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Paul Graham Claims "Microsoft is Dead"
netbuzz writes "He doesn't mean dead as in six feet under, but rather that the software giant no longer instills the kind of fear — particularly among entrepreneurs — that it did back in the day when it was making road kill out of companies like Netscape. Microsoft obits have been around for almost as long as the company, but Graham's stature, style and devoted following are likely to make this one a classic."
But if it keeps releasing "upgrades" that serve to only make your computer slower and slower then it will be soon.
~= scwizard =~
I though people wanted MS to play nicer and I though MS theyself wanted to have a nicer image as well, because the old "aggressive" image was bad. So they do that and have a better nicer image now, and this is bad as well... hmm...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
While many large companies don't fear Microsoft as they used to, there are still multiple small ones who still have a fear of being swallowed whole or being beaten out of business. Microsoft, if nothing else, still has the power it needs in order to take another (smaller) companies ideas and launch them themselves, creating a hit and effectively driving their competition out of business.
and many things that die have a very loooong decline. ''When did the decline start?'', you can argue that for ever. Paul Graham will be proven right - eventually, but when? -- No one knows - but Paul will be there saying ''I told you so !''.
ok, and i really watching "justin" sleep right now?
I won't believe this untill it is confirmed by Netcraft
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
...it's just pining for the fjords.
what is 4%?, new units, or upgraded, oem or new customers... I read some article not long ago about how you can make %'s look like you want to.
m10
It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web
Oh, please. Web-based software? C'mon. Ajax and "web-based" applications haven't gone anywhere, and they're not going to. I file this alongside of Java's write once, run everywhere, and "push" technology.
no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway
I don't care what this guys credentials are... he is clueless.
I don't respond to AC's.
Microsoft may yet win. They seem to be working for once in a coordinated way to dominate (truly, and not by default) the home market:
-Windows Vista with pretty good media center capabilities
-Windows Home Server
-XBOX 360
-Zune
-Windows Media player
-MSN Live
-Various subscription services like XBOX-Live, Zune marketplace
It's quite a line-up and it's becoming more and more integrated.
On the corporative side, while many people prefer usign Unix for certain applications, I dont see Microsoft losing it's overwhelming dominance anytime soon. And with SQL Server 2005, they might increase it in the long run.
To me this story is not different from a iPod killer story. Maybe with the exception that the iPod is one product and it could actually happen one day.
Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents.
You can't be one of the most hated companies in the world without some negative effects.
This ad space for rent.
..I find that all rational people must agree "everything" "all applications will live on the web" I wonder--is it time for innovators to think more about the alternatives?
Matt
I am a big fan of Paul Graham's essays, and have to admit that this one definitely ranks as the worst. Microsoft today has a lot of money - and i dont think businesses can simply die out in a few years, specially if they are not facing a steep downward slope. I mean, just look at M$'s profits/revenues (cant cite the source, sorry) they appear quite OK to me. I'll only start celebrating when they start posting huge losses, or when windows domination ceases.
I think that tells you a lot about Paul Graham's everyday environment. He's working with startups, he's trying to put together teams of the bright and innovative, and what he's finding is that most of these people are not using Microsoft software.
I suppose you have to allow for a bit of statistical bias there. Since Mr, Graham is (presumably) involved in selecting these people, it's entirely possible that a subconscious selection criteria might be "doesn't do windows" or something similar.
Even so, I think he's got a point. How much of that market share is down to corporations who bulk-order generic beige boxes based on buying guidelines that are fifteen to twenty years old? How much is down to private homes where someone wanted to "get a computer" without realising there was a choice, or where the major criteria was that it should be "the same as the one at work".
It wouldn't surprise me at all to find that the Microsoft market share among the up-and-coming wave of computer innovators is actually very slim. And if that is in fact the case, Microsoft should indeed be worried.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
It is now official. Paul Graham confirms: Microsoft is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Redmond company when analysists confirmed that Windows market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all serious users desktops. Coming on the heels of a recent survey which plainly states that Windows has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be Steve Jobs to predict Microsofts future. The hand writing is on the wall: Microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Microsoft because Microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for Microsoft. As many of us are already aware, Microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that Microsoft has steadily declined in market share. Microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. Microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Microsoft is dead.
Fact: Microsoft is dying
If you read the actual article, Graham isn't actually claiming that Microsoft is dead (despite his provocative title) but that it is simply irrelevant -- that it's something startups don't need to worry about.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I think Microsoft's fatal flaw is summed up in this quote:
Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck.
And they never will. That's why they won't be able to adapt to changing climate conditions in technology and the nimble little warm-blooded creatures they barely notice will thrive and ultimately outlive them.
I mean look, they haven't even gotten rid of Ballmer yet. As long as he's on top it's going to remain the same stodgy old company it is now. MSFT reminds me of some 40 year old guy who thinks he's cool hitting on his daughter's college friends. He's the only one who doesn't realize he's creepy and pathetic.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Small companies don't fear being squashed by MS because that's not their primary game plan anymore. They have achieved the dominance that phase of their company wished for. Now, the new paradigm is to be acquired by them. MS doesn't innovate anymore, they assimilate.
There are thousands of small start-ups that have this as their primary goal. Get a good idea, build it up to where it shows up on some large company's radar, then be acquired by them. Then, retire. And MS is a leader in this area.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As much as I would love to see Microsoft die, the company is far from dead. Corporate death usually implies both financial insolvency and the loss of the ability to innovate. While Microsoft's domination is waning (I think many will agree with that) and its innovations are lessening, the company has the assets of a medium sized country's Gross Domestic Product. With a financial indication such as that, Microsoft may be able to turn around faster. When a company such as Microsoft resorts to legal threats and intimidation, we see the psychology of the company. The intimidation factor is indicative of significant fear of being outmoded and outdone. Much of Microsoft's bluster has little or no merit, save technologies that they have patent protections on. And even then, patents can be challenged. In order to facilitate a turnaround, Microsoft would need to drop the superiority complex and focus on issues such as interoperability and maybe even open sourcing some. Red Hat and other companies have proven that open source technology can turn a profit. Maybe a good strategy would be to drop the NT Kernel and piggy-back its interface on to top of Linux or BSD and open source Active Directory. I think Red Hat and others have discovered that costs of development come down when you have the community doing a lion's share side of your development for you. I happen to like the UI of Windows, I just hate the NT Kernel and troubleshooting it.
Web Applications can't really take off until the Internet has almost full penetration and it's pretty obvious that it's not going to happen any time soon. It'll also need a much higher level of reliability which again shows no sign of happening soon.
Silly rabbit
I claim that the word 'dead' is dead. Not dead like 6 feet under, but dead as a meaningful word. It still applies to loss of life, empty batteries and forgotten projects but now it also means 'changed' now, which makes it more ambiguous.
You can't handle the truth.
From the article:
The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OSX, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. [2] Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s.
I'm still surprised when I see a computer that doesn't run Windows. But what also surprises me is that at universities and other 'poor' places, people still stick to Microsoft, despite the reasonably good, and much cheaper alternatives. MS has the psychological advantage that people are reluctant to change from what they know to something else, even if that something else is better. But on the other hand, the lukewarm respose Vista has gotten until now shows that MS is indeed dying. I know a few avid MS fans, and even they are pondering wether to invest in a new machine to be able to run Vista, or to stick with XP. However, as many succesful start-ups have shown in the last few years, it takes just one good idea to get to the top fast. MS has so much money that once they start 'thinking outside the box' (management speak for being original) they will be back to the top very soon. By then, people will have forgotten how bad they were, and we will be having the same troubles all over again. I hope I'm not right in this...
-- Cheers!
All kidding aside, I don't know how valuable Paul Graham's point is. I basically read it as "the SanFran Web2.0 crowd isn't afraid of Microsoft". He actually sums up my objections perfectly at the end:
"Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news."
I guess I'm in the older half already? Yikes.
At any rate, I guess it's a matter of perspective. This really is more a discussion of Web 2.0 than of Microsoft itself. If you think the "web2.0" stuff is the future of computing, then obviously this could mean that Microsoft missed the boat and is becoming increasingly irrelevant. If you think "web2.0" is a chaotic anomaly from which only a few winners will emerge, then that's another matter entirely (and if that is the case, Microsoft will be there waiting once the dust settles... why would they spend their time chasing after thousands of small fish now?)
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
We have a small problem but there's no reason to panic. This is the finest vessel in the world. There's no danger that it will sink immediately. You have the time you need to make an orderly exit on our many well appointed lifeboats.
I agree with Graham, the writing is on the wall.
Required disclaimer: I hate MS about as much as anyone else here, but...
This is a very strange blog piece and I'm wondering what part of the galaxy this guy lives in:
1) Since when does "dead" mean a company that is no longer feared? True, MS has lost it's fear factor, but that is nothing like being dead. "Dead" means dead, as in SCO.
2) I wish I had a dime for every time someone says the desktop is dead and all apps will from now on be web hosted. This is so old and isn't going to happen. Sure Ajax has made the web a lot more responsive and desktop-like but there is a long list of limtations having to do with availability, security, etc. It's not all about bandwidth.
3) Take a walk through the airport or just about any business office, the dentist, doctor's office, etc. How many Mac or Linux boxes do you see? Not that many. Sure Macs are a lot more popular now and growing, but to claim that he sees hardly anything but Macs and Linux makes me wonder about what planet he comes from.
Phoenix.
And who the hell is Paul Graham?
Just press ctrl alt del until the task manager comes up and kill whatever's locked it up.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Mr. Graham's definition of "dead" in this essay only encompasses the activity in his field of work (startups). What I would like to know is how much longer will we *normal people* have to put up with microsoft's influence and products?
.NET?
How much longer will we be forced to use their software at work, such as Windows and
How much more time of our life will be wasted having to fix some Visual Basic monstrosity and the like?
How much longer until they can no longer damage others through their inmoral and sometimes illegal business practices (SCO anyone?)
He doesn't mean dead as in six feet under
So basically he lied in the title to be deliberately provocative. Paul Graham is trolling.
I think he describes the situation pretty accurately.
Microsoft does suck big time, a lot of their recent technologies are either dead in the water, or quickly heading there. Their upper management doesn't realize how much they suck, so they keep pushing the train in the same direction.
This is evident from all the soundbytes that Monkeyboy and Gates are pulling out of their ass.
I am a big fan of OS X, a huge fan of OS X, and I do understand that MS has an unimaginable cash reserve and are still profitable. But for all their might, people in the know don't look to them as trend-setters. They are more of a nuisance and a headache, especially in the underpaid tech support department.
Zune, Vista, Urge, Plays for Sure, MSN Search, Live (WTF is Live anyway?) are all examples of how to royally fuck up a product that your competitors are wildly successful with. (In some cases technically superior as well. Linux for example is free and would accomodate the needs of most home users.) Yes, you might say that sooner or later Vista will be a de facto standard, but look at all the stories from the experts. The message is to run away from it as fast as one can. In the OS satisfaction department, Vista and OS X are completely reversed, meaning for every one person that doesn't like OS X, you'll find one person that does like Vista.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I know there are going to be hundreds of posts claiming Microsoft isn't dead and that they are still a very profitable company etc etc, but that's not what the article is about, so you might as well mod those posts down now. The idea is that Microsoft's throne as supreme monopoly that can do whatever they want and everyone will follow is over. I whole heartedly agree.
There was a time 5 years ago that if MS released a technology, now matter how bad, would become the de-facto standard for no other reason than MS released it. MS has yet to do anything new in about 2 years that has become the supreme technology just because they blessed it. Their game of catchup with Google has yielded nothing powerful. Their strategy has been mostly centered around Windows Live, which has yet to garner any real interest. All their Web 2.0 stuff is massively better than what they were releasing 5 years ago (their mapping software isn't half bad), but I've yet to interact with someone who's excited over it. I know a lot of web developers who get a boner over the Google maps API though. Even their desktop software hasn't yielded anything terribly popular. People will keep using Windows and Office, but be extremely slow to adopt any of their new technology.
I guess the real nail in the coffin is that there's no single company for MS to set their sights on. The entire web is surpassing them, not just Google. Google is giving important direction and acting sort of as a leader for the industry, but I see just as many interesting things coming from outside of Google as in. How can MS compete with that? They can keep trying to break IE as much as possible, but even there they are being forced by the market to become more standards compliant.
I don't think MS will just go away and they probably will be relegated to Windows and Office until those are slowly chipped at. The OS market will one day reach the maturity hardware has and there will be standards and most common software will be written in cross platform toolkits. It will happen so slowly that we'll step back and say "Remember Microsoft 15 years ago?" just as we are saying today "Remember Microsoft 5 years ago".
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
When is slashdot going to get back to news for nerds and stuff that matters instead of being an anti-microsoft FUD orgy?
For some reason that quote reminds me of this one:
"Take your Jedi weapon! Use it. Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!"
Luke did take his weapon, he did hate, and he did try to strike the Emporer down, but it turned out his journey towards the dark side wasn't complete after all. And neither is Apple's.
They aren't dead... it's just a flesh wound. Seriously though there is some writing on the wall. They haven't been able to derail Linux despite several proxy lawsuits. They are spending money hand over fist in order to stay in the music business and the same is true for the gaming business. According to Businessweek MS loses $71 on every xbox 360 sold! The NT kernel has reached it's end of life, and all you have to do is look at Vista to realize that it is a Frankensteins monster of ideas from *nix and MacOS X. Microsoft for the most part is hemorrhaging cash on all but two fronts in the industry, and that is for how long? Does anyone know how to play taps? This is going to be one very drawn out, slow, and boring funeral.
load "$",8,1
This is old news!
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Maybe I'm a dinosaur (OK, I like BASIC and assembly, so that's a given) -- but I don't see the benefit to putting applications on the Web. I'm no paranoid tinfoil-hat cypherpunk, but I don't trust the reliability and security of running my applications via a connection to the great Out There. Downloading open-source solutions, compiling them, and running them over a LAN, perhaps, but I don't see the venerable hard drive (read: fast local storage) going away anytime soon.
I can see inherently Web-centric applications (email, searches, etc) as migrating to the Web -- but for things like word processing, circuit simulation, and (most dramatically) video editing, I can't imagine how running these over the Internet is going to work, let alone make them Better. Even with the new fiber-optic cable they just finished burying here.
Do I just not "get" it? Why should I use Web-based applications when OpenOffice works just as well? Why complicate things by introducing more points of failure (the whole Internet connection chain of devices, software, and protocols) into the mix?
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Perhaps random startup companies no longer fear Microsoft, but there is a reason why it is virtually impossible to buy Linux pre-loaded.
It is the fear of a sudden $500 million increase in Windows licensing fees, a la what happened to IBM in the mid 1990's.
Photoshop with Ajax? Just imagine this nightmare, both for users and developers. Imagine Maya with Ajax, SolidWorks, AutoCAD, *any* PC game, Mathlab, Mathematica, R, ... with Ajax.
Technically, flash is way ahead of Ajax, and even with it you cannot pull of the apps mentioned above.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
It is telling that a scaled down version of Vista is already available to customers in countries other than the so called first world.http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/wi ndowsvista/editions/starter/default.mspx
Considering the fact that the majority of small businesses in so called developed countries are living a hand to mouth existance the move to create a secure cheap version of Windows might increase Microsofts revenues. There are many who would welcome not having to run stupid anti-virus crap just so that they can do their books!
"I'm getting better."
"No you're not; you'll be stone dead in a moment."
"I think I'll go for a walk."
"Look, you're not fooling anyone."
"I feel happy..."
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
MS is dead just like Lisp
PS, note for stupid moderators, Paul Graham is well known as a Lisp advocate.
...yeah, and Lisp is alive!
They can always wake up, decide to toss out the old OS code, or run it in virtual mode, then build a brand new OS from scratch. Maybe this time, they can let Cutler run wild without without the need for backward-compatibility and make something worth looking at? As Vista is quickly becoming this decade's Windows M.E, Microsoft is going to have to consider taking the big leap.
In the mean time, they can still just sue the crap out of any entreprenuer, right or wrong, because there are few with that kind of cash and time on their hands. Most if not all would just settle, giving Microsoft access to their inventions anyway.
...not dead." -Paul Graham
Microsoft is bigger than ever, makes more money than ever (with a consistent double digit growth every quarter), and has its hads in more areas of peoples lives than ever before (PCs, business [large, midsize, small], gaming, mobile devices, cars, television, movies, etc...). At the same time, their marketing team for years has been working on making their company seem more 'friendly', not the beheamoth aggressive cut-throat company of times past, but a kinder, gentler, trustworthy Microsoft. This might not have a huge effect on real techie crowds like Slashdot, but you can see their effects on the general populous, where Microsoft shows up in near the top of the country's most trusted companies.
It would be a mistake for any company to think that Microsfot is dead.
It is official; Paul Graham: microsoft is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered microsoft community when IDC confirmed that microsoft market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 97 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that microsoft has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. microsoft is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict microsoft's future. The hand writing is on the wall: microsoft faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for microsoft because microsoft is dying. Things are looking very bad for microsoft. As many of us are already aware, microsoft continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Windows is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long timeWindows developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Microsoft is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Vista leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of Vista. How many users of windows are there? Let's see. The number of Vista versus windows xp posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Vista users. Vista posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of windows xp posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put windows at about 80 percent of the microsoft market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 WinXP users. This is consistent with the number of WinXP Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Hotmail, abysmal sales and so on, Windows NT went out of business and was taken over by the Vista team who sell another troubled OS. Now Windows Vista is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that microsoft has steadily declined in market share. microsoft is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If microsoft is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. microsoft continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, microsoft is dead.
Fact: microsoft is dying
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Microsoft claims Paul Graham is dead.
But how long can they coast? What are you looking forward to from Microsoft now? If you had WinXP, did you upgrade to Vista? Do you intend to? Or do you just figure your next Windows computer purchase (if any) will be the current incarnation of Windows? I can't think of an MS initiative that I just can't wait for. What have they even announced recently? Used to be that a product pre-announcement from would kill a small competitor that was working on the same technology. Even if the MS product never emerged from the mists of vapor.
I am not a crackpot.
He cites GMAIL as the moment when Google became more scary than Microsoft. If anything GMAIL is yet more evidence that Google's efforts outside of Search have largely failed...at least in comparsion to the standard they set with Search. I tried to find latest marketshare numbers for GMAIL using Google but couldn't find anything more recent than May 2006 :). But I don't think they've changed much. In May 2006 GMAIL had less than 3% marketshare...way way way below Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Google's only real success outside of Search is mapping and there they trail MSFT in terms of innnovation. If you don't belive me, try local.live.com and see their 45 degree photo shots and navigation. It's better.
The ultimate irony? Google is following in Microsoft's footsteps in the most fundamental way: they're mostly innovating in business model. Microsoft was smart/lucky enough to realize that software was where the money was, not hardware. They realized that there were huge economies in having an operating system that ran across lots of different hardware platforms. Google's biggest innovation is that they realized they could build a business model around advertising.
They remind me of Sony now, one foot tripping the other up (look at Zune and DRM, Vista and DRM).
However, not necessarily by all that much. I have felt for 10 years now that I will be very surprised if Microsoft still exists by 2015. I think they are still on track to meet that prediction, as well. Gates' retirement next year is not a coincidence, and is also not due purely to old age either, I do not believe...he has more foresight than most, and he would be very well aware of the writing on the wall. He is leaving while he can still do so on a positive note.
I think that is alive, very alive $$$$$
You see, eventually these folks, flush with their startup money have to evolve into businesses with CUSTOMERS. This is the moment when all their foresight, vision and knowledge gets kicked in the ass by the reality of their target audience, who whether they like it or not, are generally using Windows in one form or another. I see this all the time. Awesome ideas, cool marketing strategies, beaten senseless by a a few basic questions: "This is cool, but will it work with Exchange? No? Damn, we cant switch. Sorry." "You mean we cant SSO with this?" Or "Okay, but can I control this through GPOs or can we LDAP it with Active Directory? No? Damn. Sorry, we cant switch."
No, Microsoft is not doing anything intreguing, but I think that for the moment(though not too much longer) they have enough entrenchment to fight off all but the most innovative of ideas. Microsoft can still zap Apple any time they want by stopping MS Office development on the MAC. This will change too, but if your business docs are in nothing but Word and Excel, you are not going anywhere soon.
One of the reasons for the dotcom bust was that too many startups never got around to the thought of what their customers WANTED, thinking that they could just convince them that their idea was so cool, so sweet, that they would just jump on it, without business considerations being a factor.
Its just like parental pride in a newborn baby. No matter what it looks like, they think the child is beautiful, when in reality, it could be a hideous creature and they would never know it.
If you are an Entreprenuer who believes that they have a target market large enough to pay back their VC without some form of Windows compatibility, they are headed for a fall, just like all the others before them. You dont find a Google every day of the week.
While I'll agree that MS is not longer as relevant or threatening as it was a few years ago, Graham seriously overstates the case when he claims that "the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the web--not just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop." He points to snipshot (snipshot.com) as a web-based photoshop replacement. One, that's like saying the MS notepad is a replacement for Word. Two, snipshot is not a bit of Java or Javascript that you download, but it's an extension that plugs into your browser. So it's more like a desktop app that uses the browser to display its GUI. I fail to see how that heralds the "death of the desktop". Maybe MS is "dead", but Graham is seriously overreaching when he claims that the desktop is "dead", too.
Paul Graham just used the word dead to be provocative. The overwhelming majority of startups no longer have to worry about Microsoft invading their space.
Startups founders also no longer list an exit strategy as being bought by Microsoft. Google and Yahoo perhaps, but not Microsoft and that's a big change from five years ago. As a matter of fact if you ask founders in their twenties if they envision someday being purchased by Microsoft you are more likely to be met with derisive laughter.
Man Holmes
Whoever modded parent as flamebait is an idiot who doesn't understand what flamebait means. Please fix it.
Microsoft claims Paul is dead.
"Microsoft Corp. today announced record revenue of $12.54 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2006, a 6% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $3.47 billion, $2.63 billion and $0.26, respectively." There sits the very image of a healthy company. When you cut away all the foregone conclusions and supernatural claptrap in this blog post what you're left with is Graham's assertion that the company is failing -- twice. So he's not afraid of MSFT? My impression is that the company would rather that you wouldn't be afraid of them. They'd like it if you bought their software, actually. Which many many many people, small businesses, medium businesses, big businesses, and governments do.
Agreed that computers are just tools, and that using a Mac isn't going to make you innovative, but craftsmen choose their tools carefully. Graham is pointing out that the craftsmen are choosing the Mac and OSX as a superior tool. Choosing to use Windows is just making the job more difficult.
If they keep up with the heavy pricetags for everything, people will more than likely start 1) pirating their stuff, or 2) choose the opensource alternatives. Not many people want to shell out even $99 for something they read on a blog that doesn't work right.
Microsoft will probably just get a grip on its security issues, retire decades of sodden legacy code, shove Gates and Balmer into the wilderness, rediscover a rich vein of young turks in its own think tanks and creches, then vanish in the media fogs -- reappearing in China as an oddly non-multinational titan.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
We're not arguing about hammers vs. screwdrivers, we're arguing about which brand of hammer to use.
The Geek lives in a bubble. Bubbles burst.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates proved even more appealing than cuddly babies in the eighth-annual Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal ranking of the world's best and worst corporate reputations.
Top-ranked Microsoft managed to beat Johnson & Johnson, whose emotionally appealing baby-products business had kept it in first place for a remarkable seven consecutive years. In the Reputation Quotient survey conducted by market-research firm Harris Interactive Inc., respondents gave Microsoft very high marks for leadership and financial results. But Mr. Gates's personal philanthropy also boosted the public's opinion of Microsoft. How Boss's Deeds Buff A Firm's Reputation [January 31, 2007]
this is what I think when I remember Paul Graham
People should read more specialized economic, financial and management review
to learn more about the Business situation of MS
Reading Paul to learn about the business situation of something
is like reading slashdot to become a linux sys/admin
It'll wander around for a few decades, eating the flesh of the living, but eventually the rot will overcome its limbs and it'll lay there writhing, a threat to no one who keeps their distance -- or, the brainstem will become severed (by a bullet, blunt object, or axe) and THEN it'll be what we know is dead in a natural sense.
--
Franklin Brauner
Forget for a moment the fact that Vista is an incredibly ugly attempt to clone Mac OS. Microsoft made its zillions selling Windows to a PC market that was logarithmically expanding during the 1990's and early 2000's. Now that market is saturated. Everyone who wants a PC has one, and they're not becoming obsolete nearly as fast as they used to. It's not unusual to see people still getting plenty of use out of a five year old PC, especially if they're only running a typical set of corporate applications (office suite, web browser, email program, maybe an in-house app or three that touch databases).
In the 1990's, Microsoft could release a new operating system and make it become ubiquitous in two years based solely upon it being preloaded. Nowadays, not so easy. The ugly ducking that is Vista will have a hard time becoming the dominant operating system -- and that's good, because it'll keep Windows DRM from becoming ubiquitous.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
That article is simply littered with unfounded opinion clumsily held together with a scattering of facts.
If the authour really thinks that nobody but "grandma's" use windows, god, they live in a closeted world.
As for the photosnip link posted, in an attempt to proclaim that the "desktop is dead", have you tried it?
For anything other than the afore mentioned "grandma", it's useless. Try throw a 25mb file at it and see how quick you can edit!
It's crap journalism like this which propogates FUD.
There will ALWAYS be a Desktop platform, the difference will be how Data is stored and retrieved and indeed, how we interact with that Desktop.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
microsoft are prevented from particpiating in all the shady practices everyone else does in the IT industry. Of course no one fears MS they are effectively barred from competeing.
I officially declare declaring something dead dead. Now Rob Enderle is out of a job. Have fun with your Ferrari laptop.
I hate sigs.
... such a let down when you reach the summary.
It reminds me of a National Geographic article that had "Was Darwin wrong?" filling one page, and "No. The evidence in support of evolution is overwhelming" filling the next.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The stacks of cash can't help them. They are idea-poor. They're uncool. No buzz factor. They try to copy the hot trends, but it takes them 4 years to ship their version, and by then the buzz is gone and the world has moved on to something else. Linux and Firefox are eating their lunch, not necessarily with market share but with innovation, stability, privacy, and openness.
I think what will really kill them is DRM. It is so blatantly anti-user. They sold out to Hollywood, when they could have easily told Hollywood to go pee up a rope. What could Hollywood do if the platform used by 92% of the world refused to implement draconian copy controls? Nothing. Hollywood always threatened that if DRM wasn't there, they would refuse to release their content. So MSFT should have called their bluff. Don't release content, then. See how long your business lasts. Independent creators will fill the void.
If you say "using a Web interface" instead of "putting applications on the Web" then there is a great advantage, at least for corporate applications. And it was in great part Microsoft who made it that way.
A typical example is a project I did a couple of years ago. There was an application in Access, about 2000 lines of code, that was a nightmare to maintain. Every time one of the 100+ users changed some configuration in his computer, the support people had to figure why that application had stopped working. I was given that application with detailed instructions: "fix this shit".
So I rewrote it, to a PHP application in a Linux server running Apache and a Postgres database. People now use it in several different browsers, with no problem at all. You can even tweak PHP to send Excel spreadsheets, by making Internet Exploder believe an HTML table is a spreadsheet and run Excel to open it.
You are right that CPU-heavy applications like video editing will remain at the desktop computer, but I see a definitive trend for most enterprise applications to migrate to Web-centric applications.
I guess Paul Graham may have been making a literary reference. Friedrich Nietzsche famously announced "God is dead" and put the thought in a "parable of a madman".
a n.html
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/nietzsche-madm
Of course, the thought there is that the "death" is a actually terrible thing:
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?"
But I think I can live in a world in which we've all lost faith in Microsoft, and I'm sure Paul Graham can, too.
Can I have your shoes?
Paul Graham is great. I would even call him Paul Greatham, but what if this is obsecene?
I learned everything I know about Linux reading Slashdot, you insensitive clod!
Although I haven't yet learned how to make my sound card work, my printer does make a sound every time I try to connect to the internet.
They must have discovered BSD in Redmond !!
The young out there, in fact, anyone claiming that all apps will be web based, has no idea about the difference between "high speed" 30mb/sec fiber optics and even 800mb firewire, let alone internal connections. This is huge when running intense programs like anything adobe, or any 3-d rendering (including games). If you are thinking that 30mbs is just the beginning, let me remind you, old folks, or tell you, young folks, about the initial roll out of standard cable 30 years ago. Repeat, 30 years ago. One more time for the children. 30 years between upgrades. Why? Because it is no small feat to upgrade a nation-wide infrastructure, let alone world-wide.
Wireless? Unless everyone stops developing faster wired technologies completely, and all turn to wireless, wireless will never be faster than wired.
Have you tried using google DOCs? I actually use it, and for the type of thing I would use Wordpad for, it is a great app. But what about working on the subway? on a plane? Anywhere lacking a connection? It is frustrating to the point that I have 2 copies of everything, one on my pc, and one on the internet, mainly for collaboration.
And now for ethnocentricity. Web 2.0 in Africa? Other emerging markets? VS a simply written word processor? This, however, is another good arguement for the emminent market loss of MS, that these places simply cannot pay for MS software, and this will be the largest new market by far.
The people who demand to work in all places, internet connection or not, with intense software, will continue to define the industry. Humans are a herd like social creature. People are too lazy to have one OS at work and another at home. Maybe not slashdot readers, but the average person.
MS doesnt scare anyone, point taken.
Web 2.0 will simply not replace the desktop.
End of story.
Graham credits Google and Apple, but surely Linux deserves a tip of the hat.
In the mid-90's, when NT stabilized and swiftly sank the whole Unix workstation market, and started putting out real server products that slowly shut down Novell and Banyan, it began to look like Microsoft would soon own all levels of computing. From their secure base of total desktop ownership, they could leverage control of workstation, small server and soon, no doubt, large server markets. And on the other side, Windows CE was going to take over all the TV set boxes and music players and microwave ovens. Nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of a company that, like IBM, was not another fish but rather the Sea itself.
There was nothing that the minicomputer and Unix workstation companies like DEC and Sun could do to hold back the tide - Microsoft was cheaper software, had the unstoppable advantage of running on cheaper commodity hardware, and again, the desktop that could be tweaked to only work right with one server.
Then Linux came along, operating more efficiently on the same cheap commodity hardware and with even cheaper software. It shut them out of monopoly in the server market. Sure, they have a presence, but only as another competitor, not as a monopolist. And Linux is where everybody went for entertainment appliances, CE is a *minor* competitor there.
That left Microsoft with a monopoly ONLY on the desktop and no way to take over anything larger or smaller.
...agaaain?
The last nail in the coffin came, of all places, from Apple. Thanks to OS X, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare in technology. Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows.
Uh, Apple desktop market share is still somewhere well under 10%. Has this guy been drug tested lately?
Actually, the big threat to Microsoft is OpenOffice. Office is where Microsoft makes its money. Putting Linux on a computer doesn't hurt Microsoft; they've already been paid by the computer maker. Installing OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office comes directly out of Microsoft's profits. The web stuff gets all the press attention, but that's not where the money is.
M$ is like a rich old senile uncle tottering along telling stories of the past.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Microsoft Claims "Paul Graham is Dead"
Is closed source software business dying?
Slashdot = Sarcasm
He did try to kill the Emporer, but Darth intercepted his swing with his own lightsaber.
Credit here goes to a cluster of open-source projects - LAMP, basically, plus of course Java.
.NET) to get along with the desktop/IE monopoly and that open-Internet web sites would have to go along.
It also looked, around the time of the Netscape-killing, that Microsoft would inexorably make the Web an MS gated community. That internal corporate web apps would all surely be ASP (and then,
But between MySQL, PHP, Python, et al, and of course Java, an alternative held together that relegated Microsoft web solutions to merely another competitor - a strong one, maybe, but not a monopoly that can dictate the whole game. It was some years where it all seemed to hang in the balance, maybe MS would eventually grind them all down. Around the time most people felt that LAMP was here to stay and Java had a well-entrenched community of its own, Firefox came up out of Netscape's grave and started nibbling down IE's market share even on Windows.
That's when I realized that MS was in a box. A big, big box full of money, sure, but still, it had met its limits.
Nothing on the p.c. beats final cut pro/shake/dvd studio pro.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
...Microsoft, if nothing else, still has the power it needs in order to take another (smaller) companies ideas and launch them themselves...
That's just the thing. The article is saying Microsoft has the power to do this, but not the ability. It used to be that Microsoft could look at a small product, and just announce they were doing something similar "due out soon" and that company was dead.
Now if Microsoft said "Oh, we're working on that" the effect would not kill a company. And there is a good chance that even if Microsoft did do all the work to build a new product, it would take them some time to deliver and being a Microsoft 1.0 product, it would suck - giving a small company pelnty of time to get a product through a few iterations, and have a good head start.
Microsoft does not have the ability to compete with quick and intelligently targeted iterations anymore.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We don't need government interference in the market. Microsoft was taken down by natural market forces and the evolution of technology. That whole antitrust case was a big joke. The only people that profited from it were parasitic lawyers. We need to spend less money on lawyers.
Like when I am asked for computer help by a 19 year old blond girl untroubled by a high IQ and find that NOT only does she OFFCOURSE run firefox and has for a long time BUT also runs VLC for her media needs and can be very easily persuaded to use proper opensource apps rather then crappy closed source crap because she gets it.
Amazing. A bright new era has emerged and no longer will I ever be asked to de-infest a machine of tons of spyware.
Except that the very next day a much older guy who really should know better as he is supposed to be much smarter was complaining that his machine wasn't working properly and the net was slow only to find him using unprotected IE with a ton of shit installed.
Typical, the same era as before and I will be doomed to de-infest machines of tons of spuware until the end of time.
The problem is that of the yes men. The author talks how none of the people he meets and talks to use windows anymore. Yup. I can believe that. You tend to surround youreselve by people who share your view of the world. Since I cannot see myself having sex with myself naturally all the women in my life share that view and won't have sex with me either. IF only I had an narcacist complex I would be rolling in the sex.
For every person slowly weening themselves of MS software there are a dozen still firmly hooked who don't even know they are hooked.
And then there is the final nail in the coffin of anyone claiming MS is dead. The long proclaimed dead of the desktop.
Ain't going to happen. Ever.
Trust me on this. Photoshop on the net sounds nice but it is going to be more of an MS paint then a fullblown photoshop. The reason? Download a photoshop cd. Count the minutes. Are you willing to wait this long for every photograph you want to edit?
Ah, but you won't need the full program (not that the full program will be available anyway) all the time. Yeah, sure you don't, but will you ONLY need the limited tools available? I only buy a small percentage of products from a supermarket BUT a supermarket that only offers those products wouldn't do much business with anyone else would it?
I been around to long to still believe "dead of X" stories. Gmail is nice and all and certain tools may indeed shift slightly too a different format BUT by and large the same reason tools went of the mainframe and onto individual computers is the reason that they will remain there.
It works. The day that online space becomes availble in the terrabyte range for trivial amounts of money and I can stream HD video from my online storeage, then and only then could the desktop be "replaced". Technology may make it possible, internet companies will however have a far harder time learning to accept that kind of advanced use by their customers.
Simply put, do you keep a flashlight for when the power fails? Bottled water for when the water mains break, blankets for when the heat fails? Well, then keep a offline copy of your emails for when your internet fails.
If MS is dead, then for corpse it is damned active.
And if nobody is afraid of them anymore then, well perhaps that is like most city folks don't fear say a tiger. Don't mean tigers are harmless just because you are to stupid to realize it is a danger. Especially one that has been wounded and is on the edge of starvation and suddenly sees a lot of stupid fat cityfolks walking around.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undead
Have gnu, will travel.
FTFA, and yes an instant classic:
All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.
Slap, how truth stings. It's been over for a while, but people don't realize it because M$ spends about a billion dollars a month telling the world they are number one. Even grandmas are seeing through it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Yes, Microsoft has been and currently is the best for the "beige box PC."
But you have to look one layer deeper and ask why.
Microsoft is the best because they're the biggest and most pervasive. That's why they have the hardware support. That's why they have the network-effect on their file formats and protocols. That's why the computing model as evolved from the 1980's is locked into Microsoft.
Fastforward to 2007 and you'll see that we're still in an extension of the 1980's computing model. Maybe it's "natural" and "intuitive" and "inherently good". Maybe it's because Microsoft has used its dominance to forced computing to stay in that model for 20+ years. If there's a squeak of truth the latter, at some point the dam will break, and Microsoft will be left in an adapt-or-die position, like IBM was.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's not Microsoft that's dead, it's we all became more alive.
The Geek lives in a bubble. Bubbles burst. [cites popularity studies in favor of Bill Gates]
A company that spends billions of dollars a year in marketing and lives on public perception is always in a precarious position. The disfavor of "geeks" is fatal to them. It's amazing that you would try to turn this on it's head.
People who matter to the future of computing live and die on facts. Bubbles are built on emotions. All the marketing in the world falls on it's face when the user's computer gets creamed by the virus of the month and the user's opinion of Bill Gates does not matter at all. The shift has happened and it's all over.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I think that PG is right on: more creative work is done on OS X and Linux, but:
:-)
average people will be using Windows for a long time.
I am an independent consultant, and the open source ecosystem is great for me - I don't care if others choose Windows (unless they want to be my customers
A few decades ago, "commercial off the shelf" (COTS) software was the big new thing, but for many business processes, organizations really need custom work. Building on top of open source makes custom applications more price competitive with commercial offerings that don't really do what you need.
A beautiful turn of phrase, but he's forgetting how much barbed wire Microsoft has laid. Not just Outlook and IE and Word and Excel and Powerpoint, but the way IE renders HTML, and the .DOC format, and billions of lines of Excel macros, and hundreds of millions of vapid PowerPoint presentations.
Ah, but these are self extinguishing. M$ must constantly break their own "standards" to thwart their competitors. As each layer is absorbed, M$ must push out a new incompatible "standard" which breaks older ones. The user notices and uses less voletile formats like pdf for "things that matter" and eventually M$ ends up being used only where it does not matter.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
In Soviet Redmond...Microsoft blogs your death!
Parent makes an excellent point.
"...I'm so glad. I've got sunshine in a bag. I feel useless--but not for long! The future is comin' on, it's comin' on..."
I thought this was funny, cause even after reading his bio I still have no clue who the guy is.
I think Microsoft's fatal flaw is summed up in this quote, "Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck."
What's really funny is that he then goes on to suggest that M$ can save itself by purchasing a collection of Web2 companies - exactly how M$ built itself in the first place. They can't buy themselves dominance on a standards based web and that is why they are history and increasingly turning to patents and legal absurdities they once derided.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
> I claim that the word 'dead' is dead
I agree but It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.
-- Bill Clinton
They're only mostly dead. From what I'm told, there's a big difference.
This isn't the first time that Microsoft has been in this position.
For those who are old enough to remember this, Microsoft seemed to be at the top of their game back in 1990, where MS-DOS reigned supreme as the leading operating system. There were competing products that were out at the time, including DR-DOS and even a few fledgling open source-like projects. Keep in mind this was before even Linus Torvalds started his now infamous attempt to try a different approach as well on essentially the same hardware.
Microsoft had also made several attempts at designing a GUI file manager dubbed "Windows", and by 1990 they finally hit something that seemed as thought it might actually work: Windows 3.0. You can argue if this really was worth the effort, but earlier versions of Windows (including a visually similar shell in MS-DOS 4.0) were total flops and very nearly took down Microsoft as a company. Even the much talked about Windows NT did not really make significant sales until it was released as version 4.0
And I could go back to an even earlier time in Microsoft history, where they seemed to have a solid grip on the BASIC interpreter market and even a few compilers for several microcomputers, but had pretty much reached the peak of their game (this was about 1980). I actually owned a pre-1980 Microsoft compiler, and used some of their other products. With a little but of luck and a lot of brazen self-promotion, they eneded up PC-DOS 1.0 for the IBM-PC.
So the real question is if Microsoft can do it again. Windows certainly is dead or dying, even though it could be argued that it is the best of what it does: Provide a clean GUI interface and common low level interface for commercial drivers. Other arguments not withstanding, other operating system platforms have tried to compete with Microsoft, with the only real competitor in terms of ease of use coming from Apple Computer. And both of those companies have borrowed so many ideas from each other it is hard to tell who came up with what first. Point given to Apple for the idea first, which was in turn stolen from Xerox, but who is counting.
So the question I'm sure Microsoft execs are asking today is: "what can we do today to top our earlier accomplishments?"
As a publicly traded company, I'm sure they are feeling pressure from their stock holders, and have even perhaps suggested to themselves if they ought to invest in something perhaps even outside of the computer industry. One successful company that has nearly successfully transitioned completely out of their original core industry is the RJR Tobacco company, which took most of its money and moved it into food processing plants and buying out competitors in that industry, and has tried to gradually pull out of the tobacco market altogether. Could Microsoft do this again, but with biotech or something related? They certainly have tried in terms of internet content (like MS-NBC, MSN, Hotmail, etc.) and video games (Xbox). What sort of industry or product would work given the current Microsoft management style?
You may loathe or love Microsoft, but their managers aren't stupid, and they do have a bunch of money that can either be given as dividends or plowed into some crazy new idea. The real question is if Bill Gates and others at Microsoft will have the ability to find the next cool base tech and exploit it to its ultimate conclusion. The problem here is that operating systems seem to be the best profitable product that Microsoft has been involved with, and that may be reaching a dead end on this particular line of thinking. Regurgitation of the same old garbage but even more bloated than before may not be enough this time, and why you may legitimately conclude that Microsoft is indeed dead.
Alternative OS concepts:
*Voice recognition: MS has tried that too.
*Full AI user interface: AI research itself has hit a dead end, and Microsoft isn't noted for doing "hard" research for a ground breaking product. A "natural language" interface m
As a consultant, I'm currently implementing a solution for a client based off of Sharepoint 2007 and Office 2007. The capabilities are just amazing for business solutions and no other software can match those capabilities. MSFT will only be "dead" when they lose their stranglehold on the business world.
outside of Slashdot, the people I've talked to have said they're very impressed with Vista and hope to get it soon.
Dude, only one in ten people have plans to get Vista. You are talking to an unusual group of people.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Microsoft is killing Microsoft. They decided that they owned the developers and then they tried to milk them. It was only a matter of time that those who brought home the bread and butter would begin to let go and go somewhere else. It worked that way for Apple before them.
I bought an Apple II and upgraded the 48k memory to 64k way back in the stone age of computers. Then I decided to do some serious business programming and found that Apple owned programmers. They said if you want the chore done, hire Claris Works. Well I wasn't rich enough for them so I found a machine (Microsoft) OS that I could get data on. That by the way was a difference produced by an Industrial Spy at IBM. When the PC came out the earliest design was stolen by a Japanese spy who had clones on the market ahead of the release. This caused the data to be available that made programmers love getting into MS machines and their OS. It closed the door on the "Apple Model." Now MS wants to own the programmers who make their product live.
Only a few years ago, I noted that I could pay a horrid price for Visual Studio because I was an American but had I lived in China or India, MS had versions for sale at less than 1/10th the US price. Often they distributed in their development centers for free. This made me pay for my competition. That is a business model doomed to die. If I pay the price I pay for the end of my business. Figure this one out.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
From TFA: "Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."
This guy needs a dose of reality. If he is "surprised" running across Windows computers, he needs to visit a business, any business. I'd say...99.9% of them use Windows. Perhaps he is just surrounding himself with counterculture hippies, or perhaps he wants to ignore reality.
From TFA: "Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops" well perhaps they need to fund more broadly. Cool is cool, but not always profitable.
From TFA: "Windows is for grandmas"...and 99.9% of corporate users, and most home users, and many students.
Well, it seems like a lot of people would happily run financials via the web ... our company is moving to that from installed Windows apps, and it wasn't my doing, it was our CFO.
:-)
I seem to remember a few years back being told by a Siebel sales guy that hosted software for sales CRM wasn't going to fly either, but I bought it anyway
Paul's premise for his conclusion that Microsoft isn't dangerous is expressed in the first paragraph of his article:
"A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from Yahoo. I said that Yahoo had been warped from the start by their fear of Microsoft. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a "media company" instead of a technology company. Then I looked at his face and realized he didn't understand. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 80s. Barry who?"
Oh boy. As much as I would like it to be true, it's not. Microsoft still has a monopoly, still plays dirty by abusing its monopoly power and the Justice Department still has no balls. That means that Microsoft is still very dangerous.
They are now moving toward gaming the legal system with patent games and SCO like harassment lawsuits. Many believe that they indirectly and directly provided funding for the SCO fiasco. Yep, as long as they are both powerful and corporate thugs they're dangerous.
I would not suggest that the IT industry put down its guard even for one second just because one person is too young to have seen Microsoft's ugly side.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You must not have worked very hard looking for it. The default Ubuntu graphical shell is Nautilus. They've had scripting options for some time, and I figured SVN is popular enough elsewhere SOMEONE must have written such a thing. And lo and behold, via google:
s .pl?searchon=names&version=all&exact=1&keywords=na utilus-script-collection-svn
;) ). I hope I've helped your problem some. And God, don't bother with vista without good reason.
http://marius.scurtescu.com/node/85
Indeed, the same package shows up in Ubuntu repos from Dapper onward (as the first link describes):
http://packages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search_package
It seems that TortoiseSVN has problems with Vista. I haven't tried the svn nautilus integration yet, but there's no bugs filed against it. If you run into any, please do file a report. Personally, I choose to use editors that have SVN / CVS support built in. But I suppose some web developers may prefer a seperate client or something.
In my own experience, Windows has been about as bad as Linux with hardware. Vista's nvidia are only slightly better than Linux's with regard to suspend: instead of locking up during suspend to RAM, it fails to initialize the video on restart. Equally unusable, really. Feisty's due to make some changes with nvidia that should help alleviate restricted drivers like the nvidia closed source binary. I think it's important to stress that Linux is first and foremost an open system. If it also serves as a usable system for people who don't care, and continues to be that way, I'm willing to attribute that to the openness of the system, and so much the better. But as much as open source considerations get in the way of the user experience, they are a second class citizen in my sight. Linux makes a fantastic hacker's system.
For example, FUSE is a great idea that has several great examples with few / no comparable in Windows. Daemontools in Windows lets you present a file as if it were a cd in a drive. FUSEISO does the same thing for windows, though the GUI aspect is not quite finished. FUSE presents this mount globally, without the need for applications to know about it. And it doesn't require significant user privileges. But the greatest part about FUSE is that it's the core to several components, like gmailfs, and sshfs, ftpfs, you name it. NTFS support was written this way with good success. There's fuse modules to present Doom WAD files as a directory. There's one to access your blog. In contrast, whatever technology daemon tools is using remains cloistered.
So yea, there's a learning curve, but I'm not gonna start advocating compatiblity with Windows programs to solve it. Downloading crap from random internet sites is the modus operandi of Windows software distribution, and it's crazy insecure. Ubuntu takes the steps proprietary software can't, packaging and distributing tested and signed versions of software, without including spyware (unless you count popcon
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I'm holding out for Microsoft jeans and chewing tobacco.
Thankfully he started Y Combinator so he could stop boring us with stories about how great ViaWeb was. Seriously half his book was about the magnificience.
Y Combinator is okay, it is like a VC firm with nicer people running it. Course I don't see them as really helping those that start companies as their financing is low and they take a lot of stake in the company for a couple thousand dollars. I'm not sure if the "connections" YC has are worth it.
... oh yeah, and JPL in Pasadena uses Windows to control the MRO.
then somebody please bury the fucking body as it appears to be continuing to stink up the room...
Not to mention release diseases like Vista...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
See:
_ and_Statistics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_Damn_Lies%2C
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
He waves his hands in the air and says that profitability doesn't matter.
This is the kind of sentiment that begets bad analogies to help drive the point home. It was a good article. What was so hard to understand?
I'm sure that cute polar bear cub in Germany is putting on weight at the same pace as a steriod injecting high school senior. The point is, Microsoft's mits are getting bigger while its nads are shrinking. Looking at profits in an aging company is like trying to judge someone's fitness with a bathroom scale and never doing a blubber check. Is the profit muscle, or fat?
It's possible in the business world to mass profits while your vitals are failing. At this point Microsoft is a powerful, aging 300lb middle linebacker with stiff knees that doesn't know whether the play is going up the left side or the right side.
What Graham is saying is that the football field in the computer industry was historically ten yards wide and everyone feared the fridge in the middle. Now the field is getting wider, and Microsoft is playing out its career in the CFL, but it hasn't figured this out yet because the NFL buyout (desktop applications) was so lucrative. Now Microsoft finds itself lined up toe-to-toe against Linux in the middle, Apple wide right, and Google wide left. Occassionally Microsoft manages to get an arm around someone and the stretcher comes in. Apart from that, the chains continue to advance, and not in Microsoft's favour. The opposition is now moving the ball at will, and the game doesn't end in 60 minutes. Google is getting to the point where it can lower a shoulder and break tackles in open field. If it decides to become that kind of player, the sidelines might constrict again. One can only hope that Google doesn't at some point decide that prudent ball control doesn't involve driving four yards up the middle, down after down. Enough with the NFL already. The only entertainment value that ever had was stretcher bingo.
Which reminds me, TSN is reporting that Alan Eagleson was secretly pardoned by the Canadian Board of Parole at the earliest opportunity after serving just 4 months of an 18 month sentence. Does that suck like the FTC or what?
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=202955
200 findings of fact against, but no permanent smirch.
Agreed. I work at a relatively small company. Just a few days a go, I listened to my manager (a prospective customer of Microsoft vs some other competitors) talking about "backing Microsoft into a corner".
Be careful, car analogies are bad enough, don't start everybody off on football analogies...
web hosting industry-wise, windows servers are only offered as "flavor". linux dominates the market SO bad, but yet more and more companies enter linux hosting business, and curiously, they find customers.
Read radical news here
I blogged about this same subject in December:
s oft-bubble-in-2006/
http://www.osxautomation.com/2006/12/10/the-micro
In the meantime, that ol' Apple sandbox is looking pretty sweet.
A prison with velvet bars is still a prison.
This was from several years ago - not surprisingly prices have dropped! Intel's Clovertown/Kentsfield 4-core/CPU kludge was out last year! 2006-10. It's just a shame that Apple has hitched to the rather underwhelming Intel approach rather than the forthcoming AMD 8-core product that's fully integrated.
Let's see, if I had to build an 8-core right now:
2x L5320 Xeon @ 1.9 GHz.
Bensley/Woodcrest MB, say, SuperMicro X7DA8
slots up to 32GB of RAM but I'd settle for 8GB.
Case, PSU, Disk, gfx.
Still squeaking under $3000.
Seriously, Newegg is your friend.
Da Blog
The computer industry and its followers needs to stop using overblown metaphors. Like a company is "dead" when it is simply facing a slight change in its marketing strategy.
Microsoft isn't 'dead'. The company has billions of US dollars in reserves and makes a healthy profit each year. It employs tens of thousands of people.
So why the fuck did this clown say that the company was dead? And why are we paying any attention to this hysterical shit-for-brains anyway? Why do we give credibility to anyone who uses outlandish and absurd metaphors in order to draw attention to his (or her) less-that-stellar insights and opinions?
Just take this fool's name off your list of people in the industry who should be taken seriously in the future.
What Mr.Paul doing is pitching his firm asking the M$ to buy his startups he has funded;)
he didn't explain why he counts MS out of the web 2.0 world. may be because as he confessed he never uses MS products and is so unaware of what they are up to.