros have begun making some headway at the larger retailers, and I expect they'll make more as time goes on.
And just FYI, an American company by the name of IBM has put a ton of money into Linux development. Of course, a lot of their developers are in India. So, what again was your point?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yes. A fish swimming in the ocean has no value, a fish cut into a tiny piece and placed on a bed of rice is worth five bucks. This is why the ocean is being depleted of fish.
We measure value of things all wrong.
evil is as evil does
True enough, I can and have. In fact 4 of the 6 I now own I built but they are getting old as the hills. The dual celeron ABIT died a few months ago and want to get a AMD X2.
Here is the issue, you can get one at Best Buy for less than I would for the parts to build the same thing. It will never run Windows... Suse and Solaris likely. So I guess I have to pay Micro$oft tax to save money, ironic and anti-competative.
> X was wealth movement.
:-)
> (Y+X)-(X+0) = Y was wealth creation. It shows up as two components (Y-X) for the buyer, and (X-0) for Mircosoft.
But this misses also the value Z that Microsoft invested in creating it, so it would be Y - Z in the end. And it misses that e.g. some of the money MS spent on creating it eventually ended up in your hands. And that there is feedback loop between Y and Z, at least in a functioning market, since MS wouldn't spend more than it can possibly earn and you wouldn't pay more than it would cost to create (since you could always find someone else to create it).
And with software it becomes even more complicated due to the production cost of 1 and 1000 copies being almost the same etc.
Oversimplification can be useful just don't forget to see it as such
Wow, imagine that. For a company to make money, it costs consumers money.
If I have two hundred and fifty dollars and I exchange it for an older violin worth two hundred and fifty dollars, I have a violin that can be resold for two hundred and fifty dollars, or maybe a hundred if I'm in a hurt, five hundred is am not.
I have exchanged my money for real wealth. Maybe even made an investment.
If I have two hundred and fifty dollars and exchange it for Vista, I: Go hungry.
Well, ok, that's a trade, not really consumption (the violin will be handed down to my grandkids, not consumed. Well cared for they can last hundreds of years).
So, If I have two hundred and fifty dollars I can buy two months worth of food: life itself. Although a consumable, real wealth.
If I have two hundred and fifty dollars I can buy Vista and: Go hungry.
Are you beginning to get the idea? I'm not concerned with Microsoft's ability to make a profit, I'm concerned with my ability to accumulate wealth.
The idea behind a business transaction is that both parties should come away feeling satisfied that what they gave up was no more valuable than what they recieved in exchange for it. Maybe even both parties can legitimately feel they came out ahead, due to oversupply/scarcity ratios.
Windows will have an oversupply of Vista (indeed) and shortage of money (they will not). I will have a shortage of Vista (I will not) and an oversupply of money (I will not).
So where do I benefit from the deal? Where does Microsoft suffer if I do not give them my money?
They can bite me. I'm buyin' a fiddle.
KFG
Goose? Dinner. Goose liver and German beer, anyone?
"The Internet is made of cats."
Really? absolute monopoly over PDF with viewing and creating software, when I have kPDF, xPDF, OpenOffice, PDFCreator, and on, and on, and on to choose from?
I don't freaking think so, just like I don't think I'm going to be running Acroread any time soon, even if it is available for Linux.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
The 40 Billion mostly goes right back into the economy. Software licensing fees are a minimal part of that. The money goes towards creating LOTS of jobs in the EU where unemployment is typically over 20% - 30%. It goes to paying trainers, installers, technicians, buying new hardware that is compliant, etc. A New OS for the whole world is a VERY big deal economically, no matter what you think about microsoft.
But in the cookie scenario, didn't you just attract wealth to you that already existed elsewhere? Was wealth still created if nobody buys any cookies? Or is there an inherent value in the cookies themselves? Are they still worth $.25 each if you just eat them?
Ok now on a more serious note, he could of been a bit more objective by not flinging the Anti-M$ FUD back the other way.
Who needs to spread FUD when the facts work just fine. Print out the EULA for MS Office and for Open Office.
Note the cost of installing MS office on your home network including your PC, your laptop, your wife's PC, your kid's PC and the same for Open Office. With a highlighter, highlight the portion of the EULA where it is specific on the number of machines it can be installed upon.
For FUD, put up a few BSA articles and ask, Is your copy of Office legal on that machine?
The truth shall set you free!
There isn't an overriding definition of value. We each assign it in our own way. To a furniture manufacturer, a chair has very little value (since they have more chairs than they can use). So they exchange the chair for for something else (usually money) which they feel has more value than the chair. But the person who bought the chair didn't get ripped off. They felt that the chair had more value than whatever they exchanged for it (usually money). I the end, both parties gained form the exchange, and wealth was generated on both ends of the exchange.
So the claim that Vista will "Cost" the EU is a false one, since europeans purchasing it will do so because they feel it has more value than the money they pay for it. In the end both the EU and Microsoft will benefit from the exchange. Clearly, the author of the article has no understanding of free exchange, or how wealth is generated. And yes, looking at the price Europeans will pay for it is a good way to judge the benefit to the EU, because Vista has at least that much value to European citizens. Of course, you may think that their money would be better spent elsewhere, but in a free society(not that we actually live in one) people are allowed to make their own decisions.
"... but what this figure hides is the fact that income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe."
News flash -- income for ANY company selling a product is a cost to those who buy the product.
The issue is whether the consumer gets a reasonable deal for their purchase and whether they have any real choice in the matter. If the only choice one has in a personal computer, is a crappy PC, then there is likely some injustice involved.
Thankfully, we have choices -- plenty of them -- the persistence of Microsoft as the world's choice in personal computing is the fault of the world at this point, not Microsoft. The days of Microsoft preventing competition from being expressed in the marketplace are gone.
You've created nothing, you just converted Time (yours) into money (solidified Time, in essence).
It's far from worthless, but it's quite different from creating 'wealth' (in the stricter, Semantics'sense of the word, creating wealth is impossible).
No no no.
Money and human labour can be somewhat correlated.
Since more humans are born per second than humans that die, there is an ever-increasing amount of humans that can perform work and therefore an ever-increasing amount of money.
So, you *can* create wealth, just create more working bodies.
Of course, you have to assume that these bodies are disposable, but since most are born in the 3rd world, that's ok.........
Chances are, it'll be spent by the training company to expand their business, and for them to do new things.
:) If company A pays company B for vista training, then that's all they have. If they hadn't had to pay for that vista training - because windows xp wasn't going to dropped like a hot potato - then they could have paid for training for an actual useful new skill. Either way, the training company gets paid, but company A gets something useful out of it too.
;)
Aha, but that's the broken windows fallacy again
Admittedly, I'm assuming that vista will result in zero or negative extra productivity over existing systems, but given what I've seen in the RC so far, and that security holes still seem to be rampant on vista, it doesn't much of a stretch. I know that personally my productivity at work will drop for a time while I figure out how to fix new vista laptops for staff.
Oh, and fair point about MS europe, though a small percentage of the money wasted going to Gordon Brown just sounds like extra waste
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Although you're right in onse sense (companies trying to protecttheir turf), there is merit to this complaint and you'll have to look at the two parts of this complaint separately.
/IS/ a monopoly, and can thus more or less do as it wants if left unchecked. That's why they had to be forced to open up SMB information, that's why they are under extreme scrutiny from the EU (and various other Governments AFAIK). In that context I'm more worried about them ramming their take on DRM down your throat - when was the last time you had a functional v1 from MS? And how are you going to recover your data if it fails? But I digress.
:-).
/could/ compete if you wanted to, and there are plenty of GPL compliant readers out there.
Firstly, MS
Secondly, yes, the complainants hold a strong position in the 'alternatives' market (the "sticky plaster market" possible because of Windows deficiencies) - but who else would you expect to start complaining? Solaris resellers? SCO? Oh, um, wait
So, although the complainants have a vested interest, there is indeed something more generic to complain about. As for Adobe, I wouldn't say they have an MS-like monopoly. Their format is fully documented so you
Insert
But, yeah, that's a pretty hefty base to switch.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Wealth creation: producing something useful
Wealth movement: selling it
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Wealth "creation" seems still a pretty questionable concept, you will probably be able to introduce fluctuations to the average, but I as a chemist have the idea that it will always go back to equilibrium at some point :)
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Call it what you will, go all existential and quote Ecclesiasties if you want. But there is a real sense in which wealth is created.
But the main thing is that economics is about the distribution and allocation of scarce resources. It is their scarcity that gives them value and you 'create' wealth by ensuring that these scarce resources are directed to the people that value them the most.
Thus, if I have 10 jars of jam and you have 10 jars of peanut butter, swapping one of my jars of jam for one of your jars of peanut butter will make both of us better off. (The assumptions underlying this example are so obvious that anyone who wants to try a 'but I don't like jam' argument can just go and jump.) Nothing has been created but the allocation has been improved - a win, win situation that creates value for both parties concerned.
You so nearly got it with your blood circulation analogy. Consider the value you would get from having a completely dysfunctional circulatory system - it would be significantly less than you have with your current well functioning circulation and distribution system. If all your blood went to one organ alone the value you experienced from that would be significantly less than if you actually had blood distributed to all the organs that actually needed it - you'd be dead (even if you did have the biggest hard on known to man).
And this response hasn't even begun to touch on technological innovation and production which also creates wealth but will be left as an exercise for the reader.
Depends how much he likes cookies. The basic measurement of wealth isn't currency -- it's utility.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Are you kidding? Would you seriously claim that the total wealth of the human species hasn't increased immensely over time? Civilization itself is predicated on the fact that economics is NOT a zero-sum game -- it's win-win if done well.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
What utter nonsense the Microsoft sponsored study is. Personally, I come to the exact opposite conclusion than their paper states.
"Most business investments in computers have yielded significantly lower returns than investments in bonds at market interest rates" Google Books: "The Trouble With Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity By Thomas K. Landauer" (the actual link is much too long to include.).
Economists agree that increase in productivity of the business sector due to use of computers is very difficult to demonstrate, if indeed it exists at all. Let us generously assume some modest improvement in productivity. Then against that we must offset capitol costs, amortized over some appropriate period. Machines that are still productive are retired because they are no longer near the cutting edge, and anticipation of retirement affects economic depreciation. If we assume some productivity gain from the general use of computers, simply amortizing that cost over a longer period will increase the value of the presumed productivity increase considerably. Specifically, if all the big corporations in Europe were to suddenly decide to keep their computers twice as long before updating them, not only will they double the value of supposed productivity gains, but save an enormous amount of money that they can invest in a thousand other ways, providing a huge boost to the economy in general (at the expense of Microsoft and their friends). As well, if nobody is upgrading there computers any more, suddenly their resale value will climb, increasing the book value of assets held.
When I wanted to find some links to back up my theses, I wondered how in the world I am going to find some article I read years ago on this question of whether computers really provide any productivity gain. After a bit of head scratching, I simply typed "Increase in productivity of the office due to computers" into Google, and found dozens of interesting references to support my point of view. Now, I certainly acknowledge that state of the art computers are essential for many specialized purposes, but the computers purchased by the thousands by the Fortune 500 companies and their counterparts in Europe already have far more capacity than they will ever need.
Wealth is only created if the cost of buying/implementing Vista is lower than the savings/earnings through resulting cost reduction or productivity improvements over the existing system. It's far more marginal than Y and may be negative. Of course CEO of MS says wealth created is Y * number of sales.
Deleted
Don't worry about accumulated wealth. When the Democrats win in 2008, the death tax will hit 100% and your violin will belong to Uncle Sam.
Well it sounds like you have a sketchy understanding of economics. I would have had the same issue, but I had a pretty decent econ teacher that explained it in a pretty sane manner. "Wealth Creation" has 2 major problems...1. The connotations to the folks with more science backgrounds doesn't come off quite right 2. Its used and abused to sell self help and get rich quick type books.
I am also no economist, but I guess to try and explain at least why your understanding is a bit off we will start with a circle. 360 degrees of round. Now I use "Angle Creation" to turn it into a triangle...still 360 degrees...now I create some more angles and make it a square...etc etc etc. In economics its considerably more complicated than that, but it is largely based around leveraging debt. If I have a $500k house that is paid off its not doing anything for me, but if I take out a home equity loan of $400k to put 10% down on buying a 4 million dollar appt complex which I then procede to rent out all the units which covers the mortgage and expenses and gives me profit...that is wealth creation. Sure I now have $4 million in debt now, but I also have revenue coming in as opposed to having 0 debt and 0 revenue. Additionaly "wealth" isn't generally a fixed number like "money", its more of a ratio of your incoming money to outgoing money.
Of coarse this is largley moot point now that our wonderful Supreme Court found immenent domain constitutional, so the government can come in and just take any property you own regardless of if its paid off or not and without compensation, if some other shmuck will pay more in taxes on it.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
But they'll pay for my harmonica lessons -- whether I want them or not.
If the Republicans win I'll be shot as a suspected terrorist and my violin will be destroyed as a WMD.
If the Libertarians win I'll be sitting on the sidewalk with my fiddle and a tin cup; oh, wait. . .
That's what I'm doing now.
KFG
I think the parable of the Emperor's new clothes fits this situation better than the parable of the broken window.
The way I read Moody's analysis, it is saying that Vista would provide Europe with few benefits but if everyone pretended to see things otherwise, some $40 billion could redirected from other activities to Vista-related activities (with the implication that this would be a Good Thing, since some fraction of that $40 billion would go to Microsoft).
As near as I can tell (I'm writing after a 66 mile bike ride and not at the top of my mental form), the only benefit Moody identified in moving from WinXP to Vista is improved security. I think the proper parallel to the parable of the broken window is that producers of malware are generating economic activity like a little boy running around the town throwing rocks through [wW]indows. In fact the parallels here are very striking and essentially condemn the entire antivirus - 3rd party firewall industry as nonproductive leeches that might be considered necessary in medieval medical practice. But maybe Europe would do a lot better if it moved to a more modern approach to healthy computing (<voice type="Church Lady">such as, oh I don't know-- LINUX? </voice>).
Perhaps that is what Parent Post was inferring?
This whole idea of "creating wealth" seems to run counter to one of the most simple yet important folk sayings I've heard: "The money you spend on one thing is money you can't spend on any other thing." (Yes, I know it's possible to returned purchased goods for a refund, but even then there's a limitted return period -- and you may be charged a "restocking fee".) If we generalize the idea, we can say that "the resources you spend one one thing are resources you cannot spend on any other thing."
That's called the cost of lost opportunity or some such, I don't recall exactly how it goes. However there's another cost that's not factored in in economic circles, external costs. Such as when replacing a computer or pollution such as with global warming. If businesses were required to account for these external costs then it may help, but it's nearly immpossible to calculate them. Some businesses though can help in a sense, insurance for instance. Say take auto and property insurance, autos produce co2 which is implicated in global warming. Now, as sea levels rise the flooding means insurance has to payout more in claims, the same applies to extreme weather. However many property insurance companies or underwriters also insure autos and drivers. So what they can do is to base insurance premiums on how fuel efficient the vehicle is, the better it's mileage the lower the premium. Or homeowner's insurance can give those who installed pvs on their roofs a reduced rate.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I fully agree with the concept of wealth creation that Parent Post presents. To state it in its simplest form: when value is added to a product, wealth is created.
I think the example of furniture made from a tree is unfortunate. The timber industry, like mining, is an extractive industry: these generate profits by ripping something out of the natural world. Examples of wealth creation drawn from these industries are always muddled, since there is no common agreement about the value of an uncut forest or the costs associated with mine tailings, etc.
Better to say that the value of a piece of furniture is more than the cost of lumber it was carved from, and that the increase in value is due to the creation of wealth.
The proles are starting to think for themselves! Revolution imminent! Move your funds to Switzerland, climb aboard your yachts and set sail for South America.
South America isn't much of an improvement if you're conerned about keeping your money without working for it. You've got President Morales in Bolivia, Lula in Brazil, President Michelle Bachelet in Chile, and Chavez in Venezuela. And if I recall right other South American nations also have socialist leaning governments. Now if you're willing to work hard or you have money to invest you can make money. Selling cellphones and the service for them, starting an ecotourism, or an information technology business may do it. Many people don't have phone whether landline or mobile, so if you can cheaply setup cellphone service you may be able to sell the phones and service. And if you can buy land and build an inn or hotel if there isn't already a building you can convert, you can start an ecotourism company, ecotourism growing faster than most if not all other tourism sectors. Also as the economics of South America improves more and more businesses and people will want computers and information systems.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The opposite is true.
.... and wonder some mins later why you can't undo far enough back ... ) ...
... reinstalled systems because the latest attemt to install a vido driver failed (and some DLL suddenly vanished). In current currecen that is about $10.000 loss for me.
.... so you ca#t really call this an beneficial economic effect. (After the item is fixed the society has not more wealth, only money was shifted)
... estimates in german magazines about the world wide costs of Melissa where around 4 billion dollars!!
Instead of a stimulating effect MS always had the following efects:
1) wasted times because of lsot office documents because of wierd crashes (how often do you press CTRL-S
2) wasted times because the machine deos not boot anymore (after you installed the latest Direct X drivers)
3) wasted times because your network dos not work anymore (just because yesterday your friend with his W2k nobook was in your NT/Win98 network)
4) wasted resources because your company does refuse to buy the cheapest computer (which is more modern and faster and has more hard disk space) and buy an old Siemens (or what ever) from 14 monthes ago in the exact same configuration as the other 250 computers your company has. And all that only becaue they know all drivers work and they simply can flatten the boot drive with a disk image all the tiem when the system freaks out
I personally surely wasted over 100 hours in configuration networks that mysteriously suddenly had the wrong settings
And even if I would pay some one else to do it for me, the circulating $10.000 would not generate any wealth but only fix broken stuff
5) I forgott: endless worm attacks
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What you seem to forget is that only some of us do more fun things whilst most of us end up with a whole lot less but still end up doing many more things, things that suck and that you don't want to do. A lot of the benefits in this world are as a result of social democracy and in spite of capitalism. Capitalism has only surrendered any benefits when it has been forced, kicking and screaming all the way, to do so.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Unthankfully we don't live in a capitalist system, we live in the Corporate Aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of. While we may have some choices about what we buy and who we buy it from, we don't for some things. For instance local governments granted local monopolies to power and telephone then to cable companies. And the FCC, here in the US, makes it practically impossible for someone to start their own radio and tv stations. Just ask those who started or tried to start micropower, "pirate", radio stations. The Mass Media wouldn't have it anyother way, they don't want to competition. We are getting more choices though in that in some places power users can buy their electricity from conventional or "green" providers. And because of cellphones people have a bunch of choices as to who provides their phone service. However we still have patents, and Adam Smith the "father" of capitalism was against patents.
I would rather see tax money be spend on R&D and physical infrastructure, items industry does not generatlly fund.
Some R&D, yes, with it open sourced. Along with physical infrastructure, as long as it is all open, ie if someone wants to provide services using the infrastructure then they should be able to.
FalconShould there be a Law?
By delaying Vista deployment in Europe, EU contries reap the following benefits:
1)Extend the life of existing systems.
2)Delays HW upgrade cost by N months. (probably enough to give a nice kick to the bottom line for EU companies - by using already fully written down HW)
3)Delays Vista upgrade cost by N months.(capital costs money)
4)Shields their companies from spending bilions of dollars for the privilege of beta-testing software. (MS tradition is to release half-tested software. The WORKING version arrives in first service pack 6 months later.) Huge savings in application testing. Reduced test cycles with fewer bugs found.
5)By delaying upgrade, if and when EU companies upgrade, it will be a smoother & quicker transition, plus new HW needed for the upgrade has come down in price. Moore's law.
I expect all this to save at least $100 billion dollars for EU companies.
US companies might want to follow this path as well, and already most of them have a policy to test this sort of thing anyways before widely deploying an upgrade.
I have not bothered reading this lousy little white paper, but I am convinced that my argument is valid, and no amount of spin can possibly shave much off the $100's of billions EU will gain by delaying this OS.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
You have made three releases that I consider groundbreaking: Windows 3.0->Windows 95->Windows 2K.
I agree Win 3.x and Win95 were groundbeaking but instead of Win 2k I'd say NT 4 was groundbreaking. Of all the Windows I've used, and I've used Windows from 3.x to XP, NT 4 was the most trouble free. Yes even more so than XP. I've got an NT box and I've never had trouble with the OS, but the first tyme I used XP it froze when booting up. And this was a new Dell. Now, if only I can get more software installed on my NT box, it's a DEC Alpha and the only commercial app I was able to install was Borland C++ Powerbuilder.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In a sense, an EU-forced delay may be restricting competitiveness in an excessive manner. As much as I don't like Microsoft's tactics, I am not convinced that the EU's judgements were proper punishment.
I agree but I think for a different reason. I believe the fine should of been heavier. MS had plenty of tyme to do as the EC asked, but instead they stalled, probably hoping it would go away.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Over their lattes at Starbucks, of course. Likely while listening to Enya.
I'd rather do it in a good brewpub.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A monopoly driven by tens of companies, thousands of developers, and millions of users?
Wait, even at the company level, there's tens. That can be called a 'monopoly'?
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
"The white paper may predict sales by the "Microsoft ecosystem" of over $40 billion in six of Europe's biggest economies, but what this figure hides is the fact that income for Microsoft and its chums is a cost for the rest of Europe."
VAT
Seriously, how does the submitter think the US or Washington governments see any of Microsoft's money? Through taxation, of course! The EU gets to tax all of Microsoft's European transactions and European assets, just like everybody else.
If nothing else, 15%-25% of $40 billion isn't exactly something to sneeze at, which is what the EU will be seeing through VAT.
There are very valid reasons to doubt the magnitude of the impact a Vista delay may mean for the EU, but this... this is something an average teenager should be able to see through.
[me] "Hmmm, I think you're talking about Lindows. Well, that's just meant to be a Windows look-alike version of Linux. It does come with a Windows emulator, called WINE, but it's not 100 percent compatible, so it may not work for all your software. Also, Microsoft is suing or threatening to sue the makers of Lindows for copyright infringement, so you should probably wait and see how that turns out."
They did change the name, now it's Linspire. I got a new PC with it preinstalled last week. I don't know if it comes with WINE or not but it does come with what's called CNR, Click and Run. They have a CNR warehouse website where all you have to do is click on on the link for an app and it will automatically install the app for you. You don't have to worry about dependencies or anything CNR takes care of it all for you. And if you don't like the app there's a button you click to uninstall. As for how well it works I haven't found out yet. As the PC only came with 128MB ram and a 40GB hd which is too small as the PC I'm using now has two hds one 120GB and the other 40GB and between the two I have less than 10GB left, I got another GB ram and a 300GB hd. Just sliding in the ddr memory took care of memory but I couldn't install the hd, so I took the PC and HD to the store I got them from but they couldn't get the drive to format so it could be used. They asked me if I wanted to leave it there for them to figure out to do it or if I wanted to take it home. I took it home then spent several hours searching on the net for a way to format it after trying to use both the OS install disk and the disk that came with the drive. I found out that apparently the drive wasn't compatible so I took it out and returned it, then I went to Best Buy and picked up a 750GB drive after I checked on whether it was compatible. When I got home I tried to install it but when I booted up the PC said it couldn't find the OS, so I took it and the HD back so the Geek Squad could get it all working properly. This was Saturday and they were busy so the guy said he'd try to get it if it slowed down. Appearently he did because he called just before closing saying it wouldn't boot up properly and did I want them to run diagnostics. I told him to go ahead. I hope I get it back today, Monday.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I was not aware of the broken window parable until just a few minutes ago, thus fell enlightened;It is a good day for me!
Enlightenment through defenestration?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
as nonproductive leeches that might be considered necessary in medieval medical practice.
You may want to rethink your attitude on leeches, research is being done on the use of leeches in medicine. Here's a page on Hirudo medicinalis, medical leech from University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. And another one on Molecular Genetics and Gene Therapy of Neuromuscular, Cardiovascular and Neurodegenerative Diseases from Royal Holloway, University of London, School of Biological Sciences
FalconShould there be a Law?
Here's what I don't understand - I write a two line comment on slashdot, and people suddenly make generalizations about the many and varied lines of reasoning, source materials, and life experiences that got me to the conclusion I've assert. Somehow, from two sentences, people can gaze into the millions of factors that affect my thinking. And the most amazing part of it is that these brilliant insights can be so utterly and amazingly off.
Given what I said - that it is possible to contribute to the wealth of the world, and that money *itself* has value, in the same way that a hammer or a toaster has value - it is *possible* that I think that capitalism is the end-all and be-all of social theory, and that everything else sucks and that socialists suck.
It's also equally possible that I'm a registered libertarian, but I value the many and varied government services that have made my life work. It's entirely possible that I realize that we must always strike a balance between individual freedom and the common good, and that there is more to life than money. Although it may seem that I have "forgotten" that different people value different things, and that some people with few material goods end up having fun, exciting lives. It is also possible - maybe just maybe - that I use the term utility in a very specific, mathematical and technical sense (implying notions of transitivity and relationships to rational decisionmaking). It's possible that, because of this, my comments implicitly take into account any and all things, including paychecks, dental-work, pulling off of the side of the road to smell freshly-watered roses - that is by definition of utility, whether or not it can be explicitly and exactly enumerated.
All of these things are possible but no one will ever know - they are not to be found in those two sentences, any more than I am to be found embedded in HTML. Make assumptions if that is your only option, but try some rational thinking first - you'll be surprised where it gets you!
They have obviously misspelled it. It's MS-EGO SYSTEM!
Well, at work I still use W2000. Companies won't update for the sake of it. This is why Office is need a new and incompatible file format with every new version - to force companties to update so they can open 3rd party documents.
in a lot of countries. (down here, minimum wage ~~ US$ 120/mo)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"I mean, how would it look if they had to justify a cost of $40 billion of what is essentially public funding and produce something that can barely compete with free opensource software?!"
It'd look like any one of many government projects in a wide range of countries that pissed vast amounts of public money down a hole without producing anything worthwhile.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Nope. You need to re-read the parable of the broken window. Those two dollars weren't created out of nothing, they belonged to somebody else. For you to gain two dollars somebody else has to lose two dollars.
No sig today...
Linspire and other distros have begun making some headway at the larger retailers, and I expect they'll make more as time goes on.
Walmart sales Linux boxes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If the Republicans win I'll be shot as a suspected terrorist and my violin will be destroyed as a WMD.
If the Libertarians win I'll be sitting on the sidewalk with my fiddle and a tin cup; oh, wait. . .
At least Libertarians won't toss you into gaol. Some might even strike up a conversation, or try to, with and tip you.
FalconShould there be a Law?
if it weren't for the insecurity of Windows, you wouldn't have companies such as
Sooowhat? Then those people would work at some other places, doing something else. It's idiotic to assume some people only have jobs just because MS exists and does what it does. This world has been going before MS, and it will keep going after MS. This is the same argument that other people raise falsely above when saying that Vista will make more jobs thus make the economies grow, but at the same time they forget that the money they make is the money you pay, and for what ? For an iteration of an OS that implicitely makes you shell out large sums of money for new hardware to drop the old one you could just as effectively continue to use for 4-5 more years ? This whole thing is just idiotic.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I can think of another money spinner in the same spirit as Microsoft's Vista upgrade - employ 1 million people to paint metal buckets and another million who scrape the paint off. The benefits to the economy as a whole (and especially the paint & bucket industry) will be enormous.
I hate to burst yer bubble all y'all ms-haters, but if you already run Linux or own a Mac, why do you care about any of this? It's stupid and pointless and you may as well just finish the effect and start flinging dung at each other while grunting a lot.
After realizing how dumb you are, remember that ms is a business which means (unlike Linux in general) it has marketers working for it. I gave up reading responses because this is so lame. You are arguing over something produced by marketers! Worried about ms enslaving the masses? Then quit whining and 'free' some more people or something.
boooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Wealth creation is a legitimate enough term in and of itself; it's just prone to misuse, probably because of its seeming ability to justify any action of the speaker's choosing, so long as it remotely relates to commerce in some way. But if there were no such thing wealth creation, there could be no such thing as oil sultans or software magnates.
The problem with the 100,000 support employees argument is that wealth creation is *not* equivalent to "job creation." Wealth creation is more likely to go hand in hand with job *destruction* than job creation -- at least in the short term.
The invention of the nail gun displaced workers yet created wealth; whereas it previously took, e.g. $1500 worth of labor to frame & shingle a large house, it now took, say, $700. Initially this may only have meant that $800 was added to unemployment, and the builder may have absorbed all of the extra profit. In time though, the nail gun drove the cost of a large house down by ~$600. The increased affordability of housing created new wants among homebuyers, like having a small boat. Increased spending on new wants eventually creates employment to offset the displaced workers, and an economy that previously produced homes now produced homes & boats.
I have a mountain of grass clippings in my back yard that I have to pay to dispose of. If Ted invents a clean automobile engine that runs on grass clippings, then I and everyone else with lots of grass clippings suddenly have an asset where we previously had a liability, and Ted has a fantastic profit source he didn't have before. When the effect of uber-cheap transit propogates through the economy, things will inevitably spring up on which to use the increased discretionary income, like X-Box 640s, or PS8s.
If the support personnel argument were valid, then it wouldn't it make economic sense to make the OS as buggy as possible? In reality though, an OS that was so easy and stable that it put 100,000 former support techs out of work would be a more legitimate example of wealth creation.
Pi Ran Out
Or you could eat the cookies, thus destroying the wealth by converting the cookies to feces which has a negative value.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
> it has marketers working for it.
I would like to make a difference here between two types of communication professionals.
When these professionals target consumers (individuals or businesses), you can call them marketeers.
When these professionals target political institutions (governments, elected commissions, federal agencies, and so on), you should call them lobbyists.
And, yes, it does make a big difference. As a consumer, I accept the fact that I am targeted by marketeers. As a citizen, I cannot accept that anything else than the voice of citizens should interfere with the decision process of our elected bodies and political institutions. Corporations are NOT citizens.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
What you are missing is that when you upgrade to the latest version of M$, it no longer plays nice with the previous version, so if folks need to collaborate, you have to upgrade ALL your PCs. THAT is why M$ discontinues older versions of OSes. Otherwise, most businesses would just buy new hardware w/no new OS. Of course, when you buy a Dell (or actually any name-brand PC), the OS disk will only work on that PC. It dies, you can't install that OS on other hardware, even though you paid for the license; M$ wants it to be "you paid for that license on THAT HARDWARE only". THAT is what most folks don't like about M$. Too much money is NEVER enough.
If the only choice one has in a personal computer, is a crappy PC, then there is likely some injustice involved.
...
Well, there you have it.
You can get a crappy PC running Windows, or a crappy PC running Linux, or pay 40% more for a less crappy but less powerful PC running Mac OS X.
You can't get a PC running AmigaDOS, BeOS, OS/2, the Xerox Star office system,
I guess you're too young to remember the '80s when there really was competition in desktop computers. You think what we've got now is competition.
Here is the loss that is referred to: To purchase an adequate PC with Windows OS I will be force to pay at lease $100 more with Vista than I did with XP. If I am replacing an older computer, I should be able to port the OS and save even more but, will be forced to purchase something I don't want and don't need to get what I do need. This is the M$ legacy of monopolistic behavior.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Everyone knows all weealth is created by the United Nations, silly.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
As to hard drives and etc, I am stil on an 8 gig drive, works fine for me. My backup is under 2 gigs, 1.6 I believe. I am king of the cheap! I guess if I needed to store and work on a lot of large image files I would need a larger drive, but I don't, so I don't have one.
I am a photographer abet an amateur, I hoping to start working in photography. When I go out to shoot I can go through a 36 exposure roll of film within a few hours, I've been through one in less than an hour, and I almost always digitize my photos.
I use my computer as a decent quality adjustable internet appliance, that's about it, and for those purposes you don't need much.
Besides using my computer for photography I also use it for programming amd want to do design as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What I meant to say was ${WARMSUNNYTAXHAVEN}. I thought that maybe the Bahama's weren't that exotic. Or Monaco. Or something.
If you want a good taxhaven then try the Caymans in the Caribbean. Not only is the Caymans a good tax shelter but it's also an excellent destination for scuba diving. Though I haven't tried it there I knew a couple who went there for scuba diving yearly. Myself, I wouldn't mind being a dive master or instructor in Brazil.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Such preposterous claim can't go unchallenged.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If the little boy breaking windows (pun intended) is not your son but your neighbour's that does not change the fact that your personal economy would be one broken window poorer.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To paraphrase everybody's pal Mao Tse-Tung, "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun"
Wealth is a form of power, specifically it's the economic power gained from owning lots of stuff.
But ownership is not a law of nature, it must be enforced by some armed group, like the cops or the military, or else the things you felt you "owned" could be taken by anyone who wanted them.
This armed group is the arbiter of who owns what, and therefore how wealthy each person is. So, they are quite literally the creators of wealth.