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Steve Ballmer on MS Server, Linux, Yahoo & More
yorugua writes "Furniture trembled as Steve Ballmer was to be interviewed by InformationWeek. He then went on to talk about Linux: 'How does Microsoft beat Linux? The same way "you beat any other competitor: You offer good value, which in this case means good total cost of ownership," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says.', Embrace-Extend-Extinguish: 'We say when we embrace standards, we'll be transparent about how we're embracing standards. [...] If we have deviations, we'll be transparent about the deviations.'"
Microsoft will beat linux the same way they beat any competitor: by purchasing a rival (or in this partnering with Novell) and offering the same product with ten times the marketing force.
Eventually it will believed to be true. I think even the liar will start believing it.
Sadly many IT professionals believe Windows saves money because its an integrated platform. But ignore the reboots and being forced to buy alot more servers as Windows is not friendly with using one or 2 more apps on a single server compared to Unix.
Oh and lets not forget about the blanket licensing fees. What is the average? $12,000 per year for licensing and support per desktop? Uh yeah thats true TCO.
If it were not for Microsoft already setting the standards for Office the corporate world would have abandonded them years ago. Linux is alot cheaper and has 1/10th of the issues if only it could the VB apps and Office.
http://saveie6.com/
Because, frankly, Debian is making my life easy.
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They wouldn't need to mess around with protocols, etc.
But they already admitted that lock-in was necessary to stave off competition - in the famous "Halloween documents".
Bill Gates also said that open file formats and interoperability could be the death of Windows.
So this is all just spin. What's really going to happen is delays, obfuscation, API churn... and as many other spanners in the works as possible while still "complying" with the letter of the law, if not the spirit.
No sig today...
...apart from cmdr taco raking in cash (in the form of ad revenue) off of the slashbot hordes that are queing up to post the usual "M$ sux" comments (which will race to +5 insightful) and lame jokes about ballmer throwing chairs (which invariably get rated +5 funny)?
No point at all.
We have to be careful about the dishonesty here.
There's nothing wrong with having things over and above, or alongside what a standard calls for. Almost everybody does this.
What is wrong is selling people a product that supposedly uses a standard but does not interoperate with that standard. That isn't just deceiving the customer it's freeloading on the know-how and goodwill that went into the standard.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Slashdot didn't evolve into a "Microsoft sux" since you joined. It always was one. You're still here after all these years.
It's self moderated and you're right -- posts that disparage Microsoft and discount Ballmer do fly to the top of the moderation. That's not because some corporate sponsor has a geek lab in Bangalore with 1,000 blogdrones astroturfing the moderation. It's because Slashdot attracts geeks and that's what the geeks really think. That's honest opinion survey for you. I think a lot of that is because the observation that "M$ sux" actually is insightful, and the Ballmer's futile thrashing of a chair in helpless frustration over Google really is funny.
When you add that slashdot is still one of the popular sites on the intertubes you have to ask: does Microsoft have a problem?
And remember, an answer to every Microsoft problem is available all over the web.
They have to be running scared now. Vista has been out for a year and a half and OEMs are still introducing new machines that not only don't run Vista -- but never will be able to, and people are buying them up like crazy.
Help stamp out iliturcy.