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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."
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
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.
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'?
"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
...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.
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
If you need to buy new hardware, it's a cost to the consumer and a cost to the environment.
America does not care about the environment. Their government doesn't, so their corporations do not care either.
Upping the hardware requirements will of course be harmful to the environment. Not only there is a need to discard perfectly working hardware to be able to run Vista, but the new higher-spec hardware also consumes much more energy. Watch the consumption of a suitable 3D card when compared to a plain 2D or a low-end 3D card.
Consumption of energy in all offices will only go up when offices need fast 3D cards like gamers do.
That is a pity, especially when it is only for some eye-candy that many users probably will turn off as soon as they find out how to do that.
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.
The wealth being moved must have been created somehow, isn't it? Where do you think it comes from?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $.25 and think it was a good deal.
So, we started out with about a dollar's worth of goods, and ended up with something like three dollars worth of cookies. There's now two more dollars worth of value in the economy, and it's all mine. This is what people mean when they say "wealth creation".
If I were to, instead, just set all those ingredients aflame, the world's economy would be poorer by about a dollar. That would be the destruction of wealth.
Of course, it's true that in a closed system, it would be impossible to create more than a certain amount of wealth. It's a good thing, then, that there's this big giant flaming ball of gas up in the sky spewing an unimaginable amount of energy in every direction, some of which fortunately falls on us.
In a more universal sense, you could make the case that there's only a certain maximum amount of wealth possible; however, reaching that would involve things like dyson spheres and asteroid farms.
Someone aught to mod you up...
the American company Microsoft has no inherent right to do business in Europe and if Microsoft continues to break the rules here and abroad they can expect to be tossed aside. I, for one, welcome the time when real competition returns to the computer software OS marketplace.
Worth repeating. How come it is so hard to get a PC WITHOUT a Micro$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.
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
A bribe? If your former boss owned a newspaper and company X offered him money to place their advertisement in his paper, even though the ad was for a product neither he nor his customers wanted, would that offer be considered a bribe? The agreements we are talking about here do not involve any sort of violence or fraud. The negative connotation of the word "bribe" does not apply here.
Completely missing the point here. If someone placed an ad and then tried to pay the newspaper owner to not accept ads from their competitors then that would be the situation the GP poster was referring to.
It would be a bribe.
There is nothing wrong with the idea that you presented as the owner would be making money off of something that made no difference to the customers - ie. it would not negatively impact the customer's ability to see/buy from other ads that they were interested in.
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]